L - The Letter El

The Letter El
Laramie smoked cigarettes. She loved the taste, the feel, the
sensuality of them, the phallic wonders. She loved being addicted, the
"Soothe," as her friends often referred to it as. Laramie had been
destined to smoke cigarettes ever since she was named. There was a
popular brand of smokes on the market with her namesake, which happened
to be the preferred choice of the Mexican population. For Laramie, life
mirrored cigarettes, with a smoky, mysterious, filmy irony behind it, a
smoke that overshadowed reality. However, this day, the reality was
that Laramie was fresh out.

When Laramie ran out of smokes, Houston had a problem. Houston was
where she lived, and in a city known for its smoke, she simply had to
fit in. So Laramie began to trek down Sunshine Street in search of the
"soothe." In Mexico, they called it "El Soothe," which just so happened
to be Ricky Hernandez's nickname.

He was standing on the corner of Lilac and Sunshine, flipping a quarter
and catching it, heads up, every time. He had perfected this skill in
order to score a few quick bucks from the gringos on the street. Ricky
was also deep in thought, pondering exactly how to say, "Give me your
money, you rotten bitch." For some reason, it always seemed to come
out, "Dime tu dinero la puta mala." What El Soothe needed was a
teacher, and the most likely candidate was conveniently walking on
Sunshine.

She was wearing a vest and a frown. Her curly brown locks made her head
appear to rock and she always seemed to look down. The jeans that she
wore made her feel like a whore and the vest - oh, the vest made her
feel like she had a small chest and the green underneath completed the
wreath, the shell of a belle named Laramie.

Laramie carried herself much like she carried her cigs, whenever she
had any. She carried herself in an old, shoddy brown leather purse,
shut to the world and just frantically hoping for someone to come along
and snatch her away.

El Soothe carried himself as if he belonged in Houston, which he did
not. He exuded the aura of someone who had not been fleeing the sounds
of sirens, barking dogs, shotgun blasts, dodging immigration officers,
hurdling barbed wire, swimming miles towards a presumed better life
across the murky waters of the Rio Grande. The white man called him wet
back for his troubles, in honor of his great illegal swim. It ate at
him, that's certain. He looked as if the weight he carried on his
broad, brown shoulders seemed light compared to that of his potential
teacher. Besides, he always did like the smell of leather.

Laramie approached the corner of Lilac and Sunshine. As she got closer,
she noticed a tall, lanky Mexican man standing by the street sign. He
was wearing a white T-shirt, commonly called a "wife-beater," for God
knows why. His brown leather pants seemed to glisten in the sunlight,
more hugging than menacing. What made him appear menacing was his
ethnicity. Laramie's mother had always warned her of the wiles of the
ethnic man, and Laramie was already uptight from withdrawal. She wanted
nicotine and did not want anything else brown until she got her brown
fix. Tobacco was about as ethnic as she got anyway, especially being
raised in a Southern household. Her father made no secret of his Monday
night hobby of donning a hood and white sheet, making house calls in
the menthol district. Daddy wore white at the darkest of hours,
visiting the darkest of ours.

El Soothe liked white, particularly his women. His curiosity was piqued
in the weeks prior to his departure from "Meyhikko." His amigos had
filled his head with the notion that the pale skin persuasions were
"muy bueno en cama." That reminded him that he needed to change his
sheets before he invited a woman of any kind over. He had not slept for
days, half resulting from the stench of his sheets, half from his
endless quest for a score. El Soothe hated to lose.

Laramie had lost her lighter the day before and her virginity when she
was twelve, to a man twice her age and related. The lighter was a shiny
silver Bic, and the virginity was irreplaceable, so it didn't matter
what color it was anyway. The loss didn't make the load any lighter.
She was in it for the long haul and she needed a co-pilot to light her
fire, someone who would not only give, but take.

El Soothe lost his virginity when he was twelve as well, to a girl
about the same age as he and related. His brothers thought it would be
entertaining if they forced their younger sibling and his cousin
Alejandra to fuck. They encircled the two in a shed behind the
hacienda, surrounded the two lambs, tearing the wool away from their
tender bodies, shouting and dancing, drinking tequila.

