Education a la Carte, with Hot Dogs and Hot Cubans

Hormel makes a foul smelling Corned Beef Hash, which in the 1970’s sold for about $0.28 a can. Mixed with chopped onions, a little garlic and green peppers all worth about $0.15, this mixture when stir-fried leads you to think you are eating something akin to a Cuban “Vaca Frita.” With one and a half cups of white rice worth $0.14 and a fresh tomato worth $0.08, four persons ate a comfortable dinner. Ad two tablespoons of King Kullen iced tea to water worth $0.04 and two Yodels at $0.12, and you had a feast with desert all for under $1.00. This was the typical meal prepared by my mother for several years after her divorce from my father. For variety she would substitute the Corned Beef with chopped Hot Dogs, and we were happy, and everything was still under a dollar! Thanks to supermarket coupons, we would sometimes splurge on chicken legs and pork chops. Steaks were things we looked at with envy, and rarely could afford.

While my mother, brother and I survived on a shoestring budget, and my mother’s many tensions kept her from sleeping a full night, my brother and I learned to fetch for ourselves. We learned to survive the concrete jungles of Brooklyn, and then Queens. All of our Cuba reference points seemed irrelevant and when called upon, would always let us down. Without a father, my brother and I quickly learned that in a crisis we should never expect any backup or support from anybody. My mother, away from home from 7:30 in the morning till 6;30 in the afternoons because of her work, could not help even if she wanted. Exposed to every conceivable vice, criminal activity, drugs, rampant sex of the straight and homosexual type, gangs and epidemic school truancy rates, my brother and I somehow managed to keep to ourselves, going to school, coming home, keeping the apartment clean, studying and staying away from destructive habits. To this day, I cannot clearly explain why we survived, while so many around us fell victims to behaviors that eventually killed them, or put them in jail for half their lives.

In this lifestyle we lived, with my mother fervently believing that we were “temporarily poor” but “mentally rich.” My mother’s biggest concern was that we focus on education, and we study hard, which my brother and I did as best we could, within all the constraints that accompany teenage boys when left to themselves. My mother’s formula for study was simple; “read all you can, and stuff your head with information.” I was very good at this, my brother not so very good! I was a mental vacuum cleaner, and every time we moved to a new neighborhood, my first priority was to find the local public library, and some type of part time work. Parks, amusement areas, places where kids hung out, and theaters where at the bottom of my priority list. From age 14 onwards, my priority was to read and work.

Perhaps because of my early Quaker upbringing, my sense of ethics and work was conservative, but I did not know it. Favoritism, paternalistic behaviors, stealing, double talk, laziness, and disrespect for private property turned me off, and when seen in others it always resulted in me distancing from the person. So, between the instability brought about from my parent’s divorce, the constant moving, the lack of money to acquire the material things teenagers find “necessary for social survival” and my sense of ethics, I did not have many close friends. By the time I was 15 or 16, I felt I was much older than I actually was, and I lived in a world not commonly inhabited by my peers. I was also very disappointed with the public school system, which I felt was keeping me from excelling, while operating based on a set of rules unworthy of my respect.

When I arrived at Brooklyn’s Erasmus Hall High School in 1975, my interest in American academia had deteriorated to a level that I looked at all teachers with contempt. Having strong study skills acquired in Cuba, my mother’s influence, and a love for reading, saved me from giving up on my education, and later allowed me to recapture the desire to succeed in life via intellectual pursuits, and business instead of my bare muscles, or crime. How I got to this rebellious state and how I formed a long lasting antipathy for American education is a trip that took many turns before I reached my 16th birthday. But, I know it began the very first day I stepped in an American school. Those who know me today can never imagine how I navigated through these waters and how I managed to survive.

In 1960’s Cuba, the only way a young “Gusano” (a person black listed for disagreeing with the revolution) could safely compete with his communist peers was through academic achievement. Learning was a process whose meaning was tinged with family pride, survival, an athletic like competitive feeling, and the knowledge that this was the only way to get back at people whose parents at any time could torment your life. As a result all the “Gusanos” I know from that period that became exiles are academic over achievers. I was a straight “A” student in Cuba, a country whose education system was at that time highly regimented and probably superior to that of the United States, and whose military model of discipline produced one of the highest per capita levels of university educated people in the world. From this I came to a public education system whose teachers were experimenting with “Groovy Flower Power”, Ivan Illich’s “Deschooling Society” and “the everlasting love of the Woodstock generation”.

