by Marie Simas
They asked me a million questions. Did I smoke? Had I ever been abused? Did I use drugs? Did I want to be tested for STDs?
Yes. Yes. No. Yes.
I quit smoking cold turkey and started taking vitamins. They tested my blood. I was Rh-negative, so they had to give me Rhogam injections; otherwise, my body would reject the fetus. I was considered high risk because of this.
I stopped craving sweets and started craving raw meat and hot peppers.
“You’re probably iron deficient,” my doctor said.
They drew blood again to make sure. They gave me iron pills, but the cravings for raw meat didn’t go away. I ate bloody-rare steak and jalapenos for nine months. I lost weight. Dr. McCann got mad at me.
“Listen up, Missy! Pregnancy isn’t a fucking diet plan! Stop losing weight!” she yelled.
In the end, I gained only fifteen pounds.
I worked full time until the very end. My water broke while I was volunteering at the county animal shelter. The hot liquid ran down my legs and pooled into my shoes. It felt like pee. I called Oscar, who became frantic.
“Jesus! I’m coming to get you! Don’t move!”
I laughed, “It’s fine, baby. I’m all right. Take your time.”
And I was right. We went to the hospital. I fought for a natural birth, and resisted their attempt to give me drugs. I was in labor for three days. Eventually, they gave me Pitocin, which is a drug that increases contractions. It was horribly painful and I passed out a few hours later.
They rushed me upstairs for an emergency Caesarean. The doctor gave me three epidurals, but couldn’t numb my lower body, so they gave up and anesthetized me completely.
They cut me open and tore my son out of my body. My scar is over eight inches in length. I missed the entire birth of my son.
I awoke hours later, shaking from the anesthesia. I didn’t remember anything. My husband was by my side. He grabbed my hand.
“Hi, baby... I’m so happy... to... see you,” he whispered. His face was pale and his eyes were bloodshot from crying.
“Baby, you look terrible.” I croaked. My voice was horse because they intubated me.
“I know. You scared the shit out of me.” He smiled.
My wonderful husband never left my bedside. The orderlies wheeled me into the maternity ward, and he held my hand the entire way.
Then the nurse brought me my son. He was rolled up in a little flannel blanket, wrapped like a burrito. His skin was bright orange, with a huge mop of shiny black hair that trailed down his forehead and temples. He was jaundiced, and would stay in the hospital under sun lamps for another week.
My little son was hairy and orange, like a baby orangutan.
He was also the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.
Peace Be With You, and Also With You
2006, AGE 33
When I was still in college, I decided to stop talking to my father altogether. I broke all contact with him. The last time we spoke, it was on the phone. He told me I was “an uppity mule that needed a good beating.” I hung up on him. I never spoke with him again.
Years went by. I cut him off completely. Zero contact.
When I married my husband, my father was not invited. He called my house a few times, but I never answered the phone—I let it go straight to the machine. I never called back.
When my son was born, my father tried to communicate with me. He wanted to see his only grandchild. He sent messages through my cousins. I ignored him.
I was invited to a cousin’s wedding, which my father attended. He wasn’t invited. He just showed up. I didn’t expect him to be there; my cousin had guaranteed that he was not going to attend.
I didn’t notice him come in. He snuck into the church, sought me out, and deliberately sat behind me.
During Catholic Mass, the priest directs everyone to shake hands with their neighbors.
“Peace be with you.” Shake.
“And also with you.” Shake.
I shook everyone’s hand in front of me, and then I turned around to welcome the people sitting behind me. And there he was; my father, with his hand stretched out. I was shocked. My mouth dropped open. Everyone in the pews stared at us. It was a family wedding. They knew about me. They knew about my mother. They knew about my father.
“Peace be with you,” he said. His hand trembled in the air.
He smiled at me. It had been over fifteen years since I had seen him in person. He looked small... shrunken. His hair was white and he was bald in the front.
