He’s a hard partyer, a fighter, and out-of-control jealous, three traits that are constantly getting him in trouble; he gets into more brawls than the rest of us combined. We hear rumors about his debts and scandals and we play them down; it must have been a drunken quarrel, we say, or a mess over some girl, or a night on the town gone wrong. Once, he was beaten up and thrown out of one of his girlfriends’ houses for pissing in one of the potted miniature palms in the dining room. We laughed with him each time, though not so much anymore, less and less these days.
In Muñeco, chaos is charismatic, his bad reputation envied by us all, or at least it used to be. Not too bad either: it’s a hip myth, after all, the mama’s boy, spoiled man-child.
“Muñeco’s bullshit is such a drag,” we complain.
Does he hit the drugs hard? More and more, though that’s nothing exceptional; it’s common among the new generation of executives. Muñeco loses it and flies into rages: that’s his spoiled way of being a brute. He can’t stand it when anyone contradicts him: he sees red and overreacts.
Is he a drunk? Sure, but he’s not alone in that. Wild drunken binges have been the norm since our prep school days, have even been required to avoid getting dubbed a freak. We were all baby alcoholics, though Muñeco was always the most extreme.
We agreed on a basic code and kept to it: worship of drink, dominance of females, betrayal of our mothers, scorn for the weak, and shitty relationships with life in general.
Sometimes Baby-Boy shows up with his pupils glazed. Other times he’s barely able to speak, mumbling nonsense, moving quickly and frenetically, claiming no appetite and a horrible thirst. Impatient and greedy as if there were no tomorrow. Warning signs.
Malicia’s pronouncement is drastic.
“Can’t you see? Come on, cielo a pecorelle,” she says, gesturing, because she lived in Rome and speaks Italian, “clouds like sheep. A bad omen.”
“But they’re nice, those little sheep in the sky.”
“I don’t like them, myself. Why don’t we go to Panfino for some yucca breads? They’ll be hot out of the oven at this hour. My treat.”
In the history of the Tutti Fruttis, hookers and call girls arrived early.
Though I was never drawn to whores. They weren’t people, that’s how the rest of them saw it, and maybe I did too. They didn’t deserve consideration. I won’t lie, why bother at this point: Since childhood, we’d learned there are decent women, other people’s sisters, for example, or the ones in your own family, the girls you met at parties, bazaars, and proms. You treated them a certain way, or, as people say, with respect. And there were other women who existed to be disrespected. Whom you could buy or grope without consequences, order around, humiliate. You didn’t even ask their name, and if they said it, you forgot it immediately.
At Tarabeo’s house there was a thin servant called Aminca, and even I cringed to see the way he and his brothers treated her; it was pretty sadistic, how they’d threaten her with tennis rackets when she didn’t obey. But even that wasn’t so far out of bounds.
From the preteen years on, some of the guys made regular weekly visits to Eden, which wasn’t some disgusting second-rate bar, but something closer to a spa or one of those underground plastic surgery clinics, all very tidy and sterilized, with girls like nurses in their white uniforms. Let’s just say that someone not in the know could end up there trying to get a wound bandaged up or an injection, though, for a medical team, these girls were way too dressed up, with all their curves shown off. The place smelled of body lotion and air freshener, the lights were dim, and discreet curtains separated the beds where, for a few pesos, you got a massage on very clean sheets.
I went to Eden once, I admit it. Only once. And that single time was only because of pressure from Tarabeo, who got points from them each time he brought in a new client, and the guy brought them so many that he enjoyed full service for free.
Even then, Tarabeo struck me as enigmatic. He was the only one with a steady girlfriend, a slip of a thing from Santa María Goretti, the most desired of all. She was known as Minichí and her irises were a violet I’ve never seen in anybody else. Supernaturally colored eyes. She was blond, and a cheerleader, a gorgeous creature: a jewel in the crown.
Though she could have had anyone, Minichí stuck with Tarabeo, who’d visit her home with a chocolate bar or a postcard from the pharmacy, though, yes, first he’d swing by Eden to avoid showing up hungry at her door.
During the time those two were together, Minichí suffered and we all saw it. She flunked her grade at school, and those unbelievable violet eyes of hers clouded over with gray.
My debut at Eden was unlucky.
“Oil or talcum powder?” I’m asked the minute I come in, as a hot young nurse with incredible breasts—really, she’s stunning—helps me out of my clothes.
“What?” I ask in a panic.
“What would you like, love, should I use oil or talcum?”
As I sit there, bewildered, a familiar hand pulls back the curtain, and behind it on a cot is Píldora, butt naked and chubby and shiny, all greased up with oil like a piglet ready for the oven. He’s a sight, and I’m trembling.
“Oil is best, bro,” Píldora advises, in the tone of a connoisseur. “Take the oil, Hobbo, the talcum powder’s not so good, believe me, I’ve tried it.”
Eden: they advertise massages, but sell jerk offs.
The pretty nurse assigns me the bed next to Píldora’s. She invites me to climb aboard, and then she’s practically on top of me with a jar of scented oil in hand. I stop her just in time.
“None of that!” is what I think I’m shouting, because she steps back.
“All right! It’s no big deal . . .” She tries to calm me down, but has the opposite effect.
“Chill out, brother, relax and you’ll see.” Pildo’s voice reaches me through the curtain.
I know I’m risking everything. If I stay, I’ll be one man, and if I run away, I’ll be another and regret it forever. I’d also be squandering my status in the Tutti Fruttis, I’d be mocked by my comrades in arms, they’d hate me, they’d drive me to suicide. Or perhaps I’d only earn their laughter and complicity.
“It happens, kid,” they’d say. “It’s a rookie slipup, don’t worry, you’ll stay hard next time, you’ll see.”
I’m fully aware of how hot my masseuse is—she’s a juicy, dark bombshell, turning slightly to reveal her killer curves. She turns again: her cleavage spills forward and I’m dazzled by the sight.
I’m torn between horror and lust.
Pleasure or sacrifice. Enjoyment or death.
Maybe if I let go . . . if I let my guard down and surrender to my fate instead of all this hemming and hawing . . . maybe.
My body responds, and is about to yield, but paranoia floods my mind. I shrink back, curl up, shield my balls with both hands, and a stream of terrible images, as if in a Rorschach test, assault me: an intensive care unit, a bunch of guys castrating a colt, a knife slitting flesh, an arm amputation. I’m a heretic about to burn, a guerrilla facing torture.
I leap off the massage table as if it were a surgical bed, grab my clothes, throw them on as fast as I can, and make for the door, where someone stops me.