by Lazaro Lima
Moment Number 2. One or two weeks after, with a most perfect Persian fuck buddy in Westwood, a fellow alumnus, shorter and flirtier than I am. It had been until then an exciting and useful months-long sexual relationship. Every couple of weeks I’d come to his tiny single apartment after working late at the office, leaving files, bibliographies, e-mails, and professional insecurities behind for the night. I’d bring bottles of wine, and, after the perfunctory TV cable cruising and cross-cultural comparisons, he’d get up from the couch where I’d caress his hair and he’d turn on the stereo and select the song in his CD player, the one he always played, over, and over, and over. I’d make love to him for a portion of the night, our senses numbed and intermittently vaporized with the help of several of his small glass bottles of poppers, erotic time thus slowed down to match the tempo and make history that much longer. On more than one occasion he had suggested that I penetrate him raw—without coming, of course, he clarified—because it felt so much better. He reassured me of being HIV negative. Once, he even offered to pull the paper evidence out of a drawer across the cramped room; as he was going to reach for it, I told him I didn’t need to see it, that I believed him, a most odd, on-the-spot negotiation of trust, I thought, unconvinced. I always rationalized nicely why we should not give in, taking the upper hand in the situation—literally—controlling his body and his hands, making sure lube and condoms were always around us, the reassurances close to me that I’ve always needed, not to feel alone with irresponsibility. Until this one night. Then, the wine, the fumes, the same song over and over, and the same body parts on the same section of the bed simply come together stronger and my insistence against the pleasure he has offered too many times before caves in. It is as if he has dared me one too many times, and I have called his bluff, perhaps my own. Of course I come inside after a forceful fuck, perhaps with a vengeance while disregarding his violent grunts as he holds on tightly to my torso, a rampage; I know he knows what we’re doing, that he feels me deep inside, can’t imagine that he wants me to stop, for us to end. The feeling of that closeness persists, its memory as fresh today as then. After my release I lie on my back next to him, until he gets up, and reassure him of the safety of our trespass—this wasn’t just my doing. I have no paper documentation to offer, just my testimony. But neither one of us is entirely convinced. I shower later that morning and leave after we have a bagel sandwich nearby. We never talk again. I see him at a bar a year later in another city; I am not sure if he sees me, but I ignore him and our earlier history.
Moment Number 3. Sometime in the summer before I start teaching, at my favorite bathhouse in Los Angeles, right next to the freeway, sunbathing naked bodies caressed by the exhaust-filtered humming of the 101. Inside the multiracial maze, with safety all around us—lube, condoms, raggedy bleached towels, and a dim light in my tiny room close to the showers—he positions himself for me to enter. Fit, friendly, handsome, and hungry, he moans as we both control the rhythm, everything well placed, calculated, measured. I finish inside, reassured of its appropriate context, and he does too, loudly, both so satisfied, hearts beginning to slow back down. He remains lying on his stomach; I remain inside, lying on his back, total silence. And then, no longer needing him, I pull out and realize the artificial latex barrier between us was broken. Neither one of us cared to check in the process, which is recommended, and which is so easy to forget. After seconds of silent dialogue with myself, I choose not to burden him with this detail of our encounter. Later in the day, outside and under the brightness of the L.A. sun, I wonder if others have done me the same favor before.
