enciende mi piel

Zacarias Ferreira: “Amiga Veneno”

It is summer. Make that the peak of July: hovering around 90 degrees every day, humid enough to wilt the concrete sculptures in the Sculpture Garden. Everything wet and sticky and slow-moving. And there is a boy.

There is always a boy.

This is a problem, or it is not a problem, in alternation. In this case, it is a stop-gap. An unfair measure. Because before summer is spring, and this spring a friend dies, a three-year relationship ends, and a promise is broken. And all through this there is this boy, who says, oh, no matter what, and you are so beautiful, and hyacinth girl.

I am sinking into unhappiness, discontent I can’t name. It permeates everything. Taking a shower is too hard. In the depths of spring, I sit in the back of a friend’s car and think about dying while the green is in its first force. I’m paranoid and anxious and frantic. The glow-in-the-dark star on my ceiling fan terrifies me.

And finally we watch The Virgin Suicides and Harold and Maude all in one night and it is too much, so I sleep in his room, while he sits in the chair and makes sure I don’t wake up crying, and plays music softly on his computer. I wake up over and over, see him slumping in the chair, hear the songs on repeat.

But it is stifling, and I want to flex and unfurl. He means need, and curfews, and phone calls, and responsibility, and debt, and no matter how much he says oh, no matter what, he means, how can you ask me to walk you to the busstop to meet another boy?

Then one night I go dancing.

It is a wonder of the body that after four months cocooning myself away, dancing woke me up. The dance club is a little smoky but mostly it is dark and there are blue spotlights and many, many young men and a live band. They are from Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and they teach me salsa, rhumba, bachata.

There is something about the way those men touch me that pulls me back into the world. They aren’t brothers, but they are safe. They watch for my feet. They hold me in the vortex of a twirl. There is tenderness in this anonymity. One song, a bachata, stands out. It is called “Amiga Veneno,” and I ask the DJ to play it again, one more time, please?, at the end of the night. Two a.m. Everyone wants to go home, but I just want to stay on the floor, in the blue light.

A boy I know from school offers me a ride. His car is cold, the air is cold; the summer is evaporating in the night. We go to his house and dance, alone in his bedroom. We lie and kiss each other for four hours. It is nothing. It is being awake in the first grey of humidity returning. He tells me, tu piel me encanta.

Later in the summer, I will leave my friend for the last time, tell him I could never be his girlfriend. It’s not only because of the dancing and the young men and their strong cologne. Or the way night skies in summer turn from purple to robin’s-egg. But while the catalpa trees bloom out my window, something begins to shift.

Amiga veneno, tu amor es el fuego enciende mi piel/ Y cada noche en mi cuarto, me dices ven, me dices ven, mi dices ven//Sus ojos verdes son espejos/Brillan para mi/Su cuerpo entero es un pleser/ de principio a fin//Dormiendo en mi cuarto/me despierto con su sed/Me veo hablando con paredes/Hasta el amanecer (forgive me for the lack of accents; I'm guessing, here).