Ambientes_New Queer Latino Writing

by Lazaro Lima

  One night Bianca was throwing attitude at her fellow drag queens, cutting them down for no apparent reason. She was wired and talking a lot of trash. “I’m tired of that bitch acting up,” Pesticida said to one of her drag queens at the bar. The situation was made worse because Pesticida knew Bianca was doing a big trick and not telling her about it. Bianca’s man was a dermatologist in Stockton, whom she was finger-fucking for “two hundred dollars a probe,” as she put it, when she bragged to her “evil sisters,” the other drag queens. The doctor was married and had kids at Stanford, but he had a sexual weakness for Mexican drag queens who could penetrate him in creative ways. He gave Bianca coke as a “bonus” and she would snort it like a fanatic because she thought it was so much better than crank. Bianca pretended to keep from Pesticida what was all too obvious, amounting to a glaring, arrogant affront to Pesticida’s intelligence and authority. To make matters worse, one night Bianca decided to perform as Selena, and to sing the song that was Pesticida’s most cherished Selena song, “Como la flor.” Bianca performed “Como la flor” in the tight-fitting black leather number that Selena wore on the posthumously released album Selena Forever.

  Bianca’s shapely Selena dress was five sizes smaller than Pesticida’s; it was, in fact, the same dress size as the real Selena Quintanilla. Bianca’s moves and gestures were more Selena-like than Pesticida’s, which overall made Bianca a more convincing Selena, and an instant hit, dethroning Pesticida from her Selena throne with a single song. This infuriated Pesticida; she felt humiliated and betrayed. Pesticida barged into the backstage greenroom after Bianca’s performance; Bianca was sitting in front of the mirror admiring herself. “Listen, you skanky tranny,” Pesticida fumed, grabbing Bianca’s skinny wrist. “I want your coked-out ass out of here. You know I am the only Selena in the house and you think you can disrespect me just because you’re fucking some old white geezer who fills your ass up with coke. Well, fuck you, Bianca, Gabriel Montoya, whoever the fuck you are. You can go back to picking peaches with your puta mother ’cause you’re not setting foot in my house again. Understand?”

  Bianca yanked her wrist out of Pesticida’s manly grip. There was hate in Pesticida’s makeup-plastered face. There was hate and defiance in Bianca’s younger, smoother face, beautifully made up to look exactly like Selena.

  “Oh, shut up, you old hag. Get over your ugly self,” Bianca shouted as she got up to face her. “You’re too old and fat to be Selena. Can’t you see I’m Selena? Look at me!” Bianca proudly glanced at herself in the mirror and then stared Pesticida down. “Didn’t you hear the way they clapped? I was Selena. You never were. You’re used up—”

  “Get the fuck out of here before I slap your nasty face,” Pesticida shouted, pushing Bianca violently to the floor. “If it weren’t for me, you’d be a junkie-puta on Ninth Street, which is where you’re heading. So get the fuck out of here. Go!”

  Bianca insolently picked herself up, grabbed her twenty-two-dollar swap-meet faux Gucci bag from the top of her dresser, and gave Pesticida one last look, very telenovela-like, and walked out of the greenroom. The drag queens getting ready to perform in the second show of the night saw Bianca storm out and knew what it was about. They knew she would not be coming back.

  Bianca was found dead in her apartment. Shot through the heart. She was the third drag queen murdered in two months.

  A drag queen murdered in a small town is nothing out of the ordinary. A trick at the wrong time and place under inevitably sexually ambiguous circumstances is a recipe for a straight man to commit murder. Drag queens at the Gold Rush got killed once in a while and the Modesto police thought they understood why. Modesto city investigators interpreted the murders as “random acts of hate crimes, possibly linked to prostitution and drugs, possibly in retaliation for victims dressing as women”—that’s what the official police reports stated. And it was close to what the Modesto Bee reported. Even the Gold Rush regulars, who were not deterred from frequenting the Gold Rush, believed in this commonplace explanation for the unfortunate fate of the unfortunate drag queens. Only Pesticida’s girls began to perceive a pattern that had not been considered. The fact was that all of the victims had dared to perform as Selena, violating Pesticida’s copyright of Selena’s glamour. But that explained nothing. That, in and of itself, was simply a bizarre coincidence until the death of Pesticida herself.

