Covid

Edward Hopper, Morning Sun (1952)

My father is sitting in a corner of the bed, next to me. He tells me something, he doesn’t care I’m asleep. He keeps speaking and I wake up, barely, with heavy eyes, and I see him there, on the other side of the blur. I can hear his voice, I am listening. I try to move and shake the stiffness of the body just awaken…

Then I wake up. I truly woke up this time. The corner of the bed is empty. I’m alone in the hotel room. I had a dream where I saw my father sitting next to me in that very hotel bed. A hotel room that is miles away from where he really is, in some hospital bed, across an ocean.

In my dream, I was listening, and finding some meaning in his words. Awake, I can’t remember. I just feel that his voice was clear, like it used to be, clearer and stronger than how I heard him the last time we spoke. A phone call, long distance, across an ocean. A voice in a dream that was not tired and panting, like the voice of someone that is having trouble breathing. I could hear him gasping for air. He said goodbye. He knew.  

My father died early in the morning of the following day.

Grief is supposed to be scripted. One must go through stages, was it five? But who said how long does it take to navigate grief, or when does it strike, or if it strikes at all?…

There must be the confirmation of a loss, better if you see it by yourself, so you can’t deny it. And what happens when you are an ocean away. Then you must find a way to overcome the anger, you will find someone or something to blame, either God, a system, or a person in power, that made you the target of a loss at a time that wasn’t right. Because the time is never right.

When loss is certain, and definitive, I guess, it leaves little room for negotiation. Unless… Maybe some people with some internal faith that makes them believe in an encounter that will happen at some point, like death wasn´t truly the end.

Then sadness takes over, overwhelming sadness, the anguish of the never more, the sudden sob that comes out of nowhere, like an earthquake. With time it becomes less frequent, although it is never certain that it won’t come back again. And one day, I hear, memories start to produce smiles. And the loss is replaced by some form of ethereal company. And that is supposed to be acceptance.

My father died. It was a summer morning, in a faraway hospital bed. I was away in another country. I did not attend his funeral or burial. I learned of his death in a text. I cried. I cried more with every phone call. I took the honest ones, from the people that I felt really meant it when saying I’m sorry. I didn’t pick up the rest. Fuck the protocol calls. But my crying wasn’t grieving.

My cry was closure. I was closing a chapter, a whole book. My father’s death brought me the gift of certainty. The end of a conflict. The end of a story. So final that it left no place for open endings. Questions, unanswered or not, don´t matter anymore. I discovered certitude in the finality of death.

Moratorium

A rat. That’s pretty much the first thing she saw when she entered Washington Square. A rat in a run from under a bench to get lost behind a tree. A middle age white lady was seated in the bench, reading; a couple of teenagers were sharing a joint; in the east side of the park, a crowd was gathered attending or pretending to pay attention to Shakespeare in the Park. Nobody seemed to have seen the rat, or nobody cared, but nobody reacted.

Disgusted, she walked still some two meters before seeing him. He saw her too, he waved. He had the same beard that she remembered from more than ten years ago.

…

She remembers him reading from the back of photographs. Flags photographs. His photographs. It could be 2005, after Audioslave’s concert in Havana. Any case it had to be at some point before the 2006 World Cup but after Greece won the 2004 EuroCup. Because back then she couldn’t stand playing defense.

Then the memory jumps, slides, dissolves and fades away. They are walking over rocks, by the coast, he´s telling her about camera angles and how the most unknown thing to a man, is the man himself, because for whatever optical illusions the mirror returns an image that it is not what others see of him. The Person that you think you know the most, the Person that breathes your air and sleeps in your bed and have your thoughts, is cursed to be the ultimate stranger.

And then they are in his room. And he lights a candle and tells her to shock him. And from her fingers air starts to blow and she braids that air and creates a twister that blows that candle off. And they are in the dark. And somewhere inside the wardrobe he keeps a camera and a flag.

And she pictures him in fast motion. Sitting under the shade of trees. Accepting that award. Telling her not to come. Being with someone else… Being back in her room for one last time…

…

That day in Washington Square, he’s old and new. She’s the same but reconstructed. Soo good to see you. So good to see you too.

She heard him saying something about politics, or perhaps academia. She heard him explaining something that she couldn’t quite remember the next day. Something about red flowers maybe, or Kim Il-sung or the Midwest.

