Chulito (27 page)

“You ain’t going to your room to cry.” Kamikaze pulled him over in a headlock. “You coming with me. When your heart’s broken, you should not be alone.”

“Thanks, but I want to go to bed.”

“Bye, fellas.” Kamikaze held Chulito in a headlock and brought him over to the car.

Davey mock cried, “Bye, Chulito. You’re gonna live. You’re gonna live.”

The fellas laughed.

Kamikaze pulled off and made a U-turn on Hunts Point Avenue. “You hungry?”

“No.”

“I’m starving, bro. How about some Mickey D’s or seafood?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Let’s got to City Island.”

“All the way over there? Can’t you get seafood someplace else?”

“I want the best. Besides, Rey owns a restaurant out there and his top dawgs eat for free.”

Chulito looked at his watch and figured that Carlos must be gone.

“Let’s go,” Chulito said. Before Kamikaze even reached the entrance of the Bruckner Expressway, Chulito breathed heavily and fought to hold back tears. He looked away from Kamikaze out the window. He wondered where Carlos was. He thought of texting him, of saying he was sorry, but that wasn’t the issue. Carlos wanted what he wouldn’t give him. Carlos wanted to be open. The pain Chulito felt was unlike any other he’d experienced. It began in his chest, right in the center, and then it spread up to his throat and strangled him. It pulsed in his temples, like his brain was being squeezed. And the tears. They kept rising and spilling. He’d lost control of holding them back and sat sobbing. Kamikaze looked over to him and swiftly pulled the car over to the side of the street. Chulito put his hands on the dashboard to steady himself.

“Wassup, Chulito?”

Chulito was on the brink of hyperventilating. Kamikaze removed their seatbelts, placed a hand on Chulito’s neck and squeezed. Then he pulled Chulito over and embraced him. Chulito sobbed in Kamikaze’s arms. “This hurts, bro. I feel like I can’t breath, and there’s a knot in the middle of my chest. My head feels like it’s gonna pop, Kaz.”

“I’m sorry to see you like this, bro.”

Chulito pulled away from Kamikaze. “I feel so embarrassed crying like this in front of you.” He wiped away at his tears. Kamikaze flipped open the glove compartment and pulled out tissues.

“It’s alright. Love can make you lose your cool.” Kamikaze lifted Chulito’s face and examined it. “And you have definitely lost it, little bro, but you don’t always gotta be cool, and definitely not with me.”

“Thanks.” Chulito wiped his face. “I’m O.K. now.”

“Let’s just go to my crib, I’ll order from the Chinos instead and we got weed and Hennessey and whatever else you want. This way, if you feel like you need to cry, let shit out or whatever, you can do what you need to do. It will be just me and you.” Kamikaze smiled.

Chulito spent the rest of the night in Kamikaze’s apartment with its blue skies and fluffy clouds. They shared rib tips and fried rice from the Chinese joint, eating out of the same containers, drank Coronas and smoked blunts. Whenever Chulito had a crying fit, Kamikaze would hug him, place the flat of his palm on his back and move it around in soothing circles. He wished that he was hugging Carlos or that Carlos was holding him instead. They didn’t talk, except for Kamikaze cradling Chulito and periodically saying, “Let it out, little bro” or “It’s cool.” It was strange for Chulito to feel this close to Kamikaze. He’d had fantasies of being in Kamikaze’s arms, but they never played out like this. It was peaceful and easy. He liked being close. They were alone and private. Chulito knew that Kamikaze understood the deal and that they could never do this on the block. Why didn’t Carlos understand, too?

Chulito fell asleep on the couch, and Kamikaze removed Chulito’s Timberland boots before going to sleep.

Chulito woke up as the sky was starting to shed its darkness. He looked around the room. The air-conditioner was humming in the corner and the ceiling fan was spinning slowly above him. Kamikaze must have cleared the empty bottles of beer and Chinese food cartons. He walked over to Kamikaze’s room and saw him asleep on his bed. Kamikaze was lying on his stomach, hugging a pillow while one bare foot poked out from under the plain white sheet covering him. Chulito could see Kamikaze’s tattoo blazing on his back in the dim light. He taped a note to the bathroom door that read “Thanks.”

