U.S.: Carnival Saturday nite, 2

Well, I burnt a few hours hunting for streaming audio so I could hear Panorama live. No such luck, and I'm frosted, seriously. TIDCO, whoever those idiots are, could've made it possible for folks to hear Panorama online, but no, they blocked it! Who in Sam Hill in T&T is going to listen to Panorama via the web when it's on the radio and tv? Net fees in T&T are ridiculous!

So, frosted, I poured the Foster's I'd bought for the occasion into a Fischer's Ale bottle. Chilled it. Now I'm really buzzing cuz I've got a 2 beer limit, and 1 Foster's = 2 beers. I'm a cheap drunk. No Panorama, but I've got a pretty good head going.

I got invited to this Mardi Gras party, but I decided not to go. I didn't feel like partying. I just wanted to hear pan. So, here I am in the gateway to the mid-West, drinking Foster's from a Fischer's Ale bottle, and totally disgruntled. So, I'll bitch to the powers that be in T&T.

Maybe I should cut my dreds off in total grief at being unable to hear Panorama.... Nah, when I get up in the AM I'll regret it.

The other night, I was talking to a buddy of mine from Latvia. She said something that struck me powerfully; she said that we are both people without a community, and we are each other's community. True. In 2000, I went to this fair, and was ecstatic to hear a Caribbean accent. I met this kid from Jamaica there. It didn't matter that our countries are hundreds of miles apart; what mattered is that he sounded like home. He sounded Caribbean. I've yet to meet any Bajes or other Trinis out here. I heard of two Trinis out here, tried to get in touch with one, but guess the party wasn't interested. So, my Latvian friend is part of my community because we talk men, theology, bs, and have fun together.

In hunting for streaming audio, I came across this soca music link. Soca is essentially jam and wine music. Calypso can be jam and wine, too, but it can also be music for the thinking man. Most social commentary is calypso. If you want mindless party, drink rum, drink beer, wine down the place, sweat, wave your shirt like a flag, put your hand in the air and wine, jump up and get on bad music -- heck, you're talking soca.

The nice thing about soca is that if you can put your hands in the air and jump, if you can wine your waist, then you can dance. Seriously. Understand that when you jump, you don't really jump. In T&T, wining is serious business. I remember one year, Delano sang, Don't Ask Me to Wine. Thing was, the song had people wining.

What's this wining thing Trinis are always talking about? Bump and grind, or, just pretend that you've got a ball-bearing in your waist and act accordingly. Feet planted firmly on the ground, hands in the air, dip the hips, swirl, rotate, grind, back-back the behind and wave it like a flag, roll it, bounce it, shake it, go all the way down to the ground, come back up, then start all over again. Wining is not really a sexual thing, though I saw a guy get hard once, but that was cuz his jeans were too tight and must've got him going. Everybody, who saw him at the party, laughed at him. That's not supposed to happen when you're wining.

I mean, a woman might throw a piece of waist to blow a man's mind, but his response is to wine back, to try to keep up with the waist she's pelting. Oh gohhshs! woman!! That kind of thing. I didn't always understand wining as a non-sexual thing until I saw a couple at this party. They'd been married for some time. She had the body that said she had a few kids, the little tummy pouch, you know. When the music hit her, she started to wine, totally caught up in her woman's thing, expressing her enjoyment of the music. He, her husband, standing behind her, not quite touching, was busy pelting waist behind. Now, hear the thing. She's absorbed in the music, in the dance, in the wine. He, mankind was busy trying to keep up. It was a beautiful thing to watch.

Frankly, apart from Trinis, nobody could wine like African, Haitian, and Jamaican males. Tonnerre!!! Some Camerounian friends taught me this dance years ago, whooo!!! heat in the place! Talk about wine! As for Haitians, that is high-speed, long distance, ball-bearing in the waist wine. When I was in college, I went to this party in the student union; some rude bwoys were on the stage. One of them turned his back to the audience, lifted his shirt a bit, and brother!!! I had to pick my tongue up off the ground. Who'd have thought that reggae could produce that?!?!

One Labor Day, I saw a little Hasid on a music truck on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. The guy was wearing his tefillim around his waist; he was clothed in the black pants and the white shirt Hasids wear. He had his yarmulke on his head, and there were little curls dangling at his ears. I don't know if he had had anything to drink. I just figured that the music had gone to the Hasid's head, then had gone down to his waist. Anyway, this little Hasid stood on top of the music truck heading down the Parkway and was pelting waist as though it was going out of style. I didn't know Hasids could wine like that. He must've been a Trini Hasid. He had both hands in the air, legs spread, and, tonnerre!!! he must've had snake oil before he left the house that morning because his waist was that fluid.

Dag! My beer is finished. Sigh. I've got some Vat 19, but I'm not really a rum drinker. Sigh. That reminds me, when I was in T&T earlier this year, I had Carib and Stag. I preferred Stag. That's not to say that Carib was bad; it's just that the after-effects of the Stag beer were better for me. Most of the men said they preferred Carib.

I went down there with a bunch of friends on church related business, but we hit a few beaches, limed with some friends. Shortly before we returned to the U.S., we went to La Rufin beach down Moruga way. Sweet beach. The water was deliciously rough. Huge curls. Huge slaps. My friends had preceded me and my other bud, Vena, to the beach. Vene and I passed by a roti shop and ordered dalpouri (roti and paratha), curried channa, chicken, beef, pumpkin, anchar, and other goodies, then we headed down to La Rufin. Down there, we met a bunch of Indian guys out for a good lime. They'd cooked wild meat and provisions (root veggies) down at the beach and invited us to join them. One of them, Harry, an old rumbo, wanted to take me home for wife. Harry promised that he would show me how he cooked his special rice, and that once I tasted it, I wouldn't want to leave him. Yeah, right. It takes more than rice, dude.

La Rufin was sweet, though. It was better and cleaner than Manzanilla beach. You go to Manzanilla and you've got to keep an eye out on the flags on the beach cuz you can bathe there depending on the color of the flags. You see, Manzanilla can have nasty undertows that will pull you out to sea; next thing, you're like Composer, you're gone. La Rufin doesn't have any flags, but you can see an oil derrick a few miles off-shore, and you can see, from the color of the water, where there is a trench of some kind several yards, maybe a quarter-mile from the shore. I picked a ripe cocoa pod when we were heading back home. Sweet!