Carlos Castán - Bad Light

Some years later, I aimed the semen from one of the first masturbations of my life into the handbag of one of my mother’s friends. Visitors to the house would pile coats, scarves, umbrellas, and the like on top of a bed in the room closest to the front door. I went in and did that in the half-darkness, quite why I’m not sure. Perhaps because she was the prettiest and youngest of the female friends who would drop by for afternoon tea from time to time, and the one who best hooked one leg over the other as she sat down in the little side room for coffee and cake, not to mention the only one whose nails were always painted maroon, not only on Sundays, and I wanted those hands of hers, so soft, when fumbling around for something inside her handbag, to be stained with the semen that was the product of a love and a fever that, deep down, was hers by every right. Queen of all she surveyed. That semen was her doing, fruit of her harvest, the consequence of a desire she had worked for beforehand — whether consciously or otherwise, that’s neither here nor there — when brushing her hair that afternoon at the dressing table, when picking out her dress and trying it on in front of the mirror, turning this way and that, when covering her skin with lotions. I liked to imagine the look on her face, the grimace of disgust when she discovered her hands soiled with God knows what, so sticky, her sunglasses tainted with me, her small leather-bound address book with the telephone numbers of the men who’d buy her cocktails on Saturdays, her lipstick, and all those little bottles of eau de cologne, and the lacquer for those nails that never clawed my back.

I think of love now and I always picture the same dark room, much like the one in which the coats were left, the blinds partly muffling the noise of the street, the unbearable light of day, and a gray sheet damp with sweat, on which to lie while everything settles back down, barely saying a word, next to a body that just moments ago was nothing but moans and cries and frenzied desire and that now lies vanquished, still trembling a little, ravishing and filthy in the half-light. A summer afternoon in the city and wondering what is to become of us, how to fight against the flesh that binds us and drains us and satiates us and tosses us through the air, how we can go on living from now on without eating one another alive, without hurting each other, without having to crawl after the other’s desire each time one of us leaves and the other returns and the yearning draws blood and only flies come to the wound. Down what slope we shall tumble when the city comes to a standstill in the middle of a barren summer and we no longer have each other or anything other than the memory of all this like a torment, the imprint of my fingers on your buttocks while Miles Davis played and the candle flame flickered out atop a pink mound of melted wax. Sometimes, the punishment for the pain that is to come already lies, like a down payment, in the fury of love, when it brandishes its claws and is unleashed for real from the deepest depths of the blood, and when caresses and lashes of the whip, honeyed kisses and brutal thrusts all blend into one. Vengeance for the tears that have not yet but will no doubt be shed, sooner rather than later, and for the solitude that lies ahead and the sorrow of the evenings and yet more evenings, on the other side of a season or two, when memories will linger of the vertigo of this soft skin slammed against the wall, the hiss of the riding crop through the air, the parted lips that in the semi-darkness plead for punishment and mercy at one and the same time. Perhaps love is not the word, then. Perhaps it is not the word at all if the hips we hold firmly in our grasp, sinking our nails into them, are always those of a cheap whore and all of the pain that lies in wait, even when it has yet to take shape or come into being, is already seeping out from somewhere and drips onto our back in the darkness.

Today I remember, in no particular order, some of the women who passed through that bedroom that was not always the same one, much though it might be in my memory, as if the bed were a flying ship that traveled through time in every direction while also moving from city to city. Some of them I all but wrestled into bed. For the most part, though, their hips swaying a couple of steps ahead of me, they willingly climbed the staircase, with its plant pots and its cats, up to that bedroom, its window muffling the ever-present noise of the traffic in different streets in different cities and the ambulance sirens wailing down there below, on the asphalt, heading to the La Paz, the 12 de Octubre, and the Casa Grande hospitals.

