The Three Kings Delivered Me My Heart on a Platter

I swear to God, this is the start of my first book. A graphic novel. Almost like a kids book, but for adults. This is all the text. I'm gonna start on the visuals right now.

***

Me: Really? Really? It has been decided that this is the shit that I need right now?
God: Yes.
Me: You’re the wackest God ever, God. Not only do you bring me some pretty tragic shit to deal with when I’m trying to relax in a tropical fucking paradise but then there’s like children starving all over the world, mass genocides, and war. You fucked up and you know it.
God: Oh my dear child, you just don’t understand.
Me: Damn right I don’t understand and it’s not cuz I’m stupid either. Hell, I almost got a Masters degree! And I’m not your goddamn child. Ooh sorry…to uh take your name in vain and shit.
God: ...
Me: Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!!

So started my camping trip in Culebra, Puerto Rico over the Three Kings holiday. Culebra is home to one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. That’s what all the websites say anyway. And all the fuckers who have enough money to see all the beautiful beaches in the world and are arrogant enough to say that they have enough knowledge to rank all of them. Straight up paradise: white sand, clear turquoise water, lots of cool shit to look at when you go snorkeling, forests to fuck around in, coconuts, a sky full of stars, blah blah blah.

I was setting up my tent. Eager to place my lips around the bottle of Balvenie 12 Year Doublewood that I brought with me to help me forget.

Forget what, you ask? There are many terms for it. How should I start? Hmm…A douchebag, un cabron, un hijo de la gran puta, asshole, jerk, trafala. The man that broke my heart. I thought I had been lucky enough to go through life without ever really being heart-broken. Sure dudes have made me cry before. Sure I’ve had really nasty break ups. But heartbreak? I had no idea what the shit was until about a week ago.

Heartbreak is the shit that La Lupe songs are made of. La Lupe. La Yiyiyi. The Queen of Latin Soul. You can’t understand La Lupe’s songs until you have been made to suffer by someone who you reallytruly thought loved you but then you find out in a really wack way that you were making the shit up the whole time. She sings this one song called “Amor Gitano” and the chorus goes like this:

Toma este puñal,

ábreme la venas,

quiero desangrarme 
hasta me muera.

No quiero la vida
si es de verte ajeno,

pues sin tu cariño,

no vale la pena.

That’s some deep ass hurt. And I got hurt La Lupe style on the beach in Culebra, Puerto Rico. Even though the hurt started about a week before that. This tropical beach hurt just kind of served to underline it, bold it, place exclamation points at the end of it. Almost like a citation, it made it official.

So I’m setting up my tent. A bottle of fine single malt whiskey in my backpack waiting to be consumed by me. So happy to be out of the city. Then. I see. Him. With a girl. A girl with long hair, bigger breasts than me, a bigger ass than me. Fuck. They are walking down the main path on the camping grounds. You know this man, dear reader. I guess he really didn’t want anything serious with me.

It can’t be him. Why would that be him with another girl? It can’t be him because I don’t need this right now. It can’t be him because it would just be too perfectly tragic if it were. It can’t…holy shit, that’s him and look at how he’s looking at her.

They were giggling. Giggling for God’s sake!

They did not see me.

At that point, I stopped setting up the tent. Because physically I could not. Because I could feel my stupid little heart detaching itself from the veins, arteries, and valves that used to keep it securely in my ribcage. Pop! Pop pop! It slipped past my lungs, started to slide down my esophagus, make its sad little way past my kidneys. I doubled over in pain, held my stomach with my right hand to keep my heart from falling out of my vagina, reached into my bag for the whiskey with my left hand, opened the bottle and took a long sip. Head thrown back, looking at the sky, this is the moment I was reminded that Orion is made up of more than the five stars that squeeze through the light pollution and contamination of your normal city nights. I drop the bottle, take off my clothes, and stumble to the beach in my bathing suit.

Every. Step. Is harder. Than the last.

