The bastard part of me always forgets father's day. It was the twenty-second day of me running away, and I was on the side of the road, lost, but I had my dirty little homeless hand wrapped around the fifty dollar bill I stole the day before with a magic trick that went wrong. That fifty dollar bill was the biggest thing I ever held in my pocket. I felt "placed by God" standing at the side of the road with my hand in my pocket, pressing down on my dickhead every time seeing a car drive bye. I didn't want to go anywhere, so there was no need to have my dumb in the air. I saved my dumb for the little girls who didn't know any better. I'd be like those little girls if I was a girl.
My mama missed me, and cried at the fact that I was born to always be hungry and cold, and my daddy cried with his fist over the son who became a bastard on father's day. I was good at being on the side of the road, any road, any town; the color of the city didn't matter as long as there is a road and a rest-stop that had a sink and toilet for me to work.
I always made friends in rest-stops, dirty toilets and warm water oozing out of everything reminds me of where I was born. And I know how to pick up friends in the places I come form. These rest-stops always have paper for me to clean off my work from the night before, or as I'm working.
Men come walking into these used bathrooms late at night with their erections pressed against the dollar bills they're willing to get rid of as long as I can say the right words for them to touch me in the wrong way. I stand in these bathrooms with ready-eyes, and as still as the porcelain inside of them, but I'm the only thing in there for sale.
They sometimes take out their marriages on my young body - my hairless face pressed against cold tile walls that are as cold as the movements they use to get rid of the anger, trying to thrust away the gay on this little boy who knows more tricks than their wives, and who also knows their secrets they hide so deep.
Other's just really like me, almost like a little, professional nephew that they can take in the woods behind these bathrooms for ten minute champing trips. And there are also those who want to take me to their homes to play "house." But I always refuse with candy in my mouth, for I am too much of a man for that sort of thing. Empty belly pressed on top of the sink - dirty hands dragging down the grime from mirrors that hold all our pleasured secrets - touched head turned back with price tags in my eyes, the only discount I may give is a kiss on the lips once done. And they pay me with shame in the same eyes they bought me with.
I have no need for baseball cards, treasure maps, bicycles, plastic swords, skateboards, slingshots or Band-Aids, for I no longer play with those of my same age, now I play with men, and the only toys I need are already attached to me, as if I were born to do this in these bathrooms on the side of roads, always ready to use what I was taught, with a glass of lemonade in my nervous hand, and my superheroes down at my ankles.
My father sold beds, and for this I'll never get fucked on my back again!
Roberto Beltran is a 34 year old goat of a writer - he eats most of what he writes, and he drinks down all the bad things he's done. Roberto never liked apples, but he loved the five years he lived in New York City, loving all the different colors and the fact that he could only afford to write when he couldn't buy food. But Roberto stopped being a vegetarian and moved to Buenos Aires where the beef is better than good, and as cheap as Roberto would be if he were a prositute for all the women who hated him.
Roberto knew that he had to leave so could write a novel about that city, and about the only lover he hurt first. Roberto doesn't read the rules, so he's gonna call this book "I LOVE YOU MORE THAN COCA COLA" Argentinia has been good for Roberto's pen. (The truth is, that Roberto still drinks too much, and that he can never get over the pain of once hating his mother, who made shoes. Roberto has always had just one pair of shoes.) Please don't tell any of this truth to Maria Teresa!