While most of the women I chose, insofar as they were mine to choose, had their dark side, there were others whom I snatched straight from the light, above all in the early days. I plucked them from gentle worlds in which they were happy in their own way, flitting cheerfully between their English lessons and their piano lessons, their Wednesdays at the swimming pool, their Friday tango classes with an Argentine instructor, their afternoons at the library highlighting veritable mountains of photocopied notes with felt-tip pens of every color, with their adorable short-sightedness, with their hair tied up so as to be able to let it down if and when the mood took them, when the time came, with the simple gesture of removing their hair band and placing it on their wrist, by way of a bracelet, to make sure it didn’t vanish as if by magic on a bedside table overflowing with stuff (earrings, a box of tissues, used condom wrappers, tea lights, a small pile of books, a lamp, an ashtray), then putting it back on before heading home by ten to set the table in great haste for a dinner at which they often went without dessert as punishment for having lost their temper when arguing with their fathers about the class struggle, about Cuba as a beacon of hope for the people, or about the Cold War. That was one sort; and then there were others, yet more radiant, who came later, as if in batches, touched by the rays of the Sun God, with flowers in their hair and white bicycles that slept in the living rooms of their apartments, leaning against the wall, just another animal among the many that stretched their limbs amid the cushions that always lay strewn on the floor. There were several of their type, and I’ve never understood why. Those girls never ate dinner at ten at their parents’ place. Indeed, they never had dinner anywhere. They’d grab a yogurt and a piece of fruit. If ever a girl used the word piece when discussing fruit without being on a diet, it was because she was mixed up in some weird meditation and balance vibe; those were the worst, they liked to carry little bottles of water around in their pockets and would not be separated from them. I know their sort well — they end up hating you because you smoke and also because they know that, much as they might desire you, they will never be able to love you. They hate you because they figure you won’t brush your teeth as often as you should. They hate you because it’s plain to see that it’ll never work. I don’t know why, but my life has always been well-stocked, rather too generously for my liking, with women of that ilk, considering how much trouble they’ve always given me, for the fact is I’ve never been able to peel a simple tomato, chop an onion, or dress a salad worthy of the name. Come to that, I still hate salad, even more so one that’s been smothered, as those girls were wont to do, with soy sprouts or brewer’s yeast. To this day, the absurd consensus that holds all such things, salad in particular, to be edible still strikes me as utterly conventional, arbitrary, and hare-brained. I don’t like riding a bike, either, nor do I understand the need to spend the whole day discussing herbal teas and types of honey. There are, by all accounts, many types of honey. Lavender honey, so they told me, albaida honey, thyme honey, rosemary honey, orange blossom honey. Though, as far as I’m concerned, it’s hard to tell one apart from another and they all share the same common denominator of being sticky and foul. And yet I have never strayed too far from that world of bikes secured to the staircase railings in the patio or at the door to indie bars, next to the notice board announcing yoga, street theater, and tantric sex courses, that world of sticks of incense burning nonstop and all that crappy whole grain and raw sugar. Which begs the question: What was I doing there if I hated, with every ounce of my being, all that inner balance bullshit, the kettledrums, the baggy pants, the dancing on the sand, and if it was clear to me that my life’s best moments have always taken place with a brimming ashtray and a clutter of glasses and empty bottles nearby, adding, for the truly memorable ones, clothes strewn on the floor, torn, if possible, and a record that goes on spinning well into the night with the first light of dawn, the world now broken, shoulders slumped, defenses in disarray thanks to all that poison guzzled without a second thought? Perhaps the answer is that, contrary to popular belief, the opposite of love is not hate — the opposite of love is revulsion. For I was searching for something in those women who lay barefoot on the campus lawns in their long skirts, like Indian princesses, and who, in my darkest hours, took me into their clouds of incense and marihuana smoke and soothed my nerves, taking me for walks through the gardens separating the different department buildings from the parking lots, pointing out the trees and their names, this leaf, that branch. Something like ensnaring moments of peace in my nets, moments of a light I never knew how to use and all I could do was devour it later on, at the hour when the moon takes its leave and the wolves remain, at the back of a lair, when the night is dirty and pure darkness sweating and spinning. Those girls wanted to take to the air with me, and that was love, the clean air of a certain paradise they seemed to know beforehand, while I needed to be led astray, to ask questions, to grope around for the path, to stumble and to bleed, to fall from the cliff tops holding tight to their hips.