Upon our arrival in the US, my brother and I were at least three years ahead of our American peers in all subjects except English. And, for lack of English skills, I was placed in a class with mentally retarded children, and my brother was placed one year behind the grade level where he should have been. American teachers and their education system welcomed my brother and I with a slap in the face and a three-year demotion. Soon, after transitioning into “a normal class” and gaining comfort with the English language I began to suspect that in American schools kids were promoted for reasons other than academics, good behavior, and hard work. And, I also learned that there is no room for over achievers, like there was in Cuba, because Americans are afraid of creating over achievers, lest they be classified an “elite” group, which is a major taboo, especially for liberal Americans.

I learned that age and some other things not clear to me, like race, are determinants and that as one progresses up the grade levels, these things gain in importance. Kids who were clearly undeserving, who cut classes, were inconsistent with their homework, were troublemakers, disrespected teachers, and failed on most tests, were promoted. Bright, studious, hard working, and deserving kids went with little recognition and for the most part were mocked as square. As my suspicions formed and I began to accept this as the “way things work” I became unsettled because I did not remember anything like it taking place in Cuba, even though the public policy there was always to “provide equality between the social classes”, while the “Gusanos” were harassed. The day that I was able to confirm this merit less system was the day I lost respect for all teachers, and anything that had to do with education in the United States. But, at the time, I did not rationalize it in clear political terms. I was simply overcome with a tremendous inability to hold serious conversations with most teachers on any academic topic. It was clear to me that what was going on in the New York City public education system, had very little to do with what I considered “education”, and a lot to do with things I did not quite understand, cared for, or even respected.

This view caused a great conflict for me, because accepting the idea that a school was not a place for academic pursuits was unimaginable. Realizing that the public schools were more like assembly lines for lazy pampered teens, giant baby sitting places for future unemployable social misfits, and places of work for largely incompetent grown ups who could not be fired, simply did not fit my simple expectations. And, as a Cuban whose family fled the political repression and humiliation of socialism; the sit-ins in protest over the “capitalist” Vietnam War, and the waving of Vietcong flags, the middle class white teachers who lectured in defense of the Black Panther movement and Angela Davis (considered heroes in socialist Cuba), and the Puerto Rican and black students who wore Che Guevara pin buttons in their jackets, did little to encourage my class attendance.

As time went on, my challenge became how to avoid the education system, while becoming educated. How to avoid the “flower power” teachers whose social studies lectures floated around the classrooms like sick echoes from a three-hour speech by the Maximum Leader, the butcher Fidel Castro. While wearing faded blue jean bell-bottom pants, colorful polyester shirts, long hair, and enjoying Jimmy Hendrix, my mind was nowhere near that of my school peers who happily accepted the wisdom of our “groovy” teachers.

By this time, my divorced mother with limited financial resources could not even contemplate the idea of transferring me to a private school. The New York City Board of Education in its infinite wisdom did not allow transferring to another public High School, and moving to another neighborhood was not in the cards. Believing that there were no choices, left little in the way of alternatives. Had there been something akin to school vouchers, or a way to easily transfer to another school, perhaps my life would have been dramatically different. But, it didn’t turn out that way. My decision to solve this challenge was simple but against everything I had been taught, and everything I believed regarding social advancement and “education”. I dropped out of Erasmus Hall High School at the end of my freshman year. And, I did not tell my mother, or anybody else, for fear of ostracism by fellow Cubans. Dropping out of school, was considered as bad if not worse than taking Welfare, and a thing no self-respecting young Cuban exile should have even contemplated.

Ironically, the thing that helped me the most when considering dropping out of High School were thoughts of my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my father and mother. I thought about “El Come Balas” and his long life, the fact that he rose from illiteracy to the status of a hero due to his courage, natural wits, and hard work. I thought about Pedro Font the man who rose from poverty, to high levels of material well-being and social standing due to his intellect, honesty, and perseverance. I thought about my father and his entrepreneurial habits, and I thought about my mother who always told me that if we could conceptualize something, we could do it. If these people where able to achieve what they did in a small country like Cuba, how could I not achieve greater things in a big, powerful, rich country like the U.S.A.? And, I said to myself, “this school challenge is all bullshit. I can do what ever I want to do. I’m going to drop out of High School, and I’m going to go to college and be a successful businessman.” And, I saw myself going to college, but the details of how I would leapfrog on to college never bothered me!

