by Oscar Lewis
The thing is, growing up in our environment here, we see the realities of life so close that we must learn to have a lot of self-control. Sometimes I had an intense desire to cry because of something my father said, but instead, because life, cynicism, had taught me to put on a mask, I laughed. For him, I did not suffer, I felt nothing, I was a shameless cynic, I had no soul … because of the mask I showed. But inside, I felt every word he said.
I have learned to hide my fear and to show only courage because from what I have observed, a person is treated according to the impression he makes. That’s why when I am really very afraid inside, outwardly I am calm. It has helped me too, because I didn’t suffer as much as some of my friends who trembled when they were grabbed by the police. If a guy shows weakness and has tears in his eyes, and begs for mercy, that is when the others pile on him. In my neighborhood, you are either a picudo, a tough guy, or a pendejo, a fool.
Mexicans, and I think everyone in the world, admire the person “with balls,” as we say. The character who throws punches and kicks, without stopping to think, is the one who comes out on top. The one who has guts enough to stand up against an older, stronger guy, is more respected. If someone shouts, you’ve got to shout louder. If any so-and-so comes to me and says, “Fuck your mother,” I answer, “Fuck your mother a thousand times.” And if he gives one step forward and I take one step back, I lose prestige. But if I go forward too, and pile on and make a fool out of him, then the others will treat me with respect. In a fight, I would never give up or say, “Enough,” even though the other was killing me. I would try to go to my death, smiling. That is what we mean by being “macho,” by being manly.
Life around here is raw, it is more real, than among people with money. Here, a boy of ten isn’t scared off at the sight of the female sexual organ. Nor is he shocked when he sees a guy lifting someone’s wallet, or using a knife on a man. Just having seen so much evil at close range makes him face reality. After a while, even death itself doesn’t frighten us. We get our bruises in the struggle against life at a very early age, see? And a scab begins to form. It never disappears, like a blood scab, but remains permanently on our spirit. Then, there comes another blow and another scab, until it gets to be like a kind of armor which makes us indifferent to everything.
People with more means can afford the luxury of allowing their sons to live in a world of fantasy, of only seeing the good side of life, of protecting them from bad companions and obscene language, of not hurting their sensibilities by witnessing scenes of brutality, of having all their expenses paid for them. But they live with their eyes closed and are naïve in every sense of the word.
All during my boyhood, and even afterward, I spent a lot of time with my gang. We had no chief or leader … he would have to be too good at everything … but some boys were outstanding in one way or another. We didn’t have bad characters like some gangs. There was one bunch in our neighborhood that was known for stealing money from drunks, and for taking marijuana. Only one boy in my gang took to the needle and went bad. In my day, we never did anything worse than grab the girls by their behinds … things like that …
At that time I very much admired my older cousin, Salvador, the only child of my aunt Guadalupe. He was the terror of the gang of the Street of the Bakers, a really tough gang; of all the members he was the one that was most feared. But I admired him only because he was a good fighter. Otherwise, I didn’t think much of him because of the nasty way in which he spoke to my aunt, especially when he was drunk. He took to the bottle and went to the dogs quickly because of a woman he was in love with. He had a son with her but then she went off with another man, the one who finally killed my cousin with an ice pick.
When I was about thirteen, some of the older fellows in the gang wanted to take me to a whore house on Tintero Street. “Not me, brother, to Tintero Street I don’t go. My father is liable to kill me. No!” But they said, “What about this guy? Are you a queer or what? It’s about time you went. We’re going to pay for a broad for you and you are going to screw her.” I didn’t want to go because I was afraid of getting an infection.
I was, and still am, terribly afraid of getting venereal disease. I was very young when this fear of mine began. Once, in the steam room of the bathhouse, I saw a man with a penis that was half-decayed and full of pus, and that scared me just to see it. Then, someone took me to a museum where I saw pictures of the children of syphilitics … and one of the boys in the Casa Grande had had gonorrhea four or five times. He cried when he urinated and I heard him scream with pain when a doctor treated him.
