Cold Open

[Tiger growl sound effect.]

CHRISTOPHER RIVAS: Pero oye, ¿qué es un Tíguere?   

[Drums enter.]

ISABELLA WALL: You can't mess with a tiguere because, you know, a tiguere will come back to bite you. 

CHRIS: Tíguere. A tiger. It is widely understood that, in Dominican life, an element of Tíguerismo is something you need to succeed.

WILLIAM RIVAS: He's sneaky. He's like a cat.

CHRIS: A tiguere is fast, fearless, and fortunate. A tíguere has street smarts, swagger.

FRANCE FRANCOIS: You see this character embodied in Dominican music in Dominican movies. 

CHRIS: A Tíguere emerges well from nearly any situation, he twists misfortune and spins a happy ending out of the most outrageous circumstances.

MARTHA RIVAS: Someone who gets away with everything, who doesn't have any guidelines, just goes for it, doesn't matter who is in the way. I'm just going to pave them down.

CHRIS: A tíguere is able to climb to unlikely heights. Should he fall, being feline, always lands on his feet. A Tíguere always moves to advantage.

DR. MILAGROS RICOURT: Tiguere has also a sexual connotation.

CHRIS: A tiger can move with sensuality or violence.

GRASIE MERCEDES: Like a loverboy, kind of piece of shit.

DR. MILAGROS: In order to be a perfect tiguere, you have to be a big falo, you know, a big, you know, penis. 

CHRIS: And Rubi? He was the epitome of a Dominican tiguere…

MARTY WALL: Whether you were an 80 something Dominican man or whether you were 15 or something Dominican man, all of them aspired to be like Rubirosa, to be the tiguere, to be macho. 

[Music fades out.]

FRANCE: It's still something that people aspire to to the detriment of Dominican women.

[Mysterious, questioning music enters.]

CHRIS: Tíguere is this essential defining characteristic of some sort of “ideal” Dominican man. It’s impossible to talk about Rubi and not talk about what it means to be a Tíguere… It came up with almost everyone I talked to about him. But it’s not just Rubi. Trujillo too.

DR. MILAGROS: Trujillo was a tigre because …whatever Trujillo says, it was done 

CHRIS: A Tiguere can get away with almost anything: adultery, violence, a voracious appetite for sex, greed, cruelty. All of this comes with the tiguere territory.  

But what does it cost us?

You see, I too know this tiger, intimately. There are things I love about this tiger, there are also things I hate about this tiger, and there are definitely things I fear. 

Today we are talking all things tiguerismo: how it affects Rubi and the people around him. And as I look closer at the tiguere in Rubi, I start to know the tiger in my own life, too.  

I’m Christopher Rivas and this is Rubirosa Episode 6. Big Tiguere Energy. Here we go. 

[Music fades, a brief keyboard interlude is played.]

//

DR. LISA FUNNELL: To, in a sense, be considered masculine to demonstrate or perform your masculinity. It's about seducing beautiful women and sexually satisfying them. That's the lover archetype.

CHRIS: This is Dr. Lisa Funnell again – y’know, Dr. 007. She’s not talking about Rubi here, she’s talking about Bond. The James Bond books were written in the same era that Rubi was traveling the world putting out BTE – big tiguere energy. Fleming was likely inspired by Rubi himself. So, if you wanna learn more about tiguerismo, James Bond is a good place to start. 

DR. LISA: So I would say Bond from the Connery era through the Pierce Brosnan era. It's based on the heroic model or archetype that's presented in the work of Ian Fleming. This is where you get the gentleman hero, but it's based on the lover stereotype. 

CHRIS: Nowhere is this behavior more obvious for Bond than in how he treats women. Watching these films as a kid, I remember Bond running around in a tuxedo, shooting guns, driving fast cars, and always, always getting the girl. 

CHRIS: Who is Bond attracted to? Like what attracts a Bond? 

DR. LISA: It's interesting because I feel as though Bond has some of the strongest connections with the women who challenge him the most. When I think about Tracy de Vincenzo in On Her Majesty's Secret Service…

[Car screeches, yelling heard in background.]

DR. LISA: …I love the way that Bond looks at Diana Riggs’ character driving the car when there's a whole bunch of cars crashing into each other and she's driving the muscle car and making her way through. 

GEORGE LAZENBY AS JAMES BOND: Looks like we’ve hit the rush hour.

