A Growing List of Reasons To Say, “KEEP YOUR FUCKING DICK IN YOUR PANTS”

REASON ONE: Today as I was waiting for the bus to take me to the health food store so I could buy my weekly supply of tofu, almond milk, and organic nuts and berries soldbytheBULK, a man showed me his penis. No...no. That was an understatement.

Picture this:

You are waiting for the bus by yourself. You are a woman. In a city you are not from but feel increasingly comfortable in (which doesn’t mean yo stupid ass won’t get robbed, but I’m just sayin). You are sitting on a bench that is just high enough to give you space to swing your legs. So you swing your legs because when was the last time you did that?

Across the street is a man. You know he is watching you. How? Because you feel like a fucking reality tv amoeba porn star being observed under a fucking microscope by a sick ass molecular biologist who has an unhealthy obsession to watching amoebas just trying to do their amoeba thing.

You do not meet his gaze. Even when he goes: ssss…ssss…ssss.

You try to read the book in your purse. It is The Power of Now. Fuck. It should help you focus but you can’t find your Being because your Being is being too horribly violated to be found. She is hiding.

It’s like when your mother told you not to touch things as you walked into semi-fancy department stores.

Or when your teachers used to tell you never to look directly at the sun during a solar eclipse.

You just had to do it.
You just had to look.

And so you see him jerk off.

Not quite: swinging his stupid dick around in stupid circles.

You know what you are going to be faced with. But you look anyway. And when you do, you close your eyes, open them again, see the same shit, close your eyes, open your eyes, shake your head, and walk to the next bus stop. Don’t you dare look back, you...

When you turn the corner, you see a police car driving up the block. You feel relieved, saved almost. Then you remember the following: walking down the street in Brooklyn and a police officer leering at you, grabbing his dick with one hand and holding his gun with the other, that since the beginning of the year just about 130 people have been murdered in this island, that it is February 21st, that so many people wouldn’t have to die if somebody didn’t turn a blind eye or open an expectant and complacent palm.

You walk past the police car. You look back and the fucked up molecular biologist is walking behind you but turns the corner. You meet his repulsive gaze. He looks at the police car. Then at you. You turn your head and walk faster to the next bus stop.

You don’t want to miss your bus. The drivers are assholes. They won’t pick you up if you’re not at the stop. They’ll leave you running, sweaty, dusty, and embarrassed.

Que chille la chilla

I once was a chilla. My boss, older than me, more knowledgeable than me, married, a child at home. I told him I wanted to learn so he taught me. I was his apprentice. And nothing is as sexy as whispering, “ay jefe” in a man’s ear as he slips his hand inside your underwear.

It has to do with power.

Power over me: I, an adult, am making the conscious decision to fuck someone I know I should not. Someone who has the power to fire me as soon as I say no. Or as soon as She finds out.

Power over him: It’s amazing what a pretty smile and the confident offering up of some pussy can do to a man. He turns soft and when he’s hard he goes
right
inside
of me
And I take him and I make him forget things that should be impossible to forget. The child he made, the woman he goes home to make love to, his business, his employees. "Shh jefe, it’s okay," I ensure him, as if I’m the one writing the checks.

Temptation is powerful. I convinced myself that this was something I had to do. Everyday I saw this man, I wished for a way to find myself alone with him. I found myself brushing up against him as I passed to get to the storage room. For that split second of touch that would make my vagina so uncomfortably hot, make me so wet I couldn’t work because I just had to meet his eyes one more time.

Temptation makes you say:
To hell with his wife
She will never find out
I need to do this
Ay Dios, una vez na ma (even though you know STOP is not one of the words you will ever say to him)

Knowing something that others don’t know is powerful. When I met his wife—this was before we started having sex but after we began to flirt ceaselessly—I didn’t feel guilty or ashamed. In my head I kept saying, “can you tell that I’ve seen your husband’s cock? Can you tell that I am crazy to have it in my mouth?” When I saw him grip her waist and kiss her neck, I wanted to steal a moment with him in the bathroom to remind him of my lips and show him how they feel on his body. In other words, I felt jealous.

And this is the downfall of la chilla. La chilla has to live within the rules that are laid out by the man she is having an affair with. La chilla cannot call her lover in the middle of the night to talk to him about her bad dreams. The ones where the faces of devils grow out of her bedroom walls to stare at her, to laugh at her. La chilla cannot call her lover when she is horny because she cannot outwardly disturb the relationship her lover has with his family. La chilla must wait. She must be fiercely independent at all times. If one is meant to be a chilla then this is not a problem. I’m thinking now of Sabina in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She is the mistress of two men, belongs to neither of them, and is content. She paints and never feels quite at home anywhere. Unsettled. So why settle with a man? That will simply serve to make you forget things you shouldn’t, namely that you are not at home and haven’t found a home yet.

There is something sexy about being the mistress of someone. The knowledge that you are satisfying a man in a way that his legitimate partner cannot. The secrecy. The fleeting intimacy. Knowing someone is giving you all he has for a couple of hours and that perhaps he is thinking about you and how you scream and how you arch your back in orgasm as he lays down with his wife.

Yet you know you are doing something undeniably fucked up. Not just to this woman with whom you have no beef at all but in general. You are supporting every man who leaves his wife to take care of his children while he fucks another woman. You are supporting that system of machismo that says women should wait: Las chillas esperan sus amantes mientras las esposas esperan un cambio que nunca vendrá. You are normalizing the destruction of marriages. But whatever. Maybe you don’t believe in marriage. I was never the girl who pictured herself in a white, wedding dress saying, “I do” to a faceless knight in shining in armor. As a child I just wanted to draw and be thin. There were no princes in my dreams.

But I’m not deluding myself into thinking that I was participating in something radical with my boss when we had an affair. We weren’t fighting against the injustice of marriage. We were fucking selfishly. I mean, we were fucking selfish.

It's been so long, jefe. But I still remember the thoughts that danced through my mind as I held your head in my arms. As you told me to behave myself(as you kissed my breasts)as you made me promise not to be trouble(as you bit my neck): what kind of father are you? What kind of lessons do you teach your son when you come home and place him on your lap, the scent of foreign sex underneath your guilty fingernails?

