Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Layer 1: Cousin

Once this very tacky cousin of mine met a man over the internet, a Honduran businessman living in Spain who paid her a trip around Europe. She went to Spain and England and Italy. She wrote me from Venice so I tried to muster an enthusiasm I didn't actually feel, I said "How lucky! May you take a gondola ride under the Arch of Love and be with him happily ever after!" to which she replied nothing because she had no idea what a gondola or the Arch of Love was. A week after she wrote back to me, "This is your place. I can just picture you here, I swear you'd be so successful." to which I wanted to answer that no it wasn't, that it was hers regardless of whether she actually belonged there or the role physical attributes played in it. Instead I forced myself to a quiet, pathetically dignified resignation.


Last year she and I worked together on her Israeli stepfather's cigars company. But anyone in their right mind could hardly call what we did "work", as it involved mostly partying and travelling and bonding with businessmen and rich people. We spent almost four months at beaches, bars, hotel pools, nightclubs, on the road, spending everyone's money but ours. We dealt with Russians, Italians, Cubans, Chinese, Brazilians, Salvadorians, Americans, everyone who would fell for my cousin's meaty curves wrapped in her sultry attires. She was the embodiment of Guy de Maupassant's Boule de Suif, except that she was better at it. She had her ways and they always worked. We would sit in a random fancy bar and in matter of minutes the owner would send us drinks and food and flaming cocktails. Two weeks later he'd be depositing money on her account so she could buy a car. 


That must have been one of the times when I felt the least hope for human kind. Here's this lousy, unintelligent money-driven selfish woman who achieves everything she wants just because she triggers some subconscious response to fertility in the opposite sex. Not that I was so naive before as not to imagine, but being involved made me feel like all of my existential struggles and praise for brilliance were silly and unimportant, that hers is the way things get done in real life.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Me parecio muy bueno, solo una pequena observacion. No se si se leeria mejor

She went to Spain, England, and Italy.?

Raúl Valdivia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.

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