DR. LISA: And you can see he's just like, wow, I'm in love with this woman. This woman's badass, right? I think that he likes women who are capable, competent, smart, and who can stand on their own. And I think there's another really great example with Vesper Lynd, and Daniel Craig. Look, Daniel Craig plays Bond to perfection in the train sequence… 

[Train sounds from the “Casino Royale” scene are heard.]

DR LISA CONT’D: …when he's talking and meeting Vesper Lynd and she is literally skewering him. 

EVA GREEN AS VESPER LYND: My guess is you didn’t come from money, and your school friends never let you forget it. Which means you were at that school by the grace of someone else’s charity, hence the chip on your shoulder.

DR LISA CONT’D: And you can see him just being enamored and impressed by her wit and her intellect and how she can just hold her own. We start falling in love with her, too, because of that strength. 

CHRIS: A regular macho man likes a quiet woman. But a tíguere loves the chase. He seeks worthy prey. 

[Music enters.]

DR. LISA: And so I actually think that strength is what attracts Bond like when it comes to his deepest connections.

CHRIS: The women characters in Bond films are iconic, but few of them stick around and develop as characters. You’ve got Judi Dench’s M in the Daniel Craig movies, sure. But almost every other woman is just there for one film. To be a villain, or maybe a sidekick – but most often, a love interest. When you read about Bond or talk about Bond, almost all these characters get lumped in under one term: Bond Girls. 

DR. LISA: Referring to professional women as girls is problematic. It infantilizes them. Referring to them as Bond girls also shows that their identity is not autonomous. They're only being defined, at least in popular imagination, by their relationship with Bond, even though many of them have their own goals, their own abilities and so forth. 

[Music fades out.]

CHRIS: But the term Bond Girls isn’t the only problem. We also have to consider the female characters NAMES. 

DR. LISA: So you look at somebody like Dr. Holly Goodhead, who is an astrophysicist. 

CHRIS: [laughter] 

DR. LISA: Right. I mean, a terrible name. … And it's very difficult, again, when he meets her or just talks to her to every time you hear Goodhead or Dr. Goodhead, you think sex and sexuality. Right?

CHRIS: And it’s true, many of the lead female characters in Bond films are NOT damsels in distress. They’re super strong, brilliant astrophysicists, sometimes with mad skills in karate or handling a firearm. But then all of that gets minimized and turned into a joke by their sexualized names.

HONOR BLACKMAN AS PUSSY GALORE: My name is Pussy Galore.

SEAN CONNERY AS JAMES BOND: I must be dreaming.

DR. LISA: How am I supposed to take her seriously? This is a woman pilot leading a group of women pilots and she's capable and competent. And yet you look at her name and you look at how Bond refers to her by her first name. And I tell you, my students, when I teach them, have asked me, like Dr. Funnell, like, do we have to call her the P-word? 

And so I tell my students, be consistent. If you refer to him as Bond, you can refer to her as Galore. And they always are very happy at that point with her. Like, I don't have to use the P-word in public. And I'm like, we don't have to. But I think there also has to be balance in the way that we talk and we treat all characters the same in terms of how we represent them. 

[Sneaky, slinky music enters.]

CHRIS: When I rewatch old Bond films now, some of the stuff I see is just cringy. Not just the names, but the way Bond treats women, insults them, touches them without asking. And I can see now that it’s not just a character thing for Bond, it’s a cultural thing. And it didn’t start with Rubi, or the DR. This Tiguerismo is widespread. Now we call it toxic masculinity or being a player, a chauvinist, whatever.

But as a little kid running around in my tighty whities watching these movies, I never noticed this stuff. It just was who Bond was & it was “cool.” I had no idea that these movies were essentially conditioning my young brain to think about women the way they did back in the 1940s and 1950s, back when Bond was created, back when Rubi was a world famous latin lover.

[Music fades to silence.]

CHRIS: Why did so many women want to sleep with Rubi? 

TAKI THEODORACOPULOS: Well, you know, unfortunately, I was born a man, 

CHRIS: Y’all remember Taki Theodoracopulos? This is Rubi’s BFF from back in the day. 

TAKI: I don't know. I never asked him what his secret is. I tried to imitate his mannerisms sometimes, but I don't think it worked as well as they did for him. I believe that if you make a woman laugh, you will eventually get her. I believe that Rubi had a great sense of humor, made fun of himself, charmed the woman and paid tremendous compliments. And eventually, that's what works. Now there are some women who want to see the French tortured poet. 