The Meaning of the Toothbrush

Fuck hearts. Fuck a box of chocolates and chubby, little cupids. Fuck the color red and it’s bastard offspring pink. Fuck a goddamn engagement ring or checkbooks with both you and your partner’s names on it. Fuck a tattoo of your partner’s name on your nalgas. Fuck meeting his parents and fuck the first phone call. The most important symbol in any relationship is the toothbrush. You know how santeros can read your past in cowery shells and fortunetellers can augur your future in tea leaves? I can divine the prospects of a relationship from a motherfucking toothbrush. Tengo un don bien fuerte.

There are two ways to address the toothbrush issue in a relationship. Each signify something vastly different The first is The Passive Aggressive Method (or the PA Method, as I will refer to it in the rest of this article). The second is The Let’s Talk About it Baby Method (the LTAB Method). There are subcategories within each method. So when someone has left their toothbrush in your apartment all you have to do is refer to this article to figure out what your future will be with that person.

The Passive Aggressive (PA) Method

It’s never advisable to be passive aggressive. When I act passive aggressively it is usually because I am insecure about what I am doing or I’m scared of the ramifications of what I am doing or because I’m scared of the person I am doing whatever I am doing to. Sometimes I’m passive aggressive because I just don’t want to deal with confrontation. The problem with being passive aggressive however, is that your message may be misunderstood because you’re not being openly communicative about it. For example, let’s say we live together and you always leave your dirty calzoncillos on the sofa and I fucking hate it. I decide to tackle the problem in a passive aggressive manner by picking up your calzoncillos and hanging them on your doorknob. You might take this to mean that I am helping you clean up after your filthy self. But really it means that if you leave your putrid panties on the sofa one more time, I might just punch you in the fucking chest.

Passive aggressiveness doesn’t allow for the effective communication of your feelings. You may think you’re settling the problem by stealthily avoiding it while dealing with it, but really you’re just letting it fester in your gut until it turns into a big, nasty deal when it didn’t have to in the first place. Way to go you passive aggressive dummy, you just made your problem a lot worse.

There are two subcategories within the PA Method: The Sneaky Tyrannical Oppressive Method, or the STO Method and the Oops My Bad Method, OMB Method. The STO method is the wackest one I have encountered in my life. By sneaking your toothbrush into my bathroom, you are by definition being oppressive and tyrannical. Let me share an example.

Once upon a time in a mystical and fucked up land called New York City, I lived unhappily ever after and sought comfort in random sex with random individuals. One of those random individuals began to turn into “someone special,” into someone I was “seeing.” Definitely not a boyfriend but someone who spent the night at my apartment at least twice a week. Definitely not a boyfriend but someone who I enjoyed having sex with, a lot. Someone who was acutely intelligent, exceedingly handsome, and fantastically charming. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he was also a certified NUTJOB! Which was good at first because it made me realize that I wasn’t the only crazy person in this world but then I realized that he was on some manipulative/mind control crazy shit. And, to tell you the truth, I was a victim of a good dick. You know when sometimes you just get blindsided by a high quality penis and it’s hard to find your bearings again? Yeah, his dick knocked me on my ass.

Anyway, one day I was fiending for some gooooooood sex. It had been a like a week since me and this dude had fucked and, to top it off, I had had really bad sex with someone else just a couple days before (just a hint guys, if you have to tell me to “say your name” when we’re fucking, that means that not only have I already forgotten your name but even as you thrust yourself in and out of me, I am in the process of forgetting that this night ever happened). So one day I invite this guy over for pancakes, conversation, and sex. We’re talking, the pancakes smell like a dream, it’s summertime and the blueberries burst in my mouth with peppery sweetness, we listen to Led Zeppelin, we smoke delicious weed. Everything is just splendid. As I was flipping the final pancakes and he talked about something or the other, he began to open a package. It was a small package and it came in a pharmacy bag. It was a toothbrush. He walked to the bathroom, put toothpaste on his brush and brushed his teeth. I thought little of it. There were more important things to think about: should I make a peach compote for the pancakes? Should I have anal sex with this man today? Clearly he had forgotten to brush his teeth at home and bought a toothbrush so he could fix his problem here at my apartment, before we got into anything heavy and his bad breath would offend me.

I had forgotten all about it until after he left, after the pancakes were eaten, after I had descended from the lofty peak of orgasm, when I was no longer high out of my mind. I walked into the bathroom to wash my face and stopped in my tracks with a gasp. What the fuck is this doing here? Above my sink, in the toothbrush holder, on the left hand side, in the middle hole: a blue and white Reach toothbrush with an angled head to get at the stubborn pieces of food that always seem to stick where the bristles won’t go, still wet from when it was broken in just a couple of hours ago. I stood there looking at this uninvited piece of plastic in my bathroom with my hands on my hips and my head cocked to the side. Ain’t that some shit…You sneaky, passive aggressive motherfucker.

This is a prime example of the STO Method. The toothbrush in question found its way into my life without my fucking permission, i.e. SNEAKY. The toothbrush in question irrationally insisted on existing in my bathroom without regard to what I wanted, i.e. TYRANNICAL. The toothbrush in question invaded my bathroom and usurped a position in my toothbrush holder against my will, i.e. OPPRESSIVE. The STO toothbrush loudly states, “I’m here, bitch! Deal!” And because I didn’t give the STO toothbrush permission, its presence makes me angry and contumacious. If something is oppressing me, I must rebel against it. And if something is oppressing me passive aggressively, I guess I’ll just have to rebel against it passive aggressively. In this case, I passive aggressively used the toothbrush in question to clean the toilet bowl. He he he.

