Review of Mike Henry and William Henry’s novel, The Ride Along
By Christine Maynard
The Ride Along, co-authored by Mike and William Henry, is fresh fiction. You’ll find one of a kind characters and brisk action from beginning to end. The story unfolds in labyrinths of the Vieux Carre and takes the reader on a romp from OPP, the Orleans Parish Prison, to crypt like chapels with voodou as well as arcane, apothecary accoutrements.
Jake Banks pursues and is pursued by the darkest element imaginable, murderers imbued with occult powers, reinforced by ritual, divination and spells. The Santeria lineage holder, Sorcerer Torres, a.k.a. Brujo, is determined to oust “The Other” from landed gentry all around good guy, Jake Banks, from Sunshine, Mississippi.
Jake is well educated, well trained and connected, yet against Brujo his only amulet seems to be his basic goodness. A secret ally, the head of Domestic Operations Group, as deus ex machina, does comes in handy. He appears in the nick of time, repeatedly, assisting Jake and his father.
Jake is quickly provided in the opening chapter with the opportunity to test his training. He learns to rely on himself and his instincts in this suspense filled thriller. His physical prowess and mental conditioning are put to the test, repeatedly. The narrative lens is sharply focused. The writers are well versed in legal hierarchies, political histories, gang activity and cults. The reader is invited to peer behind the scenes into the often clandestine inner workings of the judicial system. (Mike Henry was a prosecutor and District Attorney, and William Henry has experience in law enforcement specializing in gang activity.)
This well-crafted novel places likeable Jake in jeopardy and peril at every turn. The unpredictability of the situations in which he finds himself, just when it appears the coast is clear, bonds the reader to Jake causing us to root for him time and again. Jake has integrity. He is moral without being didactic. And his wry sense of humor in the face of near annihilation gives him an Indiana Jones allure.
The anti hero, Brujo, possesses deadly confidence and super human skills which convince his followers to do his bidding. They believe he holds the secrets of Santaria and the power of Santa Muerte. Brujo the Sorcerer is Darkness personified. Jake’s “steeped in tradition and morals” upbringing, youth and fitness make him shine with vitality . His presence informs us that good will prevail. And then, it nearly doesn’t.
A favorite character, introduced in an earlier Willie Mitchell Banks novel, is the weight challenged Jimmy Gray, a loyal family friend and banker, who is a bit OCD when it comes to his oyster ritual at Felix’s in the Quarter. He is a gem and another juxtaposition; as the novel turns on its axis, Gray’s hunger for physical sustenance mirrors characteristics of Brujo’s right hand man, Big Demon. He has an insatiable hunger for spiritual sustenance, albeit evil.
Brujo also feeds a hunger; he craves his trance states more and more, and drinks “tea” from a wine skein down by the Mississippi. Even Willie Mitchell floats at time in a void, “an empty black hole. I am no more,” when he suffers petit mal seizures.
Existentialism, the underbelly of society, and French Quarter impenetrable mysteries are presented from vantage points grounded in context and normalcy. Eerie scenes punctuate pages of the The Ride Along even though the familiarity of exact locations of intersection and places of business provides a false sense of security about that which seems routine.
Moma Cobas, Brujo’s grandmother who raised him from infancy, is expertly trained in herbs, spells and potions, which she learned in her earlier life in Cuba. Jake’s mother is the quintessential Southern Belle, who teaches his FBI girlfriend, Kitty, how to place the silver for a formal setting. Kitty’s mother and Brujo’s real mother are only alluded to as they are driven to insanity before the story takes place. (Brujo’s mother is named Luna.)
There is the fleshy banker with a voracious appetite and the flesh eating Brujo, who rips a hole with his incisors in a prisoner’s chest to loose The Other, an evil spirit he felt must be exorcised. He recognizes this same spirit in Jake. Willie Banks is unable to protect his son, and the outcome is irrevocable. Brujo and Big Demon kidnap Jake as Willie Mitchell Banks lies on the floor, impotent, having a seizure.
“We must first exorcise the Other.” Brujo later informs a bound and tortured Jake. Jake’s wry response is “ Tell me who he is and I’ll get rid of him myself.”
The Ride Along is witty and incisive, with characters I hope to meet again.
Jake chooses to quench his thirst while a captive, w/ the only thing “wet,” a brew of psychoactive tea, which creates the additional burden of hallucinating transparent white alligators with emerald pulsating centers while fighting for his life. The jaguar headdress and red codpiece outfitting his opponent are real, as are the obsidian swords.
The Ride Along is tantalizing, and a great read. Expect the unexpected in every arena. And keep looking over your shoulder! The only thing not surprising is that in the end, true love prevails.
THE RIDE ALONG may be purchased in trade paperback or e-book format at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other distributors. Check out www.henryandhenrybooks.com and click on the covers for links to their novels’ distributors.

