DECONSTRUCTING SANTIAGO

From Monteviedeo to Santiago for seven days.  To turn them into professional expenses, Bruce has put me in touch with Fernando Bustos, a young man affiliated to the MOVILH (movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation), the activist group in Santiago .  Contacts have been made in a hurry.  I have a full schedule: presentations, meetings, interviews.

I attend A MOVILH’s Executive committee meeting with an anarchist group.  After much soul-searching,  the Executive Committee decides to reject any collaboration with the anarchists.  They point out, quite rightly, the precarious position of their own group as regards the law, and the problems which an alliance with other marginal groups would bring.

Another young man,  Victor Hugo, interviews me for his radio program, “The Open Triangle.” on Radio Terra  Difficult questions, difficult answers, but I feel satisfied.

That evening I go out with Fernando Bustos to meet with Amanda Berenguer, a writer, and the famous/infamous Frsncisco “Pancho” Casas,” founder of the guerilla theater group “The Apocaliptic Mares.”  We are to gather at The Prosit, the favorite place of raving queens of all sexes and Santiago ’s budding alcoholic youth.  Both arrived accompanied:  Berenguer, by a feminist who gives me a copy of her book, written in what I have come to recognize as international postmodern nonsense; Casas, who unfortunately looks more like Aubrey Beardsley than Rock Hudson,  by a quiet nineteen-year-old boyfriend.

            Casas attacks Bustos furiously because he has not ever been invited to the MOVILH, whereas foreigners are.  The feminist tears into him for trying to get me a gig at the National Library.  She proceeds to name a string of previous invitees, from Juan Gelpí and Cristina Peri Rossi to Jean Franco to Frederick Jameson, to prove that Chile has enough culture and I am too small a fish to deserve such an honor.  Then they all get tangled in a discussion on “Revolutionary Queers” (Casas) and “middle-class homosexuals” (poor ol’ me) which attracts everyone’s eyes, while I try to hide under the table.

            Casas proposes we move the party to a cabaret called “The Triangle,” which should have been properly named “The Nightmare.”  Triangular avant-garde furniture, painted in garish colors and terribly uncomfortable.  We meet with another member of Santiago’s intellectual bohemia, a drunkard reciting poetry which always ends in whistling , and then compassionately telling me he once brought Gorbachev to Chile and no one paid attention to him either.  His hunk of a friend, also soused, spends the evening trying to pick Berenger up, inviting her to dance and later to his apartment.  But he simultaneously shows me his crotch, which I defiantly do not cease ogling.  These people drink but don’t eat so, being the guest with dollars, I pay for the seven bottles of wine they have imbibed.  Casas sarcastically tells the drunkard to stay away because we are “a table of (middle-class?) homosexuals” but he insists on talking to me.  I return at two o’clock in the morning, famished and dead tired, wishing I were back in New York ..

            As soon as I wake up the next day, Bruce informs me that the conference at the National Library, mysteriously degraded to a news roundtable, has been cancelled.  The MOVILH is undergoing a crisis: a TV program on homosexuality has been censored by the government.   I get a call from Bustos telling me I must be at the MOVILH for a poetry reading at 9.00 PM .  I must take a taxi since he is not picking me up.  It is Bruce’s birthday.  Since his jealous mate has taken the car, we take the Metro.  At last I can speak about my work and field questions.  One shakes me up.  They want to know whether Gabriela Mistral was really a lesbian!   I tell them that, being Chileans, they should know better than I do.  I recite, from memory, “Lai” (A man, beautiful as glass) and read from The Woman’s Voice I Carry Inside and Wild Duck, ending with the subversive “Love Said.”  I announce that the reading is dedicated to the man in my life, the birthday boy.  That is my gift.  His eyes surprisingly wet, he puts an arm around my shoulder, hugs me and says the magic words:  “Je suis fier de toi.”   Then he leaves for another party with some friends.  I end up at the Prosit with another one of his acolytes, Alejandro,  dining on pizza and house wine.