The Cheater's Guide to Love

by Junot Díaz

  The Cheater’s Guide to Love

  Junot Díaz

  Faber Stories

  Contents

  Title Page

  Year 0

  Year 1

  Year 2

  Year 3

  Year 4

  Year 5

  About Faber Stories

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Year 0

  Your girl catches you cheating. (Well, actually she’s your fiancée, but hey, in a bit it so won’t matter.) She could have caught you with one sucia, she could have caught you with two, but as you’re a totally batshit cuero who didn’t ever empty his e-mail trash can, she caught you with fifty! Sure, over a six-year period, but still. Fifty fucking girls? Goddamn. Maybe if you’d been engaged to a super open-minded blanquita you could have survived it—but you’re not engaged to a super open-minded blanquita. Your girl is a bad-ass salcedeña who doesn’t believe in open anything; in fact the one thing she warned you about, that she swore she would never forgive, was cheating. I’ll put a machete in you, she promised. And of course you swore you wouldn’t do it. You swore you wouldn’t. You swore you wouldn’t.

  And you did.

  She’ll stick around for a few months because you dated for a long long time. Because you went through much together—her father’s death, your tenure madness, her bar exam (passed on the third attempt). And because love, real love, is not so easily shed. Over a tortured six-month period you will fly to the DR, to Mexico (for the funeral of a friend), to New Zealand. You will walk the beach where they filmed The Piano, something she’s always wanted to do, and now, in penitent desperation, you give it to her. She is immensely sad on that beach and she walks up and down the shining sand alone, bare feet in the freezing water, and when you try to hug her she says, Don’t. She stares at the rocks jutting out of the water, the wind taking her hair straight back. On the ride back to the hotel, up through those wild steeps, you pick up a pair of hitch-hikers, a couple, so mixed it’s ridiculous, and so giddy with love that you almost throw them out the car. She says nothing. Later, in the hotel, she will cry.

  You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda. You compose a mass e-mail disowning all your sucias. You block their e-mails. You change your phone number. You stop drinking. You stop smoking. You claim you’re a sex addict and start attending meetings. You blame your father. You blame your mother. You blame the patriarchy. You blame Santo Domingo. You find a therapist. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. You start taking salsa classes like you always swore you would so that the two of you could dance together. You claim that you were sick, you claim that you were weak—It was the book! It was the pressure!—and every hour like clockwork you say that you’re so so sorry. You try it all, but one day she will simply sit up in bed and say, No more, and, Ya, and you will have to move from the Harlem apartment that you two have shared. You consider not going. You consider a squat protest. In fact, you say you won’t go. But in the end you do.

  For a while you haunt the city, like a two-bit ballplayer dreaming of a call-up. You phone her every day and leave messages which she doesn’t answer. You write her long sensitive letters, which she returns unopened. You even show up at her apartment at odd hours and at her job downtown until finally her little sister calls you, the one who was always on your side, and she makes it plain: If you try to contact my sister again she’s going to put a restraining order on you.

  For some Negroes that wouldn’t mean shit.

  But you ain’t that kind of Negro.

  You stop. You move back to Boston. You never see her again.

  Year 1

  At first you pretend it don’t matter. You harbored a lot of grievances against her anyway. Yes you did! She didn’t give good head, you hated the fuzz on her cheeks, she never waxed her pussy, she never cleaned up around the apartment, etc. For a few weeks you almost believe it. Of course you go back to smoking, to drinking, you drop the therapist and the sex addict groups and you run around with the sluts like it’s the good old days, like nothing has happened.

  I’m back, you say to your boys.

  Elvis laughs. It’s almost like you never left.

  You’re good for like a week. Then your moods become erratic. One minute you have to stop yourself from jumping in the car and driving to see her and the next you’re calling a sucia and saying, You’re the one I always wanted. You start losing your temper with friends, with students, with colleagues. You cry every time you hear Monchy and Alexandra, her favorite.

  Boston, where you never wanted to live, where you feel you’ve been exiled to, becomes a serious problem. You have trouble adjusting to it full-time; to its trains that stop running at midnight, to the glumness of its inhabitants, to its startling lack of Sichuan food. Almost on cue a lot of racist shit starts happening. Maybe it was always there, maybe you’ve become more sensitive after all your time in NYC. White people pull up at traffic lights and scream at you with a hideous rage, like you nearly ran over their mothers. It’s fucking scary. Before you can figure out what the fuck is going on they flip you the bird and peel out. It happens again and again. Security follows you in stores and every time you step on Harvard property you’re asked for ID. Three times, drunk whitedudes try to pick fights with you in different parts of the city.

  You take it all very personally. I hope someone drops a fucking bomb on this city, you rant. This is why no people of color want to live here. Why all my black and Latino students leave as soon as they can.

  Elvis says nothing. He was born and raised in Jamaica Plain, knows that trying to defend Boston from uncool is like blocking a bullet with a slice of bread. Are you OK? he asks finally.

  I’m dandy, you say. Mejor que nunca.

