the pishtaco

and other fictions

listen to this story:

part one. difficult conversations.

juan sits with me at the table as i digest my microwavable dinner. he asks if he can ask me a question without me getting angry. i resist the urge to point out he just did, instead reassuring him that i've never been angry in response to a question. but i also remind him nothing is impossible. then i ask if he has a specific question in mind.

it turns out he has a few. each regarding what i've come through the years to call my outer dialogue. put simply, he wants to know why i talk to myself so much, what i'm talking about all the time, and whether it means i'm not in good shape mentally or emotionally. 

encountering genuine curiosity about some part of myself from someone relatively close, well-meaning and clear-eyed, is so rare, and so refreshing. i wish i got more of it, and i want to reward what little i receive. but the truth is that i don't really have an answer to his questions. 

i talk to myself. i do it a lot, out loud and in front of people. i do it for the same reason i talk to anyone else, and the same reason anyone else talks to me. 

it would be pretty strange if i didn't respond to other people when we're sharing space, and they're speaking to me. that sort of thing creates negative feelings in us, and for everyone who sees or experiences it. 

the corollary is also true. the reward centers in our brains light up when we talk, even casually, even to strangers, whom we find in our space. so most of us just do it. i have no idea if talking to myself is any different. but i know for certain it doesn't feel any different. so i just do it.

when i was a young man, i stressed a great deal, and struggled to sort of fight the impulse, to be normal, to not frighten, alarm or embarrass people with what i assumed was just weird shit i needed to cut out. but getting older, i just don't see the point in ignoring myself. so i don't.

part two. drag queens.

angry shouting rings out in the alley below our second-story, one-bedroom unit. i look down through the window framing our rusted-out bistro table. 

a homeless man, scab-covered, dressed in rags, is hunched completely over, shouting at nothing apparent while sifting with his large fingers through a berm of shredded litter and soiled garbage. the waste is spilling over a long-forgotten gravel sleeve to clog the catch basin.

the man pulls a discarded cigarette butt from the heap, producing a lighter and attempting unsuccessfully to revive whatever life may be unused within. but the thing is spent. so, he pockets his lighter and takes an imaginary drag, sucking hard on the filthy butt.

juan looks down at him as well for a few moments before gasping a soft but genuine excitement when he notices the man is talking to himself. then, in his broken english, juan spends a few minutes theorizing that the man is actually me, come back from the future. 

i remind him that i quit smoking two weeks ago, so i wouldn't come back in twenty years looking for butts. 

he argues that, because i'm white and don't moisturize properly, the man we're looking at is not me in twenty years, but more like me in five. then, he quickly adds that giving up cigarettes hasn't stopped me from sucking on street trash every chance i get.

it's such a good barb. the sort of brutal humor i imagine he often dishes out in spanish, but is now learning in english, as a student of the drag queens at the gay bar where he's a barback. i love when he brings the ferocity home, and always struggle when he gets angry and starts spitting fire in spanish. 

stupid isn't a feeling that really sticks to me, although i'm sure i look the part. he might as well be insulting a farm bird for all i understand. being read to filth by the master though, and not being able to savor or appreciate it? it's like our friend down there, traveling through time just to suck on spent smokes. what a waste.

juan isn’t much older than me, and he used to perform drag. it’s got to be better money than barbacking. his passion and talent for doing makeup makes me wonder why he gave it up. i worry he’s denying himself.

but as the man in the alley starts shouting again, i resist the urge to say anything, even something encouraging. i've said twice since we moved in together that he should get back into what he loves. both times he waved me off, shrugging when i pushed him for a reason, explaining simply that he's happy. 

of course, both times he also turned it back on me, arguing i was, “too tall not to try it,” and promising he would do my makeup. i do want to encourage him. but i'm also just glad that he's happy. rather than sharing my advice again, i decide to simply share my grateful silence, for this space we’re in with each other.

juan returns the gesture. and we feel, as we increasingly do, a companionable calm, even as the man in the alley keeps shouting. we watch and listen. from the storm of nonsense he blusters, a bright bolt flashes right between us. “time traveling fucks!” he screams.

and juan is up, out of his seat, ecstatic and exalting, as if he has discovered he can harness the weather. i’m briefly frozen in astonishment, like some witness to the divine vindication of an absurd conviction. but his joy thaws my astonishment, and we are soon laughing uncontrollably together, as the man in the alley screams it again. 

part three. our first words.

at the age of four, i started begging my mom to let me wash the dishes. i’m not sure why. the appeal is lost on me now, as it was on my mom then.

fresh out of the police academy, she had secured a rookie position with the local sheriff’s department. she started her day very early, worked long hours and was exhausted by the time she picked me up late each afternoon in her patrol car, still having to cook dinner and clean up after we finished eating. she absolutely hated doing dishes. everyone did.

when she said no the first few times i asked for the chore, doing it herself and ordering me to go watch television, i thought she was protecting me from getting unfairly stuck with the after-dinner job everyone else hated. she didn’t want me to be taken advantage of, i reasoned. only as an adult did i realize she was protecting both of us, and anyone who might eat off our dishes, from me. there is no way a load of dishes washed by a four-year-old is safe to cook with or eat from. 

