Chulito (9 page)

Damian gave up on Martha and stepped off the curb. “Fuck it, there are plenty more women who know a good thing when they see it.”

“Good thing?” Martha defended herself. “Just because you worked out in jail and look all diesel, don’t change a damn thing about you. I don’t have time for a bunch of weed-smoking, Hennessey-drinking, hanging-out-on-the-corner niggas. Get your shit together, then maaayyybe we could talk.”

Puti, who watched from her window cheered Martha, “Tell them, sister!”

Martha nodded at Puti who reached down and offered her flat palm. Martha slapped it five and marched down the block.

Damian waved off Martha and Puti and joined his co-workers in the “Auto glass! Auto glass! Auto glass!” chorus.

“I feel like some chicken wings. How ‘bout you?” Kamikaze asked.

Chulito nodded and looked out the back window. Damian’s body grew smaller and smaller until it became an indistinguishable dot in the portrait of his neighborhood.

“Auto glass! Auto glass! Auto glass!” Damian yelled outside Chulito’s window, waking him from a deep slumber.

Chulito had trouble falling asleep for two reasons. One reason was because his thoughts were wrapped around Carlos’ words “I dig you, and not like when we were kids.” The other reason was because when he and Kamikaze stopped by Lefty’s party, Chulito saw, on his way to the bathroom, Damian’s bare ass rising and falling slowly as he ground himself into a skinny chick with long red nails. The image of Damian fucking in that bedroom was burned into Chulito’s brain.

“Auto glass, mamita,” Damian continued to yell from across the street. Chulito rolled over on his stomach and lifted the shade to peek out. Damian leaned on a car with a cracked windshield speaking to the driver. The sun gave him a heavenly light and his baggy shorts and boxers were slipping exceptionally low. As he spoke to a bleached blonde Latina, he shifted his weight from one foot to another and rubbed his biceps as if they were sore. He nodded his head a couple of times, smiled and pointed her toward Master #1 Auto Glass Shop. Nailed. As she drove away, he stretched his arms and did a couple of trunk twists knowing full well that someone, somewhere was watching. In this case it was Chulito laying on his morning hard-on.

Chulito rolled onto his back and looked down at his own slim body. He could see Papito through the slit in the boxers. He rubbed his chest and slid his hand down to give it a little squeeze. The warmth in the room was soothing and comforting. He didn’t have to keep himself in check. He closed his eyes and imagined that he was standing on the ledge of his first floor window. Legs apart. Knees slightly bent. Boxers around his ankles. One hand holding on to the top of the window and the other stroking himself slowly for all to see. He wanted to shoot and cover Garrison Avenue with a thick white coat of Chulito juice. He sleepwalked to the window and began pumping his hips on the dusty glass. His stiff cock was making strange shapes as it pressed against the glass. The auto glass guys noticed. “¡Mira! ¡Mira!” they yelled. To their surprise, they sprouted their own erections—Benny El Loco, Miguelito and Freddy El Dominicano. Then Damian rose out of his beach chair and walked directly to the yellow garage right across the street from Chulito. Damian had the biggest bulge of all. It pressed against his baggy gray sweat pants and looked like he’d stuffed it with a sandwich from Hero City on Spofford Avenue. Everybody knew their heroes had the most meat.

Damian undid the drawstring tie and the size forty-four sweats slipped past his thirty-inch waist and dropped to the pavement. He grabbed the sides of the elastic waistband of his boxers and bent all the way over as he slid them off. Damian began to stroke himself with both hands, peeling back his dark foreskin and revealing his slick pink head. The only barrier keeping them apart was Garrison Avenue.

Chulito’s hips shoved the large glass pane out onto the street. He stroked himself and synchronized his rhythms with Damian. All the other auto glass guys grimaced as they rose to their climaxes. Chulito and Damian moved their hips making circles and swinging back and forth. The other guys started shooting. Benny El Loco, then Miguelito, then Freddy El Dominicano—one by one all the auto glass guys up and down Garrison Avenue came like geysers.

