Point.
Later that night, I was home after a short visit to the bar and a tequila-pounding session. The nice thing here is that you can buy painkillers over the counter that you would need scrips for in the States, so lucky me, I had alcohol and painkillers.
I got home and was flipping through some of my drawings and some of the other magazines that the place puts out. Some of the more conventional ones. I started to get my own personal motors running and, as I have been wont to do, since being here and unable to meet women, I rubbed one out. As I was getting up to clean off, I noticed a smell that was really familiar. I walked around for a bit, smelling my hand, trying to figure out where it was familiar from. I mean, not like it’s the first time I’ve done the five-knuckle shuffle, but it was different. Closer somehow. Then I remembered the letter. I went to my bag and got it out. I brought it up to my face and caught a big whiff—way too similar to what I was smelling just moments ago. And vomited all over the letter and the kitchen floor.
“Eduardo, he fucking came on the letter!”
“You mean, the letter came, right?”
I forced a little more patience into my voice before answering. Eduardo was smart, and he was educated but this wasn’t his lengua primera we were speaking, out of respect for my blancito ass, no less.
“No, he ejaculated all over the letter,” I said, suppressing the gorge rising in my throat.
“Ewww.”
“Yeah.”
We both looked up at a voice that came from the entrance to my cubicle.
“E’cue me, can I talk to you for a momento?” my boss’s wife said, looking at me.
Eduardo looked at her, looked at me, pursed his lips, and got the fuck out of there. I toyed with the idea of calling out, “Take me with you.”
“Que tu hace, Gloria? Gonyo, you’re gonna get me fucking fired.”
“Que tu hace? Fuck joo, pendejo. Joo said joo was gonna call me.”
“What’s the matter, Gloria? Get bored with the valet?”
She pouted and sat down, going for hurt and vulnerable and just succeeding in looking cunty and swollen…. Works for me.
I’d fucked my boss’s wife last month. Yeah, I know I didn’t mention this earlier. I don’t really remember it too well. A bunch of us went out to the bar after work, and my boss showed up with his wife and driver in tow, trying for a folksy “get to know you” with his employees. It worked like a solar-powered flashlight.
He started drinking immediately, got a cheer when he bought us all a round. I was thinking of making a statement and not drinking it, but fuck—a free drink’s a free drink. So we all got kinda sloshed, but then he started arguing with his wife and she ended up shrieking, throwing a drink into his face, and bursting into tears. I hear communication is key to a healthy relationship, so maybe that wasn’t such a big deal. But then he stood up, said, “Puta!” nice and loud, and stormed out, stopping long enough to grab his driver by the arm and split. Leaving wifey to find her own way home or not.
She continued to drink and we all tried to deal with it in our own way. Most everybody else ignored her, but I ended up talking to her—and then taking her home. I think. The next morning I woke on the floor next to the bed, with the pattern of the molding at the base of the wall embossed in my cheek. Further inspection revealed that my face stank and my dick hurt. I popped my first herpes sore a month later.
Puta.
By the pointed looks whenever she came by the office and by the way she was looking at me now, I guess I fucked her.
“You gave me herpes, Gloria.”
“No. I no ’ave, wha’ chou say, ’erpez.”
The only woman I’ve ever come across that could make the word herpes sound sexy.
“Well, maybe not, but you should get checked. Because I have it and you’re the only one I’ve fucked recently.”
“Chou lie. Chou ’ave beeng fauckinngg deez Tijuana whoooars.”
“No, I haven’t….” This was bullshit. I didn’t know whore had that many Rs.
“Chou dong care sheet forrr mee. Bastardo!” she said, and stormed sobbing from my cubicle. By the time she was three feet away, it was a full-on siren wail that didn’t seem to require breathing, since it never stopped all the way to the elevator. I followed her half of the way. I don’t know what I was thinking, just trying to get her to shut the fuck up before somebody got theories. But when she stormed into the elevators and gave me the finger as the door closed, I gave up and turned to go back to me desk. Only to see my boss staring at me from the open door of his office.
That afternoon, at five, I packed the stuff from my desk that was mine into a shoulder bag, swept everything else into the trash, and got ready to go. I walked out, passed by Eduardo’s desk, and gave him the finger on the way out. I don’t think he saw me. I decided to hit the bar on the way back, just to take the edge off. I was still flipping out a little from the scene in the office, what with it looking like I had made my boss’s wife cry. Not a great career move. I couldn’t even put that on a résumé should I get fired.
I sat down at the bar and the bartender nodded to me, the height of familiarity for him, and I ordered a beer and a shot. After that, I started to think maybe things weren’t that bad. After the second round, things started to seem downright okay. I had a good job, never mind that I hated it…tons of people around the world hate their jobs, right? I had a place to live. So did (what seemed like) half the cucarachas in Mexico. But it had a roof, didn’t it? I ordered a third beer and shot, and at the end of that I was the luckiest motherfucker in the world. I was like a cat—nine lives and feet that no matter which way I was thrown stayed beneath me. Everything was great.
I paid up, tipped well, and left the bar. As I tottered to and fro on the way home, I had the sudden urge to sing, so I did. I warbled the whitest, most off-key version of “Guantanamera” ever to defile the empty uncaring streets of Mexico City. I turned down alley and street, side and back, before I learned that I was lost. You see, I hated the place. So the year that I had spent there, I literally spent walking only to work, the bar, the taqueria, and back. Tacos there suck, by the way.
There was no exploration and no deviating from this formula. When a place simultaneously makes you want to vomit and scares the shit out of you, it tends to happen.
When it was definite that I was lost, I turned around and figured out that I wasn’t completely alone. There were some guys behind me enjoying the night air too…. Excellent. I’d just ask them for directions. So I called out:
“Buenos noches, caballeros, ayuda me, por favor, con los direciones. No se ir a mi apartamento.”
They didn’t say anything, just kept walking closer to me, and that’s about when I started to get scared. I started to back away but they just got closer. The beer goggles kept me from really gauging their distance to me until one of them sank his fist into my gut, and I stupidly thought to myself: Yup, they’re too close. I was dragged, gagging for air, into a nearby alleyway, where I guess the beat-down of the century was supposed to take place. I got hit a second time and one of the guys kicked me on the way down, where one guy, the linguist of the group, leaned down and said:
“Stay the fuck away from Gloria, maricon.”
I would have laughed if I could have gotten air. Gloria was fat, ugly, and I had already drunk-fucked her once for which I was given the parting gift of a lifelong STD—plus the bonus for playing, a gang beating. I really could have laughed, but it would just have dissolved into tears. Luckily, I was spared having to think about this. They started the beating in earnest.
But just as soon as it began it seemed like it was over. I looked