Once my father also scared me. When I was about twelve, I had arthritic pains in my heels and he saw me walking on my toes, to avoid the pain. He thought it might be from something else, and one day he locked me in the bedroom with him. “Pull down your pants, I want to see. Cabrón, how many women have you been with in Tintero Street? I don’t want grandchildren that are going to be one-eyed, crippled idiots! Pull down your pants and let me take a look.”
“No, papá I don’t have anything, no!” I was terribly embarrassed to let my father see me … I already had hair there and … well, I turned my face away because I was so ashamed. But he wasn’t satisfied to just look. He took me to a doctor and the faker gave me pills, although nothing was wrong with me.
That’s why I did and didn’t want to go to Tintero Street with the boys. But they told me that if I squeezed lemon juice on my member afterwards, I wouldn’t catch anything, and so we went. Alberto and I and another guy went with the same señora. I was so nervous it wouldn’t even stand up. My legs were trembling. One of the boys got on top of her and went to work. When he got finished he said, “Now you go.”
“O.K.,” I said, “but if I catch a disease, you bastard, are you going to give me the money to get treated?”
“This trembling idiot doesn’t seem to be a man,” they said, and I had to go through with it. I got on top of the señora. She moved in a very exaggerated way and it wasn’t a bit pleasant. I was thinking that the old girl had had lots of experience, that with her anyone who wanted to could get his end in. I didn’t like it at all. But the boys were satisfied with me and so that was over with.
After that, the fever, this sex business, got hold of me in such a way that all I did was to go around thinking about it. At night, my dreams were full of girls and sex. I wanted every woman I saw. And when I couldn’t make some girl, I would resort to masturbation.
It was at about that time, I think, that Enoé was working for us. She was a woman who lived in our courtyard and came to the house every day to clean and to cook. Her son was one of my friends. Well, I went after her because I knew that Elena’s brother, Raimundo, had laid her. I thought, “Chirrión, why only Raimundo? Others also like a ‘taco,’ no?” But she said, “Ah! jodido … you’ll have to answer to your papá.” It seemed that my father was also sighing for her!
I didn’t have luck with our servants because my papá always got them first. The same thing happened with La Chata. She was very fat and I didn’t like her. She made me angry by trying to force me to eat after school. If I said no, she would say, “You’re not going to eat? Good, that means more for me.” And she would sit right down on her double-sized behind and eat my food.
But she was a woman, and once I spoke to her about … this thing. “No,” she said, “you are too little, what could you do?” But I insisted.
“Well,” I said, “maybe you won’t feel anything, but I will. Let me! Come on!”
“Well, why not?” she finally said. “Come to see me at my house.” So I went to her house, but she had changed her mind. “No! You’re just a kid, what do you know about such things? Go on home.” And then she told me about my papá.
Up to that time I had fooled around with a couple of girls in the vecindad and in school … Julita, my cousin, the three sisters who lived in the middle courtyard, María … about eight in all. But it was just play … papá and mamá, because I was too young to do
anything with them.
Then I met Pachita at a dance and she was different altogether. She was a champion dancer and we liked each other. She would press up close to me and would get very flushed when we danced. One night I took her to a hotel.
Well, when we got to the room, I began to kiss her on the neck and on the arms, and she returned my caresses. I took off her shoes and stockings … that is the most exciting thing for me … the one who struggles a little, who shows a little shyness, excites me more. She was that type. If I wanted to put my hand in a certain place, she wouldn’t let me. Well, little by little, I made my way in, and then I felt a completely new sensation in my life because this girl had what we call “dog.” You feel something absorbing, sucking … well she was the only woman I climbed eight or nine times, while I was going with her. As a matter of fact she was an expert and taught me a lot … different positions and how to hold back. That’s when I learned that women enjoy it too. But she wasn’t for me because I wasn’t the one who had dishonored her. Women who have screwed others were not to my liking.