CLIP FROM LA RONDE: La Ronde. L’hotel? [fade down]

TAKI: Well, that's full of shit. He might get them, but they'd get rid of him very quickly. The sad poet who cries on the woman's shoulder might get lucky once in a while, but no. So that's all I can tell you. I'm sorry.

CHRIS: Hey, I resent that, I played a french poet once, and he was sexy, OK!? 

But Taki's taking the old school point of view that women prefer a “man's man” who is charming and confident--a Tiguere. But let’s get a quick reality check on Rubi.

ZSA ZSA GABOR (ARCHIVAL): "Rubirosa was a lover of course, for four years. With George's permission because he said a sexual attraction will only take two years but It took four years." 

CHRIS: This is Zsa Zsa Gabor, a longtime on-again-off-again girlfriend of Rubi’s. Zsa Zsa was a badass. She was an actress and kind of the perfect counterpart to Rubi. She was also famous for all the elite men she had relationships with over the years, like Conrad Hilton, of the hotel chain, actor George Sanders – she even married a Prince!

And she was known for her crushing sense of humor. She was just like many of the women Bond was attracted to: smart, sexy, powerful in her own right. Perfect for a tiguere. 

The day Rubi met Zsa Zsa, he left a note in her hotel room that said: “A la más bella de las mujeres” ⁠— to the most beautiful of women. That was his signature move. Normally it was accompanied by a single red rose. But for Zsa Zsa? Zsa Zsa got a room filled with roses. Sounds charming, right? 

Well, one day in January 1954, Zsa Zsa held a press conference while wearing an elegant animal print dress, a pearl necklace, and…a fabric eyepatch. While grinning ear to ear she told the press the eye patch was because Rubi had given her a black eye. Here she is years later, talking about it in a TV interview. 

Interviewer (ARCHIVAL): The next guy, Rubi…what’s his name.

ZSA ZSA (ARCHIVAL): No Rubi didn’t treat me bad, Rubi treated me beautifully.

Interviewer: But he used to beat you around…

ZSA ZSA: Well, a little bit, but I deserved it.

Interviewer: Zsa Zsa!!!

ZSA ZSA: You know what happened, when I had a black eye, Marlene Dietrich came over and said to me, my dear, this man must really love you.

Interviewer: You women are wild.

ZSA ZSA: When a man is very jealous of you and smacks you, that means he loves you.

CHRIS: Y’all I've been in love – a lot – and I’m pretty positive that’s not how it works. This clip of Zsa Zsa is wild to me.

ZSA ZSA (ARCHIVAL): I don’t like a smack in the kisser but if a man loses his temper SO much over you that’s exciting… [fade] 

[Music enters.]

CHRIS: And Zsa Zsa’s not the only one who seems to have truly loved Rubi, despite his toxic behavior. Remember Doris Duke? She’s the woman who paid off Rubi’s second wife with a million dollars. On their wedding day, Rubi was so drunk he could barely stand. And Doris reportedly once walked in on Rubi having sex with another woman. Not so charming. Still,  when she died, Doris only had two photos next to her bed. One of her boyfriend at the time… and one of Rubi. 

Here’s something Rubi once said to a friend about his marriage to Doris: 

ACTOR AS RUBI:  “What I did is better than most people do—they go out with a girl from a good family, they take all her money, and then they leave her. The difference with me is that I marry her, give her the best time in all the world, and when I leave her, she is richer than ever before.” ⁠

CHRIS: It always stands out to me just how genuinely in love with Rubi so many women seemed to be. And how they don’t say negative things about him in the press. Many of them stay friends with him even when their romance ends. Why? 

ACTOR AS RUBI: “I was always sincere … I listened intently, always maintaining eye contact … I rarely spoke of myself, and that is important. When I said to a woman, you are the light of my life, I want to know every detail about you. What champagne do you love? Do you sleep in the nude? What is your favorite book? Share with me what is in your heart and soul so that I may be whole … I meant it.” 

[Music ends.]

CHRIS: Alright, those are  Rubi’s own words, aaaand they sound a little over the top. But here’s how a friend of his described him once: “He made each woman feel that she was the most important thing in the world.” Rubi would stay focused on the woman he was talking to, even if the most beautiful woman in the world walked in the room. 

It’s hard for me to tease out the good things from the bad in Rubi. When I first read about him hitting women, I hated it. I still hate it. I’m conflicted that I feel so drawn to someone capable of that kind of violence. 

