Javier Castano

PROLOGUE MARCH 3, 2017 APPOINTMENT: TEN IN THE MORNING It was the middle of the dry season, and the torrential rains that fed the Panama Canal would not arrive until the following month in mid-April, but for weeks a storm had been brewing in my gut. The U.S. embassy had given me an appointment to pick up my American passport. I had called my sister to come down from Miami and be a witness or to be an advocate in case an explanation was needed. Angela, my oldest sister, could always be counted on for anything. “Yes mother,” I had said, “I need you to hold my hand.” When she came down, I told her the truth, that I was terrified of going to the embassy alone. “Why,” said my enabling angel, “everything is working out for you. All the pieces are falling into place.” “Exactly,” I said, “and that’s what I’m afraid of. There ain’t no such thing as a free breakfast. What if it’s a sting operation? What if I’m being tricked, being set up?” My sister told me that I was paranoid and then did what she did best, which was to reassure me that she’d be there for me every step of the way. I was fifty-six years old, and my life was finally in order. I had a decent life in Panama. I was back with my ex-wife; our son was happy; I had a house with a pool and a job that I loved at a university where I was an English teacher. I didn’t want to disturb my life by going to an institution belonging to the U.S. government, but months earlier my daughter had asked me for help. She was months away from graduating from a University in Florida and wanted to stay in the United States, so I had contacted the embassy. After a shave and a shower, I had breakfast with my son and then took him to school. Then Angela and I headed out to Clayton, the old military base that used to belong to the United States but now belonged to Panama. I told my sister about a dream I had a few days prior. I was a Boy Scout trekking the Appalachian trail on the base of Bear Mountain on the New York border next to New Jersey. It was the early 70’s. I was tiptoeing towards a massive beehive and its honey in the distance. The trail was quiet but for the stream of water from a nearby creek. The sun shone rays of lights through the trees. My backpack was heavy, and looped on my belt was the scabbard with machete, the compass, and a water canteen. I walked stealthily with my gum-soled, high-top sneakers making sure not to step on dried leaves or branches that might disturb the hive. The swarm, however, had a different idea and a Blitzkrieg was launched as I ran for my life. When I got to the clearing, the other scouts shooed away the mob of killer bees, except for the hundred or so that savagely fought to leave a stinger on my bell-bottom jeans and my backpack. “You didn’t get stung, right?” “Nope,” I said. “Then it’s a good dream. You see, it means everything is going to be fine.” I parked outside the embassy compound and walked inside the gate. My sister wasn’t allowed inside. I felt privileged and proud to be connected to the majestic new building that stood out from the rest of the third-world structures of Panama. I was walking on American soil, sort of. Past the metal detectors my phone was put in a small locker. “No phones allowed.” I was breathing hard, but my brain reminded me how I was being paranoid and ridiculous. Once inside and settled, I talked to a man who asked me why I hadn’t claimed my citizenship sooner. “I didn’t know I was a citizen. I was sixteen, nine months and four days, when both my parents naturalized on April 19, of 1978,” I said. “Did you at any time give up your residency or your citizenship?” I didn’t know what to say. I had learned in the Air Force never to volunteer information and was caught off guard. “I believe I was wrongly, if not illegally, deported from the United States back in 1994.” The man left the thick glass separating him and me and disappeared through a door. “Do you know why you were deported?” asked the man after leaving me waiting for over an hour. “Yes, sir. I was incarcerated in 1983,” I said, “and deported after I did my stretch.” It didn’t make any sense to lie or withhold information since they probably knew more about me than I did. “Stretch?” “After I finished my term of incarceration and paid society, Sir,” I said. “What were you arrested for?” “Sir, importation of a controlled substance…but I was only a passenger and—”. “Yes, we’re all innocent,” said the man and went inside again. The game was up. I waited another grueling hour. Things didn’t look good. My racing heart and my gut kept telling me to make some tracks and run out as fast as I could. “Did you enter the United States legally and did you provide proof of having lived there for five years prior to your parents’ naturalization?” “Sir, I was nine years old when I entered the United States, at the port of Miami, legally on September 12, of 1970. I was one of six children. I was seventeen in 1978 when I enlisted in the United States Air Force. I was honorably discharged. You can’t be an illegal alien and be in the Air Force, Sir. I have a copy of my DD-214 on my phone. It’s at security checkpoint.” The man went back inside, and I waited some more. “Here’s your passport,” said the man with a smile, “just need you to sign it.” I returned a smile despite the concoction of different emotions going off in my body: fear, happiness and disbelief. I signed my name right under a bald eagle