A late encounter with 'El Bori'

Today, we get up close and personal with a fellow writer through a chapter in his memoir.

Hi Friends,

Today I’m bringing you a story from a writing colleague of mine, JJ Martin. Like most of my writing buddies, I met JJ in a memoir writing class.

Besides making connections and friendships from class, I love learning about people’s stories. That’s what draws me to memoirs in the first place. Through this class, I got to see the inner workings of how other people structure their stories… and let me tell you, JJ’s stories are… wild. Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll-type stories that unfold against the backdrop of Miami’s neon nights and Art Deco hotels.

Here’s a quick setup of this chapter so you know what it’s about:

While out at dinner in Miami, JJ ran into an old acquaintance, a hookup he hadn’t seen in 12 years. This chance encounter led to an unconventional friendship that transformed him into a more loving and caring human being.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Feel free to share your comments and thoughts with JJ!

A Late Encounter with "El Bori" 

It was a Wednesday night, and I was smoking an after-dinner cigarette in front of the Capital Grille in downtown Miami where I’d just had dinner with friends, one of my first social outings during the pandemic.

As I waited for the valet parking attendant to bring my car around, I heard someone across the street shouting, “Eyyy! Oye! Papi!"

Peering into the haze, I saw a guy in a wife beater, basketball shorts, and a gaudy gold chain limping toward me, wildly waving his arms.

“Eyyy Mr. Real Estate, is that you? Is me, El Bori!” 

I couldn't believe it. I had met El Bori 12 years earlier at a Cuban coffee window just a few blocks away. Back then, he was a twenty-eight-year-old aspiring reggaeton singer working on a construction crew, while I, at 40, was a business executive and part-time real estate investor, scoping out properties downtown.

I noticed him when we stood in line but tried to feign indifference. His tan, muscular arms were adorned with intricate tattoos that snaked down to his hands, giving him a dangerous allure. His emerald green and honey-colored eyes sparkled with charisma and confidence. Surprisingly, he struck up a conversation, and his baby face and earnest charm belied his thug persona. 

He asked me if I was married. I lied, “Married, two kids.”’

If I said single at 40, it would be like screaming, "I’m a homo!" especially in Miami. Since he was being friendly, I didn’t want to scare him off.

“I got you beat; I got three kids,” he said.

Bori told me all about them, his baby mamas, and his current girlfriend. When I told him I was looking for investment properties, he recommended his neighborhood, just past the Miami River. 

“Prices are lower in the ‘hood. I’ma show you ‘round. He wasn't the type of person I’d normally seek investment advice from, but I was intrigued. He was different from anyone I’d ever met before.

When I picked him up the following Saturday, he was holding court on the front stoop of his building, rapping some Calle Trece to his neighbors Popeye and Mike.

Tengo un par de fanáticos que quieren cantar, y están locos nor pegarse como goma de mascar, pero les falta práctica, una nueva táctica, son de mentira como cirugía plástica.

He introduced me to them as Mr. Real Estate.

When we got in the car, I said, “Cartoon Popeye is muscular and tough with bulging forearms. Your friend is a morbidly obese blob with a bulging stomach.” I asked, “Does he eat a lot of spinach?”

"Nah–He eat a lot of chicken-Popeye's Fried Chicken," El Bori replied, chuckling. I couldn't help but smile.

"So why doesn't Mike have a nickname?" I inquired.

"He do! His real name’s Armando, but I call him Mike ‘cuz he talk on a ‘mic’ at the McDonald's drive-thru," El Bori explained with a grin. We both laughed at their silly inside joke.

We spent the afternoon looking at two-story art deco buildings that had seen better days.  I didn’t have the heart to tell El Bori that I wasn’t really interested in buying a unit that would require a bunch of work. I just wanted to hang out with him, so I took him out to lunch as a thank-you.

He told me his birthday was in a few days. I asked how he’d celebrate. 

His expression tightened, and he said, “Man, my baby mama giving me so much grief. I think I’ma getta motel room and drown my sorrows in beer.” 

He paused, then asked, “You wanna come?” 

I gulped and said, “Yeah, sure.” 

The following Wednesday at 6 p.m., not knowing what to expect, I knocked on the door of room number four at the Motel Ernesto on Calle Ocho. My heart was beating fast, and my palms were sweating when El Bori greeted me with a towel snugly wrapped around his waist, torso glistening from the shower.

My eyes were drawn to a tattoo of the map of Puerto Rico, barely peeking out from below the edge of his towel. Smiling, he stared intently.

We fell into an awkward but understood silence, like something was about to happen.

Then he asked, “Sooo, wassup?”

At that moment, a subtle shift occurred between us. His hands found their way to my shoulders, drawing me closer in a gesture that transcended words. I felt like fate or magic brought us together, weaving a deep connection. 

 When we got up to leave a couple of hours later, he smiled mischievously and said, “Guess what? It ain’t really my birfday.”

We never discussed our respective sexualities. Homosexuality is fraught with complexity and shame in Latino culture, with its emphasis on machismo. I knew it would be a landmine, and I wanted to keep it casual to keep it going. 

El Bori and I hooked up four more times that fall, and I grew fond of him. I loved his company and found him to be always fun and full of life. My affection felt reciprocated, and I suspected that El Bori enjoyed being around someone educated he could talk to about books, politics, and history. What he lacked in formal education he made up for in intellectual curiosity, street smarts, and quick wit. 

I went out of town for a few weeks and called him when I returned to Miami. I was dying to see him again, but his phone was out of service. I went to his house.

I found Popeye, who told me, “That chump was drunk off his ass walking around the construction spot over by the courthouse. He fell in a hole with sharp wires and 'bout lost his damn leg. They rushed his ass to the ER, and now he's laying up at his mama's crib in Nueva York, tryna get right again."

