Night Prayers

by Santiago Gamboa

  I remembered Fernando Vallejo’s words: “If Mexico were the center of the world, José Alfredo would be classical music.” That’s quite a salute, he was an intelligent man, Vallejo, all honor to him, and she put on “Ella” and raised the volume, and seeing that I was worried about the neighbors said, don’t worry, the Thais are even-tempered people, and anyway I don’t have people above me or on either side, just offices.

  We listened to two more songs until I looked at my watch and saw, to my horror, that it was two in the morning. I’m sorry, Teresa, I have to go, what a wonderful evening, could you call me a taxi? And she said, you just have to ask the doorman, there’s a taxi stand opposite.

  When I got to my hotel I found another message from Gustavo:

  Hello, old man, I found out that Manuel lost touch with the philosophy people when he left university, but that a few weeks ago he was asking questions. His sister disappeared a few years ago and apparently he was investigating. I’m going to get hold of the telephone numbers of these people and ask them what he wanted, what they talked about. Would that help you? Not that such things are easy here. Keep me up-to-date.

  I answered immediately:

  Thanks, Tavo, and if you can find out who his sister was, what kind of people she had dealings with, and when she disappeared, all the better. Thanks, brother. Have a hug from me.

  10

  INTER-NETA’S MONOLOGUES

  I divide myself and I am many, contradictory, wild, clandestine. Today I’m dedicating this space to a friend of mine so that he can tell his story, so that he can talk to you directly, dear bloggers, who is he? is he a projection of me? is he you?

  Guess, read, invent.

  I have a thousand nicknames, but the one I like most is Tongolele. That’s the one they gave me in the Splendor, a karaoke bar in Culiacán in the north of Mexico, where I went to sing once with a boyfriend I had. Or let’s say a friend with benefits, since he was married, not that that kind of thing bothers me. I sang “Ella,” by José Alfredo, and my friend whispered in my ear: you sing like Tongolele, and so that’s how I stayed. I hope you like it. I love it. I’ve seen that part of the public is like me and that’s why I’m going to talk to you quite openly: the name I was born with is horrible, decadent, demeaning: Wilson Amézquita. I had to put up with that horror, God forgive me, until I came of age, when they finally operated on me, as if it were a deformity or a tumor. I feel a knot in my stomach just saying it. Amézquita, that’s gross! I changed it to Jennifer Mor, which is so much more elegant and romantic, suggesting a woman sitting in a drawing room reading the classics, something like Racine’s Phaedra, while outside, in New York, it’s pouring rain and you hear the muffled sound of taxis hooting their horns. I mean, Wilson! I wouldn’t call a tennis ball Wilson! The name suggests a urinal with sawdust and flies in a chichi bar in Choachí. I’m a lady, I have delicate and beautiful things in my mind.

  I changed sex in the Tarabaya Memorial clinic in Bangkok, at the age of twenty-one, after I’d recognized a great truth: I liked being with men, not with fags. Forgive me, I’m well-read and I know such words shouldn’t be used, but they told me I should talk as if I were in my own home. So if they bother you, I’m sorry. As I said, I had my operation in Bangkok. A long way away, but safe. A lot of people have sex changes there, they’re used to it and it always goes well. I read about it in a magazine and then made inquiries. My girlfriends told me I was crazy. Tongolele, you’ve gone crazy! You’ve really lost it! But I was sure. Scheherazade, who’s like a sister to me, was the only one who looked at it a bit scientifically and told me it wasn’t worth it, that it was an unnecessary risk. According to her, women have three pussies: one in the mouth, another in the vagina and the third behind, in the you know what, right? And so she said and still says: of those three I have two and I’m happy with that and I make my men happy, those who also like cock. For Scheherazade that’s enough, but not for me. I wanted real men, the kind who fuck but won’t let themselves be fucked. When I’d recovered from the operation, which takes time—but of course, Bangkok is wonderful!—I went to see a physical trainer, because now came the external transformation… I showed him a photograph of Pamela Anderson, the stunner I wanted to look like, and said: I need to be like that, what do I have to do? how much does it cost?

  He didn’t say it was impossible, although he looked at me sadly. Couldn’t you have chosen an easier model? I said no, Pamela Anderson was the woman of my dreams: if I’d been a man, a man in my soul, it was a girl like her I’d have liked by my side. I’d have liked to find her every morning between the sheets, in the shower, look after her when she had a cold, or see her sitting on the toilet, taking her morning leak. That’s why I want to be like her. Not that it was such a stretch. What I mean, my friends, is that I was already a woman, men gave me the eye when I stood up, when I went out for a walk; I felt that look, the kind that lifts miniskirts, goes through panty material, and burrows away inside, like a termite but really nice, it’s great to be looked at like that, isn’t it, my tongolelos? But let me carry on with my story: with the photograph of Pamela I went to see the best plastic surgeon, a really nice Colombian, Tomás Zapata, who’s the one who beautifies the women who matter in this world, beginning with Amparito Grisales and Fanny Mikey, I’m talking about the body, not the soul, and not only in Colombia but also in Spain and Brazil, where the major leagues are, and I said, Tomasito, my dear friend, this is what there is and this is what we want to have. Then I took out a photograph of Pamela who was originally wearing a thong but who I’d stripped using Photoshop, since I needed to make things clear. Tomás grabbed it from me and said: we’re going to make you very similar, or rather the same, my darling, and the rest is up to you, with that grace and intelligence God gave you. Oh, I love that Tomás! Because as the classics say: there is no beauty without brains.

