The Dirty Girls Social Club

by Alisa Valdes

  “I was wondering,” he says. “I couldn’t tell from back there. Very creative.”

  I recognize his name. Joel Benítez is the director of artists and repertoire for Wagner Records’ new Latin division. In other words, he’s the guy with the juice, the one who signs artists. On a whim, I sent him a demo CD a few months ago. I never heard anything, so didn’t think much of it. It’s unusual to hear back from a big-time guy like that unless you have an agent, and I don’t. I had an agent before, and didn’t like the way he tried to get me to change my hair and sound. I tried for a while to find another agent who might understand my music, but I was unsuccessful. I don’t even have a manager, for the same reason. I’m a control freak. Anyway, I never expected Joel Benítez would show up here in his suit and tie.

  “Sounded good,” he says. He lifts one corner of his mouth and his eyes gleam. “Really good, actually.”

  “You liked it?”

  He smiles. I can smell his strong cologne. It reminds me of the stuff my grandpa wears. Plumber’s cologne. Gato doesn’t wear cologne, just woodsy patchouli oil.

  “Can you come by our offices next week, say Monday morning?” he asks, point-blank. He looks bored, considering.

  “Monday morning?” I stall.

  “That’s the second of February,” he says—the Mexica New Year. Coincidence? “In the morning. Unless that’s too early—for a musician.” He laughs. I laugh like a hyena. My hand zooms up to my hair and starts to fiddle with it.

  “Ten okay?” He’s looking away now, watching the people in the club, confident.

  “Ten’s fine. That’s good. Ten.” I hear terror in the staccato rushing of my voice.

  He takes a silver business card holder out of an inside pocket of his coat and flips it open with one hand, slides a single card out with his thumb, graceful and practiced. Snap, the case shuts. I pluck the card from his fingertips. “The address is right there,” he says, still looking away. “Tell the receptionist you’re there to see me.”

  I think to ask him what he wants to talk about, but he has already turned away from me and weaves through the dancing bodies toward the door. He walks like a man with power. I watch him go and once he’s gone keep staring into the dark until I feel another hand on my shoulder, Gato.

  “You ready?” he asks. He’s still missing his shirt, and his exposed skin is covered with angry scratches and welts from the pit.

  “Yeah, sure.” I shake myself and remember I still have to pay the guys in the band. “I have to get the money from Lou,” I say, referring to the club manager.

  “I already did that. Here.” He pulls out a check from the club owner. It’s more than I expected, a couple thousand more. I grab the check and my jaw drops. I smile at Gato. He tells me the owner was so impressed with the turnout that he wanted to make sure I’d come back. Cool.

  I look at Gato’s face to see if he noticed me talking to Joel Benítez. I don’t think so. I don’t want to tell him. Not here. I never wanted to be the first one to get a deal, in the same way you love your children so much you hope you’re the one who dies first.

  I pay my band in cash. We shake hands and then Gato and I head out the back door and climb into my Honda Civic. My mom gave it to me last year, after she bought a new Accord for herself. It’s a nice car, almost too nice. Too clean and too normal, like my family. I had Lalo draw ancient Mexica symbols all over it. On the hood is a big drawing of Ozomatli, the Aztec monkey king of song and dance. I’ve got bumper stickers all over the back, I think it’s important to educate people about the truth every chance you get. One says MEXICA: WE DIDN’T COME TO AMERICA, AMERICA CAME TO US. There’s FEMINIST MAJORITY; EVOLVE, DAMNIT; and the NICE TRY, WHITE MAN. The one I get the most comments on is my big magnetic Darwin fish eating the little puny Jesus fish. I get a few crazies trying to run me off the road sometimes for that one. Nothing makes me sadder than seeing Raza with those little magnetic fish all over their cars, like Elizabeth. They have no clue. Jesus is a white man’s religion.

  The drive back to our two-room apartment above a watch repair shop on Silver Lake Boulevard takes a long time, like all commutes in Los Angeles—more than an hour. The smokestacks of the oil refineries along the shore in Long Beach turn the horizon an unnatural orange, flames lapping at the sky everywhere you look. I apologize out loud to Mother Earth for the sins of my fellow man. There aren’t many people on the road at this hour. Gato and I don’t talk much. Performances take so much out of us, we like to just hold hands and listen to the ringing in our ears.

