Crying at the Supermercado

In the year 1994, Rolandito Salas Jusino was born. I was four that year. He was four when he disappeared.

In other words he was by himself in the community park and he was four and he had mousy ears and he was four and he was light-skinned and he was four and he smiled through many milk carton photographs and he smiled frozenly, smiled frozenly four, in many news reports and in many news hours and news half hours and news quarterly reports and commentary sessions and black and white El Nuevo Día Puerto Rico’s Finest Newspaper shots and in many Front Page color shots—smiling frozenly four: a smile that’s fit to print, frozen into the year 1999, his eyes emanating from some center, his eyes in print and in monitor seeing the eyes seeing him on the milk cartons and the reports and the television screens and the FBI Missing Persons page.

He was called Rolandito like I was called by my parents and my grandparents. But this is about Rolandito not about me, this is about a four year old, actually no it’s about something else, it’s not about 1999 when he was 4 and I was 8, it’s about 2000 when I was a little older, a little young but still a little older, and Rolandito was still four even though he might have been older too, because he was frozen.

I was nine maybe and I was in a classroom with drawings of test tubes on the walls and it was always hot in there we were talking, I think maybe we had gone off-topic and the off-topic topic was done with and we were just talking about something off the off-topic, and I don’t know how it was brought up, conversation-wise, but I know that it all started with a raised hand, the raised hand of a boy, a boy named Christian, or that’s how it starts for me in my memory anyway, with the teacher looking at a seat behind me, me turning my head to see the raised hand of Christian, the athletic boy who never let me play volleyball, who always had an it-wasn’t-me face.

He said, “Missi,” as in Missus, pronounced Mee-See—he said “Missi,” as in Teacher, as in Maybe You Have The Answer Because I Didn’t Ask My Mom Because I Don’t Ask My Mom Things Like This—he said with his hand up, “Missi,” and Missi said, “Yes?” “Missi, I was in the supermercado the other day, I was with my mom, and we were at the cashier’s box, paying, I mean I wasn’t paying but my mom was,” and the lighting was fluorescent and pale and people always look gray then, “and two aisles ahead, I saw Rolandito’s mom.”

Rolandito’s mom, unlike Rolandito, was not frozen, and the year 1999 ended and 2000 began and time continued for her and the only way Rolandito grew for her was through those digitized age progression pictures. Or that frozen one.

“I saw Rolandito’s mom,” Christian said, “and I didn’t get it, Missi.” And then Missi said, “What didn’t you get, Christian?” And Christian said, “Well, it’s just,” and he even rolled his eyes a little bit, because he knew it was very obvious, “it’s just that she wasn’t crying.”

And so Missi, middle-aged and attractive, Missi who had her own daughters and her volleyball body and her volleyball career and her volleyball hotness and who taught science and who had a great ass even though I didn’t know about great asses then or if I did I wasn’t aware on the “Look She Has A Great Ass” level—Missi with the great ass said, “Well, Christian, life goes on.”

Now we were all confused: how can life go on? She expanded: “We can’t always be crying in the supermercados and the supermalls and the supermax and the wal mart,” she said or something like that, “we need to do what we need to do. Believe me, Rolandito’s mom had had a lot of time to cry. And maybe she still does, but not in the supermercados. It’s okay not to cry at the supermercados.” But Christian still didn’t understand, I could tell. 

I didn’t understand it either. 

ROMEO MOTHERFUCKER

“Oh,” she says. 

Her eyes are glazed, like those of a bored house cat. He had a cat once. Fucking hated it. But it’s not hate he feels now. It’s more like his body is buried under snow in the north pole, his head sticking out, like a mole, being torn to pieces by a polar bear. With penguins watching.

Cold, that’s how he feels.

“Eh, uh, oh,” she says, her head shaking like a dog drying off. “No, I mean—” she clears her throat, and her eyes look at him with a steely certainty, composure regained: "No."


She walks away. He can’t hear the click-clack of her heels on the floor. Maybe it’s because he’s thinking about the fact that she should’ve been wearing the ring by now. Or maybe it’s because there are 23,500 people in the basketball arena who have just released a collective gasp, followed by a worried murmur. In the overhead monitor, a pink heart frames the solitary man with the ring in his hand. The caption under the heart: "CONGRATULATIONS!" The woman walks away from the frame, her hand over her eyes and her eyes cast down, her feet awkward on their heels.

He finds it in him to pursue her, walking behind her with the clumsy strides of a duck. “Jen,” he whimpers, over the burgeoning, bleating crowd-noise.


"I got pop-corn, I got beer, I got everything, hear hear!"

Within the crowd, someone is laughing. The man with the ring in his hand hears it over the cacophony and the stereo and the pop-corn and the boom box. It’s not cold he feels now. Now it’s like his dick is falling off of him.

He can see the headline. Pre-game show highlights: man’s penis falls off before stunned crowd. Referees pick up scrotum shreds.

He stops, looks at the stadium crowd around him, and feeling the urge of politeness or a surge of weight, holds out his hand to them, the one that doesn’t hold the ring, with the index finger up, as if saying, shush, shush, mommy and daddy are talking.

“I’LL BE RIGHT BACK,” he shouts. “OKAY JUST A MINUTE.”

Then he walks off the court, leaving it empty and lit.

On the sidelines, the man wearing the jersey (home team, yellow, number 45) wipes his face. “Romeo motherfucker got the raw deal,” he says. Coach, standing up, arms crossed, shakes his head and bites his tongue. Number 45 shakes his head too: “Juliet be trippin, man.”

In the crowd, a man continues laughing. He is still laughing when home team loses later that night; and it’s maybe his laughter that bounces off the alley walls when in the black hours of morning a beggar finds a 14 karat ring in the dumpster behind Cheng's, the Chinese joint.

2009: Gay Panic in the San Juan Streets

            “She—or he, or whatever—just shouldn’t have taunted him.”
            That’s Victor. He’s been our official driver since high school. He had a Cadillac. We had feet. He's got issues with self-esteem and women and such. He's a midget.
            “What?” Collectively said by me, Carlos, Norbert, and René. Or to be less confusing, I’ll just say “we,” “us,” a big majority.
            We’re in Lola’s room, in my house. Lola is our seventeen-inch Apple computer, and the room is spacious and has a plasma TV, a set of game consoles, and an exercise machine. It’s on the second floor of my house, and large windows look out to the neighborhood and the mountains beyond. Here my brothers and I play Rock Band; we in the family watch The Sopranos, Law and Order, and Steven Spielberg movies; my friends and I watch YouTube videos from our megatronic Apple computer; and we have debates about everything in the comfort of the air-conditioner breeze. Today is one such occasion. 
            “I’m not saying what he did was right,” Victor continues, “but what I’m saying, just hear me out guys, is that if he or she would have told him that, you know, he was a man dressed as a woman—he, the guy who did it, wouldn’t have gotten angry.”
            We replied: “It was la avenida 15 on a weekday night, Victor. You don’t go there looking for women.”
           He countered: “Maybe he didn’t know that, man!”
            Who “he/she” was: a man dressed in drag, hair stylist by day and prostitute by night.
            What the other guy “did” that was not right but understandable: soliciting sex from said prostituto, taking her to his apartment, fucking her on his couch, proceeding then to dismember her and decapitate her. 
            To clean up his tracks, he burned the couch.
            “But you are justifying the act, though,” we say to Victor. “You’re defending his decision, you’re—”
            “Hey, man, like, I’m not saying it was right,” Victor stumbles, “All I’m saying is, if she wouldn’t have provoked him, he wouldn’t have killed her.”
            Gay Panic--the Laramie Defense. And then there's the Twinkie defense. What was that about, hamburgers? All kinds of shit makes you kill gay people, apparently. But never with such purpose, with such verve, as this man who kindled a fire. There's something maniacal about that, something that doesn't bespeak a "panic." It goes much deeper.
            “We’re not saying that you’re saying it’s right, we’re saying you’re defending him.”
            “All I’m sayin is it’s her fault! She provoked him! She should know--”
            “What the fuck? What do you mean ‘provoked’ him? It wasn’t like this guy was surgically operated or anything. He was a thin man wearing a wig, speaking in falsetto. You can tell, you know.”
            “Well, it was dark, the queen should’ve been clear about it.”
            “Dude, you can see the Adam’s apple.”
            “He could’ve been good at pretending to have a woman’s voice.”
            “You know, you’re defending machismo. You’re defending a culture that simply accepts as fact that some people should be more afraid of getting hurt than others: that if you’re gay, that means it’s okay for people to get angry at you for being gay. Would you like it--”
            I stop. I finish the sentence in my head: Would you like it if people killed you for being a midget?
            But since I don't finish the comment, Victor rolls his eyes.
            We debate for an hour and, the effort proving futile on both sides, we go out for drinks.
            As it turns out, the lead investigator of the case is on Victor’s side. Quoted in the newspaper and all: “People who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen.”
            Can't be any clearer than that.