RAISING MY THREE SONS ON MY OWN

Ruth’s Chris was my stomping ground for effecting change in building codes to save historic structures and to put monies in the pockets of my employers, a triumvirate of a chemical company, a wood treater and the big miners. Naturally the home builders association, good old boys with dark side Mafioso connections would stop at nothing to thwart our desired mandates. But they didn’t cause the car wreck. My husband fell asleep at the wheel on the three hour trek north at midnight, after the meal.

So two years post wreck, post political dinner, having lost the initiative to mandate treated wood but making progress with a Belle Chase military Base and one Hope VI project in New Orleans framed entirely with borate treated wood, I planned to have lunch with my son, Cahir Doherty. He had a scholarship to LSU and his own apartment.

I called and called, but no answer. When I arrived, I saw a painting like a volcano on the grey door of Cahir’s F150 truck. Maybe a dream sicle had melted, creating the art. Maybe it was practise for a science project, with Cahir… who knows.

I licked my finger and smeared it through the art, on one level I must have already suspected it was blood. Walking around the truck I discovered the entire bed covered in the same rust color. I found him inside, passed out. His nicked artery scotch taped closed. He lived.

And he lived and lived and lived through harrowing, life halting events. Fracturing 30 places through both plates of his skull, egg shell cracks of the fragile basal skull from an avalanche in New Mexico he caused by leaving the trail in a race and pulling up on 14 foot pine trees on the lip of the mountain, which dislodged, along with boulders. His brothers witnessed him falling upside down through space. Niall, the boys father, knew before he turned on the trail. He recalled the high pitched mournful, cry of irrevocability from Ian. A death cry. He landed on rock face thirty five feet below, or on a small patch of grass covered with leaves, the only padding on rock face. They saw him try to stand and his head wobbling unable to be lifted above shoulders and then, a crumpling. He was supposed to have a craniotomy or later experience seizures or have his brains grow through his nose, causing retardation or death. He survived without intervention, except for IV’s in intensive care, and stitches on his shin.

We found a top neurosurgeon who had written chapters on basal skull fractures and believed that in Cahir’s case, the fractures would align and grow back together, perfectly. After six weeks of recuperation and terror everytime he sneezed ( the fear of the fractures re-opening and of a cerebrospinal fluid leak) he was given clearance to go back to school. No bumps, no running. No PE. He blew on a duck call before getting in the car with the other children and clear fluid poured out of his nose. We were going to have to airlift him for an immediate craniotomy. Cerebrospinal fluid leaves a perfect circular pattern on paper towels, and has an unforgettable sweet taste. He laid on his back for an hour, and when he arose, the leakage had stopped.

The following year he was shot point blank in the face. The bullet missed everything vital and he doesn’t even have a scar, as the barrel parted muscles in the corner of his eye, tearing only the lachrymal duct, which recannalized. His hair fell out in tufts, leaving geometric patterns, rectangles of allopecia which I think was from the radioactive isotopes in the dyes from the angiography when surgeons went in through the femoral artery to cauterize the bleeder.They thought it was the carotid, but it was a lesser vessel.

