Week: I really need to learn to shut up

Sometimes, we misjudge. It is true. What seems like a sure thing might have a 20 percent margin of error, and in that 1/5th, there opens an abyss for missed connection, misunderstanding, apathy or even malice. More than that: sometimes we judge a situation to be safe, even harmless, when it is anything but that. But more often than not, at least in my experience, we like to skate on the edge of danger, because it reminds us that we are alive. Until, you know, we're reminded that even that isn't a given.

I say too much, and I am careless with my words. It is true, I spend words profligately, use them as currency, throw them in the trash like excess table scraps that could have been saved, repurposed, fed to another hungry mouth, or mind, later... But my impulse control center is lacking, perhaps, or perhaps (and this seems more likely), I go through life knowing what the prudent thing would be, and mostly adhering to the rules, until I decide: fuck it... I don't have to and I don't want to and I can't be anything but who and what I am. And in those petulant moments, it seems like a good choice to overshare, to expose the contents of my secret suitcases, dumping it out onto the metaphorically unmade bed.

Usually, the consequences are minimal. Even the keen emotional pain of romantic disappointment, or of the unraveling of a shared life are surmountable challenges. In fact, with age, I've decided to take more risks, embracing (not radical) honesty and transparency, and stating my desires and needs not because I experience less disappointment on having those needs left unmet, but because I now have ample experience in survival. The pain will, eventually, subside, or shuffle off to Buffalo, and the far recesses of your mind only to be unleashed on rare occasions when inebriated by the pull of an old melody.

Sometimes, however, this abject openness, this flagrant daring of social mores, or this unrelenting performance of self that one has committed to carrying out, can have real, life-threatening implications. When the rules of engagement are unclear, and the object of the game is unspoken, that's when the abyss rips open, and we dangle from a thread, trembling like leaves on a tree in the midst of a hurricane.

For example, I carelessly tell you: "I refuse to live in fear" and mostly, that's true, except when it isn't. (Does that make me a liar? You would say yes, like you always do, holding my inaccuracies against me. What does it matter? I digress). If we operate from a place of constant defense, our bodies and minds contort into the strangest of shapes, but if we refuse to acknowledge our real vulnerability, is it better?

The other night, on my way home in an Uber, sitting with my guilt over my own conflicted participation in the neoliberal logic that exploits workers, constantly lowering their wages, extending their working hours, was precisely a moment in which I let down my guard, and exposed myself to real, concrete danger by talking too much. It was, perhaps, a gesture to mitigate my discomfort with class discrepancy, or even just a jovial, pisco-induced false sense of security, or the habit of engaging on a personal and affective and intellectual level with people that wander into my sphere, but I revealed too much. Suddenly, before I knew it, I found myself in the old familiar chest-pounding dilemma of being simultaneously at someone else's mercy, and desperately attempting to carefully extricate myself from the precipitously deep water in which I might drown without them noticing my departure. This, of course, is a metaphor, though the streets have been flooding in my neighborhood these days.

Let me explain.

I do believe that the affective ties that we build with others in our daily interactions are tremendously important, and that if I can sow more love than fear, more gentleness than sharpness, then I count myself as lucky. But, damn, sometimes I can really fuck things up by not holding my tongue, not holding my cards up closer to my chest. (Being an empath and a people-pleaser probably doesn't help my cause in this attempt to shutter my soul, but I am once again reminded that I must be more careful, that just because I am comfortable with who and how I am, doesn't mean that I am impervious to the impositions of other's imaginations on me.) Sometimes we are braver than we ought, and sometimes our fears can make us lose the things we most need, and the trick is knowing how to rectify our mistakes mid-stream, because we're going to keep making them.

So, before Uber, there were taxis, and despite the admonishing (and well-founded) advice to never take them from the street, I have been known to calculate that risk, and throw the dice, relying on my hyper-attuned ability to read people. And in the better part of my adult life, I have also relied on my ability to interact in a warm way with taxi-drivers (almost always, but not exclusively, men) so as to mitigate my own risks in the context of being in an enclosed and moving space that is their domain, and often where I am without recourse in the event of any unpleasantness. It has almost always worked in my favor, that is, I am still alive and relatively unscathed (except that sprained hand in Chicago and the driver who on the grid-locked freeway made it clear that while I was "in my right" to make a claim of the accident, wouldn't it be better if I sat pretty and didn't make a fuss?). I have learned all sorts of marvelous things, have coached people on their career paths, served as confessional, laughed with deep connection, shared parenting tips, lamented the state of politics, learned about local events and preoccupations and gotten a glimpse into worlds and cosmovisions that are utterly removed from mine.

And yet. There is a nagging danger about housing one's soul in a feminized body.

Sometimes we get an extra-heavy dose of punishment because we ooze out past the edges of respectability. Because we travel alone. Because we don't have a boyfriend, or husband, on hand, as our passport to the wider world, because we are mothers without children, or are not mothers at all, And sometimes we walk right into the trap, confident (foolishly) in our ability to decipher the motives of others.