In one swoop, and vested with self authority, I declared the public education system in New York City illegitimate, and did what every person who faces this dilemma should do; I disassociated myself from it. I resigned from the system. I told myself that I would take a year off, and then I’d figure out my next steps, and how I would get to college. With only “gut feeling” I proceeded into the unknown!

During my year off, which when asked by family and friends was called my “sophomore year,” in order to cover-up the fact that I had dropped out, I worked at an Italian restaurant. I saved money, bought a Fender Precision bass guitar, took music lessons and joined a Rock band. I did all the things I felt I wanted to do in previous years, but could not do. I also made sure I continued reading, and I focused on the classics, and philosophy spending long hours at the Public Library near Flatbush Avenue. My hair grew, and I began to wear uncoordinated filthy clothes just like most of my new friends from music school. Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Santana, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull where my idols, and my fingers always hurt from practicing the bass guitar, and my ears buzzed from standing next to 800 watt Marshall amplifiers at full blast. Because I didn’t have Cuban friends, Cuban music was something I rarely heard and was exposed to only when visiting my father and his friends. But, when within earshot, I’d tune it out of my brain. Cuban music for me at that point represented the past, and not the present.

During this “sophomore year” when I was unrestrained by the past, and discovering an American identity, I also discovered sex. Not in a bar, or at the beach, or in the movies, but, in a public library. Sex first came to me while I read “Lazarillo de Tormes,” in the form of a gorgeous Philippine girl that enjoyed sex uninhibitedly, and rubbed my legs under the table to see if I was receptive. Then with a Hungarian girl that looked like a young Zsa Zsa Gabor, and enjoyed oral sex in public places. For a while libraries helped me learn, and pick up women. I lost count of the number of women I had sex with during that year, all picked up at public libraries in central Brooklyn. So it was, that by age 16 I had achieved two of the three most important things a teen-age boy of that generation should have mastered. I was in a Rock band, and I was having lots of sex. The third thing was drugs, Marijuana to be precise, and I didn’t touch that until age 17, when I thoroughly inhaled three joints before feeling any effects, one of which was a two hour erection I happily shared with a gorgeous Irish girl.

Sex, drugs and Rock and Roll are for teens like nectar for bees. Who doesn’t like to get buzzed, listen to music and have sex all at the same time? When discovered and shared with others, this trio quickly takes over all other priorities. The sex buddies I made in my late teens in Brooklyn and Queens remained in contact with me until my mid twenties when everyone started to get married. Many, however found it very hard to kick the habit, and paid dearly for not becoming adults, when the time to become an adult arrived!

Sex, drugs and Rock and Roll broke down whatever conservative Quaker restraints still remained in me, and I still recognized just a year prior to dropping out of High School. My concerns became a little more Hedonistic, and less focused on Cuban concepts of right and wrong. Some of the values of the "Flower Power" generation got to me. I accepted the 1970’s pre-AIDS notion that recreational heterosexual sex is something to be thoroughly “practiced” until marriage. In order to do it right, that is in order to have lots of good sex, I read the Kama Sutra, and a few Tantra manuals, but at that age, and high on pot, none of my partners were interested in experimenting with position number 204, which facilitates the “blow of the bull,” where “as it enters, the linga strikes both sides of the yoni at the same time!” I probably averaged 11 orgasms a week, and I was very slim, tired and happy.

Secretly dropping out of High School was a serious challenge. Had my mother found out, I think she would have castrated me, and if my estranged father had found out, it would have given him ammunition for his claims that my brother and I were growing up as wild boys. For three years, while I worked several jobs, played in a band, studied at libraries and had wild sex with whatever willing female I could find, I told my mother and close relatives that I was doing well in school. Because my mother left for work early in the morning, and school started at 8:30, she believed my claims, never noticing that instead I was going elsewhere. My brother covered for me, and when the school sent letters regarding my attendance, I simply intersected them. After a year the school gave up. What I did tell my mother was that my part time jobs were paying better, and hence the more money I was sharing with her, and our improved ability to buy “luxuries” like a new television set when our second hand one burned out. I lied to my mother, and many others, but I did it thinking that what I was doing was grounded in the reality of our poverty, and not the idealism of 1950’s Cuban values. Values that were half destroyed anyway! We needed more money, and idealism was not going to get it.

