Chulito (5 page)

“Nothing, just going to meet Jennifer’s mother at the train station,” Brick responded.

“Oooi, la Sueeeegraaaaa.” Gil shivered.

“No doubt. That’s why I got some protection right up here on my shoulders. She don’t start no shit with me as long as I got this sweetie with me. Right, mamita?”

Crystal kissed the top of her daddy’s head.

“Need a light?” Gil asked, nodding to the unlit cigarette that dangled from Brick’s lips.

“Nahhh, nigga, you crazy.” Brick looked up to Crystal.

“Oh shit, sorry, bro. So, you going out with the fellas to celebrate Chulito’s birthday?”

Brick looked down at Chulito and the fellas on the corner. “Nah, I stay away from Kamikaze. I had my days of dealing drugs and dodging bullets. I got more important things to do.” Brick kissed Crystal’s ankle.

“I hear you. I’ll probably pass through after I lock up. They expect to go all night.”

“Well, I’s gots to be moving ‘cause la suegra don’t like walking alone.” He said good-bye with an upward flick of his chin. “Say bye to Gil, mamita.”

“Bye, Gil.”

“Bye, mamita,” Gil said.

“Yo, Majora!” Brick shouted to a Black woman with a vibrant tangle of dreads. Majora grew up in the ’hood and formed the local environmental group that rented a storefront next to the liquor store. Brick was placed in her program where he got paid to clean up the Bronx River and take tour groups canoeing.

“Hey Brick, you’re working next Saturday, right?”

“Word!”

“See you then. Hi, sweetie,” she said to Crystal.

“Hi, Majora,” Crystal responded as Majora stepped behind her agency’s glass doors.

“Look, Daddy!” Crystal pointed to Julio who owned the travel agency where Brick worked part-time cleaning up and delivering plane tickets to the old folks.

Julio came to the door. “Oh my God, who is that big, beautiful young lady on Daddy’s shoulders?”

“Hi, Julio, you got lollipop?” Crystal asked.

“Yes, mamita, right here.” He handed her a red lollipop.

“Eat it later, ma,” Brick warned Crystal. “I don’t want you to get dirty before Grandma sees you.”

“Oh, so grandma is coming to visit?”

Brick rolled his eyes. “Yeah, so do you need any help?”

“I’m closing soon, but you can work a couple of hours later tonight organizing that mess in the back. I’ll leave you the keys to lock up.”

“Definitely! Anything to get out of my house. I’ll build the shelves for the supplies.”

Chulito was intrigued by Brick and Julio’s friendship because Brick was über macho and Julio was über gay. Julio would dress in drag every Halloween, usually as a stewardess or a cruise director. His family had owned Cruz Travel Agency for years and when his father died, Julio took it over. The fellas didn’t bother Julio, because they grew up with him and he kept to his place. They also knew he had a registered gun on the premises. Having Brick around also helped.

Brick was strong, stern, and puro hombre with an old soul that could be seen in his dark eyes. If beauty was a mark of leadership, Brick was destined to rule the Bronx. He only stood at 5’ 9” and weighed in at a slim buck fifty. But size mattered in other places. First, were his hands, which he now used to do odd construction jobs and other forms of physical labor. He also had a big heart and thought of others in addition to thinking of himself. And word on the street was that he was a condom stuffer, a gift he shared with any woman he chose.

Chulito remembered when Julio used Brick in a promotional campaign to drum up the travel agency’s business. The ad was a simple poster of Brick shirtless with a seductive stare in his eyes and the tag line, “Come away with me.” Every store owner in the neighborhood put one up, and Brick became a local celebrity. In addition to being displayed all over Hunts Point, the fellas found out that the poster was also hanging in every gay bar in the city and in ads in gay magazines. Brick’s stock rose one thousand percent with the women, but the guys gave him lots of shit, asking him if he was turning because the ad looked gay. Brick loved the attention and ignored the guys.

He got about three other, high-paying modeling gigs off of that. Julio managed his budding career, and the fellas teased Brick non-stop, calling him a homo-thug. Eventually, Brick stopped accepting offers for gay campaigns, but his short-lived venture with Julio cemented their friendship. When some rough necks from the other side of the Bruckner Expressway gave Julio some trouble, Brick intervened.

