Making Love in Spanish

Habia una vez (Once upon a time)

Habia una vez

(Once upon a time)

Another time, another placeWhen Emilio was still a mere toddler with dark, unruly hair, dressed in nothing more than nappies and dimpled smiles, I went to New York for the first time. I was in my mid-twenties. His mother probably would have been in her mid-twenties, too, gazing out the window of her Santo Domingo home, a second baby perched at her hip, dreaming of America, waiting for the coveted visa that would magically transform their lives.

I did the math. She must be my age, give or take a few years.

I, on the other hand, had escaped to New York for a breather from Paris, where I’d spent the last four years studying art history, marveling at a seductively beautiful Manet here, admiring a sumptuously gilded cupola there, savoring a slab of foie gras sautéed in port and chanterelles whenever I could, and basically temping my way through various jobs, thereby constantly tempting my father to reassess his continuing generosity.

“Don’t you think it’s time to come home?” he said to me over the phone once. “There’s just been a revolution, it’s a new dawn for the country, and all that studying … ” he paused, and I could tell that what he meant to say was, “which I paid for,” but he chose to bite his tongue. Ever the mild-mannered gentleman, he was never one for recriminations and accusations. My mother, well, she was a different story. Even on a crackling long-distance line you’d be able to feel her eyes narrowing into plutonium-laden missiles ready to launch whenever she was displeased or exasperated.

“I know, I know,” I mumbled, and my words echoed endlessly amid the static of the overseas phone connection. Go back? To where? To my vaguely Spanish-speaking, English language-mangling little tropical country in the middle of Asia, where the beaches were splendid but the traffic was crippling, where the people were warm but life was generally uninspiring, twenty-four-hour servants and chauffeurs notwithstanding? My country, the shining example of feudal democracy in the twentieth century, people power be damned.

It was inevitable that I’d go back at some point, of course. But before that, a week, maybe ten days, in New York beckoned.

Impulsively, perhaps foolishly, I’d arranged to rendezvous with three men I’d dated briefly, all roughly my age, all disarmingly handsome, all, coincidentally, of Spanish or Hispanic descent. All scheduled to be in New York that same weekend of my twenty-fifth birthday.

And all named Al, also coincidentally.

There was Alejandro, the securities trader for an investment bank that no longer exists. Tall and golden-haired, lightly tanned and athletic, he was from Argentina, had an Italian last name, and occasionally played polo. We’d met the summer before through friends in Paris.

There was Alfonso, the producer at a then-fledgling cable news network, who chased after drug dealers and subway gropers in the name of ratings. He was, in fact, from the motherland—Spain—tall and lean, with dark hair, and dark, impish eyes. He was the brother of one of the translators I temped for when I worked at UNESCO in Paris. A cushy job that paid me fifty dollars a day, tax-free, but in the end, my mother liked to point out, netted me nothing because I spent seventy-five dollars a day. Not a win-win situation.

And there was Alberto, the bohemian non-conformist architect from San Francisco, who was flying in to see me. An unusual and irresistible mix of Colombian, Chinese, and Scottish, he was lithe and muscled, his skin the color of caramel, his thick, black hair just brushing his shoulders or bundled in a ponytail. And we met the old-fashioned, earth-moving, soul-stirring, and ultimately cheesy kind of way: our hands reached for the same book at W.H. Smith on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris—Palladio’s Rome. But I didn’t find out until we met again in New York that he didn’t wear any underwear underneath his jeans.

So. Alejandro, Alfonso, Alberto.

I can call you Betty,

And Betty when you call me,

You can call me Al …

My name isn’t Betty, though. It’s Maxine. And no, don’t ever call me Max. Or Maxie. Seriously. Just Maxine. Only my kids get away with calling me something else. Which makes me sound like a sanitary pad. “Please, pretty please, Maxi-Mum?” they’d implore, complete with puppy dog eyes, when they want to stay up late on a school night, or go to a party I’d already said they couldn’t go to, or even just to crawl into my bed when I was working late into the night.