Cahir in trauma unit at LSU, 12 doctors and nurses, sliding on bloody floors, my job to hold up a hand towel to catch the paint ball like trajectories, the clots that emanated from his nose and mouth as he coughed and sneezed, drowning from his own blood draining from inside his head. “Be a soldier,” he said to Ian his bother, as they wheeled him away, giving us not much hope that they’d make it in time to save him. But they did.

And he came out thinking he was Tupac instead of getting it. He got it for a week, or rather said the things his more mature friends, his real friends insisted on him saying if he wanted the continuance of their friendship.

They said they were tired of being pall bearers at friends funerals over drugs and stupidity. One was a banker, one in construction. Childhood friends of Cahir’s who were at our house almost every week-end, told him the only chrome he saw growing up was on old people’s wheel chairs. That he was from an educated affluent loving family, not poverty and abuse. That his sagging, silver heavy chain wearing, gansta rap persona was passé, a phase they admitted to having been in, but grew out of, and theat he, too must move forward. Embrace growth, get over it. Get over himself.

Yet he insisted that I give him “dap.” Had a fight with me when I refused. Hit closed knuckles to everyone else’s saying dap. He used double negatives and eubonics when he spoke to doctors. It was truly miraculous that Cahir lived, and doctors came in on Easter Sunday, marveling at his sterling condition, no permanent damage. No follow up needed besides tracking the tear duct. Cahir was practically unscathed from being shot point blank in the eye. The roof of his mouth revealed broken vessels, tracking the path of the bullet. It missed esophagus trachea, brain, nerves (that is what suprized them most, touching his face with his eyes covered and finding no neurological deficit.) everything except sinus cavities, which would calcify. He already had trouble flying and couldn’t scuba dive because of the cracks from the 35 foot fall on rock face.

My son Cahir sat in a hospital bed with the following scene repeating as fresh doctors did rounds with patients they had never seen before.

Doc appears outside of hospital room door. He or she picks up chart, reads the intake and enters the room of the victim of a gunshot wound to the face. Doctor looks at patient, and jerks agrily toward the nurse, flaring anger at the obvious error…his boy has not been shot in the face. This boy has a black eye. No stitches, no trauma and he is sitting up in bed, coherent, with his fist extended, lifting his chin, encouraging the doctor to give him dap, back.

Chele, his Hispanic girlfriend comes to the hospital every day. She is a senior and has never learned to drive. Most boys think she is extraordinarily attractive, especially as Cahir has her dressed like Little Kim. She is lean, exotic looking with a narrow face, doe eyes and a slender, aristocratic but not aquiline nose. She looks as if she should have kohl around here eyes and a tiny ruby nose ring. But she has an extra set of eye teeth, visable when she smiles.

When I arrived at the hospital, and saw Cahir, having confirmed on my race to the hospital that my firstborn baby had been shot in the face with a .25, he was talking trash. He was drunk, messed up. He didn’t really want anything to do with me, pushed me away, as he embraced Chele, her little sis, and her very young, mother, saying loudly, This is my family right here.

I was crushed but amazement and concern kept me drinking in the scene. The attendant RN’s and LPNs bit their lips and crossed their arms tightly around their bodies, shaking their heads. Most of them, in this small town, already had a fair idea of the difficulties and traumas I had endured with Cahir. Their attitudes were a direct reflection of his apparent ungratefulness coupled with the fact that he acted as if he had done something marvelous and admirable instead of risking his life stupidly buying drugs

. He obviously didn’t think he was at risk of dying. With bullets to the head, it can take a while for the bleeding to show, to drain into the lungs, to asphyxiate.

Regardless of Cahir’s wishes, I was the only one allowed to ride in the ambulance as he was transferred to a trauma unit at a large University hospital. By the time we arrived, he was going downhill fast.

