My Favorite Girlfriend was a French Bulldog

by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias

  WYNWOOD, THREE IN THE MORNING.

  The black city sleeps. It wakes slowly, one eye, another eye, other eyes, other human beings. The buses approach in a straight line; I don’t see them arrive because if I turn my face, the wind blows my hair, it’s annoying. I don’t even look at the cars; they upset me.

  The bus brakes, stops, doesn’t lose speed, gains space. It’s my space. It has the look of an animal, of an immense plant. It costs a dollar, more or less, maybe two. The girl invites me to get on with a friendly gesture. I get on. Inside, everyone is black. Black old women, black men, black children, my girl. The air conditioning, cruel, makes everyone bristle. The girl caresses me, rubs my arms to warm me up. It burns. There is an imperceptible movement of my arms that denotes estrangement. I find it a little pathetic that I don’t know how to detach, can’t manage anything less than astonishment.

  Half an hour before the bus arrived, I walked beside this girl along a sidewalk of squirrels, raccoons, flowers. Not speaking, only smiling, rushing toward the bus. Laughter replaced language, cancelling it out.

  It’s a bus and two women, poor, strangers.

  PANTHER COFFEE, TEN IN THE MORNING.

  The people are beautiful. Never in my life do I remember having seen so many beautiful people within a single perimeter, without suffocating. Inside and out, beautiful, marvelous. They speak English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic, German. They tell the truth and they lie. They can lie because they’re beautiful and they drink coffee very elegantly. They open their computers and type quickly very elegantly. They order iced teas and chew whole-grain sandwiches with even more elegance. They enjoy their appearances, they smack their lips, they smile at each other, forget what brought them precisely to this place. They enjoy life and the coffee. They buy Bolivian coffee, Colombian, Brazilian, Venezuelan, American. They’re kings. They reign and order. They command and exchange. They exist.

  For my part, I’m a cat, seated and calm. She’s a cat too. Loose braids. Standing behind the counter. Serving them all. She purrs toward me, a mug in her hands for me, hot. Almond milk. Heart.

  I take a photo of the almond heart with my phone.

  Cat and happy.

  BOOKS&BOOKS, TWO IN THE AFTERNOON.

  Suddenly the opposite. Grimace, glass, paper. Pricey, pricey books that I can’t and don’t want to read. Classics. Modern. Contemporary. Tables with umbrellas. Writers more illustrious than the books. White wine in fine glassware. Sightseers and bystanders. Three women writers sitting side by side not knowing what to say to themselves. One crosses her hands, another crosses her legs, another calls the waiter over.

  Buy whatever you want, my treat.

  I want to flee and collide with a tree that smells of damp resin.

  We don’t have trees, only books or glassware.

  I want to flee and collide with a tree that smells of damp resin.

  A FRIEND’S HOUSE, NINE AT NIGHT.

  Six of us girls are sharing a platter. There’s a lot. Colors and flavors unknown until now. One friend takes a roll and puts it in my mouth. “This won’t make you fat.” Another friend takes a roll and puts it in my mouth. “It doesn’t make you fat or nourish you.” So the taste is still unknown. I only see the rolls go straight into my mouth, I don’t know what they taste like.

  We’re too sober. Bored and sober. Playing at sticking random things in our mouths. Sensual. Hungerless. We have to eat it all.

  It’s sushi and it’s Japanese.

  “You want a gin and tonic?”

  I like my friends and the foreign warmth, things foreign to reality. I like to sweat and get nervous. I like beer and plastic, canned vegetables. Everything rots so easily here.

  My girlfriends smoke like chimneys. They go outside to smoke. They’re the prettiest chimneys I know.

  I like everything with my friends. Without them, the city is a giant hormone, speaking to me in English and Spanish at the same time.

  I’m in love.

  Listen here.

  With you all.

  Later I laugh with other friends through a screen. I cover a thousand latitudes in half an hour, skirting a digital country that, tired as I get, never ends.

  DOLPHIN MALL, MID-MORNING.

  A little like an airport, but without the need to get anywhere.

  Buy. Buy. Buy.

  Forever 21, underwear.

  Aéropostale, a shirt.