Moments Number 4 and 5 in this itinerary. Different geographies and bodies and races and dimensions, but all similar moments of uncertainty, pleasure, and deep sadness over the loneliness of queer life and queer death, however I exaggerate it but can’t ignore, of queer survival with dignity when you feel the weight of responsibility is all over you. And you feel that you can fail yet again, whether you want to or not. This was, actually, a very biased itinerary of the anxiety-ridden kind, for what I failed to do in that evening of queer sexual narrative disclosure to the self, and during that week of pre- and post-testing self-suspension, was to remind myself of the dozens of times I did privilege safety, when I ensured and experienced queer pleasure with others within the modern dictates of sexual conduct. Our culture of HIV antibody testing has generally failed to deliver the message of hope and faith, to recognize honestly human frailties as much as human agency. The cultures of shame, stigma, silence, and denial continue, some better than others, and I am often embarrassed to admit, sadly, how tough it has been to challenge them. And no amount of academic degrees can protect you against that. One week after the drawing of blood, now with the excitement of having reconnected with a man I felt so attracted to a year earlier (now my boyfriend), I drive to a Santa Barbara clinic to get my results. My routine during this week of waiting is rather surreal, again an individual silence around HIV testing as I choose not to share the process with anyone, that weeklong deep emotional reflection hovering over my writing, my speaking, day and night. Finally, I walk into the post-testing counselor’s office quite self-assured, tired of feeling guilty, and rationalizing both a possible negative or positive result. It’s been thirteen years that I’ve remained negative, I remind myself, not a bad accomplishment in queer time. He’s quick in his delivery of the good news, almost too quick, given the exaggerated weight of its meaning on my psyche. I am more relaxed from that moment on, but not fully satisfied, as I know that I have been here before, in that nice, momentary state of assurance. Because I know that it’s kind of going back to zero, the score cleared, with only my erotic history helping me move forward. The counselor asks me if I have any questions, if I need condoms (I take several packets), and is happy to hear that I do have some comments for him. The counselor is engaged and a bit surprised, it seems, for me to be so specific and matter-of-fact about a frustration I communicate to him. I explain how much I have thought, these months before this latest testing round, about sexual negotiation, and how tiring it had been for me, more often than not, to be the one trying to be consistent about condom use, with inconsistent lovers, and how defeating it felt to acquiesce to the other’s request for naked pleasure. At least that’s what I tell him, maybe trying to justify my own actions, trying to delimit the borders of my own individual human agency. Perhaps what I am communicating to him, dressed as personal frustration, is actually the forced recognition that I often get tired of safer-sex practices, for fifteen years now, and that, like thousands of others, I tend to “slip” more and more, and simply cannot find better scapegoats for my raw desire than those closest to my queer, desperate self. I promise the counselor that I will return more consistently to this testing site, a mutual, reassuring pact between us to at least keep the questions over queer safety and desire alive. He has no final answers for me either, but the conversation remains. Yet another silence in the open.
My Father and His Son: Late Summer 2004
Three months later, the roles of patient and counselor in this game of life switch. My then-eighty-seven-year-old father has had two trips to the emergency room in a week, and all the medical exams are not able to determine what is going on with his digestive system. As I translate between him and the young Chinese doctor, I see how disappointed he is to hear that he will need more testing, this time a colonoscopy that will require drinking more nasty fluids to prepare his system. He tells the doctor he simply cannot do it then, that he needs to go home to rest, and that he needs to wait a week. I feel for my father’s weariness and admire his successful negotiations with all the medical authorities he’s become dependent on. The smiling doctor, understanding my father’s discomfort, agrees that it’s a wise move. I take out my PalmPilot and coordinate a date when I can drive him back. I want to do this now because once the academic teaching run begins again and students and faculty land on campus, my time with my parents is cut short. As they age, my parents’ illnesse
