Jim Daniels
BULLFIGHT
Mexico City
boldfaced on our itinerary. I shared a hotel room with Professor Carrillo. His beautiful daughter Gabriela slept across the hall with the 3 other girls. No joking allowed. Carrillo. I could not roll my R’s. He snored. Her white bikini barely there. Her brown skin glistening. My white skin reddening. We’d lived with families in Veracruz. No one got sick. In Mexico City we all got diarrhea. No sex in the city. Dropping like flies. Drooping like flies in unshaded heat. Worried about sudden accidents. Yet, Bullfight! Sweat ran down Professor’s bald nervous head. None of us wanted to see bulls die. One matador ran. The others finished it off. Our textbook did not tell us picadors lanced the bulls first. Tore muscles so they couldn’t raise their heads. The PA system murky, and my Spanish weak. Somebody smelled like shit. Gabriela faded into the greenish tint of her halter top on the other side of her father. Yet lust bubbled primal on my own skin. We exchanged pained looks. 21, I tried to raise my head. 20, she lowered hers. Her father smoked—died of cancer two years later. Below us, they cut off ears and tails. None of us gathered trophies or roses. My watch band broke when I tightened it. We exchanged notes in sweaty Spanish. Cheat sheets. I pretended to be her boyfriend at a disco to keep local boys at bay. She had a real one back at school. I had a girlfriend back at school. The Cathedral in Mexico City sank beneath us. Our clothes see-through with sweat. We wanted to exit the bullring. Staying, part of our education in using usted, not tu. We clacked hips and locked eyes. It was the era of the bump. We spoke a third language. Diarrhea was our undoing. She was shy. I, the only boy. I slept with her father. In another universe she and I shared a room and talked in tongues. At the pool, she leaned back and watched me jump off the 10-meter board. It was all I could do. Bulls snorted and sniffed around us. When they dragged a dead one away, its blood darkened the sand in unreadable blotches. We turned and swirled in the dark nightclub—in fancy clothes we’d been told to pack but had not worn. Back at school, we fell on the swords of imagined love. Why did we stay true after learning they cheated at bullfights? We lanced each other with lusty looks. Why did we spare ourselves the delicious guilt of betrayal? I lost all faith in restraint at a bullfight nightclub in Mexico City. Oh, the red cape between us as we passed each other time and time again in the darkness, in the heat, the dripping of us, the fear of the goring of hearts. Carrillo. Ole. The untranslatable swallowing of blood.
bo
Mexico City
boldfaced on our itinerary. I shared a hotel room with Professor Carrillo. His beautiful daughter Gabriela slept across the hall with the 3 other girls. No joking allowed. Carrillo. I could not roll my R’s. He snored. Her white bikini barely there. Her brown skin glistening. My white skin reddening. We’d lived with families in Veracruz. No one got sick. In Mexico City we all got diarrhea. No sex in the city. Dropping like flies. Drooping like flies in unshaded heat. Worried about sudden accidents. Yet, Bullfight! Sweat ran down Professor’s bald nervous head. None of us wanted to see bulls die. One matador ran. The others finished it off. Our textbook did not tell us picadors lanced the bulls first. Tore muscles so they couldn’t raise their heads. The PA system murky, and my Spanish weak. Somebody smelled like shit. Gabriela faded into the greenish tint of her halter top on the other side of her father. Yet lust bubbled primal on my own skin. We exchanged pained looks. 21, I tried to raise my head. 20, she lowered hers. Her father smoked—died of cancer two years later. Below us, they cut off ears and tails. None of us gathered trophies or roses. My watch band broke when I tightened it. We exchanged notes in sweaty Spanish. Cheat sheets. I pretended to be her boyfriend at a disco to keep local boys at bay. She had a real one back at school. I had a girlfriend back at school. The Cathedral in Mexico City sank beneath us. Our clothes see-through with sweat. We wanted to exit the bullring. Staying, part of our education in using usted, not tu. We clacked hips and locked eyes. It was the era of the bump. We spoke a third language. Diarrhea was our undoing. She was shy. I, the only boy. I slept with her father. In another universe she and I shared a room and talked in tongues. At the pool, she leaned back and watched me jump off the 10-meter board. It was all I could do. Bulls snorted and sniffed around us. When they dragged a dead one away, its blood darkened the sand in unreadable blotches. We turned and swirled in the dark nightclub—in fancy clothes we’d been told to pack but had not worn. Back at school, we fell on the swords of imagined love. Why did we stay true after learning they cheated at bullfights? We lanced each other with lusty looks. Why did we spare ourselves the delicious guilt of betrayal? I lost all faith in restraint at a bullfight nightclub in Mexico City. Oh, the red cape between us as we passed each other time and time again in the darkness, in the heat, the dripping of us, the fear of the goring of hearts. Carrillo. Ole. The untranslatable swallowing of blood.
bo
Copyright © November 2024 Jim Daniels
Jim Daniels’ latest fiction book, The Luck of the Fall, was published by Michigan State University Press. Recent poetry collections include The Human Engine at Dawn (Wolfson Press), Gun/Shy (Wayne State University Press), and Comment Card (Carnegie Mellon University Press). His first book of nonfiction, Ignorance of Trees, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. A native of Detroit, he currently lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.