In just sixteen minutes, El Soothe had become a man, something that
took most men sixteen years or more to realize. He didn't know the
implications, what to think of his past, because it had passed and the
present was today, on Lilac and Sunshine. The future was now within
striking distance, and El Soothe was looking deadly in his snakeskin
boots.

Laramie had expected what happened next because that was what she was
always told to expect. Since the days when she used to sneak a smoke
out behind the old woodshed, they always told her what to expect. Even
when the unexpected happened, they told her to expect that. Momma would
tell her that when they were walking down the street, the Mexicans
would speak in tongues, something usually reserved for forces of a
lower element. She said they were speaking Spanish so that white people
wouldn't understand what they were saying. But Momma understood, and
she helped Laramie understand with a few healthy lessons in human
nature. She helped her understand that they weren't just leering at
them because they were there, but because their intentions were more
lecherous in nature. Lecherous. For years, Laramie never knew what that
meant.

Daddy's approach was a little different, but still produced the same
result. Hate. Confusion. Suspicion. Loathe. Daddy didn't call them
Mexicans. Daddy called them Spics. Wetbacks. Border mans. She
expected the tall, lanky brown man to look her up-down and leer at
her.

She expected him to start at her hips? focus? refocus? proceed.

Focus on the chest, or lack thereof? refocus? proceed.

Focus on the brown leather purse (where she housed her soul)? refocus?
proceed.

El Soothe proceeded to lunge at Laramie in slow motion and she expected
it. She swerved her hips to the left as he missed her. He missed her,
her taste, her feel, her sensuality. Refocus. Proceed. He grabbed the
leather strap on Laramie's shoulder and began to wrestle for control.
Laramie was once again ready.

Laramie had practice wrestling for control. She left her last boyfriend
after six years of black and blue roses. The sorrys only made her
angry, the tears only made her stronger. She knew the taste, the feel,
the sensuality of control as she wrapped the leather strap around the
brown wrist of El Soothe.

Snap snap! The leather strap made El Soothe wince. His brothers were at
it again, always playing fun games.

Snap snap! The leather strap made El Soothe scream. His brothers told
him they were sorry but that only made him angrier.

Snap snap! The leather strap made El Soothe cry. The tears made him
stronger.

He took Laramie's free wrist with his free hand and began to squeeze.
He felt little bones pop pop on Lilac and Sunshine and El Soothe was
not expecting what happened next.

Laramie felt the searing pain of popping ligaments and bone in her
wrist and winced, half at the pain or what was happening, half at what
she knew she had to do. She knew what he wanted. He wanted to be
soothed. Inside, she felt a strange tense tingle, one of pleasure, one
that made her nervous. In a strange way, she liked what she
expected.

Laramie, with one hand bound in brown leather to a Mexican and the
other bound to a Mexican in leather, did next only what came unnatural.
She took the leather strap and gripped it as tightly as she gripped the
brown unknown. She pressed her lips to his and it was different. In her
mind, she apologized to her father and it only made him angrier. She
watched her mother cry, but that only made her stronger. She looked at
herself and felt like a woman, but that only made things worse.

El Soothe kissed her in kind, the only way he knew how, and left that
day with a new leather purse. He finally learned how to speak, but it
was a dead language. He winced, half at the knowledge he had learned,
half at the knowledge of how, then proceeded home to change his sheets.
He felt very dirty, not unlike the yellow stains on his bed. The walk
home was a long one, but not as long as it felt. The purse felt very
heavy and there was not a grand river in sight to help him stay afloat.
The sirens in the distance screamed in tongues. El Soothe broke his
walk into a run. He was expecting what happened next.

Laramie found that her brown fix was broken and all of a sudden lost
her craving for a cigarette. She had found something much more
important to desire. She laid on the ground in a heap, rolling,
laughing so hysterically, it sounded as if she was crying. On the
ground beside her lay a broken cigarette, tobacco spilling onto
concrete, overlooked and forgotten. All the brown yesterdays could not
satiate her new craving, the new fix. She did not achieve the Soothe.
The Soothe achieved her.