Damn, poor Bori.

I felt like I would see him soon, but soon somehow turned into 12 years. 

I never forgot about him, and now, here we were, face to face in front of the Capital Grille. 

El Bori was now 40, and I was 52. Except for a slight limp, El Bori looked the same—he was still hot. My heart beat fast as all the memories came flooding back. I wasn’t going to let him get away this time.

The valet pulled up with my car, hopped out, and handed me my keys.

I grabbed El Bori’s arm and said, “Let’s go for a ride!” 

As we ascended onto the expressway and the Miami skyline as our backdrop, we began catching each other on our lives.

We drove over to South Beach, and El Bori told me all about the accident and almost losing his leg. He never called because he’d lost his phone in the accident.

He had trouble keeping up with the three kids he had when I met him, so I was surprised to find out that he’d gotten yet another woman pregnant and now had two more kids.

Finally, I headed back to the mainland, and when I pulled up to his building, he asked, “You sure you can’t chill a little longer?”

“I have to speak for an hour at a work meeting tomorrow, and I’m only halfway done writing my presentation,” I said, hoping he would get the hint.

Instead, he said, “Here’s what you do, use what you got, just talk really slowwww”. 

I couldn’t stay, but I took a rain check for the weekend. I took him to a motel with a jacuzzi suite. El Bori had yet another surprise: three pearls in his privates. The pearl is a Caribbean phenomenon where a man makes an incision in his member and places a pearl, or three, in it.

He seemed proud to have undergone this virility ritual, describing how he’d used the sharpened end of a toothbrush to make the cut. Once healed, he said the pearls drove the ladies crazy with added sexual pleasure. 

When I later told my friend Carlos about this, he said, “That dude must have been in prison.” 

I waved him off. “What? Nahhhh, no way!" But the next time I saw El Bori, I asked him if he was ever locked up.

He looked startled. After a beat, he said yes. After his accident and the lengthy hospital stay that followed, he couldn’t find work and needed money… and painkillers. He got two years for selling drugs.

Upon hearing this, a part of me wanted to bolt; I couldn’t be involved with someone who’d been in prison.

Didn’t people who went to jail have high rates of recidivism? What would my friends think? What would it say about my character? 

Sensing my uneasiness, he assured me he changed. As a child, he suffered horrific abuse at the hands of a relative. When he was a teenager, he was arrested for armed robbery. When he spoke, I noticed tears in his eyes. 

I stayed quiet and listened, but I also thought about my solid middle-class childhood with loving parents who supported me unconditionally.

El Bori was betrayed, neglected, and abused by the very people who should have protected him. If El Bori and I had swapped childhoods, would we have turned out to be the same men today? 

Most of the people in my circle, myself included, seemed to have their lives figured out, and appeared not to need anyone or anything. But I often felt pretty lonely. That’s why El Bori got my attention. Here was someone who needed a friend, and if I was being real, I needed a friend too.

The fact that he trusted me with his story was an eye-opener and touched a part of me that I didn’t know existed. I was incredibly humbled that he opened up to me that way. It made me realize we all have our struggles and internal battles to face, and at that moment, I felt that our friendship would be more profound than I could have imagined. 

Weeks later, his girlfriend found out about us after she broke into his phone and saw our messages. After that, she left him. El Bori looked shell-shocked as he showed me her angry texts, “Now I know why you don’t want me anymore!” 

He turned to me and asked, “Do you think I’m gay?” 

And there it was. The question we’d never talked about. It was a landmine I always avoided. I hesitated, not wanting to state the obvious because, well, I knew he wouldn’t like it. He didn’t look gay, but we were having gay sex.

I could tell from his expression that my response probably should’ve been, “Nooo, of course not!” but out of nervousness, I let out a chuckle. I finally eked out an “I dunno,” and shrugged. His demeanor changed, and my shrug was like I had just spit in his face. 

He ghosted me for two weeks, and his disappearance hurt. When he reappeared, he asked me if he could borrow $200—the first time he asked me for money.

Popeye had told me he was involved in “bad things” again, so I avoided his calls for a couple of days. He sent me a seven-minute video in response, pleading for my forgiveness as he sat on his bed shirtless, smoking a cigarette.

Two days later,  he called again; this time, it was from prison. I picked up and heard a recording. "This is a collect call from an inmate at a Miami-Dade County correctional institution.”

I learned El Bori had gotten arrested for drug possession. He was not just selling, he was using too.

After our conversation, I deposited $30 into his commissary account and later sent him books to help him pass the time. He’d call every couple of weeks, and I did my best to encourage him.

When I later shared the entire story of El Bori with my friend Eric, he questioned why I even bothered picking up El Bori’s calls in the first place.

I couldn't come up with an easy explanation, but I knew it went back to our childhoods. While mine was far from perfect, it was filled with love and support from my parents, friends, and relatives, who always had my best interests at heart. They showed me what it truly meant to be cared for, and made me believe I could do anything I wanted in life.

It wasn't until my relationship with El Bori that I realized the many advantages my upbringing had bestowed upon me, and not everyone had the same good fortune. I felt compelled to show kindness and love to someone who had lacked that experience.

I became more empathetic towards El Bori, and I realized I needed him too—not romantically, but because he had become important to me.

As I struggled to find the right words to explain all of this to Eric, all I could say was, "Because I love him.”

About the author:

J.J. Martin is a business executive from Miami, Florida. In his spare time he enjoys traveling, reading, and sometimes writing personal stories in both English and Spanish.

ICYMI… Here’s a story I previously posted from another writing buddy.