Brick was his nickname, because his birth name, Alejandro, was too old and formal for the twenty-four-year-old former street gangsta. Alejandro was a name he would have to grow into, if ever. Brick worked well with the shorties and it commanded respect from the brothers.

Lost in thoughts, Chulito realized that Brick had almost reached the corner when Looney Tunes waved his hands in front Chulito’s face. “Yo! Wake up, bro. Your posse is gonna leave you behind.” Chulito looked away and saw Kamikaze beckoning him over. “Later, Tunes.” Then he looked back as Tunes dashed toward Brick.

“Yo, Brick!” Looney Tunes called out, stopping him in front of the pawn shop three doors down from the travel agency.

“‘Sup Tunes?”

“Those suckas won’t let me go with them, so I’m gonna hang out with my girl.” Looney Tunes was feeling the new girl who worked in the pawn shop. Whenever he visited her, she’d send him back and forth getting her coffee or something from the doughnut shop.

“Your girl? Right.” Brick smiled and kept walking down the block toward Chulito and the fellas.

“Yo, what you mean ‘Right?’”

“Forget it, man, you da boss.”

“That’s right and don’t you—” Looney Tunes was interrupted by Crystal’s voice. “Bye, Tunes!”

“Hey, mama, don’t you look beautiful today. Is it your birthday?”

“No, Grandma’s coming.”

“Happy birthday, mamita!” he yelled and disappeared into the pawn shop.

“Yo, Brick! You coming?” Papo yelled. Brick waved and pointed up to Crystal.

But everyone knew Brick stayed away from Kamikaze and from doing things with “the pack.” He was a bit of a lone wolf, played on the low with his share of women and he had a Jesus tattoo on his back. There were several stories about that tattoo, but no one seemed to know the real reason he had it done. With Crystal on his shoulders and Jesus on his back, Brick checked out the cars as they filled with the guys and took off into the night to the Gentlemen’s Lounge in Yonkers.

From the passenger’s seat in Kamikaze’s ride, Chulito watched Brick cross the street with Crystal bobbing on his shoulders. He wondered how Brick managed to stay friends with Julio and stay ahead of all the homo rumors.

A strong stream of piss splashing loudly in a toilet bowl across the room brought Chulito back to the conscious world. His auditory nerves twitched and his eyelids lifted slowly to reveal a fuzzy view of a ceiling fan spinning lazily and sending down a soft warm breeze on his face. Ah, he could feel his face. With every blink, the room came more into focus. He was in Kamikaze’s crib called cielo which means heaven, but was just on the other side of the Bruckner Expressway near Longwood Avenue in a building that got fixed up and went condo. Kamikaze had BG, one of the guys from Tats Cru Graffiti Mural Kings Inc., paint the apartment’s ceilings and walls to resemble a sunny blue sky with puffy clouds that glowed in the dark so they could be seen at night. Plush white carpets covered all the floors in the apartment except for the kitchen which had smooth, white, marble tiles. The white overstuffed couches were like giant, cumulous clouds parked around the expansive sunken living room. Kamikaze believed that with all the shit he’d done on earth, he’d never make it to heaven, so he created it in the Bronx.

Chulito’s neck muscles joined the awakening and he turned to see Kamikaze standing over the bowl with his back to him and from between his legs the golden pee shimmered in the late morning sunlight. He wore briefs (he only wore briefs because he said his low hanging balls needed support) and the elastic waistband dug into the top of his ass as he pulled down the front. His legs were hairy, which contrasted his smooth back and on his wide shoulders he had KAMIKAZE tattooed in cobalt blue letters with red, orange and yellow flames rising from them. His waist was small and although his butt was covered Chulito could see the two indentations that sat right above each cheek.

The pissing trickled and stopped. The last few drops were squeezed out and Kamikaze tucked himself away. Chulito shut his eyes so he wouldn’t get caught watching, then as the toilet flushed he pretended to wake up. Kamikaze turned. “Glad to see you survived last night.”

Chulito sat up on his elbows and felt like the room shifted forty five degrees, so he plopped back down.

