Bad Trip Category—Gold Winner: Getting into El Cielo
“I want to be kissed tonight,” I say. I can’t remember the last time I was kissed. Really kissed, held, adored. It’s been a virtual drought since Noah. In Mexico it seems anything is possible. Like no one here will know I was that dorky girl in high school with the navy blue uniform and the hot pink tights talking too loudly to seem cool.
Lily and I are stumbling across the cobblestones of San Miguel de Allende, holding onto each other’s arms for balance. On our way across town, we collect whistles and catcalls like the roses we have lined up on our dresser, one from each man, proof of our power. We are drunk on attention.
“I could get used to this,” I say. We traipse past the brooding eyes of the mariachis, leaning against the archways of the Jardin, wrists balanced on the necks of guitars, trumpets at their feet, violins trapped inside their cases, waiting for someone to buy a song.
“It’s so romantic here, it hurts,” says Lily.
We are sitting on the edge of the water fountain inside Mama Mia, the town hotspot on Calle Umaran, just half a block downhill from the Jardin. A guitarist is serenading the dinner crowd with Mexican love songs when a bouquet of red roses appears in front of Lily. A well-dressed man nods at her from across the room where he sits with a bunch of rowdy Mexicans. They are throwing back tequilas and singing loudly, without a care in the world. They seem like people who have figured out how to enjoy life.
Julian (the man behind the flowers) invites us to join in the merriment. He and his friends march us two blocks over to Panchos, a rock-n-roll disco a few blocks away, where everyone seems to be under the age of twenty-five. His friends leave us to dance to some chicken dance, which involves flapping their arms and acting like chickens. It’s amazing the things people are willing to do once they have a few drinks in them.
Julian and Lily are enmeshed in an intense discussion about something. He is playing with her pearl earrings and she is laughing. I feel like an overdressed doll.
Then I spot the guy with the curls. His hair is loose, long thick black curls hanging in his face. He is the tallest Mexican I have seen. And I had resigned myself to forever dancing with men who barely reach breast level.
It turns out he is a friend of Julian’s. Lily tells Julian I want to meet him, and three minutes later (just like that) he is over at our table, shaking my hand firmly and buying me a frozen margarita with lime and salt. Turns out, he is the manager, so every few minutes he has to leave my table to check on something. He’ll cruise the room, pat people’s arms, nod, kiss women on the cheek, take a hand, whisper something to someone, and then return. I fidget with my rings and lick the salt off the rim of my glass, trying to look occupied.
“Sorry. I just have to keep things smooth.” Antonio has an accent that sounds like a mixture of New York street slang and Mexican tequila. He begins to tell me about his life philosophy.
He reminds me of Nico, the long-haired earringed boy I passed each morning in high school, the boy I never spoke to but dreamed about daily for four consecutive years. He stood at the Westside bus stop on his way to Collegiate, the all-boys private school across town. I passed him every day at 7:15 A.M. while I was walking our dog. Sometimes I smiled; other times, I pretended not to see him. Once in a while, I said hi. Last I heard, he had ended up in some fancy rehab center for an overdose.
I ask Antonio about his dog. I assume that a man who owns a dog has to be sensitive.
“Her name is Buddha, and she’s my comadre. We go up to Cante, the botanical garden, you know, every Sunday, and that’s my church. Better than the bullshit the priests try to force on you. Tu sabes?”
“Yeah, that’s cool. I’m not really into religion either.”
Antonio keeps looking around the room, but I figure he has to keep an eye on things because he is important and all. His eyes slide down to my chest and back up again. I feel the heat rise to my face.
“So, you’re from Nueva York, eh? I’ve always wanted to go there. When I make enough money, I’m going to become an artist, you know. I’ve been working with drawing cartoons, you see. And I want to have an exhibit in Nueva York, you know. What’s that song? It’s a hell of a town. Right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s a hell of a town. But personally, I like it here better.”
“Well, you haven’t been here so long.” He glances over my shoulder. I arch my neck around to find that there is a mirror behind me. He is brushing a curl away from his forehead.
“You have to make things happen in la vida. You just can’t sit around. I like your hands,” he says, turning them over inside of his. His hands are like my father’s, blue veins running up and down them, and so big they seem to contain the power to create entire worlds within them.