They looked pretty much the same. They could be venturing the brave new world. He was definitely venturing that brave new world.

He walked ahead. And somehow, she had the prickly feeling that he was saying something that wouldn’t stay with her the same way as what he used to tell her before. She looked at him looking at her, and she saw in his eyes the reflection of the child version of herself.

It was evening when a chilling wind started to blow. They left Washington Square. Shakespeare in the park was over. She said no to his question of finding a place to dine. She kissed him in the cheek and waved good-bye.

Breath

-How do I know what I want? Really want?

We are walking side by side on the sand, near the waves that break softly in white foam. We are alone between the ocean and the dunes. The woman next to me answers.

-Shut wide your eyes, and even hold your breath until your lungs empty and your stomach contracts. If it’s still there what you think you want when you’ll grasp for air, you probably really want it.

Although her old voice sounds familiar I can’t recognize her face, because her features are blurred. Then I ask.

-How do I go and get what I want?

A dream.

I don’t hear her answer because I wake up under water.

I can’t see the bottom nor the floor nor walls all around. It is just me inside infinite water and I need to breathe.

And the lungs get emptied and the stomach gets tight and I grasp for air when I am waking up.

For real this time. I hope.

…

Once upon a time I thought life would be like an Ingmar Bergman film, maybe Cries and Whispers, with a face that was beautiful, a face that was strong, and a face that was dying.

But life turns out more like the opening of Millennium Mambo. A woman stomping over a long and elevated passageway.

…

At the end of the passage people wait for the train. The train stops and I get in. I walk pass a woman with a baby towards the end of the wagon. Then I lock eyes with the most beautiful man in the world. Just for a second.

Baudelaire has that poem, À une passante.

Un éclair… puis la nuit! — Fugitive beauté
Dont le regard m’a fait soudainement renaître,
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité?

Ailleurs, bien loin d’ici! trop tard! jamais peut-être!
Car j’ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j’eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais!

I open my mouth, but I feel the voice trapped in my throat. The most beautiful man in the world looks at me for one more second before stepping out in the stop before mine.

…

I am blocking a number from my phone. We have met four times for language exchange at the library. But the fifth time makes me anxious.

I block a number because a “no” answer is ten times better than a lingering question.

With odds I can play, but possibility is a bitch.

…

I stand on the edge. High up. Under my feet, a steep wall of stone and then water. An old quarry turned deep pond. I can’t see the bottom nor the place where the stone wall meets the water. I know I can jump from the higher spot because I already survived a dive before, holding a hand.

I jump alone.

Under the water, I swim towards the surface. One, two, three. The lungs emptying and the stomach contracting right before reaching the surface.

And I breathe.

Woman 2 Woman, part of #MeToo

This is not about Lesbian love, in case someone gets the wrong idea.

This is still an attempt to articulate feelings, ideas and impressions at the same time –something I’ve never been good at- about all this men-abuse-of-women conversation and where we draw a line.

Gauguin – Two Tahitian Women

There is probably no line. There might be multiple lines spread around depending on where you grew up and what community raised you, no matter you’re male or female.

I met with female friends today and one of us was adamant that No means No, and then I retorted Well not really, in Cuba many times No means Yes, because No is utterly ignoring a guy’s existence, let alone encouraging any advance. Our discussion was endless, even though we agree on the core: nothing justifies abuse. But we saw differently what the role and responsibility of women are in all this flawed way of men and women interacting with each other.

We two did have different perspectives. And the third woman on the table had yet another point of view, with a third layer of nuances and values and “should” and “must”.

And after that lunch another angle to this conversation seemed even clearer to me, that I maybe owe a Mea Culpa to a couple of you girls out there.

I too believe that nothing justifies hurting women. NOTHING. PERIOD.

And there are gals out there pushing it really hard. I remember once passing by a couple, she was repeating “hit me, come on be a man and hit me. If you would be a real man you would hit me, if you were really brave you would hit me.” The guy was breathing deeply looking up to the sky and just taking it, walking heavily, with his hands inside his jacket’s pockets, looking like he was dragging a heavy burden. I don’t know what was going on with those two, what could have caused her to act that way. But I remember having thought that I wanted to make her stop, and I wasn’t him, so poor thing. He was so in the right side of that argument.

