Un Gâteau, Pour Un
June 26, 2020. Montréal, Québec, Canadá.Coming down my cheeks tears were —as cattle amidst a storm— looking for shelter inside my N95 mask. In a stupor, they were acting in a conspiracy, hand-in-hand with my asthmatic breath to asphyxiate me. But not today, because it’s cake day.
Just in case I died in that precise moment walking down Ontario Street, at least I’d turned a look: a vintage leopard jacket I once bought from a friend-of-a-friend in Bogotá; an acid-trippy neon mesh shirt from ASOS with a mollusk —or maybe a jellyfish, or maybe both— emblazoned all across the torso, and a pair of J.W Anderson’s Chuck Taylors as glittery as a drag queen’s wig at the end of Pride month.
Today all I want is some solitude and a little bit of gluttony, to gaslight myself into thinking that it is OK for me to, once again, spend my birthday without any social interaction, and instead daydream about book signings in tiny rustic bookstores on Reykjavik cobblestoned roads, while promoting my new book aptly titled The Dick Whisperer.
Little cubes of cheese —vegan please; let’s save cows— would make their rounds on silver platters, coupled with organic wine from a local vineyard that’s so hipster Bjork is a spokesperson. Glasses would be poured, inciting drunk guests to swap their credit cards in a frenzy of capitalism and literature. A feisty musician as the entertainment; everyone would love it, and my book would be touching lives and making people cry (I love crying while reading), and my publisher would be so happy that I would get signed for four more books, and yes, I’m daydreaming…
Fierce strutting —not power walking— while crying is not a skill mastered by everyone, but I thank Jessie Ware for today’s moral support. After I brush my teeth and follow some tribulation, I decide that this morning I would go to the Polish patisserie next to station Frontenac to get a cake, just pour moi —a cheesecake, a mille-feuille, quelque chose. This, being my first birthday spent in my new-home Montreal, I yearn to be the cliché of the gay guy living abroad, eating a whole cake, crying to Bowie’s Heroes —The Perks of Being a Millennial.
Twenty-eight candles to blow, it still surprises me that I’ve made it so far. All the roads not taken, and the ones taken as well; all the soil in my soul just waiting to be watered by the hands of young adulthood I’m about to embark on. Age has given me dialogue and patience, it has taught me the value of spontaneity. Every morning, as the sun says, Hello, I thank the wind for the lungs that move my life; I apologize to the ants walking beneath my feet, for the invasion of privacy, and I salute the birds that visit me outside of my window to serenade my morning menu of two eggs and orange juice. Later, at sundown, I bow down to my mistakes to try to make them not last, to have an amicable divorce á la Moore-Willis.
Halfway through my cake —gâteau de vanille et framboise— and one step closer to death, time has come to slap me in the face to snap out of it and to start writing. To not just use the craft as a business card during dates, and to stop fooling myself that what I do is somehow not appreciable. Being a writer is much more than an interesting impression to say during dates to get some D —although I gotta admit, it really works; apparently gays love writers.
To enable oneself to the idea of being a writer means to actually subject yourself to do the job, and to the utmost importance of exposing it to others. Art is not art if it ain’t perceived.
As the world continues to inch forward with this stupid virus, it’s also asking us to re-think our purposes. For some, this may come in the form of better reading habits, or perhaps leaving a toxic relationship, achieving a healthier weight, or finally retiring from animal meat. In my case, what the pandemic has refurbished is the eagerness to envision my vulnerabilities and feelings, connect with them, and use them as weapons to battle the blank page or the rainbow wheel. As writers, we have to learn how to sweat, grief, and celebrate characters, spaces, commas, and paragraphs.
My passion and joie de vivre, the written word is every fiber of my being, much more until the last breath that echoes my ghost. When I see an apple I see letters; when I see letters I see phrases; when I see phrases I see stories and universes. To write is to be defied, by changes, tears, cake, paint, trauma, a joint, some more cake, heartbreak, and yelling against the wall. Creating, as an act of rebellion and emancipation is a claim of existence. To be an artist is about taking yourself further in the process, not so much about achievements as prospect —because the intimate tour de force is the achievement.
The challenge of being exposed, to the public scrutiny, to the blank space, to the stressful and titillating vertical line that indicates that there’re still words to be made. To come back to deadlines, and morning “editorial meetings” with me, myself, and Mary Jane Blige.
These last gulps of cake are also met with tears, this time of joy. Coming to the conclusion that I basically just ate my fucking feelings, only this time at least they took the shape of words. Words that you’re reading, words that I wrote. Words that make sense and that mean the world to me. As I peep out of my window and into my desk I start to wonder, am I the gay Carrie Bradshaw? Or am I just the voice of a generation? (Please let me know if you laughed at that) All I know is my name’s Mauricio and that’s enough.