my life in roughly 33,000 brief strokes

the story of me, part I, or Of how I pulled out half my hair when I was fifteen while eating cheetos in the bathtub

my story starts on jan. 16, 1979. I was born in the heart of this city, at two o'clock in the afternoon and after only five hours of labor. how bout that?


my mom very much wanted this baby, so I complied by becoming quite the little Einstein. I was one of those quiet, contemplative babies that can spend hours taking things out of a box and putting them inside again. I was reading by age two and a half, but that year I was also stung by a bee in the tongue because I was running around with my mouth open and my tongue out. that proves there's as much silly as there's smart in me.

my parents moved around quite a bit during my toddler years, but my memories begin clearly when we moved to this house in what once upon a time were the outskirts of this city. I was four and my mom was pregnant with my brother.

I remember that the day my brother was born I was digging in the back in my grandma's backyard. I uncovered something that was neither plant or dirt or stone; it turned out to be a toad. so later, when I was taken to my mom in the hospital and an uncle asked me, "guess what your mama has brought for you", somehow it made sense to hesitantly ask, "a toad?"

much confusion ensued. since then, I'm all about confusing people.

as I've said, my coherent memories start when we moved here. with the move, two things happened: I was switched from a montessori kindergarden to a very strict catholic school, and my mom cut my hair. until then I had been in a preschool where my relentless curiosity was encouraged; in the traditional system, I was considered insolent and unruly. I was four and I could read, write, count, and color within the lines; I got bored easily. teachers were annoyed with my questions. the problem with the haircut was that on the first day of school everyone, teachers included, thought I was a boy. this mortified me. to this day I look at those old pictures and I think, boy! I look like a boy! and until my hair grew back, everyone mocked me and said I should wear skirts or they'd treat me like a boy. and I'm not only talking about the other children. I'll never have my hair short again.

those first few days in my new school somehow defined the schoolyears to come. during my first years of formal school, I never really bonded with other children and most of my teachers were annoyed by me. an honorable exception was my first grade teacher, who always hung my drawings in the corkboard and made me the Dictionary Minister. I think she honestly got a kick out of the fact that we were the only two people in the room who knew what a 'Minister' was.

I don't remember being unhappy during this time, though. I read many books, saw many movies, watched hours of cartoons, and daydreamed a lot about my imaginary friend Pepe and our herd of giant red oxen. later on, I'd use my baby brother as a prop. I didn't miss having friends but in the vaguest way; I guess I thought that 'someday' I'd have friends like people did in my favorite books. our childhood was fiercely guarded for reasons that still aren't clear to me, but it was okay then, I guess. this will become clearer later in my story, but in my family there are some things we Just Don't Talk About, and we Just Don't Do. not to mention things that Just Never Happen. even at five or six I knew there were some questions I wasn't supposed to ask. but we were very much loved and doted on by my mother, and by my father by extension, though he was much less prone to pamper. but he taught me all sorts of daddy-like things, like watching insects, musical notes, looking things up in a dictionary, and later on, playing with my wonderful commodore 64!

as the years went by, though, I began to dread the time my dad came home, all the same. I relished thursdays and sundays because he didn't come at all those days. my dad is not a bad man, but he's always had a terrible temper and the years didn't make it any better. he gets mad at everything. he got angrier as the years went by, and he has never bothered to hide it... at least in front of us.

there were many fights during my years 11-15, when I first started to feel rebellious and started trying to reach out to the outer world. I was now feeling desperately left out at school and somewhat felt that I needed to bond with people my age outside the school environment. during those years, I felt very much identified with carrie white my father never really approved of any social contact; he'd always say "I'd have time for it later". I still wonder if later for him meant thirty five, because he kept on saying that until I was twenty one, when I finally left home. until then, every single time I asked permission to go out, even if it was only with friends, there was a major fight. and I mean MAJOR. there would be much fist slamming, yelling and flying objects. and to this day I don't really know why. it's not like we're mormons or anything; he just didn't want us to go out. I eventually stopped asking for permission and I started sneaking out.

and thus I ended in very bad company for a pube who had never properly socialized one thing I learned in those years was to take care of myself; I was painfully aware that since I was sneaking out, there was no one really to look out for me. that didn't stop me from doing a lot of things I now wish I hadn't, though. and I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I didn't know what else to do; reasoning had done nothing for my parents.

of course I got caught continuosly, which didn't help the relationship with my parents and only made things worse. I had been straight A's through elementary, but those grades dropped in junior high as I became more interested in partying, and later on in highschool when I became more interested in being miserable.

you see, by sixteen I was tired of the partying and became convinced I was a huge failure. I'd become aware there were some truly horrible stories about me going around in what I considered my circle of 'friends', stories that eventually spread to reach me and my family, and that just broke my heart, because I further realized some of those stories were true. I was a horrible person. I cut all connection and switched highschools, in my new school I spent three years playing cards with other outcasts like me and presenting most of my exams in extraordinaries (which is the only exam you can take if you miss 98% of the classes, like I did). I would only attend the classes I liked, like literature and etimologies. in retrospect, I don't know how the school didn't kick me out. I managed to save my high school by only presenting finals and playing with averages. I needed 85% to get into college and somehow I made it by studying on my own, even if to this day I don't know shit of analytical geometry.

at home, I locked myself in my room and read books, listened to tortured music and wrote my dark thoughts. I did many stupid things to myself. I drove my parents insane during that time, not because I was sneaking out to party now but because there was no power on earth THAT WOULD KEEP ME IN SCHOOL. what came to help me through those times were my dogs, strange as that might sound. I became involved with a rescue group and soon I was training my Herriot, a truly wonderful black lab, for search and rescue. from there I graduated to training dogs for a little money. those people actually were my buddies for awhile; I was seventeen while the rest of the group were in their thirties or older, but almost all of them genuinely liked me and took me under their wing. from them I learned how to drink and do drugs --not to mention get along with other people-- properly, and how to teach your dog to climb trees, knit sweaters and recite the pledge of alliance.

so by the end of highschool I was feeling better, not great, just not terrible anymore --after two years. I had to start thinking about what to do next. I had already dropped the ballet, which I very seriously practiced for eleven years, because I had never really been interested in becoming a professional dancer. after giving much thought to what I wanted, I realized I had no idea, but something that I *had* known for quite awhile is that I very much wanted to have my own place. so I decided that whatever I ended up doing, I wanted it to be something that would give me enough to support myself, and dancing just didn't seem to be viable.

sometimes I wonder if I made a practical mistake. it's true, I've never missed dancing, and I would have NEVER been a Pavlova, but I could have been a very decent performer. ironically, in this screwed up country of mine, sometimes my artist friends have more luck in the job market than us practical blokes.

not that I was *that* practical, for that matter. I didn't choose robotics or accounting or something profitable; I chose english literature at the national university, because they offered a specialization in translation and it's the finest school of literature in latin america. I figured, I like english, I like translation, I like books, what can possibly go wrong? by then, I'd been translating for four years, because my dad was also a translator and I'd beg him to let me do bits of whatever book he was working on. when I was thirteen, I made a very serious attempt at translating It for my brother; I did it again four years later, when the Dark Tower 4 came out. that one I did almost complete, I still have it in my computer. and one of my pipedreams is still to make my own translation of the dark tower books. or the harry potter series.

so, I chose english literature.

and I'm going to stop here, because this is already too long and probably no one but me is reading by now. I can hear you all snoring with your face on the keyboard. University was for me an eye opener and it deserves a chapter of its own, because I think that's when I truly started living my life as I know it. so, I'll tell it some other time soon.