The Oops, My Bad (OMB) Method is not inherently fucked up like the STO Method. The OMB Method can be employed both sincerely and insincerely. In other words, you could have really just forgotten your toothbrush, maybe you left it in your gym bag which you really did forget at your partner’s house. Or you could say to your partner that you forgot your toothbrush but really you “forgot” your toothbrush and really you left it there on purpose. Either way, when your partner brings it up, you say “Oops, my bad” hoping that s/he will say back, “No worries. Just leave it here.” Or you could make it really look as if it were an accident and bring it up first by saying something like, “OMG. I left my toothbrush here. My bad. How wack of me.” Then, naturally, your partner will say, “oh whatevs, I didn’t even notice it. You should just leave it here anyway.” Even though the OMB Method is not so bad, it still passive aggressively forces your partner into a position that maybe s/he was not ready to be in. If I want your toothbrush in my toothbrush holder, I will find a way to get it there, on my own terms.

The Let’s Talk About it Baby (LTAB) Method

Simple. Straightforward. But not necessarily easy. The LTAB Method also has two subcategories: the Straight-Up (SU) Method and the I Have a Present For You (IHAPFY) Method. Recently the man that I am currently dating (not seriously, promise) helped me to develop the theory of the LTAB Method. Here is what happened.

I was walking out of the bathroom and into my bedroom to cuddle into sleephood with this man. Just as I am about to turn out the light, he asks me if I had brushed my teeth. I said that I hadn’t because I felt bad brushing my teeth when he couldn’t because he didn’t have a toothbrush here. It’s not fair that I get to enjoy the refreshing feeling of just-cleaned teeth while all the food that he ate during the day rots in the noisome cesspool that our mouths turn into as we sleep. He responded by saying that he could use my toothbrush. I said, of course. Of course he could do that. Of course. I slid into bed and pushed my booty into his crotch to slip into dreaminess in a perfect spoon. But I must admit (don’t tell him this, okay?) I didn’t sleep well that night. I kept waking up to listen to him breath, to watch his mouth tick as he undoubtedly dreamed about laughing, or eating, or smiling really hard. What are you trying to pull?

He had brought up a topic that means something. But before I get into what the toothbrush actually means, let me describe both subcategories of the LTAB Method. What this man that I am seeing did was a combination of the two subcategories; it is undoubtedly the SU Method and it has led me to try out the IHAPFY method.

This man brought up the topic in a straightforward and confident manner. He needs to brush his teeth and has spent enough time at my place to ask about the toothbrush situation. The SU Method, especially the way in which it was employed by this man, is highly admirable because when you use it, you totally put yourself out on a limb. Anyone who uses the SU method is a keeper. If you don’t like the person then you have to at least give him/her props for bringing up a tough topic. To many people, sharing a toothbrush is absolutely gross, even with a consistent sexual partner. Which is weird…we can have each other’s genitals in our mouths but not our toothbrushes? So to ask me to borrow my toothbrush is brave because he risked committing a serious social faux pas. I could have been one of those people that takes the toothbrush sharing thing very seriously.

But whether you ask to borrow your partner’s toothbrush or you ask if you can have a spot in their toothbrush holder, by using the SU Method you are actively starting a conversation about the status of your relationship, which is dope because those are not easy to have. Because if you want to avoid the toothbrush conversation while still making sure you have fresh breath, you would just make sure to always have a toothbrush in the glove compartment of your car or in your purse and you would take it out right before you’re about to go to your partner’s house. That way you can fuck and also make sure you have a kissable mouth without having to worry about things getting confusing.

The second subcategory of the LTAB method is the I Have A Present For You (IHAPFY) method. Someone who employs the IHAPFY method has observed that her partner has brought a toothbrush over once or twice but mostly forgets it or that her partner has asked to borrow a toothbrush on a couple of occasions. And then one day as they are both in the bathroom stepping out of the shower she offhandedly says, “oh hey papi I have a present for you” and presents him with the toothbrush. The partner will then smile and say, “thanks” and then they will happily brush their teeth together, having avoided any awkward conversations about relationships, sharing toothbrushes, or which hole in the toothbrush holder will be given to the partner.

This second subcategory is sweet, kind, and thoughtful. It lets your partner know that you are thinking about them, that their oral hygiene is important to you, not just because you kiss that mouth but because you want them to be healthy. It also communicates that you want your partner to be comfortable when s/he is at your house. It is a small token that says, “I recognize that you spend a significant amount of time here and I want that to continue.” Yet, as I am writing this I also wonder if it is a little passive aggressive. What if your partner doesn’t want your gift? I don’t think it’s a big deal though. If you can’t appreciate the fact that I am trying to make your life easier, then you should fuck off anyway.

The Meaning of the Toothbrush

The toothbrush is definitely a step in a relationship. Whether it mysteriously and passive-aggressively finds its way onto your sink or whether it is openly discussed, it means something. It obviously represents the following:

1. That your partner cares about oral hygiene, which is a good thing.
2. That your partner is now thinking practically about the fact that s/he spends a significant amount of time at your place to warrant having a toothbrush there.

But this is what it intimates:

1. That your partner imagines him/herself spending more time at your place in the future.
2. That your partner likes hanging out at your place and, by extension, that s/he likes you.

The crazy thing is that it has any meaning at all. When the man I am (not seriously) dating asked me if he could use my toothbrush, why was I taken by surprise? We have swapped spit, hung out naked more often than with clothes on, had long conversations about bowel movements and farts, and have the most divine oral sex —frequently, ay qué rico. Why is it so weird to ask me to use my toothbrush? Perhaps because it connotes a level of intimacy that I didn’t know we were approaching. It seems as if every time we see each other, we talk about how this is not “a serious relationship.” But hey motherfucker, I think it’s pretty serious that you want to use my toothbrush to clean away your plaque. My pussy in your mouth is one thing, clearly not a serious thing, but my toothbrush in your mouth is completely different. Because if the toothbrush conversation insinuates that your partner wants to spend more time at your place because, by extension, s/he wants to spend more time with you, then doesn’t that mean that things might be turning a little serious? Holy shit...

So the plan is to try the IHAPFY method on this man I am (not seriously) dating. The next time I see him I’ll casually present him with a brand new toothbrush. I’ll say nothing else. Although it may mean that I know he enjoys spending time with me and will continue to spend time with me in the future (a prospect that both of us may or may not find really cool), I only really want it to mean that I care about his teeth. And his teeth are pretty fucking awesome.