  Gap, a dress and a pair of shorts.

  Chocolate. Stairs. Lights.

  Android.

  Transgender.

  Triumph.

  Bienvenido al paradise.

  Sit down and breathe.

  You’re in control.

  JOSÉ KOZER’S HOUSE, NOON.

  Before me a famous man who gives me the shivers. He’s tall. He’s a tree. He’s a beautiful monster with branches. Instead of two hands he has three hands. Long. Luminous. His fingernail beds measure two centimeters. I always notice the size of fingernails. Fingers and nails inspire pleasure in me, excitement.

  His wife, the same. A beautiful monster with branches. Green branches. Green flowers, too.

  They take turns talking. My ovaries hurt. I go to the bathroom several times. I expel blood, urine, gases.

  She makes raw fish, with lemon and basil and herbs that I cannot enjoy.

  I chew looking at the man, who talks about poetry and money at the same time.

  Speak nature.

  Speak palm, pine.

  I’ve been waiting for you for a while.

  TATTOO STUDIO, SEVEN THIRTY IN THE EVENING.

  My friend picks me up in her car, bought on credit and used, comfortable. I get into the car. I look out the window as I ride. Highway. Cars. I get dizzy. She knows where we’re going, but I don’t. It’s her goodbye present. A promise. I look at her from my seat beside her. She’s five years younger than me. I like her a lot. She attracts me like a movie on the big screen starring my favorite actors and actresses. I need to have an accident.

  She works at a bank and because of that she says we have nothing in common. She kisses me. She holds me against her chest. She says I’m so little. They all say the same thing. What a drag. When she brushes my buttocks by accident, she startles and looks deeply into my eyes, her lips half-open, her eyes watery. Maybe I’m imagining it. I want to marry her.

  We go into the tattoo and piercing studio. The adrenaline rises. I love tattoos and piercings, although I would never get a tattoo or a piercing on my genitals. The idea is terrifying.

  I want to get my nose pierced. Through the septum so I’ll look like a cow, but I won’t moo, or eat dry grass, or bathe in a lake on the outskirts of town. I’ll take the bull by the horns, till the cows come home.

  A piercing is a hoop, with two little steel balls that screw onto the ends. Very delicate, and feminine.

  The piercer is a sad Peruvian woman with the expression of one who hasn’t had sex in many days, or eaten anything tasty in many days, or seen an astonishing movie, or laid eyes on the ocean.

  The Peruvian woman grabs my septum with scissors that have a hole on either side, and it hurts. I close my eyes. Open them. I tell her to show me the rest of her tools. She shows me.

  “If you don’t want to, don’t.”

  “I want to.”

  My friend gives me her hand. My hand in her hand makes me decide to do it; I’m brave.

  The Peruvian woman puts a metal bar through the circular ends of the scissors, and then through that she’ll introduce the piercing, in the form of a hoop. I want to. Cold-blooded. The pressure of the Peruvian’s hands is in harmony with hatred and revenge. It hurts more than a tattoo, more than love.

  I expel blood, tears, mucus. It all mixes and drips down. My friend laughs. I laugh and cry.

  The piercing looks as though it’s always been there. Since my birth.

  I thank the Peruvian.

  The Peruvian thanks me.

  Forty dollars.

  INTERNET, MIDNIGHT.r />
  Since I’ve been here, I click on the Wi-Fi icon and connect. Where I live there is no such thing as Wi-Fi. My best friend lives in Canada. My sister lives in Tenerife. My dad lives on a lost island. My exes live in Mexico, Brazil, and New York. And so on, successively. A mule train of people I never imagined living without. Those people are there, connected every day, present. Now I, too, am present. I also have a name and a profile, and a status I can update every day. I see them. I hear them. They’re desperate, want to catch up. We cry together, as a group. We go to bed and get up together. We well know it has an end.

  I love you.

  Me too.

  Good night.

  See you tomorrow.

  FAREWELL PARTY, TIMELESS.

  It starts with “Fast Car,” by Tracy Chapman. It ends with a song I don’t remember. Not because I don’t remember, but because some people have vomited, others are talking, and others, like she and I, are dancing strangely in the kitchen, her lips in front of my lips, a few millimeters away. Our respirations are very close to each other.

