It was a frenzy of music and dancing and sangria and, every morning, the running of the bulls. One morning, still bleary-eyed from the night before, we went to the bullring and watched the runners at the end of their run, coming into the arena, the bulls and oxen close behind. The runners, all men, looked relieved and giddy, like they’d survived something horrible and now, safe, could tell their stories, embellish them even, because what they’d done, if they’d run close to the bulls, was challenge injury, even death. It was the height of macho, but there was something more, something universal and life-affirming in the challenge they’d taken and the challenge they’d won. They’d struggled. They’d survived.
“That looks exhilarating,” I told Claire from our safe arena seat. “They look like they’ve lived through something and are better for it.”
“The tradition seems a little forced,” she said. “But they do look exhilarated.”
“I’m thinking about it,” I said.
“Don’t. Those are real bulls with real horns.”
“Don’t be a Hemingway Hater,” I said.
“It has nothing to do with your sex.”
“Maybe it does,” I said.
She smiled at that.
That night I was in and out of sleep, in and out of deciding. I woke early, an hour before the shot rang out that signaled the day’s running of the bulls.
“I’m running,” I announced.
“You’re sure?” Claire said.
“I am.”
“The runners aren’t written about so favorably in The Sun Also Rises, you know. It’s the matadors who get the glory, the ones willing to risk their lives for a few moments and look beautiful doing it. The runners, they’re amateurs.”
“I’m an amateur then,” I said.
“Is it because it isn’t fun anymore?”
“It’s still fun,” I said.
We were still in bed. I moved to her, on her. I kissed her long and slow.
“But this would be all mine,” I said. “Not about you. Not about my child or your child. Not about the stares we’ve taken together, the comments, not about the hate that’s out there. It would be mine.”
“And this would prove something to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Okay then,” she said. “Let’s get you dressed.”
Claire got up, pulled one of her red T-shirts from a drawer, ripped it, threaded a piece of red through the belt loops of my white pants, a makeshift belt, tied a piece of red around my neck, a makeshift kerchief.
“You look brave,” she said.
“I don’t feel brave.”
“Maybe you do.”
I was nervous.
I walked, solo, to where the runners gathered at the end of town by the pens where they kept the day’s bulls. There was a crowd of men. And there was me. Most of the men looked at me critically—a lot of Hemingway Haters. I imagined my ex-husband seeing me here, imagined the sneer, the words of criticism, or, perhaps more truthful, no reaction at all, that dead-eyed look that said he didn’t know me and didn’t care. I saw Claire’s eyes before she kissed me good-bye. She was excited for me. She said she’d be waiting in the arena where we’d sat the day before, keeping her fingers crossed.
“You ready?” It was a man dressed in white and red.
“You’re American,” I said.
“Not today. Today I’m Pamplonan.”
“Today I’m a Hemingway,” I said.
He smiled, kind. He was a Hemingway too.
He told me to run fast, to keep running no matter what, no matter how scared I felt. He told me the most dangerous time was when the bulls were separated from the oxen and started charging all over the place. Those were called Sueltos, lone bulls. If that happened, or if I slipped or got stuck in the crowd, he told me to do anything I could to get out of the bull’s way. In those moments it was every man for himself, he said. Then he smiled.
“Every person for himself or herself,” he said.
“That sounds a little clunky,” I said and smiled back.
I thanked the man and he wished me luck.
The waiting was the hardest. And that made sense. That’s how it had been before I told my husband I was leaving. I hadn’t had the courage just to tell him. I’d waited for the Who? and then, forced, I’d said I was leaving him for a woman. I didn’t tell him I still cared for him. I didn’t tell him about some of the good memories I had of us. The first thing I told him was something harsh, It isn’t fun anymore, and then I told him I was in love with a woman. I wasn’t gentle at that moment. I wasn’t kind. I wasn’t supportive. It was about me. I was scared and hurt from all the waiting I’d done, which, when I finally delivered that harsh Hemingway line, I finally understood. The wait to tell the truth, and the weight to tell the truth, had been the longest wait because until I said the words I didn’t know if I’d back down and wait and wait and wait forever. Now I was waiting on the cobblestoned streets of Pamplona, but it was my waiting, mine, and the only fear I had to face was my own fear. And it was about being a woman too, being a woman surrounded by all these men and running with them. I was running with the men as much as with the bulls.