What kept my mother from figuring me out was my reading. I kept reading, and with more disposable income, I developed a decent library. When I got tired of the Spanish classics in English, like Alarcon’s the “Three Cornered Hat,” the extremely long “Don Quixote de la Mancha,” and Calderon’s “Life is a Dream,” I began to read Sarte, Hammet, Shakespeare, Terkel, O’Neill, Verne, Orwell, Shaw, Huxley, and Chekhov. Of the Cuban authors, I only read Marti, whose “La Edad de Oro” I had read in Cuba, and did not find very interesting in English, considering him a gifted journalist, a romantic poet and political leader, instead of the great literary figure many make him out to be. If my mother was judging my education by the volume of my reading, she was very satisfied.

Having spent more than a year working in an Italian restaurant making dough, sauces, and pasta, I longed for a change and the ability to earn more money. I realized that I had spent enough time investigating life without a college degree, and went about looking for a “hidden path” or a “loophole” into college. The hidden path was the GED High School Equivalency Diploma, which I earned after “several weeks” reviewing the study guides. Obtaining my High School diploma one and a half years prior to my regular High School class, had I stayed in Erasmus Hall was a victory I savored. Entering Brooklyn College a year prior to my class, and greeting some friends from Erasmus who remembered me as a drop out, was also an exalting moment, and something that caused great surprise in many. But, before I achieved these things, I needed to make a stop in beautiful Gramercy Park.

My mother’s heroic attempt at supporting my brother and I with a seamstress’ wages always felt short, and my restaurant wages being part time were often unreliable. So, one day she asked my uncle Fernando if he knew of a part time job that would pay me better than what I was making at the restaurant. It turned out that uncle Fernando’s brother-in-law was the manager at a luxury building in Gramercy Park, and he was looking for a part time doorman. After agreeing to say I was eighteen years old, instead of the sixteen I really was, I got the job. I quickly got a haircut, and traded my funky Rock and Roll clothes for preppy attire, and penny loafers, as recommended by my uncle and mother. From the working class streets of Flatbush Avenue, I headed to the well-groomed sidewalks and “invitation only” private clubs of Gramercy Park.

The oldest elevator in New York City is in an old luxury building in Gramercy Park. Getting to the top floor of the building is strenuous since you have to propel yourself up like Fred Flintstone, by pulling on an iron rope that protrudes through the side of the cab. Everyone who loves architecture and urban planning goes there to experience the humble beginnings of a technology that later on revolutionized the face of cities around the world. For many who know about these things, this building is revered like the Flatiron building on 23rd and Broadway, with its hydraulic elevator. Each building around Gramercy Park has a unique history and very special character, and most of the people who chose to live there were, as I later found out, also unique.

My work as doorman gave me access to some of the buildings surrounding Gramercy Park, and I often enjoyed going to their roofs to look down and contemplate the views of the park, the New York Life Building and beyond towards midtown and the Empire State Building. In the summer time the roof in the hand cranked elevator building is a great spot to enjoy a cool iced tea, a steak sandwich and then read Tirant Lo Blanc’s chapter on the Order of the Garter or his travels to Constantinople. From the vantage point of a sixteen-year-old doorman in one of those luxury Gramercy Park buildings, I learned a great deal about New York City, myself, and the views of the youth culture that existed in the mid 1970’s, which later became the established culture of the 1990’s. This exposure shaped my political and social views of America for many years.

Upon arrival in the building I discovered that of the eleven employees who provided services to the tenants, ten were Cubans, and they all came from Oriente province. Martinez, Enrique, Alfredo, Julio, Manuel, “El Guajiro”, and Jose, became my friends. Quickly it became evident that these men all knew my extended family in Cuba, and immediately began to treat me like family. Without exception, each of these men had better work ethics, humanity, intelligence, family values, decency and sensitivity than most of the wealthy people they had to serve. In spite of the fact that the tenants, who earned more money in one week than most of us earned in four months, treated us with disdain, we went about doing our jobs quietly and as dignified as possible. Like my father, my co-workers were cleaning toilets, vacuuming floors and cleaning windows. But, amongst ourselves we all knew we were in a twilight zone and we were not toilet cleaners. The Americans however, had no idea of this and saw us simply as menial laborers with clumsy Latin expressions, and a short temper whenever the subject of Fidel Castro was mentioned by anyone.

