Do Tampons Take Your Virginity?: A Catholic Girl's Memoir (14 page)

Growing up, my husband’s nickname was
gato
, which means “cat” in Spanish. This is because, when he was fifteen, Oscar’s brother Miguel got him stinking drunk, shaved his eyebrows, and painted whiskers and a black cat nose on his face with a permanent marker. When Oscar woke up, he was unable to remove the permanent marker for three days and was so embarrassed he refused to leave the house. His brothers took Polaroid photos, some of which survived. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. The nickname stuck.

Anyway, everyone at the party assumed that my son was also named Juan, and they kept calling him “Juan Junior” all night. I only corrected them once. After that, I just let it go. It was a worthless exercise.

One cousin drank ten beers in less than an hour and fell asleep standing up. He was swaying back and forth, but never fell down. That takes
years
of practice.

Christmas Eve was topped off by the midnight piñata, which was stuffed with stale candies left over from Halloween. The adults took the piñata outside for the kids to break. It was wrong on so many levels.

First, all the kids were less than six years old, outside, in December, beating the crap out of a cheap piñata in the middle of the fucking street...at midnight. I’m sure all the neighbors were used to the commotion because no one called the police on us, but it was still very surreal.

The kids were exhausted (because it was
midnight
, way past any normal bedtime). But none of this night was normal, so I just went with it.

The kids took turns beating the piñata, and after about ten minutes, it broke and they all went on their knees to get the candies. It had rained recently, so the ground was muddy, but that didn’t stop them. My son isn’t allowed to have candy very often, so he was in heaven. All the fatigue caused by the inappropriate way-past-your-bedtime playing was soon replaced by a sugar high.

The kids stuffed their pockets and came back inside. The sugar rush kicked in and the kids started running around the house in circles. Dozens of tiny crackheads bouncing around the house.

The kids settled down to open their gifts, shaking with excitement and insulin poisoning. My son didn’t have any gifts (we left them at home), so I thought it best for us to go.

I signaled with my fingers. My husband’s family protested and wanted us stay there; I knew they would, but it was ridiculous. Where would we sleep? There were dozens of people in the house already. We would have been forced to sleep in the bathtub or a kitchen cabinet for lack of space.

We went back to our hotel and I went straight to sleep.

The next day, we returned to the trailer park for more Christmas Day fun.

The Pozole had been resting on the floor in a giant pot all night and it was reheated so we could have more. I admit that I must have eaten ten bowls of the soup that day. It was delicious, but I didn’t poop for six days afterwards. Giant corn is not great for your digestion, if you know what I mean.

On Christmas day, all the kids played outside, in the street, with the other parents oblivious to their activities. I kept going outside to check on them.

“Why you keep going outside?” asked my husband’s aunt.

“I’m checking on the kids. They’re playing in the street,” I replied.

“Oh, the people here drive slow. They’ll be all right.”

Any child molester could have popped out and snatched one of them and no one would have noticed.

The TV was blaring nonstop with Mexican soap operas, which have universally bad acting and very Caucasian-looking Mexicans playing all the good roles. The acting is really bad. Usually, the men find an excuse to rip off their shirts, revealing muscled abs and steely arms—bodies not found in nature. All the women have breast implants and enhanced lips—huge, like water balloons.

Anyway, we didn’t pray or go to Mass; we just ate and drank, and told bawdy jokes. We left after 9 p.m. and drove back home.

We had a great time, and it certainly was interesting.

Still... they were all more normal than my family.

You win, hubby.

I have dated many different types of men and I will tell you that Latinos have their own particular brand of sexual foreplay. What American men need to realize is that all female mystery could be solved if they just adopted the
Universal Latino Philosophy
, which is:

“My machismo is undisputed! Every female wants to fuck me!”

Latinos are confident to a fault. In fact, there’s no such thing as an
overconfident
Latino. But it works for them, and I think many relationships break up because the wife gets fed up with her fumbling husband and starts fucking the landscaper.

Latinos are the opposite of American men. They don’t worry about what women think or what they want. They don’t worry about the size of their cock. Even if it looks small to us, it’s still a GIANT COCK in their eyes. They’re human roosters, kicking up dirt and flapping their wings. The only real goal in life is to attract more chickens; everything else is secondary.

They’re right. The real secret is that women don’t really care what a man looks like. Not really. Women don’t even care about money, at least not at the beginning. It’s all about confidence.

It’s not that Latinos don’t care—it’s that they’re so certain of their ability to please any woman that they don’t bother much with the details. They don’t hassle with flowers or chocolates, they don’t caress your face, and they don’t whisper sweet nothings in your ear.

Instead, they’ll squeeze your ass while you’re cooking, squeeze your tits when you wake up and rub their balls against you when you come out of the shower.

All of this physical touching will be accompanied by phrases like, “Ahhh, mamacita... let me see your
chi-chis!
Or, “Mmmm,
chaparrita
, (shorty) your
nalgas
(ass cheeks) are sooooo goooooood today; let me sqeeche dem!”

You will be squeezed repeatedly, daily, unceasingly. After the kids have gone to sleep, the squeezing gets more insistent. “Aye, mama, are you going to let me stick it in?”

Or, my favorite line, “Oh, mamacita, my train
necessita pasar por tu tunel
, (my train needs to pass through your tunnel).”

This is foreplay.

I usually laugh and eventually give in. That’s the point. Latinos like to have fun with everything, including sex. We could all die any day... so let’s have some fun!

When my husband and I were dating, there was a little more romance, but it was always really over-the-top, Antonio-Banderas-as-Zorro shit. He raced cars, had long soccer-hair, and bet on sports and racing. We would go out dancing, and he would grab my hair (painfully, of course), and tell me that he loved me so much he would die for me, kill for me, etc.