I was numb, for the first time in my life. It didn’t happen during childbirth, or during the shooting by Mickey’s ex. Not when Cahir’s shirt and the skin of his belly were sucked into the escalator intake belt, and he was nearly disemboweled, at a third world airport in St. Martin, on the way to Paris, not when he was busted, any of the times, not even when I sat and slept on the cold floor outside of the schizophrenic unit waiting for my 20 minutes, to catch a glimpse of the boy not on earth. I never felt completely numb, emotionless in all of my life except for this experience. I felt nothing. It was too, too horrible. My worst fear was realized. I couldn’t save him from himself.The reality was as bad as the fear I lived with of him committing vehicular homicide or being in prison for life. My son was dying from being shot in his precious face, his Cahir-face, in a drug deal. Two men, who had begun the day with $5.00, they bragged, and ended it by having done $1,000 worth of cocaine, planned to steal my son and his companions’s money, kill them, take the truck and go to Houston.

As A A Milne might say, “Now he is twenty five”

A woman friend saw him in Austin and commented “He’s so handsome he doesn’t even look human.” By the absolute grace of God Cahir is fine, well, adjusted, happy, healed.

I had decided, after Byron stood me up, again, that I wanted no part of him, and that I would never answer his calls. If I softened and did pick up the phone, I’d tell him I didn’t wanted to see him anymore.

He called, I answered. He was on his way. He could spend the night. My intention transmogrified into “yes,” as I thought about the sex. Which was great; aggressive, intense. Above the river, unseen, but heard, surely, from the midst of a bamboo thicket. Underneath us, smooth hardness, the raised wooden meditation platform, perched on a precipice.

His age matched his ACT Score. Young and bright. And educated, confidently insinuating “Wahhabism” -the strict interpretation of Shia, -into my ”Studies in Terrorism” white paper submission, for the Department of Defense. He was at home with the works of my favorite late nineteenth century Russian authors, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Even Turgenev.

I further queried his knowledge of spiritual avatars from the same period. He didn’t know Ouspenski, but recalled Rasputen. I spoke of Gurdjeff.

Byron was blond and slight of frame, but had been an effective tight end for a north Louisiana high school football team, during a stellar season. He had evenly distributed musculature, like a boxer, not a lifter. Bantum weight.

He had a beautiful, perfect…everything. It made me sing and squeal. I discovered what I’d been missing that other women thrilled to, being on top. He went so deep in me, hitting my g spot, mind blowingly.

Anxious for a replay, in the morning, focusing my breath, and resting in his arms, images from the previous night gripped me. I anticipated, tremulously, how he’d roll me over some way and enter me and just rock my interior, my psyche, making me weave and weave and weave.

I’d trip; our sex opened chambers, rock face split suddenly revealing hidden passageways, treasure troves spelunkered along neural pathways not consciously known. This morning’s stimulation ignited parts of my brain decidedly distinct from the Jeopardy-esque category of “Russian authors and avatars.” Now, unveiled, dancing like gumdrops in my hippocampus, were scenes from the unvented laundry room of my childhood home.

I remembered with such vivid clarity, chickens, baby chicks, one black and one yellow, in a shallow rectangular Easter basket in the cold washroom. It was a bright cold Louisiana April morning. My father took my hand in his, and led me to a dry cleaning slip he’d “found” on his pillow. The marks, blue ink in loops, glyphs, were instructions, from the Easter Bunny. ”Look in the laundry room for your present.” The Easter Bunny.

I tore down the hall in foot pajamas and found an Easter basket, neatly woven strips of thin light beige, chartreuse faux “grass,” hard boiled eggs (I never knew why anyone would eat them) dyed sky blue, and these two tiny chicks which fit, one at a time, in my four year old palm.

They lived in a box in the wash room, and then were ensconced in milk crates, one inverted on top of the other, in our back yard. Beyond our yard lay a ravine, a Shetland pony farm, and beyond that, fields studded with pecan trees, that extended to the levee between the Red River and the Cane.

One evening, there was a sudden, terrible racket in the back yard, punctuated by gunfire, and then, silence. My mother’s gaze was riveted, staring out the kitchen window, as the salmon croquettes began to burn. A dog, a wild dog, a mongrel came in our yard and killed my chickens. We called him “Chicken Killer” and, even though my father ran outside and fired repeatedly at the dog with a shot gun, the threat, terrifying and delicious, was there, that any evening, at dusk, Chicken Killer might appear.