  Pesticida was found dead in West Modesto, in the parking lot of the Days Inn Motel, a cheap but respectable motel bordering the barrio. She had checked in by herself in the middle of the day, telling the hotel clerk, an old white lady who was spooked by Pesticida’s appearance, that she would be expecting a woman named Yolanda. “Please direct her to my room, if you would be so kind,” Pesticida said, very Miss Manners– like, to the frightened matronly clerk, who had never seen a Mexican drag queen in her life.

  It quickly became evident that Pesticida’s apparent murder was more than just another Selena killing. The gun that killed her was found next to her body on the bloodied concrete. In her purse she carried a collection of strange love letters from a woman named Yolanda to a woman named Selena. The letters were brief, fervent declarations of love and loyalty. One of the eight letters, all dated within a span of two weeks, read:

  Corpus Christi,Texas

  March 2, 1996

  Querida Selena,

  I get the sense that you don’t trust me anymore. Even after the sacrifices that I’ve made. They tried to steal your soul, your beautiful essence. But I stopped them. I know you belong to me only, and no one else. And still, you don’t love me. Why, Selena? I worship you night and day. Why is that not enough? I have waited for you my whole life. You are my santita, my Selenita. If you say no to me I think I’ll kill myself. I mean it.

  Love You Forever,

  Yolanda

  The letters were variations on a twisted theme, obsessively repetitive. An analysis of the handwriting revealed that it belonged to the man whose driver’s license was found in a wallet inside the victim’s purse: Rubén Artiega, forty-eight years old, 1346 El Toledo Dr., Apt. 18, Modesto, California, 95354—Pesticida’s address for the last fifteen years.

  The authorities would soon discover that the victim was not really a woman but the man on the driver’s license. Pesticida, at the time of her death, was in Selena drag, dressed in the same jeans and simple white blouse Selena was wearing when Yolanda Saldívar gunned her down. The time of Pesticida’s suicide coincided, almost exactly, to the time of day Selena was murdered, on the same day, one year earlier, in the parking lot of the Days Inn Motel in Corpus Christi, Texas.

  Pesticida had staged Selena’s murder as her own Tex-Mex crime of passion. Her descent into madness was a series of self-betrayals in a privately psychotic but glamorous telenovela tragedy. She was the star of her own Corpus Christi script, reeling night and day in her delusional mind, pacing toward its inevitable climax. She had killed her drag queen daughters who had tried to imitate her. She believed she was the real Selena, and she became her own crazed love fan. It would all end as it did for Selena, in tears and blood underneath a confusing sun.

  Magnetic Island Sueño Crónica

  SUSANA CHÁVEZ - SILVERMAN

  9 julio 2006

  Magnetic Island (Queensland), Australia

  For K.E.and K.B.

  Te tengo que escribir mi sueño. A pesar de los cries—penetrantes, ghostly, badgering o hechizantes—de los pájaros, some of which seem to go on and on, far into the night (y uno de los cuales me despertó por un momento anoche, around 3 a.m.: an electrifying, piercing, mournful, downward-falling wail que me hizo pensar en el último plaintive, beyond-hope cry de Rima, when the Indians were burning down her tree with her in it, en la novela Green Mansions), I sleep well here.

  Duermo profundamente and I wake at first light, or even before, con los primeros llamados de los pájaros del alba: el too-whee y cha-caw, cha-caw, luego un uncannily pavorreal-mimicking chillido. Todos esos cries pertenecen al enormous curraw
ong. El wheeeeee-uh del pop-eyed, nocturnal curlew. Estoy aprendiendo, en persona (well, OK, in persona avis), hasta la famosa risa del kookaburra. Can you believe it? Es así: ooh-ooh-ooh-uh-ah-ah-ah-ah. Semejante al haunted laugh de un hombre muuuuy grande. Like, por ejemplo, el Herman Munster. O mejor, como si riera (as if !) el Lurch, on The Addams Family. Remember? Can you hear it?

