Technologies of the Self

1. Leather-1

1. LeatherMom carries her bowl to the dining room table, sits across from Uncle Tomás, and tells me about the time he slapped his teacher’s ass. Mom was five. She and her siblings were playing baseball in the street outside their apartment building on 135th in Spanish Harlem when they spotted Tomás walking toward them in the distance.

“We gotta see this,” Miguelito said.

“Papá is going to slap him as hard as he slapped Miss Feinstein,” Carlos agreed.

Lourdes nodded. “C’mon. Let’s go, let’s go.”

Gloria, the eldest at seventeen, was working in the Garment District.

Mom trailed after her older siblings through the front door, up all five flights, and into their apartment. There were no elevators. They rushed down the long hallway, weaving between clotheslines and hanging socks, and crowded into the brothers’ room. They pressed their ears to the door and waited. Abuela had left, preoccupied by her son’s deed, but Abuelo was waiting. They had glimpsed him in the kitchen leaning on the back of his faded white folding chair and lifting his plaid brown jacket from his shoulders with quivering fingers, as if he were suddenly an old man about to pee himself.

At last, they heard the door swing open. They giggled.

“He’s in so much trouble,” Lourdes said with glee. “Tomás, man. Papá is gonna give him the whole treatment. You see. You wait and see.”

“Shut up!” Miguelito whispered. “They’re talking.”

In our Connecticut dining room, Uncle Tomás sputters his lips. They are fuzzy with fine gray hair and wet with saliva and sancocho. “You weren’t there, Dolores,” he says. “You didn’t see nothing. I’m the one who met the demon.”

Mom shrugs and purses her lips the way she does when she knows she’s won an argument—“Sure, Tomás.”—but he’s already turned to me, eyebrows jumping. He picks up where Mom left off.

In the apartment entrance, he kicked off his shoes and entered the hallway. The hall was narrow and dark, obscured by clothing that swung from long strings stretched overhead down the length of the corridor. At its end, the hallway broke right and then terminated with the children’s bedrooms and bathroom. He knew his brothers and sisters were there beyond sight, ears pressed to the door, giggling. The hallway seemed to pulse. “I knew I was in deep s**t,” he tells me. “It was all quiet. Just car horns and people yelling on the street, you know? All quiet.” He stopped where the open kitchen door met the hall, leaned against the outside of the frame, and held his breath.

“I can hear you,” Abuelo beckoned. His Spanish was soft but insistent. He had performed this routine many times with his sons. They knew the rules.

Tomás stepped into the kitchen and avoided Abuelo’s gaze. Light flowed from the window, illuminating the tile floor. It was freckled black with grit and oil.

“Stand in front of me.”

Tomás shuffled until his toes were inches from Abuelo’s polished black shoes.

“Remove your pants.”

Tomás unbuckled his belt and undid his jeans. The belt buckle clattered onto the tiles as the rest slumped onto the floor. He stepped out of the pile, nudging it aside.

“Give me your belt.”

Tomás knelt and slipped his belt from his jeans. He held it limply with upturned, trembling hands like the carcass of a half-strangled snake. He kept his nose upturned and his gaze on the window. The light there was bright and clear as rays of sun in water off the coast of La Romana. He missed his island. This place was cold, black, putrid, with too much noise and no rhythm. It would not shut up. Even now it was loud. Only its constant presence in his ears had rendered this moment silent, like a roaring surf heard in the confines of a shell. This city, I realize as he tells his story, is as restless and incessant as he was.

Abuelo snatched the belt from his hands and stared back at him. Tomás saw that he had brown eyes and flat lips that matched his own, the same big hands and big feet, the same desire to tell the other off. They shared a first name, Rafael. It was why people called Tomás by his middle name. One day he was going to f*****g rule the world, ride through it and work schemes like Clint Eastwood’s Blondie going town to town. Who cared what his father thought.

Abuelo held his tongue, I imagine, because this was his son, and he loved him. Tomás held his tongue out of rage. Why grant his father the dignity of a response? He didn’t deserve to be disciplined. He never deserved to be disciplined. He deserved respect.

Abuelo still wore his tie, but he’d undone his top button. He rotated his index finger in the shape of a cone.

“Turn,” he said.

Tomás curled his lip but did as told. He stared through the open door and into the opposite wall of the corridor. The clothesline seemed to flicker as if one of his siblings had twanged it from the far end. He could smell habichuela in the air, and he could hear the plátanos still sizzling on the stove. If he concentrated, he could feel them sizzling, tiny reverberations in the fabric of this piece of the universe, as if he were very small and aware of the movement of every tiny thing.

“And now your briefs,” Abuelo commanded.

Tomás blinked. He breathed for a moment before he tucked his thumbs under his sweaty white underwear and pushed it down to his ankles. His balls dangled dry and cold between his thighs. He heard the chair creak behind him as Abuelo rose.

“Bend over.”

Tomás chewed the insides of his cheeks and focused on his toes atop the tiles. He inhaled the habichuela and plátanos. A moment passed, another, and with a grunt and a muffled whoosh, Abuelo struck him.

“Eyyaaaa!” Tomás screamed.

He heard Abuelo step back. “Do you know why this is happening, Tomás?”

Tomás balled his fists at his knees. He was going to be the king of the world.

“She was s-so hot!” he cried. “I c-couldn’t help it!”

Abuelo’s voice teetered to a higher volume. “Excuse me, Tomás?”

“She was s-so damn hot!”

He heard Abuelo step forward and swing. The pain came an instant later and burned.

“How dare you speak back to me!” Abuelo thundered.

Again, he swung the leather.

“B-but she was s-so hot, Papá!”

Smack!

“B-but she was so f*****g hot!”

Smack!

“Papá! I c-couldn’t help it!”

Smack!