My eyes narrowed and I gritted my teeth. I felt sick; my heart raced and blood pounded in my ears.
Father reached out a little further, offering his hand to me. Countless times, that same hand had risen to strike me. Now my father, bent with old age and filled with regret, extended his hand, silently begging me to take it.
I turned around. My father’s hand stayed there in the air.
He had begged me... BEGGED...
I left my pew and went outside with my son. We went home.
Drunk Christmas
2008, AGE 35
We were invited to have Christmas with my husband’s family. It was a drunk Mexican Christmas. The party was in a nice trailer park in Sunnyvale, California—if you can imagine a nice trailer park. Outside, five cars were parked in one space. There was no room to open the car door, so we crawled out of the back seat windows: husband, kids, me. Everyone.
All the keys were in a fishbowl by the front door so that you could move any of the cars if you had to leave.
We were in charge of the liquor. We brought three giant cases of beer, six bottles of tequila, and lots of other assorted liquor.
Everyone crammed into the kitchen and the living room, sitting on folding chairs and other mismatched furniture.
The living room had a huge seventy-two inch plasma screen TV. Who needs a heater when you have that? Next to the TV, there was a framed picture of Pope John Paul II kissing the hand of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Everyone took turns rotating through the tiny kitchen, which had a table crammed into one corner and almost no space for anything else. They had a huge vat of Pozole, which is a pork stew made with hominy. It had the biggest corn kernels I’ve ever seen in my life. They were the size of quarters. When I asked about this, no one had a real answer for me.
“What kind of corn is this? It’s the largest corn I’ve ever seen. Where do you buy it?” I asked.
“At the store. It’s big corn. It’s Pozole corn.”
“No, I mean—is it hominy? What type of corn is it?” I asked again.
“No, it’s not hominy. Hominy is white, and it comes in a can and the taste is very different. This is big corn; Pozole corn.” That was the official answer. So if you ever want to make your own Pozole, just go into the supermarket and ask for “big corn.”
Portuguese people eat lots of stews, too—but nothing like Pozole, which is red, greasy, and delicious. The ingredients are these: pork (with all the bones and skin, etc.) and giant corn. Then, after the stew is made, you chop up onions, cabbage, radishes, and little herbs and then add them to your bowl of stew. You also squeeze lots of lemon into the bowl and most Mexicans add salt after-the-fact. I don’t know why these little vegetables aren’t added to the stew while it’s cooking, but apparently it’s a texture issue because Mexicans love their stew to be crunchy and taste like lemon.
There were about twenty-five people at the family gathering, and at least half of them were minors, but even so, all the alcohol disappeared very quickly.
The younger men, including my husband, had nicely-trimmed goatees. They wore almost identical outfits—black boots, jeans, and tight, black long-sleeved shirts. They looked like identical twins. All the male cousins tried to outdo each other with increasingly exaggerated tales of masculinity, although they had to be careful because all the wives were present.
Somehow, all of my husband’s cousins are named Juan.
Juan Carlos, Juan A
ntonio, Juan Horacio... and Oscar got a little pissy with me when I couldn’t tell them apart.
“Babe, which one is he? What’s his name again?” I whispered and pointed. I kept forgetting.
“Hey, what’s your problem, Marie? Get your head out of the clouds and pay attention. It looks rude.” Oscar said. He didn’t want me to embarrass him.
I got angry. Under my breath, I hissed, “It’s not my fault— can’t your family pick an original name? How come all the men are named Juan? Christ, show a little fucking originality. And it doesn’t help that you all have nicknames, either.”
The use of funny nicknames is ubiquitous in all Catholic families, not just Latino ones. When I was a kid, everyone called me “ladybug” and my brother was “onionhead,” because my brother’s hair was so blond. As I got older, “crazy bitch” replaced “ladybug” as my father’s preferred nickname for me.
