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Nothing makes sense, except chance: it was 1986 and I was perpetrating a television program in Santo Domingo, of all places. It was a program on international politics, a subject I knew nothing about and the guest panelists knew less than nothing. It could be said then that it was a program about nothingness itself or, seen in another way, an autobiographical one.
As soon as I stepped into the Las Américas airport, I handed in my passport to the immigration agent, only to discover to my dismay that I lacked an up-to-date visa to enter that island where I made a living telling lies on television.
I was sternly informed by a profusely sweating agent that, according to Dominican law, I had to be arrested and deported in the shortest possible time to the place where my buccaneer journey originated, Miami, the capital of Latin America.
I did not resist when two agents with visible signs of intoxication led me to a tiny room, devoid of any comfort, where I had to survive badly until the moment I was deported to Miami for not having an up-to-date visa to enter the country.
Hours later, I begged the embarrassed agents to allow me to spend that night in a hotel, accompanied by the necessary police equipment to prevent my escape, and I offered to pay all the expenses, mine and those of my guards, which would allow us to spend a night of strict obedience to the law, but also, and at the same time, of well-deserved relaxation.
Surprised, I received the news that my request had been approved by the senior police officers at the Dominican airport, who ordered my immediate transfer to a hotel on the boardwalk, in the company of a single agent, ordering us to return first thing in the morning to proceed with my deportation.
It was in such random circumstances that I met the Dominican police officer Hipólito Peynado de los Santos, an attentive servant of the law, rather plump, already in his forties, married and father of three children, carrying a firearm, stuttering, apparently fatigued, apparently lacking in sparkling intelligence and charged with spending a night with me in a hotel on the boardwalk.
If some unlikely viewer had recognized me at the reception of the four-star hotel, accompanied by Hipólito Peynado, registering us in a shared room but with separate beds, and looking at us with growing sympathy, perhaps he would have thought that we were about to spend a luxurious night, not exempt from of physical violence, shots to the sky from his pistol and tight meringues on the balcony.
Once settled in the room, and after Hipólito chose a bed and resigned himself to being treated as you, we ordered a gargantuan dinner that we realized by watching a ball or baseball game on television that I did not understand and sipping beer frozen in a climate of civic-police fraternity that allowed me to forget for a moment my opprobrious condition as a criminal, a status that I remembered unexpectedly when I went to the bathroom and Hipólito came hurriedly behind me with a gun, that being the only time in my life that I I pissed under police surveillance.
After dinner, and in view of the euphoria of Officer Peynado, whose baseball team was victorious, I allowed myself to suggest, with all due respect, a short visit to the cabaret on the boardwalk, famous for the bare-chested dances of some fiery mulatto women , to thus mitigate the rigors of my capture, a suggestion that he enthusiastically welcomed, shouting “let’s see boobs, boy, life doesn’t last a hundred years”.
After walking a few blocks in which Hipólito Peynado took the opportunity to confide in me about his domestic life (for example, that he did not have enough money to pay for a hemorrhoid operation on his wife Usnavy Bendita, whose exotic name came from the ships of the North American Navy that Usnavy’s parents knew how to admire, sailing the waters of Puerto Plata in the years of the dictator Trujillo, alias El Chivo), we accommodated ourselves in the chosen cabaret, ordered cold beer, admired the beauty of the ebony dancers and abandoned ourselves to a loud and lurid conversation about the alleged lovemaking habits of Dominican women.
As soon as the girls finished their dance routine, Hipólito Peynado clapped his hands virulently, in a state of overexcitement that seemed at odds with his police uniform, since even then we were slightly drunk and inflamed by those swaying mulatto women, two of whom soon approach and offer us pampering and caresses in exchange for us paying an obscene price for a couple of bottles of champagne, which of course I bought without saying a word, because that was the order of my wiggling superior and drunken captor, Agent Peynado de los Santos.
When the ladies-in-waiting modestly suggested that we visit the sections of that nightclub to allow us a more intimate conversation, perhaps punctuated by outbreaks of tenderness or effusions of erotic desire, Hipólito had no qualms about leaving, squeezing his dark-haired companion and abandoning me. luck, in clear disobedience of his obligations, because I was then able to flee in a hurry along the boardwalk, but naturally I preferred to go to another sinful hiding place in the company of the beautiful Panam, the dancer who was lucky for me because Hipólito chose the other, Braniff , more dramatic in curves and makeup.
As soon as I was done with my time with Panam, I realized that it was almost time for dawn. So I went through the curtains of the neighboring cubbyhole and suggested to Hipólito that we leave that hospitable whorehouse and return to the hotel, but my suggestion fell on deaf ears because Agent Peynado, clearly drunk, and with a brunette curled up next to him, She imperatively asked me to pay for one more hour with her friend, apparently very lavish in caresses and cuddles, an order that I did not hesitate to comply with, going to the till and paying another thousand pesos so as not to disobey such an esteemed representative of the law .
The sun was breaking on the horizon when I returned to the furtive corner where my captor was enjoying himself with that brave mulatto woman, only to find him lying on some cushions, with his shirt open, his pants unbuttoned, reeking of drink, without a gun or a lady-in-waiting, snoring like a cossack. I did not hesitate then to wake him up abruptly to the gallant cries of:
-Hipolito, stand up, you have to deport me!
The drunken officer opened one eye, looked at me in a gallows manner and sentenced, annoyed:
-Don’t fuck around, boy, let me sleep!
I was not intimidated by his encouragement and insisted, at the risk of provoking a fight:
-But you have to deport me, Hipólito. It is what the law requires!
It was in vain, because friend Peynado had already returned to snoring heavily, ignoring my exhortations to do his duty. I had no choice but to shake him vehemently, taking him out for an instant from the spiritual astonishment in which he found himself, and ask him, in the most respectful tone:
“What should I do while you sleep, Hipolito?”
To my surprise, the admirable policeman did not hesitate to clear my curiosity with an emphatic and aguardentos voice:
-Go to hell.
I understood then that I had regained my freedom.
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