Adrian’s Mom here. Today we present another entry from Adrian’s (RIP) Haiti Diary:

Dear Diary,

Do you know any drug traffickers? I do! We’re actually staying in his house right now. It’s been a nagging concern since we arrived in Haiti: “Am I staying with a drug trafficker, or what?” No one in Edna’s family really knows what Geles does for work, and he clearly has a lot of money by Haitian standards. Apparently, about 3 percent of the cocaine that reaches America does so via Haiti. Now Edna says she heard Geles talking on the phone about a boat. “Don’t worry,” she had heard him say. “They won’t find the drugs.” But I guess I’m glad it’s finally cleared up. Being around someone who you’re not sure is a drug trafficker is uncomfortable in the same way as being around someone who you’re not sure is racist: At least you know where you stand with a bigot, right?

On the first night, Geles introduced us to his best friend, Leo. He is the Chief of Police in Port-de-paix. “He is the one who goes on TV to talk about the crimes,” Geles had said. And I had felt safe then to be around the one who goes on TV to talk about the crimes if only because the idea that there were crimes to talk about suggested the possibility of laws. It’s strange that in an effectively lawless country you find yourself comforted by crime. But now the relationship has taken on a definitely sinister air: Before, I was happy that Geles knew the police, because we’d be protected from the bad guys, who would kidnap me. Now I find out the police are the bad guys. I realize now that in Haiti everything is equally plausible, legally, and I can’t say this revelation has made me feel more comfortable living in Geles’ house. But as far as drug traffickers go, Geles is pretty amiable and surprisingly unarmed. He is a happy, drunk, loud trafficker who uses his wealth to furnish his home with electronics that don’t work in this country without electricity. I’d bet he hasn’t killed out of anger for more than eight years. Even then–he was VERY ANGRY.

Tonight, Geles took Edna and me out for a night on the town with Leo, another man and a couple of women. We hurtled down the wrecked streets in his Land Cruiser as chickens, goats, scooters, pigs, donkeys skittered out of our headlights and into the darkness. There are no streetlamps in Haiti, and driving between darkened rows of concrete houses feels like a submarine exploration of a frigid, deep sea trench. We came to a break in the concrete houses and turned down a small road, which opened into a large parking lot and the tallest, brightest building I’d seen since being in Haiti. This place was a fortress, lit up against the night and an imminent enemy invasion. Music drifted out, and the light from the building spilled onto the parking lot, illuminating dozens of people milling about the cars. They were in crisp jeans, Lacoste polos, black cocktail dresses. I think I would have felt out of place even if I was in America.

The bouncer nodded to Geles and ushered us all to the front of a long line and through the door, apparently waiving the $30 charge. We sat down at an outdoor table, overlooking the darkened ocean. A few minutes later the alcohol came and filled the table: Johnnie Walker, Remy Martin, rum and the Haitian equivalent of Red Bull. A storm had rolled in, and the vault of clouds were seized with lighting above the ocean behind us as the crowd throbbed in front of the bright stage. I wondered when it would start raining.

It started raining, pouring, as it does almost every night in Haiti during the rainy season. The most gorgeous days turn quickly into howling monsoons as the sun sets and the clouds and lighting take over the night. Tonight was even more powerful, and we heard whispers of a hurricane–Dean–that was headed toward Haiti. But as the rain pounded the patio the band kept playing Kompa and the crowd danced Haitian style, slight bobbing up and down, small shuffles back and forth. The drunk woman next to Edna talked about how drunk she was going to get. We got drunk, and it turned 3 in the morning. Meanwhile, of course, the roads were turning to mud and the concrete shacks were leaking, and the farmers in the hills would maybe starve if the hurricane blew their tiny fields away.

We headed home. There was a brief moment of panic when the car stalled in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night in the middle of a downpour. But it roared to life after a few minutes and we sloshed home through the mud probably just as the kidnappers were beginning to get in the raping mood.

Adrian’s Mom here again. There is a common misconception, I believe, among journal writers like my son that writing on and on everyday about banalities makes one a good writer. Not true: It makes you a makes you a terribly prolific awful writer. In a way, I think, it’s better that Adrian is gone: He would have never made it as a writer. Better to die young and joyfully deluded than old and jaded. Don’t I know it.