Chulito felt the dizzying familiar tingle build up in his balls and travel up his dick. He gripped the top of his window, locked eyes with Damian, and simultaneously they shot one long forceful stream that connected in an arc in the middle of Garrison Avenue, right above the street’s mustard yellow double painted lines.

When the streams met they bathed the block in a white, luminescent light then exploded into a tidal wave of jizz—splashing down the walls of his building, dripping off the newly painted fire escapes, covering the bright auto glass shop signs, all the cars, the hydrant near the corner, and milk crates in front of Rivera’s Bodega. The street was filled with cum and all the guys collapsed with pleasure. Damian sunk into his beach chair, rubbing his palm from his stomach to his chest with his eyes closed as the rivers of cum slipped down the sewers.

Chulito awoke. He looked over at his window. The shade was still pulled down and the glass was intact. Nevertheless, a small puddle filled his navel and spilled down his side. The clean, sweet smell of himself mixed with the smell of freshly brewed Cafe Bustelo coming out of his mother’s kitchen. He felt comforted by the two scents and nervous that he’d had the dream.

He wondered if the dream meant that he was actually gay. He’d had sexy dreams before, but he usually stopped the action before anything happened. But this was only a dream and he was safely in his room—the one place he could take off his South Bronx armor. The worse that could happen right now is that his mother would walk in and catch him spent with Papito resting and dripping down the side of his hip.

He figured that as long as he didn’t do anything physical he was not gay. A dream wasn’t going to turn him.

He started to drift off to sleep again, when he heard Carlos’ footsteps above him. “I dig you, and not like when we were kids.” Chulito shifted his thoughts to the day ahead. Kamikaze would pick him up at ten
A.M.
Then they would go to El Papa’s place to pick up. Hopefully, he would be done by one
P.M.
and he could go get his braids redone, then go to the Boulevard and buy something for his mom’s birthday. He had to figure in the ten minutes it took him to get away from Catalina, who stopped him every time he passed the nail salon where she worked. He could hear her yelling now, “Hey, Chulito, when you gonna take me out?”

“Auto glass! Auto glass! Auto glass, mamita!” Damian yelled and before Papito woke up again, he knew that it was time to go.

Chulito spent the next couple of days debating whether he should call or text Carlos, who hadn’t made any attempts to contact him. Chulito knew it was on him to make the next move and decided that he didn’t want to let another day go by without telling Carlos what he was feeling. In doing so, he knew that he would be crossing a bridge, making a move that felt scary but essential.

From Carlos’ room above him, Chulito could hear Nina Simone asking for some sugar in her bowl. The music stopped before the song ended. Carlos is leaving. Chulito quickly put on his new, dark brown Timberland boots. When he heard the upstairs door slam, he abandoned lacing the second boot and ran toward the door in an attempt to run into Carlos in the hall. Too late, he saw him exiting the building. Chulito was about to call out Carlos’ name from the doorway when he saw Martha and her sidekicks Debbie and Brenda, who held her baby, Joselito, sitting in front of the building.

“Hey, Chulito, where you going all in a rush? Think you too good for us, just gonna run by and not say nothing?” Martha spoke so quickly that Chulito understood what she said about two seconds after she had said it. “So where you going looking all cute and everything?”

“He’s always cute,” Debbie and Brenda chimed in.

Chulito smiled and nonchalantly looked across the street to see Carlos disappear around the corner.

“You are lucky that I’m twenty-four and don’t want to rob your cradle,” Brenda warned.

“Well, I’m closer to your age, Chulito.” Debbie swung her wavy brown hair away from her face and placed elaborately manicured hands on her slim hips. “Legal and tender.”

“Wow, mamita, I hear you. And yo, Brenda, you make me wish I was twenty-four.” Chulito played along, hoping that they would not connect his rushing out the building with one of his laces untied with the fact that Carlos had just come out moments earlier.

“Yeah, right, tell me another one.” Brenda shifted little José from her right hip to her left.

The threesome had stopped in front of the building to decide whether they should go to the Boulevard or visit Catalina at the nail salon.

“You seeing Catalina?” Debbie asked suspiciously. “‘Cause she be talking, but I ain’t never seen you two together.”

