18 Years of God Damn Bullshit: A Memoir

Half Man; Half Mexican

11-19-21

I am a duality that doesnt dare to cross. I am a man, I am Mexican, I am from the Texas intercity heat. I am "normal" in that I dont dye my hair and I clean up well enough to get and keep a job. Hard-working, and subscribing to the All-American virtues of getting my education (and the debt that comes with it) and becoming a wage slave for the rest of my life as God intended.

I am also less than a man. I was born female, I am white-passing, and bisexual. I grew up in the bad parts of town no one wanted to go to but to buy their groceries cheaper, or their anything cheaper. I am abnormal in that I do not have a family to provide for because I have no family. I am one of those soft men my abuelos and tios call maricon. I am one of the ones who didnt want to hide, and so I went up north and found the ways I wasnt Mexican.

The opportunities we take for ourselves: self, or family. Identity, or conformity. Are important. 

I chose to leave the poverty trap, I chose to leave my life before in photographs, but at what cost?

I am an alien here. I have to earn respect, evident in the minor interactions I come across. Need to prove my personhood with an ID. Your name doesnt save you. Your name means nothing. My personhood, the labels I have for myself jumble and writhe in the minds of others. Misconstrued and mistranslated, I am confusing. 

I fit in when I can read and write, and when I laugh along with my white friends when they say something racist because Im one of the ones who can take a joke. I fit in neatly because here at least no one cares to know your name. Where youre from isnt as important as whether you can work or not, whether you are funny, whether you can pay for their drink when they need it, whether you look enough like them or more like the ones who sit on the other side of the room and speak words they cant pretend to understand. 

Why cant they just speak English? 

(You know they say the same about you.) 

They cant seem to see Texas written on my forehead. Or poor. Or Mexican. Im one of them here.

They cant see the people Ive known or the people Ive been but they see the woman in me so clearly. They eat when they hear the pitch of my voice, they gnaw at the name on my ID. It is every day I face the tired lions. And I let myself be eaten because what can you do?

It was Marlon T. Riggs who said, I can not go home as who I am. When I speak of home, I mean not only the familial constellation from which I grew, but the entire black community. 

I sat at the table so quiet for years. I could not tell them who I was because I knew what I would relinquish. I waited. I waited until I turned 18 and by that time I couldnt stay silent anymore. 

I said my name and somehow it got even quieter. And my cousins who were just learning how to be quiet looked at me. And my older relatives who had long been silent stared. And my tias and abuelas all cried out for the daughter they had lost, as my abuelos and tios stood up to drag me out by the shoulders.

Im not allowed at the table anymore. 

I said my name, and they couldnt hear it.

So I went upstate where the air is better and the money is somehow greener. 

And I put it all behind me.

You find, all too late, that it doesnt matter if you stock their groceries, or laugh with them, or buy them a drink because youre still different. You can join them, but never truly be with them. You dont have their connections, you dont have their money, you dont even have a place to go on the holidays. Why should they care to see you when they dont even know your name?

Your silence doesnt save you.

Audrey Lourde, The Cancer Journals

You need a name boy.

You have a name, tell them your name and make them hear it. 

Its Darwin, I say.

They never listen.

Darwin Torres, I speak.

They laugh at how you roll your rs.

Im screaming out my name so hoarse youd think my life depended on it.

They cant understand these words. 

This name is too white, too Mexican.

Its not a real name unless god gave it.

They take away your face.

How could I ever choose? 

To have a bed to lie in or to be a person to lie in a bed.

Here, Im not even a person, at home, Im much less than that. 

Tell me how Im supposed to choose then.