He was lean, a hound dog, brown, with spots that belied his lack of breeding, and a large skull, ravenous. Incisors, maybe foam. In my child’s mind, rabid. Wild.

I lay in Byron’s arms, he is so still, and I see these chicks and feel the fresh cold that made me shiver and am aware of the scent of Tide, boot leather and saddle soap. It hits me like Flaubert’s petit madelines in Swann’s Way.

How was this part of my brain stimulated ? by his scent? His sex? My response? Hyperbole aside, did the sex or the attendant weaving equal the thrill of racing down the linoleum floored hall in foot pajamas, rounding corners, touching and turning the brass knob, revealing baby chicks delivered to me, from the Easter Bunny?

What part of the weaving is unearthing of memories? Is the weaving part of natural selection? What does it mean when it is this potent, pheromones or limbic system bingo? What part reality, the reading of another’s heart energy, or of one’s own, long buried, and what part wishful?

It is the most powerful thing I do, the weaving, bringing its essence into awareness. It is where my babies came from, energetically, beyond birds and bees. It is who they are, the essence of the DNA I did read and combine, strand upon strand. I wove it; I continue to weave, entwining that which I discern, with my own, and that knowledge filters through my awareness when there is potency.

My friend Jane says she is just hopeless. Hopeless. She says all she wants is to be at home with *****, to wear an apron and bake for him, and for him to deftly undo the apron strings, and have sex with her in the kitchen. Everywhere. All the time. We love to weave.

Idolo- A Road Trip with  Mexican boxing champ Marco Antonio Rubio

by Christine Maynard

In Mexico, a boxer, while he is winning, is a demi-God. Machismo manifests in its purest form in the boxing gyms, rings, and coliseums where peleadors  perform. Marco Antonio Rubio, best known as “Veneno,” (venom,) 31-2 with 29 KO’s, embodies this machismo, and more. He is incredibly gifted and confident, with laser-like focus and an energy level that makes him larger than life.

I joined him on a road trip from Austin, Texas, where he trains with other high ranked Mexican Nationals, (including Jesus Chavez,) to his home town of Torreon, Mexico, where he fought… and won.

Traveling with a high-profile hero, from the luxury of elitist country clubs nestled amid mountains, to  street corners in Coahuila, with crowds of children clamoring for Veneno’s attention, was quite impressive. His image, along with his opponent, Leon “Ice Cold” Pearson, appeared on huge light emitting diode billboards, reminiscent of Times Square. Marco is fueled by the feedback from his fans,  whom he attends graciously.

Yet the seminal event was witnessing Marco Antonio Rubio fight. I learned that fighting is noble. That fighting is real. The appeal is visceral, obviously, but on a more subtle level it touches the spirit.

The heart of a true fighter is his strength. This strength is funded by belief, which through osmosis or alchemy becomes every man’s ability to believe. This hope is primed, behind the eyes and in the hearts of the masses, when they watch their fighter. It is magic, unlike any other sport.

A fighter becomes the transformative agent for the people, capable, if he wins, of transmuting despair into hope. This redemptive power of belief in a fighter is enthralling; he is like the Host raised high, bells signaling the change. His presence in the ring creates an incendiary pandemic, spreading startlingly, in which every cell becomes more alive, animated.  That’s what boxing is. That’s what boxing is about.

I first met Rubio in Richard Lord’s gym. He had twinkling eyes, with a perpetual smile one couldn’t resist returning. “A world class boxer” those who knew said, as Marco sparred on Saturdays. But there are lots of world class boxers, title holders and champions in the gym. I had no concept of his “idolo” status.

On a Tuesday in August, mid-morning, after training, we left Austin, heading west on 90 through the valley. The gorgeous, blue canopy that stretched above the straight west Texas highway was a cross between Wyoming, and an Italian Renaissance painting, in which cherubs are sucked into azure Duomo ceilings, amidst tufts of clouds. I felt as if we were bulging into a bubble of sky.

