19.

I called my brother, in the end I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to, I hoped to, my intention was to get ahold of myself. I called myself to order, in some sense. I knew he wasn’t the person I wanted to listen to, I knew I didn’t want to listen to him, and nonetheless, or precisely for this reason, I called him. I think I kind of needed to be shaken or whatever by somebody who really knows me and is familiar—pun intended—with my self-deception mechanisms. To my surprise, and kind of disappointment, Ramiro wasn’t that clear, nor did he go especially deep with it. He basically told me to think, that’s what he told me, to just think about how I’d been feeling. I explained it to him, I told him briefly about my encounter with Julián and about how confused I’d been and how upsetting I’d found the whole incident; he listened attentively, he asked me what about Manuel, and I said, what about him? And he goes, what are you planning on doing, and I go, what do you mean what am I planning on doing, that’s exactly what I don’t know, I ask him if he’s seen him, if he knows anything, he says yeah, he saw him the other day and that nothing seemed to be up, he was normal, like always, that he’d asked him about me, if he had any news, since I was a spaz and hadn’t even emailed him. And Ramiro had said yes, that he’d spoken with me, and that I was a little worked up about everything, which he understood perfectly, and that anyway I must be about to return. That re: today. Starting today, then, I ought to be returning, there’s no more sense in my being here, I ought to be back on the road. So basically just that, that Ramiro understands my confusion, not that that really tells me anything, not that that helps me. He doesn’t tell me what I might do about it all, nor does he tell me to stop it. He doesn’t tell me to return, nor does he tell me not to. He just suggests I give Manu a call, even if just to reassure him, even if I don’t really know what I want or whatever, but aside from that, you know, that I should just think about it, and take care. He tacks that on, take care, he just throws it in, and it’s the thing that most sticks with me when I hang up. He also said Corsito is chilling, that he’s gotten used to the house, that he’s even taking certain liberties at this point. I hang up and realize I’m in the same place as before, that I have completely failed to move forward, that I have not evolved. That for god’s sake someone please tell me what I need to do.

It’s him who answers, when I call him at work. Hey, sweetie, he says, already yanking at my heartstrings. How’s it going, he says, and he says how I kind of just disappeared, and he asks when I’ll be getting in. Yeah, there’s been a lot going on (me), with my dad, and your parents, and the ashes, the city, the south, the southern wind, the streets, the climate, or the atmosphere, I guess the atmosphere is what I mean. The scene. And the cold too, I mean. Oh, sure, of course, he can imagine, he had imagined, that he hadn’t been too worried about that, that he knew I must be going through a lot right now. And when am I getting in. And I say, well, you know, I don’t quite know yet, that I’m going to go get my ticket today, I’ll have to just kind of see, that I’ll let him know when I get it, but that things are kind of weird with me right now, just so he knows, like just so he’s prepared or whatever, so he knows. That’s fine, sweetie, don’t worry, he says, that’s what he says, that he’ll be there, that he can’t wait to see me, and I say me too, I want to see him too, and that as soon as I know I’ll let him know, that’s what I tell him, that I’ll let him know as soon as I know. I love you, baby, he says, and I say it back. I miss you, he says, but I don’t say anything to that. I’ll let you know, beso, ciao. And take care, yet another take care.

I didn’t say anything, I can’t believe it. Such a coward. But it’s fine that way too, I guess, in a way that’s fine. What would I have told him? I wouldn’t have even known what to say. Over the phone? And besides, what? I can’t, it wouldn’t be right to share my doubts with him. And over the phone. What would I say? That I mean I’m really sorry but I’m just kind of crazy right now because the other day I ran into Julián, that yeah, that I hadn’t seen him in years, and that as a matter of fact I hadn’t even really thought about him when I decided to come here, that I had barely even remembered him, that he wasn’t part of my life anymore, because he wasn’t, because he’d ceased to be? Say that and then add on that now he was again, that now he’d come back up, that he’d come back into my life, just like that, and that I was letting him, that I was fully letting him come back. Say that and then say that that was why (that was the only reason) I didn’t really know, I just couldn’t really know right now what Juli’s deal was, what he was thinking. So. That was that. That was it. Say, you know, Manuel, I adore you, and I really do care about you a ton, and maybe even that warm and fuzzy thing you make me feel, you give me, maybe love, it could be, I can’t really know that, how could I? But whatever, there’s also this other thing I wanted to talk to you about, this other thing I’ve been hiding from you, that I’ve been keeping, one that’s practically under lock and key, or in a burlap sack—a bloody one, like a lump that’s moving, writhing, that’s having convulsions in rooms, in one-room apartments that are super saturated, and by greasy colors, dark red, dark green, maroon, like that, just like that, dark and mysterious, dull, dense, I have things inside of me that are moving. And when I pay attention to them a little bit they convulse and wake up and demand justice, demand I remember them. That bloodstained burlap sack, foulmouthed and stumpy, that doesn’t want to be quiet and that struggles and groans and grumbles when it feels that I’m shedding any light on it, when it comes to hear that someone’s done something with that lock and key, that someone’s there. And meanwhile, I could get out of there, lock it back up, step back, and let things settle back down, or: pick the bag up, untie its cord, release the beast, and let whatever happens happen. Freeing the monster wouldn’t offer me more than two possible fates: either it would devour me or it would request my hand in marriage. So, and since I don’t know what I want, since I find myself with my hand on the key in the lock, and my eyes go from the bag to the well-lit room behind me, which emanates warmth over my shoulders, and from there to the burlap sack yet again, so I’d say if you want to wait for me, like if you really feel like it, wait and see what I end up doing with myself, what I do with this, what I can do, what I’m able to do, what I let win this time, or if I don’t let anything win at all and actually make a decision this time, to go for it, even if that going for it will lead to destruction, even if it is destruction itself, but, in any case, it would have been my decision. And if it did go that way, if I stuck with the bag, the bloody burlap, don’t take it as a failure, don’t take what we had, or rather, the end of what we had, as the failure of something else, something bigger, something grander, but rather as the success of itself: that long vacation we took together when you loved me and I loved you and nothing too terrible happened to us, and nothing got too tarnished or anything, take it as that, as what we had, which we liked and which was it while it lasted/which was everything, while it lasted.

I should have said all that to him, given I pretended to be fully sincere, and yet, no, it wouldn’t have done any good, it probably would have only generated, first, a silence, finishing up with something along the lines of, oh, sweetie, I don’t know, you’re mixing me up now, why don’t we talk when you get here? And he would have been right. So whatever, my problem, and I’m left alone with my images and to see how I’m feeling and what I can do about it. Which isn’t much. For now I should, at least, be able to decide when to return.