Reading Spinoza, Voltaire, Spencer, Kant, Darwin, Malthius, Marx, Freud, Lenin, Tocqueville and Adam Smith between 1:00 AM and 5:30 AM every night (the Grave Yard shift) was an uplifting experience, and somewhat peaceful given the occasional sounds of police sirens on Park Avenue, and the unceremonious solicitations of beautiful prostitutes who traded oral sex for five dollars, or less if business was slow. Sometimes when I was deep in my reading, some respectable looking middle-aged man wearing a tuxedo or a Saville Row suit would knock in the door, drunk and clasping to a younger man, who was obviously his lover for the night, and in clumsy language complained about my tardiness in opening the door.

At other times bisexual couples holding wife swapping orgies in their expensive Penthouses would call me upstairs to order Champagne or Chinese food, while the guests had rough sex and moaned on their plush living room carpets, before my not so very calm eyes and ears. My job required the utmost patience, courtesy, control of erections and good manners in addition to staying away from the women, and accepting the credo that in a dispute or misunderstanding the offending party and not I was always right. The art of fake compliments and self-control in the face of idiots were also traits needed for the job, and I learned these well. I also realized these professional qualities were everywhere else called, “hypocrisy.”

Looking good required a serious amount of time polishing shoes, making sure the pants were properly pressed, the white shirt impeccably starched, the black bow tie balanced properly around the collar, and the jacket was creaseless. The hat had a policeman’s air to it, and for a perfect fit I had to maintain my hair well trimmed. When in full garb, I looked like a doorman from a Woody Allen movie. My nametag said “Mr. Joel Font” so everyone could properly identify and address me, but few did. Instead, most tenants called me “Joe”, unceremoniously chopping off the “L” from my name. A Cuban with the name of “Joel” somehow did not match, and “Font” was too complicated to explain. Clearly, “Jose Fernandez” was what they expected, and many thought “Joel Font” was not my real name.

The double personality of Gramercy Park in the late 1970’s during the heyday of hip cocaine, cheap Marijuana, no AIDS, and discothèque stimulated sex was orgasmic, but as a Doorman it was also a great education on the lifestyles of upper middle class America, and especially the new rich. The decadent Gramercy Park of the night was nothing like the conservative gracious well groomed Gramercy Park of the daytime. Its inhabitants conducted themselves with great style and flair during the day, often discussing politics and the problems of the poor and ethnic groups of the city with thoughtful care when with strangers, and paternalistic disdain when among themselves. During the summer weekends half the building would empty, as the younger tenants would head out to the beach, and the older ones would head for their limousines, driven by smiling black drivers, who quietly whisked them away to Democratic Party fundraising events in the Hamptons, Hyannis Port or Martha’s Vineyard.

While living in an exclusively white neighborhood, using Asian, black and Hispanic nannies for their children, and sharing nothing but a condescending attitude with the minorities, these wealthy Democrats thoughtlessly took advantage of privileged institutions, but talked about the sufferings of the poor, the problems of racism, and the injustices of the Nixon administration as if they had unique insight on these issues.

Living with my single mother, and my younger brother in a six story walkup in Queens, and considering a Saturday Kung Fu movie matinee a splurge on entertainment, I quite well understood the differences between the rich and poor in New York, and I clearly knew, first hand, how the poor lived in Black Harlem, and Spanish Harlem. I also knew that the people I catered to, the “socially conscious,” had never set foot inside the house of a poor black or Hispanic person, and their meaning of “poor” was not mine, or for that matter that of those they claimed to “protect.”

I enjoyed talking to the younger tenants in the building, who at one point explained to me what a “Trust Fund” was, along with the joys of summer camping in Vermont and Maine. My job required that I help their parents bring up boxes full of silverware and fine crystal from Tiffany’s, silk dresses and expensive shoes from Saks, and Cashmere sweaters for their dogs purchased at Burberry’s on Fifth Avenue. As a young Cuban in the process of Americanizing, I had admiration for many of these people because by then I considered myself a New York Democrat, and most of these tenants were at the top of the political pecking order, and I wanted to be a good New York Democrat.