Growing up, my husband’s nickname was gato, which means “cat” in Spanish. This is because, when he was fifteen, Oscar’s brother Miguel got him stinking drunk, shaved his eyebrows, and painted whiskers and a black cat nose on his face with a permanent marker. When Oscar woke up, he was unable to remove the permanent marker for three days and was so embarrassed he refused to leave the house. His brothers took Polaroid photos, some of which survived. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. The nickname stuck.
Anyway, everyone at the party assumed that my son was also named Juan, and they kept calling him “Juan Junior” all night. I only corrected them once. After that, I just let it go. It was a worthless exercise.
One cousin drank ten beers in less than an hour and fell asleep standing up. He was swaying back and forth, but never fell down. That takes years of practice.
Christmas Eve was topped off by the midnight piñata, which was stuffed with stale candies left over from Halloween. The adults took the piñata outside for the kids to break. It was wrong on so many levels.
First, all the kids were less than six years old, outside, in December, beating the crap out of a cheap piñata in the middle of the fucking street...at midnight. I’m sure all the neighbors were used to the commotion because no one called the police on us, but it was still very surreal.
The kids were exhausted (because it was midnight, way past any normal bedtime). But none of this night was normal, so I just went with it.
The kids took turns beating the piñata, and after about ten minutes, it broke and they all went on their knees to get the candies. It had rained recently, so the ground was muddy, but that didn’t stop them. My son isn’t allowed to have candy very often, so he was in heaven. All the fatigue caused by the inappropriate way-past-your-bedtime playing was soon replaced by a sugar high.
The kids stuffed their pockets and came back inside. The sugar rush kicked in and the kids started running around the house in circles. Dozens of tiny crackheads bouncing around the house.
The kids settled down to open their gifts, shaking with excitement and insulin poisoning. My son didn’t have any gifts (we left them at home), so I thought it best for us to go.
I signaled with my fingers. My husband’s family protested and wanted us stay there; I knew they would, but it was ridiculous. Where would we sleep? There were dozens of people in the house already. We would have been forced to sleep in the bathtub or a kitchen cabinet for lack of space.
We went back to our hotel and I went straight to sleep.
The next day, we returned to the trailer park for more Christmas Day fun.
The Pozole had been resting on the floor in a giant pot all night and it was reheated so we could have more. I admit that I must have eaten ten bowls of the soup that day. It was delicious, but I didn’t poop for six days afterwards. Giant corn is not great for your digestion, if you know what I mean.
On Christmas day, all the kids played outside, in the street, with the other parents oblivious to their activities. I kept going outside to check on them.
“Why you keep going outside?” asked my husband’s aunt.
“I’m checking on the kids. They’re playing in the street,” I replied.
“Oh, the people here drive slow. They’ll be all right.”
Any child molester could have popped out and snatched one of them and no one would have noticed.
The TV was blaring nonstop with Mexican soap operas, which have universally bad acting and very Caucasian-looking Mexicans playing all the good roles. The acting is really bad. Usually, the men find an excuse to rip off their shirts, revealing muscled abs and steely arms—bodies not found in nature. All the women have breast implants and enhanced lips—huge, like water balloons.
Anyway, we didn’t pray or go to Mass; we just ate and drank, and told bawdy jokes. We left after 9 p.m. and drove back home.
We had a great time, and it certainly was interesting.
Still... they were all more normal than my family.
You win, hubby.
Latino Foreplay
I have dated many different types of men and I will tell you that Latinos have their own particular brand of sexual foreplay. What American men need to realize is that all female mystery could be solved if they just adopted the Universal Latino Philosophy, which is:
“My machismo is undisputed! Every female wants to fuck me!”
Latinos are confident to a fault. In fact, there’s no such thing as an overconfident Latino. But it works for them, and I think many relationships break up because the wife gets fed up with her fumbling husband and starts fucking the landscaper.
