La Bufadora
By: Presley Thomas
Tags: Fiction, LGBTQ

Roberto didn’t come clean until the plane ride over. I kept looking over, ever the attentive boyfriend, trying to mask my concern. I had managed to keep it off my mind knowing I would rather spend Christmas in Hell than stay home alone. That’s where my parents thought I was going anyway. I turned off the music, took my earbuds out, and asked the question.

“What am I getting into?” I asked.

“My parents want to see me, and I want to see you, so we’re both going to see my parents.”

“Do they really want to see me?”

“They want to see me, and if they want to see me, they see you.”

“What exactly happened when you came out, anyway?

“My dad took me to the doctor. He asked her to order a test to check my testosterone and other hormone levels. He thought maybe that was the cause, but everything came back normal.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“He told my dad that maybe his son is just gay. That there is no medical explanation.”

“Does he still try to convince you otherwise?”

“Not since that day. My mom asks about you and has been reading some books.”

“What kind of books?”

“She handed me The Velvet Rage last time I came to visit. It’s not as angry as it sounds, and it talks about the harm homophobia and masculine ideals do to gay men. It doesn’t try to fix us.”

“Good, cause mine already think I’m broken,” I said shifting in my seat as Roberto rubs my shoulder and kisses my temple as I fall asleep.

It didn’t take as long as I thought to get across the US border after our Italian lunch. Roberto and I sat in the back seat. I hunched down as soon as we got across and hoped they drove fast through Tijuana.

I was not a local but an American, and if I had learned anything from my father in our heated conversations leading up to this point, is that my nationality had value to him even if my sexuality didn’t. My Mexican boyfriend was leading me into a trap to get kidnapped and appear on Fox News as a missing white gay man who should have known better and dated a demure white woman from church as his parents wanted, “We knew this would happen,” they would say into one of those spongy microphones outside their suburban home.

After we passed through Tijuana and the sun went down my body loosened. Roberto grabbed my hand in the middle seat in the comfort of darkness. The view from the backseat was a mixture of modern and abandoned buildings. It was like the time I visited the Prada store in the desert near Marfa except that was some conceptual art. This was a town, peoples’ homes, or what was supposed to be.

When we got to their home, Roberto got out of the backseat and opened the metal gate in front of the driveway. It mirrored my sense of Mexico so far. If you wanted to keep something nice you had to protect it yourself, build a fence around it.

Roberto grabbed my bag as we went up the stairs to his parent’s home. He found my room in the far corner of the house and dropped my bag on the nightstand. His childhood bedroom was just across from mine, but we wouldn’t be sharing a bed. Maybe that was part of the rules.

“There’s no AC, but if you want your room to be cooler, you can always open the window. We are in California now, not Texas,” He looked to see if his parents were nearby the open bedroom door, smiled, and kissed me before leaving the room with a soft goodnight.

Laying in bed in my boyfriend’s parents’ home felt like a miracle. Even mentioning this idea to my own family turned into an accusation. It fell hard like a rock in the empty well of my soul that used to be filled up with so many feelings for them. It knocked against the walls and echoed in the space where what I thought real love used to be as my father opined after I asked if we could stay just one night before we went to the airport nearby a few weeks later. I wanted some hospitality in kind so that I could say, see, my family can do it too, but then he says,

“What if he plays with the children?”

“You mean, like LEGOS?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, he just looks at me, eyes bugging out of his red, angry face. I finger the handle of his King Ranch truck. Why do I choose to have these conversations in an enclosed space like the cab of a truck that speaks royalty but just means money, leather seats and a vanity logo for a famous Texas ranch its wheels have never trodden on. I might as well have entreated my father as he sat on a golden throne.

It was the act of being transported, the gall of me to think maybe we could get a ride to the airport when they lived so close, that we wouldn’t have to get up so early. That they would do even a little thing for my relationship when I had seen them support my straight brothers and their relationships in so many ways.

Then I realize it wasn’t LEGOS but something more sinister. My parent who claims to love me also claims that my boyfriend is a pedophile. That instead of building silly cars and planes out of multi-colored blocks, he would groom my toddler nephew in a matter of a few short minutes to do something inappropriate with him.

“What the fuck, Dad. My boyfriend is not a pedophile.”

“I’m just saying. We don’t know him.”

“Did you have the same concern for my sisters-in-law?”

“No, but…”

“You are more likely to be a predator toward your grandchild than a stranger, and we’re leaving days before they even come over for Christmas. Quit acting like we didn’t both see that video on child predators year after year in Boy Scouts,” I said struggling to open the door and dreading the long drop from the cab to the concrete driveway. I fell asleep that first night remembering my feet hitting the ground.