Bad seed, p.1
Bad Seed, page 1
BAD
SEED
STORIES
GABRIEL
CARLE
Translated from the Spanish
by Heather Houde
Published in 2024 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
feministpress.org
First Feminist Press edition 2024
Mala Leche copyright © 2018 by José Gabriel Figueroa Carle English translation of Mala Leche copyright © 2024 by Heather Houde “Devilwork” and “Helium” copyright © 2024 by José Gabriel Figueroa Carle
Mala Leche was originally published in Spanish in Puerto Rico by Ediciones Alayubia in 2018. The stories “Devilwork” and “Helium” were written in English by José Gabriel Figueroa Carle and appear here for the first time.
“In Heat” appeared in The Common, issue 24, in October 2022.
“Luisito” appeared in Southwest Review, volume 107, issue 3, in October 2022.
All rights reserved.
This book is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
This book was published with financial support from the Jerome Foundation.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First printing May 2024
Cover design by Dana Li
Text design by Drew Stevens
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.
ISBN 978-1-55861-320-1
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A Yeya, a Ma, a Pa
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
In Heat
Luisito
In Your Head
Casablanca Kush
Devilwork
The Blunts That Bond Us
In the Bathhouse
Helium
About the Author and Translator
More Translated Literature from Feminist Press
Also Available from Feminist Press
About Feminist Press
In Heat
It’s the last day of school and I get home with butterflies in my stomach. My mouth already tastes like summer, like heat outside and AC inside, like the darkness of my cave, like cloister and crypt. I turn on the TV and change the channel, change the channel, one to the next, checking the lineup that will feed my hunger for the rest of the night, the rest of the weekend, the rest of summer break.
I’m used to my mom being home most days, holed up with her romance novels, because she doesn’t have any special-ed kids to teach at her school. I’m used to my grandfather at his desk, in the armchair in front of the television, in the living room glued to the computer for hours playing online poker, acting like the least grown-up old man I know. I’m used to my grandmother telling me to shut off the AC at ten o’clock every morning, yelling at me to make my bed, or pick up my dishes, or put away the clothes on the floor—picking a fight with me because all I do is watch TV in my room, play Wii, look for ungodly things on the internet, which I take care to do at four in the morning when everyone is asleep except for me, with my left hand on my dick, my right on the mouse, and the cockroaches scurrying up the walls.
I get up every day at eight in the morning to glue myself to Lifetime and watch The Golden Girls, followed by two episodes of Frasier, followed by two hours of The Nanny, followed by two more episodes of The Golden Girls, followed by two episodes of Desperate Housewives, followed by two hours of Grey’s Anatomy. The daily spiral: the same lineup, the same lines, and the same episodes since I discovered channel 42 (now channel 25) in the fourth grade and, thanks to closed-captioning, found the perfect way to practice my English, so I could perfect my sarcasm, and wait for the laugh track, so I could learn to be a destructive-rebel-anarchist teen who cries too much and who locks himself in the bathroom every night at seven p.m. to shower and scrub off his filth before disappearing into the steam.
In the afternoons the sun blares down and the grackles scream their mating calls. I melt into bed with a fan aimed at my face, with my grandmother jotting down recipes from Food Network, my grandfather playing solitaire on the computer, and my mom getting home from the movies exhausted (I didn’t want to go with her, didn’t want to get out of bed, didn’t want to brush my teeth) and locking herself in her room to pick up where she left off with whatever romance novel. I imagine myself surrounded by Brazilian dicks and African American dicks and Sean Cody models fucking bareback with little beads of sweat sliding down the hair on their orifices like pearls.
I can’t get on the computer right now, can’t get any relief, there are too many witnesses. My hand tightens around the remote control and I listen for changes in my periphery, flicking randomly, channels in English, Spanish, English, English, English, Spanish, English, English, Uruguayan Spanish, Spanish Spanish, Argentine Spanish, British English, and I land on the History Channel, falling into a new documentary, The Universe, and I discover the universe, the planet, the Caribbean, the island, San Juan, my bedroom, through the TV static, and the waves bounce off the worn cement walls.
Night comes and I enter prime-time territory: Family Guy, American Dad, The Simpsons, South Park, Robot Chicken, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, UFC (if it’s Tuesday or Thursday or Friday), and I jerk off to the wrestlers throwing each other to the ground in front of a bloodthirsty crowd. I land on Disney, horror of horrors. Why the fuck am I still watching this channel? Instantly erasing all memory of Lizzie McGuire and Raven-Symoné and Kim Possible, I don’t have time for that childishness—it’s time to take advantage of the tropical silence, of my family’s deep, air-conditioned sleep. I sneak into the living room and hold my shirt between my teeth, drenching it with saliva, making sure not to get a drop of cum on it, so all of those shining white pearls land on my stomach and I can feel the true heat of adolescence on my skin. They’ve never caught me at this hour: I erase the stains, erase the history, erase every horny trace. I heat up some Tyson nuggets in the toaster oven, turn on the TV, and it’s still Toonami at four, five, six in the morning. The static fills the space between my thoughts.