So, anyway, that was the plan. Three men. One weekend. New York.

Manageable, I thought, just like those romantic comedies. I could already imagine the movie posters along Times Square. Or the TV sitcom inspired by real-life events …

How difficult could it be, really?

My French roommate Sylvie had her doubts, which she based on last year’s fiasco, and quite reasonably so, since I had inadvertently pit two suitors against each other, with disastrous results. Both had come to Paris to work during the month-long General Conference at UNESCO; for us temps it meant lots of late nights, lots of overtime pay with free food and transport allowance, and lots of raucous fun hanging out together while the Palestinians and the Israelis engaged in the tragic and never-ending debate about the land to which they both laid claim.

I was trapped in a conflict zone of my own making, albeit a more frivolous one. In this battle, the warring nations were Uruguay and Bolivia. Fernando, the Uruguayan, was young, blond, cocky, and comfortably funded by his parents; he reeked of recklessness, good restaurants, and an overdose of tequila. Juan, the Bolivian, was older, quieter, and more thoughtful; he also didn’t have much money. He promised poetry and profundity with cheap food and decent wine.

I was floored by the attention they both lavished on me, especially since the city was overflowing with so many stunning, slender Parisian girls who’d lost their puppy fat at the age of four, my roommate Sylvie included. I couldn’t decide between the two men; honestly, the outcome of a football match between their two countries would be easier to call (Uruguay, hands down). And, unlike Sylvie, I was woefully unskilled in the sophisticated art of stringing men along, French style. So I sat in the Japanese gardens of UNESCO at lunchtime, framed by the cherry blossoms, and listened, entranced, while Juan told me about mythical, fantastical creatures like the Griffon, the Manticore, and the Squonk, reading out loud from Borges’s The Book of Imaginary Beings.

Fernando, on the other hand, was and would probably forever be in frat-boy mode. He just wanted to party, get plastered, and reach ANY base with girls, which was pretty much par for the course for a twenty-two-year-old. And he could get us all into the best clubs—definitely a point in his favor.

At the cocktail reception marking the close of the conference, Juan and Fernando, complexions as pallid as the gray proletarian concrete that lined UNESCO’s walls, circled me like salivating vultures, almost coming to blows in an attempt to settle the question of who would get to take me home after the party. As trophies go, winning the privilege to escort me home was a dubious honor; it didn’t guarantee the winner would even get to first base. Yet they still fought over me—pint-sized, prim Eurasian me with the straight dark brown hair, Oriental eyes, and fair skin—shoving each other, then rolling their sleeves up menacingly, jammed into a corner of the basement hall, where the rest of the English Translation Section team had gathered to drench themselves in wine and champagne, oblivious to the unfolding melee. I watched them, mesmerized and mortified that it had come to this, realizing that none of them had even asked me whom I preferred to leave with, and that I was content with nothing more than their admiration. I don’t even know why I didn’t just leave on my own; UNESCO would have covered the taxi fare anyway.

I suppose, in retrospect, the choice was clear. Juan would have made better boyfriend material, even if he could sometimes be too intense, while Fernando would have made better arm candy in clothes that weren’t shabby, but there would be no significant conversation. It all depended on what I wanted: a fling or a future? But I was only twenty-four. What did I know? My parents wouldn’t have minded either one, I was certain, as long as they were both Catholic.

I no longer remember how it ended, but I remembered the look on Juan’s face, the look of disappointment meshed with disgust, as I felt myself being pulled away from the party by Fernando.

So it was only natural that Sylvie would be skeptical. I could barely handle two men at the same time, and now I was attempting to rendezvous with three? In another country?

“Are you participating in some obscure Olympic event no one knows about?” she asked with characteristic cigarette smoke-dragging sarcasm the French seem particularly gifted at, as I packed my suitcase. “Like juggling three paramours in a span of as many days? Chérie—”

God, I thought, when would my accent be as perfect as hers? The way she said chérie, the way she rolled the “r” crisply, then dragged out the vowels coquettishly, half-teasing, half-pleading—

“That’s a sport best left to the pros,” she continued. “And by pros, I mean French women.”