s give me the urgency simply to care more and just be there. It’s a driving routine with multiple doctors, clinics, and hospitals that my oldest sister knows far better than I do. But this time it’s my turn. Two weeks later we are in a high-tech clinic near my parents’ home. I am taking my father for his colonoscopy. His walk is so much slower now, carefully measuring the distance of each one of the few steps at home, slouching a bit more, his hearing and vision slightly worse, although mentally sharp as ever, all the detailed memories of El Salvador still present. He has been worried all these weeks that it might be something really bad, he tells me, like cancer. I explain to him the many other possibilities, speaking frankly and so self-assured about the eventual negative diagnosis he receives. I am actually reassuring him to reassure myself about my own father’s life. Once close to the examination room, I help him undress a little, but leave the bathroom once a friendly white nurse who calls me “hon” smiles and indicates that she will take over. I take with me my father’s wallet, his scarf, and his raggedy green faux-leather bag full of medication bottles, all the corroboration of his conditions in the past few years. As I wait for nearly two hours in the lobby, I write in my journal, read a boring academic article, and refuse to think about the future. Once he comes out of sedation I return to the recovery area and realize my father has no idea the procedure has already taken place. I reassure him that all is well, having talked to the doctor for a while. I spare him unnecessary details, and tell him that the doctor has recommended more fiber, prune juice, and another colonoscopy in three years. I especially like this last request from the doctor, as it marks life in time and a date with the future. My father does not laugh but seems a bit amused with being able to make, in his age and at that moment, such a long-term appointment with life. But he is relieved to know it’s only a matter of having a better diet. As we prepare to leave, I help him stand up in his white gown, help him remove it, and try not to see too much of his small, aging naked body, more than five decades of psoriasis, and the plastic tubes he now needs to live a relatively normal, though constrained, daily life. Once he is fully dressed, a nurse takes him on a wheelchair close to the curb, where I am ready in my car to take him back to my mother.
I often wonder what my father thinks of me, beyond the academic success and big-mouthed irreverent immigrant clown that I strive to be. I am thinking more of me, his gay son, the end of a particular bloodline (though not the only one for him), and what my queer public life means to him. Months after the colonoscopy, he gets to meet my boyfriend for the first time during a brief visit home I make to talk with my older sister about the progress of the house expansion. My mother, caring as ever, has food ready for her son and his man; she is meeting for the first time a person who’s there to comfort and nurture her last child when I am not in my parents’ home. The day I told her I had a boyfriend she thanked God.
This could only be a quick first visit for me as I am still trying to put together all the essential pieces in my life, blood and queer kinships. And it’s all beginning to feel right. I continue to live between distances: my job site where I teach, do committee work, and try to avoid destructive academic politics; my parents’ expanded and now more comfortable place, so loaded and so rich with our histories of immigration, displacement, and struggle; and, for several years, a city of immigrant landings, Los Angeles, and all its queer Latino present and history of life and death, including the one I am still learning how to negotiate within desire, risk, pleasure, and commitment. Constantly shuffling folders, files, freeways, and feelings is not easy, but I know it is the only way for this queer survival I most desire now. Accepting an award at an academic conference of mostly heterosexual white folks, most decades older than I am, matters; hearing my father appreciate the fact that I can travel sometimes to take him to the latest round of medical exams, matters; and having whatever spaces possible to not simplify Latino and queer worlds, and the survival we all deserve in them, matters too.
La Fiesta de Los Linares
JANET ARELIS QUEZADA
The lanterns on the ground lit the faces of Los Linares as they told jokes and stories. They sat on overturned crates and old cane-bottom chairs. It was hot, and shirtsleeves were rolled back; some feet were bare. They had eaten already, and the relaxation of their mouths slack from chewing the good food allowed the stories to flow freely.
The three wooden structures on the lot were filled with people and candles too, but most of the celebration was taking place outside. The two rooms behind the storefront that faced the road that went by were small and warm. When there weren’t any celebrations Doña Tomasa and Teresa, her eldest daughter by her first husband Dagoberto, slept in one back room and Amalia and Yuni slept in the other. The two houses, no more than rooms really, were separated by a patch of land and some grass and tonight had been taken over by two hostile groups. One held the young crowd that wanted to hear music other than that of the merengue trio that had been hired for the night. The other held the strained, earnest voices of a choir singing about the son of God.
