16.

Are you going to the Hilbs’ place? Well, yeah, where the hell would I go otherwise? No, dummy, I’m asking because maybe you could be staying with your pops. No, my dad doesn’t have space for me. He converted my room into his study. I’m glad, it’s a good fate for a room, I’m glad that that’s where he chooses to go and be alone. I’ll take you, I have my truck. I haven’t looked at him again. We cross the street, and Juli walks towards a truck I don’t recognize, they must have traded it in, traded in the F100 for something more modern. I follow him, he opens the passenger-side door for me, we don’t say anything else to each other. Inside, of course, besides being cold as fuck, it’s full of snot and traces of child, and in the back seat there’s a car seat scattered with crumbs, one of those seats that you buckle the child into. Oh. A real family man. The worst part is that little seat, just that little seat, which being as dirty as it is, full of life, gives me an idea of the extent of the damage. This, this seat and everything that it represents, is irreparable. I don’t say anything, I move some multicolored cloth dice and a little bottle of Coke, empty, from the space I manage to sit in, I don’t say anything, I hold the dice, I look at them, and in the end I put them in the rear window, alongside other things: a pacifier, a cassette tape, papers, cloths. Julián turns on the heat and the music; he starts singing Bob Marley. Midway through, he starts singing midway through. How funny, it’s good to know that some things never change. Bob Marley survived it all, I see, my absence, yours too, of course, as we all did, and the adolescent mother, the difficult pregnancy, the child, the children, fatherhood. And he’s still there, singing, like nothing’s changed, like no time has passed, reclaiming those same things as though reclaiming everything. It soothes me that it’s like that, this welcome agrees with me, it strikes me as a harbinger of good things to come, I don’t know what things, but it brings something back, it brings back something good, it returns it to me. I know this song, I know by heart nearly all Bob Marley’s songs, I’ve listened to him almost to the point of getting tired of it, although that’s just a manner of speaking, because I never really got tired of it, ever. At first passively, I listened to them passively, until the only option that remained was to appropriate them, and it wasn’t very difficult, I have to admit, he’s easy to love. I’m a fan, I like Bob, he’s a good egg, and particularly in this moment he makes everything seem a little less hostile, foreign. Juli lights a roach that he takes out of his pocket, I find it redundant, but I also think that Bob had been on before, so it’s not like it’s a mise en scène, particularly. In fact I like seeing how they go together, how well fatherhood and pot allow themselves to be combined, and fatherhood and reggae. He offers it to me, at first I don’t want it, I think I don’t want it, really I don’t even reach thinking about it, it’s like I had already decided the matter beforehand, I’m hardened, or I was, and now I don’t even know why, I don’t even remember what had offended me, so I recant, I accept the offer, I tell him that actually I do want some, and I take a nice, big hit. It’s very strong. I start coughing like an idiot, I choke, Julián laughs. What the fuck is this, shithead? I say to him. Is it bad? No, I don’t know, the last stuff I got is really crappy, what happened was that one of the ones at home got bugs in it, and now I don’t have any. I don’t have much of this left either. It’s really bad. Yeah, it’s fairly bad, but it seems to get you high all right. Does your wife smoke? No. Does she know you smoke? Yeah, honey, I have the plants at home. And she doesn’t lose her shit? No. Your boyfriend? What? Does he smoke? Yeah, but not that much. He always has some, but he doesn’t smoke much. Lately, really, he used to smoke more. You? I practically don’t smoke at all anymore, I don’t know, I stopped liking it. Slowly but surely. There was a time when every time I smoked I got high as a kite and it was good, it was good weed, but it gave me an irregular heartbeat or I would fall asleep or I would eat whatever, so now I hardly smoke at all. It must not be the same in Buenos Aires, he says. Well, no, I say, it’s not the same. We get to the door of your house and he says, okay, okay, I say to him, and for the first time we look at each other again since the moment when I decided to be offended even though I don’t remember why now. I realize then that really I was hoping or wanting him not to take me straight home, that it was just a manner of speaking, I’ll drop you off, but that really we were going somewhere else, I don’t know, to the river, to Trevelin, or just to drive around a little, or at least he could have parked the car for a while in front of your house, turned off the engine or something, to talk a little bit, there was so much to talk about. Wasn’t there? But the fact is he neither made any move to park, nor to turn off the engine, he gives me a kiss on the cheek, very unambiguous for my tastes, and he says, take care. Take care, he says, what the fuck does that mean? Not even a see you, or it was so good to see you, or see you around, or at least a hey, I’d rather us not see each other—no, take care, he says, and in the moment it’s as offensive to me as if he had said kill yourself. That’s what I hear him say, kill yourself. You too, I say, and I get out of the car. No sooner do I set foot on the sidewalk than I hear him start up the truck, I don’t turn around, I’m indignant. Or bothered. And besides I’ve become dizzy. I can’t believe it, I’m confused. Did something bad happen? At what point, exactly, did that break happen, that shift? We were fine, we were communicating, or at least that’s what it seemed like, I thought so, it wasn’t that we were going to fuck, I wanted us to talk, I don’t know, I wanted to know how everything had happened, his life change, or okay, I don’t know about the life change so much, but there was still weed left, Bob Marley, hats, and fantasy T-shirts, but fine, he was a dad, he’s a dad now, and a husband, he’d have something to talk about, he must have had something. Wouldn’t he? Or did he not want to anymore? He probably doesn’t want to anymore, he has no desire left. This sucks, I feel so stupid, I thought we had had a connection, how ridiculous, I can’t believe it. And with Vanina there, I must have made such a fool of myself, I must have looked so ridiculous, I must have looked like the spiteful ex-girlfriend, resentful, how pathetic, everybody must have realized: the kid with the family that put his life back together, or not back together, just together, given all I was was his high-school girlfriend, we were kids, how stupid, it’s probably not even as significant to him as it is to me, like he just slept with me, it’s very clear, I can’t believe it. Right now he’s probably telling his wife about the encounter, and he must have told her that I’m still in love with him, poor thing, and they must be laughing about it together, how awful, with the baby, with the baby in between them in their full-sized bed and him kissing her stomach, the stomach that holds his next child, and I’m here alone and drugged like a teenager, how fucked, how sad. I have to go to sleep, I have to sleep, I want to switch off, I must switch off.