Clear Blue Easy Redux

It's a good thing the guy I'm seeing (don't worry; it's not serious, we promise) has vowed (well not really) to never read my blog because if he read this he would feel REALLY awkward. Phew!

Remember a little while ago when I posted something about taking a pregnancy test? Well, after I finished it, I became kind of obsessed with the idea and I wrote more. And here is the finished product.

How My Baby Would Kill the Devil and God With A Bat of Her Non-Existent Eyelashes

Clear: the result
Blue: a little
Easy: not as much as you would think

Clear: I’m in the…
Blue: En este momento, in my bathroom with the blue tiles, my mosquito-bitten ass sitting on the blue bathtub, yo quiero estar en el mar. In the blue water, deadmanfloating looking up at the sky so bright blue it hurts.
Easy: Is that why they call me…

Clear: Pa’ que estemos claro. I don’t want a child but sometimes I see little hands wrapped around bigger ones en dondequiera: the market, the shoe store, the bus stop, the pharmacy and well, I can romanticize, right? I can be a woman in my latefuckingtwenties, right?
Blue: My vein bulging out of my forehead, when I’m worried. When I’m thinking too hard, assuming too much, when I cum and I fall.
Easy: Does it…But do it.

I am not pregnant.
Which is an extremely good thing for the following reasons:

1. I am unemployed
2. I like being unemployed and dread the day my rumbling belly will tell me to update my resume, get my ass on a bus, and work BITCH
3. I am slightly crazy

Yet, as of late, I have begun to feel the evil presence of all these hormones that I can’t pronounce but sure as hell can curse out because they’re making me feel things that I don’t want to. So, for five days I wondered, what if. What if for nine months the clothes that fit me a few days ago now rubbed into the swelling mound that housed half of me? What if my jeans could no longer hold in the life that grew so intensely inside of me that it stretched my skin, stretched my imagination far beyond the boundaries of my own selfishness? What if I started to cry at all the things that were supposed to make me sad before but didn’t? What if changes in hormones are just this littlealmostperson inside of me teaching me what it really means to be human? To be good. Finally. What if I could create something that wasn’t about receiving accolades, hugs, positive feedback from people I respect, props, a beer from a boy who wants to hit it or a smile from girl who thinks I’m cool? What if I were a mother like in the magazines at the supermarket checkout line? What if I talked to my baby about everything instead of saying “because I said so”? And she understood? What if I no longer hesitated to hug someone when she cried or walked away when she needed me?

***

It has been forty days. Forty days since I last looked down at my underwear and saw a stain like rust telling me it’s time. Time to plug myself up, to shed the lining of my uterus because I DON’T NEED IT THIS TIME AROUND. A stain like rust: as if I am not using my parts, as if I have forgotten about them! But I haven’t; and this is why I’m in trouble in the first place.

Forty days is a biblical amount of time. Jesus fasted and wandered through the desert for forty days and the Devil tried to tempt him three times. Each time, Jesus cited scripture and the Devil ran away. I think if I retreated to the desert for forty days, I would see the Devil too but surely I would not chase him away. I would need someone to talk to, someone to help me pitch my tent. Surely I would accidentally trade my soul for some directions. The Devil is a tricky, smooth-talking motherfucker, I hear.

According to the Christians handing out yellow pamphlets and telling me that “Dios me ama,” I don’t even have to wander into the desert to see the Devil. Apparently the Devil is the reason why I think I’m pregnant. If I have seen the Devil in the past forty days it has been:
1.
When I walked down the Paseo de Diego to buy some avocados and saw a young man, surely not older than me—pero ave Maria, how heroin ages you, he looked so tired.
He sat on the sidewalk, nodding out, almost hitting his head on the ground.
(But you know he never will right? The Devil has slipped an invisible noose around this man’s neck and he will never let him rest. Just when he slips into unconsciousness and his forehead is about to meet the grey reality of the cobblestones and he will finally be at peace, the Devil, sometimes quickly sometimes gently but always violently, tugs that invisible rope and wakes him up.)
The young man’s left arm is almost completely gone. A gash, the only abyss I’ve ever seen in my life, takes up the entire inside of his forearm.
So deep you see bone.
So deep you gasp.
So deep you don’t look but then you do again, avert your eyes, but then you look again.
So deep you wonder how he is still alive enough to ask you for a quarter.
But then you realize that it’s only the Devil that could be keeping him alive when clearly it would be better to be dead.
He is so far gone, his skin so slimy I thought my fingers would slide right into it as I pressed the shiny coin into his palm. Like Silly Putty, I swear to God.
(to who?)
The Devil made me want to wash my hands afterward.

2.
When I see the man with metal sticking out of his leg, walking around, with a Burger King bag full of somebody else’s left over french fries. I don’t really (want to) understand but will try to explain it:
Certainly he has broken his leg in many places
and someone was concerned enough to take him to the hospital.
The doctors performed a complicated surgery in order to put him back together,
a surgery that included sticking four shiny metal vises (is that what they are called?) into his calf bone.
Maybe those vises are supposed to be tightened on a precise schedule (you see, young man, you turn the little, butterfly-shaped metal thing approximately 14° to the right every two days. Remember: righty tighty, young man, righty tighty!)
Maybe he escaped from the hospital
or the hospital kicked him out
because he couldn’t pay.
or because he wanted more and more morphine and the nurses wouldn’t administer it to him
(maybe it’s the Devil that makes me think that).

A Portrait of the Devil on La Calle Humacao:

The Devil is not unprotected sex.
The Devil is heroin and he is destroying my island.

