I’m sure my family thinks he is fantastic! I’m sure they find his cars and flash and little bit of fame very enchanting! But to me, what a heartbreak to imagine you selling yourself short to be this guy’s wife. This thug of a guy who spends all his time making music about nothing. No, not about nothing! From what I’ve heard he makes music about money. Having it. Stealing it. Needing it to validate himself. Have you forgotten that when money is what centers someone’s soul, that soul is hollow? This man is so lost he’s ashamed of his own identity—changing his name to hide! Imagine what your father would have said. A man that insecure wants marriage to mark you as his territory the way a dog pisses on a hydrant. A man that insecure will never allow you enough space to find your own way, to express your own voice.
In fact, I can’t help but feel that since you’ve met him, you already seem to have lost your way. What happened to your passion for your photography? What goals are you pursuing beyond spending all your time going where he wants to go with the people he knows?
I won’t try to convince you that this guy isn’t worthy of you. I remember being young and thinking I understood love, too. But I do have to ask questions, in the hopes that you will ask them of yourself. What are his bigger ambitions for himself? When was the last time he asked about yours? Besides your looks, does he value your mind? Does he ask your opinions in public? Does he support your curiosities in a meaningful way? What is his vision for you as a wife and a mother? What is his vision for himself as a husband and a father? Does he ask you if you want to have kids or does he just assume? Does he know that money can purchase things but not joy? What, besides being Puerto Rican, do you even have in common?
Pa’lante,
Mami
SEPTEMBER 2017
BILINGUAL
Getting her brother an invitation for the Blumenthal party had been so easy, Olga couldn’t believe how challenging procuring her own had been. Of course, Olga was not a congressperson, let alone one who was on set at Morning Joe almost as frequently as the hosts themselves. Adding to this, Olga found out via Dick’s assistant Charmaine that the new Mrs. Blumenthal was a self-declared “fan” of her brother. Indeed, a deep dive into Mrs. Blumenthal’s Instagram account—@rrriottthespian—revealed that Mrs. Blumenthal had in fact already met her brother, when they shared the stage at the Women’s March on Washington. Likely it was not a long meeting, but long enough that they had snapped a selfie together, which Mrs. Blumenthal captioned, Great politics and easy on the eyes #womensmarch #easyontheeyeshardonsexism fire emoji, fire emoji, fire emoji.
As she had suspected, Dick, an ardent Libertarian, refused to fork over the $10,000 for entrée into the fundraising fete, sending Prieto a note to say that it was nothing personal, but he wouldn’t give him a dollar until he cut government spending and supported deregulation. When Olga read it, she rolled her eyes and almost raised the point that if he really wanted a relationship with her, he would need to see past policy and support her brother in ways big and small. Then she remembered that she didn’t want a relationship with Dick and that she therefore didn’t really care what he believed or supported. Besides, the entire point of this play, by design, was to ensure that she and Dick would not enter the Blumenthal party together, where surely a New York Social Diary photographer would be lingering. Instead she would walk in tethered to her brother’s shiny star, enabling her to attract Mrs. Blumenthal’s attention and rob Dick of the smug satisfaction of diminishing her to arm candy intended to impress some old white guys he liked to slap backs with.
Olga had helicoptered over with Dick on Friday afternoon. As she did not particularly like the Hamptons, or sleeping the night with others, it was her first time out to his house there, an impulse purchase he’d made in the wake of his divorce. It was a lavish bachelor pad, with a game room and movie theater in the basement, and glass walls that looked out on the infinity pool and the ocean just beyond. The kitchen was comically masculine. Walls of dark gray invisible cabinets, a massive wine fridge, and a marble countertop so long and wide she was certain that Dick would want to fuck on it, if only because it invited such unoriginal fantasy. It was a “sexy” house, in the way that pornography is sexy—it screamed the most basic desires a man has while seeming utterly ignorant to how and what might give a woman pleasure. Dick had bought the house, he’d explained to her, as a lure to his growing sons, hoping that they would find the place cool enough to want to come out with their friends, and not mind the “old man” being around. As far as she knew, they had not been out much, either.