Trennice Brown, a bad-boy, black boxer from New Orleans by way of  Cincinnati, slept in the back seat of Marco’s Chevrolet, as we drove past hunting ranches, with metal cut outs of wild hogs, or ducks in formation above the gates, as advertisements.  In Uvalde, we pass the soon–to-open Oasis Outback. Two story palm trees at the entrance are alluring, yet the cultural dissonance of a west Texan Sultan theme fills me with  prescience- expect the unexpected on this trip.

Trennice and I had no idea where we were headed, only that I was to act as his corner and that Marco had been instructed to not let us out of his sight.    Trennice KO’d Jhonny Torres, in 37 second in Houston. He has a fierce left hook and incredible musculature-genetics, not discipline. He is the opponent for “Chloro” Ruben Padilla, on the undercard of Marco’s fight.

A dream catcher hung from the rear view mirror.  Conversation was conducted through a translating device, out of necessity. But gestures and expressions worked best for conveying meaning.

Marco showed me photographs on his cell phone of his girlfriend, golfing, a dashing dark-suit-clad Marco speaking at a dinner, and a few pics of gyms at which we would stop, in order to train. What looked like aboriginal drumming was actually boxers with heavy hammers lifted high, then thrust down rhythmically to strengthen the arms.

When we arrived in the city of Acuna, across the border from Del Rio, I couldn’t ignore Marco’s name painted in red- large block letters- above the entrance of the gym, a white metal barn-like building. The bathrooms were stalls facing the ring, with colorful graffiti, and a pre-Jack Lalayne treadmill was missing its conveyor belt- only the wooden cylinders turned. It was easier to envision it as a reflexology device hyped in an in-flight magazine than it was to realize champions have trained on this.

Mosquitoes made speed bag work torturous; they breed in abandoned tires which punctuated the grounds outside the gym. Young boys and men trained with an intensity and seriousness that spoke- “this is the only way out.”

According to Marco’s promoter in Mexico, Hector Sanchez, his move to  Austin,Texas, in order to work with Fernando “Flaco” Castrejon, has made him a different fighter. Even better. Jesus Chavez, who also trains under  Flaco stated that “Marco is in the place where he needs to be-where his career can progress.”

Hector is a used car salesman who owns a compound of concrete shotgun houses and an SUV. He also promotes Baby Face, Julio Garcia. Julio is a rising star with a 30-2 record and 24 knock outs, He is only eighteen. And he is under the tutelage of Marco. They are friends, gliding through the same swath of illustriousness and paparazzi, Spartan discipline, hard training, and the single-mindedness to place boxing above everything else in the world. Always.

Marco eats organic almonds and baby carrots, snacks I brought. Trennice buys chips, twinkies, a soda and a pack of cigarettes. We stay at a Best Western where Marco is feted, favored, and later we go out for dinner. There are mariachi bands and a synthesizer. The food is good, and Trennice and I order two for one Negro Modellos- it is happy hour.

I awaken at 7:00 a.m. with eyelids swollen from mucho cerveza .The boys call, having finished a morning run, and are ready to roll. I shower, grab coffee and my backpack and we head to Hector’s to pick up his SUV so Baby Face and his father can join us on the road to Torreon.

Hector’s spare is shredded from a blow out. We have no choice except to rouse a tire man. This is tricky, and our departure is delayed. Marco appears edgy, but polite.  I only later realize that a media event is scheduled for our arrival, including photo shoots of sparring. We are unable to release the rim from the underbelly of the vehicle. After many attempts, along with unloading and re packing luggage, satin fight robes, bottled waters, and respective CD cases, mandatory boxing equipment, we are cruising.

Conversation becomes more facile. We drive through areas of protected flora and fauna, in the mountains. Trennice has flashbacks from Vision Quest. The counselors told him that if he chose to run away, just over the top of the mountain he’d see Tucson. Trennice and two others left in “boxers,” with no other clothing, not even shoes. They took horse blankets and cut them up for moccasins. They side stepped snakes, jumped ravines,  and were exhausted upon reaching the top where they saw mountains as far as the eye revealed, not Tucson.

