“I write for my own self value. To take ownership of my skin color, sexuality, voice, body and story.
My grammar is horrific. My passive voice is distracting and my vocabulary is limited. The disclaimer I just stated is my defense against the hierarchy that disempowers me. It’s evidence of my insecurities that are rooted in my own internalized oppression caused by homophobia, racism, sexism and classism. Here are my wounds and the pen I am writing this piece with are my healing herbs to my surviving soul”
PREFACE
I knew of nothing and of everything when I signed up to take Chicana Studies 151 with Professor Chela Sandoval. I do not remember the mental state I was in during the beginning of the class; like most of my life, my memory is fragmented because of traumatic experiences that have stripped, cut, erased, and reinvented who I am as a being living in a space where I am not meant to survive.
But I am a survivor! A survivor of sexual assault, of physical, emotional and mental abuse. A survivor of a father that was not a father. A survivor of a brother whose life was cut short. A survivor of poverty, racism, homophobia, sexism and malos espiritus. My journey is never smooth as the pavement I walk on is filled with cracks that are entirely impossible to fix but easily covered.
Everyday I feel the need to out my queer identity so I can put an end to the various faces that wonder, “Is he gay? Or not?” As oppose to my brown skin that is never second-guessed. I wish it were that easy though.
I am not my words but the roots of my words. So the sentences that escape my mouth are superficial invites to my complex, intersectional being as a chicano-queer-man of color because words are not enough to represent my journey of my sisters, brothers and antepasados.
I wonder if my courage to openly identify myself as a queer chicano compensates for my lack of voice when it comes to identifying as a survivor of sexual assault? My denial of experiences is troubling for it prevents a healthy discourse of a love life. The discourse being the possibility and the validity that presumes a love life exist inside of me. Of course externally I do not disillusion myself to ignore the love life that provides pointless, oppressive, never-quite-enough, top or bottom, insignificant gay sex.
The process of a survivor is more than the healing of a father that raped me and now I must forgive myself and him in order to move on. The complexity that follows my molestation, I have come to realize, is never ending. More and more layers of life evaluations, understanding why, when, where and how I came to the state I am in. Then see if it is productive or counter-productive to my life goals. Layers of trust, who, what, why trust a “human” or define what trust means to me in the context of “I trust you with my body”. Am I worth more than forced sex? Worth more than a white sugar daddy that exotifies my “Hispanic” experience? Or am I even worth to be loved by other men?
BODY
Me violo, me tacho y me gusto porque I believed that was my worth in life. Life meaning, naïve little chicano that yelled whenever his beautiful curly haired mami would not buy him $10 action figures. Little chicano not understanding that the reason why his mami could not buy him the action figure was because there was no job available that would pay a recent Mexican immigrant anything higher than minimum wage. The same little chicano that did not understand that when his father penetrated him de atras era malo.
I am currently 20 years old and when my father raped me I was 8. He raped me four times in my mother’ bed while she was in Mexico for her sister’s funeral. Till’ this day I do not know the full impact the molestation has played in my life and I cannot help but wonder if I ever will? I am currently 20 years old and my body has only experienced abusive intimacy: from rapes, to one night stands, to infidelity, to oppressive gay sex where the only time I cum is when I spit “it’s fine, I don’t like cuming.” Reading Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” helped me learn to love the body of the little chicano once again. I have continually othered my body because of the pain it has brought me. Left it unkempt and unloved for years that I have blocked off my body’s capacity to love. At the time that I read Lorde’s piece I was still processing my experiences of being the other man in two separate occasions, so I wrote:
“More,
times more,
times more,
times mothafuckin more,
than the other.
I don't know to what extent I can further allow this hatred of my body, soul and mind to continue. Sitting with other has tarnished my erotic. Not to the point of no return, but to a place where it will take more than poetry to reclaim my erotic.
There are sexual practices that are foreign to me, yet they seem like fundamental knowledge that makes me doubt my capacity to be truly engaged in a relationship. The vulnerability that is needed from me is the erotic. Could it be that the erotic is vulnerability? Vulnerable because that would mean that I would have to search within myself to develop a complex understanding as to why the mediocrity of my current state is the reason why my agency, as a queer man of color, is out of reach. To expose myself to not only the public but to myself...
I am ready for love.
Every step is more than what I know,
Know how to inhale,
Know how to exhale,
And know more about what I already know.
I am ready for love.
The first occasion was a drunk,
no excuse,
FUCK.
Fucked with a man,
Who was with a man,
A man that did not know what it meant to love another man,
Nor to love oneself...
Baby,
Queer Man of color,
Chicano,
You are worth more than what your behavior demonstrates.
I am ready for love.
You,
With just a year less,
Singing like a bird,
Singing to me to a point of blindness,
Where your commitment is no longer visible,
And the only thing visible is your hand down my pants.
I am ready for love.
Me,
With a father that touched me,
A dead brother,
Immigrant mother,
Me.
These words are ordinary.
My words are not mine but someone else's,
That I was able to take from, at the expense of my humanity.
I am ready for love.
Take it slow,
Take it slow,
Take me apart and see the blood rushing through my veins,
The truth behind this coat of denial,
Just like you.
I'm ready for love.
Ven mami,
Ven hermana,
Ven hermanos,
y ven papi,
toma mi mano y besala.
I'm ready for love.
Seeing more than what's in the mirror,
seeing more than what I was during the drunk-no-excuse-FUCK,
Seeing more than the year-less-hand-down-my-pants mess around,
Seeing the erotic as treasure and not a low expectation.
