by Lazaro Lima
I found it.
I rip the announcement off the board and run home to make the call. Don Juan is a Santería priest from Costa Rica who is traveling throughout the U.S. He is raising funds for his village, which is on the verge of economic catastrophe due to the plummeting trade value of coffee beans. He will be in Buffalo for a day, offering private sessions for $200 an hour. If I translate for him, I can have a session for free. My mind is racing with the cappuccino still fresh in my bloodstream. I’ll do it, I tell the man who is coordinating the sessions at Rust Belt Books.
The back room in the bookstore, normally a site for poetry readings and art installations, is set up with an altar for the Orishas. Atop a white cloth is a feast for the gods—fresh fruit and flowers, salted codfish, feathers and candles, coconuts and corn, water and rum. There is a fishbowl in the center. I am watching the tiny fish, marveling at their vivid metallic colors while Don Juan prepares himself for a day of ceremonies. He is a small man, lean and strong, with intense eyes, dressed in white. He sprinkles the space with scented waters and chants in Lucumí.
I sit on a straw mat on the floor. I close my eyes and breathe deeply.
I am in Cuba now. On the terrace of a spirit house in Old Havana, meeting with a Babalao. He is puffing a cigar and the smoke is all around me. I come to inquire about my brother, who is gone from Earth. I am in the Barrio Jesús María, looking up at a balcony on the second floor. Someone throws a rope down with a key dangling at the end. I snatch it, open the door, walk up a hot, dark circular stairwell and into a house ruled by Yemayá. A santera is cleansing me with flower water, speaking to the spirits on my behalf. I am in Buena Vista, nighttime, at a drum ceremony. Spirits are all around me, dancing, laughing, flirting. I am in Matanzas, wearing white. It is dusk and the batá drums are calling me to the spirits. I am dancing. I am outside of myself. I am one with the spirit. It moves into me swiftly, sweetly. I am in bliss.
I am in Miami. A santera is sweeping my body with branches. I am in Miami Beach, whiffing the fresh blood of a dove. It is intoxicating. I am in Bogotá, meeting with a curandera, in an apartment near Seventh Avenue, downtown. She is burning dried herbs and I am cradling a coconut in my hands, praying. I am in Gainesville, Florida, calling the four directions, casting a circle with a group of women. We are all in the nude, bound together by a red cord. It is dark and there is a fire and a goblet with wine being passed around.
I am at Niagara Falls, throwing sacred collares into the rapids. I am in Buffalo, talking to a medium. My brother is with me, she tells me. I have found him.
I am at home in Buffalo. Here is my altar for Ochún. Above the altar is a photograph—I am kissing Antenna on the side of her neck. Her hand is in my hair; she is pulling me into her. Beneath us is a color photograph of two mermaids underwater. They are seducing each other.
ireally really miss you now and long to see you.
I am at home, surrounded by Frida Kahlo and ponytail plants and la Virgen de Guadalupe and Audre Lorde and the Chibchas and Shakira and la Patasola and beaded curtains and smoking prayers and San Antonio and the tree of life and pyramids and pussy willows and flamenco dancers and good-luck bamboos and chunks of rose quartz and clusters of amethyst crystals. I am burning sage. I am splashing myself with Florida water. I am offering libations to the spirits. I am hitting the Chinese gong. Clanking on the energy chimes. Clicking the castanets and dancing around the house like a wild woman.
I open my eyes. The cobalt-blue fish is still and seems to be looking at me. Seven candles are burning on the altar. Don Juan has made markings on the floor with white powder. He will cast sixteen shells and divine my future. He will converse with spirit guides in an ancient language and translate their messages for me. He will give me recipes that require specific herbs and sticks.
When I get home I will set up a new e-mail account and an instant messaging system so that I can fuck Antenita electronically, like she wants. I will put a map of New Zealand on Ochún’s altar and ask for her blessing and guidance.
I will fuck all I want, and love all I want, and live all I want. Here, and there. So mote it be. Aché.