Latinos are the opposite of American men. They don’t worry about what women think or what they want. They don’t worry about the size of their cock. Even if it looks small to us, it’s still a GIANT COCK in their eyes. They’re human roosters, kicking up dirt and flapping their wings. The only real goal in life is to attract more chickens; everything else is secondary.
They’re right. The real secret is that women don’t really care what a man looks like. Not really. Women don’t even care about money, at least not at the beginning. It’s all about confidence.
It’s not that Latinos don’t care—it’s that they’re so certain of their ability to please any woman that they don’t bother much with the details. They don’t hassle with flowers or chocolates, they don’t caress your face, and they don’t whisper sweet nothings in your ear.
Instead, they’ll squeeze your ass while you’re cooking, squeeze your tits when you wake up and rub their balls against you when you come out of the shower.
All of this physical touching will be accompanied by phrases like, “Ahhh, mamacita... let me see your chi-chis! Or, “Mmmm, chaparrita, (shorty) your nalgas (ass cheeks) are sooooo goooooood today; let me sqeeche dem!”
You will be squeezed repeatedly, daily, unceasingly. After the kids have gone to sleep, the squeezing gets more insistent. “Aye, mama, are you going to let me stick it in?”
Or, my favorite line, “Oh, mamacita, my train necessita pasar por tu tunel, (my train needs to pass through your tunnel).”
This is foreplay.
I usually laugh and eventually give in. That’s the point. Latinos like to have fun with everything, including sex. We could all die any day... so let’s have some fun!
When my husband and I were dating, there was a little more romance, but it was always really over-the-top, Antonio-Banderas-as-Zorro shit. He raced cars, had long soccer-hair, and bet on sports and racing. We would go out dancing, and he would grab my hair (painfully, of course), and tell me that he loved me so much he would die for me, kill for me, etc.
We would get drunk and fight. Then we would make up twenty minutes later with rowdy, wake-the-neighbors crazy sex. I was living in a soap opera. But that’s when I was in my twenties and had the energy for all that foolishness.
Now that we’re older, our sexual play has become much more tame. But we still like to hear stories and, since my husband still works in the hospitality industry, he brings home good gossip.
Case in point: my husband came home
recently and told me that the lead server (blonde, blue-eyed cheerleader-type) in one of his restaurants is fucking his new hire, a short Columbian dishwasher. The guy barely speaks English and doesn’t have a car. The girl is in love—she now drives the dishwasher to work in her Audi.
My husband asked the dishwasher, incredulously, “How did you get that American girl?”
The dishwasher responded, completely serious, “What do you mean, Patron? I can get better than her. Just look at me! Yo soy el Chingon!” (which means, “I’m a badass!”).
Bad Catholic
Every year, we miss Ash Wednesday, which is a Catholic religious holiday. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the season of preparation for the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday.
Every year, I see all the Catholics in my hometown with little ash crosses on their forehead while my forehead is conspicuously bare. For Lent, Catholics are supposed to give up something as a sacrifice. Many Catholics give up eating meat or drinking alcohol. Some even give up sex.
Catholics aren’t very good at avoiding sin and physical indulgences, which is why the Catholic Church has given us the generous gift of confession.
My husband usually gives up meat for Lent. This year, I asked if he would give up sex, since that would be a real sacrifice for both of us. He just stared at me like I had grown two heads.
“Come on, Marie....”
“No, really... maybe we should try to give up sex. That would be genuinely difficult—it’s supposed to be a penance.”
Oscar was uncomfortable with the whole conversation. He frowned, went into the other room, and turned on the TV. That was it. End of conversation. It was too much to ask of him; it was impossible.
We both gave up red meat instead.
I’m such a bad Catholic that I actually had to look up “The Apostles” on the Internet because I wasn’t sure if there were twelve or thirteen of them. For some reason, I thought Judas Iscariot wasn’t considered part of the “Twelve Apostles.” You know—Judas being the betrayer of Jesus and all. But no, there were only twelve, and Judas is included in the original twelve.