And I know sometimes in a conversation I might have criticized a woman because she was too flirty, and Girl If You Act Like That You Are Going To Confuse That Guy, And Then Don’t Be Surprised if He Makes a Move, Maybe a Rough Move.

But again, no justification for hurting women. NONE. PERIOD.

Years ago, still in boarding school, the rumor spread that a male classmate had attempted to rape a female student. We were summoned for a big meeting, to hear two spokespersons tell us about a potential rapist among us. These spokespersons did not identify the victim, nor the perpetrator. What we did hear is that actually, it had happened more than once, and to more than one woman. But we didn’t know who were the victims or culprits among us, and they claimed not wanting to say because they didn’t want to spoil anybody’s career, and because they just wanted to send a message: anything else would not be tolerated any longer.

The entire community came out of that meeting with a bad taste in our mouths. Distrust and suspicion taste really bad, and for weeks the tension in the place was so thick, so palpable, that it could be cut with scissors. I got angry. Angry at those two girls that acted as spokespersons for just putting so much weight on all of us, for spoiling it for all of us.

Days later I was having lunch with another female student. We were working on a project but we weren’t close friends. The topic came up, I said that if it had been really serious they would have acted more forcefully, that this looked like a melodrama to me, that many women around us really liked to get drunk to the point of blacking out and yes, sometimes alcohol makes you do things that in the morning you’ll regret, or be flirty and invite someone upstairs which sober you would not, but that was no reason to cry Rape, that was if anything an indication of bad judgment and that alcohol isn’t really good for you. And I added, You Know How an Undesired Guy Doesn’t Get in Your Bedroom? If you lock the door when you are in.

That girl listened to me, and argued very little, very weakly, that even with an open door no guy had the right to get into anybody’s room without being invited, being allowed. And I said that that was in the ideas world, wishful thinking world, but that down here if you don’t take care of yourself, nobody will. And I was sounding so self assured, so righteous…

That girl had to leave school shortly after. A family problem came up and she had to go back home for good. Time passed. Come a day that I hear from one of her best friends that she had been one of the girls that had suffered the visit of an uninvited guy. And I wanted for the Earth to open up to swallow me.

So to every female I know, friends or acquaintances and those that have yet to meet, I can be wrong even when I make it sound right. Even if you hear me yelling that you have to close your door to be safer, I do too believe you should sleep in peace with your door open. I am not going to hesitate to help you.

Nothing justifies hurting women. NOTHING. PERIOD.

The man, The woman, The #MeToo

If there’s a time, or rather topic, that I don’t really know how to start writing about, this might be on top of the list.

I didn’t even know what title to use, because “sexual harassment”, “sexual abuse”, “sexual misbehavior”, “sexual  violence” were all terms that crossed my mind, but at the same time none of those words really fit into what I want to say, and all terms fit too.

Then I’ve ended up with a title that reminds me of a novel of a Cuban author that I have not read, by the way, called El Hombre, La Hembra y El Hambre. In Spanish, the sound and flow of that title is really awesome, so I thought, what the heck…

I live in NYC. I would need to be in a coma to not be aware that all around me the issue of problematic sexual interactions –and I appreciate the freaking irony of having to use such a cranky terminology because I don’t really know how to land this in a simple concept- is omnipresent. From whispered corporate stories of lawsuits to Donald Trump’s grab-them-by-the-pussy, this is something very hard to escape and it’s marking relationships with friends, family, coworkers.

And even to these days, I struggle with the narrative, the framing, the interpretation of all, because on the one hand I have beloved men in my family and I would be terrified if something was said about them. And false accusations from confused victims have happened before, and will happen again, because this will never be an easy straightforward issue to deal with.

I will, for example, cringe when I hear the word “rape”, or “violation”, used to loosely. I don’t believe every action has the same weight. A regretted night, a bad night, cannot be the same as what happened to a girl in my hometown when she was 15… She was coming from a party at 11pm, to comply with her parents’ curfew, when she was followed by three men. The men grabbed her, threaten her with knives, made her walk like a prisoner for blocks and when they found a dark alley they raped her, mercilessly. That girl was left for dead. She had been beaten and bitten; they bit her nipples and spat the skin. The tale of that girl haunted me for all the time I was a teenager. I guess her image is what I picture in my mind when people use that word, because it was the first time I remember to have heard of rape.