Marco delights in violin overtures moving his right hand in the air, drawing the bow, when he hears strings. He plays air accordion as well, while we drive. He is an admixture of passion and childlike enthusiasm. He looks like a young Sean Penn.

At the media event, Marco warms up in a hooded windbreaker and work out pants. He shadow boxes, wearing layers in 100 degrees and no AC, alternating high forward kicks while touching his toes, with punches, hooks, jabs. The boxers pose with fists prominently displayed for photographers. Interviews followed.

We leave two hours later and check into the Torreon Best Western, which is very nice, with plenty of amenities and attentive staff. Marco has a tight Achilles tendon on his right leg from a misstep, landing on the outside of his right foot. He asks for a massage and I oblige.  He skips dinner as weigh in is two days away. We drive around Torreon, making unannounced visits to gyms, and to his home.

His nephew, Jorge, was on the sidewalk, waiting for Marco. He didn’t recognize the car. When Marco rolled down the window, the ten year old was jubilant. His uncle, his father-figure, and his “idolo,” as well as the “idolo” of all his peers, was home.

Marco’s father died when he was only fifteen. His mother, Lupe, died last year. She had been on dialysis, due to diabetes. He keeps a photo of her- sleeping while in the hospital- on his phone, as a screen saver.

He had just signed with Golden Boy Promotions, and was in Hidalgo preparing for a fight, which was to be aired on HBO Latino. His mother died on Sunday. He returned to Torreon for her funeral. On Thursday, he was victorious against Jeffrey Hill.

At the hotel before the fight, Marco appeared relaxed. The electricity and water had gone out an hour before our departure time. Fighters and opponents spoke amiably in the lobby. Once we arrived at the coliseum, the only sign of Marco in the boxer’s dressing room was his red satin robe, hung on a wall, covered in dry cleaning film.

Hours later, after Julio “Baby Face” Garcia’s fight, I found Veneno, dressed, juiced, pumped. Super charged, neck snapping, flashes popping, high voltage electricity surging-it’s source, Marco Antonio Rubio. His potency was palpable. He was on his power. Yet, he continued to quip with reporters and pose with kids.

Nowhere was Marco more amazing than in the ring. He tore his opponent apart with meticulous attention to detail. His method was perfectly orchestrated and executed, like a war theatre. A war theatre with the  Marx brothers as alter ego, that is. When Leon cowered on the ropes, forearms locked in front of his face, his only vestige of defense before the battering ram “Veneno,”  Marco interjected humor which made the crowd go wild. At the height of dramatic tension, Marco’s gloved hand hovering, arm cocked, he exaggerated a wind-up, cartoon-like, before sending it home. He played with Leon, a cat dissecting a mouse at its leisure.

He thrills his audience. And he knows exactly what he is doing every step of the way. When Leon’s mouthpiece hit the floor, Marco pantomimed surprise, shot down to retrieve it, and popped it in Leon’s mouth like a pacifier. The fans roared.

He KO’d Leon in the fourth round. The crowd pushed into the ring. Leon and his manager, Don Hale, disappeared into a hotel van. Don had mentioned earlier that it could be rough here, recalling another fight in the Expo Gomez Palacio where bottles were thrown, and leaving the stadium was almost impossible.

Marco Antonio Rubio is spectacularly confident, and loves his life. Others love his life- and life force- right along with him. He is a champion, and he is unforgettable. There is a purity about him which makes his essence shine.

He has four boxing championship belts,  but he only brought them out after showing me his Our Lady of Guadeloupe string Santos, and  pictures of his family.

 First impressions.

