| On the other side of the insurmountable wall was adulthood, grounded and
broken into little bits of ungraspable imaginary scenes, by a little night club called
"The Babalu". |
|
| At night we would hear loud music coming down from the wall, down the three sections
of the slanted garden and down to our little cottage. |
|
My mother explained to me what a night club was: "… a place where adults go
at night to dance and drink…". |
There were those magic words: "adults" and "drink" and
"dance".
|
"Adults" for me was covered in red bright light and little strands of black,
memories of the first Playboy I ever saw and breasts and freedom and a recurring strange
sensation in my crotch. |
|
When a movie was "only for adults", this meant extreme and almost unbearable
excitement, something so strong and pleasurable that only an older, stronger creature
could withstand it. |
"Drink" was a tall glass full of bubbles and the laughter of my father’s
friends, recurringly connected stories that went on past midnight and anger in the
remaining hours of the early morning. |
|
Curses and loud voices and men stumbling to the doorways, holding on to door knobs and
walls. |
|
"Dance" was forbidden and unthinkable, an unmanly movement of the body that
signified a loss of pride and righteousness in a man and strange temptations and
revelations in a woman. |
|
| A man who dances must be a "marica", a man who likes other men, and that was
something nobody should be or admit to being. |
|
A woman who dances inspired that "adult" sensation mixed with fear and a
confusing apprehension. |
|