and the red, white and blue flag printed on the first page. “By the way,” said the man, his smile a little bigger, a little wider, and a little bit more welcoming, “there’s a letter for you.” The United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, had a warrant out for my arrest concerning a case for possession, importation and intent to distribute 268 kilos of cocaine. “Sir,” I said, “I maxed out my time. They milked my sentence to the last drop.” “Hey,” said the man, “don’t get pissed off at me. I’m just the messenger.” “What about my passport?” So close and yet so far. I should have listened to my gut. “It’s a temporary passport. You’re good for fourteen days,” said the man, “but after that you will not be able to travel.” His smile came back and so did mine—though mine I forced with a chisel and hammer. “Thank you, Sir,” I said, “I appreciate your and the embassy’s kindness.” I didn’t have to run and there were no killer bees in the distance. It had all been a figment of my hypervigilant imagination. How could I have not trusted the United States embassy. With a passport, I had two weeks to go home to the Southern District of Florida and fix the warrant for a crime I had already paid society, a crime protected by double jeopardy law. Home sweet home, baby, here I go. I was given my phone at the checkpoint, and I slowly walked towards the gate as I tightly held the blue booklet in my left hand. My picture, my name, my date of birth, my country of origin, and the United States of America jumped out at me from the passport. It was real. My left index finger was bent to where I have two small scars that make a perfect crucifix. I had long before stopped praying to the cross but thanked the scar, nonetheless. I was going home and was going back to exercise my rights as a citizen after waiting for almost forty years to do so. My daughter, my Little Munchkin, would be getting her American dream, a priceless blessing that had just come out of the blue. Angela, whom I sometimes called my angel and my mother, was going to be ecstatic. Just as I was at the embassy gate with my eyes still glued to the passport, I was startled by two men who grabbed me by my arms. Another man appeared in front of me and another one grabbed me from behind. I was cuffed and shoved inside a pickup truck. I was caught completely by surprise. I looked for Angela, my angel, by she was nowhere to be seen. I scanned everything around me, sized up the man driving, the one riding shotgun, and the two on my flanks. The driver sped away. “Soy inocente, soy inocente,” I kept saying in Spanish, but they told me to shut up. We entered the slums of Curundú. I had been in the area many times but had never been through the back alleys. The off-road vehicle rolled over the dirt road on the side of the rubble still left over from buildings that President Bush had bombed during the U.S. invasion three decades earlier in 1989. My breathing raced with a vengeance, my heart sped, the hairs on the back of my neck stood out, and heat rushed to my face. There had to be an escape route. “Por favor, no me maten, por que?” When the four men didn’t answer why they were ordered to kill me and started laughing instead, I looked at my scar, my heart skipped, my fight and flight vanished into thin air, my body went limp in total surrender and helplessness, and my soul left to hover above me, again, like it had at times in the past. Would the bullet shatter my head and splatter my brain on the dirt road? Or will the bullet exit the bone after dancing around in my skull, leaving a neat little puddle out by the rubble? I should have known that getting an American passport so easily was too good to be true.

Assignment 1: Story Statement Losing identity to toxic masculinity and then finding the authentic self. Assignment 2: Antagonistic Forces The main antagonistic force is the concept of toxic masculinity, and the lack of humanity. The main antagonist is the covert narcissist father who is not only emotionally absent from his son’s life but also burdens the son with the role of “man of the house.” The father, indirectly, exposes the boy to extreme violence growing up in Medellin (machete fights, stabbings, shootings), then expects the immigrant boy to excel in school in New Jersey; the father shames the pre-teen son (sexuality); and ultimately gives the eighteen-year-old son a machine gun to smuggle cocaine from Colombia. The second antagonist is himself: He doesn’t accept his vulnerabilities nor his true nature. To survive and to maintain the false, toxic-masculine persona, the protagonist must suppress his authentic self. The third minor antagonist (blessing in disguise) is the overt narcissist wife who demolishes the protagonist’s toxic-masculine façade and leaves him completely lost without the little bit of remaining identity (if he hadn’t lost himself completely, he’d never sought recovery). Other antagonistic forces are discrimination, racism (growing up an immigrant), the drug trade (ill-prepared), maximum security penitentiaries (must survive), and systemic blunders (after completing sentence, gets deported back to Colombia despite being an America citizen). Assignment 3: Working Titles The Priest, The Soldier, and The Smuggler: My Choices, My Life From Soldier to Smuggler to Teacher: Evolution on the Edge of Toxic Masculinity A Priest or a Soldier: A Memoir of Toxic Masculinity From Hotwheels to