November 17, 2009
Fiction
El Salvador Will Win
Josh noticed her T-shirt first. The “I Love Lucy” logo seemed like an unusual choice for a Hispanic woman in 1981. Perhaps she was expressing ethnic pride in the success of Desi Arnaz.
“El Salvador Vencera,” read his own T-shirt, under a drawing of a peasant hoisting a rifle. Josh knew the words meant “El Salvador Will Win,” but only because someone had told him. Like every other left-wing 19-year-old he knew, he was certain the Reagan administration would reinstate the draft and send him to die in El Salvador.
They were standing at a bus stop in DC, waiting to cross the Key Bridge to Arlington. Because it was Wednesday, Josh was heading to dinner at his parents’ house instead of his summer job at Red Lobster. He was already enjoying the prospect of an evening in which he would not peel a single shrimp.
Josh might never have spoken to the woman if she hadn’t spoken to him first. “El Salvador vencera!” she exclaimed. She was smiling, and there was a sparkle in her brown eyes. Was she from El Salvador?
She seemed to expect a response, so he replied with one of the only words he knew in Spanish. “Si,” he said.
That was all it took. She launched into a torrent of Spanish that left him feeling like Lucy Ricardo during one of Ricky’s outbursts. The “I Love Lucy” logo bounced up and down, in a way that would have distracted from her words if he had any idea what she was saying.
She was a curvy, attractive babe with long dark hair, burnished golden skin, and super-tight jeans. Although she didn’t look like a ravaged survivor of a brutal civil war, he had to wonder. Had she lost loved ones? Did she know people in the rebel army? Had she been a fighter herself?
After a few minutes, Josh held up his hand. “Excuse me — I’m sorry — but I don’t speak Spanish,” he said. She stopped in mid-flow, as if the tap had been suddenly turned off. Then her eyes met his, in a way he could only think of as beseeching. “¿No hablas español?” she asked, pointing at his T-shirt.
As he shook his head, the bus arrived. Josh waved her ahead, then sat two rows behind her. She stared out the window, not engaging him at all. Being the kind of person who always carried a book, he proceeded to lose himself in it. He did not expect to see her again.
But as they approached Glebe Road, she turned in her seat and looked back at him. With startling suddenness, she stretched one copper-colored arm along the windowsill behind her, bridging the space between them. Her hand was open, and reaching for his.
For an atheist Jew, Josh suddenly became quite Talmudic. On one hand, he had a girlfriend, a fellow science fiction fan named Ginger. On the other hand, science fiction fans in 1981 expected each other to be above petty human emotions like jealousy. They were sex-starved nerds who couldn’t believe their luck at falling in with other sex-starved nerds, and they were determined to make the most of it.
But Josh was still the guy who hadn’t even dared to sit next to a strange woman on the bus. This woman whose language he did not speak, and who did not speak his. This woman who had at least three years on him, and who might well have lived through unimaginable horrors in El Salvador. This woman who respected his political commitment and thought they were comrades in the struggle. This woman who promised to be the first anonymous sexual encounter of his life.
Anonymous sexual encounters were still hip. Unlike Josh. The whole thing was unlike Josh.
Before he could think himself out of it, he took her hand. She closed her fingers around his and led him quickly up the aisle and off the bus.
Two blocks, three flights of stairs, and several elaborate locks later, they were standing in her living room. It looked like a student apartment. Did the English books belong to a roommate? A husband? The room was stuffy in the August heat. He hoped to hell she had an air conditioner in the bedroom.
Josh had never before entered a woman’s apartment for the express purpose of fucking her. He felt like a dangerous character indeed.
But danger would have to wait for a moment. “Do you have a telephone?” he asked, holding one hand up to his ear and making dialing motions with the other. Still silent, she pointed to a side table. Then she crossed her arms, waiting as he called his mom to say that a friend from junior high had invited him for dinner.
There was one more thing to do before the thing itself. “Do you have . . . any . . . birth control?” he asked. The Latina looked at him blankly. Feeling like an idiot, he tore open an invisible condom packet, extracted an invisible condom, unrolled it, and applied it to an invisible dick. She laughed, shook her head, and spoke in Spanish. Her tone suggested they had nothing to worry about. Maybe she was on the Pill. He was going to have to take his chances about VD or crabs — unless she was telling him he would have to take his chances about pregnancy as well.
Caution battled lust, but only for a moment. She took his hand again, and led him to the bedroom. Josh felt like a kid on a roller coaster line who had just passed the last-chance exit. He would have to take his chances about a lot of things.
She turned on a rotary fan — hallelujah! — and pulled him closer. Not being a naturally talented kisser, Josh felt a brief pang of guilt as he conscientiously applied the very tips Ginger had given him: relax the mouth, not too forceful with the tongue. He put his arms around the woman, and in moments they were pulling off each other’s clothes. She seemed to be getting more beautiful by the minute; did the brown of her eyes match exactly the brown of her areolae?