  My arms don’t take her by the waist, her arms don’t hold me. It’s a state of freedom and pleasure reached very few times in our lives, like a song.

  At the party we had beers, cocktails, gin and tonic, marihuana, mushrooms, fish, meat, vegetables, barbecue, hummus.

  We had everything.

  We had what we deserved.

  I don’t remember the last song.

  AIRPORT, EIGHT IN THE MORNING.

  The name of the airline isn’t well known. Once I’m back home I’ll forget it. Same as the unpleasant experiences.

  We arrive, weigh the suitcases, wrap them in plastic to hold them tight and protect them. We check in, pay. The people who’ve been in charge of me stay with me until after four in the afternoon. I thank them. I thank them infinitely. They are not kindred souls. I seem strange and ungrateful to them. Careless, awkward. They expected something else from me. I wasn’t expecting anything from them.

  The flight has been delayed because there are problems with the plane. They buy me water, food. They hug me coldly. I try to look them in the eyes and transmit connection. They avoid my gaze. Our eyes don’t meet. They leave.

  I sit glued to my phone, talking to my friends, waiting for a sign to appear. The sign doesn’t appear.

  Twenty-four hours later they announce the plane’s departure. They lead us down a hall to gate number so-and-so. We have the right to potato chips, hamburgers, apples, soft drinks. Airline’s treat. I don’t take anything.

  Sunscreen

  on your hands

  and on your chest.

  You know a

  woman’s true age

  by looking there.

  CLITORIS

  I reported my situation on a Monday morning. I did it duly, in writing, to the Clinic. On Wednesday they called me in. The doctor lifted my skirt, separated the hair a little, and observed the irritation with the expression of a scientist. She put on gloves and took out a medicated cream. She spread the cream over my genitals and looked at me again the same way. A way of looking with a penetrating gaze, raising her eyebrows, opening her eyes nice and wide. She didn’t even cover her mouth. I reached the lodging with its sixty beds and threw myself on mine. My body resounded on the batting like a sack of rice when it’s dropped. The Clinic was a horrible place. Silent and white, but horrible. The doctors who worked there gave the impression they were veterinarians.

  The next morning I was worse. The cream the doctor had applied was still there, sticky; my skin hadn’t absorbed it. I couldn’t open my legs. It hurt as much as it burned. I headed to the phones to call Mom. Girls from my class were sitting in front of the phones. When they saw me they started to laugh. They laughed in loud peals, pointed their fingers at my legs, covered their noses. They wanted me to cry and I obliged, ashamed. Mom answered the phone a few seconds later. I asked her to come pick me up. To save me. I explained my situation to her. The urgency of the situation. She promised to come right away.

  Night had fallen by the time I received a call from the Office. Mom was there, asking for authorization to check me out. It was painful to move from the lodgings to the Office. The lodging was square and my bed, far from the door, shook when I got into or out of it. The beds were double. Bunk beds. My lodging was the third one on the fourth floor. I moved by holding onto the railings, the banisters, and the columns, asking for help from some fellow patient, breathing deeply. The director wanted to check the veracity of my story. He lifted my skirt and observed. Below was my body, naked and broken. The deputy director and the guard observed. Mom too. The four of them understood, covered their noses. The director personally signed the release.

  Mom drove me home. It had been a long time since I’d seen the rest of my family. They all hugged me and carried me to my room in their arms. Dad’s sister, a neonatal specialist, came over not long after to examine me. The examination consisted of a profound, lengthy observation. “I don’t dare treat her,” she said. “You have to take her to the Hospital.” Neonatology deals with babies from one to thirty days. After thirty days, another type of specialist examines children, diagnoses them. That night I slept in my own room, on a real mattress, on a real pillow, with real people around me. I dreamed several times. Not that day or any other have I ever managed to remember what I dreamed. Neonatology is the specialty that deals with babies from one to thirty days. After thirty days, another type of specialist examines children, diagnoses them.

