Week One

Week One

This story lacks a sequential thread of thoughts and event –just like real life, you could reckon. From the moment we become aware of our surroundings, the repetition of the ambiguity that we define as reality becomes somewhat unavoidable. The next step is the writing in stone of the idea, thus turning it into a dogma. The decision calls for denying everything that opposes your definition of what, from all that one perceives, is really happening. You end up creating a cloister made up of bricks of ideologies, each one closely and carefully placed to fit the others and build a strong perception of "truth." What is better than being able to address someone as a down-to-earth person? To build these cloisters, the logical thing to do is to look for spaces with enough empty room to found, with minimum or no opposition, the development of your own reality complex.

Earth provides an interesting setting for this construction process. The paradox of human existence is precisely the following: whenever you think you have figured out your life, an event happens, a place emerges, a person shows up. This last one specifically batters the foundation of our reason to be. At first, every function of your brain will struggle to deny what has become evident. Reason will censor every attempt of yielding to the newest different notion of the surroundings. Even so, it is only a matter of time until the brain starts perceiving the newest notion as valid and rewrites the existing construction, just like a child, lured by sweets and presents, abandons a bad habit, adopting a more adequate one.

I was in a place of such improbable wicked fantasies not so long ago. I entered there for the first time in a night with a grim sky, puddles of water, and mirages in every stumbling step. Ghosts seemed to have had a hold on my senses, and the world was blurry. "Welcome to the Cheshire Cat's Room" I heard someone saying clearly in spite of my inebriated self. The voice that granted me entrance was warm, manly, perfectly trained in the art of clear diction and able to make the listener shiver with the anticipation of what he could say next. I was entering, through a metallic threshold vaguely illuminated, the apartment of the owner of such voice, no doubt. Why would anybody choose such a theatrical name for such a simple apartment? In a perfectly normal world like mine, the name was so absurd and juvenile that not even in my state of drunkenness could I find it logical. The thought was interrupted by a frenzy of neon colors, distorted sounds, and dazzling images. Next thing I knew, I was lying next to a warm body for the hours that were left before the sunrise.

This is my story, and I will start it as I deem fit. I won't speak of my past because I find it vulgar, common, and unappealing. It would make a bad start. For all that matters, my reality began the first time I had the chance to play at ease in the enigmatic chamber of the feline I've mentioned.

I should introduce myself formally: first name, surnames, age, zodiac sign, patron saint of my name day if such thing were still required, yearly income of my legal representatives, personal achievements, and sexual preference. Let me start: I am Nicolás. My last name is far too ridiculous to the point that it looks good as a brand of canned food. Would they sue me if I use it? I turned 18 years old recently, and no one sang a happy birthday song to me or lit candles on a cheap ass cake from the corner store. There was no ritual of initiation into manhood with the neighborhood whore either. I don't wish to be pitied, though. I had a great time watching the sky during the whole day while sitting pensively in a bench of Parque Morazán. I was having a laugh at the poor neighborhood kid who got his initiation into manhood with the bonus of a real grown up problem: syphilis. I do not believe in astrology, nor do I believe in saints' favors. I do not blame people who do. Sometimes, I wish I had a fantasy like religion, something I could hold onto instead of feeling out of breath while my agnosticism dies and a crescent atheism takes over. Opposite to what my physical appearance would indicate, I do not possess any means to make myself socially desirable. I'm just good looking. Growing up knowing you are poor is a cruel reality, but once you come to terms with that, you don't waste any time pretending you're someone you are not. I'm very fond of not having anything and even boast about it. I'm as free as the easy breeze that blows and walks Mother Earth every morning. I wander like the notes of a fawn's flute in the mythological forests of yore. I am different from those who have everything and yet are emptier than hollow tree trunks. I am sovereign of my life and can live my unrealities and play clandestinely in the demented cat's room without garnering anyone's direct disapproval. I haven't got much in life except a good judge of character. I just got my high school diploma, and I really haven't done much since. Some people offered to pay for my university, but such people and promises faded away just as easily in the land of good intentions and hollow deeds while I kept on walking toward crude reality's fair. I shall leave out the topic of my sexual preference.

It was right after listening to the unusual welcome into what I thought was a common room that I sat into a cushioned chair, falling right away out of dizziness. At first, I could focus my sight on the wall in front of me, leering at a crying clown painting –the worst of my nightmares– circled in a cheap golden oval frame. I had obviously drunk too much. Partying had ignited unstoppable lust inside me. This feeling muted my reason and yielded the entirety of me to the jaws of the god of pleasure. It didn't take long for me to give up the glancing fight I had with the joker on the wall and to finally decide on closing my eyes, unbothered by my face hitting the rugged floor of the Cheshire Cat's room.

I became sexually active when I was sixteen. Some people think that's premature. I've read otherwise, and I believe statistics that show most of teenagers engage in sexual intercourse around fourteen years old in Latin America. I've met girls and been with girls of my city for two years now; our encounters have always been very low profile. There's a European air about me, and that makes me popular among locals. I've had an older friend for a while, a thirty year old street dog we call "the Frenchman." He's trained me well in avoiding knocking girls up. That same man –a great person by the way– has insisted I take advantage of my age to have sex with every girl I come across. He tells me earnestly that people my age only pay attention to physical appearance. The way you look is everything for young girls. They go through a stage when the tingly sensation in their stomach, chest, and thighs takes over and impedes them to think about social status or financial benefits of association with males. This is something I discovered by myself rather than learned through the teachings of the Frenchman: a girl moans more when she feels she is being treated with care and some tenderness, even when you're dominant. A girl enjoys the throbbing masculinity that comes inside her and possesses her firmly while taking care of the frailty sculpted in every inch of her glass-like body.

