A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean - book review

by Richard Frisbie

At first I thought the unlikely title of this hilarious non-guide book went too far, Rotten Person indeed! Then, after just a few chapters I realized it didn’t go far enough. “A VERY Rotten Person and his Wife (she would say better half) Travels the Caribbean” would be a much more suitable title.

Author Gary Buslik does for the Caribbean what he does for marriage, turns it into a funny but cruel joke so razor-wit sharp it draws blood. You’re never quite sure if the wounds are murderous or self-inflicted, or just whose side you are on as the blows fall. This book is wicked.

The altar-egos the author created are the stereotypical Ugly American and his shop-olic wife, Annie, playing off each other in a passive/aggressive duet, breaking every taboo in a good cop/bad cop evisceration of convention. He’s an expensive-cigar-smoking Republican money man and she’s a bleeding heart liberal (he says communist.) I hated them, I liked them, I laughed out loud at their antics, cringing as I did so. I never want to travel with these people, but I want to hear the stories from someone who did. And I hate myself for saying that.

The author gives us a fly-on-the-wall look at this perfectly mismatched pair yin/yanging their way through the steamy airports, bars and hotel rooms of the Caribbean. They are at times arguing, making-up and separating again. Always slightly out-of-tune with their surroundings, they blithely trample everything and everyone in their paths. Hedonistic, self-centered, boorish and no longer the beautiful people they once imagined themselves to be - and these are their GOOD qualities - Gary and Annie bully, banter and connect in a compulsively readable way.

I have to admit that there were times I threw this book down in disgust, they are just such an awful couple. But each time I retrieved it, picking at it like a scab, reading with guilty pleasure the further exploits and exasperations of such unlikely ambassadors of American culture, or, in their case, lack of culture.

Here’s an example of the cruel wit as the author is nervous about smuggling Cuban cigars wrapped in dirty underwear through customs:

“This customs agent had just come off his lunch break during which he had had a lobotomy, so even by U.S. government standards he was still not exactly normal. Not to sound elitist, but since the student revolution of the sixties and the dumbing down of America, it was entirely possible that this civil servant with a forehead shaped like a gravy bowl might have been hired on the basis of affirmative action and so might actually enjoy swishing his hands around my rotting fruits of the loom.”

Here’s the second-honeymoon couple in a vitriolic pool-side tête-à-tête:
Annie: “We’re going dancing? You’re a horrible dancer. I wouldn’t even call it dancing. It’s like some weird quadriplegic thing. You hate music. Do you have any idea how sick it is to hate music?”

Gary: Not as sick as putting ketchup on hot dogs, I thought. But I kept my mouth shut “True enough,” I offered instead. “O.K. Celebrity watching instead.”
Annie: “You hate celebrities.” She got up and collected her towels. “I’m going to the gift shop to max out our credit card.”

Gary: So it was a pretty good bet it was going to be a long, lonely night.

His observation on marriage made me laugh out loud:

“In any argument in which your spouse has to choose between your welfare and the welfare of a house plant, it’s always better to be the plant.”

Throughout the book the reader is reminded that Gary is a freelance travel writer. In fact, many of the chapters appeared in a slightly altered form in travel magazines and literary journals. His observations on the plight of a downtrodden scribe and the wily ways of their editors are spot on scathingly funny. I enjoyed his insights into a profession I’ve come to know.

Here, he’s on a horseracing assignment in Barbados when his “cunningly parsimonious” editor suggested an additional assignment - on cockfighting:

“The article would pay more than twice his usual miserly fee, but I’d have to research it on the same trip as the horseracing piece. So, could I - you know - just pop over to Grenada for a little look-see? To the average sun-lusting planter’s punch jockey, this might have seemed like a great gig, except that it was September 1983 and Grenada was in the midst of a vicious political power struggle that had all the earmarks of impending bloodshed. I may have been a hungry writer but I was not stupid. On the other hand, my editor did suggest that if I didn’t write the bird article, my horse article would wind up in a glue factory in New Delhi, along with my check. Which is why I soon found myself checking into a guest house in Grenada’s picturesque capital.”

Non writers can enjoy this way of life vicariously, envious of the perks but aware of the price a journalist pays to travel freely through the exotic locales of the world. You’ll be glad it is vicariously if the writer is Gary Buslik on his way into a war zone, or anywhere with his wife, carrying his perpetually dirty underwear packed with cigars, trampling through the now despoiled Caribbean.

A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean
By Gary Buslik
Each Chapter recounts another island-hopping, culture-clashing crisis that pits the homesick author against falling coconuts, singing Rastas, topless beaches, cricket, steel drum bands, and even the French. Screamingly funny and often poignant, Gary Buslik plies the Caribbean with shark eye and barracuda wit. $14.95
ISBN 978-193236158-2
Traveler’s Tales Books www.travelerstales.com

supplied by publisher