I can’t describe the graffiti because it wasn’t fixed, but changed depending on your angle. No living beings were depicted, nor dead ones. They weren’t good, or bad: as much one as the other, like everything. Not close, not far, just there. They resisted interpretation.
Damián’s graffiti was our victory.
My cousin also instigated my change in appearance: He made me throw away my wool sweaters and trousers, the collared long-sleeve shirts, and gave me an urban makeover. He showed me how to lose the belt and sag my pants so my boxers showed, and how to camouflage myself in a dark hood and walk with hands in pockets. Under his wing, I got an eyebrow piercing and my first Walkman, on which he had me listen to Metallica, Anthrax, and Megadeth, and he talked me into trading my Shirley Temple curls for a fierce cut like his, with wild bangs falling into the eyes like Jared Leto, the tragic hero of Requiem for a Dream.
When I got back from the United States, I was different. I started at Quevedo Prep, where I heard about the main clique, self-named the Apaches, which would later become the Tutti Fruttis. These Apaches seemed infantile to me. And they still seem that way, now that I’m one of them. Just overgrown kids, then and now. Childish adults, and I’m one of them, because of course I can’t let myself off the hook. Immaturity unites us and connects us to an international brand: we’re the generation that refuses to grow up.
Anyway, I didn’t look up to the Apaches when I got back from Detroit; that must be why they noticed me.
They seemed like a bunch of posers, sitting in the back of class, mocking everything and everyone. Compared with the great Damián, these boys were nothing, and I looked down on them even more when I saw them jacking off under their desks during class, betting on ejaculation contests and muffling their laughter.
They called those group jack offs “masturbathons.” I’d glance at them from the corner of my eye, scornfully; the truth is they revolted me. Later, my perspective changed. I began to watch them with amazement, even envy—I, the compulsive masturbator who always did it alone and shamefully. Every day I sinned and felt terrible. I had that mark of Cain on my forehead, a betrayal of my mother’s love and the teachings of Christ.
Until I began to see in the masturbathons an interesting pact of friendship, a healthy cardio workout, and an unabashed expression of self-love. So there was an alternative to hiding or beating your chest? And we didn’t need a girlfriend to enjoy ourselves? No? They’d just revealed a formula for happiness. The Apaches’ masturbathons: a declaration of men’s right to freedom of pleasure.
A challenge, though, to get into their group. I had to do my part; it wasn’t free of charge. First, I had to deal with soccer, their main passion. From the start, I threw myself into it with Jesuit discipline; what was for them as effortless as breathing—they’d been kicking the ball since they were babies—was for me a painful labor. They were born into it, while I was a convert, a late arrival to the sport with more eagerness than talent. But like all converts, once I joined up, I was as devoted as anyone. A soccer jihadi, a kicking mystic. I never could play as well as the others, but I made up for my incompetence with the only athletic gift God had given me: speed. I could bolt off and be everywhere in no time, and this was my best defense.
Plus, I had the weekly tae kwon do classes my dad paid for, probably to make up for never being around. I learned moves like yeop chagi, bakkat chagi, bandae jirugi, dung chu mok, and, eventually, how to break an arm.
Still, now that I’d been separated from my cousin Damián and was living in Bogotá again, steeped in the brew of resentments and revenge that was my parents’ divorce, the dark of night went back to showing me its bitter face. I curled back into my shell. My old fears returned, coming and going, with ups and downs: sometimes I overcame them, while, at other times, they beat me down.
The creepsters are only two, or so Muñeco insisted last night, but if I don’t watch out they could multiply and metastasize. I fear this state of mind; I call it perverse solitude. To be clear, I like solitude, it’s my thing, the smooth and rosy inside of my shell. But there’s a different way of being alone, the intensified kind, that’s so malignant not even chemo could eradicate it. The nights of perverse solitude show me life’s most hateful face, a face that turns against me. Even my own shell becomes an irritant, as if covered in salt, and forces me out into the hazardous space beyond my bed.
We’ve all got murderous instincts; we keep them deep in our pockets. Who doesn’t want to see someone or another dead. Donald Trump, for example, or maybe your own mother, who hasn’t thought, once or twice, I hope the old lady dies and leaves me in peace. But thought and deed stand miles apart.
What if Muñeco is crossing the line? That would be—who knows what.
Even those of us who know his blazing life story can’t imagine how far he’d go. Nobody, not even Malicia with her supposed talent for predictions. I call her that, Malicia, though her real name is Alicia. Malicia may have the power to warn us of what’s coming, she doesn’t trust the Tutti Fruttis and has opinions about us that are ugly and probably true. She says we’re in love with ourselves, that we’re lords in a nation of the poor, learned minds in illiterate lands, feudal masters among the dispossessed.
I let her scold me, submissively, her words are justified.
But even Malicia has her limitations, and once in a while she shows her true colors. She talks and curses in front of me when it’s the two of us, thick as thieves, but in front of Duque she goes quiet. With him, she goes sweet, accommodating, and well behaved, like all women in love. With Tarabeo, she has bouts of fear, including over politics, and with Muñeco, she doesn’t even get pissed off, what a waste of time, she says, why try to reason with a brainless man.
The thing is, she never met Muñeco in his glory days, and that changes the picture. I may as well say it, Muñeco was God, at least during our time at Quevedo Prep. He cut a striking, martial figure in his black tie, impeccable white shirt, and blue blazer, with his ornate sash and baton raised high, as head of the marching band. You had to see him back then to understand the absolute nature of his reign. Muñeco shone in those days. I wish Malicia could have met him then, so she could really understand.
I remember Muñeco on the day a certain alumnus visited campus. He wasn’t just any alumnus; he’d been named minister of something. An extremely high office. The whole school was in formal attire, out on the big courtyard, celebrating the proof, because, yes, it was true. Yes! An alumnus of Quevedo Prep had become a government minister: clear evidence that it could be done. The crowning dream of all prep school boys, the goal we held, each of us, born to govern. The nation’s owners, masters of the universe. You think we can’t become ministers, even presidents, or Wall Street magnates? Of course we can. Again, in English. Yes, we can.
“You, young men, are the future ruling class,” the dean predicted, gesturing toward the alumnus-now-a-minister on his right, exhibit A.
All education focused on that vital goal.
The dean and the minister took turns making grand pronouncements for us, their captive audience. Meanwhile, down below, at the front of the marching band, Muñeco waited for his moment. Because he wouldn’t let himself be defeated just like that, our Ken, a.k.a. Muñeco or Mi-Lindo. He knew how to size up the competition, how to make them feel strong and secure before he attacked.