A TONGUE TWISTER (5)
On what bleak barbican or bulwark, what brigantine beached in Barbados, what veranda in Baltimore, or in what base brothel in Bordeaux did Virgilio banish his virginity?
’Twas on neither barbican nor brigantine nor veranda, nor in one of Bordeaux’s brothels, that Virgilio’s virginity was banished.
Instead, one bright morning around breakfast, the embattled bard invited a dog, a Saint Bernard, to partake of his vittles. But the Saint Bernard, deaf, badly misunderstood, and drilled him with his vermilion rod.
Had the Saint Bernard but gobbled the vittles, Virgilio’s virginity would never have been plucked, and undoubtedly to this day be intact instead of banished.
For Virgilio Piñera
IN THE MONSTER MEN’S ROOM
One after another, men were entering the monster men’s room. They would pull out their imposing tools and urinate in the most imposing way. Eachurbod studied these maneuvers—that manly, captivating way they did it, that defiant move they made as they threw open the doors to the mansion and strode in and undid their flies. Oh, my dear, that indifference yet concentration with which they pulled out their tools and looked up toward the ceiling or at the walls covered with erotic drawings and graffiti—outings of closet queens cheek by jowl with cartoons of certain individuals closely linked to the country’s power structure —and therefore to Fifo himself. Some brazen (i.e., suicidal) queers had posted on that public wall the hours during which they could be found at the Copelia ice-cream parlor or in a certain corner of the park; others boasted of their talent for blow jobs or their skill at making even the most dormant phallus stand again. And then there were the hustlers and trade who advertised their merchandise: thickness, length in inches, and, of course, price per inch.
But that was all just words, toilet literature, thought Eachurbod. Those queers weren’t looking for blow jobs, they were blowhards. They didn’t have the balls to be in the places they said they’d be in, and those hustlers didn’t exist. O divine St. Nelly, tell me—is it true, as some have said, that the top is an extinct species, which disappeared with the advance of civilization? Are there no longer Men upon the earth willing to get it on with a youthful, ethereal, and elastic girl-queen such as I? Eachurbod, receiving no reply from St. Nelly, looked again at the army of pissers standing at serious attention before the urinals, immersed in their pissing. But she, the devouress, knew that secretly they knew that they were in a special place, a place where there were only men exhibiting their pricks, and that this somehow compromised them, and made them either tops or topped. And gazing at that divine collection of hoses in all colors, and the seriousness of expression that formed itself upon the faces of their (apparently guilt-ridden) owners, Eachurbod composed one of his most profound sayings of the day: “Every man that walks into a men’s room where there are only men peeing becomes a citizen, voluntarily or not, of Fairyland.” Oh, yes, under the influence of Skunk in a Funk, who was a friend of the great poet José Lezama Lima (whose poem “The Death of Narcissus” she sometimes recited to Eachurbod sotto voce), the unhappy and misshapen queen had suddenly turned poet-queen-philosopher herself. . . . But it was not Narcissus who was about to die this time, it was Eachurbod himself, if he didn’t scratch his itch, didn’t find a Man among all these Men. Oh, if only one of those menacing mulattoes, one of those hunky chocolate dreams, would make her a sign of complicity. How could this desperate queen have lived (have stood) so many years of abstinence, how could she never have been skewered, if she lived only to be skewered? How could no man have possessed her, even by mistake, if her entire life she had done nothing but run after men? What curse hung over her now dried-out ass? What Stygian lightning bolt had condemned her tongue to drool in solitude? And yet—in spite of her unending failures—Eachurbod was not giving up. Quite the contrary: every man she saw yet could not conquer was a goad that spurred her on to further seeking. So desperate was her desperation that many was the time (unable to bear it a moment longer) that the poor wallflower had thrown herself at the groin of some big giant of a man who she thought had signed her dance-card. And what had she gotten in return for such girlish forwardness? A fist, a horrid insult, jail, and sometimes death itself. Yes, my dear, death itself—because Eachurbod had been murdered several times, though her rectal fire was so powerful that even after death it goaded her to get up, rise from the grave or the sea, and throw herself into the chase once more. There was, for Eachurbod, no hope even for the consolation of a lasting peace after death. For this warrior-queen, there was no rest. There was even the famous story, anthologized by Agustín Plá and the lovely Doctor Lapique, in which Eachurbod, about to be buried (for the fifth time, or the ninth?), broke through the casket and threw herself at the zipper of a once-in-a-lifetime black gravedigger. Of course the truth was, as everybody including Agustín Plá admitted, that black gravedigger could raise the dead. . . . But now my dear Paquita, I mean Eachurbod, you’re alive and kicking once again, in one of the most magnificent men’s rooms in the world, surrounded by exquisite thugs with golden skin, pissing with the roar of a cataract before rejoining the conga line. But none of those phalluses swings even an inch in your direction. Vei e mori.