I make small talk. I am happy, not even tipsy, but relaxed, he is pleasant, speaks respectfully. His speech pattern and accent prompt me to ask if he is originally from Spain (it seems he has an accent that could have been softened by years in Mexico). He's clearly not from here, but he claims to be from Sonora. His accent is not from the North. I ask him where in Sonora, and he makes a vague reference to being from "right" in the middle. I see a red flag fly up into the air and I ignore it. Sometimes my adherence to honesty is just my innate lack of imagination. It is not expedient to make up stories, and I don't derive glee from tricking others. I waltz trough life like an open book whose pages are only obscure because of the verborrea, always only hidden by my over-exposure and others' inherent (and confirmed) lack of interest. I don't realize until it is too late that I have somehow let on that I live alone here. Another red flag, "you should try having a Mexican boyfriend, while you're here" he says casually and I snort (making a mental count in my head, reminding myself of promises I made to no one about not being bamboozled again, etc.). The second red-flag snaps me into sharp alert, though, because what I thought was just casual chit-chat is suddenly making me aware of how deep in the ocean I actually am, and how far away the shore, and how hungry the sharks really are. I remain calm, I realize I have to continue the friendly tone for my own safety. He makes a wrong turn near my house, apologizes with an air of someone that isn't really in a service-profession, continues the superficially pleasant conversation. He tells me he's the owner of several cars, in business with his cousin (I'm reminded of a book I am reading, and my literary brain lights up, fanning the fear-flame). I am careful, now, not to reveal more information, though he continues to press... I do not say which floor I live on, though he tries to elicit the information. I think, "this dude is good. He's subtle. He's fucking dangerous." Maybe I am dealing with a sociopath. I keep it light, and friendly. I get out of the car, thank him, wave goodbye once I am inside the locked gate of my building. I get the sense that he is watching me, but I shake it off. I am home. I feel safe. For a minute.

The house feels suddenly empty with Cheyla's departure. I don't mind aloneness, I like it, but the warm sisterhood of our little ninth-floor nest is suddenly, painfully absent. I feel cold. I carry out a few of my alone self-care rituals and am about to settle into some evening pleasure-reading, or to continue writing, letting my adrenaline dissipate when my interphone buzzes. I freeze. I know it is him before I answer. But I still answer. I hear his voice, there is a galloping in my chest. I keep my voice steady. He claims to have found a phone in his car, and is it mine? I know it is an excuse. There was nothing in the back seat of the car. It is a very sly move, a sleight of hand that creates an alibi before the crime is committed. "No," I state calmly and forcefully, "I am not missing a phone." He explains a second time why he's there, and I say, "Nope, definitely not mine." He apologizes again what sounds like a non-apology, and I am submerged in immediate terror.

I run through the statistics of femicide that are clearly tattooed in my brain. I know the city isn't safe, isn't free from human-trafficking cartels, that individuals can still operate in violent ways if they are rebuffed. I know my over-confident hubris-laden tromping through life can come back to bite me in the ass and I try desperately to wrest myself from the clutches of a full-fledged panic attack. It doesn't work.

I am shaking so hard I have to hold onto the bed to not fall down. I stagger around the room. I reach out, wanting so badly to have you hold me in your arms until it passes. But, even Mick Jagger knows you can't always get what you want... I know that rationally, this man, as you might point out, probably was just hopeful. A ver si chicle pega. That the taxi-driver fantasy that Arjona disseminated a quarter century ago across the airwaves was not his own, but a story shared, the romantic notion that you stumble upon a client who will suddenly become your lover. But I feel like there was something deeper and darker, I try not to cry. I am reminded how no one likes to see such unmitigated vulnerability because it likely makes them feel responsible for caring and carrying you through it when they might not even have the emotional reserves to do it, now or ever. These are all rational understandings of the way things are, but in the adrenaline rush of fight or flight, all I can do is tremble and shiver and try to address the problem. I report the incident, though, of course, the purported return of the possibly purloined phone will be cover enough. I gird my loins, and try to follow through with the rational process of speaking to the doorman, to a) ascertain whether he gave my apartment number out, and b) tell him that under no circumstances should he let the man through the gate, but as I approach the door, as I reach for the handle, keys in hand, I am paralyzed by fear. I know, I know, me and my careless metaphors, but no... I was literally paralyzed. I froze and could NOT make myself open the door. I ran through scenarios in which he had followed someone in and was waiting in the shadowy dark of my two apartment hallway, ready with duct tape and a gun, ready to force me back inside the room, or to coerce me into the elevator. Always my fear of doorways, sometimes, a survival instinct.

Instead, I double lock my door, locking myself in. I am a shaking much harder, I need comfort, and I talk to my daughter who tells me to get a knife and keep it next to my bed. I don't. But when I was a child, alone in the house, after sundown, I would keep a butcher knife close when I would get spooked. I wonder why that fear has always been there, lurking, like I imagine this man, ready to step out of the shadows, to torture me, to punish my transgressions. My lack of imagination in some realms, you might claim, is cross-canceled by my excessive imagination in other arenas. You might not be wrong, but I am suddenly shaking too with rage. Rage that he has the power to terrify me, just by showing up where he doesn't belong, and being a little too interested. Rage that this fear I feel isn't unique to me, but rather is shared by pretty much every woman I have ever met, rage that no matter how many times we explain, we mollify, we modify our tone, we are not ever safe. Rage that I caused this situation simply by being too careless, friendly, or verbose, a charming yet potentially deadly cocktail of personality traits.