Then the stick rocket exploded, the signal that the gates had opened and the bulls were free to charge, and I didn’t think about anything. I ran and I heard. Heard men’s shouts. Heard pounding steps on cobblestones. Heard my own heavy breathing most of all. Then the oxen were near me. Then the bulls. And the runners, so many runners. And then the bulls were gone. The jolt of fear subsided in an unexpected way. I cried one long, loud moan, a giving up of something. Then I smiled. And I stayed smiling as I ran the rest of the run, through Pamplona’s old streets, into the bullring, as close to Claire as I could get.
I waved to her.
She waved back.
On Being a Queer Jewyorican
BY SHARA CONCEPCIÓN
I WAS STANDING IN THE DOORWAY OF TYLER DINING HALL for the very first time, and she was sitting at the back of the room, wearing a white headband. The wolf in my stomach howled and kneaded and nudged from inside. The fireflies in my head glowed and faded like a pulse. The cicada long-burrowed in my heart threatened to climb out of my mouth and profess to the world: That girl over there, I want her hair on my pillow. I want her breath in my ears. I want her curved like a half moon against the cradle of my body. But what my body knew, my mind wouldn’t, couldn’t accept. My line of sight receded, and the dining hall stretched out before me: rows of round table tops, the soft angles of unfamiliar faces catching yellow light.
“I think the line for food is over there,” said Maribel, pointing left. She was a fellow community college transfer to the Ada Comstock program at Smith College, my first ally in that strange new world.
I followed Maribel’s finger, jutting out like a gun, to the mob of students inching towards the wafting smell of barbeque sauce. We joined the back of the hungry mob in their march, our backs to the girl in the white headband, but I swore I could feel her energy, a current moving through the air—past tables, past chairs, past the clutching hands of strangers guiding forkfuls to their lips. That girl looks lonely, I thought as I piled rack after rack of barbecued ribs onto my plate. I decided it was my moral responsibility to keep the lonely girl company. At least, that was the excuse I made for myself.
“Let’s sit at the back,” I said to Maribel, motioning with my head, and she agreed. Dinner in-hand, I wove my wide hips through the maze of tables between us until I was across from the girl in the white headband. I smiled dumbly as she methodically forked the mountain of spinach on her plate.
“Hi,” I said as I put my plate on the table, “I’m Shara,” and I stuck my hand out. The girl in the white headband dropped her fork and looked up at us dumbstruck.
“Hi?” she said in an intonation that suggested it was more a question than a greeting. Then, gathering her wits, “I’m Alex,” and she took my han
d. More people joined us at the table, all friends of Alex, the girl in the white headband. I was a little overwhelmed by the gathering crowd, but played it cool—worked the group in that unabashed, loud-as-fuck New York way, waving my hands in the air like an orchestral conductor and spewing just about anything and everything that popped into my head. And then, I started on about the ribs:
“They have so many ribs here!” I said, wide-eyed. “I’ve never seen so many ribs! Aren’t ribs super expensive? Like, I can understand chicken, but ribs? And they don’t even control our portions. How can they afford that, it’s fucking crazy! It’s impossible to go hungry here! But I’m gonna go home and put this in my freezer, just in case.” I put my hand on the bulbous Tupperware lid in front of me, its clear plastic body revealing packed-in mounds of sauce-smeared meat. “Shit,” I said, “if my family were here, they’d be all up in there like vultures, like scavengers. My titi’d take the whole damn pan of ribs home.” Alex watched the elaborate hand show in silence, looking at me like I’d grown two extra heads.
