As I stared up at his face, a foot away from him, I knew I was on a roller coaster that had arrived at its summit and was about to drop at a ninety-degree angle. There was a moment of suspension, and my stomach flipped again. I had to bite my lip to prevent a delirious shriek from leaving my mouth.
After every game, a barbecue happened on site for the players and their wives. We joined the festivities as M’s guests. M was elated—he’d played his best game yet, he told us—hugging Alejandro and me over and over again, proposing toast after toast. As for Estéban, my radar’s waves bounced off him all night, detecting his every move, determining his location. It was impossible to tell whether I was on his radar too, but there was no wife or girlfriend in sight and this filled me with expectation. He had arrived to show me that my erotic self was a force to be reckoned with, that I was a sexual person after all, and that no matter how hard I tried to suppress that key part of myself in order to stay married to a man I was no longer attracted to, my body was now telling me self-repression was not an option anymore. I had lacked the courage to end the marriage, as had Alejandro, but now that my sexuality had burst forth and expelled the Terror for a night, there was another undeniable truth to be faced: the marriage was over.
Within a month, Alejandro and I were separated. We both cried long and hard, and mourned by immediately seeking solace in others’ arms. I hoped my infatuation with Estéban would become mutual, and Alejandro started dating a skydiver he’d met at the Flying Club. She would become his second wife and they would have a son together.
M morphed from adopted son to long-lost brother and self-appointed personal stylist. Although during my marriage I’d possessed a decent array of mainstream eighties outfits, once I was single again, M, who was making a killing by Argentinian standards, announced he’d be overhauling my wardrobe after fattening me up. Huge plates of gnocchi were ordered, and for the first time in over a year I ate heartily and watched my face and body fill out again. The Terror was still ever-present, but slumber, with apocalyptic, epic dreams, came back too. At the most expensive boutiques in town, he yayed and nayed each outfit I paraded in. “That hard!” was his stamp of approval. According to M, walking lessons were imperative. “Shake that ass, woman!” he would yell as we strutted down Avenida Argentina, Neuquén’s main thoroughfare. A visit to the hair salon was in order, to get my hair permed and highlighted. When he was satisfied with the results (unbeknownst to him, he had also invested in a now-impeccable petit bourgeois cover for my ongoing MIR activities, still carried out with Alejandro), he instructed me on the ways of men. Or, specifically, the ways of Estéban, the team member M was closest to, as Estéban spoke a little English.
“All he does is brag in the change room about how he can have any girl he wants.”
“So what should I do?”
“Ignore him completely. Don’t even look at him. Never acknowledge his existence.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as I tell you.”
“But isn’t that rude?”
“Woman, do you want this guy or not?”
“Very much so.”
“Then do everything I say.”
And so, for every home-game night, I’d don an outfit that had been assembled, green-lit, and financed by M and make my way down to the gymnasium with Luisa. She was a janitor at the cathedral and could give a rat’s ass about her appearance. Her uniform consisted of filthy acid-washed jeans, an unflattering T-shirt, and falling-apart espadrilles, dirty hair in a messy bun.
Luisa was a free spirit, who despite being penniless travelled to Argentina’s four cardinal points with nothing but a small pack and her thumb to take her wherever she wanted. Like her mother back in Paraná, she was a clairvoyant able to read people’s intentions before she got in a car, or feel the energy in a shantytown before she walked its dirt roads in the middle of the night. She possessed nerves of steel and fed herself through a thoroughly rehearsed shoplifting method that involved a large woven bag and targeted only chain supermarkets.
“I am an ethical thief and will never steal from a small business, although sometimes I’ll borrow a magazine from a kiosk and then return it.”
