The first short I wrote during my trip to La Descubierta last year was about a beautiful platano vendor I saw on the side of the road. Man, was he GORGEOUS! After we sped by him I pulled out my tiny notebook and began scribbling my thoughts as fast as my hand could transcribe them. Before I knew it, “Three Seconds” was born.
In the few seconds it took us to drive past the gorgeous, dark-skinned, bearded vendor on the side of the road, I imagined what our legs would look like tangled up in sheets in the hours before dawn, before he would have to load the truck with platanos and go sit to wait for customers. If I had asked Tia Milagros to stop the car, I would have gotten out with all my bags and gone to him. I would have sat next to him, thigh-to-thigh, and admired the contrast of skin tones.
I would have sat there and gotten to know him while we watched cars drive to and from La Descubierta. He would tell me where he grew up, that his mother died when he was little but his father still lived in the house next door to his own. I would tell him that my parents were divorced, living on opposite sides of Brooklyn, and both no longer speaking to me. That I had an older sister who was a lawyer, and an older brother who owned two restaurants in Manhattan and a slew of nieces and nephews I’d never bothered to get to know. That I was the only one who “hadn’t done anything” with her life. I wouldn’t tell him about my son.
And as you know, there’s no way I can sit and write and edit without some killer tunes to set the mood. For this particular story, I chose an all-Latin-music playlist, because I believe the narrator would abandon her entire American self–including the music and culture–to assimilate into this man’s world. Yes, you guys, he was that FINE!
I mean, you just don’t know how beautiful he was…
What do you think- does the music match the snippet? And more importantly, have any of you started your own playlist-making rituals?
xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse