I scrubbed my body with a stiff brush until my skin was a reddish brown. How I wished I could keep that vibrant color, instead of my dull beige. The bathroom mirror showed a naked female of the human species emerging from a sulfurous cloud. She was short and solidly built, with some roundness of ass and belly to balance the muscular arms and back. Her breasts were small and not yet sagging. Her face was older than her body. It told her real age: old, but not irreparably old. Her short hair was dyed brown to match her eyelashes, eyebrows, and eyes. Her hands, feet, and ears were surprisingly small. Her nose strong, her lips fleshy, her teeth regular but slightly yellowish, her chin weak, her face square. This was the person known as I.
I put on my best clothes for my Christmas dinner with McCabe: black corduroy pants and jacket, beige button-up shirt and socks, black leather boots I had shined the day before, all much worn, but of good quality. For the pyre I would change into work clothes and old sneakers. I took my time brushing my teeth, clipping my toenails, combing my hair, rubbing lotion on my body, getting dressed. It was nine o’clock. I did not expect McCabe to arrive before noon. There were only two flights she could take: the daily flight from Chicago to the state capital, one hundred and eighty miles southeast of Elmira, arriving at 1:00 p.m., or the weekly Penal Colony transport arriving there at 10:30 a.m., in time to catch the 11:00 a.m. air taxi to Elmira. Traveling all the way by land, or on a privately chartered plane, seemed far-fetched options. If McCabe arrived on the earlier flight, I would offer her a light, cold lunch; if on the second, an apéritif. Dinner would be served at eight o’clock. The venison would go into the oven around six o’clock. Her bed was freshly made in case she wanted to take a nap before dinner. I opened her bedroom windows to let in the clean winter air.
Ice floes lumbered down the river toward the Shangri-La bend, where they got stuck. Soon the bend would be frozen solid. Once, Glorita had dared me to walk on the ice. When I refused, she stepped on it alone. I watched her walk toward the middle of the frozen bend until I could not stand my fear. I grabbed a sturdy tree branch and followed her. “What’s that for?” Glorita said when she turned around and saw the branch. “Nothing,” I said, embarrassed. “I can take care of myself,” she said. I thought she had read my mind and knew the branch was to save her if she fell through a crack. “I know,” I said. “Then why do you keep butting in?” she yelled. Glorita was scary when she got pissed. I was afraid she’d melt the ice and we’d both drown. She was angry that I had gotten into a fight for her. A big moron called Ñico pawed her at the bus stop in front of the school, so I jumped on his back and tried to strangle him. He whirled around like a mad elephant with me hanging on to his back, my hands too small to circle his thick neck. Two of his pals ended up pulling me off and kicking me on the ground until Glorita threw herself on top of me screaming at them assholes, mothafuckas, pendejos, cabrones, hijoeputas, chingones, etc. They hesitated for a second because she was a pretty girl, even if she let the fucking dyke suck her pussy, come suck my big fat Mexican dick instead, you puta. Glorita seized the moment to pull me away. The three orangutans jumped up and down in a frenzy of crotch-grabbing rage. Ñico screamed he was gonna stick it up my filthy tortillera dyke ass. I yelled at him to go home so his daddy could shove it up his fat ass: “He’s waiting for you, maricón!” The three gave chase, but the school bus pulled over in the nick of time. I was spitting blood. My left eye was closed and my lips swelled. Breathing was painful (a broken rib, as it turned out). I told my parents I had fallen down the stairs trying to catch the bus. They didn’t believe me, and I was grounded for a week. The truth I told only my grandmother. Glorita and I were thirteen. There had been other fights before, and much taunting, but this was my first big match. In the next five years, until I graduated from high school and Glorita dropped out, I got another rib and an arm broken, lost two teeth, and saw my clothes periodically ripped and my lips, nose, eyes, elbows, and knees bloodied. I was not a victim. I gave almost as good as I got. I never ratted on anyone—not out of a sense of honor, but because it would have made matters worse: everybody hates queers, even those who say they’re our friends, and a lot of queers hate themselves. To compensate for my size and inferior muscle power, I began to wear, and use, brass knuckles decorated to look like rings. I always aimed at their snouts. I also carried a box cutter in my pocket, which I used more than once, and a hunting knife in my knapsack that I often flashed, but never used.
High school taught me that my enemies were everywhere, and my people nowhere. I was still one with Shangri-La in what concerned white people, but not in what concerned me. The benevolent Shangri-La of my childhood, all for one and one for all, turned into the envious, narrow-minded, bigoted, gossipy, hateful, brutal Shangri-La of my youth. It loathed me and I loathed it back. Just like Elmira, although Elmira is unforgivable. Even Rafael avoided me in public, afraid to call attention to himself. I did not hold that against him. Rafael did not know how to fight. No one was unhappy to see me board that refugee bus, except Glorita and my grandmother. I lost them both that day. Do not try to find any larger meaning in any of this. Mine was an unexceptional adolescence. Glorita and I did not fall through the ice. She told me to turn around and start walking back to the shore. She would follow, keeping a distance between us, so as not to stress the ice. I did as she said. Not once did I look back to see if she was following me, despite my doubts. On the shore, I kept looking ahead and just waited, and waited, and waited. I was about to turn around when I felt Glorita’s arm over my shoulder. She was already taller than I was and liked to feel proprietorial.
I reluctantly shut the windows in McCabe’s bedroom. Glorita was vividly over there, on the icy shore. I could not tear myself from her. In the end, I did. I betrayed her. But it was only provisional, until I took care of McCabe. In the kitchen, the clock radio was still on, now spewing static. I ate breakfast, then went up to my room and brushed my teeth again. Trying to read Turgenev’s Home of the Gentry, I got stuck on “the little girl stretched her hand out of the window the little girl stretched her hand out of the window the little girl stretched her hand out of the window.” I read and reread it without understanding it, unable to move on. This has happened to me in airplanes during takeoff. A newspaper intended to calm me down trapped me in a groove in which terror replaced meaning. I put the book back on the shelf. I knew it by heart. I could close my eyes and walk through it. That is what I did until the Judge’s grandfather clock announced that it was noon. As if on cue, I heard the crunch of the gravel on the driveway.
A dark-blue sedan was approaching. Was it the same one that McCabe had taken that night in September? It disappeared from my view as it pulled into the front entrance. I heard the car door slam and steps on the pebbles. I controlled my urge to run to the front door and fling it open. I began to descend the stairs, measuring my breathing as if the plane was about to take off. The doorbell rang. Had I left the door locked? Had she lost her house keys? McCabe was being formal. I did not know how I should greet her. I decided to take her bag. It would be my sword of purity. Until I had it, my hands would remain deep in my pockets. They should not touch McCabe. It was not myself I was restraining, since I had no desire to touch her, but social convention, with its enforced physical contact, its collisions and accidents. The doorbell rang again.