loving women. They can dig into you and hold the insides of you, all bloodied and smelly, in their hands. They know you like that. But this is nothing I can say to my mother.
I miss the conversations now. More than anything, I long for the days when I came home to report that Julio had given me flowers or promised to take me to Wildwood. We have, my family and me, including my father (who demanded to know if Julio was gay the whole time), settled into a region called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” And it is hard, I imagine, for people who have not experienced this to understand the weight of that silence and how the absence of language can feel like a death.
Often when my mother tells me about those early days in her relationship with my father, she mentions the postres .
“He would bring pastries from the bakery,” she recalls, smiling and then adding with a warning, “That’s how they get you.”
Kristina does it with dulce de leche .
Our first date is a month after September 11. The city is struggling to be normal. The subways are running and the New York Times is publishing its “Portraits of Grief.” Kristina and I eat burritos on Christopher Street and walk to the piers. In the summers, brown butches and black divas light up the area, their bodies pretzeled around their loves and friends and strangers, but tonight the piers are empty, muted, solitos . With the bone skeleton of lower Manhattan near us and Jersey’s lights across the river, Kristina and I kiss for the first time.
She’s mixed: white, Chicana, Californian, New Mexican. She reminds me of the women in my family, the shape of their bodies, ni gorda ni flaca . It’s how quick she lights up when I say, “I’ve got chisme ,” and the way she talks to her mother on the phone and then laughs and says to me: “I’m on hold. Walter Mercado’s on.”
This is our routine: I take a bus from Jersey, then switch to the 1 train. She meets me at the stop near her apartment in the Bronx. We make love. Afterwards, Kristina rolls over on her side and asks, “You want some ice cream?”
She dresses and crosses the street to the deli for small cups of dulce de leche . I eat the cold caramel on her sofa, my head on her shoulder, crying into the helado , because Halle Berry has won the Oscar.
My mother would like Kristina. She would probably like her more than she likes me. Kristina believes in diplomacy. Like my mother, she doesn’t see why I need to write about sexuality. She values privacy. My mother would appreciate that.
When Kristina and I break up, almost five years after we first ate dulce de leche together, I call Tía Chuchi to deliver the news. “We’ve ended,” I say in Spanish. “For good this time.”
I don’t know what to expect from my auntie, but I’m figuring she will say something along the lines of good riddance. Instead, she exclaims, “That’s why you’re taking the martial arts class!”
“What?”
“That’s why you’re taking martial arts. I knew this woman who rented a room once from a lady and it turned out the lady was, tu sabes , gay.” The lesbian had terrible fights with her partner. “It was horrible,” my auntie recalls, as if she had been in the room when the arguments exploded. “They threw pots and pans at each other and fought with their fists.” Tía sighs. “It’s good you’re taking the martial arts classes to defend yourself.”
I start laughing and crying, because my ex-girlfriend couldn’t face a kitchen mouse let alone strike another woman, because I loved her so much and walked away, because I glimpse in my tía’s words some deeper emotion, some love that struggles to be steady even when it hurts.
Queer Narratives
T he teenagers file into the classroom, an army of baggy jeans and stiff hair, acrylic nails and cell phones. They number at least thirty, maybe forty. Their teacher is forcing them to be here, because a community organization has sent me to talk to them about what it
I miss the conversations now. More than anything, I long for the days when I came home to report that Julio had given me flowers or promised to take me to Wildwood. We have, my family and me, including my father (who demanded to know if Julio was gay the whole time), settled into a region called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” And it is hard, I imagine, for people who have not experienced this to understand the weight of that silence and how the absence of language can feel like a death.
Often when my mother tells me about those early days in her relationship with my father, she mentions the postres .
“He would bring pastries from the bakery,” she recalls, smiling and then adding with a warning, “That’s how they get you.”
Kristina does it with dulce de leche .
Our first date is a month after September 11. The city is struggling to be normal. The subways are running and the New York Times is publishing its “Portraits of Grief.” Kristina and I eat burritos on Christopher Street and walk to the piers. In the summers, brown butches and black divas light up the area, their bodies pretzeled around their loves and friends and strangers, but tonight the piers are empty, muted, solitos . With the bone skeleton of lower Manhattan near us and Jersey’s lights across the river, Kristina and I kiss for the first time.
She’s mixed: white, Chicana, Californian, New Mexican. She reminds me of the women in my family, the shape of their bodies, ni gorda ni flaca . It’s how quick she lights up when I say, “I’ve got chisme ,” and the way she talks to her mother on the phone and then laughs and says to me: “I’m on hold. Walter Mercado’s on.”
This is our routine: I take a bus from Jersey, then switch to the 1 train. She meets me at the stop near her apartment in the Bronx. We make love. Afterwards, Kristina rolls over on her side and asks, “You want some ice cream?”
She dresses and crosses the street to the deli for small cups of dulce de leche . I eat the cold caramel on her sofa, my head on her shoulder, crying into the helado , because Halle Berry has won the Oscar.
My mother would like Kristina. She would probably like her more than she likes me. Kristina believes in diplomacy. Like my mother, she doesn’t see why I need to write about sexuality. She values privacy. My mother would appreciate that.
When Kristina and I break up, almost five years after we first ate dulce de leche together, I call Tía Chuchi to deliver the news. “We’ve ended,” I say in Spanish. “For good this time.”
I don’t know what to expect from my auntie, but I’m figuring she will say something along the lines of good riddance. Instead, she exclaims, “That’s why you’re taking the martial arts class!”
“What?”
“That’s why you’re taking martial arts. I knew this woman who rented a room once from a lady and it turned out the lady was, tu sabes , gay.” The lesbian had terrible fights with her partner. “It was horrible,” my auntie recalls, as if she had been in the room when the arguments exploded. “They threw pots and pans at each other and fought with their fists.” Tía sighs. “It’s good you’re taking the martial arts classes to defend yourself.”
I start laughing and crying, because my ex-girlfriend couldn’t face a kitchen mouse let alone strike another woman, because I loved her so much and walked away, because I glimpse in my tía’s words some deeper emotion, some love that struggles to be steady even when it hurts.
Queer Narratives
T he teenagers file into the classroom, an army of baggy jeans and stiff hair, acrylic nails and cell phones. They number at least thirty, maybe forty. Their teacher is forcing them to be here, because a community organization has sent me to talk to them about what it
Similar Books