“Suffer, papa. ¿Pa’ eso bebe? Hope you learned your lesson not to mix liquor.” Kamikaze teased.

Chulito pressed his knuckles into his temples. “What the fuck happened, Kaz?”

“You couldn’t get hard.” Kamikaze ran and leaped onto the sofa bed.

“Ow, don’t make the bed shake, bro.”

Kamikaze sat cross-legged on the bed. Chulito could see the folds of skin from a hairy testicle through the loose leg band. The stale smell of Kaz’s cologne sent an electric thrill through Chulito that made his heart race. He turned on his stomach to press down on the awakening in his groin.

“You got fucked up within an hour after we got to the club. We had the hottest mamitas over to lap dance and you kept saying, ‘My shit won’t go up. Somebody put something in my drink so my shit won’t go up.’” Kamikaze laughed and smacked Chulito’s butt.

“Ow. Chill wit dat, yo.”

“Man, you held on to those dancers like your life depended on it. Remember the one named Veronica who was into you? She buried your face in her tetas and the guys chanted, ‘Dale leche, dale leche.’ Man, she would have been here, too, if you hadn’t passed out.” Kamikaze stretched out beside him and hugged a pillow. He raised his two thick, beautiful, black eyebrows. He looked like he was half Chinese and half Puerto Rican. His skin was the color of soft chocolate ice cream, with a short nose and high cheeks. Kamikaze trimmed his moustache close to his lip to the point that it was barely detectable but emphasized their fullness.

Kamikaze’s unusual beauty and irresistible charm made it easy to like him. He was open and happy, not like typical dealers or thugs who were all dark and moody.

Chulito stole a glance at his torso, which was smooth except for a small mass of hair in the center of his chest that trailed down the center of his stomach. He pulled the thin white sheet over his head, but in his mind’s eye he could still see Kamikaze’s long body hugging the pillow, facing him. “Yo, Kaz, keep it down.”

He apologized and continued to tell Chulito about the night. How at one point Chulito got up on the low table in their booth to dance with one of the strippers.

“I danced? I don’t dance, bro,” Chulito protested, defending himself.

Santo, one of the Tats Cru guys, said that he used to strip in a gay club in Puerto Rico and got up on the table to demonstrate. The fellas joked and gave him shit, calling him a fag.

“Shut the fuck up,” Santo had said. “I don’t let the patos touch nothing, pero I used to make good tips.”

Chulito had shoved him off table and tried to imitate him. The German twins from Tats Cru said that they went to a club in Spain where the patrons licked the dollars and stuck them to the stripper’s skin. Chulito then pulled the front of his shirt over his head so that it rested on his shoulders and exposed his stomach and chest, and the guys licked dollars and stuck them to him. Even Veronica the stripper licked one of her tips and stuck it on Chulito. After management made him get off the table, he gave his tips to Veronica.

Chulito recalled the evening in small flashes. He remembered feeling jealous when he saw Kamikaze flirting with a blonde dancer with long legs. He remembered that Chin-Chin cried because he hadn’t seen his daughter since his ex moved to Florida a year ago. He remembered how the women in the club were all over the German twins because they are blanquitos with blue eyes.

Damian, one of the auto glass guys, was a great dancer and tore up the small dance floor with one of the strippers. He remembered Damian kissing her hand like a gentleman when they finished then rejoining the group, saying that he would eat that dancer alive starting with her pussy.

The three guys who founded Tats Cru—BIO, Nicer and BG—basically hung together and did their fair share of tipping. One of the dancers, a Latina with huge hair, told BIO that he was the man of her dreams. He jokingly told her to keep dreaming ‘cause he was already taken, but that she could live a little of her dream right then. She responded with a lap dance. Orlando, the young guy who worked at the corner bodega, showed up to wish Chulito well and had a couple of drinks and a lap dance before leaving. Several other guys from the neighborhood did the same.

Chulito remembered that with each shot of Patron, with each Corona, with each Jack and Coke, with each Cuba Libre he thought of calling Carlos and cursing him out for not calling back. He remembered going to the bathroom to text him: sorry sorry sorry please call me or hit me back. Chulito checked his phone. No texts from Carlos.