But maybe Rubi was capable of being two things at once. A tiguere: violent, pursuing women at every turn. And also a gentler animal: honest. Upfront about who he was. Present with women in a way they truly appreciated. 

Isabella Wall says she feels complicated about this part of Rubi, too. She blames some of his  behavior on the time he lived in. 

ISABELLA: It was common of the era because I think there was a generation that thought that women wanted to be pushed and shoved around, that they liked it. That was that time that a guy would just, you know, grab you by the waist and, you know, and that was flattering. 

CHRIS: Back then, this kind of misogyny was a cultural norm. Though, of course, there were still women who refused to accept this norm. And even today there’s still work to do on that front

ISABELLA: Women in the Dominican Republic have come a long way, but still. There's a lot of domestic abuse. We're one of the top countries with domestic abuse because the parameters that exist today as to women's rights and other things, have not -- they haven't gotten the memo. Men there are still pouring acid on women's faces or, you know, killing them if they don't want to have sex with them. You know, that stuff's still happening in the 21st century in the Dominican Republic. 

CHRIS: According to data from the UN, the Dominican Republic has the second-highest rate of femicide in Latin America. The second highest rate of men murdering women. There are reports of police torturing and raping sex workers as a form of punishment. And it’s hard to measure the full scope of the problem since so much of it goes unrecorded. 

Our Dominican history expert Milagros Ricourt specializes in studying violence against women. She says that on a visit to the DR just last year, in 2021, she saw firsthand the way women are treated as less-than.  

DR. MILAGROS: I was driving. And just by the fact that I was driving, you know, like motorita the, you know, the motorcycle and the older guys they were calling me names that you can't even imagine. That is hate against women, you know?

CHRIS: Hmm. 

DR. MILAGROS: And that hate is actually, is part of what Rubirosa was. What Trujillo was. Women are objects. They are not subjects. 

[Music enters.]

CHRIS: Women are objects. Bond is the subject. Rubi is the subject. A Tiguere is the subject. 

But what would happen if the objects in Rubi’s life got to take up their own space, tell their own stories? What would the women Rubi hurt say about how he impacted them? 

I haven’t been able to speak with any of the women Rubi married or slept with. But I did get to speak with someone affected by Rubi’s actions firsthand…  

PATRICK: Rubirosa destroyed my parents marriage

[Music fades out.]

⁠—AD BREAK⁠—

CHRIS: What does the name Porfirio Rubirosa mean to you? 

PATRICK:  Porfirio Rubirosa. Yeah. Well. It means to me playboy, a romance addict, certainly, probably a sex addict. And Rubirosa destroyed my parents' marriage. 

CHRIS: This is Patrick Reynolds, the son of Marianne and RJ Reynolds ⁠Jr. 

Patrick’s dad RJ was crazy rich. His family ran a huge tobacco empire. Patrick is no longer part of the family business ⁠— he actually founded an organization to help people stop smoking: tobaccofree.org. Check it out. 

When Patrick was just three years old, his mother Marianne had an affair with Rubi. This affair led to his parents divorce in 1952. 

PATRICK: I was angry it destroyed her marriage and I didn't see my father again until I was nine and I hardly knew my dad. And that really had a profound, deep impact on me and caused me a lot of confusion. I mean, it really screwed me over. It destroyed our family. 

CHRIS: Patrick is in his 70s now. Neither of Patrick’s parents are alive. But he knows the story of how Rubi got intertwined in their marriage. Patrick interviewed his mom for a book about his family’s history.

PATRICK: I said, Mom, why do you have the affair with Rubirosa, and she liked to take a drink or two and five o'clock was always the cocktail hour, and at this point in the evening, she'd had a couple of drinks. 

PATRICK: She said, look, Patrick, I was standing on the deck of one of the largest private yachts in the world. I had furs. I was drop dead gorgeous. I had the most important jewelry. I had designer gowns. And every night I was a prisoner on that boat. Because your father. R.J. Reynolds Jr. was passed out from drink. And I was a prisoner because I could not go ashore without my husband. 

CHRIS: Marianne was in the same circles as Rubi. She and RJ would take their yacht to the French Riviera. Or to the glamorous capitals of Europe. 