  Except you’re not. You’ve lost all the mutual friends you had in NYC (they went to her), your mother won’t speak to you after what happened (she liked the fiancée better than she liked you), and you’re feeling terribly guilty and terribly alone. You keep writing letters to her, waiting for the day that you can hand them to her. You also keep fucking everything that moves. Thanksgiving you end up having to spend in your apartment because you can’t face your mom and the idea of other people’s charity makes you furious. The ex, as you’re now calling her, always cooked: a turkey, a chicken, a pernil. Set aside all the wings for you. That night you drink yourself into a stupor, spend two days recovering.

  You figure that’s as bad as it gets. You figure wrong. During finals a depression rolls over you, so profound you doubt there is a name for it. It feels like you’re being slowly pincered apart, atom by atom.

  You stop hitting the gym or going out for drinks; you stop shaving or washing your clothes; in fact, you stop doing almost everything. Your friends begin to worry about you, and they are not exactly the worrying types. I’m OK, you tell them, but with each passing week the depression darkens. You try to describe it. Like someone flew a plane into your soul. Like someone flew two planes into your soul. Elvis sits shivah with you in the apartment; he pats you on the shoulder, tells you to take it easy. Four years earlier Elvis had a Humvee blow up on him on a highway outside of Baghdad. The burning wreckage pinned him for what felt like a week, so he knows a little about pain. His back and buttocks and right arm so scarred up that even you, Mr. Hard Nose, can’t look at them. Breathe, he tells you. You breathe nonstop, like a marathon runner, but it doesn’t help. Your little letters become more and more pathetic. Please, you write. Please come back. You have dreams where she’s talking to you like in the old days—in that sweet Spanish of the Cibao, no sign of rage, of disappointment. And then you wake up.

>   You stop sleeping, and some night when you’re drunk and alone you have a wacky impulse to open the window of your fifth-floor apartment and leap down to the street. If it wasn’t for a couple of things you probably would have done it, too. But (a) you ain’t the killing-yourself type; (b) your boy Elvis keeps a strong eye on you—he’s over all the time, stands by the window as if he knows what you’re thinking. And (c) you have this ridiculous hope that maybe one day she will forgive you.

  She doesn’t.

  Year 2

  You make it through both semesters, barely. It really is a long stretch of shit and then finally the madness begins to recede. It’s like waking up from the worst fever of your life. You ain’t your old self (har-har!) but you can stand near windows without being overcome by strange urges, and that’s a start. Unfortunately, you’ve put on forty-five pounds. You don’t know how it happened but it happened. Only one pair of your jeans fits anymore, and none of your suits. You put away all the old pictures of her, say goodbye to her Wonder Woman features. You go to the barber, shave your head for the first time in forever and cut off your beard.

  You done? Elvis asks.

  I’m done.

  A white grandma screams at you at a traffic light and you close your eyes until she goes away.

  Find yourself another girl, Elvis advises. He’s holding his daughter lightly. Clavo saca clavo.

  Nothing sacas nothing, you reply. No one will ever be like her.

  OK. But find yourself a girl anyway.

  His daughter was born that February. If she had been a boy Elvis was going to name him Iraq, his wife told you.

  I’m sure he was kidding.

  She looked out to where he was working on his truck. I don’t think so.

  He puts his daughter in your arms. Find yourself a good Dominican girl, he says.

  You hold the baby uncertainly. Your ex never wanted kids but toward the end she made you get a sperm test, just in case she decided last minute to change her mind. You put your lips against the baby’s stomach and blow. Do they even exist?

  You had one, didn’t you?

  That you did.

  *

  You clean up your act. You cut it out with all the old sucias, even the long-term Iranian girl you’d boned the entire time you were with the fiancée. You want to turn over a new leaf. Takes you a bit—after all, old sluts are the hardest habit to ditch—but you finally break clear and when you do you feel lighter. I should have done this years ago, you declare, and your girl Arlenny, who never ever messed with you (Thank God, she mutters) rolls her eyes. You wait, what, a week for the bad energy to dissipate and then you start dating. Like a normal person, you tell Elvis. Without any lies. Elvis says nothing, only smiles.

  At first it’s OK: you get numbers but nothing you would take home to the fam. But after the early rush, it all dries up. It ain’t just a dry spell; it’s fucking Arrakeen. You’re out all the time but no one seems to be biting. Not even the chicks who swear they love Latin guys, and one girl, when you tell her you are Dominican, actually says, Hell no and runs full-tilt toward the door. Seriously? you say. You begin to wonder if there is some secret mark on your forehead. If some of these bitches know.

  Be patient, Elvis urges. He’s working for this ghetto-ass landlord and starts taking you with him on collection day. It turns out you’re awesome backup. Deadbeats catch one peep of your dismal grill and cough up their debts with a quickness.

