My Favorite Girlfriend was a French Bulldog

by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias

  We leave the bar drunk, the android, my friend, and I. Our walk recalls characters by Severo Sarduy or Reinaldo Arenas, our arms around one another while we’re falling down laughing, me and the android kissing behind the trees along the sidewalk. The android has an iPod with an amplifier. He carries it in his hand like a music box. “It is a music box,” he tells me. “You are music and I am music.” At every tree we kiss behind the android asks me, “Does your father look like this tree?”

  Really, the trees in this city annoy me. So pruned and clipped they seem artificial. They seem rootless and un-perennial. In my brain I’ve drawn up a list of famous trees: baobab, eucalyptus, willow, birch, pine, fir, ceiba, chestnut, maple, cedar, cypress. “I would like to kiss you behind a cypress,” the android whispers to me like a lecherous child. I think about how this tree, where we are now, has the same genetic information as my heart.

  They kicked us out of the bar. We don’t need that bar to have fun. A bar that pays homage to Fernando Pérez’s worst movie. They should be ashamed. They should come and apologize to us. The bar’s owner found us in the bathroom, kissing, with the iPod and speaker turned all the way up, and the bar’s owner didn’t find it charming, he found it obscene, a disgrace. He made a motion like he was going to hit us; my friend came in, shoved him; he shoved us.

  * * *

  The year two thousand and one marks the beginning of a very personal exploration by each of the Enchanted Deer’s members on the subject of illness, and the central text of that investigation was the novel Beach Birds, by Severo Sarduy. Severo Sarduy has been considered one of our members since nineteen ninety-eight. The discovery of his work contributed to defining the poetics of the Enchanted Deer, based on the connection between the narrative language put forth by Severo Sarduy and theatrical language. In terms of the relationship between Severo Sarduy’s work and that of the Enchanted Deer, I would point to how neither are informational in nature, but rather are metaphorical; their interest is not in telling a story, but in showing a situation that puts the reader/spectator into a certain physical state. This is one of the reasons why working with sensation is the basis of the Enchanted Deer. “I am sick,” whispers the android behind one of the trees, “and I’m going to turn into an enchanted deer, or a golden antelope, I’m not sure.”

  Another particularity that brings the works of Severo Sarduy and the Enchanted Deer closer is the relationship between body and writing, which the author himself engaged with through his creative process. He considered writing to be a physical exercise, and he would do a dance for finding the precise word until the word appeared. His work’s intention lay in provoking pleasure that was not intellectual but rather sensory, its impulse to invade the reader, absorb him. “So my writing is my sexuality?” the android asks me, his red button lit up.

  The decision to sleep at his house is made by all three of us. His house, located at a mid-point between where we are standing and my house, seems like a real paradise at this hour. We go up four flights of stairs, down a hallway, and inside. The apartment is narrow and short. When I look to see what’s licking my legs, I find a purebred French bulldog, black and white with a square head. All three of us flop down in an enormous bed between flowered sheets that don’t match anything. The android and I keep kissing a while longer, playful and regretful, we’ve known each other by sight for so long now. The French bulldog careens from the bathroom and plops between us like a soccer ball. The android lifts him up like a dead weight by the tough skin of his back, puts him in the living room, orders him to sleep. But at that hour the bulldog no longer wants to sleep. He wants to give love.

  The android calls me two or three times a day. Every time he reads a page of my study, he calls me. He sounds distant and I don’t know him. He makes me laugh with funny anecdotes, but I don’t know him. There’s such stillness here. He’s converted the PDF into a Word document and given new names to my chapters. He’s added italics and erased the acknowledgments. He’s broken up the chapters, added and subtracted pages. He’s said that some accent marks are missing, but it’s not my fault, it was the laptop keyboard’s fault. He’s changed the first person plural to the first person singular. “It’s not a thesis anymore,” whispers the android over the phone. “It’s got to be a book.” “Don’t call me anymore,” I whisper to him, and I hang up the phone.

  I live alone and still. Sometimes it hurts and sometimes it doesn’t. In the Enchanted Deer, pain is a path toward knowledge. To constantly overcome one’s limits is what brings the body to another state of consciousness, where it can rediscover the real functioning of our organism, making the body into a technique.

  The goal, as in all moments of training, is to connect the things that we’ve grown accustomed to dispersing. In this case, to achieve this unified state, one passes through the pain threshold. This reminds me of the words of Marina Abramović, a performance artist who also works in this key and posits in her documentary The Artist is Present, centered on an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art: “Yes, pain exists. But the pain is like a secret. The moment you cross the pain threshold, you enter into another mental state. There is a feeling of beauty and of unconditional love, that feeling that there are no walls between your body and the medium that surrounds you. Then you start to feel incredibly light, in harmony with yourself.”

  My buttocks are also large, round, and taut, and they harmonize with the rest of the house. A pine stairway leads to a second, handcrafted room, where I sleep for hours on a mattress on the wood floor. There is dust everywhere, and also darkness. In the darkness the dust is invisible. I want to move.