Her red eyes surveyed the field. She began over in the corner, at the mighty colonial door hewn from two blocks of finest cedar wood. Turning slowly back through ninety degrees, she scanned the entire room. One by one she inspected the bodies of those men, their stony faces, and (naturally) their members, until her retroceding gaze fell upon one of her own claws or grappling irons (“lily-whites,” the innocent creature called them) and she saw—horrors!—that in one of them she was carrying Volume XXVII of the Complete Works of Lenin. Ay, that dratted book given her for protection by her intimate friend Nicolás Guillotina (for whom she often danced naked, to the music of Sóngoro cosongo, upon the glass top of his dressing table). Always carry this book, Eachurbod, wherever you go, he had told her. It will save you from any suspicion of heresy; it will be like carrying a Bible when you walk down the street in Ireland, or a copy of the Koran in Teheran, or a novel by Corín Tellado in Miami. And the queen, out of respect for her protector (who was that to her, my dear, and nothing more), now lugged that heavy red-bound tome around with her wherever she went. . . . Now she realized why men ran away from her. What man was going to fall for any girl’s sparkling smiles, or winks, or coquettish come-ons if she was going to be carrying around Volume XXVI (Didn’t you say it was XXVII?) of the Complete Works of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin? That book, that name, were practically synonymous with the Communist Party and consequently with Fifo and consequently with the implacable army that hunted down and punished all “sexual deviation.” Anyone carrying that book—and flashing it around like that, so openly—had to be a political commissar at the very least; i.e., somebody you had to hide every life-affirming (and consequently phallic) manifestation from. Dratted book—where on earth, here, so publicly, could the poor queen get rid of it? Dumping it into a public toilet would be considered treason so foul that it would cost her her life. Could she eat it? No way. Not only was it awfully thick; everybody knew that if you so much as nibbled at one corner of one of its pages, you’d lose not just your mind but also your life. So as quick as a vaudeville magician, Eachurbod sucked in his tummy, swept the book under his shirt, tucked the volume into his pants, and then, transformed into a refrigerator-shaped queen (the book was almost as tall as she was), returned with much greater confidence to her cruising.
And she’d been right—within minutes she proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the red-bound book was an albatross about her neck. The second she’d tucked it away, a splendid sailor from the Gulf Fishing Fleet stood alongside her, planted his stunning legs wide apart, unzipped his bulging fly, and fished out a lovely rosy-pink eel that Eachurbod couldn’t take her eyes off of. And for greater comfort, the young sailor (was it the same one that had killed Cernuda?) took out not only his pink phallus but his two pinkís-simo testicles as
well. Enormous quantities of pink, Eachurbod recited to himself (in honor of Lezama) as he gazed upon those divine dimensions—two enormous Dominican mameys, and sprouting from between them the king of fruits, a burnished, splendid banana. And the monarch of the sea began to spout a stream of piss that flowed to the farthest horizon. Ay, such was the potency of that young sailor, who had perhaps just stepped off his ship after months of abstinence, that his piss did not fall into the streambed of the urinal, but splashed against the prick-graffiti’d wall. Oh, if I were only one of those drawings! sighed Eachurbod as he watched that hose that washed them down. When the young sailor—broad shoulders, brush-cut hair, red-cheeked face, manly legs and bubble butt almost bursting from his tight pants—had finished, he stood there, beside the devouress, shook his magnificent bell-clapper, and, never losing his sailor-boy (and therefore absolutely otherworldly) composure, looked out of the corner of his eye at Eachurbod. I’ll ring those sweet bells for you, Eachurbod thought as he looked at the pendulous roundness of the testicles and the lovely phallus which, rather than being tucked away into the uniform, was still out—standing so gracefully pert and unconcerned that it might have been riding the waves. And like the waves, the lovely phallus throbbed and swelled and almost gamboled before the astonished eyes of the devouress. There was no time to lose—experience had shown, beatings had shown (and Guillotina had drummed into her) that when one stood in the presence of such a phenomenon, a phenomenon as rare as the appearance of Halley’s Comet, one couldn’t waste a second. Eachurbod put out a hand and caressed that regal campanile, and at her touch the great bell-clapper swung so high that it clapped against the young sailor’s chest, emitting a heavenly peal. At last! After a hundred (perhaps even a thousand) years! The queen had found her yearned-for love god! Now all she had to do was kneel before him. Eachurbod took out Volume XXVIII (Now hold it —I’m sure you said it was Volume XXVII!) of the Complete Works of Lenin and knelt upon it as though it were a silken cushion—which brought her mouth just to the level of that glorious mouthful. Eachurbod opened her worshipful mouth, stuck out her tongue of fire, and moved toward the place where the staff of life stood erect.
And at that moment, a mezzo-soprano voice, so potent that it paralyzed every pisser in the place, burst forth in the monster men’s room. All the pissers whirled around (including the young sailor), and what to their wondering eyes should appear but a skeletally thin lady of mature years, dressed head to foot in the style of mid-nineteenth-century France, standing in the center of the men’s room, singing. It was María Mercedes de Santa Cruz, the Condesa de Merlín, who a hundred and fifty years later, driven by homesickness and rage, was returning for a second time to her residence in Havana, where she intended to sing once more, within those beloved walls, the opera Norma that Bellini had composed in 1831.
