The Boxing Day Lime

THE LIME

Georgetown celebrated the day after the alleged day of Jesus Christ's birth with a lime. Not lime for your Corona. Lime the verb.

Now "lime the verb" (to lime) is as close to a pan-Caribbean creole word as you can get. While Jamaicans don't use it, Guyanese and Trinidadians do. It means "to chill". Hang out. Drink beers. Listen music. Talk shit. Sunday afternoon shit.

As I was in the Caribbean, I thought I'd interview 10 people on the subject of "lime the verb's" origins. I needed only go as far as my mom.
"Well, limes hang from a tree. So you lime, you hang like a lime from a tree."
"Isn't that kind of arbitrary? Why lime as a metaphor for hanging and not orange, apple, or coconut?"
She doesn't miss a beat. "Because limes never fall off a tree. They hang until you pick them off the tree. Oranges and coconuts...comes a time when they fall off. Or a good breeze knocks them off. Not limes. They just, you know, hang there."

Genius. Then there's "the lime" (noun), an event purposefully created for the collective liming of Guyana's capital city; The Georgetown Boxing Day Lime on Main Street.

SOME MEN GOT LAZY TONGUES

At the top of Main Street, stands the antiquing but stately Bank of Guyana and dancehall artist, Konshens, singing about real friends to a big, girly, unpoppable human bubble from a small set of steel bleachers that appear to be suspended in mid air. The bubble is screaming, it seems, louder than the night before at the "Unforgettable" Christmas night concert he co-headlined with Jah Cure and Ashanti. He's surrounded by a council of bethren in shiny jewelry and fitted baseball caps nodding their heads to the bass.

We stop for beer once we turn onto Main Street proper, lined with little white tents on either side. Competing sound systems down the middle. I'm with Wayne, a family friend with some sort of car business, who's my exact age. He wants to hold my hand and lead me through the crowd. I decline that. I accept a beer. Banks. He gives the vendor who he seems to know, 500 Guyana dollars. That's $2.50 American. He waits for change. A man and woman in matching white aprons fumble around for a bit. Wayne watches with an outstretched hand. "Don' worry rob me, ya know? Whe' meh change?" They tell him they don't have it and to come back later. We wander past Timeka Marshall playing on one sound system. Mavado, a few yards further.

A large field off the main drag feels small because the crowd's so dense. We can't break the perimeter. There's a meters high brick ledge to my left, a dozen or so revelers dancing atop. My eyes keep going to a light skinned girl in a short, white, terrycloth jumper. She's whining till her whole back ah move. A man stands behind her, himself barely moving. I sip my Banks. A vendor passes with his merchandise stuffed in a small cardboard box and hanging from his neck, lit by a mobile. I sneak a peek inside. Cigarettes. gum. Condoms. Spanish Fly? I ask Wayne. "What's Spanish Fly?"
"It's a thing...like..."
He pauses so long, I wonder if perhaps he doesn't know.
"You know, some men tongue lazy."
I don't know what to say to this. Nor even how to interpret it.
"It's a thing," he ventures again, "It's a thing men use to have sex with women."
"Like Viagra." I already know this is wrong.
"No. Like they does put it in women's drink...so then they can have sex with them."

My middle finger plugs the beer bottle neck.

OVERHEARD

Four Chinese men in white uniforms with red trim and Nehru collars navigate the crowd single file, with bicycles. I can't hear what they're saying to clear a path, or if they're saying anything. When I see them come up beside me I move. So does everyone else. They're carrying bags of food.
"Watch everybody moving fa dem. Ya tink black man could move through a crowd a Chiney suh?"

SHOTS

The music has ended and it's quiet save the voices of hundreds rejoining their friends in the aftermath. Deciding where to go next.

The Jamaica Party at Wild Palm?

Something Bollywood at Buddy's?

The Miami Party at some such other club? The one with mirrored aviators and Latin looking girls on the flyer?

Or a nice, dark house party with food?

Wayne stops at the vendor that owes him change. Before he can order, people start running and screaming. Bottles are flying. I'm about to move. Run. Duck. Call a cop. "No. Don't move," Wayne says. I'm stock still but looking for a way out. Just in case Wayne's deer in the headlights approach gets me clocked.

It only took a second for my head to do the 180 from Wayne on the right to the vendor in the red shirt to my left. Straight ahead, a guy with corn rows and a white button down is running towards 5 uniformed officers. He looks behind him, dives to the ground covered in broken glass to dodge a flying bottle. The officers back up behind the gates of the youth ministry as.

Pap! Pap!

Directly to my left is a vendor with dark, cratered skin, a red T shirt and a gun in his hand. They do smoke after fire. He slowly pulls it down to his side. Waits. The running, falling and bottle throwing cease as quickly as they'd begun. He looks at me. I nod and he nods back. Wayne steps forward to get his beer. Doesn't pay for it.