Take 2.

TAKE 2.

When the sugar cane throws its silky seeds high into the bluest of Salvadoran skies,
November already,
The circus comes to town.

It blooms overnight, colorful petals one by one assembling themselves
Opening up to the stars, breathing in deep the brisk winds, the sleepy volcanoes.
The small, hardworking, calloused people of these lands will come to see.

We come, truckloads of us. We come and drink coffee in Styrofoam cups and eat tortas and
Popcorn, the young men drinking sugar cane liquor in the shadows, underneath trees, silent.
The tent opens and two sad beautiful women collect our dollar bills and we step in,
Into another world, the finest theater in El Salvador, dirt floors and wobbly wooden benches,
Cigarette smoke and the smell of beer permeate the air as we eagerly await the clowns,
The dancers, the jugglers, the trapizee, and the most famous character of all Latin America:
The maricón. We come mostly to see him.

We will die before saying it, but we all want to be the maricón, the faggot.
Stiletto heels, frayed jean skirt, a blond wig, and so much makeup may seem like lies,
But he dances well. He dances well.

We avoid eye contact, throw our liquor bottles, whistle, crack jokes with our buddies. Yet
We stare at his firm ass and cheap sequined silver shirt, carefully exposing his belly button and
The joke is on us.
He is the only one doing what he wants.

This is the stuff of love.
We might all well be maricones if we are brave enough to dance with all the jealous taunts,
The hisses of people too scared to dance. (Good circuses are full of mirrors).

I am on the stands, she has been in the ring, and tripped,
And I probably don’t have the strength to write the poem I need to about her.
It would have been too complicated to say some still foreign part of me would’ve liked to
Stand up and make my way down through the crowds of cowboys and dance.
It is easier to say, «How could she?, freak of nature for being so confused. Maricón. »

But there are no more sorries anymore.
We have both fucked up, the circus is already over.
He will dance again soon, a new song,
We have one more dollar folded deep in our jeans pocket.

We get into these rusty pickups and ride through the fields, the landscape as alone as space,
The moon burning bright,
Going back to our small homes and sleeping the night away, that damn
Maricón haunting our dreams.

Date No. 2

Date #2

We part ways at MetroCenter. I am heading home.

I down two beers in the bus station bathroom in San Salvador, hidden behind a stall with the smell of shit mixed with beer, the noise of the city,

and I am in Cal Anderson Park in Seattle all over again, me and Alex slamming whisky in the basketball court on late Friday nights.

I ride the bus in the rain, buzzed (Seattle again), free, happy, giddy, thinking about why I didn´t kiss her, why I won´t.

But she looked great today. Great. It had been seven months since I´d seen her. She is smart, funny.

And my mom, what would she say? Would the other girl be jealous? She sounded jealous on the phone.

I am here now in my hotel room waiting.

Open

She tells me I´m not open enough. That´s my problem.
That´s not true. That´s not who I am.
I am ready to be open, but for the right thing.

The night we went to the lake, when we sat on the dock and got drunk on cheap liquor and went back to the room and she tried to get into my pants, kissing me hard and pushing me onto the bed, I really didn´t want that. Or expect that. That sucked man. It was not the right thing.

So I shut her down. Because no, I´m not open to half-way love.
I fell out of love very quickly the last time I tried it.
Being generous, one would say I know what I want and don´t settle.

For so long, and this will continue, I have felt I have needed to be strong.
Can that mix with love? I think so. After all, Obama´s married.

And maybe she is too open, maybe that´s why three times now she is getting hurt. Maybe she is too unsure of who she is, what she needs, where she is going, and she is afraid to do all of that alone.

I am not afraid of being hurt, if that´s what you are thinking. So why does that sound like a lie? Who isn´t afraid of that?

Is it also a lie to say that in three years I have not met anyone I´ve been interested in that has also like me?

It´s true to say I also haven´t been trying.

My friend gave and lost a lot to a girl who threw him away.
The way I see it, then, where´s the harm in waiting? But what am I waiting for?

Cuz I hear all those cheesy things bout saving me, rescuing me, love love love.
Man, I´m just trying to save me. And that´s as far as it goes.

So is she right, that I don´t want to take care of anyone right now, don´t want to accept responsibility for anyone´s feelings? Yeah, but I do. Man I do that with a lot of people, even with her.

Cuz my mom said that when it´s right, it´s something you wanna do. It´s compassion and sympathy and you reach out because you wanna feel what they feel, be there, not just help or save, but laugh, love, be lazy on Sundays, eat out, be happy.

Maybe she´s got it all about finding someone to help her- Maybe that´s not it. Or at least, it´s not the reason to love…to help.

So what to do? I guess I have to just keep being me, and I have to look for opportunities. That, honestly, is not so easy here. But I must do it, because Obama´s married, but Batman isn´t.

Or why? At my own pace man. My uncle got married at 75. My grandma at 19. We live our lives man.

I remember summers in Colorado, the mountains, the rain, the wonderful people. The green. Man, that´s where I need to be.

Day by day.