It was a twenty-minute walk back to Hunts Point from Kamikaze’s apartment. An hour later, Chulito found himself sitting on a rock by the Bronx River. The water moved slowly and he watched leaves, plants and an occasional can float by.

Watching the sun rise, Chulito felt angry at Carlos for asking for something he couldn’t give and cried because he didn’t want to think about not being with him. Chulito thought about Poe Cottage, he thought about Sebastian and Pito, he thought about the time they slow danced, how happy he felt when he and Carlos were alone. He considered telling Kamikaze the real deal, but not the fellas. Well, not all of them; maybe Chin-Chin and Davey, but not Papo. What would he say to them? “I lied about the church girl. It’s really Carlos who drives me crazy and I feel happy when I’m with him.” Would he tell his mother? After about his fourth cycle of being angry at Carlos, coming out to some of his friends, and deciding to just go on without Carlos, two guys showed up at the river with fishing rods. They nodded to Chulito who dusted off the seat of his pants and headed back toward his neighborhood. He looked at his Fossil watch and saw that it was almost eight o’clock. He knew Carlos would be leaving for his internship in about an hour.

Chulito walked through his neighborhood, but avoided Hunts Point and Garrison Avenues where he knew all of the auto glass guys were already lined up. He looked at his old elementary school, the NYC Parks Department gym that was being constructed and the new post office. He looked at the cracks in the sidewalk and wondered if the little blades of grass came up from some deep dark place in the earth and pushed their way through the cement, or if the seeds flew through the air and landed on the little bits of dirt. Either way that was some tough grass, he thought.

He walked by the giant warehouse with the theatre and artists studios on Barretto Street, where a woman planted flowers in small patches of dirt around new trees. He thought it was strange to see her with her long light brown hair in her face, digging into the ground. What was the point? He thought about asking her whether the grass came from underground or from the air.

The flowers were small and vibrant in shades of pink, magenta and purple. She had a bicycle with a basket in front of it that had lots of little plants and loose flowers. She wore a daisy pierced by a gold hoop as an earring. When Chulito passed her she smiled, got up and handed him a sunflower.

“No thanks.” He kept walking.

“C’mon, take it,” she said. “Give it to someone you love.”

Chulito stopped and looked at her. She was still smiling and holding out the sunflower. He had seen her before, riding her bike. He knew that she was down with the two gay guys who ran the dance studio in the warehouse.

“Or give it to someone you don’t love, but I want you to have it.”

Chulito walked over to her and accepted the sunflower, “Thanks.”

“Thank you for accepting it.”

“Why are you planting flowers?”

“Why not?”

Chulito opened his shirt and stuck the flower inside.

“Too much of a macho to walk around with a flower?”

“Nah, I want it to be a surprise.”

“Alright. But if there is some law that says a macho guy like you can’t walk down the street holding a flower, I think it should be broken.”

Chulito nodded and continued to walk home with the flower hidden under his shirt.

When he arrived at his building he sat inside at the bottom of the steps near his door. He knew that Carlos would be down shortly and would have to pass him. Soon he heard Carlos’ door open and keys locking the door. Carlos took two steps down and saw Chulito sitting at the bottom of the stairs. He continued down and Chulito looked up at him.

“Good morning.” Chulito presented Carlos with the sunflower.

Carlos stopped and accepted the flower. “Thanks. Do you have something to say to me or did you just want to give me this?”

“I hardly slept, thinking about you.”

“If you gotta whisper, then you haven’t heard what I had to say.”

“I know what you want, and I been thinking all night, Carlos. I just need time. I’m not ready.” Chulito took Carlos’ hand then let it go.

“I know you’re not. And I want to say, fuck it. And all night, every time I heard a car door slam or heard footsteps, I looked out the window to see if it was you, but I don’t like sneaking around.” Carlos realized he was whispering, too, and used his full voice. “I don’t like this double life thing. I came out to my mother, to everybody and it’s not easy, so I understand that. I even lost you as my friend for a while.” Carlos paused and looked away from Chulito. “Now I’m losing you again.” Carlos handed the flower back to Chulito and left the building.

Chulito opened the door to his apartment and saw his mother standing in the hall.