I wobble around the apartment, turn on the hot water to run a bubble bath, I am metabolically cold, I make tea, I make bubbles, I imagine my body, wet, naked, soap-covered and bloodied. Who would find me? I think about the way in which my story would be written, when the contents of my personal phone, camera, chats and emails were pored over, interpreted. Would my lifeless body take on some other meaning, or is that the very same projection that this man saw, in a culture of toxic masculinity, one that finds it more logical that a woman might spitefully commit suicide in front of her demonstrably abusive boyfriend (for example) just to, you know, show him! rather than conclude that he had been violent with her, on camera, and that her murder was a logical escalation of his already documented interpersonal violence enacted on her, purportedly, beloved body. I shudder to think about the story that would be told about me, though I have heard deformed versions of it from the mouth of someone who claims to have once loved me, so, you know... whose story is real at the end of the day in the morass of emotional claims? Oh wait, the beaten and broken female body, scientifically scrutinized, still never provides enough incontrovertible evidence that she didn't, that I didn't, in fact deserve what we got. The punishment always presupposes the crime, no?

And as I let the jacuzzi jets froth shampoo into a rising mountain of bubbles to cradle my body in air and cleansing, I sink into the memory of the policeman in Virginia that when introduced to me by his friend stated with a grin: "I ran your plates, I know where you live" as if that weren't a freakishly terrifying invasive way to introduce yourself to a woman alone. Who then weeks later pulled me over, as a joke, with my kid in the car, just so he could say hi, and who weeks after that, when I stopped at the midnight gas station, standing guard at the door with his cop buddies, inquired about whether I was going to my house alone. And, the thing is, nothing ever happened. I wasn't murdered with impunity, the way so many other women whose names we forget, or whose names we never know, or whose stories are written by someone who never knew them or loved them, but I was left with the soul-shattering what-if until I left the town, and I will still feel vaguely unsafe in my house, here in Mexico City, until I change apartments or leave altogether. The bubbles, though, are calming. And the cold eases its grip on my bones, and the fear dissipates a little, and my anger, too, goes back into its cave. I feel a little bit better, but I don't sleep well, and I stay holed-up like an agoraphobe all day, though I work with a colleague, and in sharing stories we laugh together though we could just as easily cry, we show solidarity and sisterhood, one intuited and which will come to fruition, we are safe today. We escaped, once, twice, three times.

I return to my fearless self. I get back on the horse. I brave the city, into Santa Úrsula, to meet a dear old friend and make music. I do. We do. I spend hours with three, wonderful, gentle, talented men, and I know that life doesn't have to be a constant antagonism. That structures can be thoughtfully unlearned. That I am going to be ok. That I can just let it flow, without judgment on myself. Neutral.
I release some of that pent up rage in the rub of voices on voices. Paco drives me home at midnight. And I finally, finally get some rest.

A propósito Cuevas

            Llegué a la casa cansada. Es decir, sudando con ese calor frío que acompaña una agitación física y emocional del ajetreo del transporte público, combinado con la frescura de la temprana noche húmeda de este valle que se iba apagando al final de la jornada.

            Habrán sido las 7 cuando mucho, y habrá sido noviembre porque vivía en ese cuarto piso, sin elevador, sobre Patriotismo, con Andrés y Teo pero agradecida de que mi trayecto a la escuela sólo fuera de un pesero de 3 pesos con 50, directito de la esquina a la Universidad, en vez de que fuera pesero desde las Bombas, metro Tasqueña, trasbordo apresurado en Chabacano, hasta Tacubaya (o a veces Pino Suárez hasta Observatorio, si no me veía lista, o mi lectura de obras teatrales me dejara pegada a la silla y perdiera mi bajada) y pesero de nuevo hasta llegar al umbral de la Universidad privada a la que me mandaron por ser también de una escuela de “élite”.

            “¿A poco pisas metro, güey?” me había interrogado una compañera, incrédula y bastante mamona que vivía en la Nápoles, ni que fuera para tanto, pero cuya línea en la arena, aparentemente, era jamás verse entre la plebe que pujaba, como reloj, en horas pico, pulsando en colectividad para entrar como sardinas o como muéganos, en los vagones que dieron el triple o cuádruple del cupo imaginado en su diseño original.

            “Es una postura ética ante la vida” le habré replicado, o quizá sólo me riera, también experta en las artes de la mamonecia, echando mi larga cabellera naturalmente rubia y rizada  por detrás de mi hombro con un gesto distraído, casi sin querer queriendo. Sobra decir que entendía muy poco, y me creía muy sabia. Era adolescente en fin.

            Si bien el edificio carecía de elevador, el departamento carecía de un refri funcional, de un timbre o interfón (lo cual obligaba que la gente que llegara por ti se pusiera cuatro pisos abajo a gritar o chiflar o pitar el cláxon con la esperanza que escucharas y les aventaras la llave por la ventana para que pudieran subir sin que tuvieras tú que bajar y subir de nuevo), carecía  también de agua libre de bichitos rojos o negros, que en la fría luz del día, sin microscopio, se vieran como ranacuajos en miniatura, y que seguramente, a pesar de la delgada tela que usábamos para filtrar la apertura del grifo, y a pesar de las gotitas yodatadas, seguramente eran causa de mi malestar intestinal perene… pero nada de eso me importaba. Estaba bastante contenta con el cuarto privado que me cedieron, con acceso al único baño, con colchón en el piso alfombrado,  y libros enfilados en circuito por tres cuartos de las paredes, y una puerta que en la noche cerraba, en contra de mi propia naturaleza, pero que dejara fuera el humo de los cigarros y el ruido de los hermanos que conversaran mientras yo me entregara a la lectura asidua. Ellos cada noche sacaban sus colchones de detrás del sillón y dormían como si esto fuera un experimento relacional, o un campamento temporal, no la situación de un par de hombres a la mitad de su vida, padres separados, trabajadores, no como si fuera la vida real. Pero era. Quizá todavía es. No lo sé.

            Ese día llegué, cansada. Quizá fuera jueves y marcara el fin de mi semana escolar. Venía sin rumbo, ni plan. Resulta que mi situación de gringa rara hacía que no tuviera muchos amigos de mi propia edad, o quizá fuera porque los alumnos de letras ya tenían bien formados sus grupitos, y yo, que era invasora e ignorante además, pero con un curioso manejo de la lengua si no de las costumbres (para mí ignotas), simplemente no cuadraba. O quizá porque vivía la mayoría de mi tiempo en mi propia cabeza, escribiendo poesía truncada, o leyendo, tirada boca abajo en el pasto con poses poco apropiados para una damita mientras el resto del alumnado se vestía con ropa comprada en fines de semana de shopping al extranjero, abrazándose, coqueteando y fumando alrededor de la fuente en el centro del campus. Desconozco los motivos, pero venía como solía hacer, sola, sin ninguna idea de lo que el fin de semana me deparara y sin que eso me causara ninguna molestia.

            Subo los escalones, saltando de dos en dos, como yegua en la recta final. Siempre he sido así, un poco salvaje, un poco vale madres, un poco desatenta a lo que sucede fuera de mí hasta que me interese indagar. Abro la puerta con estruendo, dejando caer mis útiles en el piso de loza. Andrés me mira con su sonrisa chueca.

            “Ponte guapa, vamos a una exposición.”

            “¿Qué tan guapa?” pregunto, un poco nerviosa porque no suelo llevar ropa de vestir, y no tengo, de todas formas, nada ya que he estado bajando de peso misteriosamente. Se me ahuyenta un poco el cansancio, con la ansiedad que esta propuesta me provoca.

            “Sólo cámbiate. Ponte algo negro. Siempre te ves bien de negro.”

            Teo sale de la recámara, recién bañado, “Sí, ya vámonos saliendo. Empieza a las ocho en la Roma. Hay que llegar al comienzo.”

            Quizá habría que explicar un poco de la historia de fondo. Andrés y Teo son de ese grupo de hombres que van rondando por las aperturas de galería, aprovechándose de la oferta cultural de la ciudad para emborracharse gratis, mientras también consumen exposiciones de vanguardia, o de arte totalmente tradicional, neobarroco, figurativo, paisajista… da igual. El chiste es sacar el periódico y escanear los anuncios para el sitio donde mejor tequila vayan a servir, en las zonas más cómodas para acceder. Andrés trae coche. Es un vochito azul y es de su jefa, la licenciada. Sus días se van en llevar paquetes para entregar de un lado de la ciudad a otra. Ellos llevan un par de meses llevándome de acá para allá, ya que di el afirmativo de que me gustaba el arte y me daba gusto acompañarlos. Claro. Todo era nuevo.

            En general, ellos iban más que yo, pero durante un par de meses, una o dos veces a la semana, me encontraba en la situación de haber recorrido una pequeña galería, conversado conmigo misma la calidad, significado o contenido emocional de la exposición y esperado gentilmente a que los meseros esquivos les entregara un último caballito a los hermanos y sus cuates, mientras con mala cara les hacía saber que se acababa la fiesta. Ya reconocía las caras de algunos de este grupo de consigna incógnita. Los observaba yo, hasta más que el arte colgado en las paredes, tratando de sacar un sentido cohesivo de su fraternidad. Se me escapaba. Yo sólo veía que después de dos o tres copas, ya empezaban, algunos, a discutir con más fuerza, sus gestos se hacían lentos, sus caras retorcidas, y parecían hechos de barro. Perseguían las bandejas cargadas de chupe gratis, echándose, de pronto unos canapés para puntuar sus largos sorbos etílicos. Casi no había mujeres. Es decir, llegaban parejas, consumidoras de cultura, tomaban una copita y se iban, pero a este grupo misterioso, sin nombre ni afiliación, no se unía ninguna mujer que yo viera. Me sentía, como es de esperar, fuera de lugar, pero suficientemente ajena al asunto que no me sintiera implicada. No bebía nada y me parecía divertido ver el juego de acecho entre ellos y los meseros que si bien no los conocían, tenían órdenes expresas de no servir demás, ya que no era un vil antro, sino el alcohol servía de toque decoroso al consumo de “alta cultura”.

            No sé qué ponerme, pero mis opciones son tan limitadas que termino con un pantalón negro, medio aterciopelado, unos zapatos negros de cuero, sensatos, léase: sin tacón (los cuales me apartaba de una de la mayoría de la población femenina de la ciudad por lo observado), una blusa-playera que se me ajusta bien enmarcando con destellos de luz mi busto amplio, y un suetercito para el frío que ya cae a la par de la luz crepuscular.

            Es decir, puro colegiala, cero elegancia.

            “Vámonos.”

            “Pérenme,” gruño, “tengo que comer algo…”

Los veo con cara de exasperación mientras como una guayaba ya pasadita que está perfumando la cocina que, me dicen, quedó sin gas esa mañana. Me vale, tengo hambre.

            “¿Ya niña?”

            “Ya”, me limpio la boca con el envés de mi mano, busco una servilleta o algo para limpiarme la mano y no encuentro, pienso dos veces antes de secarme en el pantalón, y siento incrementar la ansia colectiva. Me jala del brazo Andrés de esa forma de quien se adueña de lo que no es propietario, un gesto que ya hace un par de semanas reconocí con incomodidad, mientras me paseara por la Roma, curiosamente parándonos en pequeños locales, talleres retacados de telas, máquinas de coser, cueros curtidos en el que se reunían hombres, algunos chimuelos y con las manos grasosas del trabajo, para chupar y jugar a las cartas sobre mesas desplegables hasta las altas horas. Había pensado—no sin disgusto—me está presumiendo con sus cuates, como si yo fuera trofeo. Pero ese pensamiento lo espanté para no romper mi felicidad precariamente ganada en cuanto a vivienda. En ese gesto poco paternal volví a sentir la misma náusea, la volví a ignorar… al final, me llevaba más de 20 años, y además yo había sido novia de su hermano menor… lógicamente, tendría que entender que las cosas no iban por ahí.

            En 10 minutos, ya estamos frente a una casa de cultura de arquitectura decimonónica, pura piedra y escaleras amplias, iluminada con un diseño de colores coherentes que conducían a una pasarela central y un umbral enorme de madera tallada. Veo la larga cola de gente bien vestida, en ropa de gala, con invitaciones personalizadas caligráficamente en la mano. Siento que el corazón se me revienta, y una piedra cae en la boca de mi estómago. Me mareo. Me quiero echar para atrás, correr en la noche fría, sola.

            “No tenemos invitación” le digo en un susurro agitado a Andrés, que me está sujetando el brazo.

            “Tú sígueme, nos vamos a colar.”

            “No mames.”

            “Ya vente.”

            Y no sé cómo, pero me dejo llevar por el miedo al espectáculo, o por miedo de quedarme espantada a media calle sola, y nos infiltramos a la cola ya en la puerta, y el chavo que está revisando las invitaciones le hace un ademán de reconocimiento a Teo, leve, casi imperceptible, con un movimiento de su mandíbula y un parpadeo, y ya, pasamos.

            “Es una retrospectiva de José Luis Cuevas. Sí lo ubicas, ¿no?”

            Mis ojos como dagas son la única respuesta a Andrés, pero claro que sí lo conozco porque pocas semanas antes, hurgando en las pilas de libros en una de las librerías de viejo en Donceles, había dado con el último ejemplar de un tiraje ya agotado de El libro vacío (necesario para mi clase de narrativa mexicana) cuya tapa lucía un diseño suyo—imposible no reconocer el estilo único de caras desfiguradas y monstruosas, cubistas.

            Navegamos el espacio lleno de gente fuera de mi órbita y pienso, al menos aquí nadie me conoce, y a la vez estoy rezando a un dios en el que no creo que me trague la tierra de inmediato. Pasamos por pasillos llenos de obstáculos, es decir, esculturas estratégicamente puestas para prolongar mi miseria, y trato con afán desesperado de meterme al corazón latente de la exposición sin que nadie me delate, alejándome con paso apresurado, de Teo y Andrés y su bola de conocidos que ya se están saludando con palmadas en la espalda. Estoy mareada. Se me regala una copa de champán y acepto, consciente de que quiero disimular mi rareza, mi condición de no-invitada a la fiesta. Vago por la planta baja de la exposición tratando de desaparecerme, de desintegrar mi ser burdo y torpe y fuera de lugar, pero las paredes son blancas, y yo estoy vestida de negro, y al final, aunque siempre lo he querido, nunca se me ha dado el don de la invisibilidad.

            “Ayyyyy, nena…” oigo una voz nasal penetrar mi soliloquio interno de la vergüenza, y alzo la vista para encontrar una compañera de mi clase de teatro, bajando los escalones, con un vestido plateado transparente, de una tela casi líquida, “qué lindo verte por acá. Hasta por fin sales”. Para acabar de humillarme, baja con un gesto de bailarina, y me saluda de beso. No sé si su risa es de genuina alegría o de malicia, y todo parece girar, fuera de enfoque, las caras de sus acompañantes, hombres pulcros, galanes, altos, con agua de colonia que no arroja dejes punzantes de etanol como en el que suelen bañarse los oficinistas y trabajadores de clases subyacentes. Esto es la alta burguesía, pienso, y se me cierra la garganta y quiero que me borre de pronto la luz cegadora de la que cantaba Silvio aunque la situación fuera otra.

            Me desafano de sus garras de inquisidora, con un mínimo roce, “sí, sí, te veo el martes”. Sonrisa falsa, la mía, mi máscara de acero, de sangrona que encontré por ahí para sobrevivir mis cursos en el que si no me tachan de idiota, me ignoran por completo. Quisiera escaparme de esta pesadilla. Casi no puedo respirar, voy subiendo la escalera de dos en dos, sin correr, claro,  para buscar algún rincón dónde sentarme hasta que pase este pánico, huyendo cual criminal, de la escena del crimen. Sigilosa y gatuna.

            De repente, Andrés me abraza desde atrás, y siento el pesar de su aliento alcohólico en mi cuello, sus brazos ya flojos como marioneta cuyas cuerdas se soltaron, posando sobre mis hombros. Siento una mezcla de miedo y pena, y sigo subiendo la escalera ya a un paso más rápido. Subo, y subo, saltando pisos y pasillos de exposición, cuerpos envueltos en telas pasadas por las manos de sastres de alta categoría, sin color, transparente, quiero convertirme en agua cristalina y escurrirme por las ventanas que dan al patio central. Y no sé cómo, pero a pesar de su estado ebrio, Andrés sigue escalando al lado mío, dando las vueltas al infinito hasta llegar al último piso, donde ya no hay exposición, sino está la oficina de la dueña (por el decorado adivino que es dueña) de la galería. Hay un baño. Me escabullo y cierro la puerta. Andrés me sigue con unos ojos que me asustan, llenos de esperanzas mal puestas, fantasías no correspondidas, que hacen de su cara una máscara más, podría ser una de las obras, una escultura monstruosa y viviente. Me meo, no sin antes bajarme los pantalones, me quedo, respirando sobre la taza de porcelana, con mis pantalones sin chiste por mis tobillos. Pienso, tengo que levantarme, tengo que volverme a vestir, tengo que salir allí donde ya no soy anónima. Pasan minutos que son horas, u horas que son minutos. No lloro. Me echo agua en la cara y me veo en el espejo, no me reconozco, me desdoblo. Yo y mi otra, los ojos que me miran son fieramente esmeraldados con destellos dorados. YA salte, me regaño.

            Y abro la puerta para encontrarme a Andrés, con una sonrisa estúpida, y un ramo de flores en la mano que me presenta como regalo que minutos antes había yo visto en un florero en la mesa de la directora.

            “No las quiero” le digo, gélida. Y se queda ahí, insistiendo en que tome las flores hurtadas. Lo dejo solo, con las pendejas flores en la mano y bajo ya corriendo, ya sin importarme nada, con el viento en la espalda que genero con mi propia rabia. Y salgo a la noche, sola, donde agarro el primer taxi que veo. Teo me grita algo, pero no volteo, Andrés lo alcanza y los veo achicarse en el retrovisor, aún con copas en la mano.

            Por la mañana me disculpo con la excusa de que se me había descompuesto mi pancita. Teo me trae sopita. A Andrés no le puedo mirar a los ojos ya. Me siento invadida. Al mes me escapo a la playa y luego me voy de la casa, a vivir con un novio que no me conviene. Pero eso sí, siempre tendremos a Cuevas.

Week: rain and leather

Talabarteros, I think, aren't what they once were. I peer inside the shop, briefly, hoping for the smell of tanned leather to fill my senses. Instead I gaze upon neat stacks of machine-crafted wallets and bags. Nothing here to see, move along.

The ground is damp. It rained in that way that feels like the earth is being pummeled, but here in this neighborhood, though there is a park where we tried to sit, earlier, to calm our collective anxiety, with muddy puddles, I don't feel connected to the earth. I also didn't jump in puddles. I remember when I. was a small child, and how she loved to puddle-jump, splashing a slurry of brown water on whatever pink dress her mother had put on her. I never cared. That's why we have a washing machine, I would always say. Of course, back then we didn't have our own washer or dryer, but rather, a small apartment with coin-operated machines nearby.

There is something about walking alone through this city, I am reminded. Its flat grid, unending, spreading out beneath the rubber soles of my, yes, I'll admit it, orthotic sandals. My last visit to this beloved place left me crippled for months: I hobbled around, stubbornly resistant to any sort of medical intervention because I knew that it was all a product of my mind and my emotional processes, until he arrived on my doorstep in the thick of the summer oppression, the ac unit broken, in Phoenix, a crime against humanity, or at least human decency... sometimes I wait too long to make a decision. I don't listen to my body screaming at me, telling me to flee, to be alone, to lick my wounds. At least he encouraged me to deal with my own shit. For that I will be forever grateful.