PATRICK: Finally, when Rubirosa and his buddy, the Prince Ali Khan, called and said, “Marianne, Marianne and come to dinner, come to dinner, come to the casino.” She said, by God, I went ashore and he had quite a reputation, all the women knew that this guy was a stud and good in bed and. He pursued her, he sent her the red rose, la mas belle de mujeres [sic], to the most beautiful of women.

CHRIS: Rubi’s signature move again. 

PATRICK: He followed her from city to city. She said, “He followed me to Rome. He followed me,” you know, and I should have asked her how how did he know where you were going? Finally in Paris, she succumbed to his charms.

CHRIS: Patrick's father eventually found out about Rubi and Marianne's fling. He filed for divorce and named Rubi as the reason for their split. Rubi denied the affair to the press. But it didn't matter. The story was widely reported on. 

PATRICK: Rubirosa was just one player, and I don't blame him, I don't blame my mother, I don't blame my father, it's it's really all of it taken together. I feel sad, a little angry, more sad than angry. And, you know, for the havoc that these people wreaked on their lives by making such bad choices.

[Piano music enters.]

CHRIS: That’s what can happen when a tiguere gets out of his cage. He eats marriages for breakfast. He breaks up families. He breaks hearts.  A tiguere’s love affairs might make for good scenes in the movies. But in real life, there’s a morning after, and there are people who have to keep on living.

Remember that quote about Rubi making any woman he was with feel like the only woman in the room? I wonder if that’s how he made Marriane Reynolds feel. Maybe that’s why she risked her marriage to be with him. And even though the impact of her actions was deep for Patrick… he said one last thing about Marianne and Rubi that caught my ear: 

[Music fades out.]

PATRICK: She made her choice. She wanted that experience. She wanted that. And I'm going to honor that in my mother

CHRIS: Marianne wanted that “experience.” And here’s where the script flips a little bit…where Rubi goes from being the subject–the tiguere pursuing his prey–to being objectified…an “experience” worth pursuing. Marty Wall shared this story he came across in his research.

MARTY: Rubi finds himself in an elevator with some female socialite and she approaches him and actually tries to grope him in the elevator to see if it's as big as everybody says it is. And I just kind of thought, you know. It's just people were always trying to just, you know, be with him and get with him and chase him and find out what he's got and how do I get that? 

TAKI: He was known for having the largest you know what. 

CHRIS: Here’s Rubi’s pal Taki, again.

TAKI: In fact, all the pepper mills were called "Rubi" in the restaurants. In the good restaurants. You never asked for a pepper, you said "Allez Rubirosa," and they used to bring the pepper mill. It was a joke. 

CHRIS: The pepper mill, like the big wooden pepper grinder thing. And the joke lives on to this day. So many articles about Rubi mention the pepper grinder thing. 

But the pepper grinder is just the beginning. Doris Duke described Rubi’s member in her biography – sidenote: her biographer was her godson, kinda awkward to talk about your lovers thing in that context. But anyway, here’s what she said: “It was the most magnificent penis that I had ever seen … six inches in circumference … much like the last foot of a Louisville Slugger baseball bat with the consistency of a not completely inflated volleyball.”

The tabloids had plenty of fun with nicknames for Rubi, too. In Paris, newspapers called him Mr. Toujours Pret ⁠— “Mr. Ever Ready.” Rubi couldn’t even escape all this attention by going home to the DR. 

ISABELLA: Chico, in the Dominican Republic, Trujillo got in charge of spreading the word of his endurance, of how he could go for hours and not ejaculate. 

CHRIS: That’s right. Even the DR’s leader, Trujillo, was spreading the word about Rubi’s sexual prowess. In fact, he wanted to profit off of it. The DR manufactured a Trujillo-approved drink supplement called “pega palo”. It was made of tree bark and herbs. I think of it like a “liquid Viagra.” An American magazine ran a photo of Rubi next to the product, claiming he drank it every day and credited it for his virility. 

ACTOR AS RUBI: After that article, I received hundreds of letters from tired men and disillusioned women. Everyone wanted me to urgently provide them with the elixir. 

CHRIS: This is the point where I start to be like, yo, chill out! Give this man a break. Especially after I learned that Rubi’s “ever-ready”-ness was actually a medical issue. Here’s Marty:

MARTY: We learned that he likely had priapism, which made it very, very difficult for him to ejaculate, 

CHRIS: Priapism is basically what the Viagra commercials warn you about. If you have an erection that lasts for more than four hours, it’s a problem. Perhaps due to his priapism, Rubi was also sterile – at least that’s what we think. He never had any children. Is this why women were so excited to be with him? He was safe, safe to play with. All the fun without the possibility of a dark-skinned consequence running around 9 months later.  And if this was the kind of experience women wanted, well, Rubi didn’t exactly shy away from being objectified.