***

Forty days is the amount of time you fast before Easter. Forty days is the amount of time God made it rain. Forty days is how long it took Him to kill Everything. How long did it take Him to decide we were not worth living? To realize that He Fucked Up and needed to start all over again? A split second of a second thought perhaps. One hundred and eleven years is how long it has taken the United States to:

bomb the shit out of our island and say i'm sorry but not before babies were sorry they ever breathed in so deeply they inhaled fumes so toxic their lungs buckled under the weight of an asthma so powerful
sterilize the women on our island under the guise of testing birth control (“it’s better for you,” they say in english as they scrape our wombs clean of possibilities)
commit massacres in Ponce, in Utuado, Río Piedras, Jayuya, and San Juan
kill our leaders
imprison our leaders
replace our farmland with cement (“it’s progress,” they say in english as they pour highways over our houses)

It took the United States one hundred and eleven years to make sure we forgot what freedom was.

I know the United States is not God even though they both work in mysterious ways, here they are both unseen and all powerful, many Puerto Ricans look to them both for salvation and prosperity and will drop to our knees if either one of them tell us to, even though everyone here has a few family members they have lost to both of them.

QUE DIOS NOS BENDIGA (Cross yourself.)
QUE LA ESTADIDAD NOS BENDIGA (Wave your flag.)

For forty days I have been wandering in the desert that US imperialism has made. And if I have run into, crashed into, collapsed into the warm and inviting arms of sin, I don’t mind. God is a gringo in a suit that can’t get me off anyway.

***

I waited five days before I consulted the white plastic fortuneteller. For five days I thought about having to make one of the hardest decisions in my life. It wouldn’t be a baby anyway, right? It’s hard to reconcile pro-choice politics with the feelings that come from terminating something that all those pink and blue books say will give you unprecedented amounts joy. A mere collection of cells. A creature that will smile and grow and give your life meaning. Which one is it? Then there are those women who have babies for all the wrong reasons: to have someone to love you unconditionally, to have someone to love unconditionally, hoping it will make a man love you unconditionally, to put your womb to use before it lays to waste. I don’t want to be one of those women. For five days, however, I loved the potential group of cells in my may-or-may-not-be-empty womb.

I am scared of what these feelings mean. I am scared that my friends will think I have turned into some kind of pro-lifer evangelist, giving a spirit to a blob of blood and proteins. Yet for as much as I denounce religion, I can’t reject the pulsing spirits I feel inside of things (everythings): Have you ever sat on a rock in the middle of a river after it has rained long and hard, ants stinging your thighs, the chirping of frogs filling your ears? The leaves of the trees that hold you in that moment shield the sun from your eyes. Then they open to let the sun warm your shoulders, still cold from the swim you took to get to the most perfect spot in the world. Has that ever happened to you? Yes? Remember that spirit you felt as you hugged your knees close to your chest and closed your eyes? Then you must believe there is a spirit in the pin head-sized gathering of cells that began to take shape inside of you when you squeezed a man closer to you, squeezed your vaginal muscles tighter and tighter (no te vayas) as that man came inside of you. How can you not want to protect that bead of potential life in the same way you wanted to protect that man from everything bad this world will hurl at him, as his head rested on your collar bone and you noticed with every swelling of his chest as he inhaled, your chest caved as you exhaled? There are many things in this world I want to cradle in the clammy crook where my bicep meets my forearm: the baby brown bird with a broken wing I found on the street the other day, fresh baked bread that has risen perfectly, a branch separated from its tree during a storm, a book that makes me miss my stop on the subway, a beautiful man after he has fallen from orgasm, the idea of being a mother even better than my own.

***

Triplets

One evening when I was a senior in high school, I gave birth to a little pink ball of flesh. To this day I have no idea what it was. I remember sitting in the common room of my dorm and doing my homework when I felt something uncomfortable in my underwear, like when you haven’t put a tampon in correctly and you can feel it slipping out. It did not hurt and I do not remember if this birth was preceded or followed by cramps or blood. I remember I was not menstruating at the time. When I went to the bathroom, I pulled something out of my vagina that was about the size of a golf ball. It was the color of my insides: a pink you would never wear, blue bulging lines the color of your eyelids when you’re sick. I placed it on a wad of toilet paper. I sat on the floor of the bathroom for quite some time observing it. It was a hard, little thing. I flushed it down the toilet and told no one about it. Sometimes I wonder if that was the only chance I would be given to… A chance…in and of itself. I mourn it but there is nothing I can do.

Mom told me once that you had two abortions when you were a teenager. Those were hard times, huh sis? Dad, a full-blown tecato fuck up. Mom, depressed and barely holding it together. I was still in boarding school and I rarely came home cuz I hated it. When I did, we pulled each other’s hair and clawed at each other’s faces. I’m sorryI’m sorryI’m sorry Those two procedures were secrets, never daring to cross the tightrope of your lips. I want to ask you about them, to get the advice older sisters are supposed to impart on little ones. What was it like, both times? Was the second one harder or easier than the first? Did you take a pill, sis? Did you have a surgery, sis? So many things are not talked about between us. People say we look like twins. But I don’t see it. If you looked like me, surely we would have more in common, more stories to share, more mindtomind connections that would take the place of conversations. You have two dogs you refer to as the girls, just like mom and dad refer to us. It’s so good to have all my girls here for Christmas, dad, now clean and happy, says.

I had a dream that I carried a baby in a dark Washington DC. I held her in my arms in a blanket. She was me as a baby. I held myself and I wasn’t crying. We were lost and there were police officers who helped us find the metro station. When I got to the escalators, all the gears and chains and mysterious machinery that makes things move were exposed and each step was like a grate but there was a wide space in between each bar and there was a wide space in between in step. I didn’t want to get on. I didn’t want to get swallowed. The baby was not scared. I remember the dream in shades of blue and grey. We were by the baseball stadium, even though I had never been there in real life, but it was under construction. The only sounds were the loud churning and clunking of the escalator, the drills drilling, hammers pounding, men throwing planks of wood into piles.

***

For five days I thought about this moment right now, in the bathroom, sweating, shaking, not wanting to look at myself in the mirror, not knowing which result would be the right one. Then I peed into a white plastic fortuneteller and waited for two minutes for either one or two lines. One line=I’m good. Two lines=I’m fucked. (???)

