4. My Boyfriend
My Boyfriend
Gerardo Sámano Córdova
I’m aware my boyfriend is possessed. He was possessed long before we met.
Kind of why I think he was determined to date me.
He’s hot (midnight-fantasies-can’t-sleep hot), that demon glow—Oof—the violent sharpness of his bones, a hairiness close to fur, his beastly ravenousness, et cetera.
Would he be as hot unpossessed? No. (Still turn-your-head handsome.) He’s also nice, the non-demon part, like cinnamon roll nice—gooey, sweet, and a great comfort in the mornings: he remembers what I say better than I do, has framed three of my drawings and taken one to his office (to look at, I presume, as some sort of talisman).
Sometimes he stares at me so happy I exist, like I’m a veritable godsend.
I squirm. I’m no godsend. I took him possessed, and he took me milquetoast (I wouldn’t even say ugly, ugly has panache).
My boyfriend doesn’t slaughter people. He doesn’t lure them to evil either (cheating or stealing or murdering or whatever).
He condemns some to hell, but we all do that, “Go to hell!” to someone who cuts you off in traffic, that type of thing, except when he does it and his voice changes pitch, I imagine he actually damns them, their souls irreparably doomed.
The best demonic he does is fuck like it’s a competition and the prize is paradise.
At least, he used to. He’s lost his moxy.
My boyfriend seems content in routine: work, come home, prepare a healthy snack, and watch cooking competition shows in shorts and socks.
The curandera took one look at my boyfriend and “Yup,” she said.
“Possessed.” This was a few months ago, two years into our relationship.
He was tired of waking up in the night speaking in several pitches of unintelligible grotesquerie, of the persistent neck soreness from gyrating 360 degrees, of the projectile spewing of blood from every orifice (nasty business, lots of mopping, sheets like Kleenex until we decided we didn’t mind keeping them bloodstained).
Mainly, he said, he wanted me to have him and only him.
No demon, no more. My Felipe wants me all to himself, how cute.
But I don’t mind the demon—two boyfriends for the price of one.
The curandera lit her candles, spoke her incantations, did the herb-shaking cleanse and the egg cleanse (yolk came out like tar). “Very dark demon,” she announced.
My boyfriend paled, and I hid the pride I felt.
If I was dating a demon (semi-dating? Dating by proxy?), it better be the darkest, foulest.
My grandma used to say, “Isidro, listen, better alone than badly accompanied.” She was right (she should be; her husband died twenty years before she did, and she was never livelier), but when you’re me—a guy who’s been alone for a while, early forties, and an uncannily pretty man offers to buy you a drink at the bar you swore you wouldn’t go to anymore because you come out more depressed than when you go in, but you still go because, what the hey, what else are you doing on a Friday night—you say yes to the drink, and you say yes to going back to his apartment, and when in the middle of heavy making-out, naked and groping each other’s asses, thighs, cocks, as if grabbing were breathing and your flesh oxygen, his body spasms and it looks like eels are crawling beneath his skin and his voice lowers to a cavern-like book and says who knows what in a primeval-sounding language and his eyes darken like black marbles and you’re sure that this is it, this is the moment you die, and the only thing that comes to your mind is that you forgot your laundry in the dryer…
you give in; you relinquish your life and hope the demon does a better job of it than you.
We can’t have dinner parties. Though my boyfriend’s demonic demonstrations happen after midnight, he doesn’t want to risk alarming our friends.
His friends. My friend is singular and she moved three hours away to Querétaro: husband, two boys, SUV, house in a gated complex—the middle-class dream.
She used to be fun. The first of us to get a tattoo, the one to score coke, the one who slept over on Sundays to avoid the weekstart gloomies.
Now she gets bored and calls me to announce her husband is cheating (he’s not), and when doubly bored, she calls to confess she’s the one who’s cheating (she hasn’t, but it’s only a matter of opportunity until she does).
When I tell Felipe’s friends I’m a political cartoonist and their eyes go wide and they say something clichéd but genuine like “That’s so cool,” I answer with “It pays the bills.” Is it so hard to say, “Yes, super-duper cool” and puff like a puffer fish?
My therapist argues I don’t believe what I do is “super-duper cool” and that’s why I can’t puff about it.
He may be right. Then again, he nods off half my sessions and snaps back as if he were a staunch listener.
I should change therapists, but the idea of starting anew, erasing all the hours invested in this guy (even if he remembers only a portion of my inanities), exhausts me.