  One month, two month, three month and then some hope. Her name is Noemi, Dominican from Baní—in Massachusetts it seems all the domos are from Baní—and you meet at Sofia’s in the last months before it closes, fucking up the Latino community of New England forever. She ain’t half your ex but she ain’t bad either. She’s a nurse, and when Elvis complains about his back, she starts listing all the shit it might be. She’s a big girl and got skin like you wouldn’t believe and best of all she doesn’t privar at all; actually seems nice. She smiles often and whenever she’s nervous she says, Tell me something. Minuses: she’s always working and she has a four-year-old named Justin. She shows you pictures; kid looks like he’ll be dropping an album if she’s not careful. She had him with a banilejo who had four other kids with four other women. And you thought this guy was a good idea for what reason? you say. I was stupid, she admits. Where did you meet him? Same place I met you, she says. Out.

  Normally that would be a no-go, but Noemi is not only nice, she’s also kinda fly. One of those hot moms and you’re excited for the first time in over a year. Even standing next to her while a hostess looks for menus gives you an erection.

  Sunday is her one day off—the Five-Baby Father watches Justin that day, or better said, he and his new girlfriend watch Justin that day. You and Noemi fall into a little pattern: on Saturday you take her out to dinner—she doesn’t eat anything remotely adventurous, so it’s always Italian—and then she stays the night.

  How sweet was that toto? Elvis asks after the first sleepover.

  Not sweet at all, because Noemi doesn’t give it to you! Three Saturdays in a row she sleeps over, and three Saturdays in a row nada. A little kissing, a little feeling up, but nothing beyond that. She brings her own pillow, one of those expensive foam ones, and her own toothbrush, and she takes it all with her Sunday morning. Kisses you at the door as she leaves; it all feels too chaste to you, too lacking in promise.

  No toto? Elvis looks a little shocked.

  No toto, you confirm. What am I, in sixth grade?

  You know you should be patient. You know she’s just testing your ass. She’s probably had a lot of bad experiences with the hit-and-run types. Case in point—Justin’s dad. But it galls you that she gave it up to some thug with no job, no education, no nothing, but she’s making you jump through hoops of fire. In fact, it infuriates you.

  Are we going to see each other? she asks on week four, and you almost say yes but then your idiocy gets the best of you.

  It depends, you say.

  On what? She is instantly guarded and that adds to your irritation. Where was that guard when she let the banilejo fuck her without a condom?

  On whether you’re planning to give me ass anytime soon.

  Oh classiness. You know as soon as you say it that you just buried yourself.

  Noemi is silent. Then she says: Let me get off this phone before I say something you won’t like.

  This is your last chance, but instead of begging for mercy you bark: Fine.

  Within an hour she has deleted you from Facebook. You send one exploratory text to her but it is never answered.

  Years later you will see her in Dudley Square but she will pretend not to recognize you, and you won’t force the issue.

  Nicely done, Elvis says. Bravo.

  You two are watching his daughter knock around the playground near Columbia Terrace. He tries to be reassuring. She had a kid. That probably wasn’t for you.

  Probably not.

  Even these little breakups suck because they send you right back to thinking about the ex. Right back into the depression. This time you spend six months wallowing in it before you come back to the world.

  After you pull yourself back together you tell Elvis: I think I need a break from the bitches.

  What are you going to do?

  Focus on me for a while.

  That’s a good idea, says his wife. Besides it only happens when you’re not looking for it.

  That’s what everybody claims. Easier to say that than This shit sucks.

  This shit sucks, Elvis says. Does that help?

  Not really.

  On the walk home a Jeep roars past; the driver calls you a fucking towelhead. One of the ex-sucias publishes a poem about you online. It’s called “El Puto.”

  Year 3

  You take your break. You try to get back to your work, to your writing. You start three novels: one about a pelotero, one about a narco and one about a bachatero—all of them suck pipe. You get serious about classes and for your health you take
up running. You used to run in the old days and you figure you need something to keep you out of your head. You must have needed it bad, because once you get into the swing of it you start running four five six times a week. It’s your new addiction. You run in the morning and you run late at night when there’s no one on the paths next to the Charles. You run so hard that your heart feels like it’s going to seize. When winter rolls in, there’s a part of you that fears you’ll fold—Boston winters are on some terrorism shit—but you need the activity more than anything so you keep at it even as the trees are stripped of their foliage and the paths empty out and the frost reaches into your bones. Soon it’s only you and a couple of other lunatics. Your body changes, of course. You lose all that drinking and smoking chub and your legs look like they belong to someone else. Every time you think about the ex, every time the loneliness rears up in you like a seething, burning continent, you tie on your shoes and hit the paths and that helps; it really does.

  By winter’s end you’ve gotten to know all the morning regulars and there’s even this one girl who inspires in you some hope. You pass each other a couple of times a week and she’s a pleasure to watch, a gazelle really—what economy, what gait, and what an amazing fucking cuerpazo. She has Latin features but your radar has been off a while and she could just as likely be a morena as anything. She always smiles at you as you pass. You consider flopping in front of her—My leg! My leg!—but that seems incredibly cursí. You keep hoping you’ll bump into her around town.

  The running is going splendid and then six months in you feel a pain in your right foot. Along the inside arch, a burning that doesn’t subside after a few days’ rest. Soon you’re hobbling even when you’re not running. You drop in on emergency care and the RN pushes with his thumb, watches you writhe, and announces you have plantar fasciitis.