I took my clothes off, your house was nice and warm, I wanted to forget about everything as fast as possible. I go to bed wearing my underwear and a T-shirt. I get into a fetal position, but I’m not even close to falling asleep. My ovaries hurt. So fucked up, I did it again. Or rather, he did it again. He could have, he could have had me. I can’t believe it, can’t believe I’m so easy. Even though I don’t like his shirt, even though I’m irritated by his way, so aggressive, so constantly on the defensive, but there I am again, as though no time has passed, like an idiot, clingy. I realize, I now acknowledge that I would have liked to kiss him. I would have wanted him to kiss me in the truck and I would have wanted to try to resist him, a little, because of his wife, because of his children, and I would have wanted for him to insist, and I would cede, cede, cede to him and everything he brings up in me, everything he can do to me, and have him fuck me, like that, very awkwardly in the car, in the front or in the backseat, wherever there was more space, in front, I guess, so as not to have to cut off/interrupt the moment, I would have wanted him to fuck me like that, fast, with everything still on, the two of us with our clothes still on, and to sweat and steam up the windows of the car and to come, as I almost always did, with him. I’d jerk off if I wasn’t bleeding so much.

I’m alone, I’m hungry, my ovaries hurt, and I’m bleeding furiously and nonstop. I go to the kitchen and make a sandwich with the meat leftover from the barbecue the other day, cold, and tomatoes and mayonnaise. It’s amazing. There’s nothing like mayonnaise, and I feel better. My body, when it’s in transition, requires fat, the more saturated the better. That’s how I end the day, this long day of shock upon shock: crying and eating a sandwich, like Chihiro but sadder, because it’s not even because my mom and dad were turned into pigs that I’m crying, it’s for myself, because I’m nothing now/because I’m such an idiot.