4. My Boyfriend #2
“The demon must be starving. Don’t demons need sacrifices to stay alive?”
“We do the sacrifices, of course! A chicken every new moon. When the night is darkest.”
“Lovely.”
“It is actually a charming ritual. Candles, chants, we dance naked, drink chicken’s blood, lather in it.”
“Ew. You do it, too? How does it taste?”
“Warm.”
The time we didn’t do a sacrifice (out of curiosity, testing what would happen), my boyfriend seethed, shrieked, smashed half the apartment, clawed his skin.
I watched: at first huddled in a corner, then I got in his way.
I wanted to see if he would smash me like the dining chair, our blender, and all our plates.
I offered myself. Break me, too. His black marble eyes scanned me.
He grunted and flung me out of the way. I flew, not because he used that much force, but because I needed to know what it felt to be hurt by him, if he could ruin my enchantment. He couldn’t.
The next day he felt so bad among the debris, he called in sick and cried while I tended to his torn skin. My enchantment relies on his duality: the terrifying excitement of his wildness giving way to softness, the way he embraces me, ear to my chest, my heartbeat a salve lulling him to sleep.
We brunch with Felipe’s friends on a sunny patio in la Roma.
People wear sunglasses, fashionable jeans, lean back like there’s nothing better to life than this Saturday, this patio in Mexico City.
His friends, a couple who brew beer in their backyard, hug me like I’m an old friend.
There’s an exquisiteness to my boyfriend when he’s having fun: louder, more rotund—smacking down his enfrijoladas, nothing tastier, the slurping of his coffee, the delight as he nibbles on his concha, a contagious savoring.
I wonder what part of passion is demon. The hunger is demon, the savoring Felipe.
He holds my hand. His friends coo “Adorable,” and I soak up their jealousy.
It might be genuine warmth. Whatever the case, my palms sweat.
They know Felipe. They don’t know the demon. The demon is all mine to love.
Next morning, we’re in bed. Even if we’re not cinematographed in sweeping light and the ambient noises are uncurated (I could do without the motorcycle roaring past), this is the kind of scene I believed only happened in movies: our whispers intimate, our pauses romantic, his breath a stinky delicacy, his eyes so gorgeously dark I want to lick them.
“Isi, who do you love, me or the demon?”
I love both. I don’t think I can love one without the other, like an ice cream swirl—you can’t lick only one flavor. You must enjoy both.
“You,” I say.
“How can you tell?” he says, and I part my mouth so I can taste his words.
“You don’t know me without the demon. I don’t know myself.
What if I’m boring? I’m probably boring.
Would you stay with me?” (Maybe? Probably not.
I don’t know.) “I catch myself watching TV for hours and my demon screams Stop it, but I don’t mind.
Work is the same I’ve done for years, but why would I quit?
Another job would be the same. I have one set of skills.
I can picture my life in five, ten years so clearly, same everything, with you but demonless.
Is that bad? Sounds predictable, but doesn’t feel so bad. ”
“I think we should stop going to the curandera. She’s killing the demon.”
“Isn’t that the idea?”
“It was. But what if you’re not supposed to be without the demon?”
I find Felipe in his eyes: streaks of a lighter, brownish hue. Brilliant only because of the darkness that surrounds them.
My boyfriend agrees to pause his sessions, but a month later, his demon remains weak.
Weaker. Its night spewings have become mere trickles, his neck barely turns past his shoulders, his black onyx eyes have lost their glint of damnation.
Felipe wanes, too. Mopes. We order out more often, decline brunches.
He watches reality TV without his usual zest: doesn’t tear up at a wannabe singer’s performance or shout at the foibles of hot people dating.
We certainly don’t fuck. The curandera really did her job, five stars, and now we need to reverse it.
Felipe suggests we skip the month’s chicken sacrifice, poke the demon, anger it.
I’m on board. We hide our valuables and the furniture we can fit into the bathroom—can’t afford a half-destroyed apartment.
Past midnight, the demon awakens. It thrashes, growls, and I’m hopeful.
He picks up a chair (cheap and expendable) and hurls it.
We want the demon to remember the thrill of smashing.
The chair breaks, but it doesn’t smash proper.
The demon thrashes a bit more, growls out some grotesqueries, more like an obligation than true relish, and folds on the floor.