“Her ass was r-right there, what was I—”

Smack!

“Aaaa! Papá!”

Smack!

“Papá!”

The pain caught up with Tomás. It clung to him with urgency, singing shrilly in his ears. His back arched and his toes curled. His tongue twisted into itself and his teeth ground against one another. For a moment, he felt that he had left his body. First he believed he was in Abuelo’s body, delivering his own wounds. And then the body of the light from the window behind him, old and waning as the day completed itself. And then he was in the clothesline, vibrating, pulsing, flickering to a rapid beat, jazz maybe, or bachata, but bereft of melody. All drums. He jerked his head as if from a pool of cold water and discovered himself in his own body again, neck craned upward, staring into the hall. He heard Abuelo’s footsteps fade into an adjacent room. “Mi hijo…” Abuelo whispered.

Something black slipped from the clothesline. The tip of a boot, big as an ogre’s, then a thick, armored pant leg sealed to the boot, followed by half a torso, an arm, the blade of a sword, and a morion with its visor lowered. The rest of the body fell through the clothesline, moving impossibly into three dimensions like a beam of light split along all trajectories. The figure knelt in the doorway, and at last Tomás could discern what it was. A knight in shining armor, suited in black and, kneeling, as tall as the doorframe. The figure reeked of gasoline.

The knight rested his forearm on his upright knee and with his free hand lifted his visor. It clanked. Beneath was a sheath of stained glass and a breathing apparatus. He punched a rusted protrusion beneath his chin. The apparatus exhaled and the glass slipped away, revealing blue eyes, bushy brown eyebrows, and thin lips adorned with a generous, vibrant red mustache. He made a point of smiling.

“Hello, Tomás. Didn’t think I’d find you?” He spoke Spanish like a Spaniard, steady and formal, and at first Tomás did not understand his accent. The knight looked over Tomás’s shoulder and shrugged. His garments banged and scraped against one another. He smirked. “Was her ass worth yours?”

“Who the hell a-are you, man?” Tomás demanded.

The knight paused and stroked his nose with an iron-gloved finger.

“What year is it?”

“Uh, 1967.”

The knight spat onto the floor. “Shit.” He shook his head. “s**t s**t shit.”

Tomás gestured with his chin at the knight. “You gotta problem?”

“I was supposed to kill you at a different time. Clean. No paradoxes.” He stared off. “s**t. s**t s**t shit.”

“Kill me?” Tomás lifted a hand from his knee and beat his chest. “Why not k-kill me now, cabrón?”

“You would want to fight me. You stupid, stupid boy.” The knight continued to stare into the wall. “But I can’t. No paradoxes. I said that. No paradoxes.”

“What did I d-do to you, man?” Tomás asked, digging a fingernail into his palm to counter the pain in his ass.

The knight tilted his head, but his eyes remained on the wall. The cupboards rose on either side of the door, bearing rows of plates, glasses, and condiments. The air was still, as if a hurricane had passed through these rooms hours ago. Tomás could hear his father’s urine spool into the toilet in the adjacent room, and he wanted to call out. Fear and pain paralyzed him.

“You kill me. Killed me. Will kill me. One of those,” the knight murmured. And then, with distant confidence: “It’s a f*****g mess.” He faced Tomás and pointed his thumbs in opposite directions. “You and I, we’re going along, downstream upstream. Time travel, man. How many times have we fought? Will we fight? Are we fighting? You’re still here, you know, and so am I. I have to wipe the slate clean. I killed so many … but you I can’t. I try so hard. I really do.”

“Hey! Answer me. Who the hell a-are you?” Tomás demanded, louder now.

The man shifted his left boot. His mustache twitched.

“You wouldn’t remember. We’re side by side, you and me.” He began to turn. “I’ll be back soon.” He turned back. “Oh, and don’t forget: Keep some change in your pocket. It’s very important you do that, Tomás.”

With this, the man turned. The floorboards groaned under his weight. He coughed, punched his chin, and slipped through the clothesline. The line twanged.

Tomás inhaled and shook his head. He found himself on all fours, drooling onto the cold tile. The belt lay behind him. The bathroom sink was on. He heard it gargle to a stop, and then his father stepped back into the kitchen.

“Do you understand now?” Abuelo demanded.

Tomás growled and rolled over; his underwear bound him at the ankles. He pulled it over his ass. Dominicans are blessed with big asses, men and women alike, but unfortunately for Tomás he had the flattest ass in the family. A white boy’s ass. The pain was always sharper than it was for his brothers. It stung as he dragged his briefs to his waist.

He retrieved his jeans and struggled to his feet.

“Y-you will n-never understand me,” he said, leaving the belt.

He wiped the slobber from his lips and stumbled into the hall.

“You’re impossible, you know that, Tomás?” Abuelo called after him. “You are impossible.”

Tomás shook his head and worked his way down the hall, leaning on the walls and groping for a handhold. He was numb now. He could only hear the drum of the clothesline. As he ambled toward his room, he stretched his hands above his head and looked up, running his fingers along the clothesline as if tracing the movement of constellations. But even without a roof, he knew the thick light of this city would obscure the night sky. In the DR, the universe sat easily on top of the world.

“That was the weirdest thing that ever happened to me,” Uncle Tomás tells me.

By now, we’ve finished lunch, and Mom has ordered us to pull weeds in the backyard. Uncle Tomás is not good at gardening, but he works consistently. At least this is what Mom says. She pays him to do odd jobs around the house since he’s unemployed and living off government disability checks. The rest of the family supports him too, although after he tried to smuggle Colombian heroin into JFK two years ago, they’ve begun to question their loyalty. “He’s almost seventy,” Mom told me once. “He can’t be doing these things. He’s a senior citizen.” Uncle Tomás thrusts a clump of weeds into his trash bag and arcs his back.