As for shelter, she lived at a female students’ boarding house funded by the local chapter of the Catholic Church in exchange for janitorial work. Meals were taken every day at my apartment, where she would show up with vegetables or a kilo of stolen meat, and she did any odd job that was offered to her, including now being M’s cleaning lady. The three of us went everywhere together—cafés, bars, discos. I’d met Luisa at the Comahue National University when she’d taken my conversational English classes at the Tourism Department. When I recruited her as a resistance helper, she’d immediately pickpocketed Argentinian ID cards for comrades who needed to get out of Chile as soon as possible. A true adventurer at heart, she was always game for anything, including the systematic seduction of Estéban. As for her romantic life, she was in an open relationship with a sexy, intense, recovering heroin addict who had supported his habit by prostituting himself on the streets of Buenos Aires and now lectured on the evils of drugs and prostitution at local high schools. Omar was clean, but still so wild that a night out with him and Luisa provided legends as opposed to mere stories.
Weeks passed and I followed M’s instructions to a T, obedient student that I was. At the post-game meals, I conversed with everyone but Estéban, avoided all eye contact, and moved to a different part of the room if he came within ten feet of me. Adoquin, the most chic disco in town, was the preferred destination after the barbecues, where groupies were the bees that buzzed around Estéban, the honeycomb. Once there, I was not to dance with him or ever look his way. “Remember, he doesn’t exist.”
Just as I was about to throw in the towel by professing my love to him—treating like a leper this man for whom my toes curled was torture—the modus operandi started to work. Luisa—tickled by the goings-on that were as alien to her as taking tea at Buckingham Palace, for it would never cross her mind to invest any amount of time, energy, or money in entrapping a man, her preferred style being simply to go up to an object of her affection and declare, “I want you”—reported that she had caught Estéban’s eyes unequivocally lingering on me numerous times, most notably when I was cutting a rug to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” in my pumps, satin leggings, and butterfly belt buckle.
“Told ya,” M bragged as he applied lotion to himself before our next outing. M was the most convincing moisturizer I’d ever met, his boudoir stocked with face serums, hand creams, hair oils, and body butters. “Now keep doing what I say.”
Omar accompanied us to the game and Adoquin that night. The Luisa–Omar combo being what it was, something for the history books was bound to happen. When we were all leaning up against the bar and Estéban made his way over, M said: “Stay here tonight.”
In laying the groundwork for that week’s game, he had bought me a floor-length denim Calvin Klein jacket with enormous shoulder pads, underneath which I wore thigh-high black lace stockings, a black knit micro-miniskirt that clung like a sleeve, and a crocheted black top with gold thread woven through it.
“Don’t talk to him and don’t look at him, but don’t leave either. Keep your eyes on the dance floor and gyrate to the music a bit.”
When “Time of My Life” from the Dirty Dancing movie began to play, rather than awaiting further instructions, I turned to Estéban and said, “Wanna dance?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
I grabbed him by the hand, took him to the dance floor, nailed him with my smoky eyes, and got down with my moves. I had no idea what had hit me, for this was definitely not part of the plan, to go from avoiding him like the plague to dry humping his leg with no transition, but there it was. Possessed, I laughed and woo-hooed, and Estéban took me in with a smile. As for M, he was grinding with a voluptuous groupie and gave me a high-five. Then the music stopped and a scrawny, whiskered teenager, microphone in hand, materi
alized under the disco ball.
“Good evening, everyone. Thanks for coming. Don’t know if you know this, but half the cover charge tonight is going to the Industrial High School’s fundraising efforts for our graduation trip to Córdoba. So yeah. Thanks for that. And we’re gonna be having a little kissing contest now as part of the evening. So in three minutes the dance floor will be cleared and we’ll be holding the contest for the longest, saliviest, juiciest kiss. The winning couple will receive a special prize. So yeah, let’s finish dancing while those interested couples get organized.”
Before either of us could say a word, Luisa came running up to me.
“Help me look for Omar. I’ve gotta do this contest with him.”
Found necking with a high school student and told about the contest by Luisa, who could care less about his exploits, Omar didn’t skip a beat: “Yes!”
While Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” played out, Luisa ran to the bathroom. Pale as a ghost on her return, she pulled me aside and told me she’d just shit her pants.
“What do you mean you shit your pants?” I asked.
“I shit my pants. That’s all. I was nervous and I shit my pants.”