Why was I doing this all alone? Certainly I wasn’t the only one who got myself into this mess! These are the names I called the man who made me think I was preggers:

1. sperm donor
2. asshole
3. mi amor
4. douchebag
5. papi
6. lindo
7. jerk
8. dick
9. wonderful

These names floating in and out of my head as I carefully read the instructions to my pregnancy test.

***

(Setting: Raquel’s pink and blue bathroom in Río Piedras. It is early afternoon. The mirror is broken, the toilet is running, the garbage can is full to the brim with toilet paper. There are two cats fighting loudly outside and the neighbor is blasting “Loba” by Shakira. It is hot. There are two identical Raquels. They are both sweating. They are both naked except for a turquoise towel wrapped around their chests. They are sitting on the edge of the blue bathtub. Raquel is reading the instructions to the pregnancy test. Other Raquel is looking at them over her shoulder.)

Raquel: (Visibly angry.) What a douchebag, he couldn’t even return my phone call.
Other Raquel: (Smiling. Not really listening to what Raquel is saying.) He’s probably just busy. He’s beautiful! Think about what his baby would look like!
Raquel: No. I don’t want to think about his stupid baby. I swear to God, it better not be inside of me. Fucking jerk, he knew I was going to do the test today.
Other Raquel: Well maybe he didn’t get the message because he had no service, you know that can happen where he lives. (Gets up and dances around the bathroom.) ¡Ay pero qué lindo, qué precioso, qué HOMBRE!
Raquel: Well that dick should have been paying attention to his phone. God, I hope I’m not pregnant! If I am, I swear , I’ll rip my uterus out and beat the shit out of him with it!
Other Raquel: It’ll be okay. Just because he’s not here, doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. After all, he’s wonderful! And maybe we can have wonderful babies together!
Raquel: (Now infuriated.) You know what, fuck you! You just don’t get it!
Other Raquel: (Insulted.) Hey! No, fuck you!
Raquel: No, fuck YOU! (She picks up other Raquel by the hair and flushes her down the toilet. We hear the gurgled screams of Other Raquel. Raquel sighs heavily as she sits back down on the rim of the bathtub.)

***

***

For five days I entertained the romanticized idea of what it would be like to have a child:

I would do yoga everyday so that my baby would come into this bleak world flexible, ready to bend and not be broken by the difficult situations this world would throw at her. I would eat only the purest foods—clean the soil from them with my fingernails—so that my baby would be healthy, not addicted to the chemicals, preservatives, and artificial colors that only serve to make us weak to the interests of companies who only think they are larger and more powerful than the love I would have for that imaginary child inside my may-or-may-not-be-empty womb.

I would sing to her and dance with her to give her the lightness of spirit that will allow her to travel inside the spirits of others and heal them. You see, my baby would be a traveler. And I would pack her suitcase with epiphanies, lullabies, hands to hold, and bombas molotov.

My baby would see inside of you, see through the wool you try to pull over her eyes, see solutions in people blinded by ignorance. See possibilities, shiny and brilliant as shards of broken glass, in this society inured by colonialism. She would have x-ray vision, even though she would probably wear thick glasses, like her mother, the kind that magnify your eyes and make you look like a spider(woman).

I would exercise everyday so she could be strong enough to Fuck. Shit. Up. Tear down seemingly impenetrable walls of silence. Slice through handcuffs with the sharp blade of her tongue. Lift the weight of US occupation off of our chests with her bare, calloused hands. Carry the baggage our grandmothers have hauled for too long with their long, sinewy fingers spotted with age, broken by generations of hearing “no, eso no se hace.” She would be strong enough to love whomever she wanted, fearlessly, fiercely because I would have planted that love inside of her, fearlessly and fiercely.

I would give offerings to Yemayá and Ochún so my baby could be one with them. Offerings of the blood that escapes from my skin as I fearfully jump and crash into their laps. Offerings that would help those water goddesses drown out the Devil’s distractions so my baby could swim through this world with her eyesWIDEopen in water with waves so powerful they knock the weak off their feet and wash away the non-believers.

But I
am not
pregnant.

So I sit on the edge of the blue bathtub and stare at the white, plastic fortuneteller that comes in the aluminum wrapping that comes in the white and pink box, that is Walgreens brand because my first response to First Response was, “hell no, my unemployed ass will not spend eight more dollars for the same shit I can get for $11.99.” And I wait for the second blue line to not show up. And in the empty white space that confirms my empty uterus, after the two minutes of obligatory waiting time, I see nothing.

And now
I don’t have to say
Nothing
To him
I don’t have to plan
Nothing
With him.
I don’t have to worry about
Nothing.
And so,
I throw out the white plastic fortuneteller in the white plastic bag it came to me in, roll a cigarette, pour a glass of wine,
And feel.
Nothing.

¡El Paro Nacional y los QUEERS!

As I have grown older, I have become more comfortable with my identity (thank the spirits) even as that identity continues to complicate itself. I remember the good ole days (do you see the sarcasm dripping from my words?) at my bourgie boarding school Milton Academy, when I used to agonize over being one of a handful of scholarship kids and being one of an even smaller handful of people of color. I evaded questions about what my parents did for a living and didn’t talk about what I was doing over vacations—because, clearly, my ass wasn’t going skiing in the Alps or scuba diving in the Yucatan Peninsula. That, however, wasn’t really an identity struggle as much as it was an experience in displaced-working-classness (i.e. what the fuck do I do with these people who don’t know a damn thing about work?) Some of the people I went to school with had farms and they understood what physical labor meant. But they weren’t the farmers who grew food to live; they weren’t the farmers who worried about Walmart and Costco and not being able to compete with lettuce grown in a place they have never had any reason to look for on a map. My classmates had big farms but even bigger cushions to fall on if something went wrong. They had second houses in the city where they escaped to when it got too cold and complicated in the country.

What I really struggled with as a teenager was the combination of my sexual and my ethnic identity. When I came out as bi (back then, I didn’t have the consciousness or vocabulary to be able to come out as queer), I immediately felt the awkward stares from the vast majority of the students at Milton. Whatever. That didn’t matter. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I really enjoy making people feel uncomfortable. Yet I felt alienation from the other students of color and that mattered big time. Suddenly I was faced with a really fucked up question: How can I be happily Puerto Rican and happily enjoy women at the same time?

