After the Hurricane(77)

“What the fuck was that?” Santiago asked. He never cursed, ever. His uncles cursed, loudly, colorfully, in English and Spanish. Santiago didn’t. He believed that it made them sound what they were, uneducated, like thugs. He never wanted to sound like that, like them.

“I didn’t know you were here. I came back early, and the room was empty. I thought it would be okay,” Neil said, his voice hoarse.

“To kill yourself?” Santiago asked him, incredulous. Neil was nervous, yes, and more than a little off, but as far as Santiago knew, he had performed well in school, he had no reason to want to die. Not like he himself had. Neil looked down at the sheet in his hands.

“There is no point in living, anyway,” Neil said. Santiago looked at him in disbelief and then, so quickly he wasn’t sure how it was possible, hit him in the face. He didn’t know how it happened. He didn’t have any thought or desire to do it, it wasn’t until his fist connected with Neil’s jaw that he realized it was happening.

“What was that for?” Neil asked, clutching his face.

“What does that even mean, no point? You’re rich, you’re doing well in school, what the fuck do you not have to live for? What could possibly be your reason for saying that? Self-indulgent little prick, what the hell do you—”

“I’m a homosexual,” Neil said, flatly, his voice a dead thing. Santiago looked at him, not understanding.

“So?” Santiago said. He knew lots of men like Neil. He’d met friends of his uncles, of his father, men who preferred other men. There were slurs about men like that, maricón, but they were usually said affectionately, at least in his family. His grandmother didn’t exactly approve, calling it against God, but then, she didn’t approve of anything. People didn’t always talk about it openly, but everyone knew about men like that, and as long as they didn’t make it too public, especially around the police, all the Puerto Ricans he knew at home and on the island just shrugged, and accepted it. Who cared who other people slept with? The only problem was when you slept with two people at once, although according to a lot of the conversations that Santiago overheard in the cafeteria, that was becoming more and more popular among the students, who talked about free love and “rejecting conventions that restricted human connection in all forms.”

“So, it’s illegal. It’s a perversion, a mental defect,” Neil said, his voice bitter, and Santiago wondered if he was quoting someone else. “People like me should be shot on sight.”

“I don’t think that,” Santiago said, simply. He wasn’t sure what else to say. He had his own problems, so many of them. It had never occurred to him that Neil had any, as well.

“My father does,” Neil said, squeezing the sheet tightly. “He sent me back here early. Says I can’t come home until I fix it. Fix myself. I’ve tried not to, to want anyone. I’ve punished myself, I’ve prayed. I cut myself when I think about men, look.” Here Neil rolled up his pant leg and his sleeve, showing Santiago lines of cuts, some healed scars, some scabs. “But I can’t stop. I thought maybe this would be the next best thing. To fix it. To make him proud.”

Santiago stared at Neil. He had trained himself to want, to expect, nothing from his parents. What would it be like, he wondered, to crave something from a parent so much that you were willing to kill yourself to get it?

“Fuck him,” Santiago said, breaking a personal record, cursing twice in one day. “You want to smoke?” He rummaged around in his desk, pulling out a joint. Julian had left it for him before he went back to Chicago for break. He hadn’t seen Julian much after that first day, but whenever Santiago did he felt the only sense of comfort he had experienced since he came to Stanford. The last time he saw Julian he was on his way to the airport and realized he still had a joint on him, and hastily passed it to Santiago, saying something about how his mother would kill him if she smelled it, and Merry Christmas.

Neil stared at him, clearly shaken from Santiago’s lack of reaction to his confession.

“Pot is for degenerates,” Neil said, doubtfully.

“You’re already homosexual. What do you have to lose?” Santiago said, feeling unexpectedly light. If this was his last night at Stanford, he might as well make it a good one. He lit a match, and inhaled, coughing as he exhaled. He had only done this once or twice before. He passed the joint to Neil, who took it, his hands shaking.

“You really don’t think it’s bad?” Neil said, and Santiago recognized the thing in his voice for what it was. Hope.

“I really don’t.”

Neil smiled, the bruises on his throat from his suicide attempt already forming, moving over his bobbing Adam’s apple, and took a hit.

In the morning, when Santiago told Neil about his plan to leave school over breakfast in the cafeteria, Neil grabbed his arm and forbade him from this, absolutely.

“I’m failing. I’m alone here. I have nothing,” Santiago said, frankly, shame pinching at his temples. Neil smiled.

“Not anymore. Now you have me.” He took his hand off Santiago’s arm and held it out. “If you keep me alive, I’ll help you learn better. Deal?”

Santiago looked at Neil’s hand, pale and soft, the hand of someone who had never had to bag groceries or shoot pool or cut cane. Could he put his future in a useless hand like that? And then he thought of Neil, ready to end his own life in their dorm room.