Notable & Tardy: Henry's "Nightly Prayer"

"I pray that Fidel Castro should die of a painful heart attack. My prayer morphs into a meditation as if I could cause this event to happen. I concentrate on it. I envision him alone in a plain bed. He’s wearing boxer shorts and a sleeveless camiseta. A ceiling fan spins on the ceiling. I envision his heart and the blood vessels that provide blood to it. I imagine myself clamping those vessels shut with my fingers. Sometimes I just envision crushing his heart with my bare hands." — Henry Louis Gómez, "A Nightly Prayer," Babalú, January 18, 2009

A "painful heart attack?"

Really, there are worse ways to go.

Since nothing is impossible for God, why not ask that Fidel be struck by lightning or that the earth open up and swallow him? Hackneyed, granted, but still quite lyrical and no more than he deserves.

Or perhaps implore God to turn Fidel's anus inward so he can drown in his own excrement? Well, that prayer has been answered anyway, for whomever it was that made it. Still, the successful supplicant did not take into account Castro's almost inexhaustible ability to assimilate shit, so the world still waits for him to reach his limit.

Perhaps Henry is right — a quick heart attack might have been best. As for his fantasy about carrying out God's sentence on Fidel, though the sentiment does Henry credit, his technique is far too complicated for the task at hand. We are talking about an 82-year old man who may weigh at most 140 lbs. A pillow over his face should do the trick, or, if Henry insists on laying hands on him, it shouldn't be too difficult to snap his neck or twist it like a chicken's.

The problem is not killing Castro; it never has been. He is as mortal as any man and surely more people want him dead than not. The problem is getting close enough to Castro to do it. The only man outside Castro's immediate circle to have had that opportunity was Ted Turner when he went quail hunting with Castro 20 years ago. Fidel actually used to load his rifle for him. Too bad that Ted is not the shot that Vice President Cheney is.

I should advise Henry to forget about the small details in his mind's eye (e.g. the boxer shorts and sleeveless camiseta) and the "ceiling fan spinning in the ceiling" (where else?) and concentrate instead on how he's going to get pass Castro's security detail. There's the rub since even his own sons don't have unrestricted access to Fidel. So, definitely, Henry's fantasy needs a prequel which explains how he evaded Castro's praetorian guard to carry out this mission of mercy (for all Cubans, except Fidel). Perhaps there is a clue in Nostradamus Dorshner's Prophecies; he should consider plumbing these some more.

To make Henry's "meditation" more historically accurate, I should let him know that Fidel wears pajamas, the old-fashioned kind with a belt (yes, swimming suits had belts once, too). There's a famous picture of him arrayed in that attire and maybe I can find it for him.

I only regret that Henry did not make the ajusticiamiento of Fidel Castro his first BUCL Campaign.