Read Online Mundo Cruel by Luis Negron - Free Book Online

he needed it, after such a morning—after almost twelve hours without a phone call. It was José A. telling him to come to his house after work to get ready for the bar. Pachi, drowning in tears, could only murmur yes.
    After going around the block six times, he managed to find a parking space, and pressed the intercom to request access from his friend. Trembling and sobbing he told José A. what was happening in the world. José A. hadn’t noticed anything because he had spent the whole day giving himself a facial, a Swedish fruit mask. Following the directions for the facial, he hadn’t been able to get up, not even to vomit, although at one moment he thought that the fruit in the mask could make him fat.
    So what his friend told him seemed totally preposterous and he tried to comfort him, telling him not to worry, that that night they were going to the bar and that surely homophobia would be intact there. Succeeding in calming down his friend a little so that he could deal with this minor crisis, José A. went to his bathroom and vomited.
    Stressful times, he had read in Gay Style , made fat accumulate in the body and, upon remembering this, he put his finger in again so as not to leave anything. During the next six hours they dressed and dolled themselves up so much that when they left for the bar at a quarter to twelve they seemed made of rubber and worthy of a show window in the Plaza Mall.
    They were on their way to the bar in Pachi’s Land Rover with the Gay Ibiza VIP Club Music Collection on the stereo concealing their anxiety that the bar too might be affected. But almost at the entrance to the formerly exclusive (men pay ten, women thirty, get my drift?) and super “in” bar, they saw the first sign that the world, their world, was going straight to hell. Six lesbian couples, with their cell phones on their belts, were entering. Alarmed and almost complaining they asked the bouncer in disgust, “Is this women’s night?” The bouncer said no.
    They entered as if thinking twice before doing so, but without slowing down and with their noses turned up, they went over to a corner to see whom they should ignore. There weren’t as many people as usual, but the worst part was that almost all of them were dressed casual, not to say like ragpickers.
    At that moment the music stopped and the DJ announced that everyone should go out on the street, as the city had declared the first Thursday of each month “Gay Nights in Santurce.” Everyone went out on the avenue. José A. and Pachi went outside with a disgusted look on their faces and with their hands up high so as to not touch so many sweaty and dirty persons.
    A section of Ponce de León was blocked off. An enormous commotion was growing, people talking, laughing, and dancing. Some Dominican women had even improvised a stand to sell fried food. José A. and Pachi went to a corner and there they encountered some activists, furious because no one had given them any credit for putting an end to homophobia. They should make an announcement, they said, to thank us.
    At that moment, amid the dancing crowd, Pachi saw the sweet love of his youth, Papote, the fireman’s son. He came toward Pachi with the same beautiful smile that led him to love him when they were in high school.
    Papote, with gray hairs and the extra weight that the straight life causes, grabbed him by the hands and said to him: “Babe, come with me, I came out of the closet and came here to find you.”
    He gave the keys to his SUV to José A. so as not to leave him stranded, and before he knew it he was dancing a bachata right on Ponce de León with the man of his life. With one eye he saw the disgust on the face of his friend José A., but with the other he saw Papote’s full lips. Even with his ghetto mustache and all, he gave him a kiss, and said, surrendering to come what may:
    â€œPapito, I’ll go with you to the ends of