The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (18 page)

The old bull macho laboriously raised himself from his Barcalounger
^®
and shuffled through his enormous house, a mansion now in ruins and almost empty that had been a gift from Fifo many years ago, in the days when they’d gone out hustling together. The old butch made his way through the grand empty living room and on back through the house, and finally he stood before the mirror that covered one wall of his bedroom—the mirror in which he had relished most of his butch-on-butch conquests for these last sixty years. The old man contemplated his dried-out face, the pendulous rooster-wattle of his throat, the furrows of his forehead, the terrible bags that hung under his eyes like two black lizards. Of what had been rows of sparkling teeth there were but two fangs left, and his body was nothing now but atrophied veins, bony joints, and loose dangling folds of chicken skin. His once proud, firm legs had gone knock-kneed, and on top of his head, out of the middle of the desert of his bald pate, there grew a ridiculous, insulting little bud—not even a grassy tuft—of snow-white hair.
And to think,
he said to himself, looking at that image of himself in the mirror,
that I was once Bull Macho Numero Uno in all of Cuba, the only man ever to have screwed Mella, Grau San Martín, and Batista, all celebrated bull tops in their own right, and even—
how his sunken chest swelled with the thought of it!—
even Fifo, who’s celebrating a half century in power today. Fifty years . . . although it’s really only forty, which Fifo adds the extra ten to because he’s always loved red-letter anniversaries, not to mention publicity. . . .
And that human rag doll that looked at itself in the mirror still not only had the gall to be alive; more tragic even than that (which was tragic enough), he still craved an ass to screw. And not just any ass, mind you—it had to be an ass-fucker’s ass.
Because make no mistake about me, you people out there—as a macho’s macho, a true top, which is what I’ve always been (and therein lies my tragedy), I’ve never been able to screw some pansy faggot.
Yes, Mary, our old bull macho’s tragedy was this: his prick would come to attention only when it was saluting another top.
Díos mío!
Yes, my dear, I kid you not. . . . But little by little, after years of trolling for catches and reeling them in, the glorious bull macho (who wasn’t an old man back then) realized that he was the only top, the only
real man,
the only
nonfaggot,
left on earth. In all his long erotic wanderings through the world, he, the supermacho top, had always thought he was screwing another top. But imagine his surprise to realize that all those supposed tops were really just a bunch of pansy faggots, because they would allow their butts to be stuffed by other tops—tops, in turn, who weren’t really tops because they would allow their butts to be stuffed by other tops, and so on,
ad infinitum.
In fact,
ad nauseam.
Because to his horror, the old bull macho had finally realized that the world had contained no
men
at all—there was nothing but pansy faggots. Faggots of all kinds—some, of course, passing themselves off as tops, but others totally and absolutely in the closet (those were the worst), married men with wives, mistresses, children and grandchildren, closet queens who got off by screwing each other or, in the majority of cases, not even that—sunk in a bovine and beatific state of denial, wasting their lives sitting in front of the TV secretly fantasizing about the baskets on the black basketball players, spending their lives in one long stupor of eyes-only faggotry. The old bull macho made his halting way to the large framed image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that stood upon an altar in one corner of his bedroom.
Lord,
he said,
tell me—where can I find a real butt-stuffer that I can screw?
Nowhere, replied the Lord, turning the other ass-cheek.
That’s what I figured,
the old butch macho said to himself with a sigh, and he recalled the disillusionment that had been the last straw for him. At the time he was personal bull macho butt-stuffer to Fifo, who made himself out to be a supermacho top and swore that he played bottom to the not-yet-quite-so-old bull macho’s top only as an act of sacrifice and even love. One day, intending to have himself another piece of Fifo’s ass, our supertop had climbed the stairs to the top floor of the Piti Fajardo Hospital, which Fifo had turned into a “male room.” There the old bull macho found Fifo, on all fours, receiving a package in the rear cargo compartment from Ché Guevara, with Ché accepting a delivery through the back door from Camilo Cienfuegos, and Camilo one from . . . At the memory of that betrayal, the old bull macho lost it—all his old rage returned. He went and picked up his massive Barcalounger
^®
, staggered with it all the way through the mansion, and heaved it into the huge portrait of Fifo that hung above the fireplace (yes, Miss Thing, a
fireplace
—the height of luxury, my dear, like anything that’s totally useless). The portrait (painted by Raúl Martínez) hung in tatters. Then the old bull macho stuffed a wad of ancient bills into his pocket and walked resolutely out of that mansion to which, on Fifo’s personal orders, he was now supposedly confined under house arrest. He was taking to the streets. . . .

