(This is part of a storytelling experiment called WELCOME TO YOUR QUARTER-CAREER GAP YEAR)
You’re sitting on the porch of Victor’s house, watching the sun recede into the horizon and waiting for your cousins to pick you up. These are the cousins from your paternal grandfather’s side of the family. You visited their home in Bolands a few days ago, and had a good time catching up with Aunt Eileen (your father's half sister), Riley (who feels more like a young uncle), and Riley’s family, which consists of his wife, their three kids – Tully, Brian, and Lara – and also Lara’s five-year-old son, Solomon. You last saw them a couple years ago, but that was with the social buffer of your mother and sister. Now that it's only you, you’re able to have deeper conversations and learn more about what’s going on in everyone’s life.
“Cuuuuuuuuz! What’s uuuuuup!” yells Tully from the front passenger seat of Brian's compact SUV as it pulls up to Victor's property. This is typical Tully: early-twenties-energy wrapped in adopted hip hop swagger. Even though soca and calypso are the island’s main genres of choice, he loves the American export of rap and all its flashy accoutrements. In fact, he aspires to one day become a big-time rapper. So, when he’s not using his culinary degree to look for chef jobs in local hotels and restaurants, he spends most of his days in the “studio” (whether that means a professional space or a friend's computer program, you don't know) recording tracks for an album.
As you hop into the backseat, you hug Lara and give a high-five to her son, Solomon. Then, you greet Tully and Brian who sit in the front. Tonight it will just be you five, hanging out and going to an open mic poetry slam.
“You ready to hear some poetry, Solomon?!” you ask. He responds with shy smile as he snuggles closer to his Mom, showing how easily he can go from drama-club-extraverted to mommy-seeking-introverted. You laugh and look out the window as Brian maneuvers the car back to the main road.
You heard about the event from one of those Facebook writing groups that the people at the bookstore told you about. Finally, you’ll get to meet some Antiguan writers. Back in the States, you had a writing group that you met up with every couple weeks, so you yearn for the fellowship that comes with commiserating over narrative struggles and bonding over storytelling aspirations. Even though this event will only be one night, you look forward to learning about the similarities and differences between the Antiguan writers and writers back home.
But as soon as the car pulls into the deserted parking lot of the restaurant where the event is supposed to be held, your hopes drop faster than a wicket faced by Curtly Ambrose.
Not only is the lot devoid of cars, but because of the restaurant’s open-air design allowing you to see straight into the dining room, you can see that it’s also practically devoid of people. Two people are inside, sitting at the bar, but they probably work there.
“Have mercy, man. Did you get the place right?" asks Tully, which is what you’re asking yourself. But then you see the name “Big River Restaurant” on the marquee, which is the name mentioned on the Facebook post.
“Yeah, this is the place,” you say, and get out of the car to talk to the people inside.
From the people at the bar, you find out that they do work at the restaurant, but they don’t have much info about the open mic. Yes, it’s supposed to happen tonight. But no one has arrived, and they haven't heard from the organizers.
What's worse is that it’s currently 7:30PM, which is 30 minutes after the Facebook post said that it would start.
“That’s 'Antigua time' for you,” says Brian, referring to the general nonpunctual nature of gatherings on the island. “They will give a start time of 7, but they really don’t get going until 9.”
Obviously, you didn’t know this, so you’re torn between convincing your cousins to wait around for the next hour, or doing something else. As twenty-somethings who live with their parents, your cousins are eager to use any excuse to get out of the house, but just waiting around for an event that they’re only going to because of you, isn’t something your comfortable with.
So, collectively, you decide to stay for fifteen minutes to see if anybody else will show up. And as you wait, Brian and Tully text their friends furiously, trying to find out alternate options, while Solomon does cartwheels in the performance space in the back of the restaurant.
After several minutes, no one arrives, so right before you ask everybody if they want to a leave, Tully stands up and starts an odd-looking dance.