There was a fellow named the Rat … he was finally killed … well, he wanted to teach me how to be a pimp. He would say to me, “Don’t be a jerk, brother. Get hold of a broad and dance with her and get her to fall in love with you. Then you dishonor her and put her to work in a cabaret.” He was a good dancer and that was how he got so many girls. I kept saying no because I didn’t like the idea. Then he showed Alberto and me one of his girls and he planned for us each to dance with her and treat her to beers until she was so drunk we could all screw her.
So we went to work on that girl. We shoved beer into her, three to our one, until we couldn’t any more. We got two nembutals into her and that girl got the three of us drunk! She stood the three of us off and came out walking straight. The Rat couldn’t believe it. He said, “I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch! How can that fucking broad take all that?” She was one girl who gave us the slip.
Alberto and I were pretty low, really, we were a pair of rascals. He had dishonored a señorita, a virgin, and as a result of that, somewhere, there is now a son of his. But he wasn’t serious about the affair and wanted to get rid of her. “Compadre,” he said to me, “there is nothing to do but for you to take her. Make love to her, sleep with her, so I can say, ‘You have betrayed me with my best friend.’ ” I, out of loyalty to my friend, didn’t even realize what a dirty trick it was, so I helped him out.
At that time Alberto was in charge of his uncle’s second-hand-clothes stall in the outdoor market. The stalls were lined up on both sides of the street, just outside the big market. This stall specialized in “white clothing,” that is, underwear, and I helped Alberto sell when I was not in school. He juggled the accounts and didn’t turn over all the money, so we went to the movies every day. For more than a year, we went to the movies every single day.
Sometimes we stayed to see the picture three or four times, so we’d buy a couple of big rolls and fill one with beans, another with rice, another with cream or avocado, and we’d take a pile of food with us. We drank two or three sodas apiece, ate oranges, squash seeds, candy, nuts … well, we left a huge pile of garbage behind every time. And Alberto paid for everything. He would spend about twenty-five pesos a day, of his uncle’s money.
Seeing that his business was going down, Alberto’s uncle sold the clothing stall, and we didn’t have easy money any more. The person who took care of the stall after that was a girl, Modesta, whom we used to chat with. She liked us and treated us to tacos and sodas. She was not attractive … her face was full of pimples and she had a cataract in one eye … but she had a very provocative body, a nice little behind and a pretty bust. So when we didn’t have money for the movies, Alberto and I would go to see her.
One time we went with a plan in mind. The stall had a counter and a back wall, and she sat between. I jumped over the counter and said, “Hi, Modesta. How goes it? Caray! You look more delicious every day.”
“Aha, you bloody bastard. Are you beginning?” she retorted.
“No, really, you’ve got everything. You’re all there.” And so we talked, to heat her up, no?
Finally, she said, “Listen, Manuel, and what does it feel like when you do it?” She was a virgin then, right?
“Ay, don’t be foolish. I can’t tell you that. We have to do it, to know.” She was sitting on a bench, with her legs apart. “Look, I’ll give you an idea, more or less.” And I put my hand between her legs … “And then you just do this, see?”
Alberto signaled to me, to get her on the floor. It was just about noon and there were lots of people around. But before she knew it I had her down, under the counter, and Alberto threw a sheet over us. I unbuttoned her blouse and grabbed her breasts, kissing and biting them, and went to it.
People were passing by and the sheet was going up and down, up and down. Alberto told me later that people could see the sheet moving and he kept pinching me and telling me to stop, but I didn’t feel or hear him. While I was entertaining her that time, Alberto grabbed two or three children’s drawers from her stand, so that we could sell them and get enough money to go to the movies.
I visited Modesta a few times after that. Once I pulled down her panties and was stopped short by the sight of blood. I got scared because I thought she had a bad disease or was rotting or something. That’s when I learned about women having “la regla.”