soldier to Smuggling: My choices, My life Into the Jaws of Toxic Masculinity Assignment 4: Comparable Titles The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls because it covers a lifetime of dysfunction and challenges. A Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff because it shows the lengths the protagonist goes through to create the false image. Educated by Tara Westover because it shows the power of education (A college degree from Leavenworth Penitentiary allowed the protagonist to become an English teacher and turn his life around). Assignment 5: Core wound and… Fears of all shapes and sizes, many, jagged and sharp: abandonment, isolation, and stuffed feelings that are kept bubble-wrapped inside a dungeon in the mind and locked with a key of denial. … Hook line/Logline After getting discharged from the United States Air Force, a teenager gets lured by his father into the easy pickings of the early Colombian drug trade where he gets lost not knowing if he’s the villain, the anti-hero, the victim or the joker—until he finds himself, the Inner Hero, and redemption. Assignment 6: Conflicts INTERNAL CONFLICT The protagonist is born with a congenital deformity which makes him feel different and ashamed. He’s also a sickly child who only wears long pants to cover his skinny legs that look like broomsticks. To empower him, the mother calls the boy, “the man of the house.” He doesn’t know if he wants to be a priest (like his father who spent two years in the seminary before he married his mother) or a soldier (like his grandfather). At age six (or seven), guilt is added to the shame and to the feelings of inferiority. SCENE THAT TRIGGERS THE PROTAGONIST When he is six (or seven), the boy wants to do one of them “ambushing things” to scare some kids who are making a ruckus outside his house. He had seen his father shoot at a trucker, so he goes into the closet, takes down the rifle and loads it. He then goes out to confront the kids (The catalyst). His sister comes over and, in the melee, the shot goes off. The bullet takes out a kid’s eye. The older sister gets blamed. The protagonist watches his sister cry as she gets punished. He stays quiet as a mouse. He knows he did something wrong but doesn’t know exactly what. His mother didn’t want to traumatize the boy and thought he’d forget, so the incident was swept under the rug and never mentioned again. The boy decides he’s going to be a priest and constantly prays. He is quiet and timid both in school, at home and in the neighborhood. SECONDARY CONFLICT When both parents leave the children in Colombia to seek opportunities in the United States, Lele, the protagonist feels the abandonment. He feels at fault for his parents leaving but doesn’t know why. He prays and prays but nothing happens. He befriends the barefoot kids (poor) from the neighborhood and gets out of his isolation. When he and his siblings are reunited with their parents in New Jersey, the protagonist, then nine years old, gets bullied in class for not being white enough. He’s the only Latino in an all-white classroom. In the neighborhood, he gets jumped by the black kids because he’s too white. He gets tired of the name calling, of the bloody noses, and the spits in the face; but he’s afraid to fight. He thinks he’s a coward, thinks he’s worthless, no good. He decides he’s going to be a soldier instead of a priest. Both priests and soldiers share the values of loyalty, duty, sacrifice and service, concepts he understands. He slowly embarks on a “fake” persona that is tough on the surface but hides the weaknesses on the inside. The priest and the soldier will fight for dominance of the psyche from beneath the shadows of consciousness. In charge of the rational, logical brain is the walking self, often confused, insecure, and doing his best to keep the mind sane from the battles inside and doing his best to keep the body safe from the wars on the surface. And thus begins his journey into toxic masculinity. He loses his authenticity and must reinvent himself every time the settings change. Assignment seven: Settings · Medellin Colombia 1960’s, the city of Eternal Spring, lush mountains, the Alps of the Americas, picturesque landscapes (ages 1 to 8). · Jersey City, New Jersey. Rough neighborhood (ages 9 to 16). · Lackland Air Force Base, boot camp (age 17). · Miami, Los Angeles, NY and anywhere in between in the late 70’s and 80’s during the early drug trade (ages 18 to 20). · Drug deals in houses with dangerous gangsters. · Clandestine air strips in Colombia and in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Paramilitary men armed with machine guns. · Small planes stuffed to the gills with cocaine and volatile fuel. · Back to Medellin when it becomes the most dangerous and violent city in the world. · Leavenworth Penitentiary where for a time the protagonist is the youngest and only first-time, non-violent offender (age 21 to 33). · Third world prisons in Colombia and Panama. · Back in Medellin Colombia when Pablo got killed and the city was at war as key players were jockeying for the void left by the dead kingpin (age 34). · Panama where the protagonist becomes a teacher (in his 40’s). · Madrid, Spain (in his 50’s). · Back in prison in the United States after he finds out he’s been deported despite being a citizen. · On the road driving a truck in the lower 48 states and writing a book (at present and in his 60’s).