How wonderful, I thought, to have so much and to at least be aware of the needs and existence of the poor. And, with such style and panache, like the Kennedy’s and Camelot. Here were American capitalists, with an interest in sharing the wealth and, although in a strange and distanced manner, trying to at least do something about class disparities. Even though I detected hypocrisy in their behavior, a paternalistic disdain for Hispanics, and their decadence was in full view, these were my champions. Unlike some Cubans who equated the defeat at the Bay of Pigs with the Democrats, I felt this view was short sighted. In order to be a good American, accepted by other “real” Americans, Cuba must be placed in its proper context. And, that is a tiny little corner where it can be hardly noticed!

And so it was, that in 1979 when I finally met a Republican, I could not help but pull away in utter disgust. His name was Joseph Marchetti, he wore khaki pants, a red polo shirt, penny loafers, was Italian-American, and was visiting his aunt in Gramercy Park. Joseph was working on a plan to bring parental choice and competition to the New York City Board of Education. I thought this made sense and was a good idea, but had to be a right wing reactionary and disruptive scheme, if not part of some fascist plan to defraud the City. Fixing the education system can only be done by screwing the teacher’s union, and that must have been what was behind Joseph’s plan, or so I thought. I was sure that no Republican could understand the problems of the working class and the poor. A Republican in New York City was strange, and rare! As a Hispanic, I already knew, because the Daily News, Mrs. Winthrop, and everyone I knew had clearly explained, my allies were not the Republicans, even if they made more sense and appeared more decent and honest than the Democrats. Although, I was still years away from becoming an American citizen, I was already ardently liberal and anti-Republican.

My Cuban co-workers on the other hand were all Republicans, but also un-able to vote because they were not yet citizens. I brought great disappointment to them, when my liberal tendencies were revealed, and I told them that we should not decide our American political affiliations based on the Cuba experience! “You guys should at least be Independents, that way you can vote for the best candidate.” One of the guys, Martinez, who was very philosophical and wise, looked at me and with pity said, “How young, how foolish and how stupid you are!” It took me 21 years, the shenanigans of Bill Clinton, numerous insults to my intellect, and the unabashed racist and polarizing tactics of the Democratic Party during the 1990’s, for me to understand how right Martinez was and how thoroughly brainwashed I was.

In my efforts to assimilate, to be accepted as a New Yorker, to transcend the pain of the Cuban exiles, and be liked by my generation I gave in to the herd mentality that says Republicans are all Neanderthals, and the enemies of all the minorities. As a result, I refused to allow myself to objectively see the Republicans, to find out about the large numbers of minorities, women and especially Cubans involved in the Party, and to compare my core values with theirs. When ever I tried to find out about the Republicans, I relied on Democratic commentators, read Democratic controlled newspapers, spoke to local Democratic politicians, consulted with my Democratic friends, and accepted Democratic polls and the world view expounded by Democratic academicians, entertainers and advertising agencies. As a result, every effort to find out facts on the Republicans resulted in greater fear, hatred and misunderstanding of what they stood for and who they were. When I was finally able to break away from this spell, a legacy of Gramercy Park, I happily voted for George W. Bush, and now I cannot see myself ever returning to the Democratic Party.

Standing there handsomely between the ages of 16, 17 and 18, like an invisible knight from the days of Tirant Lo Blanc, and with a strong liberal heart, I saw and heard the grandchildren of 19th century Jewish, German, Irish, and Italian uneducated immigrant paupers, drunk with pompous self-importance and with an unabashed desire to transform themselves into White Anglo Saxon Protestants, at the same time they were preaching a hatred of the W.A.S.P’s. I saw them in fantastic Giorgio Armani tuxedos, and I saw them stark naked high on cocaine on all fours with their asses high in the air waiting for salvation.

I also watched many Academy Award level performances by people who clearly thought I was incapable of enjoying the shows. Most memorable were shows where middle aged American Jewish women compared notes on plastic surgery, hair dyes, cosmetics, breast implants and designer clothes upon their return home from vacationing in Grossinger’s, without their husbands. The desire to acquire trophies and become trophies takes a central place in their views of life, and how others are judged. I often thought that if one had the ability to move some of these arrogant people from the area, Gramercy Park and its wonderful architecture would definitely be one of the most beautiful and idyllic places in all of New York City.

