am.
It feels like a sick love affair: a faceless power needing to know my every move, utterance, thought, and behavior even though thereâs no reason for me to be under observation or suspicion. It seems my valentine finds me threatening, which reveals more about my valentine than it does about me.
I hand in the form, and a portly woman with a stern face comes around the corner. She provides an obligatory smile.She positions me in front of a white backdrop and raises a digital camera in front of my face.
âSmile, darling.â
We walk to what looks like a copy machine except itâs bigger than I am. The woman speaks warmly to me. She puts on a pair of latex gloves, takes my hand, and puts each of my digits on a clear glass grid individually, then together, and then itâs over. She hands me an alcohol wipe and tells me Iâll be receiving another notice as soon as the FBI clears me.
âThatâs it?â
âThatâs it.â
Ariel: âThatâs it?â
âThatâs it.â
I look at my watch. âTasty Tacos?â
My friend Chelsea, a native of Des Moines, made me promise that after the capturing of my biometric data, Ariel and I would eat at Tasty Tacos. She smiled facetiously, displaying her prominent incisors when I agreed.
âStarting with virtually nothing, we have taken a family recipe and given people across the country an opportunity to sample our one-of-a-kind flour taco.â In 1961, the Mosqueda family didnât imagine theyâd own five profitable âfast serve restaurants.â Ariel and I canât stop smiling at this mongrel food establishment: Formica diner booths and tables; an old-school slide-lettering menu above the cash register thatâs faded yellow and spattered with some kind of dried red sauce; a fat, mustachioed man with a long, braided ponytail; a group of three construction workersâone black, one white, one brownâall wearing tan Carhartt jackets. A family of threeâa morbidly obese white woman whose lower stomach is dangerously wedged under the table, her racially ambiguous partner, and their even more racially ambiguous child whoâs going to town on two corn dogs.
I look at my red tray, with one hard-shell chicken tacoâchicken that feels, between my teeth, to have been boiledâoneshriveled corn dog that tastes thawed from a long deep freeze, and one small cola in a disposable cup with the restaurantâs logo: a young Mexican boy wearing a sombrero with a sarape slung over his left shoulder, his hands extended, in the small reverie of being a man. He exclaims, âNada Es Imposible!â
CHAPTER 4
La Soledad de Octavio
To live is to be separated from what we were in order to approach what we are going to be in the mysterious future.
âOctavio Paz
, The Labyrinth of Solitude
âChhhht, cabrón.â Octavio swats at my head because weâre three cans of Tecate in, and Iâve forgotten to speak quietly again. He lives in a small, single-family home with his wife, her mother, his brother-in-law, his brother-in-lawâs wife, their infant son, and his wifeâs widowed cousin. One overweight Yorkie named Cookie yips incessantly while looking out the window, and another one, an emaciated, seventeen-year-old male named Coco, bumbles about in a diaper, drooling, until he finds himself in a corner and freezes, at which point someone turns him around so he can get stuck in another corner. In a small office past the kitchen, an African grey parrot sleeps standing on his perch.
Iâm home for the weekend, visiting from graduate school in Iowa, which feels like being stuck in a tiny aquarium that never gets cleaned. The displeasure of being perpetually surrounded by graduate students and academics gets to be unbearable, and cooking meals for one and eating them ina silent apartment shaves away at the psyche. Iâve recently taken to setting my laptop across from me while