A throng of people were coming down Quinta Avenida—it was the entourage accompanying the president of Argentina, who had just arrived in Cuba for the party being hosted at that very moment by Fifo. The old bull macho saw the president and his escorts all feeling up each other’s asses; sickened, he kept walking. From the seawall on the Malecón, teenagers with golden-tanned backsides were diving into the waves, braving sharks and dodging surveillance for the pleasure of playing grab-ass under the water.
I am the last true top in the world,
the old bull macho said tragically to himself, shaking his head. And as he was standing there on the wall, a police van pulled up and a dozen police officers, with the butch voices and gestures of make-no-mistake-about-it straights, rounded up all the teenagers skinny-dipping in the surf and with the butts of their rifles herded them into the van. Once the skinny-dippers were all in the van, the cops started sucking the young faggots’ cocks.

I am the last true top in the world,
the old bull macho said again, this time even more tragically. And he turned and started walking toward Coco Solo. He came to the house of José Antonio Portuonto, who was said to have once been a famous hustler, and went in. Portuonto was just putting the finishing touches on a hurdy-gurdy organ. “I’m going to play it at the Carnival, when Fifo makes his entrance,” he proudly explained. “After a tribute like that, Fifo will surely rehabilitate me and name me ambassador to the Vatican.” And Portuonto began to turn the crank on the hurdy-gurdy, which played the tune to “The Cayman’s Crawling Off, Crawling Off to Barranquilla.” And in spite of his ninety years, as he turned the crank Portuonto writhed and wriggled in lascivious abandon. The old bull macho said good-bye to Portuonto, who didn’t hear a word, and headed for the house of an old friend of his—a black man named Cuquejo.
Even if Cuquejo’s retired and way past his prime,
thought the old bull macho,
he was a good top once; I never saw him give his ass to anybody.
“Cuquejo! Cuquejo!” called the old bull macho at the old black man’s door, and when nobody answered it, he turned the knob and stepped inside. The house looked like a cave that’d just had a cave-in. And only then did the old bull macho hear deep sighs and heavy breathing. He peeked around a corner and saw old black Cuquejo lying naked on his back, his legs in the air, trying to stuff a huge black rubber dildo up his butt. The dildo finally slipped in, but not satisfied with that, Cuquejo crammed the two synthetic balls up inside him too. The old bull macho sighed and turned and left, closing the door quietly behind him. In one of the out-of-the-way corners of Parque Central he saw Skunk in a Funk; he was rewriting his lost novel
The Color of Summer
yet again. He was working on a chapter titled “HM, top, seeking same.”
What can that poor queen know about tops?
thought the old top, and he crept away through the huge bandstands and stages erected for the upcoming Carnival.
No faggot has ever known a true butch macho top, because a true butch macho top never screws a faggot. In my book, any butch macho that screws a pansy faggot is just another pansy faggot. . . .
Disconsolate, the old bull macho decided to go visit his grandfather, an old gentleman named Esteban Montejo who was more than 130 years old. When the old bull macho was a boy, his grandfather had raped him. Obviously, thought the old bull macho, my granddad was a natural-born butt-stuffer like me.
Child!
the grandfather said when he saw his grandson,
I can’t believe how old and decrepit you’ve let yourself start looking! But come on in, honey, I’m gettin’ myself up for the party.
And the old bull macho saw that his grandfather was dressed from head to toe in drag.
Come on in here and tell me what you think about this new getup I’ve put together to wear to Carnival.
But the old bull macho didn’t go in; he headed off along the coastline. In a cane field near the ocean, several volunteer cane cutters were sucking each other off while they were still whacking away at the cane stalks. In a dug-out trench, dozens of soldiers in fatigues were tirelessly screwing each other. In a park, the so-called men were leaving their wives sitting on benches while they went off to a latrine to get their butts stuffed by other faggots.
I am the last true bull macho top, the last one in the world,
the old bull macho sobbed in what was almost a cry of despair, remembering those golden days of his youth as a soldier, when he would break a masculine young black man’s cherry and the black guy would go off and hang himself—those days when, on a secret mission, he had screwed a Colombian guerrilla fighter and the head of the KGB in Panama.
There are no more real men anymore,
the old bull macho said to himself;
all the real butt-stuffers, the machos that don’t play drop-the-soap for anybody, have been wiped out—or were always just a fiction. Everything’s just appearances, playacting, a mask they never take off. And behind that mask, pansy faggots can delude themselves that they’re being screwed by a Real Man Bull Macho Butt-Stuffing Top, and pansy butt-stuffers can be fucked by other pansy faggots without any pangs of conscience because yesterday they played the part of the top. Good upstanding husbands can screw their wives and put their kids to bed and then because they’ve met their masculine obligations they can go off and pay some purported butt-stuffing hustler to fuck ’em. And they can even think they’re happy. But not me—burdened
by this one-way butt-fucking taste of mine, I wander the earth alone, bearing my cock, I mean my cross, of iron. . . .
The old bull macho saw Raúl Kastro chase down a white mare and cut off her tail with a machete, then steal a huge mosquito net from Vilma Espina. (It was the mosquito net that covered the whole floor of the dormitory that the woman giants slept in.) He watched him jump the high wall of the Colón Cemetery and snatch from the tomb of Luisa Pérez de Zambrana the crown of golden laurel leaves that Avellaneda had returned, though grudgingly, at Fifo’s request. And with that motley collection stuffed in a green duffel bag, the Fairy General climbed in an armored Toyota and drove off in the direction of Fifo’s palace. Because that very night, at the Grand Fiferonian Fiesta, if his brother (who’d been discovered to have cancer of the rear) didn’t appoint him his sole and absolute heir—especially after he’d had him take fifty of his favorite generals (part of whose duties it had been to screw the two brothers) to the firing squad and shoot ’em—then he, Raúl Kastro, head of the country’s armed forces, would throw himself into the ocean in the middle of Carnival wearing a horse’s tail, the crown of laurels, and the huge mosquito net wrapped around him as a shroud. . . .
Well, I better get a move on,
the old butch macho suddenly said to himself as he watched Raúl rush off at full steam.
I’m gonna show that faggot Fifo—I’m gonna poop on his party.

Calling upon almost his last ounce of strength, the old bull macho hobbled as fast as he could to the huge door of the catacomb-like palace.

“Fifo!” he yelled in a voice that could be heard all the way to the poles. “You pansy faggot! You tricked me—passing yourself off as a top while other people, not just me, were ramming it up your butt! But you listen to me, Fifo—I am the first and last butt-stuffer who’ll ever commit suicide over you!”

And at that, the old bull macho pulled out a pistol that dated from those days in the Revolution when he’d fought alongside Mella, and he shot himself in the head. Mortally wounded, the old bull macho toppled onto the body of the president of the Spanish Royal Academy, who as the reader may or may not recall had succumbed on that spot only hours earlier when the iron gate of the palace had dropped on him like a guillotine.
Jesus Christ! I might have known!
thought the old bull macho as he lay dying—
some miserable son of a bitch beat me to it, so I can’t even be the first person to commit suicide on the doorstep of Fifo’s palace.
And at that, in his last agony the old bull macho rolled over, perhaps out of instinct, onto the backside of the recently deceased president of the Royal Academy. And at
that
indignity—which the president of the Royal Academy, even in death, considered a mortal insult—the venerable academician returned to life, and with a vengeance!
How dare you touch my ass!
he yelled at the old bull macho, grabbing him by the neck.
I don’t care if I
am
dead, I will not allow such an atrocity against my person! The only one that plays grab-ass around here is
me! And as the old bull macho bled and was simultaneously strangled to death, he howled with laughter—at the end of his life he’d finally found a top he could have some respect for. And as the two men wrestled fiercely to see which one would bugger the other’s ass, they both expired before the palace gate.