Every day I went to work brought about a new chapter in what was for me a highly educational environment, on other days it was an incredible fantasy from a Frank Kafka novel. But, I was well paid and I was a member of local 32B with benefits, and a Shop Steward who told funny jokes, and occasionally smoked pot. And, I no longer had to stir gigantic cauldrons of spaghetti sauce in a dark room. The better pay earned from catering to pompous asses also meant I could go to the movies and watch a Planet of the Apes marathon with my brother without feeling guilty about the expense.

After a short while observing the people I catered to, I learned to see things below the surface. Many of the wealthy women who lived in the buildings lived in boredom, or were clearly in relationships for reasons other than love. Most of them seemed to enjoy teasing the “Hot Cubans”, as they sometimes called us, while we held the doors open for their early morning jogs around the park. Our “hands off” policy towards the women was self-imposed rather than external, and it seemed that the women knew of it, making them more aggressive and uninhibited towards some of us. My co-workers explained the meaning of “Hot Cuban,” and it was a mixture of a gregarious but discreet Ricky Ricardo character, a romantic Latin lover, and an over sexed stud that could copulate with any willing woman on demand. The definition was adjusted depending on the expectations of the woman, and the willingness of the Cuban to play along! Since most of my Cuban co-workers were married men, they’d comically dismiss this, but the two that weren’t discreetly took advantage of it as often as possible.

During my second summer as a doorman, during my regular “Grave Yard” shift, an unusually beautiful red headed woman in her forties whom I had never seen before started to take her dog out for walks around 12:30 every other night. After a few nights of not saying a single word to me, or even acknowledging my existence, the woman, knowing that I could not leave my post, asked me to come up to her apartment for a “hot glass of milk”. With an instant hard on, I thanked her but explained I could not leave the door un-attended. Two nights later the woman having noticed my enthusiasm for reading, gave me a copy of the “Perfumed Garden” by Cheikh Nefzaoui, an Arab masterpiece on love making, and told me that the book had left a “tremendous impression” on her and she hoped I learned from it. A week later, upon her return from her dog walk she asked me to take her up in the freight elevator because she had some garbage to dispose and didn’t want to keep it overnight in her kitchen. This request was within the scope of my responsibilities and I agreed to help her.

As we went up in the freight elevator, she quietly and carefully looked in my eyes as her hands unzipped my pants and she then proceeded to do things, which made the elevator abruptly stop in between floors. When we finished having sex like rabbits in a cage, I took her up to her floor, opened the elevator door, and she said “have a nice night”. Clearly, the woman had no garbage to take down. My red headed lover turned out to be a well-connected Wall Street attorney who like most in the building underwent a metamorphosis from day to night. She would often come home with male friends or co-workers decked out in pinstripes, wearing expensive Ferragamo shoes, Alligator briefcases and a $4,800 Rolex watch, walking past me and my $14.99 Timex as if I didn’t exist, to spend hours with her friends in her plush apartment, and then at night she’d change into shorts and tee shirts in order to have wild uninhibited sex with the “Hot Cuban” doorman. An older woman used me as a sexual object, and at age 17, I enjoyed every minute of the exploitation. During the next two years I met four other women from neighboring buildings, who were also attracted to me, or the myth of the “Hot Cuban,” and I found myself with the difficult task of having to “ration out” sex to older but insatiable women. So, between the very sexually active friends of my age group, and the older often-frustrated sexually deprived women of Gramercy Park, it’s a miracle I did not develop anemia, or some other decease related to physical exhaustion.

The opportunity of making money from quietly observing people and giving them a sense of safety was good. Being a doorman in Gramercy Park was my transition from “High School” to College, although not quite in the traditional sense, since I did not have a normal High School “experience.” My part time job in Gramercy Park during the summers evolved into permanent part time work, for a period of close to four years, helping me pay for most of my college expenses, and giving my mother great financial relief. Gramercy Park exposed me to wealthy New Yorkers, it sustained and allowed me to execute my self-designed “High School curriculum,” and it kept me from falling into despair due to financial want. It also exposed me to hundreds if not thousands of regular people who were very different than my family, or any acquaintances I had made in the US since arriving from Cuba.