“I love hands,” he says. “They tell so much about a person.” He uses the plural, like my hands are just hands in a long series of hands he has examined. But I do not notice these things because his touch sends waves of adrenaline pulsing through me.
He leaps up again. “I’ll be right back. Sorry.”
Around 1:00 A.M., Lily cruises off with Julian.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“More than okay.” I smile. “You?”
“Definitely.” She is glowing from the heat of Latin flattery.
Antonio leads me to a little room in the back called El Cielo. A man’s eyes appear through a small sliding window, like in The Wizard of Oz.
Upon seeing Antonio, he slides the door open, high-fives Antonio, and says, “Que honda, güey?”
Antonio explains to me that güey is slang for donkey, but it’s a joke. The doorman gives me the once over, and nods at Antonio. This is what I want, I think, to belong to someone, not to just be floating around, cut loose.
El Cielo is an imitation of one of those New York clubs I spent my high school years trying to get into. Antonio is like the cool bouncers who nod their approval and let you cross the red velvet rope if you are pretty enough, or hip enough, or with the right people. He tells me I can have anything I want for free from the bartender— another Corona, a margarita, anything at all. Across the wall and ceiling fly naked men and women, built like Greek statues, angel wings sprouting out of their backs, blue and white clouds scattering the horizon—of course, because we are in heaven. And here I am in heaven with a man who has the power to make doors swing open and drinks rain down upon me.
He pulls me down next to him on a sofa, lights a cigarette, and wraps one hand around my waist, drawing me toward him. “You’re so skinny, you’re almost not there,” he says.
I don’t know if this is good or bad, but I can’t think about it long because then comes the kiss. I fall into that kiss like a girl falling into a meadow full of poppies. My heart pounds against my chest like the bang, bang, bang of techno music. I am dizzy on smoke and drink and the smell of him. He holds me by the hair at the nape of my neck. This kind of confidence I have never experienced.
“Let’s get out of here,” says Antonio. As he steps away from me, the tip of his cigarette burns into my wrist. I wince and draw away.
“Sorry. You okay?” He turns over my arm. A red sun stains the underside of my arm, a small price to pay for so much passion, I think.
“I’m fine.” I shrug off the heat that stays with me like a splinter for a few long minutes.
I wait on the couch while he closes up and the clock tick-tocks. Antonio returns again, at last, and hooks an arm around my waist, escorting me out. In the street, a fat man brushes past us, high-fiving Antonio.
“Watch out! He’s a diablo!” he says, making devil horns behind his head and cackling at his own joke.
We walk a block and a half toward a line of green-and-white-striped taxis parked in front of the Parroquia.
“Do you have pesos for a taxi? I ran out.”
“Sure.” I am a follower now, willing to go, to do, whatever. Take my money, take my body, take me for a ride.
Downhill we bump, away from the center of town, past the Instituto Allende where they teach art and Spanish classes to gringos, into the Mexican neighborhood of San Antonio, down narrow alleys I have never seen before. The houses become smaller, more modern, uglier. They are little grey boxes with broken glass shards from soda bottles sliced into the tops of the concrete walls and roofs to keep out the burglars.
Antonio’s collie jumps all over me, wagging and licking. I get down and coo at her, but he shouts, “Off, off, bad, bad, bad,” and chases her out of the room. “Oh man, it stinks in here. Puta.” I know this word because when I used to teach fifth grade in Los Angeles the Mexican kids used to teach the black kids their curse words, testing me to see what they could get away with. These were the first Spanish words I learned: whore, shit, and bastard. For the poetry, I had to wait.
Antonio grabs Buddha by the collar and slams her nose into the shit on the floor until her tail curls beneath her legs and her head is down, her eyes pleading.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it,” I say, looking away.
“She has to learn,” he says. He hits her hard on the nose and throws her out onto the patio. I shiver at the cold air that blows through the room.
A tin-framed heart shows Antonio’s arms wrapped around a laughing woman.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“My girlfriend.”
“Oh,” I say. The dog has her nose pressed against the glass. A small cloud of moisture has formed around it, blotting out her face.