In college, this was not a problem. Hybridity was hot and I found myself at home in a community of queer folks of color. Yet in 2003, when I started to spend more time in Puerto Rico, I felt the absence of a proud queer identity, especially that of Puerto Rican women. Gay boys were everywhere to be found (well not everywhere but at least they were visible), yet the gay women remained under the radar. This I contributed to the presence of a fierce machismo that all but silenced the vocalization of an alternative female sexuality, one that had nothing to do with men. I mean, God forbid a woman gets off without the help of a dick!

Which is why it is dope to come back to Puerto Rico and see a full-fledged queer movement fucking shit up. This Thursday, Puerto Ricans from all over the island took part in the Paro Nacional. Organized by students, labor unions, and civic groups, including the umbrella organization, Todo Puerto Rico Por Puerto Rico, the national strike was a success because of the approximately 200,000 people that took to the streets. Generally speaking, the demonstration was designed to bring the economy to a standstill, as a way of protesting the recently passed Ley 7. In March, Governor Luís Fortuño announced his Fiscal and Economic Recovery Plan, also known as La Ley 7, as a means of reducing the island’s massive debt. The law led to the layoffs of about 8,000 government workers in May and 16,470 in September. Those layoffs will leave us with an unemployment rate of about 20% yet somehow Governor Fortuño thinks this piece of legislation will help stimulate the economy.

Perhaps the most problematic facet of the legislation is the fact that it gives the government the power to suspend any agreements established through the collective bargaining process, thereby taking power away from workers and placing it solely in the hands of those of the privileged ruling class. It also paves the way for the further privatization of government services since those jobs that are being eliminated in the public sector are now being redeveloped by private industries. For sure Puerto Rico has not seen the end of the destruction of La Ley 7. Hundreds of millions of dollars still have to be saved and that will probably mean that the Fortuño administration will attempt to layoff more workers.

What does this have to do with the burgeoning queer movement here in Puerto Rico? Everything! At the national strike on Thursday, I was pleasantly surprised by the presence of radical queers spray painting phrases like “Cambio de Sexo Legal y Gratuito,” “Dile No al Discrimen por Orientación Sexual,” and “Los Gays También Somos Obreros.” Thursday’s strike, and all the organizing that led up to it and will follow it, was not just a manifestation of class struggle. It was also an expression of the desire on the part of many different kinds of Puerto Ricans to take back Puerto Rico and redefine it in radical terms. And the government knows that. That’s why Marcos Rodríguez Ema, the Secretary of State, called those who participate in the protests “terrorists.” He said of workers’ threats to close Puerto Rico’s ports: “Ya esto se está tirando hacia una anarquía, hacia los sabotajes del pasado.” Rodríguez Ema is equating grassroots organizing with terrorism because he knows the power that that label holds. He is criminalizing the ordinary Puerto Rican, pissed off with the way shit is going down, calling us anti-Puerto Rican when really we are defending the Puerto Rico we want for the future: A Puerto Rico that doesn't give in to corporate interests; a Puerto Rico that is anti-racist, anti-homophobic, and pro-woman; a Puerto Rico where everyone has a job and can support themselves and their families. Terrorists? Really?

The police know it, too. The superintendent of police, José Figueroa Sancha, attempted to dismiss the actions of students who blocked one of San Juan’s major highways, el expreso las Américas, by saying, “[el grupo de estudiantes universitarios] no representa al estudiantado porque son unos pocos.” Additionally, he tried to paint those students not just as enemies of the police or the government but enemies of the entire country: “Estaban preparados para hacer daño a la Policía de Puerto Rico y a personas que estuviesen ajenas allí. Incluyendo la Prensa.” Of course activists are going to disagree on how to bring about change. Maybe not every student or every union leader would have laid down in the middle of a highway to protest a law that attacks people in a time of fiscal crisis instead of helps them. The bottom line is, however, that the students of the University of Puerto Rico have been organizing for quite some time against the privatization of the university and have placed their fight clearly within the working class struggle. To say that the students were “unos pocos” is to ignore the purposeful association between student activist groups, unions, and civic organizations.

But back to the queers…

It is significant to me that the queer community had such an active and militant presence at the march on Thursday because it made the struggle for queer rights part of the national struggle. Suddenly, just like every Puerto Rican has the right to a free and public education or the right to join a union, every queer Puerto Rican should have the right to adopt a child, marry whomever they wish, or identify with whatever gender they wish. On Thursday October 15, 2009, queer politics were put on the national agenda in a loud and visible manner and it was dope. On that day, activists proclaimed that being queer was just another way of being Puerto Rican.

My good friend and roommate, Leona, used the occasion of the national strike to make a statement about President of the Senate Thomas Rivera Schatz, gender, police brutality, la Ley 7, and the current state of Puerto Rican politics in general. Leona decided to protest while all dolled up in a military-green dress, a Hitler mustache, and a red armband with a swastika. Yes, it was shocking. No, I wasn’t completely comfortable with the image but yes, I totally supported the act of parody. She walked around proclaiming that she was wearing “one of Rivera Schatz’s uniforms!” For Leona, the act of vistiendose, of dressing up in drag, is intrinsically a form of protest. And a drag queen Hitler/Rivera Schatz, representing both the turn of the Puerto Rican government to the extreme right and the increase in violent acts committed by the Puerto Rican police...well that just brings that protest to another level, huh? Leona was just one representation of the growing visibility of Puerto Rican queerness at the general strike. I have a feeling that one day soon (very soon, keep your eyes peeled), Leona will be back and a hope that this is only the beginning of the inclusion of queer politics on the Puerto Rican activist scene.

The Politics of Penetration (Verse 2)

This is primarily a discussion between me and dictionary.com, more precisely, a discussion between me and the multiple entries listed under the word “penetration.”

1. To pierce or pass through. The most basic definition there is. As it is related to this article, penetrating someone’s rectum means to pierce it with something, usually a penis. However, in a wider definition, we should also understand it to include a finger, a dildo, or maybe even a tongue—but I don’t think tongues are hard enough to actually pierce your rectum. If you know someone that has such a tongue, please let me know; I’d like to shake his/her hand.
2. To enter and diffuse itself through; permeate. Here is where things start to get interesting and where we start to get uncomfortable with anal sex. It’s as if in the act of penetration, one leaves his/her stamp. If those who penetrate our anus “permeate” us then that leaves us, the penetrated, permanently marked, conspicuously saturated by someone else’s power. And that idea is certainly more uncomfortable than even the biggest, most oddly shaped phallus in my butt.
3. To arrive at the truth or meaning of; understand; comprehend. What can be understood about me when I allow someone to penetrate me? And when I like it? Of course, it can be understood that I am an open-minded person that sees every orifice as a potential invitation to pleasure. But more deeply, perhaps, when you penetrate me, you come to understand that I trust you as much as I trust myself because I wouldn’t let just anyone slip into the dark passages of my body. When we know something, we have power over it. Maybe I’m scared of being understood. Nah, I’m scared of being misunderstood. There are many opportunities for confusion during sex. Like, the only true moment of clarity there is during sex is post-orgasm. Anytime before that we are wrapped up in getting to that moment. How many times have I cum only to realize that I shouldn’t be fucking the person underneath me in the first place? How many times have I wanted to scream “I FUCKING LOVE YOU” when having sex only to then be so grateful that I didn’t after I felt that "shudder in the loins.” I can’t remember half of the random shit I scream during sex. And if someone only knows the “me” in bed, then the potential for a long list of really awkward misunderstandings is great. Nah boo, I didn’t say, “I love you,” I said, “I luck you.” Like I’m lucky to be fucking such an awesome guy. He he haaa..Have you seen my panties?
4. To obtain a share of (a market). To be penetrated is to be taken. In the worst sense, to be claimed. That’s shitty. Have you ever had sex with someone, only to realize a couple of days (hours) later that everyone knows what you did? Of course you have. Everyone has. And although you’d like to feel as if it doesn’t matter that everyone knows, it totally matters. It totally matters that everyone thinks they know what your vagina looks like, tastes like, feels like, and smells like. It totally matters that now everyone knows you start singing songs from The Little Mermaid when you fall off the cliff of orgasm. It totally does. Even the most liberated among us want a little discretion when it comes to sex, especially anal sex. But now that person with whom we have done it, has a piece of us and they can do with that piece whatever they want. And you know what? I’m not whole enough to just being giving my shit away and not care about what happens to it. So it’s scary okay? So be careful with it. Cuz if you’re careful with it, I might even let you have it again. And again.
5. To affect or impress (the mind or feelings) deeply. OMG. It is rare, so RARE to have sex with someone and forget about him or her like that (insert snap of the fingers here). Even if it was bad. Especially if it was bad. Take Becky for instance (remember her?), she wanted to forget about smearing her poop all over this dude’s dick but she just couldn’t. Because, as I explained above, this dude took a piece of her upon piercing her, a sloppy, shit-stained piece, but a piece nonetheless. It may be hard for me to recall every person I have fucked. Please don’t ask me to make a list, I’ll just wind up feeling bad about myself and fucking someone random out of self-pity, not because I have had sex with so many dudes that I can’t remember (uh…right) but that my memory is so bad and that means one of two things (or both): I’m either getting old or I have done permanent damage to some really important part of my brain from so much weed-smoking. But names aren’t important (right?) not as important as feelings and faces. Maybe I don’t want to remember the way the muscles in someone’s face slack when they first feel the inside of my excited vagina or my expectant anus. Maybe once I take that piece of them, I’ll feel too heavy and, as you can imagine, I got my own shit to carry; I certainly don’t need the weight of the memory of someone who may or may not have been good in bed. Humph. Certainly not.
   

How do I wrap this section up, now? By musing on power. Penetration is certainly an act of domination. I don’t need to remind you that it’s not always a peaceful/sexy kind of domination either. Think of all the violent words we use to describe the act of penetration: stab, cut, tear it up, beat it up, hit it, nail, pound, gut, etc etc. I’m definitely guilty of using these terms both in and out of the bed. Don’t misunderstand me; I don’t think these words or penetration are inherently violent (duh). Nor do I think that violent sex is necessarily a bad thing, as long as the people participating in it are 100% down with it and there is a very clear way to express when one is no longer down with it. But I do think it’s important to recognize the power inherent in penetration. That way, at least we can play with it as we play with our partners and ourselves. Think of anal sex as one big play date supervised by our favorite baby-sitter Foucault. Foucault, that baby-sitter who always invites someone over once he’s put you to bed and you get to watch them do it from the crack in the door. That post-structuralist motherfucker who loves flipping shit inside out. Put this shit in your pipe and smoke it:

The medical examination, the psychiatric investigation, the pedagogical report, the family controls may have the over-all and apparent objective of saying no to all wayward sexualities, but the fact is that they function as mechanisms with a double impetus: pleasure and power [oh God, yes]. The pleasure that comes of exercising a power that questions, monitors, watches, spies, searches out, palpates, brings to light; and on the other hand, the pleasure that kindles [mmmm] at having to evade this power, flee from it, fool it, or travesty it. The power that lets itself be invaded [penetrated?] by the pleasure it is pursuing; and opposite it, power asserting it in the pleasure of showing off, scandalizing, or resisting. Capture and seduction [oh!], confrontation and mutual reinforcement…These attractions, these evasions, these circular incitements [oh shit oh shit…I…] have traced around bodies and sexes, not boundaries not to be crossed, but perpetual spirals of power and pleasure [qué ricoooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh].

Gracias, y buenas noches.

***

So, because I wrote so much about penetration, I have decided to leave Verse 2 as is and make Verse 3 about the stupid homophobes and gender conformists. Verse 4 is the Ten Point Program For More Liberating Sex. So...keep your eyes peeled!