To be more precise, she’d only managed to get her pants halfway down before the shit hit the fan, as it were. Since Argentinian bathrooms didn’t provide toilet paper or paper towels, she was screwed. So she pulled her pants up, shit and all, and ran out to tell me about it. In charge of damage control, I retrieved her fire-engine red, knee-length corduroy coat made by her mother from the coat check, and she threw it on to cover her nether regions and pulled Omar onto the stage just in time for the contest to begin. I whispered the story to Estéban, and together we laughed until tears poured down our faces.
A plump, pimply, bespectacled teenager monitored each couple, making sure their lips never lost contact. As for Luisa and Omar, the urgency of their kissing made one think of a desert traveller coming across his first drop of water in days, although every time Omar’s hands went anywhere near her ass, she would gently yet unmistakably guide them away. Meanwhile, Estéban and I had to lean on each other so as not to fall over from laughter.
Luisa and Omar won the contest and were awarded a life-sized poster of a lion-maned Tina Turner in a minidress for their efforts. They promptly disappeared, poster tucked under their arms. Estéban and I found ourselves alone against the bar, wiping the tears from our eyes, hands resting on our thighs as we tried to get our breath back from the laughing fit.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked.
“Make love to you,” I said.
His jaw literally dropped.
“Make love to you. Right now. At your house.” I drove the point home, reducing him to rubble with my eyes.
He floored his Ford Taurus convertible to the top of Neuquén’s only hill, where he shared the penthouse suite of the city’s tallest high-rise with the team doctor, an equally renowned Casanova. Once there, he took me by the hand and walked me down the hall. I shook with nerves and excitement while he bedded me like the expert he was. From that day on, we were inseparable.
Luisa showed up at my apartment the next day with a stolen baguette and a block of Gouda cheese. We devoured it as she shared the outcome of her shitty night. Omar had driven her to lover’s lane, a bluff near the university that overlooked the city, and they’d made out in his Peugeot 504. Somehow, she’d managed to keep his hands away from her ass. Then they’d waited in line at Loving Moments, one of the local pay-by-the-hour motels. Once in the room, he threw her on the bed, stuck his hand down her pants, pulled it back out covered in shit, didn’t bat an eyelash, and declared, “This explains why you stink. Ya shit yourself,” before going to the washroom to wash up. When asked why he’d been so nonchalant about the whole thing, he’d responded with:
“Honey, I sucked dick and got fucked on the streets of Buenos Aires for three years. You think a little shit’s gonna turn me off? Uh-uh.”
We almost died laughing, I told her all about Estéban, and then we lay down for siesta.
THREE
In early 1989, six months after the No side won the plebiscite in Chile and elections were called for December of that year, Estéban was traded to a Santa Fe team. I moved with him.
The MIR ceased its activities; Alejandro and I were no longer needed. I was free to do with my future what I would. There was no one left to answer to and no dream to struggle for. Cut loose, I escaped into my new identity, following a man who had always put himself first and believed only in pursuing an individual goal, as opposed to fighting for a greater cause. The new existence he offered was a lifesaver, and I grabbed it before the alternative—staying in Neuquén and facing the MIR’s colossal loss alone—led me to suicide. I pushed the grief down and went numb. Alejandro stayed and became a commercial airline pilot. For years, he struggled with debilitating depression.
Neuquén, with its dry, windy terrain, was exchanged for Santa Fe, the oldest city in the country, on the shores of the Paraná River. It was so humid there that houses actually broke into a sweat. Drops trickled down the walls, sometimes streams, all resulting in the spread of fungi. If housekeeping in Neuquén had consisted of endless sweeping, wiping, and dusting of the dirt that the howling wind blew in through every crack, crevice, and opening, in Santa Fe it was all about battling the mildew that seeped through the walls’ pores on an hourly basis. Litres of bleach seemed to have no effect on the black, green, and pink affliction that spread with the same predictability as the earth spinning full circle on its axis every twenty-four hours.
I followed Estéban to this wet basin of a city. In one swift motion, I swept the cause to which I had given body and soul under the carpet and plowed forward, a racehorse with blinders on, eyes fixed on the horizon, hoping to obliterate all that had come before.
Although I told Estéban I’d been in the Chilean Movement of the Revolutionary Left, no details of my militancy were disclosed. His only words when I told him were:
“Do you ever plan on joining a resistance movement again?”