“I can’t believe it,” I said, as I felt my heart well up with gratitude about just how lucky I was to be sitting there, at how far I had come, rough edges and all. “This place is magical,” I said. “It’s a dream.” I smiled and studied Alex’s confused face. She looked like she was crouching inside herself, head slightly bowed, pale eyes glancing up the way a nervous animal watches another animal. And then the left corner of her mouth pulled back. First a half-smile. Then a loud, hiccup-y laugh—a laugh that settled my body into my chair. A laugh better than therapy.
I skipped across the manicured lawns that night, under the starry Northampton sky, past the brick-red library, the ivy-covered halls, and quaint houses. The returning fall breeze broke like a caress, gentle on my skin, and I forgot the harshness of winter, the bitter sting of New England cold. In my dorm room, I sat in front of my boyfriend’s two-dimensional smiling face, glowing dead-center on my laptop screen—he was finishing up a post-doc in England—as I prattled on about the never-ending ribs, and the girl in the white headband, and how incredible everything was. I laid in bed that night, restless. I looked at the pillow next to my head and tried to imagine my boyfriend’s face, but I couldn’t summon it. I didn’t want to. Instead, in the dark theater of my mind, I saw her hair. Then the way she looked up at me, like she was stuck behind the windows of her eyes, like she was looking out. I imagined her laughing. A good laugh, I thought, and finally, softly, sank into a dream.
I entered those ivy-covered buildings the next day, the wood-paneled classrooms, spiral notebook under my arm, feeling like an alien in a strange, idyllic world. The air was brisk with the coming cold, and the day was full of new lessons; my professors, many of whom went by their first names, asked us to write our names on papers to display on our desks, along with our “preferred pronouns”—an exercise I’d never done before. Some students wrote “she, her, hers;” some wrote “they, them, theirs;” some even wrote “ze, zir, zirs.” I learned that people like me, whose gender identity matched social expectations of their assigned sex, had a name, cisgender, and that others identified in other ways. Truth is, I didn’t quite get the pronoun thing at first, but as a self-described Jewyorican, I could understand, even then, the pain of not having language to describe and validate one’s existence. I also understood the power of naming one’s self regardless.
Walking through campus, studying the sights with my outsider’s eyes, I learned that students at Smith walked straight-backed, with purpose. That is, unless they were lounging in the perpetually green grass, making out. And suddenly making me uncomfortable.
I was preoccupied with getting to see Alex again. It took all kinds of unconscious self-discipline to stop myself from drawing obnoxious little hearts encircling her name in the margins of my notebook. I still couldn’t accept my feelings for what they were: an all-consuming, horrible, wonderful crush. I was always a little different from most other people I knew—a little queer, if you will. As a young teen, I tried to wear difference superficially, like a badge of honor; I cut my hair into a fauxhawk and wore clothes that made people either too afraid to look at me or too perplexed to look away: spiked collars, combat boots, bumblebee stockings, and black tutus. Metal bars and hoops jutted from my face, and I even openly admitted to liking women. But in truth, I never thought of dating one. There was a barrier between me and that truth—one that transcended time and space, built up long before the name Alex ever rolled off my tongue. Unlike many of the students at Smith, I had no trust, no heirlooms, no inheritance. What I had were collective memories, and much of what I have become has been shaped by them.
My mother was a broad and excitable Jewish woman from New Jersey with paper-white skin and wooly red hair; my father, a dark-haired Puerto Rican with a knack for writing poetry, tinkering with electronics, and chasing things that made him feel good. He and his family had lived through the seventies and eighties, when nearly all of buildings of the South Bronx, the place they still call home, were charred soulless. It was a cityscape reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno, with blocks of building facades dappled by blacked-out windows like punched-in teeth. While the Bronx was burning up north, queer people down in the Village, some of whom were Bronx residents, were also living through collective trauma. After the Stonewall riots of 1969, when queer people rose up against laws that made their very existence illegal, the movement and its proponents had become invigorated with a new sense freedom and self-determination. It was a kind of golden age. An age of freedom.