  But anyway, I’ve been invited here to talk about aspects of my life and my relationship with Pamela, not to philosophize, so I’ll carry on: first came the silicon, the Botox, the nips and tucks, and then, when I’d recovered from it all, I started the physical work. Three hours a day in the gym. The tanning I do with P.A. products, which are the best, the acronym is like an amulet. I attend to everything, every detail, because the body is a painting. Let’s say, for those of you girls who are cultivated, like Rembrandt’s Night Watch. Every fold of the clothes is perfect. That’s how a girl should be if the aim is to be the most beautiful woman in the world, or at least in my world, let’s not be presumptuous. If you want to be a lady and not a floozy. Every tiny thing has to be perfect because otherwise the whole effect is ruined. This lovely hair I have, for example, is natural. You see what I look like today. The day after tomorrow, I’ll be thirty-five and nobody believes me. They all think I’m in my twenties. And some men even confuse me with the original, after a few drinks, but I always say to them: no, darling, I’m the other one, the number two, the original is unattainable! The other day a boyfriend of mine, to make me mad, said I was the poor man’s Pamela. How dumb can you get? If only he knew that I’ve won seven beauty contests in trans bars, at the Latin American level, and have been Miss Wet T-shirt Trans for 2007, 2008, and 2009. In 2010 it was stolen from me and given to the girlfriend of a drug trafficker, a filthy bitch who bribed the judges. When it’s a clean competition, I always win, I’m the most beautiful because I’m identical to Pam. I can imagine you must all be wondering if I know her. Well, I have a little bit of gossip for you: yes, we did see each other once. At a charity parade. She was in her dressing room and I was in mine, but I preferred not to say hello to her. I was scared. What if she’d said something rude to me? What if she’d looked at me anxiously? When it comes down to it, she and I are the two faces of one and the same person. That’s why I prefer not to know her and to continue dreaming. What could I do? I’d either keep quiet, or I could say simply: I always wanted to be you. But that, my darlings, is something you don’t say to anyone. Not even a goddess.

  11
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br />   In those years I had just one friend, Consul, a friend from school who was quite eccentric, and lived a strange life. A quiet guy who spent his evenings reading. His name was Edgar Porras, but sometimes, to play around or to be provocative, he liked to call himself Edgar Allan Porras. As you might imagine, his favorite author was Poe, and he always carried a book by him in his coat, which was a kind of very theatrical olive green overcoat.

  He lived in upper Santa Ana, the rich part, and his house was a palace with nine bedrooms and lots of floors, in the last row before the hills. He knew English and French because he’d lived in various countries, but almost never spoke them. He said he was only interested in languages for reading. I was impressed by his library, it made me feel small. I only knew the little English and French I’d learned at school, which wasn’t enough to read seriously. He on the other hand had, and had read, books in the original language by Céline, Malraux and Camus, Poe and Lovecraft, Salinger and Dylan Thomas, Roth and Bellow, and even authors I had barely heard of like David Foster Wallace, Kurt Vonnegut, John Cheever, and Thomas Pynchon.

  I went to his house at weekends and sometimes slept over. The pretext was studying. My parents didn’t usually allow such things, but since he was from a rich family he impressed Father, who always ended up agreeing. Like the social climbers they were, they thought it was an achievement that their son was spending time with rich families, and Mother, who was addicted to “aspirational” soap operas, talked proudly about the Porras family at the florist’s. Of course Edgar and I never studied, being there was an excuse to do other things, because his family was always going out to dinners or cocktail parties, and the few times they were at home it was because they were throwing parties or dinners for lots of people, and since the house was very big we could be in his room and not hear a thing.

  Señor Porras represented a French oil company, although I never quite understood what exactly his job was. A kind of diplomat in his own country. Edgar’s siblings were older, two brothers and a sister. They were almost never at home, or when they were they almost never left their rooms, I already told you it was a strange house. There was no obligation to be together for meals, so everyone went to the kitchen, served themselves, and went to their rooms to eat as they chatted on Facebook, listened to music, or hung out with other friends. The kitchen was a little restaurant with a bit of everything. The sister’s name was Gladys and she was older than Juana.

  As well as being crazy about books, Edgar was also sex-mad and once told me that he knew how to spy on Gladys when she was having a bath. One Sunday he insisted that we go look at her. The bathroom had a high window that looked into a lavatory. If you climbed on the toilet you could see the shower cubicle. I said no but he insisted, saying she was really something, that she had huge tits and a fabulous ass. I found it strange that he should talk like that about his sister, and I told him that, but for him it was normal. Life is life, he would say, you have to take things as they come. He confessed to me that he’d steal her used panties and thongs, smell them, and jerk off. Finally we went to look at her, and to our surprise, she was with a guy and they were fucking like crazy. Standing with her back to him, her hands clutching the faucets, lifting her ass, and then on her knees sucking his cock, which was incredible. Edgar wanted to make a video and ran to his room for his BlackBerry, I’m going to put it on YouTube! he said. I preferred not to look, thinking of my sister.