It speaks its tongue, but its voice, though adequately grave, doesn’t shake the foundations of our building.
It speaks and speaks, its black onyx eyes annoyed, like how am I so ignorant to not understand it. I suggest miming. Charades. The demon holds an imaginary knife and mimics plunging it into my stomach. I ask if it wants to kill me. The demon flaps its arms like a chicken. “You want a chicken?”
The demon wags its finger. No more chickens. It points out the window, at the empty street, at the city. A man hurries on the street, a late-night jogger. The demon points at him.
“You want him? I can’t catch him.”
It points at different spots where people would be if it weren’t so late. It wants us to sacrifice someone… not a chicken… human.
I suggest we sacrifice Felipe’s boss. Not his immediate boss—she’s a delightfully foulmouthed divorcée—but his boss’s boss, the bank director.
The times Felipe has met the man, he’s been exceptionally friendly…
“Can’t we pick someone nasty, mean, rude?
” But I say we Chucho el Roto this business, class consciousness and whatnot.
Maybe we’ll lead a revolution, although we’d have to get caught, wouldn’t we, to claim our role as rebels, and I don’t plan to get caught.
Prison wouldn’t suit me, or Felipe. May suit the demon.
I suggest the easiest way to sacrifice the bank director is for Felipe to seduce him and lure him to one of the sex hotels around the city. I’ll be there and together we’ll sacrifice him.
“He’s straight, though.”
“So? You’re possessed, use your demonic wiles.”
Felipe practices summoning his demonic wiles in the bathroom mirror. I stand by his side. “Open yourself up,” I coach. Less a summoning than a “letting the demon work its magic.”
Felipe is timid. He’s spent his whole possession worrying that if he lets the demon play too long, too heartily, it’ll fully take over.
I assure him I won’t let that happen. I love the Felipe-demon swirl, not one without the other.
I have no clue how I can prevent the demon conquering, though I imagine calling Felipe’s name, Felipe, Felipe.
Come back to me. I love you. Love is infallible. Is it?
“You can do it!” I say.
Felipe smiles at his own smile in the mirror, a self-seduction. He wavers. Felipe holds on to the bathroom sink, breathes. He and the demon are tired. “Do this for your very existence!” I cheer.
Felipe straightens, licks his lips. The mirror responds with a come-hither grin.
A wink. More lip-licking. It’s all very porny.
I’m getting hard. Felipe’s skin radiates pheromoned heat; his eyes glow like only this moment matters; his muscles contract.
Felipe makes out with himself in the mirror.
I remind him I’m there. We have sex. Like Sodom-and-Gomorrah sex, like curse-an-entire-people sex, like break-the-bathroom-sink sex.
We’ll have to call a plumber. Later. Tonight we sex like damnation.
I go to the Cineteca by myself. I used to do this all the time pre-Felipe.
The artsier the film, the better. I fancied myself above the junky delights of commercial cinema and companionship.
The film is Indian and tender and, by the end of it, I want to cry but am unable.
The cinema empties except for a woman and me.
The credits keep rolling with bare-bones piano music, each note stark like a pinch in the soul.
I envy this woman… crying alone, using Kleenex after Kleenex, like I would’ve done without Felipe.
I miss this lonesomeness, so intimate, so unshareable…
but it’s only nostalgia, this luxurious pining for oneself.
Felipe is exhausted, bags under his eyes, cracked lips, his skin, once vibrant in sensuous oils, now ashen and saggy.
He’s one unkind word away from crashing.
All his energy is being sucked by the demon and stored for demonic seduction.
I let him rest. Stroke his head on my lap. We have a mission, the three of us.
My boyfriend texts: he and the bank director are in room 203.
We chose the hotel with most neon along the viaducto.
There’s commotion at reception, three people shouting at each other; someone has been caught cheating.
I slip by easily unnoticed and take it as a sign our plan is blessed…
or whatever the equivalent of blessed is when dealing with demonic sacrifice.
Damned? Doesn’t sound right.
As per plan, Felipe has jammed the door open, a piece of cardboard on the lock. Basic schemes often work best. The bank director and Felipe make out naked on the bed. I wonder if I should be jealous instead of turned on. Whatever. I relish my horniness.