“It could be fun, you know. Besides, you always say I need to live a little.”

“Oui, c’est vrai. Four years in Paris and still so starry-eyed when it comes to men and love. You could have done more with that Fernando and Juan debacle, but no, you chose to be passive, trying to please everyone but yourself.” She ran a hand through her long chestnut hair and dragged on her cigarette once more. “You convent-schooled girls from the Philippines, really … When will you understand that you are free here from whatever is holding you back from being your real self? And God doesn’t care, believe me. Parce que Dieu n’existe pas!”

“We can’t all be like you, Sylvie.” I sighed. “And I’m not convinced—at least not a hundred percent convinced—that there is no God.” I threw my underwear into a satin pouch, which, I belatedly realized, was the same boudoir burgundy shade as the velvet armchair in the sitting room. Underneath its elaborate cornices and pressed ceilings, our apartment was a convenient repository for our landlady’s mismatched cast-offs, assembled in a style we liked to call heirloom furniture with a flea market feel. But Sylvie had added a few fringed lamps and leopard-print throw pillows here and there, and now it pulsed with the eccentric energy of a retired madam.

Like all Parisian women, Sylvie was genetically chic. She was born with an innate knowledge of how to fling a scarf around her neck. And the art of flirting? She was as naturally adept at it as she was at staying slim. As they say, French women know how to indulge in the good life without getting fat. For Sylvie, it was a matter of discipline. On Saturday mornings, we liked to walk across the Seine, climb up the steps to the Trocadéro and have a coffee at Carette. Once seated, with the Eiffel Tower looming before us, Sylvie would have a double espresso and a croissant, while I’d order the hot chocolate with a little cloud of whipped cream on top, plus a coffee-flavored macarron. That was my caffeine fix.

“Mais, Maxine,” she’d say, insisting on the “nnnnn” sound at the end of my name, clucking like an amused but mildly disapproving aunt, “ça fait grossir tout ça!”

“Of course it’s fattening,” I’d reply. “But I’ll walk off the calories on the way back. Besides, life is so short and this macarron is so spectaculaire … Remind me which famous French philosopher said that?”

Then she’d tell me in the most affectionate terms that I was such a child, vraiment idiote, that I knew nothing. And really, what did I know? Certainly not as much as she did about seduction.

“Honestly, I admire you, Sylvie,” I told her as I continued to sort out my New York wardrobe. “Jacques one day, Hubert the next, and Giancarlo and Steve whenever they’re in town. I don’t know how you do it. I’m not even sleeping with any of my—as you call them—paramours.”

“Not yet, but play your cards right and … Maxine, please, if you’re going to bring a black teddy that risqué, you’d better know what to do with it.”

“This?” I held up the little scrap of silk and lace that I had hoped to bunch up into a ball and surreptitiously stuff into my suitcase without Sylvie noticing. “It could look nice under a jacket, don’t you think?”

“Oh, believe me, chérie, that’s right up Alejandro’s—how do you say—avenue—”

“Alley.”

“Oui, alley. He’ll tear it off you the first chance he gets.”

“But it’s a La Perla!”

“Maxinnnnne, Maxinnnnne.”

Again that world-weary toss of the head, that drawn-out rasp of breath. I was convinced that it was that combination of sensuality and cynicism in one so young that was the key to seduction, French-style.

“You’re such an amateur,” she said. “You’re not playing with fire, you’re playing with balls. And sometimes that is even worse.”

I arrived in New York to find summer in full swelter, and my nerves shaky, though outwardly, I was the picture of equanimity.

The phone was ringing impatiently as I walked into the apartment. At the last minute Al apparently couldn’t make it. Al as in Alejandro. He was flying out suddenly to Toronto with his boss to see a client.