Another Saturday, Sunday, Monday night emptying the freezer and filling my mind with dubbed-over Japanese for a Caribbean audience that pays an exorbitant amount of money for the few channels that come through. No one from school calls to invite me over, and anyway, why would I want to go? If I went out I’d miss the new Lifetime movie, or the new Comedy Central roast, or the new debut on FX, or whatever new gay show Bravo is premiering. Next summer I’ll get a job. Next month I’ll do my summer reading. Next week I’ll crawl out of my hole. Tomorrow I’ll wash off the stains.
During the summer I get used to dense humidity in my bones, vapor dripping down the walls, the dirty walls of my dirty room, and my mirror covered with the remains of popped pimples and semen that explode out of my reach. Days pass, weeks pass, but the television is eternal, the shows stay the same, the fourth of July passes and the barrage of familial visits to Puerto Rico come to pass: my aunt from Denver comes with her husband and my four-year-old cousin to stay in Isla Verde, then my uncle comes from Orlando with my two cousins to stay with my aunt in Isla Verde, then my other uncle comes from his apartment in Chelsea to take pictures of the facade of a family that makes the effort to get together even if it’s just once a year, pictures of daughters that call every Sunday and sons that call once every couple weeks, if that. I bought myself Zelda: Twilight Princess last week and now spend my hours trying to beat the goddamn game. It expands and becomes infinite—infinite pastures that open wider and wider and wider, into new worlds and new dimensions I can’t control, I can’t control, I can’t pull myself away from the TV, I don’t want to go to the beach, I don’t want any barbecue, I don’t want to hand over the remote control, I don’t want anyone to bother me, ever. Fuck, why don’t my cousins go play volleyball or something? They won’t leave me alone and I’m so close to beating this level, soon I’ll be battling Ganondorf and I’m going to fuck him up, I’m going to fuck him up, Link is going to fuck him up with his blond hair and wild eyes, blue eyes like I like them, eyes the color of cobalt burning on a grill … but Ian barges in and unplugs my Wii before I have a chance to hit save. I scream at my four-year-old cousin because he ruined everything. What a little shit. I yell, kick, throw the remote control, and scream into a pillow. My aunt comes in because she hears Ian crying and starts yelling at me, tells me to fuck off once and for all, you disrespectful self-centered little shit, and when she leaves the next day I don’t get out of bed to say goodbye.
So I’m back to my routine: Lifetime, food, Cartoon Network, porn, food, bed. One day after the next, one summer after the next, the only precious months of rest I get, the life of a kid who cries too much because his parents don’t understand him, who starting in the fourth grade got left alone in his room that didn’t have a door but did have a TV to watch during the day. Now summer is ending and I feel like it never happened, like the days flicked from one to the next like changing channels, one a
Luisito
For years Luisito thought that he would’ve been better off had he been born straight. He wonders whether homosexuality is his cross to bear, his destiny, to suffer a neurochemical disorder every moment of his existence: every time he wakes up with an erection after dreaming about Miguel; every morning when he runs into Emmanuel on the trolley; whenever he sees Leo with his dreads, tanned thighs, his smile that causes Luisito’s legs to spread every time he sees it. For years he’s yearned to feel his heart skip a beat for a pretty girl—average height, C-cup tits, high heels, makeup, long brown-banged hair—but the butterflies simply never come.
His uncles joke that he’s been a fag since the womb, but no one ever mentions that to Luisito. His parents never bought him dolls whose hair he could style or dresses that would flare out as he spun. He was sent to the other room when the TV host La Comay showed a picture of a man in a green bikini and Luisito wanted to see. They never let him stay over at his friends’ houses, even just to play Super Mario Bros. They kept him home, far from other boys, raising him on spankings and beatings with a belt (Take it like a man!), protecting the family from the shame of their strange child.
In kindergarten he put his hand down another boy’s pants for the first time—Alexander, with chestnut-brown hair and a pencil dick—and they both liked the tickling and rubbing. In first grade, Jessica with the ditzy voice called him a faggot on the basketball court in front of everyone. She said faggot in English because they went to private school. If he were straight, people wouldn’t insult him for no reason. In third grade they wouldn’t have bullied him for twirling down the hallway with his arms in the air, wouldn’t have complained to Mrs. Magda as if there were something she could do about it. In sixth grade he would have had a picture of his girlfriend taped in his locker—framed by an arrow-pierced heart drawn in black Sharpie. His formative years would have been brighter, more colorful, and free from sleepless nights.
When Luisito was twelve, his parents installed internet in the house, and he discovered porn. Around this time his pubic hair started growing like dense shrubs and he began to feel the weight of the cross on his back. In seventh grade, when he had to share a locker room with other boys, things became even more complicated. For example, Arturo: the one from the volleyball team with golden-brown hair, the one who could do one hundred push-ups in under a minute, the one whose dick was long and pointy, the one who, according to the rumors, refused to change his clothes in front of Luisito because Luisito would stare at him, rape him, taint him with his illness—his epidemic. Meanwhile Luisito tried to make himself very small, changing his clothes in a corner, facing the wall.
