#8 SCARFACE

Miguel is Mexican. I met him in 2010 when I lived in a dusty industrial city called Torreón. He’s a big man, in size and in character, with a huge Mexican smile and enormous Mexican hands. He’s kind too – when I first arrived in this scary, isolated desert city he drove me from the airport to my new house in his Dodge convertible, with velvet-coloured silk seats and a warm bottle of beer placed beside the steering wheel. «¿Qué onda Miles?», he shouted to me in the back seat. «Welcome to Mejico my little friend!». Then he pressed on the accelerator.

Upon arrival at my new 3 bedroom Mexican bungalow, Miguel gave me the keys and sent me inside. «There’s real nice f*cking present waiting for you in the f*cking fridge» he called from the car, and with a wink he drove away. «What a funny guy» I thought to myself, «but he speaks like a latino drug dealer».

Despite my preoccupations, the present in the fridge wasn’t a severed head, but beer, and lots of it. «Muy bien» I thought to myself. That was the only Spanish I knew.

I later discovered that Miguel was my boss’ boyfriend and a perfect gentleman. I also found out that he had learnt English almost exclusively from watching the film ‘Scarface’ on repeat. Tony Montana wouldn’t be my ideal choice of English teacher, but it worked perfectly on Miguel. The irony is that Miguel isn’t a drug dealer, but he looks like he could be, he lives in a city full of them, he drives a drug dealer’s car AND he speaks like one. Now I think about it, he never told me what his job was….

Yeh… he’s probably a drug dealer 😦