“Por fin, you’re here. And I’m at the airport. Lo siento, mi vida, I’m sorry. I really was looking forward to seeing you. Maybe we can meet in Paris again in the fall. What do you think?”

“I-I … I don’t know—”

“You know how much I wanted to show you my New York,” he said, his words muffled by din of the airport. “I was planning to take you to the Boat House in Central Park today for lunch, even. Tell me, mi vida, what do you see now outside your window?”

Well, if he really wanted to know, there was a half-naked man in the apartment right across the street from me, his hair wet and his torso glistening with sweat.

I hung up the phone feeling disappointed, of course, but more relieved than anything. The birthday weekend was turning out to be a logistical challenge. Sylvie was, comme d’habitude, right. I had no clue what I was doing.

The other Al’s, I gathered, were planning all sorts of fêtes. Alfonso reserved Friday night. Alberto wanted Saturday and Sunday, and hinted about the rest of the week being a possibility, too. With Alejandro out of the picture, and, by default, out of the running for Prince Charming of the moment, I was left with my memories of Paris with him. Memories that involved a lot of champagne, a lot of kissing, and a lot of me whispering, “No, no, I can’t.”

It was actually a good thing that he wasn’t going to be in town, after all.

Our little amorous adventure last summer had unfolded in hypnotic fashion, as if in slow motion. There was the five-course dinner at the Crillon that lasted close to three hours, the walk along the Place de la Concorde and the Rue de Rivoli in the sultry summer night afterwards, the limousine ride home with a tour of Paris thrown in. It was all so romantic and thrilling, until I realized he expected to be served a side order of blowjob along with the ride, in full view of the chauffeur. It wasn’t so much that I was playing hard to get, though I did intend to keep him panting all weekend before he could even get my panties off me. It was more the way he kept shoving my head brusquely toward his crotch in the middle of some serious lip-lock action, like he was dribbling a basketball, preparing for a slam dunk. Straight into his spunk.

“No, no, I can’t,” I kept repeating, but my pleas were muffled in the creased wool of his pants.

“Venga,” he murmured back, with another attempt at a persuasive push. “Come on, baby.”

It was getting more and more difficult to keep my head from landing straight at his inner Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, already standing at attention, poised and ready to, um, shoot.

And the chauffeur? He remained impassive, but whether he was bored or aroused was rather difficult to determine from my vantage point of somewhere between Alejandro’s crotch and a slice of Paris scenery that whizzed past the passenger window. To be honest, the only thing getting banged was my ear. And then, a sign: Caviar Petrossian.

“S’il vous plaît, monsieur,” I said breathlessly, “la prochaine à droite.” The next corner on the right was my street. Home at last.

So remind me, after that very physical yet unpleasant episode in the limo, why I even bothered to let Alejandro know I would be in New York? Because the next day he showed up at my apartment, all contrite and charming, a massive bouquet in hand, saying he got carried away, that I seemed to have no idea how incredibly desirable I looked last night, and that he promised to behave the next time.

And of course I believed him.

“No? Are you sure?”

Alfonso was looking at me with a quizzical expression on his face, his eyes wide open and his mouth contorted somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “Come on, Maxine, just try. Venga.”

Venga, venga. My twenty-fifth birthday was supposed to mark the beginning of saying “YES!” to life. And really, so far, so good. So far I’d gone up to the top of the Empire State Building, danced atop a table in a club in SoHo, approached Dustin Hoffman when I saw him walking along Fifth Avenue and 57th Street and had a picture taken with him, but not before I’d begged him to do the Rain Man thing, the one with the cards. If he was annoyed, he didn’t show it. And earlier in the afternoon, I’d tried to play cool and pretended to smoke a joint with Alfonso, who’d skipped work to take me to the Met, where we French kissed underneath the statue of Perseus.

So I was saying “SI!” to life, wasn’t I? But I drew the line at threesomes, shoplifting for thrills, eating offal other than foie gras, and, well, burying my face in a mountain of coke.

Which, it turned out, was the wonderful birthday surprise Alfonso had planned for me.