But today I walk, with a spitting drizzle misting from above, before my feelings get the better of me. I am learning, I think. I'm not the same person I was before. The thing is: I am torn between hopefulness and resignation, the pull of something new and the comfort of what once was but is no more, the sting of a harshly stated boundary, and the recognition of my own failure at establishing neat edges, to protect myself from disappointment.

Maybe we're all just swimming around in puddles of mud, inside our own heads. I'll just keep walking, I think.

I decide to break my recently-acquired habit, my footfalls, now in the sandals that the doctor told me I'd never be able to wear again (boy, did I show him!) veer to the left while I distractedly answer texts that I don't feel excited about, rebuffing attempts at intimacy that feel like invasions of my privacy, but that I don't just simply ignore. Why? Your guess is as good as mine, but I think it has to do with old habits, and my penchant for always keeping my eye on at least three escape routes, in the physical as well as the emotional realm. I should really work on that in therapy, I think, but the idea of finding a new therapist on returning to the desert makes me tired. I don't want a new one, but I have no choice. I don't even really want to go home.

But today I had a choice, and I took it. My heart hurt, so I chose to walk, to walk away from the excess emotional baggage that isn't mine, that is overloading my filtering apparatus. At times like these, I'm reminded, it is better to just be alone. I poke my head into the Mercado Lázaro Cárdenas. Most of the stalls have been shut down, but I wander the semi-abandoned market alone anyway. I imagine it as the scene of a crime, the blood being washed down the drain, the pungent chlorine penetrating my nostrils. I buy 6 guavas, 2 of the flatter yellow mangoes (they call them Manila here), and 2 semi-ripe plantains. A one-armed woman kindly overcharges me and I don't care. I feel the heft of the fruit in the bag, imagine it as a makeshift tool for defense if swung with proper force, feel the eyes of the swarm of men that are exiting the building behind me and step to the side to let them pass. I don't like feeling like there are people behind me and I don't like sitting with my back to the door in public places, always worried that I won't see the danger upon me until it is too late.

But I always see it. And I always ignored the signs anyway, convinced of my own ability to steer the outcome. Foolish, I know. I am fighting the urge to close up shop. I've said too much, I always do. I am too much, or at least that's the narrative I tell myself, but really, I think it isn't about me at all. Breathe. Remember that everyone else is on their own damn roller-coaster and you don't have to get on.

The phone rings and my girl cries, "mama, I'm sick..." and for a few moments I coo and comfort, make suggestions about what mix of magical ingredients will make her feel better. It sounds like things are under control, so I try to let go of the control myself. It isn't easy. I raised a child, I think, though it puzzles me. When did it happen? The puddle-jumper who would swing like a monkey, grasping two hands, bouncing over cobbled-stone is now, officially, on her way to college... why haven't I grown up? I wonder, as if the passage of time glided smoothly over my head, in aerodynamic patterns and flows, and all that happened was my hair got a little messy.

I keep walking, now, in my mind. I smile a half smile at the dude that sells artisanal coffee sourced from Chiapas and Oaxaca, I avoid eye contact with the shoe-shine guys who followed us around the other day, in the middle of our banking crisis. I nod at the tortillera next to the house. I hold my breath. Stop. Being. Hopeful. I try to talk myself down off the ledge. It doesn't work. I decide to make another lap around the block before climbing the 9 stories to my city oasis. I feel raw, naked, overexposed. I don't ever learn.

And then something changes, and the rain stops, and the sun comes out, and my chest eases up. The zapatero's shop makes me smile and wish that in my dash to leave the house in Arizona I would have remembered to bring my dancing shoes in need of mending. I remember that I can continue with my previously planned activities, as if I never stumbled, as if this never happened. No one has to know. Or, as Joni once sang: I think I understand... fear is like a wilderland.

Week: Starting over, maybe

July 6, 2017

Sitting with myself can be quite a challenge. Not the embracing of aloneness, but the actual quieting of the mind. I don't know exactly when it changed, but I do know that the immediacy of technology has profoundly impacted my ability to complete any mental task or even a physical one, without interrupting it to check on the virtual universe outside myself.

And I feel ambivalent.  That is, however much I might like to wring my hands and lament the way things are... well, they are, and that is not likely to shift back, towards a less-urgent mode of interpersonal communication.

We grow impatient. We have the ability to monitor if and when someone has received--if not acknowledged-- our communication. And I wonder if it helps or hinders our development as ethical, loving humans or if it is simply an indifferent, morally neutral human activity. Questions with no answers that we ask just the same.