When they were both naked, the Salvadoran woman pushed him not-so-gently onto his back. Josh had never progressed to fucking with so little foreplay, but he wasn’t about to argue. Straddling him with strong thighs, she reached down and guided him into her. She felt like heaven, or what heaven would have felt like if he believed in heaven. He never got tired of this part. The feel of her big breasts against his chest. The softness of her skin. Her aroma of herbal shampoo, sweat, and desire.
As she rode him, she found her voice. A stream of Spanish tumbled from her lips, rising and falling with her excitement. Josh could have concentrated to pick out words or phrases, but he was happy to let the cascade of language stay foreign, exotic, mysterious. For all he knew, she was telling him her life story — her role in the civil war, her pain, her loss, her redemption in the arms of a kind stranger. But, truthfully, he didn’t want to know. Knowing so little was part of what made the whole adventure feel like an adventure.
Before long, his voice joined hers. “You are so beautiful!” he yelled. She responded, or didn’t, in repetitive Spanish phrases that sounded almost like an incantation.
“I want to live in your pussy,” Josh continued. For once, he didn’t care how stupid he sounded. “I mean it. I want to move in. I want to set up permanent residence. I want to colonize you, baby. I want to occupy you. I want your clitoris to be my puppet government. And I’m not leaving — it’ll take a revolution to get me out. Overthrow me, baby! Overthrow me! Overthrow me!”
For some reason, that did it for both of them. He felt her tensing against him, and he exploded inside her like Christmas morning. She screamed something that might not have made sense even in Spanish, then collapsed onto him, gasping. He buried his face between her cinnamon breasts and held her tight.
Josh didn’t know someone else had entered the room until his lover sat bolt upright.
If the intruder turned out to be a jealous husband or boyfriend, there would be no chance of explaining things away. Josh braced himself for bullets or fists, and twisted his head toward the doorway.
To his relief, the unexpected guest was a twenty-something redhead in a yellow sundress, who said something in Spanish. Josh turned back to his gal, but she was already popping him out of her, with some sort of determined purpose in mind. “Wait,” he said, as she jumped off the bed and spoke to the redhead, making no move to cover her nakedness. The redhead nodded, and the room was instantly full of sexual possibility.
As the Salvadoran woman rejoined him on the bed, Josh looked more closely at the redhead, who was making no move to undress. Soft hazel eyes, snub nose, tiny breasts, pre-Raphaelite frizz down to her shoulders. She was nice-looking, as in polite and well-brought-up. Not unlike Josh himself.
What the hell. Drawing on the same spirit of adventure that made him take a stranger’s hand on the bus, he reached for that same hand again. His lover said something in Spanish to the redhead. “Her name is Vida,” said the redhead in lightly accented English.
Vida. La dulce Vida. “Josh,” he responded.
Vida spoke. The redhead blushed. “Vida would like to make love with you again —” she began.
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Josh.
“— but she would like me to be in the room,” said the redhead. “To tell you what she is saying.”
He hadn’t anticipated this. Vida’s eyes had that beseeching look again. Josh tried to gauge whether the redhead was doing this under duress. He couldn’t tell. “What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Teresa,” she replied, settling into a rocking chair. “I’m her cousin.” Meanwhile, Vida had taken matters into her own hands, and was kissing steadily down Josh’s torso. Maybe she was used to having sex with other people in the room. El Salvador was a densely populated country.
“Is this your apartment?” Josh asked.
“Yes,” said Teresa. As Vida took Josh in her mouth, Teresa told him that she was going for her Masters in International Trade and Investment Policy at Georgetown. Then all Josh could hear was the slow creak of her rocking chair. Josh hoped Teresa didn’t feel too awkward — she was there to interpret, but Vida couldn’t say anything with her mouth full. Vida must have realized it too, because she stopped her ministrations abruptly and flipped onto her back. He didn’t need a translation of what she said next, but Teresa offered one anyway. “She says, ‘Fuck me.’” Teresa was blushing again.
“Is Vida on the Pill?” he asked her. Josh didn’t know if it was rude not to ask Vida directly, but this situation called for etiquette you just couldn’t find in Emily Post.
Teresa and Vida had a quick consultation. “Si, si,” replied Vida, looking at Josh and smiling. With that, he relaxed — to whatever degree one could relax before having sex in front of a total stranger. Vida took matters in hand once more, grabbing his cock and rubbing it against her labia as he swelled in response.
Once they were well and truly fucking, Vida’s words began to bubble up like an underground spring finding a passage to the surface. Teresa interpreted, rocking in a steady rhythm. Josh matched her rhythm with his own, and soon Vida was swinging to the same pendulum.
“My pussy is so hungry for you,” said Teresa, presumably speaking for Vida again. He didn’t dare turn around — it would have been disrespectful to Vida — but Josh thought he heard a second set of rhythmic noises beginning to come from Teresa. “Oh, so deep, so deep,” said Teresa, her voice climbing in pitch along with Vida’s.
