The Differences Between Things

In Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands, I spent a week or so in the basement of a hotel, living with the gardener. Late at night, mosquitoes buzzing in the tiny, smoke-filled room, he sometimes had an intense need to communicate. He slept on the bunk above me and scratched on the bed frame to get my attention. I pretended not to notice and he said my name with a loud, hoarse whisper. He leaned his head out over the bed above me, dangerously teetering--his silhouetted face looming, dreadlocks hanging off his beard, and glassy eyes fierce with earnestness. Then he launched into his ruminations. “D’ya check? Excuse me. D’ya check? I don’t know but this world need a messenger, and God, he give me words.” I assured him I was listening to his words and he disappeared back over the bed and keep talking until he fell asleep.

When Ben came to the island, he spent a couple nights with us in the basement. The gardener welcomed him with an especially involved invocation, taking it upon himself to point out the differences between things, or maybe pointing out the fact that there were differences.

"An orange is not like a melon; a melon is not like an apple; an apple is not like a pear. A monkey is not like an iguana; a dog is not like a cat; a fish is not like a butterfly; a Korean is not like an Ethiopian; a black man is not like a white man; a melon is not like a cabbage; a Chinese is not like a carrot."

He just kept talking and talking about how everything is different from everything else. It was a long, narrow room with an American flag in the corner and a musical doll on the table that you could wind up and listen to it play “I Never Promised you a Rose Garden.” The room was so narrow we couldn’t sit facing either other. The three of us positioned ourselves in a row, the gardener closest to the door upon a chair. I sat with my guitar in my arms absentmindedly strumming. Ben sat behind me lying on his back upon the floor smoking his corncob pipe, fingering his harmonica.

The gardener told us that everything is different from everything else, reemphasizing his point repeatedly as if he suspected that we were sorely tempted to suppose the opposite. He kept promising that he would finish off his speech by listing off for us the nine planets. But first he wished to tell us of his secret joy.

I don’t remember if he ever got around to telling us about his secret joy. But I do remember him suddenly declaring that he would recite a poem to us that he had written about how good friends are hard to find and that they are not like cheap wine. But then he kept forgetting the words and standing up and walking over to the door and closing it to eliminate distractions if it was open, or opening it to cool off the room, if it was closed. Intermittently, he stood in front of us again, palms up, pausing to collect himself.

Then next day, Ben left to find his own place to stay. One night he slept in an abandoned bus. Another he spent roaming the island from coast to coast, happening upon all manners of dogs and strangers. Eventually we got jobs and rented a studio apartment on Back Street above Food fo’ Days.