We would get drunk and fight. Then we would make up twenty minutes later with rowdy, wake-the-neighbors crazy sex. I was living in a soap opera. But that’s when I was in my twenties and had the energy for all that foolishness.

Now that we’re older, our sexual play has become much more tame. But we still like to hear stories and, since my husband still works in the hospitality industry, he brings home good gossip.

Case in point: my husband came home recently and told me that the lead server (blonde, blue-eyed cheerleader-type) in one of his restaurants is fucking his new hire, a short Columbian dishwasher. The guy barely speaks English and doesn’t have a car. The girl is in love—she now drives the dishwasher to work in her Audi.

My husband asked the dishwasher, incredulously, “How did you get that American girl?”

The dishwasher responded, completely serious, “What do you mean, Patron? I can get
better
than her. Just look at me! Yo soy el Chingon!” (which means, “I’m a badass!”).

Every year, we miss Ash Wednesday, which is a Catholic religious holiday. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the season of preparation for the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday.

Every year, I see all the Catholics in my hometown with little ash crosses on their forehead while my forehead is conspicuously bare. For Lent, Catholics are supposed to give up something as a sacrifice. Many Catholics give up eating meat or drinking alcohol. Some even give up sex.

Catholics aren’t very good at avoiding sin and physical indulgences, which is why the Catholic Church has given us the generous gift of confession.

My husband usually gives up meat for Lent. This year, I asked if he would give up sex, since that would be a real sacrifice for both of us. He just stared at me like I had grown two heads.

“Come on, Marie....”

“No, really... maybe we should try to give up sex. That would be genuinely difficult—it’s supposed to be a penance.”

Oscar was uncomfortable with the whole conversation. He frowned, went into the other room, and turned on the TV. That was it. End of conversation. It was too much to ask of him; it was impossible.

We both gave up red meat instead.

I’m such a bad Catholic that I actually had to look up “The Apostles” on the Internet because I wasn’t sure if there were twelve or thirteen of them. For some reason, I thought Judas Iscariot wasn’t considered part of the “Twelve Apostles.” You know—Judas being the betrayer of Jesus and all. But no, there were only twelve, and Judas is included in the original twelve.

Did you ever read Dante Alighieri’s
Divine Comedy
? I did—I read all three parts. Everyone likes the Inferno the best, because that’s where Dante settles all his old scores. But I liked Purgatorio the best. It’s all about Purgatory. It’s the place where sinners go in order to cleanse themselves before they get admitted to Heaven. Catholics do believe in Hell, of course, but we also believe that there is a “middle zone” where semi-bad people go to get punished before they’re allowed to enter Heaven.

Most Protestants don’t believe in Purgatory.

That’s because Catholics basically invented the concept. Catholics need a middle ground. People need to believe in a place like Purgatory. It gives assholes some hope. I know I’m not going straight to heaven. But I don’t want to go to Hell, either. So there’s Purgatory. It’s a place where we can go and take our lumps and then, hopefully, we’ll be able to move on up.

I think most of it is bullshit, but there’s nothing wrong with hedging your bets.

I have dreams about Hell. In my dreams, Hell is a shitty, dirty factory, like a Chinese sweatshop. There’s no fire, no brimstone. Just millions of boxes on a long conveyer belt. In my dreams, the Devil is really young. He’s blond, with a nametag, and khaki pants. He’s a douchebag middle manager ordering everyone around and micromanaging the assembly line. The factory is huge and poorly lit.

There’s no emergency exit. I’m just stuck there, working in this shithole factory with this asshole teenage manager for all eternity. That’s my vision of Hell. I’ve had this dream at least a dozen times, and each time I wake up in a cold sweat.

I know that burning in eternal flame might seem worse, but really, it’s not. At least burning in eternal flame is poetic. The nightmare is an eternity of mindless labor.

The sad reality is that millions of people live their entire lives this way.

People sell their souls for whatever material bullshit they’ve decided they can’t live without. So you spend ten years working for an asshole so you can afford to buy a Mercedes or a designer purse or a new condo or
whatever
.

Maybe tragedy is what we need in order to see our lives in better perspective. I’m just saying that real clarity comes to us when our toes are at the edge of a cliff, not when we’re pounding away on our laptops in a fucking Starbucks.

Our experiences may shape us, but they don’t direct our future. Tragedy is just God’s way of forcing you to make changes. That’s all. The point is; don’t ever be afraid to make changes. You can always walk away, do something new, and reinvent your life. Don’t live your life stuck in hell with a manager in khaki pants.

2008,
AGE
35

I broke into my father’s house a month ago. It wasn’t the first time I’d done it, but this time I had a mission.

I went back to my hometown and drove to the old house, parking in the driveway. I knew the house would be empty. The backyard was overrun by blackberry brambles and untrimmed fruit trees. The fruit lay scattered on the ground, ignored. Father used to take good care of everything, but now he has a girlfriend named Ursula, so he isn’t home much.

I snuck in through a rear window, climbing into my old bedroom. It smelled like mold. I pissed in the bathroom and walked through the house. It was the same as always. Beige walls, beige drapes, and dark burgundy carpeting. The house was superficially clean, but everything had a weird layer of dust. My steps echoed in the hallway, tapping on cheap linoleum. The beds were neatly made. The house looked abandoned.

Faded wedding pictures still hung in the hallway. My mother’s eyes smiled at me from those yellowed photographs. The last time I was there, Father had taken the pictures down, but my brother Johnny said that Father had a fight with Ursula last year and he put them all back up in a fit of anger.