  The police choppers are out in full force tonight. We see three before we get to our exit. I think of my brother Peter, an officer with the beleaguered LAPD. He’s so lost. He came to one concert of mine in West Hollywood. He didn’t say much. He shook Gato’s hand, and he patted me on the back, but he never came back. I haven’t talked to him since. We don’t have anything to say to each other. It’s been like that since we were little. Peter liked to burn ants under a magnifying glass and I liked to run out after rainstorms and rescue the worms stranded on the sidewalk.

  When the janitors were striking, Gato and I used to go support them every night. We’d set up our equipment and play right there in downtown Los Angeles, next to the Museum of Contemporary Art. One time, the police came to break up our gathering—we were playing without a public permit—and who do you think was the guy who showed up with the notice to vacate? My brother. It was deep. We just sort of stared at each other for a good long minute and then I went on my way. He’s a Republican, too, if you can believe that. He likes to make fun of Mexicans, just like our dad. So many Mexican jokes. Pete thinks we should shut the border with Mexico and shoot “illegals” on sight.

  I pull the car into the parking lot behind our building and take the notebook out of my pocket. I open the car door for light, pin the notebook to the steering wheel and write, ignoring the chime alerting me that I’ve left my keys in the ignition. Two children, me and you / From the same seed we are us two / I saved worms while you burned ants / Now you wear policeman’s pants / Young we used to share a room / Now you’d point your gun in my face and go boom / Just because I know where we’re from / An ancient land, an Indian land / And you, Brother Officer, don’t understand / The immigrants you hate have American roots / They’re original here, and so are you.

  Gato carries my guitar up the stairs for me. Once we’ve locked the door behind us and I’ve started to make hot tea—a ritual designed to save our voices—we finally speak again.

  “You played un set increíble, mujerón,” Gato says, coming up behind me at the sink. He lifts my hair and his mouth is warm and soft on the back of my neck. “Tu eres la mujer más increíble que yo he conocido en mi vida, sabes.” He presses up against me and I can tell that he has more than compliments on his mind. I turn to pull him to me. I wrap my arms around him and lead him gently toward the bedroom. There’s something about playing a really good set, getting all that energy out there, that cleanses my spirit and leaves me humming with life force.

  “Forget tea,” I say.

  “Yeah, forget tea.”

  Our bedroom is a paradise. We have a king-sized futon on the floor, covered with beautiful pillows from all over the world. We have candles and incense everywhere, and the walls are draped with blankets from Mexico. We can’t paint the walls because it’s a rental, so we’ve covered every inch with sensuous fabric, even the ceiling. Gato calls it our “womb.” We undress and look at each other.

  He is gentle with me, tender, open, loving. Most men have so many issues they don’t know how to keep their image of you as a friend and human being once you’ve got your clothes off. They say ugly things. Gato is the first man I have known who smiles while making love. There’s no difference from the smiles he gives when you’re having a meal and telling jokes together. He’s the first man I’ve known who really and truly makes love to me. Our bodies become one. It’s a peaceful sort of passion, a low smoldering fire. When Gato and I make love I feel t
he spirits of our ancestors rise up from Aztlán and shake the earth.

  We climax together. We always climax together. Gato studies yoga. He’s able to control his body in ways that amaze me. “I listen to your body,” he tells me, “I hear its chords and melodies. I feel it as if it were my own. There’s a way you tense, I can tell.”

  Afterward, Gato gets up to turn off the teakettle, which has been whistling for a while now. He prepares the tea, with honey and lemon, in the dark brown clay mugs we bought from a Navajo man in Flagstaff when Gato had a gig at the university. I sit up on the bed and cradle the cup in my hands, more exhausted and happy than I have ever been. My muscles are sore. Maybe Gato will rub me with that elixir of marijuana stems.

  “So,” he says, sipping tea, smiling, “that was Joel Benítez, wasn’t it?”

  I can’t believe he knows, that he knew this whole time and didn’t say anything. I feel so guilty I can’t speak. I nod, wondering why he waited.

