Zen in the art of shoulder squeezing

Rene, my chilean friend, will turn 35 on August 4. He called me today and ordered me to do the shopping with him. The event reached, at least on the phone, epic proportions. More than his birthday, Rene seems to be preparing for his coronation as the emperor of California.

It is during the shopping that hurricane Rene reaches its paroxism. The small Chilean, Argentinian and American flags that he will stick in the melons. "The plastic cups are cheesy and I don't have enough money for 20 real cups at $5.99". "I want to buy a beheaded marble angel for the patio". "What a beautiful japanese vase". "Why am I so worried about the cups being cheesy if Mathew's dishware is awful anyway?" "Where can I buy decent chilean wine?" "I will take care of the barbecue and then I'll serve red wine with peaches and white wine with... with what??? Don't look at me like that, give some ideas!!!". "I told Mathew that I don't want his pineaple pie this time." "The last time some people had diarrea". "He got offended." "I will buy him flowers so that we make amends". "You think flowers are a good idea?" "You know that flowers are the sexual organs of the plants, so giving someone plants is like giving someone a bouquet of chopped penises." "How sad! But now that I think of it, it is a perfect symbol of our relationship". "That is even sadder". "Maybe I'll just buy him a pot plant, a lily or a cactus, what do you think?"

I end up carrying a small pot with yellow flowers, following him around among the crowds that open to yield to the chilean typhoon. He tells me all the details of the purchase of his new brown contact lenses that make him look more latin. We reach Market st. Every time we get to an intersection we have to wait forever for the pedestrian light to turn green. It is a mystery why the small "WALK" sign takes so long to turn if in every direction cars have a red.

My dear - says Rene, with a "let me explain this to you" tone - lights have NOTHING to do with traffic in the Castro. Street lights are designed for cruising. You stop at a red light, look around and start to evaluate: Hmm, that guy's cute but I don't like that nose piercing... Hmm, that guy's too thin but he's probably a tiger in bed... You weigh all the options until you get a green light. You jump on the runway like Claudia Schiffer and reevaluate your candidates at the next corner.

Every day you learn something new.

After several blocks, Rene keeps talking about his new brown contact lenses ("maroon", he corrects me, slightly annoyed) makes him more latin, and how he dyed his hair red and that makes him more Irish.

Suddenly, in front of me, 50 feet away, I see a guy that loos familiar. That weird feeling: it is someone you know but you can remember his name. He is not a friend, or a relative, or an ex friend, or an ex boyfriend... but who is he? Who the hell is he?

I start to traverse the second level of the relationships tree: the list of friends of friends, of friends of relatives, of friends of ex friends, of friends of ex boyfriends... and there I found him, hanging from a far branch: it is Mark, Tom's friend...

Mark is now 20 feet in front of me. He recognizes me and looks puzzled. I see his lips moving and whispering my name to the person in front of him. They both looks down. The guy in front of Mark (I can only see his back), is Tom himself.

Everything happens in 10 seconds. Mark is not completely sure if I recognized him, he hesitates and swallows. 3 more seconds and I am about to pass by them: Mark pretends not to see me and follows me obliquely with his eyes. I see some small wrinkles appear on the back of Tom's shirt. I imagine the small sparks of electricity that tighten his back muscles and the small drop of cold sweat that jumps from vertebrae to vertebrae.

I don't have time to think: I divert from my course a couple of inches, go towards Tom, put my hand in his shoulder and squeeze it lightly. I do not stop, I continue walking. Rene stops, understands I just ran into a friend, and waits for the customary introductions. There is a second of confusion and interference, but I continue walking.

The zen philosophy states that in the art of zen archery the only way to hit the target is to close your eyes and let the arrow find its way in the secret labyrinths of the air. I never thought you could use the same technique in the art of shoulder squeezing.

No thought, no plan, cause and effect anihilating each other: suddenly on the street, the asshole that I dumped a month and a half ago. He doesn't see me, but he knows I am there. He stiffens, he is sure that I'll pretend I didn't see him or that I'll stop and risk having a conversation as if nothing ever happened. But I reconcile yin and yang in a central void, mix together the 8 gastric juices of Shiva's stomach in a cosmic jar and I pull out an absurd gesture - a friendly squeeze in the shoulder - and I continue walking, because everything flows and we never swim twice in the same river.

