Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

“General, Captain Alvarado has joined the rebels of the Vicente Guerrero Popular Army in the Sierra Madre del Sur.”

“Well, it’s better for him to join the guerrillas than the narcos.”

“That’s true, General. You see that four out of ten leave us to go with the narcos.”

“Well, you know your duty, General Miles. Continue looking for them,” said the secretary with a smile of long irony in which General Marcelino Miles could detect the announcement of a not very desirable future.

Marcelino Miles returns with pleasure to the sierra in Guerrero. He loves the plants and birds of the mountains. Nothing gives him greater pleasure than identifying a tropical almond from a distance, the tall lookout of the forests, catching fire each autumn to strip itself bare and be renewed immediately: flowers that are stars, perfume that summons bumblebees, yellow fleshy fruits. And also, close up, he likes to surprise the black iguana — the garrobo — looking for the burning rock of the mountain. He counts the five petals of the basket tulip; he’s amazed that the flower exists outside a courtyard and has made its way into the dense growth. He looks up and surprises the noisy flight of the white-faced magpie with its black crests, the long throat of the social flycatcher and its spotted crown, the needle beak of the cinnamon-colored hummingbird. The clock-bird marks the hours with its dark beak, conversing with the cuckoo-squirrel with its undulating flight. . This is the greatest pleasure of Marcelino Miles. Identifying trees. Admiring birds. That is why he loves the mountains in Guerrero. He doesn’t search for Andrés. He has forgotten Roberto. He is in the army because of his passion for nature.

why did we run away?

because my papa wouldn’t let me be with other children nobody could come to play

with me I couldn’t go anywhere

because my father hit us both my mama and me

because my mother was afraid and so was I

because locked in my room I hear the insults the blows

because I have nightmares

because I don’t sleep

because my father doesn’t respect my mother and if he doesn’t respect her he can’t respect

me

because my papa makes me take a freezing-cold shower so I’ll behave

because my papa makes me watch porn movies with him on TV

because if my papa insults my mama why can’t I?

why did we run away?

because they abused us they whipped us they threatened to cut us

because they threw us out of the house

papa and mama, abusive father, single mother, father and mother divorced, addict fathers, drunken fathers, unemployed fathers because papa and mama have no other mirror than

us their lost youth

because papa and mama resent their lives and

they ruin ours so we won’t dare

to be better

because we don’t have grandparents and our grandparents have no

grandmother

because my husband wanted a male heir and

he made me get an abortion when the doctor told him

that my baby was a girl like me

ultrasound ultrasound there are no fetal secrets anymore

mountains of fetuses

more fetuses than garbage

a little girl is undesirable she’ll wind up going off with her

husband she’ll lose the father’s name

educating a girl is throwing water into the sea the husband

will have the benefit of the education we gave her with so much

sacrifice

ungrateful the two of them

(the sex of a fetus is no longer a secret)

(the garbageman baptizes the sex)

save yourself from happy families

look at your parents: only violence settles things

look at your parents: don’t respect women

look at your parents: your father killed you because he

wanted to kill your mother and you were near at hand

and now where?

escape your dumbass family the school that makes you stupid

the suffocating office the loneliness of

the streets

kid, become a cycleboy! they give you a motorcycle you

laugh

at the traffic lights the curses

the police the endless delays

zigzag cycleboy kill pedestrians freefreefree

fastfastfast

adrenaline express

bulletcycle cycleboy urban cowboy

though you’re the one who regularly dies every day

the only one among a thousand cycleboys who are

saved one day to die smashed up one by one

in the following days

and now where?

join the flashmobs the lightningrace find out

where’s the hookup today

escape: arrive and join in leave no more than two

minutes at a time this is the fiesta of

passing friendship of impossible communication

of instantaneous flight

suck up the coke and run

there’s no way out

run before they play taps for you

they throw you in jail

they apply the fugitive law to you

quick quick the kiss the greeting the pass

and now where?

damn motherfucker wandering around

don’t you have a home? I don‘t have a home because

nobody’s looking for me and nobody’s looking for me

because I don’t have a home

how many are there? how many flies are there in an outhouse

with open windows?

why don’t you go back?

because I’m not a damn kid anymore I’m a man

like my father

why don’t you go back? Because I’m getting mixed up

help me

Guy Furlong and José Luis Palma met in the old Balmori movie house on Avenida Álvaro Obregón, a sumptuous art deco palace with the best sound equipment of the day and a seductive gleam of lustrous bronzes, mirrors, and marbles. They happened to sit next to each other. The first brush of knees was avoided with nervous urgency. That of elbows, forgiven. That of hands, spontaneous, when they clasped during the laughter demanded by the screen, awkward only for a moment — the instant just before the meeting of their eyes that, with its intensity, eclipsed the erotic ballet of Fred and Ginger on the screen.

The Gay Divorcee was the title of the film with the Rogers-Astaire team. Then came The Gay Desperado, with an Italian singer disguised as a Mexican charro, and later, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, the autobiography of a Broadway actress. Except back then the word “gay” meant only “happy, carefree, lighthearted,” while contemptuous, insulting terms were reserved for homosexuals. Queer. Pansy. Faggot. A whole gamut of them. Forty-one, because of an old club of bourgeois transvestites with that number of members. Adelitas, for being “popular with the troops,” considering the relative ease of hiring indifferent soldiers for last-minute performances. Jotos in Méjico with the “j” of García Lorca and with the murdered poet pájaros in Havana, apios in Seville, floras in Alicante, and adelaidas in Portugal.

And back in Mexico, jotería to classify an entire sexual group. A pipe makes his mouth water. He likes his rice with the stem. He enjoys boiled Coca-Cola. The storm of nominal and adjectival scorn that poured down on Mexican homosexuals perhaps only hid, crudely, the very disguised inclinations of the most macho of machos: those who deceived their wives with men and brought venereal disease into their decent homes. Enchiladas with cold cream. Male hookers.

José Luis and Guy, from the very beginning, by an agreement unspoken but acted upon, established themselves as a couple removed from both dissimulation and excuses. It was auspicious that the movies brought them together when they were only eighteen years old. They still weren’t emancipated, but their early relationship pushed them to find as soon as possible the way to leave their families (indifferent to the situation because the lovers decided it that way) and live together. Guy achieved it first, since his success as an artistic promoter produced good commissions that allowed him to establish an agency called Artvertising, which quickly had a list of distinguished clients. In the meantime, José Luis completed his law studies at the age of twenty-three.