After I hit the floor, my host seemed to have thrown himself into my help. The next stimulus my stunned senses caught was his voice calling me accompanied by the laughter of buffoons getting drunk on my tragedy in the back. When I was able to open my eyes again, there was a magnanimous man nearing close to my face. He was holding me in his arms and he sounded concerned when he kept on asking "Are you ok?" It didn't take him long to carry me to his bed. I then abandoned myself to a succession of treacherous words and feelings that came from the dark, unconscious part of my mind.

I had never asked to come into the Cat's world. Life's most fortunate and unfortunate events are unforeseeable. The Frenchman had come into my –beg your pardon– reality out of the blue to turn things around, and my friend Cheshire had done likewise. Now that I have time to think about it, the Frenchman is rather a step on the ladder that it took for me to encounter the Cat. The relation between people and events could be easily drawn the following way:

Frenchman – Money. Money – Bar. Bar – Beer. Beer – Cheshire Cat.

The Frenchman is my employer, and he pays me every time I manage to place among the people from my neighborhood some item mysteriously acquired somewhere else. With my wages, rather scarce and petty if I were to compare it with my skills as a street businessman, I am still able to secure fun nights in different venues. The social lubricant in my nights turns out to be the same every time – alcohol. A son of the city like myself knows of ways of procuring himself a free drink every night as well. We, street people, understand the art of entertaining strangers, of making accurate opinions about whatever, of keeping a smart conversation going with more or less stupid individuals who compensate amusement with a couple of beers and shots. Just that the last person who bought me a drink was not an idiot. He wasn't common either. He was Cheshire.

The sun had disappeared into the urban horizon when the peculiar character showed up in front of me. He was a young man who couldn't have been much older than me. I calculated he was 25 or 26, tops. He was more or less my height, or so I was told by people we came across, since I always felt shorter next to him. He was white, but not strictly Caucasian like people of Viking heritage, rather with the pale, Latin American complexion you find in countries with long histories of intermarriage. His elongated face and angular cheeks made perfect match with his straight nose. Every feature matched his lean body, and it would be unfair to deny he was a good looking lad. However, what would call my attention the most among his godly features was his sometimes mysterious and sometimes proud gaze. He pulled it out perfectly with his brown eyes with exotic green spots, totally capable of turning pitch black in the corner of a bar; I came to discover this over time. It was both his eyes and his way of scrutinizing everything before him that captivated me. He could penetrate thoughts and easily leave people feeling naked in his presence. At least I felt naked in his presence. I discovered his existence at the entrance of a bohemian bar of the capital; he was coming in, just like me.

"I feel particularly down today," I had told the Frenchman that same afternoon. "I feel like getting wasted."

"Then go! That's all youth is worth for."

"Do you think I'm going to go to a bar by myself? If I'm telling you I want to get wasted is because I need someone to come with me and get wasted."

"Had a rough day, son?" he looked at me as if he pitied me a little.

This is the part when I should have answered, "With my meager wages, anybody has a bad day." I decided not to say anything. The Frenchman kept on talking.

"I really can't come with you because a lady is waiting for me. Can't you call your gang?"

"I won't exactly call that bunch of idiotic neighbors of mine 'my gang'. But it's alright. I'll go by myself, stay tipsy and stay safe."

Thus, I ventured to the venue where I, solivagant and wandering, will encounter both my dose of alcohol and the Cheshire's Cat. I headed to a bohemian bar because it is the kind of place I would rather be when the Frenchman wouldn't tag along. I particularly appreciated the environment of people in black clothes perfectly concealing my sadness. Did I really say sadness? Tedium, more likely. I was entering this bar, carrying the weight of the world upon my shoulders when I accidentally ran into someone at the entrance. And that someone is Cheshire, the only person capable of replying with kindness when my apology for running into him was dull and implied I did not care if the fault had been mine.

I feel like I must clarify this at this point: I don't find guys unattractive altogether. Time and time again after the event in the cat's room I have wondered if I can really abandon myself to some instinct that works only beyond my consciousness: an animal instinct of sorts and nothing that responds to my sexual –apologies for the word– reality. I want to deny it, but there lingered a gut feeling pulling the string that brings the self before one's own sense of honesty, and it told me to consider that I harbor unexplored horizons inside of me. The morning after my game with the cat, when I woke up next to a naked torso of a man of marble skin, served well as proof that I had changed and my reality with me.

"Sorry," I kept the apology short. He smiled, just that.

There were a few very awkward seconds right after, in which I felt his gaze upon me. I tried to ignore it while I was setting my thoughts straight, deciding I should resume my march to the interior of the bar. The strange feeling that the person at the door continued smiling and looking at me followed all the way inside.

"Bad day? Don't we all have one," he said, shortly catching up with me. "Do you know how much for the beer here?"

"Around 500"

"I'm staying for sure."

I kept my gaze lowered at all times, which allowed me to see his pointed brown leather shoes turning to the right and taking a couple of steps.

"Do you mind joining me?"

My alarms rang right away. San José has become an "open minded city." What that really means is that you cannot know now when someone's being friendly with you or actually flirting. In spite of myself, I nodded and followed the feline man, even if it took my body a few seconds to interpret my brain's command to move. It took a few drinks for me to be the twink that will end up lying next to Cheshire. That was the first time I shared a bed with a man.

To answer an old question, yes, my name is Nicholas, and I may be a homosexual.