Once a lobster’s protruding antennae were spotted, John would swim over to it with his four foot rod affixed with a nasty barbed hook on the end & would gently place the hook right on the underside middle and then yank backwards, pulling the unsuspecting lobster right to his other hand which would carefully grip around the top so as to avoid the pinchers. The hook was quickly jabbed deep into the heart of the animal, killing it within a matter of seconds and amid a few furious attempts to wrench free...death underwater at the hands of sweet John the killer...they were then handed off to me to hold by their long antennae, and in a half hour I swam slowly behind with what became seven or eight red and black crustaceans, their spiked feelers poking my bare hands...
And cooking a lobster in Belize meant mixing the pure pearl like catch with Midwest American cooking...the meat was put on tinfoil, covered liberally with butter and mayonnaise, covered in Lowry’s seasoned salt, and folded together with a helping of chopped green pepper, onion, and garlic...this was then put on the grill for ten minutes—that was the whole show and I’ll tell you after eating nineteen winks of nothing at stateside fish houses, this lobster had jungles, signs of delirium at night, rich Barrier Reef texture, the scent of the hunt fresh and tangible, and that unmistakable discursive taste of butter with the added currency of Mayo...let me tell you we ate it up, all of it—ceviche, tortillas, lobster, & salad—with Belikan beers one after another. By the time it was apparent that we were due to meet Crystal and Vera at the Playador for local night with the Punta band, our collective inebriation was superfluous, but also instantly classic and brazenly joyous...and so down we rolled all the way (a mile or so) past the now decrepit hulk of the boat used to take the cronies of the movie “Cocoon” out for their extra terrestrial communion...It was now beached and rotting, tilting badly to one side...
This Punta music, full of modern smelt ideas, was faster in tempo than a violent sonetto, and to its purveyors a cause célèbre...The band was four to five young men, an agitator synthesizer, drums, various hand instruments like triangles or wood sticks, and so much raw energy and lack of talent it made one dizzy. On a deeper level, its characters and the dramatic events in which they participated were lost on the giddy and naïve touristas, who only focused on the dancing this music demanded...how to describe the movements that are the very essence of LUST, victim of modern neurosis, hips afire, the holy synod negative space between woman in front and man in back, the Uzi, the howitzer, the Tommy gun not fast enough?! Not even close! Hubris and Nemesis...the Punta squarely in between...illegal in most universes...nearly a turn on murder so hot did the swirling mass of dancers become...the volume—it must be noted—was as loud as possible, which made outlying conversation useless so most got busy banging hips...Ramona understood this dance as if it were something everyone from Latin American did and did well.
And then there was my mother and I and the rest of the gringos, alone against tomorrow with our stiff renditions of the wiggle...
-Michael Price
