Carlos Velázquez - The Cowboy Bible and Other Stories

Naturally, the award gave me the air of a pop star. The kind of envy provoked by all Laguneros inspired my detractors into even more taunting, and they gave me an appropriate, unbeatable, leonine nickname that was the truest of all: La Diva.

The battle between the volunteers for the Oblivion Cross was scheduled for Gomitos. At the Olímpico Laguna. A deluxe finale. Vintage relievers. Santo’s Son, Fishman, Doctor Wagner, and Aquarius versus Scarlett Pimpernel, Sexypisces, Super Super Super Super Porky, Silver Arm, and Menace Jr.

In order to tend to the son of the guy who filmed the psalms as if he were a favorite Taco Bell client, I drew a pentacle on my dressing room door and dropped a Mariana Ochoa CD in the middle. When I found out I’d be playing a few arm-wrestling tournaments with my foremost rival, I appealed to all the magic a santero wrestler can scramble up on Skype.

As was to be expected by now, I appeared onstage with the Cowboy Bible held high. For ambient sound, there was Juan Salazar’s rendition of Amor de la calle. The fight was filmed for television. Wrestling’s heavy division meets wrestling’s heavy division. The fight got ratings that rivaled religious fanatical DJs. We were disqualified. To the beat of rudos rudos rudos, Dr. Assassin leapt from the second row dressed in civilian clothes, and we kicked Santo’s Son’s ass until we tore his mask and confiscated the martyr’s blood, urged on by the screams of the crowd: Fuck him, fuck that fucking dwarf.

I took the mic for our team and challenged Santo’s Son. Every saint deserves a chapel. The crowd. The crowd. I dared him to risk his belt. The defeated dwarf came up to the booth and grabbed the mic. I accept. I accept, Menace Jr. You’re nothing. You’re only good with a team. Menace Jr., by yourself, you are nothing. With those love handles of yours, no surgeon will take you on. You’re nothing.

The silver dwarf’s many performance dates had the promoters scheduling our show for after he got back from a two-month tour of Japan with Savoy Brown. My agent and little Saint Jude Singsong concluded we had to do some maintenance on our equipment, get a new life preserver, oil the joints, and change some of the padding. The point was to make a profit. And to get in shape after the insult about my weight and show up at the gig with more experience under my belt.

The first prized mask I grabbed was the Purchase Award at the DCCCXLVIII New Art Biennale in the state of Coahuila. After that, the display cases on the kitchen counter in my house grew in number and variety. After only a month and a half of training with a coach, my value on the market shot up. I invested in Thai pyrotechnics and started smoking $245 cigars. They were splendid.

Then I got myself a scalp. The Coahuila State Journalism Prize. My free pass: Prolific-plus. A grupera hit. A blend of Lidia Ávila and Martha Villalobos, the naughtiest, most savage, and bloodiest of the lesbian wrestlers in the porno industry.

The second prized mask I earned for myself was a scholarship from the Coahuila State Foundation for Afternoon Sewing and Arts Research. The project was the writing of a complete essay, the definitive book that would explain the relationship between my theoretical concepts about comeback wrestling, architorture, and electronic music at ranch weddings.

I made my final preparations the weekend the silver dwarf returned. It was at the French Alliance gallery. I called the exhibition To Die in the Desert . The press indulged me. According to the malicious gossips, the coverage was generous. But that’s a lie. The press merely recognized my talent. The phrase for which they most detested me came from Ignacio Echevarría in El País : Menace Jr., the hip-hop empire’s absolute magnate.

I freaked out that masked dwarf. Before he’d gone on tour, I was just a little unrefined brown sugar cube, but now I was a motorized mafioso terrorist. He’d need something a little more dangerous than a whip and a chair to avoid getting his little pocket trumpet of a head popped off.

Certain celebrity weddings had recently taken over the entertainment media and established an overwhelming tedium. They sold the fight as a vile mise-en-scène to a network that decided to hit its competition in the balls by broadcasting it via an open channel. No pay-per-view here.

The spectacle was called The Cursed Spring. The arena was packed. Yuri’s voice got lost on home theater speakers among the barking vendors and the famished crowd, delirious and drunk. Beerpop. Noxious lunches. Gorditas with cholera.

First up on the widescreen was Santo’s Son. His mentor was El Solitario. Mine was mini Espectrito. I left the rudo dressing room saturated with smoke. I’d made an offer of three Pandora LPs I’d burned between convulsions, untranslatable chants, prayers from postcards picked up on the highway.

I went dressed as a Cartesian seminarist. As soon as the guy in charge of composing the soundtrack to reflect the wrestling audience’s passions saw me take a step toward the ring, he put on a song by the great Sonora Dinamita:

Ae ae ae ae.

Ae ae.

Ae ae ae ae.

Ae ae.

Cry, heart, cry.

Cry, heart, cry.

Cry, heart, cry, ’cuz your Lagunero ain’t coming back.

There’ll be two or three takedowns with no time limits to win the national welterweight championship. From the extreme rudos, the pride of the Lagunero District, La Diva, also known as Menace Jr. From the technical team, The Silver Mask, also known as Santo’s Son.

Your Lagunero’s going, babe.

Going and not coming back.

Your Lagunero’s going, babe.

Going and not coming back.

Before any sound was heard, before the bell rang, a boy came up to the ropes to take a photo with me and a very sexy lady came over to give me a kiss. The place was divided. The dwarf’s popularity didn’t convince the rowdy thugs in the nosebleed seats, those guys who were only familiar with mortadella for lunch.

As soon as the action started, I planted myself between the four posts, opened my Cowboy Bible and began to preach in Yoruba: Black tongue, son of Menace, cumbianchero. I had the crowd spellbound, they were with me: Kill him. Kill him, Menace Jr. The sermon continued:

Jesus gonna be here.

Gonna be here soon.

You gotta keep the devil

Way down in the hole.

I beat Santo’s Son with three takedowns. They didn’t disqualify his suicide block, or a single hold, or even his straddling me. Cowboy Bible and belt in hand, I filled the mic with my maniac street preacher voice: Hey you, dwarf, campy film star, I challenge you to a match, just mask versus mask, no referee. Just us. Whipping our leather, whipping our courage. The star of so many ridiculous scripts responded: I accept, Menace Jr. Next week, right here, just one takedown.

Thursday, a day of tributes for the illustrious sport in Gomitos, we received notice that we were banished from the Olímpico Laguna. The reason given was that the first-division crowds threw too much stuff into the field. It happens frequently in soccer. So the match would take place behind closed doors and be broadcast on a national network.

The arena was empty. Just the second-string sound engineers hanging around their systems. We went up to the ring at the same time. Each one took his position at his corner. Behind the turntables.

It wasn’t a fun or dramatic match. My opponent wiped the floor with me. He was his father’s son. His collection of European vinyl was his advantage. It was huge. Broad. More than 2,500 records ready to go and fill a whole night of raving.

I did my best to get the most out of what I had, but no matter what kind of juxtapositions or genre acrobatics I played or sampled, no matter my programming or effects, the dwarf and his skills totally outdid me. All his equipment was first-rate. The needles, the earphones: Everything was imported.