she made it nearly an entire week telling me no. then she broke, deciding, i now understand, that she had better things to do with her life than wash dishes while i annoyed the ever-loving shit out of her, whining and begging her to let me do this thing she hated doing herself. 

better, she must have reasoned, that we should die together, happy and riddled with foodborne illness at the dishpan hands of her palpably gay child than that i should die alone, bludgeoned to death by my own mother with her sparkling le creuset.

so she pulled a dining chair up to the sink and lifted me to stand on it. then she went to the living room, flopped on the couch, and turned on the simpsons.

i was so used to seeing her, my aunt and older cousins speaking with each other while doing dishes. i must have had some association that speaking was critical to the process. so i spoke while i washed. whether it was to myself in the beginning, or to no one at all, i can't say. eventually though, it became a nightly, one-person conversation with what i imagined to be an alternate version of myself, standing just off to the side. i even started pulling up a second chair for him.

i suppose i internalized my companion self at some point. in relatively short order, all the chores i did became opportunities to have conversations with myself. i'd share interesting stories, news and events from my day. of course, being so young, i usually had none. so i'd make them up. or, more often, i’d steal them.

and i was very good. too good, at times. as when, in one of my early years of elementary school, i fully convinced several classmates, and half convinced myself, that the male kindergarten teacher mr. wallace, was really an undercover federal agent, stationed at the school to watch over me and my mother, who were living under assumed names in protective custody hiding from my dangerous, fugitive father.

it was a lot for a five-year-old to come up with on his own. my teachers praised my intellect and imagination. when, picking me up from school one day, my mother learned what i’d been telling people. she politely accepted the praise. then she put me in the back of her police cruiser, and interrogated me all the way home to find out just who the hell had let me watch kindergarten cop.

but it didn’t matter. my storytelling would oscillate over the years between talent and terrorism. the specific inspiration was nothing more than incidental.

somewhere along the way, my own tether to reality seems to have frayed. perhaps it’s the eventual side effect of ceaselessly and secretly pretending to be imaginary people, of pulling innocent company into my nonsense.

by the time adulthood arrived, i had hosted so many imaginary alexes, i had absolutely no idea who the real one was. 

i didn’t even know where to look.

of course, nothing's really changed.

part four. night falls.

just before bed, juan remembers he has more questions. this time though, he asks why i have so much trouble sleeping. 

i shrug and tell him the truth: that i don'thave trouble sleeping. 

but he insists he can hear me getting up and moving around our apartment very early each morning, while speaking quietly to myself. 

knowing i don't do those things, i suspect he's either hearing a neighbor or trying to prank me.

but he won't let it go, and seems convinced i'm sleepwalking. 

it’s an easy mystery to solve, i point out, telling him to get up and look when he hears me. 

but he grows stern and rejects the idea, calling me pishtaco, and slipping into his spanish as he shudders. then he goes to the kitchen, and barks, "pishtaco!" three times, before i realize he’s calling me, so go to see what he needs. he tersely demands i help him reach something in a high cabinet: a small, ragged, paper box.

he rips the top off when i hand it to him, then thinks hard, trying i judge to remember something distant. he speaks three words in spanish, counting them with his fingers. little as i know, i recognize he's not counting in spanish.

“la encomendaria, tomorrow," he says, finally switching to english. "but tonight," he continues. "i make a magic circle." then he explains that the circle of salt around my bed will keep me safely in it if i am possessed by a demon, which he informs me is what causes my sleepwalking. 

i argue for reason, pointing out first, the mess an eight-foot circle of salt will make. and second, that there's no way it'll work. partly because the noises he's hearing are coming from a neighbor, but mostly because there's just no such thing as magic circles or demonic possession. 

but the salt is already hitting the floor. and i’m suddenly imagining the life i’d lead as a demon-possessed alex, and the fun i’ll have by convincing juan i am. before i can even think to stop it, a new alex has entered the story and is already at the controls.

part five. madness follows.

as an adult, i've hosted so many alexes. they show up unannounced, occasionally wreak absolute havoc and often leave without notice.

at least i’m assuming they leave. maybe disappear is a better word. i honestly have no ungodly idea which are still living here and which have left. i know some who i assume are long gone still use me as their permanent address. i accept and sign for everything that arrives for them. i make room to store and time to sort it all.

but i have never been able to keep track of who's around. i have no idea which alexes are coming and going. 

as many working professionals have lived here as petty criminals, we've hosted a homeless alex and a housewife, an amateur athlete, several artists and academics, a pair of drunkards and at least one teetotaler.

though i can't say we've ever boarded a heterosexual, we did house two closet cases and an alex who claimed to be bi, but then said it was just a phase. if you're wondering how a certified platinum-star gay power-bottom can claim a bisexual phase, well, you'll have to find yourself one and ask. 

and of course there's the writer alex. 

what i really want is to know which is me. it's tempting, given the medium, to point at the writer. i'd only caution everyone to keep their wagers low. even as i write this, i'm certain i’m no closer to an answer now than i am to that kitchen sink where it all started. i simply can’t say.

but i’m starting to worry he may have left a long time ago. and if he did, i suppose juan may be onto something. because with all these alexes coming and going, and all those unaccounted for, there's no telling who’s sharing the space in here these days.