The younger cousins went in and out of the store to borrow some sodas for the party, avoiding the entrances to both small houses and trying not to let the store proprietor notice their bottles of malta. Tío Yuni had stopped deducting the amount from his inventory as soon as he had sat down in front of Alberto, Danny, and Chepo for a serious game of dominoes. On the ground around the lanterns sat most of Saturnino and Tomasa’s children, the six boys who had grown beards and mustaches in the same places and four of the six girls who were thin and bony, covering their smiles behind their hands as they listened to the picardía of their brothers. Older grandchildren and many friends of the family sat there too. Tato, who had been raised with the Linares boys, was the best and loudest storyteller among them.
Mamá Tomasa sat in her rocking chair, a little bit removed from the group, talking to Teresa and some of the wives of her sons and directing all the action around her. She was gray haired and wrinkled but with a tall spine and a firm way of carrying herself. She searched the faces of her family, looking for anything that she needed to attend to, and then dispatched someone to come bring that person to her so she could advise, admonish, or animar.
Dulce tried to keep out of the elders’ sight. She stayed around the circle of people watching the dominoes game, her body reacting appropriately to the drama of the match while her eyes and mind focused on Amalia. She watched Yuni slam down one of the ivory rectangles onto the table. “Así es que se juega, carajo.” He was excited and a little bit touched by rum, but not too much, out of respect. Everyone at the party glanced over at Doña Tomasa throughout the night to make sure that nothing that had been said had offended her. In moments of uncertainty and deep tension, when someone had tipped over a bottle, or told a really dirty joke, or two people had begun to argue, she would say calmly to the crowd: “Esta es mi fiesta, y quiero que la disfruten, pero con mucho cuidado. Que no se me alboroten mucho, ¿me entienden?”
Dulce tried to be calm. Eso de no alborotarse mucho was difficult for her. Especially now in the middle of this party at this old house. She had practically grown up here, just like Tato, only much later. She felt comfortable moving about the genial women and men of this family. She felt comfortable pulling the ears of the many children who were running about if they were giving too much lata. But she could not keep her feelings still. They moved con picante like the music that was coming out of the accordion, the tambor, and the guiro. She had a place here among these people: “Esa siempre está allí arrimadita con los hombres, tú sabes, pero no te apures; es bien tranquila.” It was okay for her, here, to sit with the men and play poker or to sip a little beer. She wore her big bowler hat that she had bought from one of the New York cousins last year and watched Amalia, hoping, just hoping.
“¿Por qué tiene la cara tan seria, ésa?”
“It’s just the game. Look at them; you know how they all get. And Dulce has always been just like the men.”
“Amal
ia!”
“¿Sí, abuela?”
“¿Por qué no bailas? Yo sé que te gusta.”
“No tengo mi pareja.”
The women gathered around Tomasa looked over at Yuni, Amalia’s new husband, and then back at Amalia.
“Este merengue se baila sola,” cantó Ramonita.
“Vaya, Amalita, ves; you don’t have to dance this with him. Go ahead. I like to see you dance, mija.” Tía Teresa laughed.
“Este se baila no importa la hora. ¡Sí, ay! Se baila sola.” Ramonita continued singing the popular song and Amalia finally got up.
Amalia closed her eyes and let her hips go into a trance, pulled by the music of the trio. She closed her eyes and shook her shoulders, letting all those New York cousins notice the way a real merenguera danced to the sound of tamboras. She was proud of the eyes she knew were looking her way.
Dulce watched the shadows around the trees that the lanterns made. Some of them flickered with the movement of dancers and others hovered in place. She wondered if she could pick out the shadow that belonged to Amalia. She knew that she could not look at Amalia’s face. The music quickened her pulse, almost knocking her down. She watched one of the shadows, now sure that she had found Amalia’s form; the rest of the shadows were parejas; this one whirled alone. Mesmerized by the movements, she imagined that slowly the shadow was taking on flesh.
The song was over and the band took a break. Ramonita la Flaca went over to the pile of soda bottles and popped one open. She smiled at Doña Tomasa but was not ready to go over and congratulate her on reaching another year in her life. She was not ready to look into those eyes, yet. But she was more than willing to go back to her spot and play and sing for her.