  “What did he tell you?” I see pain in Gato’s eyes, even though he tries to conceal it.

  I look at him. I blush. I don’t know what to say. I look down at the comforter, then into my cup.

  “That’s great,” Gato says, leaning over to kiss me softly. I look up at him. He runs a finger softly across my cheek. “Your joy is my joy. Truly.” I detect nothing in his face or voice to indicate he might be threatened or upset. But his eyes. It’s there. Envy.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I wanted it to be you. I’m so, so sorry.”

  He shrugs and smiles, but his eyes look sad. “For what, mi amor? I’m so happy for you.”

  I feel his arms around me again, and realize how lucky I am. Lauren spent so much time complaining about men last time the sucias got together, I almost started to believe her. She said even the ones who seem nice and wonderful really aren’t. She’s wrong. Gato is perfect. He’s one of the few men I know capable of moving beyond his machista upbringing.

  He is happy for me, he says, and I am pretty sure he means it.

  I was as stunned as the rest of this city to hear of the suicide of Dwight Reardon, a longtime Gazette Metro columnist and occasional mentor. Those of us who knew Dwight knew the good—his booming laugh, his seemingly cynical take on local politics that was really a mask for a huge, compassionate heart, his plainspoken encouragement of young reporters—and the bad, namely that he had for years suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder. He’d come in on gloomy days with a frown, complaining of a headache, telling anyone who’d come close to his desk how depressed he felt. On particularly dreary days, he’d miss deadline. Our mistake was not taking his words and symptoms seriously enough. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a form of depression brought on by a change in seasons, believed to be related to decreased exposure to sunlight as the days grow shorter with cold weather. Those of us who work in Boston know it’s not unusual to get to the office in the dark of morning, only to leave in the dark of late afternoon. As January drags darkly on, I encourage any of you who think you might suffer from SAD to get help. I wish I’d had the good sense to help Dwight. I miss him. This town is a drearier place without his words.

  —from “My Life” by Lauren Fernández

  lauren

  THE BOSTON GAZETTE building looks like a really big, ugly public school, built sometime in the sixties and perpetually patrolled by beefy lunch ladies in hair nets. Red bricks, green glass windows, lawns that would like to seem inviting, except for the KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs. Enough said.

  One side of the mammoth structure is lined with a fleet of bright orange trucks. The back of the building is the loading dock where union guys sit around reading the Herald, even though they work for the Gazette. In this town, the newspapers represent the pervasive class conflicts. The union guys like the Herald as a workingman’s paper, a tabloid full of big pictures and none of that multicultural nonsense. They come to work with the Herald folded under their tubular arms and leave the papers lying around for us reporters to see as we come scurrying by out of the wind and snow.

  The only Gazette writer the loading dock guys like now that Dwight is gone is Mack O’Malley. The paper used to run O’Malley’s right-wing screeds on things like why women shouldn’t work and why we should do away with affirmative action, until a McCall’s magazine fact-checker figured out he made up most of the people and facts in his columns. I wasn’t surprised. My first week on the job, his old buddy, sports columnist Will Harrigan, took me aside and in a scotch-smeared voice grumbled, “Kid, I’ll give you three bits of advice on working here. One, O’Malley makes all his shit up. Two, Dwyer [editor in chief] is a mental vegetable. Three, don’t wear your skirts so short ‘cuz you’re makin’ me sweat.”

  After much posturing, O’Malley was fired, but went on to make even more money writing about the same crap for a New York City tabloid where accuracy has never been an issue. Last I checked, he had his own talk show on a cable news network, too.

  Inside, the Gazette building is dreary. Long echoing hallways with gray tile floors and twitching fluorescent lights. There has not been fresh air in this building for several decades, not since the anti-busing group from Southie came red-faced and surly to throw a Molotov cocktail through the front window. When the presses shudder to life in the early evening, the entire building shakes. On the desks of those who sit beneath air vents are small piles of black ashlike substance. They will tell you this is dust. But everyone knows it’s ink.

  Only the offices of the editors have windows. They are the only ones. Over in my department, the Features wing, there are no windows and never will be. Our light comes from long white bulbs, exposed like femurs. The carpet was once blueberry, but has faded to a foamy jeans color. I’m not quite sure how.