The Unequivocal Moon
ELÍAS MIGUEL MUÑOZ
You’re still working on that?” he asks. “Still,” I reply, as I sip the margarita he just made for me. It’s my second one already, and he’s only been here for an hour. His wife knows that Ray is getting high with me. As usual, I’ll give up an evening of writing, he’ll give up three hours of sleep. Our occasional tête-à-tête (my word) is always a blast (his word), a place created by and for the hombres amigos that we are. He brings the booze, I provide the entertainment: food, music, and a late-night rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s a show we both enjoy for different reasons; predictably, Ray likes the ships and gadgets, whereas I go for the mind trips.
He tells me that there’ll be a full moon in two weeks, on the fifteenth.
“We should make plans,” he suggests. “Like the last time …”
“Oh, Ray,” I say in jest. “The moon is such a hackneyed symbol.”
“Hackneyed?” he mispronounces.
“Trite, overused, meaningless.”
“It’s not meaningless.”
“The moon is a parasite,” I decree, feeling playful. “It depends on the sun for its light.”
“Bullshit!”
“The moon belongs in the Land of the Dead, amigo mío.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Wrong. I know everything. Have you forgotten?”
“Not everything.”
“La Luna is a treacherous monster, both a loving mother and a demon.”
“Maybe the moon is all those things you say …”
“It is.”
“But you sure loved it the last time, up there, with me. Didn’t you?”
His eyes are retelling the story of one recent night, when up on the roof of my condo we got high on weed and Dos Equis. And we almost kissed.
“It was a full moon,” he recalls.
“So beautiful. We toasted to its light.”
He’s laughing. “And you wanted my body!”
“No, I didn’t,” I lie.
“You kept touching me, holding me.”
“I was cold!”
“Yeah, you wanted some heat, that’s for sure.”
“Are you drunk, Ray? So soon? How about some quesadillas?”
Ignoring my questions, he decides to lift the coffee table with his legs, as he lounges on the futon, his favorite spot. “Ándale,” he boasts, “sit on the table. I can take you!”
“That’s OK,” I say, unwilling to comply. “I know you could take me.”
He lets go of the table and touches my thighs. A timid caress.
“Other men,” I tell him, “are afraid of this kind of intimacy.”
He smiles. “But we’re not like those other men.”
“You know what makes us different, Ray?” I’m right on cue.
I imagine he’ll say something like … the fact that we worship the moon. But his response doesn’t surprise me.
“The size of our dicks,” he replies.
I seize the opportunity: “Let’s compare.”
Ray sticks his hand in his Bermuda shorts and fondles himself. “Like the baseball players,” he says. “They shift their dicks around all the time …”
I make an effort to stay cool, not to let my ganas—longing, hunger— show: “Their pants are too tight.” And I go on, nonchalant, “Mine is seven point five.”
“Seven point five? What kind of a size is that?”
“You know what I mean. Seven and a half. How about yourself ?”
“I’ve got a big verga. And I don’t need no comparison to prove it.”
“Who cares, anyway.”
Ray’s not deterred by my indifference; he can tell I’m faking it.
“You know, last weekend,” he announces, “on our way to Big Bear Lake, Luisa sucked me off whi
le I drove. For two whole hours! You know she gets wet just looking at my dick?”
He looks at me, between my legs where my hand is moving back and forth. I’m sitting on the wicker chair. Ray stares, “Is that your boner, what I’m seeing?”
I must disappoint him: “No. It’s my thumb.”
“Big thumb.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Is your verga bigger than your thumb?”
“I told you my size already.”
“I forgot.”
“No more margaritas for you.”
“Come here.” He grabs my wrist, pulls me to him. I trip and fall on his lap. He’s fondling himself again. “You can help.” He seems annoyed by my inertia. “Get into it,” he orders me.
It’s my turn for some teasing: “What do you mean get into it, Ray? You mean grab your big brown verga and suck on it? Suck on it hard and hungry for two hours?”