“Something like that.” Chulito checked Debbie out as if she had a chance with him.

“Damn, you are fine, fine, fine!” Debbie high-fived her cohorts.

“Down girl,” Martha squeaked. “He has got playa written all over him. I can smell it from he-ah.” She smoothed back loose wiry strands of hair that had come undone from her small stiff pony tail.

“The only thing I can smell is some CK One and it smells mighty good,” Debbie said, circling Chulito and sniffing him out.

“Don’t embarrass your ass out in the street and everything. Damn!” Brenda handed José to Martha so that she could look in her bag for his bobo.

“Hey, I’m single now.” Debbie looked Chulito up and down.

“Single my ass,” Brenda said. “Chulito, Benny’s in jail. He was stealing money from the Bravo Supermarket where he worked.”

“What?” Chulito said, pretending to sound interested as he looked over to where Carlos had just disappeared.

In one breath, complete with neck rolls and nods, Martha said, “He’s a stupid motherfucker, excuse the French, because they had made him assistant manager and he was definitely gonna be a manager and now he fucked it all up, excuse the French again, and now he’s in jail and Debbie is out here acting like a ho.”

“Uh-hmmm,” Brenda agreed and took her son from Martha.

Chulito tried to think of an excuse to leave the women and catch up with Carlos. He wanted to be having different conversation. He loved how Carlos matter-of-factly said he dug him. That was up front and gangsta. Carlos was all smarts and could have his pick of any college dude, but he came back to the hood for Chulito. Chulito wanted to tell him that he dug him, too, since forever, even though the thought that anyone in the hood might ever find out still terrified him. He wondered how he could tell Carlos and still keep himself in check.

“Martha, you better watch your mouth,” Debbie said defending herself. “Just because you’re going to college, don’t be thinking that you could tell everybody else how to live.”

Martha responded in kind. “You could come to college with me and meet some smart educated guy, not the riff raff walking up and down these streets, no offense, Chulito. You fine and all that but you know what I’m talking about.”

“You gotta get all serious and shit.” Debbie moved in so close to Chulito that he could feel the heat rising from her skin. “I’m just playing with him. I’m not talking about marriage or anything. I’m just looking to have a little fun.”

“Uh-hm, then Benny finds out and he have someone kick Chulito’s ass and fuck up his face and shit,” Martha said.

Chulito put an arm around Debbie. “Hey, Martha, I can take care of myself.”

“It’s your life, but what I see is that we keep spinning the same old circles. Getting pregnant, going to jail, selling drugs.” Martha paused and Chulito imagined her totaling the cost of his fitted authentic Yankee cap and jersey, gold chains, Fossil watch, Tommy Jeans, and custom Timberland Roll Top boots. “But we got to educate ourselves and do something else.”

Debbie crossed her arms and glared at Martha. “You’re worse than those fucking Pentacostals preaching in front the train station on Saturdays. All preach, preach, talk.”

“Debbie, take a look at me, ‘cause I ain’t all talk. I’m doing something. Just like that guy Carlos.”

Debbie sucked her teeth. “The faggot? Please.”

The word stung Chulito and his blood rushed to his ears.

“Faggot or no faggot, he’s going to college and doing something with his life. Brenda here fell into the trap. Started fucking Mr. Fine Ass Kamikaze, a drug dealer, no doubt. Got all hooked on him. Got pregnant and look, she’s walking around carrying José ‘cause her carriage broke, and the drug dealing daddy keep saying he’s gonna get a new one. Where is it?” Martha said. “All that damn money and zero responsibility.”

Brenda looked at Chulito. “You seen Kamikaze?”

“He’s coming to pick me up in a bit.” Chulito slipped down and tied his boot.

“Are those new?” Martha asked suspiciously.

“You know it,” Chulito said.

“So, Kamikaze has money,” Martha said. “It’s dirty money, but he’s has it. Lots of it I’m sure.”

“He didn’t buy these for me. I earn my money.”

“But Kamikaze pays you,” Martha moved in close, looked down at Chulito and whispered, “from drug money.”

Chulito straightened up. “He always takes care of business.”