His last year of high school, Gaspar discovered the Princesa Cultural Center, just two hundred meters down from his school. The fa?ade was painted red and the paint was recent, because that color was impossible to miss—it looked like blood had been spilled over the house. Also, the name of the place was in both graffiti and neon, so it could be seen at night. That first time, at seven in the evening with the neon already lit and the music drifting out through the open door, the place attracted Gaspar enough that he ran across the street, ignoring the car horns. It was raining a little, and his black sneakers got wet.
Outside, under the terrace balcony that acted as a roof, a girl was smoking with her leg bent, her foot resting against the wall. She was dark-skinned and wore cutoff jean shorts, a white sleeveless T-shirt, combat boots, and a lot of bracelets on both wrists; some of them shone, glittery like a little girl’s, and others were black plastic. Her hair was short and black. Gaspar thought she was beautiful like no other girl he had ever seen. He approached her unabashedly, attracted as if he were suffering from terrible heat and she were melting ice; he had to be fast, decisive.
“Is it open?” he asked, after saying hi.
From inside came a song that talked about skin flying all around. What weird lyrics, thought Gaspar. The lazy guitar seemed very fitting for that evening of humidity and rain.
“For now you can only drink beer at the bar, but there’s a poetry reading tonight. And a band is on after that.”
The girl looked at him curiously.
“I hadn’t seen this place before,” said Gaspar.
“It’s been here about a year, but we just painted it red so it would stand out. Are you in school?”
“The Normal two blocks from here. I’m behind. I’m a senior, but I’m eighteen already.”
“You repeated a grade.”
“No,” said Gaspar, and didn’t explain further.
She was older, he realized. Not much, a couple of years. She must be in college. He hadn’t been with many girls, a fact he was ashamed of and tried to hide. With Belén, an old classmate, he’d gone to the park and kissed her belly; it had tickled her, and when she moved and the smell from between her legs had reached him, he’d gotten a sudden and somewhat painful erection. He’d tried to lie on top of her and he kissed her behind the ear, but Belén got scared and he stopped immediately. I like you a lot, said Belén, but I don’t want to. He felt like his head was pounding, but since she was on the verge of tears, he told her no problem, and sorry, it’s just that you’re really pretty. Let’s go, I’ll walk you to the bus stop, okay? And she said yes and soon they were talking about something else, though Gaspar didn’t remember what because his erection was hurting and while they were waiting for the bus, he told her he was going to pee and he jacked off quickly and furiously behind a tree, before the curious gaze of a grimy white cat that blinked at him. When he returned, calmer now, Belén told him about her vacation at the Valley of the Moon and how the landscape had looked like Star Wars, and then the bus came. He hadn’t seen her again. He had slept with other girls after that, but every time it was both memorable and profoundly unsatisfactory; he was sure he should do something else, that it had to be more than just that desperate feeling of haste and joy and then the unease of not knowing if the girl had liked it, if what he did was okay, if he’d put the condom on right, if it was bad to fall sleep afterward, if he had to stop or if he was allowed to ask to go again, when to ask and when not to. He’d asked Vicky and she just said, “It’s so obvious, Gaspar.” How could it be so obvious if it was so difficult for him?
“Do you have a smoke?” the girl asked.
Gaspar pulled a pack from his hoodie pocket and offered it to her. She looked at it suspiciously.
“Le Mans?”
“I ran out of money. They’re my uncle’s girlfriend’s. She doesn’t notice when I steal them. He does.”
“Does he smoke something better?”
“No. Jockey.”
The girl let him light her cigarette. Gaspar looked at her legs. She had visible muscles. The lighter had illuminated her very dark eyes, lined in blue like a punk Cleopatra. She said her name was Marita, and when he told her his, she said she thought Gaspar was a great name. One of the Magi.
“That’s what my dad used to say, that’s why my mom chose it. Because of the wise men.”
Marita peered at him through the smoke and Gaspar hastened to explain, because he didn’t like uncomfortable questions.
“I don’t have parents. They died a while ago. I live with my uncle.”
Her face showed no pity or sorrow, she only nodded and murmured, that sucks. She held the cigarette between her lips when she knelt down to tie her boots. And just like that, feigning nonchalance, as if it were as casual as fixing her long shoelaces, she told him she had seen him go by some nights, running to the bus stop. Do you live far? No, Gaspar replied, in Villa Elisa. I stay around here until nighttime, sometimes.
“Come dancing whenever you want,” said Marita. “We have parties on Saturdays. I don’t imagine you like poetry.”
“I don’t know how to dance but I love poetry,” replied Gaspar.
“That’s weird,” she said. “The poetry part. Because no guys know how to dance. Except for gay guys, of course.”
Marita handed him the cigarette for him to finish. The filter was sticky with her lip gloss, but Gaspar didn’t mind. He liked the world of girls and women, though he didn’t fully understand it. He liked how girls giggled behind their hands, how they wrote on their clothes and shoes and preferred things to be shiny and silver, how they worried about combining colors and decorated folders with stickers of their favorite groups, or with photos of actors protected by strips of Scotch tape. He liked that they cried and worried about smells, the good ones and the bad, and the intensity of aromas, if this girl wore too much perfume, if the imported scent they’d bought at duty-free was incredible or a wasted expense, if boys’ skin had a smell and whether damp underpants smelled like peaches or fish. He liked that Julieta cursed more than his uncle and that she spent hours at the beauty parlor, and although he didn’t understand why a bad haircut made her cry, he felt sorry when he saw her sad, it didn’t irritate him （as it obviously irritated his uncle, who would grumble, I really don’t get that shit）。 He liked that Julieta noticed when his jacket zipper broke and that she knew how to fix it; he knew it was better not to argue with her when she’d had a bad day in court. He liked that Vicky would call him up and tell him: I know how to avoid being teased at school. You have to either be good-looking or you have to be weird. That’s why no one makes fun of you: you’re good-looking and weird.
Gaspar didn’t stay at the Princesa that night, but he decided it would be his spot: he liked it even before he got to know its walls painted red to hide the stains of dampness, the creaky stage, the beer that was never really cold, the big table on iron legs where they sold fanzines, used records, art books with some of the pages loose.
Vicky rested her head on the steering wheel and sighed. I’m so tired I can’t even get mad, she said.