  In that family everything was strange, out of proportion, but I liked him, plus he was very generous. He passed on to me half the things they brought him back from their travels. The only time I ever had a Lacoste T-shirt was thanks to him, also a pair of Adidas and a Nike T-shirt. At that age, things like that are important. Later you forget, but at the age of seventeen they mark you.

  His eldest brother, Carlos, would give us matchboxes filled with marijuana and say: take it nice and slowly, don’t overdo it, kids, okay? and if they catch you don’t say a word, if I saw you I’ll say I don’t remember. His father locked the bar, but Edgar knew how to open it by removing a wooden panel, so on Saturdays we’d steal bottles of wine or whiskey, whatever we could find, and take them with us to the parks in Santa Ana and Santa Bárbara, where we’d read poetry, especially Barba Jacob and León de Greiff, and of course, poems by Poe in English that Edgar knew by heart, and would yell at the quarries and the hills, cursing them, challenging Bogotá like a Colombian Rastignac.

  Sometimes he’d read me things he’d written himself, and that surprised me. I’d never before met anybody who wanted to be a writer, an idea my father would have thought sinister. Edgar used to say that being a writer was the greatest thing a human being could aspire to. As far as he was concerned, anything in book form was sacred.

  He had a text about vocation that he read to me every now and again and which I remember word for word, I don’t know who he copied it from or if it was actually his, but it stayed with me for a long time. It more or less went like this:

  You realize you’re a writer when the things that swirl or echo in your head won’t let you concentrate on anything else: neither reading nor watching a movie nor listening to what other people are saying, not even your teacher or your best friend. When your girlfriend yells: you’re not listening to me! and slams the door and takes off, and you exclaim, what a relief, and keep thinking about your things. It’s a relief when our loved ones leave us alone. If what’s happening inside your head is more powerful than what’s outside and can be translated into sentences, you’re a writer. If you don’t write, then you should think about it, it might suit you. If you are a writer, the worst thing is not to write. The bad news, given the times we live in, is that you can also tell yourself you’re really fucked.

  I, on the other hand, never told him I painted graffiti. That was a secret world, the one closest to my heart, and I could only share it with Juana. Several times he asked me, what about you, man, don’t you write? how can you not write if you like novels so much? not even poetry? and I’d say, I prefer reading, I’m very passive or very cerebral, I like to contemplate the world from a distance, to see without being seen, it’s an idea of the sublime I read about later, Consul, the sublime as the terrible seen from a safe place, that was the kind of thing I said to Edgar when, guessing that I had secrets, he started asking questions.

  When we heard that David Foster Wallace had committed suicide, Edgar dressed all in black and invited me over to his house. He looked pale. We stole a bottle of Martini from his father’s bar, along with four packs of salt and vinegar potato chips imported from England, a jar of high-quality tuna, and a Dutch cheese, and went to Usaquén Cemetery to throw a dinner in his honor. Edgar took with him a couple of original editions. I had managed to get hold of Spanish versions of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which according to Edgar were amazing in the original. As I already said, I had a complex about the fact that I didn’t know English. Or rather: that I didn’t speak it as naturally and resonantly as the people from bilingual schools. I could say everything, using few words, but reading literature was frustrating. On every line I’d find things that I understood well enough from the context, but that left me with the feeling I was missing the most important part.

  To get into the cemetery you had to go around the wall and along a side passage until you came to a garage door that was always kept shut. It was a barred door and you could climb over it and jump down on the other side. That’s what we did.

  Edgar liked the upper part of the cemetery, toward the hills, adjacent to the parking lot of a supermarket, because there was a series of graves without stones, with names written by hand on fresh cement. One of them said: “My son.” There we sat down and opened the bag of food. We ate and drank toasts to the soul of David Foster Wallace, inviting him to this poor, simple cemetery in a poor, simple country in one of the poorest and simplest regions of the world. We kept passing each other the bottle of Martini until we were drunk. We staggered around,
sang, cried out the titles of Wallace’s books, and, incredibly, I felt free, so free it made me dizzy. I would have been capable of anything, however absurd or impossible. I could have run to the top of the hill and left that city forever.

  To make things more exciting, Edgar rolled a joint and we took great puffs at it, and when we finished it we read out loud, and at that moment a gust of wind knocked over our plastic cups and Edgar cried, he’s here! it’s Wallace! We welcomed him with a bow and a few more drinks.

  My head was spinning and I started throwing up, which forced me to move away; being young, that kind of thing embarrassed me. He was rich, free, brought up to do as he pleased, while I concealed a little hell in my house. I was shy. When he appeared, I told him I’d gone to take a leak and had felt the need to be alone. He said, sure, brother, I understand, but we finished the bottle and the joint, and we went home.