Aside from the nannies, the cooks, the house sitters, the personal shoppers and the private tutors, who were almost all decent human beings, there were perhaps three or four tenants out of close to one hundred, worthy of my memory, the rest remain mostly caricatures too self absorbed in arrogance and hypocrisy to remember.

While I was a “Hot Cuban” in Gramercy Park, I was barely a Cuban elsewhere. During the year I attended Erasmus Hall I met about five Cubans in total, (out of a student population of about 3,600) two of which became my friends. There were no significant numbers of Cubans of my age to associate with anywhere in central Brooklyn. The occasional Cuban girl I’d meet was “sexually repressed” when compared to my other female friends. Boredom would set in after a day or two contemplating the idea of having to visit parents, hold hands without getting too close, and being in the presence of a chaperone. Knowing that the girls' maximum limit was a few hugs and kisses, but never sex was like a splash of cold water for me. At an age when my male hormones and erections held control over my judgment, and falling in love was “silly”, Cuban girls could not compete with the 11 orgasms I was already having per week! A few years later, when I was already in college, I became concerned that my behaviors were unfair to Cuban girls, and I decided to try and “slow down to their speed.” The two Cuban girls I ended up dating during this “experiment”, resulted in relationships that lasted a little over a year, unprecedented for me at the time, but they never gave in to their desires to have sex. I never again dated a Cuban girl, and I married an Italian woman.

I took the sexual element away from the image of “the Cuban woman” which I had rudimentarily constructed as a youngster in Cuba, thanks to Idania Aued and Maria Belen. For years I looked at Cuban girls as exotic, beautiful, and strong, but sexless. The Victorian lifestyle and morality of the Cuban upper middle classes of the 1940’s and 1950’s, that equates female sex with decadence was imposed on many Cuban exiled girls of my generation, and I suspect this has caused many regrets, and may be the root of many problems when added to all the other culture shock issues we had to deal with. To make things worse for the girls, Cuban boys did not have to abide by similar rules, and in many ways acted to perpetuate the “Hot Cuban” myth. Cuban girls were supposed to be all virgins, and the boys all studs!

My High School education was indeed very different than that of most kids. By my sophomore year I already carried more life experiences, good and bad than most adults. I was already set on certain study habits that were later to define my career, but also set me in conflict with American education. And, my social and political values were so esoteric because of the Cuban experience, that my responses to the events of the day where often the opposite of those expressed by my peers, but at the same time, they were out of synch with my Cuban elders. I was a young Cuban, far away from the center of Cuban exile culture, with a strong desire to assimilate to American society, and living with huge tensions, many clearly left from my parents divorce, some economic and some due to basic teenage insecurities. Lacking adult guidance, I improvised, and for consolation and as a tranquilizer I relied on 11 orgasms a week.

My brother and I survived the 1970’s without becoming drug dealers, addicts or runners for the Colombian mafia, as countless of our acquaintances from that period ended up doing. I was saved from falling into these things by books and sex, for in the final analysis those were the things I became addicted to, and they were the least destructive of the available options. My mother’s insistence that we were temporarily poor, but mentally rich somehow provided the rudder I later used to straighten my self out. And so, I went to college, and new experiences, somehow weaning myself from the most destructive aspects of this phase of my life.

After I had been attending Brooklyn College for a year, I invited my mother for a tour of the college, and in front of Boylan Hall, looking out across the neatly manicured campus, I told her the truth of what had happened to my High School education. I said it had been like education “A la Carte.” I had looked at the menu, like in a restaurant, and I had picked only those things I felt were important to me. And, somehow it had worked. As I expected by then, she did not become upset.

In 1999 when I was preparing to take my high tech company public through an IPO, I went to have dinner with an Investment Banker on Park Avenue and 22nd. Street. After the meeting I strolled over to Gramercy Park and visited the building where I had been a doorman. Only three Cubans work there now, and I chatted with one, a young man in his early 20’s. Five minutes into the conversation a beautiful blond woman in her late forties strolled in from the Park and told the Cuban doorman that she needed help moving her sofa, and wanted him to stop by her apartment after work to help her. Smiling, I thought to myself, “the legend of the Hot Cuban continues.” I then asked him; “Do you think she’s a Republican or Democrat?” His response, “Democrat of course! Why do you ask?” “Just curious,” I said.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
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