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When Chulito arrived at Edgar Allan Poe Park in the Northwest Bronx, the sun was
putting up a fight with its final hot rays. Everything was orange - the strong trees,
the young guys break dancing near the benches, the old lady walking her Chihuahua, the
empty gazebo, the art deco buildings on the Grand Concourse, and Carlos. He blazed a
bright, creamy orange as he sat on a bench with his chin resting on his left knee and his
right foot on the ground. He was reading a book, eating an apple, and his hair had fallen
into his face. Chulito stopped and watched him for a moment, and then, as if by instinct,
Carlos looked up and saw him.
Chulito waved. “Yo, wassup!”
“Hey Chulito,” Carlos closed his book and took one last bite out of the apple
before tossing it into the wire garbage can.
Chulito ran over and sat next to him, but not too close.
“Sorry, I’m late, man. My moms wanted something from the store as I was
leavin’.”
“It’s alright. I got a mother too. Besides I’m almost at the end of the book,”
Carlos said.
“Is that the book you bought last night?”
“Yeah, it’s really good.”
“Fuck, a book that thick would take me forever. I don’t think I ever read a book
that wasn’t for school or something.”
“I’ll lend it to you.”
“Nah, that’s cool, yo. Why don’t you just tell me about it like you used to do
when we were little?”
“Check out that sunset.”
Chulito loved the way Carlos always noticed everything - even things Chulito
thought were of no importance.
“It’s beautiful, don’t you think, Chulito?”
“Now that you mention it, it is pretty dope. Your face is all orange.”
“Yours, too,” and Carlos gazed into Chulito’s eyes.
Chulito jerked away and popped up from the bench. “We two orange niggas.”
Carlos laughed.
Being with Carlos in Poe Park with the fading sun reminded Chulito of the last
time they were there together.
It began with a race to the man selling Italian ices. Chulito and Carlos ran as fast as
their nine year old legs could carry them, and yelled out their favorite flavors. “Cherry!”
“Blueberry!” The bold, pink house which contained the park’s information center and
bathrooms was washed in the sunset’s light. They watched with excitement as the strong,
old man scooped out frosty mounds of iridescent ice. They slipped behind the house
to eat their treats where no one could see them. Carlos looked at Chulito’s face with its
curly lashes, tar pit eyes, short nose and skin that reminded him of the sweet, creamy
chocolate milk his mother made each morning.
That whole summer they had been inseparable. Chulito lived in the apartment
below Carlos, and since their rooms were right over each other’s, they would sneak
out on the fire escape, spy on their neighbors, and talk about things they wanted to do
together the next day like bike riding, going to Rivera’s corner store for candy or sneaking
into El Coche strip club, even though they always got chased out by the old Irish owner.
They would secretly go up to their roof and Carlos would read Greek myths aloud, and
sometimes they’d sword fight with broken antennas. They’d look out on the vast South
Bronx landscape. Yankee Stadium in the distance became Mount Olympus, especially
during night games when the stadium lit up the brooding urban sky with a supernal
glow.
But that afternoon in the park, while eating their ices, they sniggered and stole
glances, speaking their own language of gestures and expressions. Chulito checked to
make sure no one was around and then he pressed his bright red cherry ice stained
mouth to Carlos’s lips. The cherry and blueberry flavors swirled around for a quick
moment when their tongues met. Chulito never forgot how when they separated he saw
Carlos’s hot, turquoise tongue disappear inside of his blue smile.
“So, what’s up?”
“Well, I asked you to meet me here ‘cause I wanted to thank you for taking me
down to the vil last night,” Chulito said rubbing the red and white religious beads he
wore around his neck.
“You’re welcome Chulito, but it - ”
“Wait. I just - ” And Chulito’s heart slammed against his chest and his mouth went
dry. “Fuck!” Chulito stood up, took two steps, hiked up the pants that he purposefully
wore three sizes too big, turned to Carlos and said in one breath, “I just wanted to show
you how much I appreciate you hanging with me, again, after all these years. I mean we
used to be tight as kids, and we took real separate roads, and I didn’t think that we ... ”
Carlos looked up at him and said, “Relax, Chulito, it’s just me.”