  Even though I told him not to, the android called and he says he’s coming over. I decide to receive him in my dark, homespun room; we could dance, he always has his music box. He arrives at nine thirty. He has the music box and an external hard drive full of movies and documentaries. The laptop doesn’t have much space left but I’ll copy up to the last gig of capacity. I ask him to please make recommendations. The android recommends, nervous. I copy several directors. I copy Yorgos Lanthimos, Leos Carax, Todd Solondz, François Ozon, and Michael Haneke. I copy videos on art, literature, and jazz.

  The android is absorbed in the green line of the program for copying and pasting files. I take his fingers softly. I look at him. He has piercings in and around his face. One in the left eyebrow, another in the right ear, another in the cartilage of his nose. “And another in my tongue,” he whispers. “Let’s see,” I tell him. “Stick out your tongue.” When he sticks it out I bring my lips close and bite the tip, pain. “And another two in my nipples, I’ll show you if you put on music,” whispers the android beside me on the mattress. And of course, I put it on.

  Exercise brings you to a mental state where anxieties and insecurities disappear. It leaves the exerciser in a higher state of concentration and eliminates most of the parasitical thoughts that are always circling. This is a vital step in accessing the other, where the goal is to clear away thoughts and keep the mind blank for as long as possible so the body can flow organically, without reason getting in the way.

  The Enchanted Deer doesn’t work with calisthenics because they tend to disconnect mind, body, and spirit. Calisthenics are also known as warm-ups. They’re a set of exercises that use only muscular movements with the purpose of developing physical strength.

  I had a laborer mother who developed her physical strength and then turned into an appliance. When someone plugs her in, she unplugs herself on her own. It’s very uncomfortable because you have to be always coming and going to plug her in. I, for example, cannot unplug. Taxes have gone up since this woman became what she became. My siblings and I have drawn up a plan to pay the electricity between us all, even though none of us live in that house anymore. It seems that making us spend money has been our mother’s end point. I consider end points to always be unpleasant. Outside, the tree is motionless.

  The android

  I most loved

  had no sex,


  no heart,

  and no TV.

  Nothing

  to offer me.

  BAD

  The thing is that I’m sitting on the curb of a more or less large airport. Not as big as the ones in Madrid or Berlin, but yes, pretty big. I’ve been here for thirty-six hours and no one has come to check my ticket, or ask me what I’m doing here, or kick me out of here, so I say to myself, This is what you wanted? Naturally, I did not want this. What I wanted was to get back all the time lost over the past six months and up to this very minute.

  I’ve ordered an Americano with cream, our favorite, to warm me up. The mug in my hands acts as a heater for my body. The heat from the ceramic penetrates and does me good, so much good. Then the first sip, and the second, and the third work the same way inside me. They warm me, dry that part that is so sodden.

  I’m wearing a Gap dress, blue—from Miami—and some round black sunglasses—from Puerto Rico—that are in style in all the countries. Sitting on the curb holding the steaming coffee, I constitute a static and instalational ensemble. Why do people see distress when they look into my sunglasses? Why did the chess pieces run out of strategies? And worse, why did they emigrate from the board to my blank page? Wait, what am I talking about.

  I came to find you but you weren’t here. I looked everywhere. In the houses, the basements and attics, in the parks and squares, in the supermarkets, in the hospitals, in the theaters, in the bookstores, in the multiplexes, in the red light district, in the marihuana plantations, in the desert, in the morgue. I only missed this airport because when I arrived I went running out to look for you without thinking you might still be here. And here you still are. And you don’t recognize me.

  I was invited to a world poetry festival and I accepted. And I came on an airline that I’d never flown before. The festival reserved my ticket and I was in like Flynn, the festival paid me a stipend, and I went out to find you. It was more than two hundred and fifty dollars, all invested in looking for you until I found you. Though I did have to give talks in hostile places, like a poor, black community on a riverbank that you can only reach by air or water.

  I looked for you among the black people, poor and barefoot. I took a boat on the river, I peered into the houses, asked policemen if they hadn’t seen you. I couldn’t explain the masks. No one was going to believe that someone was traipsing around in a mask without calling attention to herself.

  The thing about the masks is inexplicable. No one would understand if I said that a mood is a mask, a political position is a mask, a logical reaction is a mask, an attitude toward life is a mask. The masks accumulate, one on top of the other, so that a person is never, ever exposed. It’s funny.

  But no one would understand, especially not at a World Poetry Festival, which fights for World Peace and hoists aloft, like a flag, a phrase that’s pretty uncomfortable to say. The phrase is stamped on posters all over the city, it’s stamped on the complimentary sweatshirt they gave me and on the sweatshirt of each participant, stamped over the entrance to the hotel and on our foreheads when we read poems in a plaza or a camp for displaced persons. Repeat with me: Peace for all, world spring.

  The thing is that I haven’t changed much. Maybe I’m skinnier and more malnourished, scrawnier and sadder from these six months of searching, but my face is still the same, even the piercing and the tattoo are still there. You’re the one who has changed, but I recognize you. I’d recognize you even if you yanked out your eyes and were covered in ticks. All these nights I’ve dreamed of ticks, those fat little bugs that suck the blood of puppies. I’ve dreamed that they fall from the sky and cover me and suck my blood.