“She’s a flight attendant so she travels a lot. We’re on vacation.” They have been dating six years. He says something about wanting to marry her. It isn’t clear whether the vacation thing is mutual or not.
I could leave right now. If I was more prideful or self-preserving or feminist, I would. But I stay, because I am none of these things.
“And you?” he asks. “Do you have someone?”
“Not really.”
Antonio tells me how he wants to have a little girl with curly hair, just like me. “I will name her Aurora, which means dawn, you see.” He tells me how he wants to die when he is thirty-eight, because he thinks life is only good up to that point. I want to take him into my arms and tell him that this is foolish. And what about Aurora?
“You shouldn’t say that about wanting to die,” I say.
“We see death differently here,” he says. “We are not afraid of it like you gringos are.” He tells me about Dia de los Muertos, the day when death is celebrated here. He pushes the hair out of my face and kisses me again, but this time we are sitting on his bed. I think, this will be worth the heartache that may come later.
There is no foreplay, no candles, no sweet talk. He throws me across the bed, and pulls apart the buttons on my red flowered mini-dress, the dress I wore because I wanted someone like Antonio to notice me. A button rolls onto the floor, spins, and lands.
“Do you have something?” I ask. I wonder how often he takes these vacations. He deftly pulls a strip of condoms from underneath the bed, as if he is always prepared.
The dog has gotten in somehow and starts licking my arm. Antonio throws a shoe at her. She retreats with a whimper.
He climbs on top of me and begins to writhe and pound until sweat is streaming down his smooth white back. A gold pot leaf sways back and forth, dangling from his neck. I feel a rush of pain shoot up from deep inside. I inhale sharply and bite my lip. There is blood in my mouth. He finishes and rolls over with a sigh.
A streetlight flickers on and off all night, unable to decide if it is going to hang on or give up. Dogs bark back and forth to each other across rooftops. A rooster crows again and again and again. I try to wrap my arms around Antonio, but no matter which way I lie, I cannot get comfortable. When I was with Noah, night was my favorite time. It was the time when we would stay up late talking, kissing, cuddling. We slept wrapped up in each other’s arms, legs tangled. I would lean my head against his chest and say, “I can hear your heart beat.” And he’d ask, “What does it sound like?” Afterward, it was always night that was hardest. I have tried to fill the gap he left with countless bodies, but the forgetting is always temporary. No one ever lives up to him.
I walk around looking at Antonio’s things. He has a closet full of leather sandals, white Mexican shirts, and hippy pants. A drum set sits in the corner of his bedroom, shiny and cold. I sit with Buddha on the concrete floor, stroking her long blonde-red fur and listening to the quiet rhythm of her breathing.
In the morning, Antonio lights a joint and sits naked at the drum set, banging away like a little kid. I blink at the brightness of the light pouring through the shadeless windows.
“Did I tell you I’m gonna start a banda?” He doesn’t kiss me good morning before heading for the drum set. “I’m going to play at Panchos some time soon. I know I’m going to be better than most of the chavos who play there.” It is becoming clear to me that I am not going to get a cup of coffee or a kiss. “The thing about mota is that it makes you understand and see things so much better.”
“I have to go,” I say. “My friend will be worried.”
“Don’t mind the woman downstairs. She looks after me.”
“Aren’t you lucky,” I say.
An old woman with a long grey braid running down her back is sweeping the stairs, swish, swish, back and forth, a witness to the comings and goings in this house. I suppose she is loyal to Antonio and says nothing to the girlfriend. But what does she really think?
“Buenos dias,” I say, rushing by.
Outside, the heads of women look up from their plastic buckets of water and brooms to watch me walk by in my wrinkled red dress. They pause before tossing more water across their front doorsteps, one handful at a time, and then sweep the water over the cobblestones to keep the dust down, a hopeless battle against the elements.
My feet hurt from my impractical shoes, which keep getting caught in the ridges of the cobblestones I had previously thought so quaint. It is all I can do not to break my ankles. I feel like a whore in my bright red dress, in the wrong neighborhood. The skin on my arm is irritating me and I turn it over to find the burn has faded into a tarnished star like the kind they sell in the market here, so shiny at first, but quick to loose their sheen.
Pamela Alma Bass is a writer who lives in San Francisco.
