Santiago Gamboa - Night Prayers

When a conversation turns to literature, there’s no end to it, so we refilled our glasses. I tried to sum up for her what I admired about Mexico. A sea of letters that comes and goes in the Gulf, that rocks and sways through the jungles of Chiapas and the deserts of Sonora, Ciudad Juárez and the north. Mexico was the country of Colombian writers. That struck her as amusing. Others say the opposite, that people go to Mexico to die.

“It’s the same thing,” I said, quite merry by now. “Where we live, we die, don’t we?”

She asked about Octavio Paz in Delhi. I told her that from a literary point of view India was Pazian or Octavian, I’m not sure of the word, Paztec? Octavian? Octopazian? We laughed.

The residence of the Mexican embassy is a tourist attraction, I told her, I was shown it by your colleague Conrado Tostado, the cultural attaché, the same person who gave me your telephone number, of course. It’s on Prithviraj Road. The nim tree is still there, where Paz married Marie José in 1964, a year before I was born, and she cried out, ’64? then we’re the same age, that’s something to be celebrated, before you go you have to try a tequila, and she took out a colored bottle, pulled the cork, and said, wait and see, this is really fantastic stuff from Mexico, and she showed me the label, José Cuervo, Special Family Reserve, it’s like brandy, better even, and I added: if we talk about the development of the human spirit, the most influential personalities of the twentieth century are Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, the Bacardis, and José Cuervo, don’t you think it’s strange that there are no women? and she said, there is a Japanese woman, Banana Split! she cried, laughing drunkenly, letting drops fall from her mouth, but I said, that doesn’t count because it doesn’t have alcohol, and she said, then you just have to pour a little in, right? and what about Bloody Mary? and I said, we’re forgetting the most obvious, Margarita! and a very important lady, Veuve Clicquot! then she stood up and said, look, listen to this, but only one, I swear, and she put on José Alfredo Jiménez.

I remembered Fernando Vallejo’s words: “If Mexico were the center of the world, José Alfredo would be classical music.” That’s quite a salute, he was an intelligent man, Vallejo, all honor to him, and she put on “Ella” and raised the volume, and seeing that I was worried about the neighbors said, don’t worry, the Thais are even-tempered people, and anyway I don’t have people above me or on either side, just offices.

We listened to two more songs until I looked at my watch and saw, to my horror, that it was two in the morning. I’m sorry, Teresa, I have to go, what a wonderful evening, could you call me a taxi? And she said, you just have to ask the doorman, there’s a taxi stand opposite.

When I got to my hotel I found another message from Gustavo:

Hello, old man, I found out that Manuel lost touch with the philosophy people when he left university, but that a few weeks ago he was asking questions. His sister disappeared a few years ago and apparently he was investigating. I’m going to get hold of the telephone numbers of these people and ask them what he wanted, what they talked about. Would that help you? Not that such things are easy here. Keep me up-to-date.

I answered immediately:

Thanks, Tavo, and if you can find out who his sister was, what kind of people she had dealings with, and when she disappeared, all the better. Thanks, brother. Have a hug from me.

I divide myself and I am many, contradictory, wild, clandestine. Today I’m dedicating this space to a friend of mine so that he can tell his story, so that he can talk to you directly, dear bloggers, who is he? is he a projection of me? is he you?

Guess, read, invent.

I have a thousand nicknames, but the one I like most is Tongolele. That’s the one they gave me in the Splendor, a karaoke bar in Culiacán in the north of Mexico, where I went to sing once with a boyfriend I had. Or let’s say a friend with benefits, since he was married, not that that kind of thing bothers me. I sang “Ella,” by José Alfredo, and my friend whispered in my ear: you sing like Tongolele, and so that’s how I stayed. I hope you like it. I love it. I’ve seen that part of the public is like me and that’s why I’m going to talk to you quite openly: the name I was born with is horrible, decadent, demeaning: Wilson Amézquita. I had to put up with that horror, God forgive me, until I came of age, when they finally operated on me, as if it were a deformity or a tumor. I feel a knot in my stomach just saying it. Amézquita, that’s gross! I changed it to Jennifer Mor, which is so much more elegant and romantic, suggesting a woman sitting in a drawing room reading the classics, something like Racine’s Phaedra , while outside, in New York, it’s pouring rain and you hear the muffled sound of taxis hooting their horns. I mean, Wilson! I wouldn’t call a tennis ball Wilson! The name suggests a urinal with sawdust and flies in a chichi bar in Choachí. I’m a lady, I have delicate and beautiful things in my mind.

I changed sex in the Tarabaya Memorial clinic in Bangkok, at the age of twenty-one, after I’d recognized a great truth: I liked being with men, not with fags. Forgive me, I’m well-read and I know such words shouldn’t be used, but they told me I should talk as if I were in my own home. So if they bother you, I’m sorry. As I said, I had my operation in Bangkok. A long way away, but safe. A lot of people have sex changes there, they’re used to it and it always goes well. I read about it in a magazine and then made inquiries. My girlfriends told me I was crazy. Tongolele, you’ve gone crazy! You’ve really lost it! But I was sure. Scheherazade, who’s like a sister to me, was the only one who looked at it a bit scientifically and told me it wasn’t worth it, that it was an unnecessary risk. According to her, women have three pussies: one in the mouth, another in the vagina and the third behind, in the you know what, right? And so she said and still says: of those three I have two and I’m happy with that and I make my men happy, those who also like cock. For Scheherazade that’s enough, but not for me. I wanted real men, the kind who fuck but won’t let themselves be fucked. When I’d recovered from the operation, which takes time — but of course, Bangkok is wonderful! — I went to see a physical trainer, because now came the external transformation… I showed him a photograph of Pamela Anderson, the stunner I wanted to look like, and said: I need to be like that, what do I have to do? how much does it cost?

He didn’t say it was impossible, although he looked at me sadly. Couldn’t you have chosen an easier model? I said no, Pamela Anderson was the woman of my dreams: if I’d been a man, a man in my soul, it was a girl like her I’d have liked by my side. I’d have liked to find her every morning between the sheets, in the shower, look after her when she had a cold, or see her sitting on the toilet, taking her morning leak. That’s why I want to be like her. Not that it was such a stretch. What I mean, my friends, is that I was already a woman, men gave me the eye when I stood up, when I went out for a walk; I felt that look, the kind that lifts miniskirts, goes through panty material, and burrows away inside, like a termite but really nice, it’s great to be looked at like that, isn’t it, my tongolelos ? But let me carry on with my story: with the photograph of Pamela I went to see the best plastic surgeon, a really nice Colombian, Tomás Zapata, who’s the one who beautifies the women who matter in this world, beginning with Amparito Grisales and Fanny Mikey, I’m talking about the body, not the soul, and not only in Colombia but also in Spain and Brazil, where the major leagues are, and I said, Tomasito, my dear friend, this is what there is and this is what we want to have. Then I took out a photograph of Pamela who was originally wearing a thong but who I’d stripped using Photoshop, since I needed to make things clear. Tomás grabbed it from me and said: we’re going to make you very similar, or rather the same, my darling, and the rest is up to you, with that grace and intelligence God gave you. Oh, I love that Tomás! Because as the classics say: there is no beauty without brains.