Jesus Chavez (photo.)

posted by christine at 6:37 PM

And it could kill you. 1-3% of those who contract this horrible disease develop fulminant hepatic failure. And die. I’ll re-check these stats tomorrow when I visit my doctor, a liver transplant specialist at Tulane Abdominal Transplant Center.
I made it. But most people with ALT and AST and free bili levels like mine are in ICU. And they don’t all recover. Some begin anti virals which they stay on for four to five years if not for life. They are expensive and can have side effects as debilitating as the disease. Others’ only chance is a transplant. Some just kick the bucket.
Who’d have thought? Not me. I didn’t think all that could happen from having unprotected sex.
I’d been told by my lover that he had been tested for STD’s. He said he was clean. So, I overlooked his pumpkin orange colored urine, when I should have realized that his RBC’s weren’t breaking down, due to a disease process. And when his rotator cuff and right shoulder hurt and all he could do was lie around, I should have considered that the pain was referred from the lop sided lump bulging out from beneath his ribs on an otherwise lean and lanky frame, his “generous” liver. That’s what it is called when it is too big, and inflamed. Throwing out an S.O.S. of enzymes, ALT or SGOT. AST. My numbers were above 2000 when they had previously been 20, and 12.
I want to reference my Oxford Book of Quotations, to be reminded of what colored bile or ethers or qualities were attributed to liver. I think it is aptly named. Without it working, I couldn’t figure out why anything mattered. I didn’t feel alive. I had total disconnect. I had no hope in my body or mind.
I felt like a puppy dying of Parvo. I wouldn’t move for hours. Just my eyes. Geometry didn’t matter. Architecture. Philosophy. I was devoid of interest. Desire. Life force.
My diastolic pressure was 45 at night.
Teams of doctors interviewed me or informed me. Most were extraordinarily caring. And real. And competent.. My favorite was the young Jewish female Internist with kind eyes. I don’t remember seeing, in hospital, the rock star head of transplant surgery with the 122 page CV, in his early forties. He’s a beauty.
I had Hep B. replicating in my subfulminant liver. Who’d have thought?
My brilliant compassionate physician, Dr. Nathan Shores, took a calculated chance that I’d get well without much intervention. He didn’t want me to be impeded by feeling bad for life from meds I’d be chained to, so he gave me a chance to get well on my own, while being closely monitored.
And I got better.
I was very sick for five weeks. I was hospitalized. I lost a lot. Muscle mass. Direction in life. Ability to take care of myself or my dog or my home. But God does provide. And friends saw me through without me even having to ask.
I’m very appreciative. Still puzzled about losing my poise and balance. It was like having a spiritual stroke. I didn’t see it coming.
And you may not either.
Hep B is 50-100 times more transmittable than HIV or Hep C. Hep Delta cannot exist without Hep B, and it is often this combo which leads to sudden, acute life threatening fulminant liver.
Hep B virus can live for one month without water. It is found in saliva, tears, blood, seminal fluids. It could be caught from sharing a razor, but it is very easily transmitted sexually. I lived with the man who gave me Hep B in May and June. My blood work was positive for Hep B with recent surface antigens mid July. And I got sick suddenly in September. I didn’t think I could make it home from Rouse’s in the Quarter. My legs felt like toothpicks. I went to bed for four days and nights.
Friends came by and I’d stagger down stairs to let them in. They’d try to convince me to go to the hospital. It took a while. Everything seemed far away. I was pretty sure that this was a stage of dying.
My sleep was so disturbed, thin. The ammonia which my liver couldn’t break down was affecting my brain. I had no opinions. Even attaining non-attachment lost its shine. I was perplexed, dumbfounded, ill, and at the same time trying to be rational, responsible and keep my humour. After all, it is a grand journey.
But you can undertake it without catching hepatitis.
Get the HEP B vaccine. Don’t expose yourself. Don’t have sex with a man whose urine is dark orange because he could be a carrier or have chronic hepatitis and you could feel absolutely awful for a month or so, and then die.
Tell people they can contract Hep B sexually. And transmit it.
If there’s orange in your pee
You may already have Hep B
(Or another kind of bilirubin rising problem.)
Get checked out by your physician. Ask for a HEP B test. Get a vaccine. Use protection.
I am honored that I get to keep living.
Christine Maynard