Knowing full well what he wanted to hear, I answered without pause.
“Of course not.”
It wasn’t that he disagreed with revolutionary politics. It was that he understood that being in a resistance movement required one to give one’s life, and he was not looking to hook up with a guerrilla, but rather to settle down with someone who would follow wherever the whims of professional sports took him.
The basketball-girlfriend lifestyle certainly had its moments of fun. Touring with a professional sports team was all about excess, and although I never drank a drop of alcohol, as I had always been a teetotaller, I relished the all-night parties and danced till the sun came up. Within a couple of months my frozen-smile exterior began to thaw, and the grief over all that I’d lost came up in the form of non-stop crying. Estéban, who had only known the don’t-worry-be-happy, party-girl me, was flummoxed.
I cried for hours on a daily basis, usually in a heap on the floor, often while walking down the street, sometimes while sitting at an outdoor table at Las Cuartetas restaurant, which was strategically placed at a busy downtown intersection for one to see and be seen. A bawling fit even overtook me at Danes, the hottest club in town, while I danced in the strobe lights to the Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy.” Then there were the long-distance bus rides with the basketball team. Curled against the window, I’d weep like a widow at her husband’s grave. It was chronic. And Estéban, who knew what I was mourning—I had explained it as the loss of a dream, of a war, of a revolution, and he had nodded, trying to understand the bigger picture I had described while not giving away the details of my MIR tasks—was at a loss.
As for me, I knew my well of sadness was bottomless, I understood that this would probably go on forever, and I was okay with that. Anguish had been a constant companion since the day of the coup, when I was five years old and tears poured down my parents’ faces during Allend
e’s last speech. Exile had followed swiftly and mercilessly, and triggers were everywhere. Being at the home of Estéban’s parents, an operatic Italian clan, reminded me of the extended family in Chile I was not with; walking the boulevards of Santa Fe, as opposed to Santiago’s “great liberated avenues” that Allende had referred to on the day of his death, smashed my heart to smithereens.
In short, being immersed in my new identity, without the outlet for my beliefs that my MIR activities and comrades had provided, destroyed me. Not to mention the fact that giving my life to a revolutionary cause had all apparently been in vain. And the knowledge that I had not only survived but landed in the lap of luxury, while many others had died, had disappeared, or were perishing in jail, filled me with guilt and shame. But my escape and attempt at a mainstream life after the defeat of our dream had the exact opposite of the desired effect. I had hoped to wipe away the past and be happy in the present. Instead, my Santa Fe exile shone a spotlight on my losses and produced a pain so primal that it hurt to touch my chest.
And yet the naked eye would tell you that I was unscathed. I’d never been captured, arrested, tortured, or even threatened. It never occurred to me to try to get help, for there was none to be had. What was I supposed to do? Go to a counsellor and say: “Hi. I was in the Chilean resistance and it was fucking rough on my body, soul, psyche, and life because I lived in a state of chronic terror for years, and even though nothing ever happened to me, I think I may have PTSD, which I know is presumptuous, pathetic, and weak, considering there are thirty thousand disappeared people in this country and tens of thousands of torture survivors walking the streets, going to work, paying their bills, and raising children. By the way, we lost the revolution, and even though elections have been called for later this year, don’t be fooled, we really did lose the revolution. Can you help?”
Not only did I believe that so much torment was unearned, I also felt undeserving of professional care. Who was I to seek help when I knew there were comrades living on the streets? Not to mention that the prospect was far too dangerous, what with the political climate in Argentina. After several tries by the military, people feared that the next coup attempt would be successful. Many were burning their compromising books and address lists. The economy was collapsing due to unpayable foreign debt, austerity measures, and corruption, and the starving shantytown dwellers who raided supermarkets and ate on the spot were being fiercely repressed. A few had been shot dead at a supermarket a few blocks from our house. Then there was Operation Condor, a Kissinger-conceived plan that saw the secret police forces of several South American countries working together to track down resistance members and do away with them through torture and murder. Considering that 179 Chilean resistance members had disappeared in Argentina, spilling the beans to a counsellor was out of the question.
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