Chulito wanted it to be just Carlos, his best friend since he was five, but after the
night they spent in the Village walking down small streets, eating pizza on Christopher
Street, buying books and rap music from street vendors and sitting on the West Side
pier watching the sky change from a chasm black to a murky cerulean blue, Chulito had
feelings about Carlos that excited and scared him.
There was a reason why they had not been friends for the past couple of years -
Carlos was a faggot and he didn’t hide it. And the code of their neighborhood was that
if you hang out with faggots then you must be one – as true now that Latinos and Blacks
lived there as it was when Jews, Italians and Irish folks first came. That code was mixed
into the concrete and asphalt that was used to build the neighborhood.
“Carlos, I, just ... ” Chulito tried to make sense but, he didn’t want to fully
understand why he’d agreed to go out the night before to celebrate Carlos coming home
from college and why he’d asked Carlos to meet him away from their neighborhood to
thank him for the good time they had in the Village.
“Just follow me.” Chulito led Carlos to the front of Edgar Alan Poe’s Cottage
at the north end of the park. The thumping of his Timberland boots on the pavement
reverberated with the cacophony of thoughts rippling through Chulito’s mind. “Carlos is
just my friend and so what if he’s gay he does his thing and says fuck you to anybody who messes with
him and that is what being a man is about so, Carlos is a man and when we’re away from the ‘hood, it
feels real cool so it’s alright for me to be hanging with him and nobody needs to know jack.”
“You ever been inside?”
“No, it’s always closed,” Carlos said.
“Not tonight.”
Carlos stopped in his tracks. “You breakin’ in?”
“Nah, I know you’re a goody, goody. I won’t get you into any trouble. Keep
walking, bro. Since you were talking about old furniture last night, I remembered my
friend Angelito works here so I cashed in a favor.”
“We’re going inside?”
Chulito smiled.
As they approached the gate, Angelito came out to meet them.
“Yo, wassup, Chulito.”
“Wassup, pana.” They shook hands and half hugged, and Chulito took advantage
of the contact to slip Angelito a nickel bag of weed. “This is my friend Carlos. The one
who is doing the report on this Poe nigga.”
“Wassup, Carlos?” Angelito looked suspiciously at Carlos’s fitted Levi jeans,
simple Adidas running shoes and generic white t-shirt that wasn’t three sizes too big.
“Hi,” Carlos said looking past Angelito at the modest wood frame farmhouse.
“So, listen Chulito, you guys got a half hour and then I gotta lock up. I ain’t even
supposed to be here tonight. And don’t fuck with anything.”
“Angelito, man, I helped you clean that house a hundred times and I know all
the shit in there, so go get your ‘forty’ and let me show my college friend that I got some
brains, too.”
“OK, a half hour and then I gotta lock it up.”
Chulito led Carlos past the thick black gate. Chulito scooted past him and ran up
the painted wooden stairs and held the door open. When Chulito shut the door behind
them they were no longer in the center of the Bronx, but in a place far away. The sounds
of the park - the radios, the kids, the barking dogs, the whizzing cars - were sealed out.
The musky scent of damp oak filled the air and the wooden floor boards groaned and
creaked as if they would snap with the weight of each footstep. Carlos’s eyes looked
from the small gift case containing magnets, Poe Cottage wooden block paper weights,
and brass Raven bookmarks, to the main small room with an old wicker rocking chair
and a dark wooden desk that had on its top an open book and a white quill pen below
an electric candlestick. The room was like the rest of the house in that it was set up as
if Poe and his wife Virginia were out for a stroll. A tea pot was set on a small table with
two ivory cups sitting on matching gold rimmed saucers, the cast iron pots in the kitchen
were resting on the squat wood burning stove, the chipped wooden kitchen table had a
crocheted cover with green, yellow and gold flowers weaved into its intricate patterns,
and the small bed in the first floor bedroom was covered ineptly with a blue and cream
plaid blanket.