  In spite of all this, I love my desk. I have draped it in Mexican rugs and Santeria beads just to scare everyone. It’s like a gigantic wedding cake stuck in the middle of the newsroom I share with about forty other reporters and copy editors. It makes them nervous, I like to think, jealous and terrified. La Virgen de Guadalupe stands at attention on top of my computer terminal, with the brass handles of a broken clock poking out of her navel. In my drawer, I keep a bottle of “Boss Be Fixed” oil I found at a botanica in Chelsea for two bucks when I did a hard-sell feature on the Palo Mayombe religion before I got my column. Took me weeks to get my editor to agree to that one. Palo who? Is that like Voodoo? If it’s Satan worship our readers won’t understand. We’re in a very patriotic, very Christian swing here. We’ll get cancellations. There’s a nice march for a couple of saints over in the North End somewhere, that’s ethnic, why don’t you go cover that? You should be able to understand some Italian, right? Here’s twenty bucks. Bring me back some biscotti, almond.

  I pasted two dried red beans to my phone receiver, along with a Barbie doll with a crew cut and war paint on her face. Onto the huge partition that separates me from the rowdy, farting guys in the Sports section, I have tacked the requisite phony-baloney photos of me and Ed. Next to the photos is a list of all the Latino business leaders in the Boston area, men (yes, all men) who had, until I started working at the Gazette, concentrated their efforts only in the extraordinarily weak and biased local Spanish media, convinced that the Gazette did not care what they were up to. They were right. But now that I’m here, the Gazette has to pretend. And so do I.

  Because of this grand charade I call a career, I am bracing myself for the meeting I’m about to have with my nervous twit of an editor, Chuck Spring. I will try to convince him to approve a column on feuding between Dominicans and Puerto Ricans.

  It has been less than one minute since I pressed the buttons to call my Message Pending onto the screen. I’d seen the words “Come In.” That’s what Chuck writes when he wants to talk to you about a story idea. Or at least that’s what he writes to me, and to Iris, the other female Lifestyles columnist. When he writes to Jake or Bob, he sends them somewhat chummier words. This is because Jake is male, graduated from Harvard, Chuck’s alma mater, and
is a member of the same Final Club. For those unfamiliar with Final Clubs, I’ll tell you they were deemed illegal by the university because they refuse to admit women. In some cases, they don’t even let women in the front door of their buildings unless they’re discreetly hidden inside a large cake. Nonetheless, Final Clubs continue to meet, albeit several blocks away from university grounds in order to avoid scrutiny. Chuck continues to wear his secret pink button-down shirt with the secret striped tie on those days when he has a secret Final Club meeting after work. They all wear that outfit. Gang colors.

  Chuck is seen by his peers at the Gazette as a man with the intellect of a newborn hamster. But he is well connected, so no one who values his or her career complains about him. He is the godson of the publisher. He is from an old New England family of the type that goes to The Vineyard to experience diversity once Nantucket has gotten dull. Far as I can tell, from my couple of years talking to him, that’s all just a fancy way of saying the man is inbred. He’s got pictures on his desk of his family and they all look just like him, including his wife. Square heads, beady eyes, hair of a color that is not quite a color, skinny bodies in button-downs and cardigans. He once assigned me, without a hint of humor, to write about Mexican migrant workers he’d seen stooped in tobacco fields on his way to the Berkshires—yes, there are tobacco fields in Central Massachusetts. “I want you to get in there, Fernández, live the life with them. Find out what moves them, what makes them tick. Find out what songs they sing around the campfire at night.” I daresay he expected those grizzled men from Zacatecas would hold hands after a long day of backbreaking labor and sing “Kumbaya,” just like he used to as a promising well-bred lad at the local Episcopal summer camp.

  When I get to his office, Chuck is leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk and the phone stuck on his ear. His argyle socks don’t match because he is colorblind. His penny loafers have pennies in them. He is laughing in a way that is nervous and nerdy, because this is how he always laughs, like he is six years old and has just slipped something slimy into his friend’s milk carton. Snort snort snort. Hee hee hee.