I also argued with female friends, mostly European women, when I saw them flirting too hard with no real intention of sex or romance, just for the fun of it and the desire to be looked at, or admired. A hundred times I begged them not to behave that way when dealing with Latino men, especially Cuban, because I knew the codes of relating to each other, men and women, were different, and I could see problems forming like clouds in the horizon. And once it happened. It was in a New Year Eve holiday when I’m part of a group meeting on some spot in the Alps and a male friend from Cuba meets a female friend from Germany, and I see the collision from a mile away. She flirted with him, even though she had a boyfriend that had not been able to join her. I told her many times to cut it because it would lead to a misunderstanding. But she was as beautiful as attention demanding, and one thing leads to another and once he was drunk, and she was drunk… and they’re in a forest walking a relatively steep hill, he makes a move, she rejects, he insists, she pushes him away… the end of the story is that they fell by accident and she twisted a wrist and he scratched himself, and was ashamed for the rest of the time there.

And I have to say, that time, I sided with him. I still do.

But the other day I checked Facebook and I see the raw emotion of a friend, telling a story, her story, of one more abuse. She is walking her way back home, 9am, minding her own business, when a guy coming out of nowhere grabs her, hugs her, touches her, and then walks away. And she tells how she felt crippled, abused, victimized, attacked, and all the common alarms start sounding –”was I dressed provocatively? Should I have taken a taxi home? Did I stare without noticing? What did I DO WRONG? WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME?

And she knows the answer. She did nothing wrong. Nothing can justify what happened to her. And the most paranoid woman in the world will not think is dangerous to walk at 9am for a couple of blocks in her neighborhood… on your way home… at 9am… As she said, she has the right to fucking walk the streets. But she also said, that guy did what he did because he could, he was able to. He was stronger, therefore more powerful. And it was sheer power what he abused.

I felt once like my friend. Years ago I was walking at 6pm coming back from the university. I’m two blocks away from home when a young guy, a young teenager maybe, is walking towards me and when he passes by my side he hits me. With his hand full open, and with the force that comes from the speed of his walking and the opposing force of the speed of my walking in the other direction, he slaps my chest, right in the middle, between the breasts.

I stopped, gasping, breathless from the pain, the surprise, the anger, the frustration, the impotence… It all comes back to power. Always. I looked back; he is just turning the corner to disappear from my sight.

I didn’t know that boy. I had never seen him before, I don’t think I ever found him again.

But I have the memory of him, forever.

And later through the years, abuse or humiliation don’t need to be as aggressive. There was a drunkard Korean lawyer in a party suddenly grabbing my hips like I guess he does with his escorts back in Korea. I don’t think such moron can hold on to a proper girlfriend. His female colleague virtually had to pull him away from me while I could not believe what was happening. I started laughing in a sort of nervous breakdown, afraid of creating a scene and losing my job.

Or the other time when I tech guy I’ve known from work for more than a year, married, with kids, pater familia, gets totally drunk and grabs my arm wanting to pull me towards him “inviting” me to go out with him. And it is again a woman coworker of him that have to intervene and mediate, because that time I didn’t get nervous as much as angry and I was very determined to report him and create a huge scene.

But these or probably others that I don’t remember are only the cusp of the problem. Abuse of power against women takes much more nuanced forms. It was the time that I wanted to end with a boyfriend and he closed the door in front of me with way too much intensity, begging me to reconsider. But we were alone, and he was so strong. I said Yes I will, We will talk more But I have to go to class… I never allowed myself to be alone next to him again.

Or even in more indirect ways, anodyne ways, like in the form of salaries and promotions. A successful female friend originally from the Indian Subcontinent told me once, White Men go first in salaries, then White Women, then minority men, then minority women.

I am a woman, I am the daughter of a woman and I am friends with women, and I strongly believe that it is rare the woman who doesn’t have a horror story hidden at least in a very dark corner of her memory. If she’s lucky enough, because there are others with fresh, recent wounds caused by abuse.

A male friend, the other day, in a middle of a discussion about Kavanaugh, said that no matter the result it would be awful. Because the accuser was clearly truthful but how could we make our minds without evidence. How could a man react in front of an accusation that he knew was false, but had no way to prove otherwise. I didn’t say anything then. But later I thought… the best way of not getting accused of abuse by a woman, is not to abuse a woman.