  I would rather be covered in ticks than write a book of poems about which the specialized critics say: precise and correct. Moreover, I would rather be covered in ticks than never see you again, laughing there in front of me. I don’t care if that smiling face of yours is a mask, or if that other face you have now is another mask, or if that other face you wear when you don’t agree with something is another mask. I don’t care about your masks, infinite and lovely. I don’t care about all those characters. Because deep down there’s a person, who is you, and I have come to find you.

  I would also rather go around dirty, covered in piss and shit, than write a book of poems about which the specialized critics say: happy and effective. Moreover, I would rather go an entire year without bathing than write any of those books the specialized critics pay lip service to by spouting bullshit. And I would rather accept any opinion from the specialized critics, including bullshit, including bullshit about tradition and generation, than never see you again, raging before me.

  The festival featured readings by men and women from all over the world. The organizers treated us with such kindness that at times I wondered whether they were wearing masks or not. They must have been wearing them, of course.

  One day they called my room to invite me to the airport, which is a local expression that means to smoke, to get high. So I set off for the airport along with the organizers, and I smoked and got high, like a little airplane or bird or a little train among the clouds of a tolerance zone.

  I looked for you in that zone and I thought I saw you. You were a little airplane or bird or a little train among the clouds, like me. I went over to the person I thought was you and that person gave me a kiss on the nose and hugged me. You would have kissed my nose and you would have hugged me, but you would never have whispered in my ear what that person whispered to me. A poem by Mario Benedetti. I turned and ran.

  Because of that I was paranoid for the rest of the week, looking over my shoulder in case someone came to whisper Mario Benedetti poems into my ear. It didn’t matter which ear, the problem was Benedetti.

  Another day they invited me again to fly in that zone and I didn’t want to, I thanked them and stayed static in the room, and I didn’t dare go down to the restaurant for lunch, afraid of running into the organizers on the stairs or in the hall or in the restaurant itself.

  The thing is that I knew that’s how you were, and that what I was seeing for the first time before me wasn’t a person but a mask. But I also knew that beneath the mask was the person and I liked the idea a lot. A person’s got to be very brave to use a mask, to even use several masks a day. The risks you run grow ever more dangerous. Like the risk of not knowing who you really are.

  I know who I really am because I don’t have masks to confuse me. I’m not brave enough to use them, but I’ve been brave enough to face customs, planes, layovers, the mess of luggage, the scanners, dogs, and ticks. I’ve faced it all and I’ve come to look for you. For the person who deep down you are.

  I know who I really am and I’m prepared to accept it, even in writing.

  I’m the one who does everything around the house, sweep, cook, make the bed, wash the dog, buy the food, and who later complains about doing everything, though it’s always done with love.

  I’m the one who eats on the sly, straight from the pressure cooker, with all the lights off in the house and the refrigerator door open, at three fifty-seven in the morning.

  I’m the one who breaks up with her current partner and starts a relationship with the woman who was with her no-longer-current partner five years ago.

  I’m the one who gets bored of relationships approximately one year and six months in.

  I’m the one who takes the dog to boring and tedious poetry readings so the poets will be entertained and will look at me with those little faces of bicentennial intellectuals.

  I’m the one who’s writing this story at dawn, at exactly six-oh-seven, shameless, because they’re going to pay me five dollars if I send it to an online photography magazine.

  I’m the one who hugs the pillow when I sleep, if you’re not there.

  I’m the one who doesn’t know how to wash by hand, not underwear, not regular clothes, not bedding.

  I’m the one who gets a tattoo at random before I figure out what it really means to me.

  I�
�m the one who can’t write with someone sleeping in my bed.

  I’m the one who gets tired of writing and goes back to join you in bed.

  I’m the one who comes in the blink of an eye if you touch that part for a second.

  Sometimes I tell lies.

  I can delight in a lie for a while, but I don’t have masks.

  The person I really enjoyed meeting at this world poetry festival was a bald, bearded guy named Pietro Aretino. They scheduled this guy during the same blocks of readings as me and we went around together like husband and wife. His poems and mine were a good pairing, the audiences had fun, and he and I entertained each other. Our meeting was indeed a success. And the spring was between his legs, and between my legs too.

  Pietro Aretino is Italian, he makes poems and he makes theater, and not only that but he doesn’t use masks. A true weirdo. We should have gotten married and been husband and wife, for real. And had twelve sons and named them after the twelve apostles, or else eleven sons and named them after the players of our favorite soccer team, or our least favorite. We were the happiest couple at the festival. Both a little stressed about the matter of poems read in other languages and the matter of poems not well-received by the audiences, who wanted to know about current politics in our home countries. Pietro Aretino and I behaved as if we weren’t from any country. The most tattered and eccentric. And the ones who protested the most.

  We didn’t want to read in that community that can only be reached by air or by water. With a temperature of forty degrees and a relative humidity of I-don’t-know-what percentage. Once in the community, poor Pietro Aretino walked through the muddy streets and turned into a ball of mud. Me too, another little ball of mud. Wet, grumpy, with our poems up our sleeves, unable to read them to anyone who cared about literature. Peace for all!