“Pre-Carnival! Pre-Carnival! Uh, uh, UH!!!!” he says while thrusting and dancing to an inaudible beat. “Wanna go to the Pre-Carnival celebrations in town?!”
The question animates everybody. Since you’ll be leaving in a few days, you thought you’d miss all the Carnival festivities.
But apparently not.
“Let’s do it,” you say, without giving it a second thought. After weeks of solitary writing, you would love to hear some Antiguan poetry and commune with fellow writers, but the pull to sample a little bit of the legendary Carnival atmosphere is too great.
So everybody piles into Brian’s car and you head back to town, blasting Carnival-appropriate music the whole way and getting in the mood.
As you enter the city limits, you can feel the excitement everywhere. Brian turns down the music in the car, and when he does, you can hear traces of calypso and soca music in the distance, coming from different areas of town, in almost every direction. Something is happening, somewhere, you just haven't reached it yet.
With Tully’s urgings, Brian stops outside one of the cricket stadiums and you see a mass of 30-40 people milling about and looking tired like they just came from some sort of celebration. Many of them are wearing pink t-shirts, while others wear green t-shirts. Lara says that they're part of two different mas bands, troupes of people that walk together in masquerade outfits during Carnival.
Since it looks like things are ending, Brian drives on. As the car moves through the streets, you can tell that things are picking up. Sidewalks are flooded with people and unyielding pedestrians cross recklessly in front of the car, so Brian decides to find a parking space and everyone gets out.
After a few blocks of walking through the streets of excited revelers, you see a mass of people ahead where the music seems loudest.
“If you decide to take a picture, do it fast,” Tully warns. “Don’t flash your phone around too much.”
Apparently, the particular type of touchscreen smartphone you have isn’t sold in the country, so if you have it, it’s a clear sign that you’re an American or another kind of foreigner and you have some money. Tully and Brian echo something that Victor and Fawnie told you: you don’t want people to know that you’re American. They’ll think you have money and they might try to rob you.
"Yeah, but at six feet one, two-hundred twenty pounds, I'm not exactly the easiest guy to rob," you say, smiling.
"Oh, they'll find a way," Tully says ominously.
When you reach the mass of people lined along the main street, you see that the festival is in full swing. Around you, people of all ages dance where they stand as a slow parade moves down the road. Streetlights illuminate the area as modestly decorated floats, showcasing live bands or sound systems, create their own mobile party. This is just a warmup parade, so the floats aren’t fully decorated with all the frills and bright colors like you would expect. It's just a dress rehearsal to get everyone excited for the big party several days away.
A long and wide party trolley rolls by, housing a steelpan band. The melody coming from their instruments is magical. Light-sounding and easygoing, it creates a relaxed vibe in the crowd. Looking around, you see how people are shrugging their shoulders and nodding their heads to the beat. This is beach bar music – it’d be perfect to listen to while sipping on a pina colada at Malone’s.
After enjoying the trolley, you and your cousins move farther down the street where you see an 18-wheeler stacked high with two-stories worth of speakers, blasting out a extremely rapid and vigorous beat. Several people sit on top of the speakers, vibing off the music, even though the decibel level seems like it could rival a jet engine.
“O-Moo!” says the song’s lead singer, followed by a string of lyrics that you don’t understand. And then, “O-Moo!” again. The beat inspires lots of couples around you to dance-grind on each other. Others jump and gyrate. Brian and Tully look on, nod their heads, and play it cool, clearly enjoying the scene, but not wanting to get too crazy, while Lara and little Solomon look like they’re in a trance, rhythmically flailing their limbs up and down, loving every minute.
You don’t go too crazy, either, but you’re dancing, shrugging your shoulders to the beat, taking it all in: the delicious orgy of sound; the delirious smiles on people’s faces; everything.
It’s not poetry, or earnest conversations about story and narrative. It’s not the night you expected to have – but you wouldn’t have it any other way.