Carlos checked out a desk, touching the edges and looking underneath it as if
he were trying to figure out how it was made. He pointed toward a room and Chulito
nodded. Carlos climbed over the thick rope and stepped into it and did a slow 360
degree turn taking in the whole room, and chuckled. Chulito realized that that was
the first sound either of them had uttered. They had been moving through the house
communicating like when they were kids, as if they had discovered the language of Poe
Cottage, and all they had to do was look and point. Chulito’s heart was beating so hard
he thought Carlos could hear it.
Carlos walked over to an ornate floor lamp and pulled the cord. Surprisingly, it
turned on, but the dim light it gave was no match to the setting sun that was putting up
a fight to the end. Carlos stepped over to the window. The pattern of the lace curtains
made it look as if his face was tattooed. Chulito smiled at the thought of Carlos, the
goody, goody college boy, with any kind of tattoo.
“What are you smiling at?”
“Nothin’. Well, you. The curtains look like ... whatever.”
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
“Check out the sun. It’s almost all gone,” Carlos said.
Chulito walked over to the window, stood by him and felt the temperature in the
already warm room rise about 20 degrees. Chulito stood so close to Carlos that he felt
like cells were jumping from his body to Carlos’s and then back again. Carlos turned his
head to look at Chulito and they were about two inches away from each other. Chulito
imagined himself jumping back and saying, “Yo, you invading my space, bro.” But he
stood there staring into Carlos’s eyes feeling the heat of the sun, the heat of the room,
and the heat of his body.
“Thank you, Chulito.”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“I love it.”
All the while they shared those words, they didn’t move away from each other.
Chulito thought that he should be turning away at that moment, but he didn’t. He should
put on the brakes because he knew where this was heading, but he didn’t. He should
have been doing a lot of things, but instead he leaned forward and closed the small gap
of space between them and their lips met. They kissed gently at first. Almost as if their
lips were accidentally bumping into each other. And then, the small kisses grew longer.
Carlos slipped his tongue into Chulito’s mouth. Their tongues did a slow waltz circling
one over the other and Chulito could taste a bit of the apple Carlos was eating earlier. It
tasted sweeter than that long ago cherry-blueberry swirl. Chulito caressed Carlos’s bare
arms and slid his hands up to his shoulders drawing him close. Carlos slipped his hands
around Chulito’s waist and they held on for life. When their chests met, their thumping
hearts were like two drums conjuring up the most dangerous spirits. The heat continued
to rise and they kissed without coming up for air, as if they had dived into an ocean
and discovered they could breathe underwater. They embraced tighter and Chulito felt
Carlos’s erection against his own.
Chulito wanted that kiss to last forever and he wanted it to end so that he could
go back. But to what? To the South Bronx, where his friends were hanging out on
the corner talking ghetto politics; where young mothers with their toddlers in toe were
whistled at by old men who called them mamitas; where the Auto Glass guys lined up
outside their shops like prostitutes trying to lure in cars with cracked windshields and
broken mirrors; where even the idea of him and Carlos kissing could be met by a fist, a
heel, a broken bottle or by someone spitting out a cold, hard, “Faggot!”
When they opened their eyes, the only light in the room came from the old
lamp Carlos had turned on earlier. Chulito looked at the small window and wondered if
anybody could see them.
“Your friend should be back soon,” Carlos said.
“We got a few minutes left,” Chulito said as he pulled the chain on the lamp
inviting the darkness to enshroud them, and their lips reunited without trepidation.
How many people had kissed in this room? Chulito wondered. He didn’t know the
answer, but if the spirits were watching, he didn’t think they ever expected two Puerto
Rican boys from the South Bronx to be locked in a kiss whose passion challenged that
of the setting sun.
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