  I had a long dream. Close to morning it all came together, nítidamente y en secuencia. Lo recordé—lo recuerdo—todo. En absoluta, fotográfica precisión. Por eso me he quedado on dry land today. Aunque siempre me ha llamado la atención el coral (OK, OK, more as jewelry, lo admito), tú sabes que me aterra el solo pensamiento de un shark. Almost as much as los osos. But I think it was more the human-tiburones I had no desire to consort with today. Por eso I encouraged Pierre y el Paulie to go on that snorkeling trip sin mí. Al Great Barrier Reef. Alegué— and it’s true—que el friggin’ diurético me hace demasiado sun-sensitive como para pasar ocho horas a la merced del southern hemisphere sun, tan cerca del Tropic of Capricorn y todo, leche solar SPF 45 no obstante. Alegué—bueno, it’s actually true—que como me había comenzado la rule (a deshora, just like last August on Robben Island, remember? When that Sangoma in our tour group me hizo comenzar la sangre? What is it about my lunar rhythms y el Sur?), I was mortally terrified que la presencia de la sangre would attract an underwater predator. Como por ejemplo un great white. Well it could, ¿qué no?

  Pero más que nada lo que anhelaba, lo que se me antojaba como un perfect day, era la absoluta soledad. Alone time en un lugar comfy pero extraño a la vez.

  For some reason, quería reproducir algo así como el aloneness que había sentido en Cullinan. On the diamond mine. When I first pitched up in South Africa. Pero without the grinding resentimiento. Sin esa horrenda frustración, the dawning sospecha que I’d given my love to someone unavailable, somehow. Someone who didn’t have the wherewithal (le faltaba algo fundamental: algo a modo de las herramientas, the skill, the precision y la pasión, OB-vio) to take the full measure of me in that country. En ese su país. Apartheid. South Africa. Someone who didn’t even know what (or how much of me) he was missing. Or so it seemed to me, entonces.

  Todos los días Howard, my true love, went off, con su university degree en mining engineering, con su solid conocimiento telúrico. Y me dejaba en casa. Literally, waving goodbye desde el umbral, me veo en mi pink Norma Kamali skirt, my teensy, grommeted black tank top, standing forlorn and lonely and foreign en la puerta de ese tiny miner’s cottage. Sola todo el día. No TV (como si la tele jamás me hubiera gustado …), cero amigos. Curling my bare, tanned toes in the pale-red dust outside. Waiting. Waiting for my love. Howard se iba y venía de mí, a diario, y me dejaba, cada vez más, tierra incógnita. O al menos, that was the narrative I constructed for myself—about him, about us—en esos días.

  Y dentro de mí el llanto y la rabia y el conocimiento de mi error—de mi largo, irreversible pilgrimage errado—se me subieron a la garganta. Se virtieron, corrosive, en las páginas de mi giraffe-print-covered diary. Hot, bitter, resentful lágrimas vertí en ese diario. Going-away gift de mamá y Daddy.

  But why am I remembering this, telling you this now? About Howard and me? About my miserable stay in an Afrikaner diamond-mining dorp? Al menos it was pretty brief. Against all odds conseguí chambita— one of just three lecturers in Spanish en todo el país—en UNISA. I high-tailed it to Pretoria, not exactly a cosmopolitan mecca—the capital of Afrikanerdom, of apartheid—ay, pero esa es otra.

  Anygüey, I think maybe I’m telling you porque ojalá pudiera rebobinar. You know, rewind, to spare my veinte-algo self toda esa angustia ontológica, erótica. Todo eso que viví tan (too much) a flor de piel. Uf ! Sha sé, I’m sounding really over-the-top, melodramática, downright ’Tine. And besides—sigh—no se puede (spare her). OB-vio.

  So, la yo, la que (sobre)vivió hasta aquí, hasta estas páginas, hasta este Sur, este estar aquí rodeada, this time, no por tierra desértica, africana, sino por este intenso green austral, escribiéndote: esta yo ha cambiado el script.

  Me siento warm, whole, open to the world. Expectant yet relaxed in my skin. “You are the place where something will happen”; recuerdo esas palabras. De la novela Burger’s Daughter by Nadine Gordimer. Howard me la regaló. Me la regaló en S.F., before he left for home. Cuando la releí el año pasado, antes de volver a Sudáfrica, it struck me as awkward, dated, demasiado Manichaean, its politics demasiado earnest, predictable, in your face. Pero ay, cuánto me conmovió cuando la leí por primera vez, en esos too-long, expectantes meses de 1982, sick with hepatitis (lovesick with yearning), mis padres hoping against hope I’d change my mind and not go.

  Pero that was me, then. Y OJITO: así también era el mundo—urgente, peligroso. Apartheid wasn’t over, not by a long shot. De hecho, estaba, I’d say, en su momento más crispado. Eight long years before Mandela’s release. Y eso no era entonces, ni lejos, not even a dream.