  In the Hospital’s ER they diagnosed me with gonorrhea. A doctor asked me, very nicely, to take off my clothes and get onto a cot. Dad’s neonatologist sister, beside me, gave her approval. When my legs were open, neonatologist and doctor exchanged a look. I perceived astonishment in the exchange, consternation, accusation. I closed my eyes. The doctor put on gloves and inserted a finger into me. Nothing in my life, before that, had ever been so painful, so offensive. I screamed, and Dad’s sister whispered in my ear, “It’s your own fault.” I didn’t feel guilty of anything. Or only of having missed classes three days in a row. Which actually made me happy, proud.

  Gonorrhea, also known as blennorrhea or gonococcal urethritis, is a sexually transmitted infection provoked by bacteria called gonococcus. Transmission occurs during coitus, or during birth if the mother is infected, or through indirect contamination if a woman uses the personal hygiene products of another person who is infected. Gonorrhea is among the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world. The non-genital places that are also attacked are the rectum, the pharynx, and the conjunctiva of the eyes. The vulva and the vagina in women, normally, are also affected, as they are connected by epithelial cells. In women, the cervix is usually the first site of infection.

  The doctor’s opinion did not take into consideration the pelvic inflammation or urinary discomfort; the man based his accusation on the redness of my genitals, the vaginal secretion, and something undeniable: a smell of rotten fish that spread throughout the room.

  Mom and Dad, susceptible to his verdict, looked at me sadly and asked, in unison, how I could be so careless, why didn’t I take precautions, who had infected me, where had the act taken place, what time of day, how many times. The inappropriateness of the questions made me doubt myself. Maybe I was no longer a hygienic person. Maybe I had interacted more affectionately with one of my classmates than with the rest. I didn’t even understand what it was all about. I was suspicious, and I didn’t believe in friendship. I was immediately admitted into the Hospital’s Infectious Disease unit.

  The next day, the initial diagnosis had to be confirmed through blood analysis and a couple of vaginal ultrasounds. I refused the ultrasounds. No one else would open my legs, or accuse me any more, or cover their nose at my stench.

  They did the analyses that were referred urgently, and no great aberrations were detected, just a little of this and another little of that, and the low index of something and the high index of something else. In general, everything more or
less as expected. The ultrasounds were indispensable but I would not authorize them. From the Hospital ER came the medical order to bring me to the Operating Room.

  Before going into the OR, an African doctor came to see me. He uncovered and observed me. He was a black man who almost reached the ceiling, maybe two meters tall, maybe two meters and change, strong and muscular, young. The white coat shone on his skin, or maybe he shone under the coat. He smelled of trees. He wasn’t wearing gloves. He brought his hand close and touched. His immense hand became a petal. The exam a caress.

  In the operating room they anesthetized me so they could do all the ultrasounds they wanted, stick inside me all the speculums they wanted, all the gloved fingers, clamps, pincers, cotton, machines. The anesthesiologist was an obese woman who looked at me like I was a freak. My fear made the snot run and the anesthesiologist whispered in my ear, “If your nose keeps running I won’t anesthetize you.” Then I dried the mucus on the edge of my hospital gown. Mom was outside crying for me, her sick firstborn. Dad was outside crying for Mom, his weepy wife.

  At the end of the day, the operation was a failure. Not gonorrhea, or trichomoniasis, or HPV, or herpes, or chlamydia, or candida. I presented only an intense moniliasis caused by dirty water and an allergic reaction to Nystatin, the cream the doctor in the Clinic had spread days before between my labia, around my clitoris, and on the vaginal wall.

  Mom wanted to sue the doctor, the Clinic, the director and deputy directors of the Hospital, Dad’s neonatologist sister, and anyone else they put in front of her. The results were given to her while I was still dreaming under the effect of the anesthesia. I dreamed, sang, danced, spoke, screamed, and cried under the effect of that anesthesia. It was a state of illumination that I’ve managed to reach very few times since, not even by putting drops of homatropine under my tongue, or inserting little triangles of acid into my anal cavity, or smoking an immense yellow flower alone in my rented apartment. Nothing has been as supreme as those milliliters of general anesthesia.

  Four days later I left the Hospital. The cold aloe salves and the intravenous antibiotic resulted in the total recovery of my genital organs. It was still uncomfortable to urinate, because of the impression of the wounds that were still in my body’s reflexes, in my memory.