To his credit he had packed a gourmet picnic basket laden with Jamón Serrano, Manchego cheese, grapes, and a couple of bottles of Bordeaux. He took it to the midtown studio apartment I was house-sitting for a friend, set the table, lit the candles, put on Gypsy Kings, dumped a bag of cocaine onto the granite kitchen counter and proceeded to arrange the fine white powder into neat little rows with his credit card.

An hour and a half later, Alfonso was sprawled on the couch, nearly comatose from his own stupidity. Apparently, all that dashing through the snows of Colombia wasn’t enough; he had to down tequila shots as well.

Si, si, si, happy birthday to me.

And then there was one. In the end, Alberto, the last of the Al’s, made it a birthday to remember. Not with lavish dinners or extravagant gestures, though there were long, lazy romantic meals in cozy restaurants in the Village. There were strolls in between smooches along the Brooklyn Bridge one late afternoon as dusk fell, and Central Park on Sunday morning. There was a visit to Rizzoli where we scanned books and piled up our favorites and kissed some more. There was the quick lunch on the steps of the New York Public Library where we sat eating the falafels we bought from Rafik’s cart around the corner, and where Alberto wiped with his tongue the smudge of garlicky yoghurt sauce that had trickled down my chin before kissing me. I must have tasted of garlic and chick peas, but so did he; it was more aromatic than romantic, really, but intoxicating in the way making out under the bleachers in the track and field oval might have been in high school. Not that I would know. Like everyone else, my romantic notions continued to be shaped by generic Hollywood movies.

Still, it wasn’t as if anyone was looking, and if they were, they simply didn’t care. This was New York, and as far as we were concerned, Alberto and I were the only two people in the world.

When you get caught between the moon

and New York City …

The moment Alberto walked into my apartment, in his uniform of faded jeans, blue-and-white striped oxford shirt, and his hair in a ponytail, he dropped his bag to the floor like he had just shaken a bug off his sleeve, then drew me into his arms, tilted my chin up, and kissed me, until, minutes later, I whispered against his lips.

“You must really be happy to see me.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he replied, his lips still on mine as he kicked the front door shut and took me in his arms. He lifted my T-shirt away from my skirt and slid a hand underneath my bra, cupping one breast, then the other, teasing my n*****s with his palm.

Outside, it was just another lunch hour in Midtown Manhattan. There must have been sirens blaring and jackhammers thrumming as people swarmed the streets but the only sounds in Apartment 26B were moans and sighs, the rustling of clothes, and the fevered panting for air every few minutes.

I pulled him even closer to me, clumsily unfastening his belt, propelled by this mad desire to yank his jeans off, if physics would only allow it, as the chemistry clearly was there and just about ready to explode. Instead, I contented myself with feeling inside his pants, stopping for a startled second when I realized that nothing came between him and his Calvins save for my hand.

“I don’t wear underwear,” he said.

“In answer to the question, ‘boxers or briefs,’” I giggled. “Neither for me. Nor for you.” He shrugged off his jeans while unzipping my skirt and peeling away my panties, and then he led me to the couch, previously occupied by the coke-addled Alfonso, whom I kicked out at one in the morning, after he’d awakened from his bender. And he’d had the nerve to ask for a kiss before leaving!

Alberto’s hair, now loosened from its ponytail, tickled my skin as his mouth travelled along my body, his hot tongue licking down my clavicle, in between my breasts, all the way through my tummy, and finally finding its way deep inside my p***y.

“Oh s**t,” was all I could say.

“Feliz cumpleaños, baby.”

For years, my twenty-fifth birthday was, hands—and tongues—down, the best birthday ever, the benchmark against which all other succeeding birthdays were measured. Maybe it was the giddiness of youth, maybe it was the boundlessness of lust, or maybe it was, simply, New York. But no husband, boyfriend, or lover, however ardent or romantic or skilled in bed, could ever match the magic of that summer.

Until, two decades later, Emilio came along.