  Kwa-kwa-kwa, grazna un pájaro, muy cerca de las plantation-style white shutters, abiertas ceiling to floor en esta casa vieja, donde escribo en una gran mesa de caoba, maciza, oscura y pulida. Ku-wa, le responde otro, lejos, hacia el lado del mar. Screee. Too-hoo, too-hoo.

  Sopla una brisa mañanera. No es muy insistente, pero hace frotar las huge, pale gray-green palm fronds, como lijas, but so softly. Their feathery tips intertwine and release. The variegated massangeana rustles (oh, ¡cuántas veces te me fracasaste en mi faraway Inland Empire de Califas patio!). A faint, eucalyptus-tinged scent floats toward me; la brisa me hace cosquillas en los tobillos. How odd, the feel of this dry, plant-infused winter breeze against my feet. Heme aquí, sitting by a wall of windows con vista hacia el mar, pero contenida, cocooned por todo este verde.

  En mi sueño, I was back on campus. Muchas veces tengo este sueño, como si los parámetros de mi vida fueran los de un recinto universitario. Ugh! Is this my life? ¿Cómo en esa novela, Giles Goat Boy de John Barth? Anygüey, era un campus de adeveras, as God commands. Huge, sprawling, mucho ladrillo. Bien old world o al menos, Ivy League–ish. Parecía Harvard. En otras palabras: my dream-version of a perfect campus, alegoría de un perfect world.

  I had a large, pale, soft leather handbag. Como de gamuza era. New. Pero en todo el revolú del back to school, I had misplaced it. Me sentí totalmente bereft, perdida sin mi bolso. Como si ese bolso contuviera toda mi vida. Todo lo importante. My belongings, mis secretos.

  Intuí que había dejado el bolso en el dining hall de una residencia, where I’d gone to look for you. El dorm era enorme. Un beehive de actividad. Students coming and going, medio jostling each other. Como en un real campus. Digo, no como en Pomona, where there are so few, el ambiente tan precious, rarified que casi nunca se ven grandes concentraciones de gente. No me sentía nerviosa ni hostigada. Nadie me reconocía. Era ese comforting anonimato I have always loved about a large university. Como Harvard. UCLA. O Berkeley, o Wisconsin.

  Bueno, anyway, a pesar de no haberme sentido muy hopeful about its recuperación, my faun-colored handbag was waiting for me en la cafetería. Me la entregó una trabajadora latina, y la abracé, sobbing de puro alivio. And then I went to look for you. Te busqué por toda esa beehive, subiendo y bajando, buscándote entre tanta gente, gente desconocida.

  De repente allí estabas. You put your arm out and stopped me, guided me; you pulled me, muy gently pero insistently over the threshhold, into your room. Recuerdo que tu cuarto era grande, y había una luz filtrada, hermosa. You had your own room.

  I was standing close to you; nos mirábamos intensamente. No había palabras. Era como si fuera la primera vez que nos veíamos en mucho tiempo. Como si nada, you were rubbing sunscreen all over my face. You were rubbing vigorously, like one does to a child, all over—¡en los ojos, hasta las pestañas! Me reía. Stop, te dije. I was afraid you would rub off el Erace concealer que uso, todos los días, on my scar, right by my left eye y sin el cual me siento exposed, unfinished, vulnerable. Let me, me dijiste. No importa. You don’t need makeup
. You’re so beautiful.

  Al terminar esa (un)cover action, entonces me besaste. Era lento y sublime. I felt the contact, todos los contornos. Sentí tus labios en los míos, gentle pressure. Sentí el frágil contacto con tus dientes, touching the inside of your mouth con la punta de la lengua.

  And then, no me acuerdo bien if we were lying down or sitting up, facing one another, en tu cama. It was late afternoon. It was us, exactly as we are. Quiero decir: I could feel and ascertain, en el sueño, que era real. Todo parecía heightened. I’d say “slow motion,” pero no lo era. It was, rather, that I possessed the attentiveness to time and sensation of a waking dream. I remember your hand was on my lower back. It moved caressingly, hypnotically, firmly. Muy lento. Sólo se desplazaba cosa de one inch. Inch by inch. I was acutely attuned to that very small place, allí, donde me acariciabas.