Read Online Chulito by Charles Rice-Gonzalez - Free Book Online Page A

Carlos with that guy the day of the bottle incident, he was feeling an urgency to be real with what he was feeling. Sooner or later Carlos was going to fall in love with someone, then Chulito would have to keep his feelings on permanent lock down. He didn’t know how he could risk being as real as he needed to be with Carlos.
    As Chulito watched Carlos hug everyone good-bye, he wished that he’d had a pause button so that the whole world would stop. Then he would go down and hug him without anyone seeing him and say, “Do your thing, Carlos.” But he couldn’t do that. People might think some shit. So instead, Chulito just peered through the slit in the shade. He watched Carlos give a final hug to his mother, climb into the cab and disappear down Garrison Avenue.
    As he sat in his small room, Chulito couldn’t make up his mind whether he was more angry at Carlos for leaving or at the whole ’hood for thinking that it wouldn’t be cool for him to be friends and hug a nigga that everyone called a pato. Who made up those rules? Chulito wondered.
    Talking to Carlos that first chance since he was back from school was bending those rules—breaking them.
    Chulito looked into Carlos’ eyes. “You have every right to be pissed.”
    Carlos shook his head and put down the other shopping bag. “I’m pissed at myself for expecting something different from you.”
    Chulito took one step toward him then stopped. “I didn’t know about the plans the fellas made.”
    “But you went along. You picked hanging with them over hanging with me.”
    Chulito moved closer and whispered, “What was I supposed to do? I was hoping we could have gone out the next day.”
    Tears began to pool in Carlos’ eyes, but he looked angry not hurt. “Talking to you every day for the last month made me feel connected, like we were friends again. But when we’re alone it’s different than when we’re here.” Carlos looked around the neighborhood as if in disgust.
    Just then a car that pulled up in front of their building and Looney Tunes popped out. Carlos wiped his tears. Looney Tunes pushed back his tangle of hair he never combed, wiped his hands on his dusty denim shorts and pulled down his faded T-shirt with a Budweiser logo on the front and a rip in one of the sleeves. He tripped on the curb and one of the flip flops fell off his white socked foot. He winked at Chulito with his green eyes, which were his calling card, he thought, for all the chicks in the neighborhood. Chulito thought he looked like he had a hangover and got dressed in the dark.
    “Hey Chu-li-to, my man, wassup?” He clapped/shook hands with Chulito and they gave each other a shoulder bump.
    “Chillin’,” Chulito responded. Looney Tunes nodded to Carlos.
    “Hey, Looney Tunes,” Carlos said indifferently.
    As he stepped into the building, he looked back and wiggled a limp wrist behind Carlos. Then his burst of laughter echoed through the empty lobby.
    “He’s a crazy nigga,” Chulito said.
    Carlos bent down to pick up the shopping bags. “No, he’s a fucking asshole.”
    Chulito moved in to pick up a bag. “I was really looking forward to hanging with you. I still want to.”
    Carlos yanked the bag from him. “Why? It seems to cause problems. Chulito, on those calls we talked about how we’ve changed. Those changes just get in our way.”
    “More college talk?”
    “Fuck you, Chulito. Don’t act like you don’t understand me.”
    “Sorry. Damn. So you saying we can’t hang?”
    “Why would you want to anyway?” Carlos asked, his expressive brows arched like two parentheses framing his eyes.
    “You’re different.”
    Carlos was always different. Chulito liked that Carlos stayed out of trouble and never hung out on the corner. He was a bookworm and talked about the novels of James Baldwin, Gabriel García Marquéz and Virginia Woolf and would get heated and say “The schools are leaving out our Latina writers from our curriculum like Sandra Cisneros,