My boyfriend works at a bank, financial something or other.
I joke that’s why he’s possessed. Banker: demon, the analogy checks.
He hates the joke. He’s not high up enough in the organization to warrant evil taking residence in him…
His position doesn’t even have the power to ruin people’s lives.
I work in cafés around la Nápoles—sometimes I walk up to Escandón, or take the metrobus down to Coyoacán.
People sneak glances, curious to know if it’s them I’m sketching.
They’re seldom right, but their stares are thrilling.
I like to imagine their mouthwatering jealousy at learning I am in a relationship with a demon.
Sometimes after a demonic demonstration, after we’ve mopped up the blood, put the sheets into the wash, and replaced them with a stained but dry set, my boyfriend weeps and I hold him.
His shivering is deep, a jackhammering in his marrow.
I encase him the best I can, like I’m Tupperware, like I won’t let him spill.
My boyfriend goes to once-a-week sessions with the curandera. Her place is enchanting. An old casona in Coyoacán with a courtyard brimming with potted plants, bougainvilleas prowling up the walls. I accompany him to all appointments, reading in the courtyard while he gets cleansed.
He doesn’t get cleansed. The demon, as the curandera warned from the get-go, is too powerful. Still, the curandera holds hope. Felipe holds hope. I hold hope Felipe will learn to enjoy his demon, let it loose once in a while without regret.
Today, I read a lovely novel about divorce.
I’d forgotten the pleasure of a good book, and his sessions have become my special reading time.
Alone in the curandera’s courtyard, it’s as if I don’t need anything else but my book and my heartbeat.
It’s as if I once knew how to be by myself…
some ancient mastery (pre-forties, when lonesomeness is still a choice and not a condition).
The afternoon sun warms the terra-cotta floors, the plants sway, a soundtrack of birds, this cushioned Acapulco chair swaddling me like a womb.
Today, Felipe comes out sprightlier than ever.
“The demon weakens!” the curandera announces. I adore the rattle of her piling necklaces and bracelets, her one missing tooth, the way her salt-and-pepper hair poofs wild. I believe everything she says. “The demon loses its hold!”
I could’ve told them that. The demon has been losing its vim for a while.
I wait for Felipe naked. Our one-bedroom apartment consists of the one bedroom, one bathroom, and an open space made up of living room with TV, kitchen, and dining table.
I stretch on the living room sofa. La maja desnuda right when he comes in.
I don’t know if this is sexy… at least it’s a clear message.
Wind from the open door rushes against my naked skin, groping, as if it too wants to partake in the sexiness.
He watches me with the same strained effort he looks at art, a puzzle to solve.
I bend over, ass up. I’m not art. I’m not a puzzle.
I’m not a formal exercise hiding a sociopolitical message. I just want to get fucked.
“Nice,” he says, sets his briefcase down (This is it! About to get rammed!), slides his apron on, and begins emptying the dishwasher. “Did you eat today?” He opens the pantry. I’m watching all this unfold from under my spread legs. “We have jicamas, I could prepare them with honey-lime dressing.”
“Demon, demon,” I call in my boyfriend’s ear while he sleeps. “Demon, demon.” (I don’t know its name.) The demon doesn’t answer.
My friend who lives in Querétaro tells me on the phone that I’m not the center of the universe. She’s on the treadmill, winded. “People have things going on, you know. If I don’t call, it doesn’t mean I’ve stopped loving you.”
“I know. It feels personal sometimes though.”
She huffs, puffs. “It is, sometimes.”
“How can I tell when it’s personal?”
“You can’t. Unless you ask. But do you really want to be asking people why they don’t want to talk to you at any given time? That, right there, is reason enough to cut you off.”
“Yeah… that’d be annoying. By the way, Felipe is possessed.”
“You wish.”
“I’m serious.”
“Since when?”
“I met him possessed.”
“And you’re only telling me now?”
“He doesn’t want anyone to know. I was being a good boyfriend.”
“Why are you not being a good boyfriend now?”
“The demon seems to have fallen out of love… lust… I don’t think demons do love.”
“So no sex, huh?”
“No, nothing. Just blah. It hates me.”
“See… this is what you do, Isi. Everything is your fault, no? Well, no. Maybe the demon has problems in hell. Maybe it’s not doing its job correctly. Maybe it’ll get fired. Maybe the demon is sick. Why do you think everyone must hate you? You’re not that hateable. Geez.”
“I guess not.”