“Maybe just one …”
“Sorry, querido. I’m not your Luisa.”
I pull away, walk to the kitchen. He follows me and touches my ass, rubs himself against me. “You like the fact that I’m strong, don’t you?” he says. “You dig my muscles.”
I should tell him that I find his strength—or, rather, his fixation with it—boring. But I won’t. Instead, I’ll let him impress me. “Yeah, I’d say you’re very well built.”
“Hit my arm,” he demands. “You’ll see that it’s like hitting a wall.”
I hit him. He reacts with a wrestling maneuver, swiftly, pulling my right arm behind my body, twisting it, and placing his right leg between my legs. I can’t move; my left hand is free, though, and I use it. I touch his left thigh and his buns.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“Yeah, you’ve got muscles of steel, Ray.”
“Do they turn you on?”
“Yes. Now let go of me.”
“Not yet …”
“Now!”
He does as I say. I’m free of him. But I didn’t want him to let go, not really. In fact, tonight I’m envisioning a perfect fantasy, a story without a happy ending for Ray, because it could obliterate his wife and his domestic bliss. It must happen at the stroke of twelve, under the moon-light, when and where I can become who I want to be for him …
He takes me. I fight back, but he’s stronger. I am, after all, his delicate mujer, the frail Caribbean queen of his Aztlán kingdom. As he invades me—ay, his thrusts!—I realize that the fantasy has gone beyond its truest form, that a man who feels this pain will never fear the moon.
It’s past midnight. We’re sprawled on the futon, having just watched a first-season episode of The Next Generation. Ray seems satisfied, relaxed, filled with booze and quesadillas.
He turns to me: “I always feel like a king here.”
I react, again on cue: “Indeed, Your Highness, under this humble roof you’re wanted and loved and well fed by your faithful servant.” He smiles, stares at the blank TV screen.
His servant, not his queen—she’s waiting for him elsewhere. No, I’m something else. His courtier? The court’s buffoon? I’ve let myself be pushed, I’ve played weak. No: I am the scribe. My strength—he has decided it—lies in the mind. Mine is the power of words.
The king brings out a binder he carries with him everywhere. This multilayered notebook organizes his life. Work: he’s a land surveyor for the Colina Company. Build shelves in garage: he owns a brand new tract house. Fix truck: he’s a part-time mechanic. Dinner out: at Denny’s or Chili’s. Movie: on cable. Mass: he’s true to his Catholic roots.
Every eight or ten pages there’s a short vocabulary list, with many entries culled from our encounters. Tonight Ray enters unequivocal, a word Captain Picard used in the episode we just watched, about desertion and the escalating threat of war. The captain, Ray’s hero, pronounced it in his customary way—male essence and wisdom teleported to us from a distant future.
“What does it mean?” Ray asks. “Do you know?”
“Yes, I do. When something—a word, a thought, an idea—is unequivocal, it has only one possible meaning or interpretation. It is clear and unambiguous, to the point. Absolute.”
He tries to use the word but fails. Too drunk. I provide an example, “Your masculinity is unequivocal,” and he nods in agreement. Now I should challenge him, wrestle with him, and immobilize him: What is the absolute meaning of your masculinity, Ray? What is so clear, so unambiguous, about your desire? How does your manliness fit into our moon ritual?
Hard questions. Not a fair match. “It’s getting late,” I tell him.
He scrambles to his feet, heads for the door. “Buenas noches,” he mumbles.
In minutes he’ll be gone, and I’ll beat off, imagining the love he’ll make to his wife, the sex we could’ve had, our long hour... Then I’ll tell myself that this, whatever it is, has to end. For good. Because I’m supposed to be older and wiser. Time to go again, it seems. I know I’ll never grow roots in this unreal city. Colina, a place where Ray stands out because he has a dark Mexican face, and where I sort of fit in because I’m a white Cuban American.
