Carlos Velázquez - The Cowboy Bible and Other Stories

I decided to try to find a heavyset woman because I couldn’t have relations with my little wife. I didn’t know a thing about fat girls. At the bar they said getting it on with one it was like getting lost in a gigantic plasma all night. I wasn’t looking for a special fat girl. I’d be happy with anyone who could reawaken my faith in love.

I had stopped sleeping with my wife because she disobeyed me. It’s curious. The fight started because I refused to take her to a dance where Valentín Elizalde was playing. I told her she couldn’t go alone. She paid me no mind. She and her sister climbed into the Grand Marquis and left without my permission.

At the dance, she ran into the devil. The guy who asked her to dance was born with a goat’s hoof and a rooster’s foot. The place started to smell of smoke, and all hell broke loose. My wife turned up burned to a crisp in the Red Cross emergency room. It was even in the newspaper. I don’t think the devil was on tour with Valentín. I wasn’t there. Nonetheless, the guys at the bar assure me that’s what happened. I’m the laughing stock of the neighborhood. And my wife believes they put the idea in my head. Everybody, including kids, now screams at me, The devil sucked off your wife, güey . It’s as if you dropped a piece of candy on the ground and can’t pick it up because it’s stuck to the dirt. Everything for God, nothing for the devil, my wife reproached me, but I hadn’t been able to find the sweetness in her body again.

Before I decided to try for the fat girl, there were others. But my game was off. I couldn’t get it out of my head that if that guy hadn’t turned out to be the devil, my wife would have ended up in bed with him. What good did it do me to throw myself at pound after pound of woman flesh, at the whole neighborhood, if I couldn’t figure out how to touch my own?

Then I heard another guy at the bar say, That whore weighed two hundred kilos. She stunk so badly, she was disgusting. And in spite of that, I still climbed on her as if she was a pancake and squirted until I couldn’t anymore. You have no idea. I recovered my faith in life. This was the final push to move me to try to win a fat girl’s favors. It’s easy, I told myself. The world is full of fat girls. But I was wrong. There were ten prospective fat girls. One overdosed on coke, and so there were nine. Another one got raped by some cripple, so then there were only eight. Et cetera.

Why don’t you leave her? they asked me at the bar. Find someone else. So many hours on the stool made these drinkers think most men in my position would have gotten a separation. But I wasn’t part of that proud brotherhood. I didn’t dare leave my wife because I had already invested too much. One of my mother’s recurrent complaints about me is that I’m like my grandmother, incapable of throwing anything away. I still have all the notebooks I used in elementary school, my toys, and the lottery numbers I bought from Simón Simonazo. I have a real talent for not getting rid of things.

The perfect fat girl. When I got tired of that bouquet of fatties, the idea of getting a specific fat girl began to tempt me. Who would be my chosen fat girl? Would it be one of the Ultrasonics or one of the Poquianchis? My love life’s welfare depended on the flesh of a well-padded girl. Where would such a wonder be found? How deep would the ecstasy go?

In order to make my search more efficient, I put an ad in the newspaper: Looking for fat girl. Looking for a domestic helper saddled with the yoke of obesity. My wife is very jealous. Don’t even bother to present yourself if you’re not aesthetically unfortunate. But my ad was a failure. My fat girl remained out of reach. Hopeless, I took refuge in a concert by Buki, Jesus Christ to sentimental fat girls. That’s where I learned my first lesson as a hunter of chicharronería customers: Fat girls are expensive. That sentimental prototype exceeded my budget.

Without actually thinking about it, my senses led me to the Olímpico Laguna, the wrestling arena with the greatest traditions here in San Pedrostuttgart. And that’s where the perfect victim appeared. A fragile and defenseless nineteen-year-old fat girl. The lamb, no, excuse me, the cow who would free me from the sins of the world. I tell you, it wasn’t premeditated. I’d just gone to enjoy the fights, and she came and sat down next to me, she just roundly settled beside me.

She was called The Western Bible. At first, I thought that she was pulling my leg. Later, that she was crazy. She swore the crazy ones were her parents and showed me her voter registration card. It was no joke. The Western Bible really was The Western Bible. She was one imposing heifer: tall, blond, and so plump. And she wasn’t alone. She was with her son. I bought two beers and a Coca-Cola for the little calf. She told me they lived alone. She didn’t know who her son’s father was, and she had no intention of finding out. Her parents were in another house, in another city. It occurred to me they had fled from her. That they had left her the house and were supporting her at a distance, so long as they didn’t have to deal with her. The story was perhaps a bit fantastic, like the ones from the bar. Trying to have a romance with a fat girl was making me paranoid. Maybe they just lived apart because of work. But why didn’t they take her with them?

From the very beginning of the show, I began asking myself how I was going to approach this young, fat, blond single mother. How was I going to insinuate to this robust female that I needed her vigor to reignite a carnal desire for my wife? Would I dare to shamelessly ask for her ass? Would I wait for her to offer it in some natural way? Would I appeal to her sense of single motherhood? To a sense of necessary sluttishness given her situation?

I couldn’t take any chances. I decided to rely on my slyer aspects. I ordered two more beers and a mortadella plate for the boy. No chilies. I bought him a Menace Jr. mask and, before the second fight had begun, he climbed up into the ring. The Western Bible focused on her son’s evolution in the wrestling ring as she drank her Victoria beer. She was distracted. Without hesitating, I took her hand and placed it on my fly. She did not complain, but retrieved her hand. Since she didn’t turn to look, I took her hand again and placed it on myself, and she took it back again. I ordered two more beers, and we continued with that same routine throughout the show, me insisting she put her hand on my less noble parts and her refusing to do so, until the second takedown during the last fight, when The Western Bible let her hand rest on my fly. The circle had been completed. I would know the indulgent love secrets of a fat girl’s spacious bed.

As we were leaving the arena, The Western Bible stopped cold. If only she would allow me to explore her and discover for myself the promising pleasures inherent in excessive adiposity. She agreed, but only after we were certain her boy was asleep. It would be inconvenient if he saw me; that’s how it is with fatherless children. Unfortunately, every time somebody decides to screw their mothers, they develop a resistance to sleep.

So while the boy fell asleep, I walked a few blocks, bought some condoms, and, bored, finally, although reluctantly, went into a bar. I considered leaving, forgetting everything, and just going home. But I couldn’t. In some way, The Western Bible was already mine. I’d already spent a fortune on our beers. I didn’t want to later regret having passed up the opportunity.

My cellphone rang, and it was her. It took two hours for the little calf’s battery to run out. During that time, The Western Bible had been hitting the whiskey. She’d taken some good hits. Like a trucker. When I got there, she’d already finished one bottle and had a good start on a second. She offered me a drink, but I said no. She got pissy. She tried to hit me in the mouth and splashed my shirt. I had a momentary doubt but decided I had things under control. Anyway, if the fat girl became insufferable, I could fix everything by slapping her around, she might even like it. Maybe she’d like it and beg me for more.