(no subject)

[kradeelav]

"Such bouts of havoc were typically punctuated by screams of ‘bayú!’ (brothel2, in Cuban slang), as some sort of deranged war cry. The whole howling mob resembled a preppy version of a Huron war party getting themselves jazzed up for battle, or perhaps Confederates charging at Gettysburg with the rebel yell.

Why we acted, always and everywhere, with such lunatic fervor, I’m not sure3. But at some point in the outing, as a last-ditch appeal to civilization, whatever poor soul had been dispatched to chaperone the war party would stand up inside the school bus and exclaim:

THE BUS SAYS BELÉN!

The idea being that we were presenting a horrible picture of the school to the outside world as we rolled down the street in a bus spewing profanities and school detritus from the windows, and visibly labeled with the school’s name.

“Bayuuuuú!”, replied the Cuban Catholic schoolboy chorus4.

Fast forward ten years and I’m a junior quant on the Goldman Sachs trading desk working into the wee hours on yet another busted derivatives model. Adam T. Hayes, the Midwestern straight arrow with a PhD from Caltech who sat next to me, suddenly turned and asked:

“You were raised in that whole Cuban thing in Miami, right?”

“Uh…yeah?”

“Well, I was at the Knicks game last night…”

As part of the standard trading-floor patronage, the managing director on our desk doled out Knicks tickets from his season-ticket box, and Hayes had gone with his wife.

“There was a group of school kids from Miami next to our box. They caused such a loud disturbance, the announcer called them out and threatened them with security if they didn’t quiet down. From their jackets, they went to some school called ‘BAY-lehn’. You know about them?”

Madison Square Garden in New York at a Knicks game….and the ‘bayú!’ reigned supreme.

“Well, yeah…actually, that’s the school I went to.”

The bus still said Belén, and I was still on it."

- The Bus Says Belen