Читать книгу Dusk & Dust - Esteban Rodríguez - Страница 8

LUCHA LIBRE

It was the mask I wanted more

than fame, the tight turquoise leather

tied with red shoestring around my nape,

the thought of being someone else

without being anchored to a face,

so as not to face the features in the face

that were slowly changing, growing

stranger by the year. And there was

the white complexion so different from

the darker shades of skin around me,

and the pimples unwilling to renounce

their loyalty, leaving me to reinvent

the candy-red bumps as chickenpox instead.

Even if I didn’t know the one-hit wonder

of this disease, once I saw those Mexican

men fighting on TV, I couldn’t care less

if anyone else believed it, if I, like them,

was putting up a front because a front

was the surest thing to guise myself in,

to carry my confidence further than

their choreographed jumps, than their lunges,

plunges, angelic dives, than the tiptoe

rope-walking as they back-flipped farther

into the ring, or as their sweaty bodies

began to sync with the crowd’s shock

and awe, feed off their praise and screams.

And there I was, bouncing off my bed,

mumbling Spanish I could barely speak,

and hardly able to drop-kick, eye-poke,

cross chop, pile drive, head-butt, body slam,

brain-bust, somersault, shoulder claw,

slingshot or sleeper hold into my role

as rudo, the dirty-playing villain desperate

to pin the appearance I no longer wanted,

to wait for the count and finish off

with a headlock so I wouldn’t have to take off

my mask, reveal to myself who I knew

I really was.