The gesture is brief, terrifying in its perfection. It is closed in itself, but that doesn't mean that its collateral effects won't propagate like concentric waves in the water of a pond: Tom is going to spend some time asking Mark what my face looked like. Did my face show hatred? pity? regret? Tom is going to spend a couple of hours trying to decode that squeeze, trying to quantify the pressure of my fingertips, halfway between caress and shiatzu. Was it friendly? tender? cocky?

I come back from my astral trip and explain to Reme: "That's Tom". "Really, wow, he's cute!" - answers automatically, and goes back to his world, inhabitted by $5.99 cups, beheaded marble angels and small rubber pigs. Half a block afterwards he suddenly stops, grabs my arm firmly, makes me look at him in the face, and shouts: "What a bitch you are! I can't believe it! Where did you learn to be so mean? You have been watching too many Mexican soap operas!".

I say goodbye to Rene and his yellow flowers and I eject myself to the estratosphere. And from up there, tied to the flesh of my illusional body by a silver thread, I see again all those incandescent emails sent back and forth when we broke up, that superflous and sweaty post mortem chess, those first aid procedures trying to resuscitate Tutankamon.

What a fool.

I should have known that it was enough just to close my eyes, raise the arch, vibrate slightly with the tension of the cord released and abandon the arrow to the tiranny of gravity.

And hit the target.

Sweet charity

[October 20th, 2004, Buenos Aires]

- I am late to see La Traviatta - Tiago was getting impatient on the phone. Open my email and see if there is anything urgent. And if there are questions about my services just send that small paragraph that explains everything.
- Yes sir. If the lady calls, what should I say to her?
- Tell her her husband went to the Opera with one of his clients. She better have my food ready when I get home.
- Yes sir.
- Stop saying sir to me, you fag. That "secretary in a miniskirt taking notes on my lap" fantasy of yours is annoying me.
- Then hire a real secretary in a miniskirt to answer your email. Also: buy your own computer.
- Be a good boy. I have to go now, we'll chat later.

The same emails as always: how much is a massage, please explain what it means to get a massage with "relax", the price is in pesos or dollars? Among the stack of male nicknames - the hunks, the studs and the machos - there is one that stands out: "Silvia, questions about your service".

Hello,
My name is Silvia. I saw your webpage on the internet and I would like to ask you for an appointment to get a massage and something more. But first I wanted to know how much it costs and if you would see someone that weighs 290 lbs, a lot of people don't want to be in bed with someone that is this obese. Depending on your answer, I will ask for an appointment or not. Thanks for your consideration and I'll be waiting for an answer. I would like to add that I am not a monster and I am doing this because I do not want to have any commitments, but I need someone to be sweet with me.
Kisses,
Silvia

I spent the whole day trying to digest that email. Im not 290 lbs but I am fat. I posted pictures of me on the internet that are 3 years old, my brief hollywood period, when I was 30 lbs lighter. When I describe myself in the chatrooms I use the word "rugbier", and if they want details, "stocky" and if they point a gun at me I admit that "I have a bit of a belly, but I am not fat AT ALL".

I still remember that night when I fell from the sky, like Icarus. I was dancing at a club and some kind of muscled Adonis, drunk and clumsy, approached me and started to kiss me. We went to a cheap motel around the corner, we fucked and we talked, in that order. He wanted to know why I was avoiding his stares all night. I said I didn't know, but I knew: I thought the guy - with his muscles, his blue eyes and his cute shaved head, and wrapped in the centripetal looks of half of the crowd - was staring at someone else. He put his hands behind his head, flexed his biceps and launched the missile, unaware of the casualties: "Since I saw you I was after you... it was so obvious, I stared at you for 2 hours. I love little bears".

Yogui bear. Panda bear. Bear. Little bear.

