Nothin’ Like Island Time with Big Poppa

Our trip to St. Thomas is full of tragically comical stories from poor accommodations to poor hosting, but the story that will live in infamy is The Night that We Met Big Poppa.

Our hotel had a bar that seemed to hold a special place in the hearts of its local regulars. One evening after dinner, we — my husband, a colleague of my husband’s, and I — decided to check out the bar and see if we could determine why a few of the hotel guests had been sitting there for the better part of 48 hours drunk as vacationing skunks.

We had barely gotten drinks and found a table when Big Poppa entered our lives.  At nearly three hundred pounds, fifty years old, a shirt refusing to cover his belly button and a very long ponytail, Big Poppa was hard to miss. Add to that that he was a very friendly and very loud drunk, it was impossible to share the bar with him and not also share his company.

In due course, he made his way over to our table for introductions. My husband’s colleague shook his hand, as did I, and then it was Tony’s turn. Here the story should have ended, polite hellos quickly followed by polite goodbyes. That, however, would not be because Big Poppa and my husband shared a first name. In the eyes of Big Poppa, instant chemistry.

And so began the most bizarre 30 minutes of our trip.

Big Poppa, refusing to let go of Tony’s hand, gave us a rundown of his life story. He was native to St. John, had started his own company from scratch, made a six figure salary, lived in a house at the top of the mountain, and owned a limo. And he was certain that, because of my husband’s name, Tony would also meet with lifelong success. This he repeated in several different drunken variations while we sat as a captive audience.

Eventually he made mention of kids. Mistakingly, we admitted to having one which led Big Poppa to pull out a plastic bag containing 50 pictures that he directed Tony to flip through.

At least he finally let go of Tony’s hand.

For the next few minutes Big Poppa kept talking about anything and everything that popped into his head. He told me that I looked like a native island girl and schooled me that I should be using that to my advantage. He quizzed Tony’s colleague on what it meant to be Mulatto. And in between his facts and quizzes, he managed to talk us through the pictures.

Only most of the people pictured were dead.

Exactly what are you supposed to say when you’re flipping through a stranger’s picture collection and their dialogue sounds like this: that’s my brother at Christmas; he’s dead now though. And that’s my nephew who died. Oh, that’s my daughter (not dead, but unfortunately a lawyer which led to a tangent about my future success in law because, you know, his daughter was a lawyer). And that’s my cousin who has died. I’m pretty certain none of us had a socially acceptable response, but that’s okay because he was too talkative to notice and too drunk to remember.

At long last he got around to handing his namesake a business card with the instruction to give him a call anytime during our stay. He would send his limo for us and we could hang out at his place where he promised food and fun. Big Poppa was finally ready to say goodnight, but not before he got Tony’s contact information.

Only no one in our party had a pen.

Big Poppa scolded us for being to “new school” to have a writing utensil, but that was okay, he would come to the rescue. Not only would he let Tony use his pen, he would give him the pen. Even though the pen was quite expensive and the best writing pen EVER. He assured us we had never seen such a pen before and would never see such a pen again. He promised that it would become Tony’s favorite. And then he handed us a pen that looked something like this:

We never did give Big Poppa a call. It’s just as well. I doubt he would have sent the questionably existent limo anyway. He probably wouldn’t have felt so friendly toward us once he sobered up and realized we had managed to keep his very rare and expensive pen.

– Mya