If Luisito had been born normal, he would have had no need to come out of the closet after meeting his first boyfriend on the internet: Hakeem, from Paterson, New Jersey. He wouldn’t have written the big news (the best news of his life!) on a little scrap of paper and passed it to Graciela in history class, for Mrs. Curet to confiscate, read, and tuck into her pocket, before clenching her jaw and asking him to stay after class to discuss what she’d read. He wouldn’t have felt ashamed when he saw his mother sobbing in the social worker’s office; the cold and her cries wouldn’t have sent a chill up his spine.
He wouldn’t have wanted to disappear, wouldn’t have cried whole weekends through. When Pedro the Fair rejected him, he wouldn’t have carved permanent scars into his legs with the knife his grandmother used to slice tomatoes.
He always wanted to be one of the cool guys in high school, someone the other guys extended their hands to for him to shake and whom the girls greeted with a kiss on the cheek. Every day he longed to sit down at lunch and casually laugh with the other kids, with food flying from one table to the next. He longed to make offhand comments about women with tits and pussies, about how he fucked one of the girls who got around, instead of always being left out of the conversation, observing silently, measuring each syllable on his tongue so nothing he said would come out wrong and make him seem strange.
He wanted to ask a girl out, to feel a rush when she smiled and said yes, to meet her in the mall parking lot so they could go into the movie theater with the ten dollars his grandfather snuck into his pocket with a wink, to feel her cherry tongue run along his neck when the previews ended and the world went dark, and fool around until the lights came back up. Instead, because he was who he was, he settled for hiding in the back row of a shitty movie with some guy named Luigi, where they had to hurriedly pull themselves apart each time the assholes in the next row turned around to laugh.
He never doubted his sexuality, though many girls tried to convince him otherwise. Once in a while college life lent itself to drunken nights with his femme friends. He took advantage of the fact that they let him hang on them and feel their tits, sometimes right in the middle of University Avenue. Once he pinched one of their nipples and she said over and over again how drunk and horny she was; she moaned and Luisito liked it. He pressed against her jeans, squeezed her tight, pulled her against him, smelled her. Her hair, her skin, and the night inked as black as the look in her eyes … but nothing happened. They went their separate ways and he never touched her again. His dick was half-hard, but he lost the drive: the butterflies never broke free from their cocoons.
Luisito was terrified of what his future might be like. He’d never had a “real” boyfriend or felt the warm embrace of a man’s arms. He wanted to be normal so that he would never have to feel the rejection of someone like Brayan, who, after fucking Luisito and making him moan like a little slut, immediately fell asleep, leaving Luisito by his side while he snored. Luisito lay there, armor down. Never, he thought, would he ever have a normal life with five kids and go out for beers with his normal childhood friends to talk about girls; nor would he have a nice wife to give his whole heart to for fifty-plus years. He would never be free from his cross, from those muffled laughs from first grade, from that jerk Brayan who didn’t want him after breaking his ass in two, from the tears that his mother had no choice but to cry for her son, her only son, who had come out like this.
FOR YEARS LUISITO thought that he would’ve been better off had he been born a woman. As he grew up, he noticed that he had inherited his mother’s metabolism: he gained weight like a woman, in his chest and ass, as opposed to the rounded gut men in his family tended to grow. He rubbed his mother’s creams on his little breasts and his butt cheeks, praying the cosmetic product would give him the tits he longed for. He began to eat more and more, despite the advice from the endocrinologist and his uncles’ insults. His ass grew. By seventh grade the pants he wore to school had a size thirty-eight waist. His mother sent him to school in jeans that were skintight—on one occasion he broke a zipper, on another occasion a button popped off. One day, despite Luisito’s fair skin, Juan told him that he looked like una negra preña and that he reminded him of the muffins his grandmother would make when they overflowed from their molds.
In eighth grade he focused all the hate that had been directed at him onto the space between his overgrown eyebrows. He tried to fix the problem with a pack of razors (three for three dollars), but his hand slipped and the razor got away from him more than once. This inspired another guy in class, Victor, to sing a song about his eyebrows at school in front of everyone, and Luisito’s grandfather, infuriated, to berate him during the whole ride home. And then he fixated on his hairy legs, those two inflated sausages that he wanted, more than anything, to see smooth-shaven and glistening in a pair of skanky red heels like the ones all the hot girls in class wore. He was ready: he had always walked ass sticking out, with his weight on the balls of his feet. He’d even taught his girlfriends how to strut down a catwalk. If he were a girl, he could wear tight pants without thinking twice, and everything would be perfect. A new kind of majesty: Tembandumba walking down a scintillating Antillean street, each of her earthshaking strides invoking the beating of a drum.
