![]() It feels like you’re being slowly pincered apart, atom by atom. During finals a depression rolls over you, so profound that you doubt there is a name for it. He was born and raised in Jamaica Plain, knows that trying to defend Boston from uncool is like blocking a bullet with a slice of bread. Why all my black and Latino students leave as soon as they can.Įlvis says nothing. This is why no people of color want to live here. I hope someone drops a fucking bomb on this city, you rant. Three times, drunk white dudes in different parts of the city try to pick fights with you. Security guards follow you in stores, and every time you step onto Harvard property you’re asked for I.D. Before you can figure out what the hell is going on, they flip you the bird and peel out. White people pull up alongside you at traffic lights and scream at you with a hideous rage, like you nearly ran over their mother. Almost on cue, a lot of racist shit starts happening. #BOOK OF TRAVELS CHEATS FULL#You have trouble adjusting to it full time-to its trains that stop running at midnight, to the glumness of its inhabitants, to its startling lack of Szechuan food. You cry every time you hear Monchy y Alexandra, her favorite.īoston, where you never wanted to live, where you feel you’ve been exiled, becomes a serious problem. You start losing your temper with friends, with students, with colleagues. One minute you have to stop yourself from jumping in the car and driving to see her and the next you’re calling a sucia and saying, You’re the one I always wanted. You even show up at her apartment at odd hours, and at her job downtown, until finally her little sister calls you, the one who was always on your side, and she makes it plain: If you try to contact my sister again, she’s going to put a restraining order on you.įor some Negroes that wouldn’t mean shit.Įlvis laughs. You write her long sensitive letters, which she returns unopened. You phone her every day and leave messages that she doesn’t answer. But, in the end, you do.įor a while you haunt the city, like a two-bit ballplayer dreaming of a call-up. You try it all, but one day she simply sits up in bed and says, No more, and, Ya, and asks you to move from the Harlem apartment that you two share when you’re not teaching in Boston. And every hour, like clockwork, you say that you’re so so sorry. You claim that you were sick, you claim that you were weak. You start taking salsa classes, like you always swore you would, so that the two of you can dance together. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. You claim you’re a sex addict and start attending meetings. You compose a mass e-mail disowning all your sucias. You try every trick in the book to keep her. On the ride out to the hotel, up through those wild steeps, you pick up a pair of hitchhikers, a couple so giddy with love that you almost throw them out of the car. ![]() She stares at the rocks jutting out of the water, the wind carrying her hair straight back. She is immensely sad on that beach and she walks up and down the shining sand alone, her bare feet in the freezing water, and when you try to hug her she says, Don’ t. You walk the beach where they filmed “The Piano,” something she’s always wanted to do, and now, in penitent desperation, you give it to her. Over a tortured six-month period you fly together to the D.R., to Mexico (for the funeral of a friend), to New Zealand. ![]() ![]() And because love, real love, is not so easily shed. Because you’ve gone through so much together-her father’s death, your tenure madness, her bar exam (passed on the third attempt). She’ll stick around for a few months because you been together a long, long time. And, of course, you swore you wouldn’t do it. Your girl is a bad-ass salcedense who doesn’t believe in open anything in fact, the one thing she warned you about, that she swore she would never forgive, was cheating. Fifty fucking girls? God damn! Maybe if you’d been engaged to a super-open-minded blanquita you could have survived it-but you’re not engaged to a super-open-minded blanquita. (Well, actually she’s your fiancée, but hey, in a bit it so won’t matter.) She could have caught you with one sucia, she could have caught you with two, but because you’re a totally batshit cuero who never empties his e-mail trash can, she caught you with fifty! Sure, over a six-year period, but still. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |