Like This Afternoon Forever. Jaime Manrique
thought, nothing in the world can remind me of him.
* * *
“You’re a little man now,” Clemencia told Lucas when he turned fourteen that summer. “You’re old enough to go downtown on your own to pay the utilities. It would be a big help to me.”
He was happy to be of help to his mother and also excited to go do something in the city for the first time by himself.
The second time he was in downtown Bogotá doing errands, Lucas noticed groups of boys his age walking on Carrera Séptima in flamboyant clothes, laughing and giggling loudly, throwing shameless looks at some of the men they passed. These boys frightened Lucas, but a part of him was also desperate to talk to them. However, he knew that if he associated with them he’d risk being labeled as one of them.
The next time Lucas was in the city, one of the street boys asked him as he went by, “Want to hang out with us?”
“No thanks,” he replied hastily, avoiding eye contact. “I have to get back home.”
“Don’t look so scared, sister,” the boy scoffed. “It’s not like I invited you to sniff glue with us.”
The brazen behavior of these boys fascinated and repelled Lucas. Once, he followed them at a distance all the way to Parque Nacional, where they sat on the lawn smoking a pipe in a spot sheltered by weeping willows. He had seen a TV program about hooligans who smoked crack and terrorized people. Lucas decided he wouldn’t have anything to do with them and walked as fast as he could to the bus stop.
In Suba there was a Casa de la Cultura, where neighborhood young people gathered for cultural activities. Their drama club was in the middle of rehearsing a play they were going to put on at Christmastime. Lucas attended performances of boys and girls who recited their own poems or the works of José Asunción Silva, Porfirio Barba Jacob, Federico García Lorca, and other Colombian poets.
Clemencia encouraged Lucas to take advantage of the classes offered at the cultural center for a small fee. She had heard that the young people who went there did not belong to gangs or do drugs. Lucas started spending his afternoons in the Casa de la Cultura, watching the young people dancing and rehearsing plays. He remembered fondly the time he had taken dance lessons before he went off to Colegio San José, so he ended up enrolling in a dance class. In Suba, Lucas learned the steps of pasillos and bambucos, peasant dances he had seen people in Güicán perform in the plaza during festivals. But his favorite was the mapalé, an Afro-Colombian dance that had originated on Colombia’s Atlantic coast. Lucas loved what happened to him when he danced the mapalé: when he leaped, he would try in his mind to stretch that moment into infinity, and for that nanosecond he’d feel he could leave the world and travel up and up, higher and higher, faster and faster, until planet earth became a small blue ball. Then, with his legs, torso, head, arms, hands, fingers, and toes, he would try to express what he felt at that moment. He dreamed of becoming a good dancer so that his mother could see him perform. When they finished rehearsing a dance, and he returned, panting, to the world, for an instant Lucas would believe he had created something beautiful and unique. It was as if another person had performed, not himself. Sometimes he wondered if what he experienced was something like the ecstasy of the saints when they were in God’s presence and inundated with His light.
A few days later, after he’d started taking dance classes, as Lucas was leaving the center to go back home to make dinner—he had learned simple recipes from watching Clemencia in the kitchen—he heard a voice call, “Hey, Lucas!”
He turned around and saw one of the other dancers from class; he was taller than the other boys, willowy, and black. Lucas had seen him dancing and practicing, and was impressed with his physical grace and beauty.
“My name’s Julio. I see you all the time watching us practice.”
They shook hands.
“My mother told me about you,” Julio said. “She said your mother told her you want to become a priest. But you’re a talented dancer. Maybe you’ll be like that singing nun—a dancing priest!” He laughed at his own joke.
Lucas made a face at Julio and began to move away from him.
“I’m sorry I said that. That was stupid. We should be friends. Our mothers work at the same place, and we’re neighbors.”
Lucas thought Julio was a bit fresh, but he wasn’t upset with him. Though his manner was gentle, Julio wasn’t effeminate, so there was no danger in hanging out with him. Besides, Lucas thought, I’m not physically attracted to him.
From that afternoon on, Lucas walked home with Julio at the end of the day. Often, he invited Julio in for a glass of juice. They discovered they enjoyed playing checkers and Parcheesi. Lucas often felt tension in the air, but he wasn’t interested in taking the first step.
After they had played Parcheesi on a few occasions, Julio said, “I’m bored playing these games. Let me show you something. Do you have any old newspapers?”
Lucas handed him some papers from the neatly stacked piles in the kitchen.
Julio said, “Follow me.” In the living room, he spread the newspapers on the floor. He sat on one of the chairs, unbuckled his pants, undid his zipper, and took out his erect cock.
Lucas suddenly felt as aroused as the first time he had masturbated while thinking about Ignacio.
“Get comfortable,” Julio told him. “I play this game with my cousins.”
Lucas unbuckled his belt and then stopped. Julio motioned with his hand for him to take out his penis. It was hard—Lucas’s tension was almost overpowering.
Julio said, “Think of any girl you like and then we’ll shoot and see whose cum lands farthest.”
This became a daily ritual. After they masturbated, they’d throw the newspapers in the trash. Though they didn’t touch, Lucas felt awful that he was engaging in such an activity with a man in his mother’s house, while she was at work.
As if to make up for what he thought was his betrayal, Lucas worked hard at preparing dinner for Clemencia. She had one cookbook, and Lucas found that if he followed a recipe, the food turned out fine. After they ate, he always insisted on washing the dishes. Doing things for her made him feel less guilty.
“You’re the best son any mother could wish for,” she would often say.
Her compliments were like a nail hammered into his heart.
At night, Clemencia watched the Colombian soap operas for hours. Lucas found them ridiculous, but he enjoyed them nonetheless, following the story line along with her and paying attention when she explained a character’s background. Keeping her company at night made him feel better because she seemed so happy spending time with him. She liked it when he stood behind her rocking chair and gently scratched her head.
Lucas could tell that she was often sad; she would sometimes look at pictures of Lercy and Adela and make dresses for one of their dolls, which she had taken with her when she left the farm. He knew Clemencia tried to get news about them from her acquaintances in Güicán. He understood that she never contacted his sisters directly because she feared Gumersindo could show up one day at their home in Suba and take him away, just to punish her.
Lucas would have done anything to see his mother smile more often. But he got the impression she had given up on ever finding any happiness on earth. It was a heavy burden for him to be her only source of joy.
Before going to bed, Clemencia always took a hot shower. Afterward, she chatted on the phone with her cousin Ema, or with a friend from work, before she turned off the light on her night table.
Lucas often wondered if this was the way most people lived.
* * *
There was one movie house in Suba: El Rex. At school in Facatativá, the TV set was kept locked in a closet and brought out only on Saturday nights so the students and teachers could watch movies on the VCR and on Sunday afternoons for soccer