Menstruation has always seemed like a dirty thing to me, perhaps because so many of the women I have had were unclean in their habits. Qué brutas! If there is something I cannot stand, it is the smelly odor of women. More than once I was in bed, kissing here and biting there, with all going along well, until the moment came to part her legs … well, sometimes the stink was so bad all my desire fell, and I had to ask her to get up and wash. I have always been allergic to a dirty woman.
At home, Elena kept getting sicker and sicker. She was pale and looked queer; papá took her to the doctor and it turned out to be tuberculosis. Papá beat us more than ever if we upset Elena. Once he claimed Roberto pushed her and made her much worse. She fell and struck the edge of the washbasin, right over the lung, but I don’t think that could have been the cause of her illness. What happened was that she and Roberto had quarreled and she fainted and fell. Later, my father claimed it was our fault that Elena died.
My father was always an extremely jealous man. Once, I believe, Elena was thinking of leaving my father for a butcher, a little runt of a guy. My father found out and one day he came home from work earlier than usual. He grabbed a knife and went toward the butcher shop. Roberto and I followed with rocks and sticks in case he needed help. We saw him go into the shop and talk to the butcher but nothing happened. He went home and bawled out Elena, but not with the same strong, dirty words he used with my mother.
He almost lost faith in Elena another time, because of his nephew. My father had lost track of his family and found this nephew by accident. By chance, my father saw a notice in El Pepín, the comic magazine; “Sr. David Sánchez is looking for Sr. Jesús Sánchez, who left Huachinango plantation in the year 1922.” My father wrote to him, and David came from Veracruz to live with us. He was the son of my father’s brother. I don’t even know the names of my uncles! David and his mother were the only ones left and they thought my father must have died too. Every All Saint’s Day they had been putting up a candle and food offering for my father’s spirit.
Well, my father got David a job in the La Gloria restaurant and we all got along fine. But one day, my papá came home and found Elena sitting on David’s knee. Now David had always impressed me as being a person completely without malice or evil. Of all my relatives, he was the one I liked best. He had retained the purity of the country and was not rotten like the people of the city. He had a clean soul. That’s why I say he wanted nothing from Elena. It was she who had gone after him, and as a result, David went back to Veracruz.
May God forgive me, but I even believe that my father was jealous of Elen
a and me. I really believe it, because when a person is angry, he looks at you in a particular way, and that is how my father used to look at me. I didn’t realize it then but today I can see he was suspicious of Elena and me.
To avoid all the quarrels between Roberto and Elena, my father rented another room in the Casa Grande. We children lived in No. 64 and Elena and her mother, Santitos, lived in No. 103. Elena’s two younger brothers and her sister, Soledad, also lived in No. 64 for a while. We got along well with all of them. Santitos was very nice, very reasonable. She always treated us well, and still does to this day. And, strange thing, she never blamed us for Elena’s death, like my father did.
I was no longer sore at Elena; I began to feel a certain affection and pity for her. I went with her to the tuberculosis dispensary and saw how they gave her the numo (pneumothorax). They pushed a kind of tube with air right into her ribs. My father, poor fellow, was terribly worried and he took her to the best doctors he could find. He put her into the General Hospital and quite often sent me there with fruit and food for her.
I believe it was while Elena was in the hospital that my father came home with a cage full of birds. I thought, “How strange that my father bought birds.” I remembered the arguments he had had with my mother because she had wanted him to buy birds for the house. The next day he bought more birds; he kept buying more until the walls of our room were hung with cages. And what a noise when all those birds began to sing at once. It sounded nice, it made me think I was in the country or in a forest.
But my father made Roberto and me get up at six o’clock in the morning to feed them, and I hated the birds for that. I always had trouble getting up early and when I heard my father say, “Manuel! Roberto! Up!” it was terrible for me.
The first few days when my father called, I’d say “Ay, papá, my legs hurt. Let Roberto feed the birds.” But Roberto soon caught on and I had to get up too. We had to chop several kilos of bananas with a large machete, and mix the fruit with flour and some greens. Then we put the food in each cage, changed the water and cleaned up the bird’s mess.