He helped build many areas of this Orange County town and was tempted by its beauty and safety. So he left his native Santa Ana and poured his savings into a down payment. Ray can barely afford the mortgage, but he wants to belong here. In his impeccable home on a verdant hill, he has a full-time housewife. Ray likes being the breadwinner, the ship’s captain. He’ll stay in Colina and have children, enjoy BBQ grills on Sundays, picnics at Colina Lake, soccer games with his boys at Verde Hill Park. And I’ll renounce our friendship because it must be done.
“There’ll be a luna llena on the fifteenth,” he reminds me.
“I’m sick of the moon, Ray.”
“Yeah. But you’ll be here all the same, waiting for me.”
“Ray,” I say as I hug him. “What you have with Luisa … is it important to you?”
“The most important thing in my life.”
“You’d never want to hurt her …”
“What are you telling me?”
“I think you know.”
“We haven’t done anything bad,” he says like a niñito caught in the act.
“Not yet,” observes the old sage who can see the future.
Ray walks out the door, turns to me. “I always feel great when I’m with you,” he admits. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel that way.”
“I agree.”
“So you don’t want me to come back?”
“No, I don’t. Not until the next full moon, anyway.”
Dear Rodney
EMANUEL XAVIER
This summer promises to be our most adventurous. My available sister of sin, Leo, and I will be away just about every weekend and even had to pencil in our movie schedules. God forbid I actually start seriously dating anyone. They’ll only get dinner, rentals, and walks in the park from me—at least until the fall. And we all know how cold it gets in New York during the winter. I have met someone who lives just a few blocks away. It’s much sweeter than phone conversations with guys who live in Kentucky. It will be nice to ask questions like “Would you like to meet up for lunch or a stroll in the neighborhood?” rather than “What’s the weather like down there?” However, we did meet on Adam4Adam.com, and he lured me with his cock pic. At least I know we are sexually compatible and I know he is also a Madonna fan from the framed photographs throughout his apartment. He also happens to be a yoga instructor. This is definitely one of the pros of gentrification. I used to have to travel into the city to meet hotties like this.
Of course, there was the tall blond who was into a lot of foreplay and the whole daddy-son role-playing. He really enjoyed spanking me and cuddling. He also asked a lot of questions about my first time. It was only weird when he asked me to imagine myself as a ten-year-old boy. Then it got a little creepy and I told him I had to be up early the next morning for school. He finally got his dick in me, molested me or whatever, and I got him
to leave. In the end, it was kind of hot. However, I think I scared him off afterward. When he asked me, “Do you know what bad boys get?” I looked at him blankly. He then proceeded to spank me on the ass really hard. I then asked, “Do you know what bad daddies get?” He pondered the question for a minute before I answered it for him: “Five to ten years!”
The next day, I found out my ex-boyfriend, a police sergeant, was arrested for allegedly having sex with a now-twelve-year-old boy over the course of five years. His arrest happened after we broke up so I suppose now I know why it didn’t work out between us. The whole time we were dating, I was thinking that as a police officer he couldn’t imagine being seriously involved with a former drug dealer and hustler. Turns out it was because he may have been a pedophile.
So we went back to Hillside Campgrounds for Memorial Day weekend. As the person who introduced us to camping, you were totally missed. Everyone asked about you, to which we replied, “He’s away with family this weekend.” The usual hedonism of men and alcohol ensued. Leo blacked out and doesn’t remember how we almost got eighty-sixed from the campgrounds after he decided to whip out his dick and get a blow job in the middle of the strip by some guy worth completely forgetting. The next evening, we crashed Cumalot’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show” party by showing up with hoodies and pretending we ended up at the wrong party. When asked, our response was cued as, “I thought this was the ‘Rocky’ party!” I went as “El Rocky,” Leo went as “Rocky Road,” and we christened Mark “Rocky Feather-boa.” We were a subtle hit among all the sweet transvestites and got drinks poured into our mouths, as we couldn’t hold any cups with those giant boxing gloves. My package was quite revealing in those boxing shorts and, as expected, I got so laid.