90 Miles of Separation

My first ten pages are attached in PDF format.

90 MILES OF SEPARATION

SYNOPSIS

Johnny and Rosa, two Cuban-Americans, are planning to get married. Rosa, blue-eyed and blonde, confronts all the men in her office who treat her disrespectfully because of the way she looks while Johnny has to deal with his own stereotype of not living up to the Latin lover mystique that women usually expect from him.

Meanwhile Johnny’s brother Pepe, the super stud, has just found out that he is HIV+. This is freaking him out because of the gay stigma attached to the disease. He doesn’t know what to do or who to tell. When he finally acquiesces to meeting his brother’s fiancée, he recognizes her as an aborted one-night stand. Aborted because she insisted, he wear a condom and he refused. This is the woman who sent him thinking that perhaps he should get tested and now she is marrying his brother.

Johnny’s other brother Willy, who has been living as a woman for years, has finally decided to go for the full sex change operation so he can attend Johnny’s wedding as a full-fledged woman. Pepe, of course, does not speak with him, even though they cross paths at work all the time. Willy is a makeup artist who sometimes works on the models that Pepe represents.

Willy is expecting their sister Carmen, who is still back in Cuba, to come for the wedding. She is trying desperately to get permission from the Cuban government since she is both a teacher and an army officer. She is also concerned about how her father will react to seeing her. He has not spoken to her since they left Cuba all those years ago because she is a Communist.

Rosa has Johnny meet her grandmother, Doña Flor, an old-world aristocrat who continues to live in West New York as if she were still the lady of the manor that she was back in Cuba. She tells Rosa after the meeting that she thinks Johnny is a bit too dark. Maybe there are black members of his family that she does not know about. This takes Rosa aback because she loves her grandmother dearly; she was practically raised by her. She’s always known of Doña Flor’s views on culture, aristocracy and breeding but she never expected this. Added to that tension is the fact that she almost had a liaison with Johnny’s brother Pepe.

Back in Miami, where the wedding is going to take place, Rosa’s brother Ralphie, a teenager who refuses to accept his heritage, keeps calling Rosa and telling her all the things that he is hearing and his fear about this wedding ceremony turning into some ethnic spectacle.

Johnny’s father, Máximo, also in Miami, has just found out the he has a fatal illness and has arranged to fly back to Cuba in order to die there. He does not want to tell his sons in order to not spoil the wedding.

Johnny finds out about the encounter between Pepe and Rosa and begins to have doubts. He has always lived in his brother’s shadow and fears that he is coming up second best again.

Doña Flor has asked her daughter, Miriam, and her husband, Diego to meet Máximo in order to check him out. When Máximo goes to visit them, he speaks to Ralphie in English. Something that is forbidden in their house. Ralphie is only allowed to speak Spanish at home. Ralphie, of course, thinks Máximo is cool while the parents believe he is too liberal and anglicized. But he is definitely white.

Johnny and Rosa, at Willy’s advice, talk over their issues and the wedding goes on as planned necessitating that these people finally confront each other and their individual dilemmas.