He was into it — how could he not be? — but surely Vida didn’t need an interpreter just for sex talk. As blissful as Vida’s pussy felt, Josh experienced a twinge of disappointment, like a clubgoer who discovers that the VIP room has the same music and drinks as the rest of the establishment.
He didn’t want to interfere with the groove, so he couched his curiosity as an intimate question. “I want to know everything about you,” he told Vida, as Teresa translated. Vida began a rapid-fire riff, interspersed with the occasional grunt and sigh, and Teresa did her best to keep up with both the talking and the rocking.
“Vida is 25 years old,” began Teresa. I am such a stud, Josh thought. “She works as a dental hygienist. She is here visiting for a month.” Vida said something urgent, looking directly into his face and following up with a hot kiss. “She does not want to go back,” said Teresa.
That explained everything. Her hunger, her desperation to connect with someone. Those bastards at INS wouldn’t grant her the right of asylum, and now they would send her back to a living hell. How could this be happening in America?
Vida wriggled out from under him and propped herself up on her knees. As Josh re-positioned himself, the future came into sharp focus. He could save Vida, he thought as he entered her again. He could get her a green card and keep her in the United States. All he had to do was marry her.
The angle was fantastic; he could feel the head of his cock bumping against Vida’s cervix, like a battering ram at the castle door. Meanwhile, he turned over the idea of marriage in his mind, and it didn’t seem so crazy. His parents were old-time liberal Democrats. They would applaud his willingness to live up to his principles. In time, they would come to love Vida like a daughter. Josh could see them all at some future Passover seder, Vida stroking his thigh under the table.
It would be a shock to his girlfriend — but she might understand after Vida explained what awaited her back in El Salvador. Besides, Ginger was bisexual, and Vida was clearly no wallflower. Maybe Ginger would be at that seder too, stroking his other thigh. Or Vida’s thigh.
“ . . . and go back to Caracas,” concluded Teresa. Between the marriage scenario and his fast-approaching climax, Josh had tuned out Teresa’s voice. He had even forgotten to look at her, although she was now directly in his line of vision. One glance confirmed that this was one redhead who had found a way to get into the act. Her panties were hammocked between her ankles, and her fingers were making urgent circles around her clit, beneath a fiery expanse of pubic hair. Teresa’s responsibility as an interpreter hadn’t taken any of the heat out of the situation for her; she was digging it. Josh wondered if Vida and Teresa had done this before.
Despite a rising chorus of sex sounds from Vida, Josh managed to get out a sentence: “So Vida might get a visa to Venezuela?”
Teresa looked at him curiously. “Vida doesn’t need a visa,” she said. “She lives in Venezuela.”
“How long has she lived there?” he asked.
“All her life,” she replied.
Before Josh could react, Vida began to scream, then buried her face in the pillow. Chivalrously, he thrust through her spasms and came as well, clutching her breasts and kissing the back of her neck. He couldn’t tell if Teresa was coming too.
As his dick throbbed inside Vida, Teresa’s last words began to sink in. Vida was Venezuelan. A dental hygienist from Caracas. She didn’t need to be rescued. She only needed to be fucked.
Josh was relieved that she wasn’t in danger — and that he didn’t have to marry her. But a part of him already missed the brave damsel in distress that he had conjured up.
Once they were disengaged, Vida asked Teresa a question that even Josh could understand: “¿Qué ‘overthrow me’ malo?” He reached quickly for his underwear and socks. This did not bode well for their future happiness.
Teresa looked puzzled, and the cousins launched into a lightning exchange of Spanish. Josh opened his mouth to speak, but he could already see Vida’s brows narrowing in displeasure.
Teresa interpreted the pure blast of Ricky Ricardo that followed. Hummana hummana hummana. “Were you making fun of me?” Vida was sitting up now, her intensity and fire rechanneled as rage. Hummana hummana hummana. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
While not ablaze like Vida, Teresa seemed disappointed in him as well. Josh knew this because, as she translated, she pulled her panties back on. He wondered if Teresa had been next in line.
Vida grabbed a blue bathrobe from the floor. He said a silent farewell as her nipples disappeared inside the fabric. She found his shirt and pants, and threw them at him with as much velocity as clothing could attain. Hummana hummana hummana. “Why did I ever fuck you?”
All this time, Josh had not said a word in his defense — nor had Vida stopped talking long enough for him to do so. “I didn’t know what I was saying,” he offered feebly as he dressed. “I got carried away.” Teresa interpreted this, but now the dismissive tone in her voice matched the look on Vida’s face.
Josh realized that there was no way at all for him to make matters better. The only thing he could do was make them worse.
“El Salvador vencera!” he shouted, thrusting his fist high in the air. Then he turned and ran. He could still hear Vida’s voice as he descended the stairs and left the building. This time, he could understand every word.
• • •
is a fortysomething filmmaker living in New York City. This is his first short story.