MARTY: And of all of the talents he has and all of the abilities that he has exploited, that's the one that got him into all of the high places and to meet all of the rich people. And it was probably partially part of his demise as well. You know, it was not always a good thing. I mean, you know. Although it kind of sounds sexy, the other side of that coin is what kind of satisfaction are you getting from lovemaking if you're not having an orgasm? So I think, you know, him realizing that he would put all the energy into giving the other person pleasure created this Latin lover legend that lives today. 

CHRIS: Rubi, you were as much of an object to women as it appears they were to you. 

When I think about you being with so many women, I am exhausted. Both physically exhausted, and emotionally. I mean to keep up this act of the macho playboy, Mr. Ever-Ready, over and over again, seems like too much work.

Did you ever feel ashamed? Were you angry that despite all the things you did ⁠— traveling the world as a diplomat, playing polo, racing cars, making it out of your small hometown, speaking five languages ⁠— that despite all of this, the thing the world remembers about you is the pepper grinder?  

Sometimes I imagine you sitting alone, miserable, worried. You know you're being forgotten, you know you're running out of time. You know you can leave nothing behind. The mask is melting and you’re terrified.

I say mask because I think, inside, you weren’t all tíguere. You were softer. Empty even in some of the moments when the world saw you as so full of life. Alone. A paper tiger. 

In his memoirs, Rubi doesn’t write much about feeling alone or tired. It’s mostly about all the action and the good times. But occasionally, things leak through the page.  Especially when he writes about women and love. Here’s one passage about the end of his relationship with his second wife, Danielle Darrieux. 

ACTOR AS RUBI: “It is sad to see your other half, your echo slip away from you. I still loved her… 

I realized in that heartrending final dialogue just how lonely I’d made her feel, how little respect I’d really given her. I think ⁠— no, I’m sure⁠—that was the first time my heart had been broken, and I was to blame.…

Once it goes, it’s gone. There is no snatching back the exhilaration or the comforts of sharing souls: like a champagne bottle dropped on the sidewalk, there is no way to glue a love back together, and there is no mending of the heartache, other than time. Once I felt that ache, that emptiness, I felt even worse, knowing exactly what she was feeling.”

CHRIS: I know this loneliness. Don’t you? Those moments of silence where nothing is around but fear - which is really just my own self, my own thoughts, me when all the distractions are gone. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes I do everything to avoid these moments. I keep my mind and my life busy with all kinds of things, just so that I don’t have to meet myself.

CHRIS: A lot of Rubi's life is really sad to me personally, like he's running away from something, like he can't be alone. What do you think about that? Was Rubi a sad man? 

MARTY: Yeah, I think that he was partially maybe a little manic. I think when we talk about someone that is uncomfortable alone, you know, that there is a narcissism level there that is like a drug addict not getting their drug. So I feel that he was sad in that way because he never really found true love. And maybe eventually, not unlike a beautiful woman losing her beauty because of age, realizes that none of these things were because people liked him. It's because he was Rubi or he could give you a wild orgasm or whatever, whatever it was. 

I think he was so distracted for most of his life that he didn't feel the sadness. But in those moments of silence, in those moments of no party and no race car and no polo fans, I think it was really sad. 

[Music enters.]

CHRIS: When I was a kid, idolizing James Bond, I thought his tiguerismo was cool, something to look up to.  Same thing when I was a young man in college and I read about Rubi ⁠— I thought, hey. Here's a ladies man. A Dominican ladies man, no less. I wanted to BE that. I wanted to be wanted. 

But now I’m a little older, and I’ve looked a little closer, and I do not like everything I see – in Rubi, in James Bond, or in myself. Yeah, there are some parts of the tiger/tiguere that serve me–the determination, the ability to land on my feet in a tough situation, but then there are other parts of that mindset that are downright harmful. Harmful to others, and harmful to myself. Some parts don’t serve any of us anymore. So it’s time to get honest, time for me to look the tiguere in the eyes and kill what’s no longer needed. 

CHRIS: OK, how do you two feel about my love life? 

POPS: Woo! 

MOM: I got a lot to say, go ahead, William.

Shit gets real. That’s next time. 

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