I wanted to correct the misunderstanding, the big mistake in his taxonomy: I'm not all that hairy. I am not part of any association, I rarely eat honey. This butterfly was being pinned in the wrong page of the album. Of course I understand the confusion, but it has to be a mistake... bear? Myself? What about some other animal? I'm a dog in the chinese horoscope, I'm faithful and woof woof, and beware of me, and I shake my tail and I will pee on your plants if you don't pay attention.

But I didn't say anything and it got worse, because he understood my silence as an invitation to autobiographical and zoological remarks. My previous boyfriend was just like you, a little bear, he added. He said little bear every 8 seconds or at least that's how it felt. When he tried to lean his head on my shoulder I jumped out of bed and said I wanted to take a shower. I then spent 10 minutes soaping myself and looking at myself in the smokey mirror, feeling as one of those animals in an egyptian vase, half bear, half human.

- So, any urgent email? - the next day Tiago is on the phone again.
- No, not really. Well, a woman sent an email asking about your services.
- Did you answer with that paragraph I gave you?
- Yes, but I felt so bad for her... I was thinking all day about her, I can't get her out of my mind...
- You felt bad about what?
- She's a little overweight, she's 290. Very sweet.
- What? I can't hear well, give me a minute, I'll come out of the store. How much does she weigh?
- 290.
- Forget about it. Tell her I'll give her a massage, that she got it wrong, that I only give massages.
- Don't be so mean, poor woman, I feel so bad...
- Then you fuck her. That's even better, I have too much work, I'm overbooked already.
- You behave like that, you'll go to hell...
- I am not the Red Cross.
- I noticed, believe me. What's the big deal?
- Don't you get it, are you that stupid? I can't get it hard, it's happened to me with guys that show up by surprise and they are in very bad condition... I have to say I only give massages. There are some that I can't fuck even using Viagra and even though I'm a professional.
- A professional would see this woman... Tiago, seriously, can you imagine feeling that noone in the entire world wants to fuck you? Nobody... not one in the zillions of stupid perverts in the galaxy.
- I told you: you fuck her.
- She saw your page, not mine. She got all excited about it, she wants to be fucked by the same male prostitute that fucks everyone else... don't you get it? She doesn't want me, some random guy...
- I understand perfectly, you don't. I'm a prostitute, not a wind-up toy. And this conversation is over, you are pissing me off.
- Don't be so fucking stubborn. You've fucked ugly guys that you didn't like at all before...
- Stop trying to mind fuck me. You are also a bottom in that regard...
- I am not trying to manipulate you... I just feel bad, I was all day thinking about her...
- That just means you have a lot of free time... Ugly or fat women get married so someone is forced to fuck them. That's how it works. I am not married to anyone, I don't have to fuck anyone I don't want to fuck... so we are done with this topic. Send an email telling her how much is a massage session.
- I won't send any email, you do it yourself.
- You are so stubborn and childish, Jesus.
- Let's talk later, I have to go get my laundry.
- You just don't get that what I do is just a job? You just refuse to...
- I gotta go. Bye.
- Whatever. Bye.

We never talked about Silvia again, even though I couldn't forget that email for a week. Each time Tiago tried to bring up the topic or explain anything to me, I told him I didn't want to talk about it.

A week later he was again on the phone asking me to look for something in his email.

- I need the address of that furniture store, it's somewhere in the sent folder... just do a search on "sofa".
- Here it is, write it down.

I gave him the address and he hung up. At the bottom of the page, 50 emails before, an email topic got my attention: "Re: Silvia, questions about your service".

HELLO SILVIA

I AM SORRY THAT I DIDNT RESPOND TO YOUR EMAIL EARLIER. IT WAS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST AND I JUST SAW IT. I APOLLOGIZE FOR THAT.

I DONT HAVE ANY PROBLEMS SEEING YOU AND I DONT HAVE ANY PROBLEMS WITH PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT THIN. EVERYTHING IS OKAY, I AM VERY GENTLE IN BED, WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A GREAT TIME. I WAS MARRIED FOR FIVE YEARS AND I KNOW HOW TO PLEASE A WOMAN.

THE SERVICE INCLUDES A FULL BODY MASSAGE, KISSES, HUGS, TOUCHING, CARESSING, FOREPLAY AND PENETRATION.

HUGS AND KISSES,
TIAGO