13

Rafael Barrios, sitting in his living room, Jackson Street, San Diego, California, March 1981. Have you seen Easy Rider? That's right, the movie with Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson. That was basically what we were like back then. But especially Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano, before they left for Europe. Like Dennis Hopper and his doppelgänger: two dark figures, moving fast and full of energy. And it's not that I have anything against Peter Fonda but neither of them looked like him. Müller looked like Peter Fonda. Those two, on the other hand, looked just like Dennis Hopper and that was creepy and seductive, creepy and seductive to those of us who knew them, I mean, those of us who were their friends. And this isn't a judgment of Peter Fonda. I like Peter Fonda. Whenever that movie he made with Frank Sinatra's daughter and Bruce Dern is on TV I watch it, even if I have to stay up till four in the morning. But neither of them looked like him. And they really did look like Dennis Hopper. It was as if they were consciously imitating him. Two Dennis Hoppers walking the streets of Mexico City. A Mr. Hopper spiraling from east to west, like a double black cloud, until (inevitably) they vanished without a trace on the other side of the city, the side where there was no way out. And sometimes I'd look at them and even though I liked them a lot I'd think, what kind of act is this? what kind of scam or collective suicide is this? And one night, a little before New Year's Day 1976, before they left for Sonora, I realized it was their way of playing politics, a way that isn't my way anymore and that at the time I didn't understand. Their way might have been good or bad, right or wrong, but it was their way of playing politics, of politically influencing reality. I'm sorry if what I'm saying doesn't make sense. Lately I've been feeling a little bit confused.

Barbara Patterson, in her kitchen, Jackson Street, San Diego, California, March 1981. Dennis Hopper? Politics? That son of a bitch! That piece of butt-hair-crusted shit! What does that dumbfuck know about politics? I was the one who said: take up politics, Rafael, take up some noble cause, goddamn it, you're a freaking man of the people, and the bastard would look at me like I was shit, some piece of trash, like he was looking down from some imaginary height, and he would say: cool it, Barbarita, it's not so easy, and then he'd go to sleep and I'd have to go out to work and then school, I was busy all day, basically, I'm still busy all day, back and forth from the university to work (I waitress at a burger place on Reston Avenue), and when I came home Rafael would be asleep, the dishes in the sink, the floor dirty, crumbs in the kitchen (but no food for me, the deadbeat!), the house a pit, like a pack of baboons had been through, and then I'd have to start to clean, sweep, cook, then go out shopping to stock the refrigerator, and when Rafael woke up I'd ask him: have you written, Rafael? have you started your novel about Chicano life in San Diego? and Rafael would look at me like he was watching me on TV and say: I wrote a poem, Barbarita, and then I would give up and say all right, asshole, read it to me, and Rafael would open a couple of beers and hand me one (the bastard knows I shouldn't drink beer), then read me the goddamn poem. And it must be because deep down I still love him that the poem would make me cry almost without me realizing it (only if it was good), and when Rafael was done reading my face would be wet and shiny and he would come closer to me and I could smell him, he smelled like a Mexican, the bastard, and we would hold each other very gently, and then, but maybe half an hour later, we would start to make love, and then Rafael would say to me: what are we going to eat, baby? and I would get up, without getting dressed, and go into the kitchen and make him his eggs with ham and bacon, and as I cooked I would think about literature and politics and I would remember the time when Rafael and I were still living in Mexico and we went to see a Cuban poet, let's go see him, Rafael, I said, you're a man of the people and that faggot will have to recognize how talented you are whether he wants to or not, and Rafael said: but I'm a visceral realist, Barbarita, and I said don't be a dumb shit, your goddamn balls are visceral realist, will you face the fucking truth for once in your life, darling? so Rafael and I went to see the great lyric poet of the Revolution, and all the Mexican poets Rafael hated most (the poets Belano and Lima hated most, that is) had been there, it was funny because both of us could tell it by the smell, the Cuban's hotel room smelled like the peasant poets, like the poets from the magazine El Delfín Proletario, like Huerta's wife, like the Mexican Stalinists, like the shitty revolutionaries who cash a government check every two weeks, but anyway, what I said to myself and what I tried to tell Rafael telepathically was: don't blow it now, don't fuck this up, and the Havana guy was nice to us, a little tired, a little sad, but basically nice, and Rafael talked about the young Mexican poets but not about the visceral realists (before we went in I told him I'd kill him if he did) and I even came up on the spot with a plan for a magazine that, I said, the University of San Diego was going to fund, and the Cuban was interested in that, interested in Rafael's poems, interested in my fucking nonexistent magazine, and suddenly, when our visit was almost over, the Cuban, who at this point seemed more asleep than awake, suddenly asked us about visceral realism. I don't know how to explain it. The room in that fucking hotel. The silence and the distant elevators. The smell of the previous visitors. The Cuban's eyes, closing from sleep or boredom or liquor. His unexpected words, as if spoken by a man under hypnosis, a man mesmerized. It made me give a little scream, just a little scream but it sounded like a shot. It must have been nerves, that's what I told them. Then the three of us were silent for a while, the Cuban surely wondering who this hysterical gringa must be, Rafael wondering whether or not to talk about the group, and me saying over and over to myself you stupid fucking bitch, one of these days you're going to have to sew your fucking mouth shut. And then, as I imagined myself sitting in my closet at home, with a giant scab for a mouth, reading the stories of El llano en llamas over and over again, I heard Rafael talking about the visceral realists, I heard the fucking Cuban asking question after question, I heard Rafael saying yes, saying maybe, talking about the birth pangs of communism, I heard the Cuban proposing manifestos, proclamations, repostulations, greater ideological clarity, and then I couldn't restrain myself anymore and I opened my mouth and said that those days were over now, now Rafael was only speaking for himself, like the good poet he was, and then Rafael said be quiet, Barbarita, and I said don't tell me to be quiet, you bum, and the Cuban said oh, women, and tried to step in with his rotten, revolting macho bullshit, and I said shit, shit, shit, we just want to be published by the Casa de las Américas on our own merits, and then the Cuban looked at me very seriously and said of course, the Casa de las Américas always publishes people on their merits. As long as it suits them, I said, and Rafael said Jesus, Barbarita, the maestro will get the wrong idea, and I said the fucking maestro can think whatever he fucking wants, but the past is the past, Rafael, and your future is your future, right? and then the Cuban looked at me even more seriously, his eyes seeming to say sweetheart, if we were in Moscow you'd end up in a mental ward, but at the same time (I noticed this too) as if he were thinking, well, what does it matter, madness is madness is madness, and sadness too, and at the end of the day the three of us are Americans, children of Caliban, lost in the great American wilderness, and I think that touched me, to see a spark of understanding, a spark of tolerance in the eyes of that powerful man, as if he were saying don't take it to heart, Barbara, I know how these things are, and then, like an idiot, I smiled, and Rafael took out his poems, some fifty loose-leaf pages, and said here are my poems, friend, and the Cuban took his poems and thanked him, and then right away he and Rafael got up, as if in slow motion, like a flash of lightning, or twin flashes, or a flash and its shadow, but in slow motion, and in that fraction of a second I thought: everything is all right, I hope everything will be all right, and I saw myself swimming on a Havana beach and I saw Rafael by my side, a little distance away, talking to some American journalists, people from New York, from San Francisco, talking about LITERATURE, talking about POLITICS, at the gates of paradise.