My father reveled in that new-found freedom of life in the Village, which became a hub of creativity, community, and exploration, sexual and otherwise. But he was not spared the fate of so many others; he contracted HIV the year I was born.
Life under these circumstances was difficult; year after year, I watched my father’s body shrivel on his bones like dried hide only to grow plump again. It was like a cruel loop, and we were caught in its current. My mother also fared poorly under the circumstances life had meted out and had a difficult time meeting her own needs, not to mention mine and my brother’s. By the time I was thirteen, I was living on the street and in friends’ houses. By sixteen, I had flunked most of my high-school classes and had even dabbled in the drugs that might have been responsible for my father’s fate. It was impossible to know how the virus entered his body—if it was through drugs or sex with men—so, until I put him into the ground when I was twenty-four (the number of years he survived), his suffering became inextricably linked to both.
I recognized that I had inherited a city less volatile than the one my father was raised in, two decades’ worth of racial progress, and skin much lighter than his. There was the possibility of survival, but it was going to require sacrifice. Being a queer Jewyorican was out of the question; to survive, I’d have to pretend to be normal. And so, I grew my hair in long and brown, mimicked bourgeois patterns of speech, and pulled the metal from my face. I gave myself one rule: every job I took and goal I set had to involve community service; every struggle I faced, I’d work to make better for others. At the same time, I’d put up barriers to protect myself from a world I knew to be ruthless and cruel. Despite the great weight of my mask, the false starts and road-blocks along the way, my strategy worked; my record of service gave me a sense of pride and accomplishment. It also helped me snag a scholarship to community college and, eventually, a full ride to Smith College.
That first evening on campus, when I saw Alex across the dining room, everything I’d worked for since my youth—the normal life I’d fought for—was threatened.
Night after night, I stayed up late thinking about the soft waves of Alex’s hair; her broad shoulders; and the cute, awkward way that she walked—more military march than gait. I spent my evenings plotting things to say to her. Still, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted. Though I had always felt attracted to women, dating them was so far out of the question that I’d never even imagined it. There were no models for that sort of t
hing in the particular pocket of New York that I came from. To make matters worse, I had always felt a kind of phobia during the rare times I did spot lesbian couples. It was a churning of the gut—a kind of embodied confusion, a mix of desire and fear that made me look away or walk in the opposite direction. But I was out of New York City and in Northampton—a city known for having more lesbians per capita than any other. Suddenly, I had undisputable proof that being a lesbian wasn’t necessarily going to hurt me.
I dove deep into the world I had denied myself. I downloaded and watched every lesbian movie I could find. I discovered Ani DiFranco and memorized her songs. I turned to Google and YouTube to get a handle on “lesbian culture.” I held the knowledge in my body, keeping it to myself until I couldn’t keep it in any longer.
I told my boyfriend first.
Though living in England, he was a native New Yorker, like me. We had met at party he was DJ-ing when he was in town visiting his brother. I approached him and was excited to find out he was an engineer, as I had recently become enamored with the beauty and simplicity of physics, a cornerstone of his field, and we talked about it the entire night. That conversation led to hours-long messaging and Skype sessions about our lives, interests, and dreams. And now, it had led to this.
Although the chemistry wasn’t quite there, I was committed to chasing normalcy, not romance, and here was this wonderful man—smart, kind, accomplished, and interesting—who seemed to be devoted to me. I figured I would have been stupid, I thought, to let someone like him go. But no matter how much I tried to pretend, the love I felt for him was strictly platonic; when I looked at him, there was no stirring or soft beating of wings between my hips. Just a simple sense of comfort and the care one friend has for another. Soon, the difference between my feelings for him and for Alex became evident; I could longer ignore what was happening.
Greetings From Janeland Page 4