I could feel my heart slipping past my stomach. I saw shooting stars. I could feel my heart winding down my intestines. The half moon was rising. And just as I got to the shore to throw myself into the lap of Yemaya, I couldn’t hold onto it anymore and my heart fell out of my vagina and landed in the pristine, white sand.

I didn’t hear it fall because the ocean was too loud.

I left it in the sand and swam and swam and swam. It’s really weird to swim and cry at the same time. You feel really stupid doing it. Like running and crying. Who does that? So I stopped swimming and just let myself cry for a little while. Then I felt stupid crying in the ocean. I started to hear the bad music that came on during the “intense” scenes of Beverly Hills 90210. I looked around for the video cameras because it was just like a bad movie. Who gets their heart trampled on when they’re on a tropical fucking beach? WTF? Really? That happens? It’s not just the fruit of the total lack of imagination of numerous Hollywood screenwriters? ¿En serio? So I stopped crying and swam back to shore. I picked up my heart from the sand, dusted it off, and swatted away the mosquitoes that thought they found heaven. The flies had already given birth to their precious little babies in my rancid heart, just as you can learn here. I shoved it up my vagina again and made sure it was put back in its cozy little home in my ribcage.

I finished the whiskey with my friends, smoked a blunt, and for a while forgot about the wackness that was my life. I went to sleep in my tent.

When I woke up, I took a walk along the beach, knowing I was going to run into them, wanting him to see me, wanting to torture myself.

I ran into him. It looked a little like this:

Him: (Gasps.) ¡Raquel!
Me: Hola.
(No kisses on the cheek. The girl stands there and looks at me. I look at him, no smile on my face. I cannot pretend.)
Him: Uh…Esta es La Fea [duh, not her real name]. La Fea, Raquel. Raquel, La Fea.
(I scratch her eyeballs out with my fingernails and fashion them into earrings using the seaweed discarded in the sand. The inferior of the species collapses to the ground and bleeds to death in absolute agony. I have proven myself to be the superior and dominant female and so the man goes with me...in my head.)
Me: Hola.
Her: Mucho gusto.
Everyone: …
Him: ¡Llegaste a la playa! ¿Cuándo llegaste?
Me: Anoche. ¿Y tú?
Him: Llegamos ayer.
Me: …
(I pummel him to the ground and shove sand into his screaming mouth. He begs for mercy, I think, because I don’t understand his stupid sandy words. I shout, “How does that taste motherfucker?! Love is bitter, isn’t it!?!? Isn’t iiiiiiiit!?!?!” In my head.)
Him: Pueh, no vemos ahorita.
Me: Ciao.
(They walk away and my heart falls from my vagina and plops into the sand. A crab grabs it and scuttles away. It takes me a moment to gather myself and chase the crab. I pry my heart from its claws of and shove it back up my vagina. I run into the water and cry corny 90210 style again. Once I start feeling stupid, I stop.)

My time in Culebra was a series of moments like this. I see them kiss: my heart falls from my vagina, gets sandy, I sigh because I’m frustrated and sad, I pick up my heart, wash it in the ocean and shove it back where it belongs. I come up from snorkeling, I see them playing in the water: my heart falls from my vagina, and sinks to the bottom of the coral reef; I dive to retrieve it, wrenching it from the arms of a starfish and shove it back where it belongs. I see her touch the small of his back as they walk along the beach: plop and it starts all over again.

Really? This shit happens? I mean, really?

When I got home on Thursday night, I noticed that he had defriended me from Facebook, which felt awful. What right does he have to defriend me? He broke my heart! Goddamn it! Beach rejection and digital rejection. The shit just keeps getting worse and worse.

When I got home on Thursday night, I stepped into the shower and took off my bathing suit, sprinkling sand on the tiles, standing naked in the shower for a long time before I turned on the water. I like the feeling of the beach on my skin. The smell of it on my flesh. I reached into myself and took out my heart and placed it in the medicine cabinet. Even though I know I should, I will not use it everyday. Too much work, just like the dental floss next to it.