“Hey, papa, it’s good to see you, I was worried.”

“I crashed at Kamikaze’s.” Avoiding further discussion he slipped into his room.

Carmen knocked on his door. “¿Chulito, qué te pasa? I know something is bothering you.”

“I’ll be alright.” He wiped tears from his eyes.

“Well, I don’t feel good about going to Puerto Rico and not knowing what’s going on.”

Chulito opened his door a crack and gave her the sunflower. “I’ll be fine, ma. I just…I just have a broken heart, I guess.”

Carmen reached for the flower with one hand and touched his face with the other. “Come here.” She tried to hug him.

Chulito pulled away and wiped his tears. “I’m O.K. Don’t worry.”

“You’re too much of a man to let your mother give you a hug?”

“It’s not that. I want to be alone right now.”

Carmen looked away and retreated from his room. “Thank you for the flower, Chulito. I love you, negro.”

Chulito laid on his bed, kicked off his Tims and sobbed softly into his pillow.

When Chulito opened his eyes, the room was dark and he felt paralyzed. He was in that place between dreaming and being awake. He could hear sirens in the distance, slowly becoming more present. He knew that if he could just wiggle one small toe, it would set off a chain reaction that would shake him out of his paralysis. The sirens grew louder and were joined by the
tuc-tuc-tuc
of helicopters whose blades sliced through the South Bronx night sky. The crackle of walkie talkies joined the symphony of the raid. Chulito could hear the television from the living room. There was a newscaster who had a voice that was smooth, creamy and very official.

“We interrupt our usual programming with a message that as of midnight tonight Congress passed a bill that has outlawed macho. A special team of police has been dispatched into five major cities in the U.S. to capture and bring in all macho men with a reading of four point eight or higher on the Macho Meter. We will hear from our Mayor Margarita Lopez in just a few minutes to explain more, but, I repeat, as of midnight tonight being macho is against the law.”

Each pounding heartbeat broke Chulito out of his paralysis and he sat up in his bed. The lights from the sirens were flashing in his room. He jumped up and peeked through the shade in his window and saw police trucks lined up and down Garrison Avenue. Chulito could hear heavy footsteps running down his hall, the voices calling out, “Alberto Sanchez, you have a reading of six point four. Come with us.”

Men in their boxers and wife-beaters were being led into trucks and vans. Papo, Davey, Chin-Chin and Looney Tunes were lined up against the closed auto glass shops and scanned with a handheld gadget that looked like a cell phone. As the police men and women passed the scanner over them, little red lights blinked and the fellas were cuffed and stuffed into a van.

Chulito jumped away from the window and paced in his room.

Outside a woman yelled, “Llévatelo, sácalo de aquí, for twenty years you have given me hell. Take him.”

“Mami, where are they taking Papi?” a young child asked.

“To make him better…Papi has a big problem.”

Chulito heard Puti screaming from her window next door. “Take that one over there, his name is Damian and he works at Master #1 Auto Glass Shop. That motherfucker threw a beer bottle at me for no fucking reason, other than the fact that I am more glamorous than any woman he could ever have. And go to apartment 7B, there is a guy named Manny and don’t let his cute face fool you, he is the most macho motherfucker on the block. And Brick, he lives around the corner…Oh, shit, he’s on vacation in Puerto Rico…are you people going there, too? That whole island needs to be under Macho Lock Down.”

Chulito searched for clothes that wouldn’t make him look thuggy, but as he tried on different clothes they got bigger and bigger—XXL becoming XXXL. He frantically looked through his closet, while outside yells, screams and cheers filled the night: “Don’t take him, he really is good deep down inside.” “About time some shit like this happened.” “Say something now, motherfucker, huh, say something now.”

On TV the newscaster was interviewing the Latina mayor who said that the men were being taken away and those who could be rehabilitated to an acceptable macho reading would be returned back to society. The rest would be put in secluded areas where they would have to live off the land or ultimately kill themselves off. Then they had a quote from the woman who invented the Macho Meter: “All men have macho in them. Even gay ones, but there are varying degrees, and while most forms of macho are lethal to the progression of the world and society, there are some acceptable levels, very low levels, that can sometimes be useful.”