Feel this brown skin,
These spanish words,
My brown hand rub you down before sleep,
These full lips wanting the other to transform into beauty.” 10/13/2009
The molestation has affected the way in which I treat my body. As much as I would like to single out the cause of the abuse, I must recognize that the molestation is only a fragment of it. The manifestation of my colored sexual discourse was shaped and continues to be shaped by western hegemony. If I wish to de-colonize my sexual discourse then I must learn to love and accept the beautiful men of color in my life. But how do I even begin when the men of color in my life have abandoned me? Abused me? Died on me? When the men I had to turn to, to better understand my queer identity were white. Whose bodies never looked like mine, whose language was always an accent off and who referenced me as the “latino hottie” but never just a “hottie.” They were my idols in life. The “falcon x porn” and the white daddies that taught me the proper way to touch another man, even though I was underage. With that said, I loved them. I loved that they needed me. Needed me to feel good. Needed me to satisfy their urges because for so long I had never felt needed by the men in my life. Yet, how could this paradoxical be the engine to my liberty, as well as my prison?
“I scrape and scrape,
Not to bleed but to distract me,
From everything,
From vanity,
From the portrait I keep painting of myself.” 2004
How could something that I wrote when I was 15 years old still hold truth? After five years of vigorously scraping through the trauma, the joys and miscellaneous I had yet to formulate a hypothesis that would encompass all my life experiences so I could learn to love men again. Reading Gloria Anzaldua’s “now let us shift… the path of conocimiento… inner work, public acts” has pushed me to peel off my skins and expose them to love.
These are my stages. The arrebato is my skin being peeled off everytime the sharp edges from the word ‘wetback’ are spit. The neplanta is my third space, the space where its not about ‘he touched me’ or ‘he didn’t touch me’ its where his touch has manifested into a life experience- a mestiza consciousness. Coatlicue state is when thirsty moths have sucked all the light, leaving me with a hungry body and incomplete words. El compromiso is when I’ve been running for miles and miles and my heart is about to burst; my sweat glands have been exhausted; I’m running on the bare soles of my feet; my breaths have shifting gear to painful screeches pleading for a longer life; when my body is about to break into a million un-loved pieces, then, all of a sudden I witness a resting point and hope for the finish line is once again within my reach. Putting my life together is my Coyolxauhqui state, when my life is co-dependent on the acknowledgement that the rape from my father, the death of my brother, the border crossing of my mother, my queer Chicano identity are dominant puzzle pieces that need each other to finish what has been left undone- the puzzle of my life. When publishing companies continuously reject my poetry pieces that carry my soul because they refuse to value my queer person of color testimony, I then seek alliances with community members for the validity of my offerings−is my blow up phase. Shifting and Shifting I find myself transformed as a spiritual activist, where the hero in the story plot is not limited to a white-heterosexual male and the love story expands to include a variety of genders and colors.
My path to conocimiento is an ongoing process. The different phases are never linear, consistent nor limiting. Like my love for men and the love for my body, I must continue to seek the unseekable and demand the impossible so I can break away from hegemonic binary dichotomies, from a consciousness that neglects the already love for men and body, from a world whose survival is dependent on my extermination, and from a self that is fragmented.
“Niño Cafecito,
Dame tu mano para que la bese,
So I can place it next to my heart and show you what love feels like.
Niño Cafecito,
The fatherly touch was never suppose to slip,
Slip below the waist,
Slip onto your bare skin and compromise your childhood experiencia.
Niño Cafecito,
You miss him but you don’t,
His existence is a dusty ole mask under your bed yearning to travel the worlds with you.
Breathe in and Breathe out,
Breathe in and Stop breathing him out,
Tu fuerza,
Tu Angel,
Tu Hermano.
Niño Cafecito,
How do you translate queer into your Spanish tongue?
Joto?
Maricon?
Puto?
No,
No,
It can’t be,
It’s niño bonito quien su sexualidad es un regalo de dios.
Little brown boy.
You aren’t little and,
You aren’t a boy.
You are a big man living in the border.
Borders between Mexico and El Norte,
Between gay and puto,
Between a father and a rapist,
Between a brother y la muerte.
Hombre Café witness,
Witness when the white-passing-queer-brotha sees you as a “whinny Mexican” but never as a “whinny gay”
Yet for you the whinny Mexican is always the whinny gay whose survival can’t be categorized so the white-passing-queer-brotha don’t gotta own up to his passing privilege. In a society where colorism is as oppressive as the other “isms”.
Hombre Café witness,
Witness when you raise your hand and the eyes of your peers start rolling. Peers who doubt your intelligence, logic, pronunciation of words and testimony.
Hombre Café witness,
Witness next time someone asks you “top or bottom?” A hegemonic question that reinforces binary dichotomies. The same dichotomies that subject you to never-quite-enough sex. The same dichotomies that “others” and abuses the bodies of your community.
Hombre Café witness,
Witness when you’re taking the bus and the womyn sitting next to you is at the edge of her seat because your male privilege is showing.
Hombre Café witness,
Witness the next you’re with the familia and you’re complaining about “life after undergrad” and your 17 year old cousin is complaining about “life after pregnancy.”
Hombre Café,
Nino Cafecito,
I,
Little i,
Self,
Yo,
Witness,
Witness the tears dripping down your face,
The hunger from your body when you’ve eaten a meal but it’s still not enough,
The Chicano who is still lonely even though he has people around him.
Come closer,
“Dame tu mano para que la bese.
So I can place it next to your heart and show you what love feels like…”
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