A TOUR OF INSPECTION
Fifo emerged from his underground palace surrounded by his personal escort—imposing specimens able to bring Satan himself to his knees by merely cupping their balls—and made his way to the presidential helicopter on the palace roof, which had been turned into a huge helipad scrubbed down night and day by three hundred diligent midgets. Followed by several government ministers, the Lady of the Veil (a personage who was traveling incognito, and about whom it was known only that she—or he?—was a prominent figure in the Arab world), a group of technical advisers, two physicians, the escort, and the pilot and copilot, the Supreme Leader boarded his helicopter. “Take us around the whole island,” he instructed the pilot, and instantly the helicopter rose aloft. Armed with an antique spyglass, binoculars, a telescope, several pairs of magnifying glasses, and other artifacts for seeing at a distance, Fifo leaned back in his presidential seat, lit a cigar, and ordered the pilot to fly over the island slowly, so he could inspect everything before the Carnival. “First of all,” he said, “find Bloodthirsty Shark for me. I want to see how he’s doing.” The gigantic helicopter descended almost to the surface of the ocean, where the great shark had called all the other sharks together for an inspection and an antirodent exhortation, while he himself remained forever vigilant. When Fifo saw Bloodthirsty Shark, his jowly face filled with tenderness and he softly caressed his long white prickly beard. And when Bloodthirsty Shark saw the presidential helicopter, he emerged and did fantastic pirouettes on the surface of the waves, exhibiting the flexibility, vigor, and virility of his powerful body.
“Throw him a piece of human flesh,” Fifo ordered the Prime Minister. “His appetite must be kept keen.”
It was the Prime Minister’s habit, and also his duty, to always bring along a sack of human flesh on these inspection junkets, pieces of which he would throw down to Bloodthirsty Shark as a gift from Fifo, who would sometimes pull on a pair of rubber gloves and personally toss the tasty morsels to his pet. When the Prime Minister heard Fifo’s order this time, though, he blanched. Fifo hadn’t announced this junket beforehand, and everything had come together so suddenly (as was almost always the case with Fifo’s whims) that the Prime Minister hadn’t had time to send off one of the household midgets to kill one of the prisoners and throw him into a sack.
“What’s the matter?” cried Fifo. “Where’s the sack?”
“Comandante, w-w-we left so fast I forgot it.”
“What!?” roared Fifo, livid, while Bloodthirsty Shark continued leaping about in the water, jaws agape in expectation of the usual tasty tidbit. “I have never heard of such dereliction of duty! I ought to have you shot by the firing squad this minute, for high treason!”
“I apologize, Comandante,” whined the Prime Minister. “I’ve been so busy with the preparations for the Carnival and the palace festivities—it just slipped my mind. I promise it’ll never happen again.”
“All right, I will spare your life this time,” Fifo relented. “So we’ll just cut off one of your arms and throw it to him.”
At a signal from Fifo, the two physicians amputated one of the Prime Minister’s arms, and the Prime Minister, using the only hand he had left, tossed his amputated limb straight into the shark’s maw. The immense fish showed its thanks by leaping out of the water almost as high as the helicopter itself, then plunging torpedo-like once more into the sea, showering the aircraft with spray.
“The arm of a prime minister must be quite a delicacy,” remarked Fifo, now in a much better humor, while the helicopter increased its altitude. Then turning again to the pilot, he said, “Let’s fly over Guanabo. I want to see how many faggots are on the beach today. It’s a workday, so everybody ought to be at work.”
But there were people swimming and sunning among the rocks. This made Fifo furious again, and with his walkie-talkie he ordered the Minister of the Interior to round up everybody on the beach.
“It is not moral for persons to swim without the veil,” remarked the Lady of the Veil. “And doing so in that way, half naked and in the sight of everyone, is indeed a mortal sin. May Allah protect us . . .”
But Fifo ignored the Lady of the Veil—he was still looking out the window of the helicopter.
“What are all those holes that somebody’s made down there along the coast?” he asked the Prime Minister, who was softly moaning as he bled to death.
“Those are the trenches that you ordered dug last week, Comandante . . .”
“Fill ’em in and have an oil well drilled where every one of ’em used to be! I’m sure there’s oil down there; I can almost smell it.”
“But Comandante . . .” one of the technical advisors screwed up his courage to stammer, “ten years ago we drilled test wells, and there’s no oil here.”
“What!?” Fifo roared again. “Ten years!? You’re telling me that nature can’t change in ten years?! You’re telling me that nature is more powerful than we are?! You’re telling me you don’t believe in dialectical materialism?! Oil! Oil! I’m sure there’s a river of oil down there. Oh, yes, I can smell it. And you, traitor, what you want is for us to remain in a state of underdevelopment forever, and for lack
of fuel not to be able to go to war with our enemies. Which is a greater danger than ever now, I remind you, when the czar of Russia has cut off our oil supplies.”
“Oil is basic for the life of a nation,” affirmed the Lady of the Veil.
“Of course it’s basic!” brayed Fifo. “But this son of a bitch doesn’t want us to have any!” And pointing at the adviser, he cried to his escort, “Shoot him!”
The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights Page 19