Today I walked from the apartment that I have rented in the Colonia Del Valle Norte to the Cineteca Nacional. It took about 50 minutes of steady walking, and while the technology was imperfect (or perhaps due to user error), my ability to navigate the ever-changing city as if I were a native who has constant contact with its grey, throbbing ebb and flow was aided by the self-same great leaps forward... technologically speaking, that is. I arrived, feeling slightly foggy, my own body throbbing with the pulsing of my heartbeat at elevation. I think, "I feel tired..." and I distractedly thumb through mind-numbing communiqués of nothingness and everythingness and all the shit and blood and bile between point a and point b. Perhaps it is spiritual, I surmise, and I feel the pulsing subcutaneously in my outer thighs. I am reminded of my corporality. I choose to be kind to myself and not spiral down a tunnel of self-critique, but rather, I sit with the throbbing uncertainty, the hope.

And I put my phone away. But my mind is unsettled and I am not appeased by watching the odd human interactions, rituals of mating, of group-bonding. I feel outside of it, but not lonely. Not melancholy. This feeling is perhaps unutterable, like the true name of God, but it isn't an entirely unpleasant one.

I wonder if I should eat something that my body doesn't need, but instead I choose to narrate to myself. There is a soothing in narration, it placates dis-ease.

I love this space, since the first time I set foot here two decades ago, it has a sort of magical peace about it, in the heart of an otherwise bustling zone of the city, divorced from the injured and moribund at the hospital just across the street.

And it occurs to me how luxurious it truly is to be on this side of the membrane that separates the ill from the healthy-- and also how desperately thin, how permeable that barrier truly is.

On this side, an excess of choice, filling time and space with leisure and entertainment, and on the other, pain both physical and psychic. Of course I don't mean to suggest that we don't carry pain into our leisure--undoubtedly we do--but simply that the order of magnitude is different. First world problems to be sure. And maybe there is nothing to be said or done, or maybe the act of writing precedes the impulse to do, or maybe it is its own sort of doing. I talk to myself on the page and I feel the amplified anxiety of an electronic addiction loosen its grip. This, I think, is good. Good girl, Ilana, you can self-soothe. You can let the world happen around you and not feel responsible for any outcomes but your own. Or you can ignore even those for a few moments.

When you were a child--you think--the world was still mediated by external pressures, but their immediacy was other. Better? Worse? Why, damn it, do you feel the need to evaluate an immutable fact of modern existence? "You're avoiding," your inner voice chides. "I know," she replies, "I'm not ready."

You want to write a love letter to Edie, before she dies of cancer. You want to write against the guilt of being, mostly, genuinely content while someone you love, have loved, is on her steady march toward transition from existence on this mortal plane to whatever else there is or could be. Far from you or what she meant to you. You avoid because you feel guilty that despite ample technology that facilitates instantaneous connection and despite the ease with which you move across continents by air and by highway, in the last decade, you have seen her but once, face to face, because you assumed you had more time, because your childhood laid a foundation that didn't require constant tending, because even when you knew of her diagnosis, it seemed like she would beat it, because people do... and it was just a little sarcoma--totally operable... and so when her daughter and son, your childhood playmates, called your mother to say it was now or never, you even debated whether to go or not, but when you heard her voice, you knew you needed to go to her.

But was it because, as you said, that you wanted to cradle her in love for her, or was it for you? And does it really matter in the end? And when faced with the real, concrete, monumental enormity of her mortality, which is your mortality, why can't you hold that humility in your heart when confronted with the rest of life, with your child, with your mother, with  yourself?

When you saw her with the hollowed out haunting of cancer, you felt so much love you thought you would burst. But you can't hold onto that feeling, you forget, and keep living, and let your mind fixate on banal and pointless things, like which pair of shoes will cause less discomfort, or if you must shower today or just rinse off, or whether you want to eat rice or pasta and think  you probably shouldn't have either because you need to lose another 50 pounds. For what? You'll still die. To be loved? You are loved. You may be. You will be. Your corporality and trauma, your absurd insecurity should mean nothing, you should let it all go.

But you can't, you don't. It isn't fucking fair that the world continues to live while you die too soon. It isn't fucking fair that even in the dying we hold on to anger and resentment and age-old dynamics. It isn't fucking fair that the pain of your death is, perhaps, less keenly felt, too, than the pain of un-love. God, I'm so selfish. We all are. It defies reason and words and makes my bones ache and my head hurt. And yet. I still want his eyes on mine. I still need to be seen. And I will still enter into the darkened room and for 100 minutes, suspend disbelief and be transported by the imagination of others. It isn't fucking fair.

But it is so God damn human.

Urgencia de conocerse
A través de la mirada alterna
Ajena sin serlo,
Sin palabras previas,
Conocimiento primordial.

De allí surgen los deseos suprimidos,
Las necesidades alejadas,
La esperanza casi apagada
Revive.

El sonido de mares,
Sangre pulsando en los oídos
Pulmones reventándose
Por una voz
Que pide ser escuchada.
Melodía subterránea
Anterior a todo lenguaje.

Agudiza la soledad
El tiempo que se sabe perdido.
La desnudez retórica repara.
Imágenes inversas,
Una mirada mutua
Profunda,
Vital,
Escrita en la piel
Sin sistema de signos.
Interpretable sólo
En la solidaridad de pupilas entrelazadas
Que no se atreven a esquivarse.

Germen de vida
Efímera
Eterna.