Being Puerto Rican ain’t easy. I should know, I’ve been Puerto Rican for a whole day. Between the Spanish-to-English translations, retina-numbing chartreuse wall paint, and all the babies, baby mamas, and their dramas, it’s no West Side Story in Southside Williamsburg. And to think I already had the bright red hair on lock. I know what you’re thinking --- this is perverse! This is prejudice! This is the greatest story ever! But stereotypes are spawned from somewhere, aren’t they? As a former boozehound and perpetually freckled, stereotyped Irish lass myself, I think I’m entitled, dammit! And anyway, mocking people by the generalized constraints society places upon them is hilarious. Well, at least to a once Jameson-soaked Mick like myself.
So picture it: Fall 2006. South Keap Street. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. My best friend BK has invited me to her and her boyfriend Vincent’s apartment for a party in honor of his daughter Maria’s 7th birthday. I put on my finest fake gold and shortest of shorts and set forth to the Land of Kings County. I would arrive just in time. The studio apartment is screaming escape from San Juan equipped with all the necessary elements for a P.R. party: incoherent screaming methodically mixed over a megaphone, enough Coquito, that blasphemous coconut beer, to fuel a Honda, and a pink flamingo or two waving from the backyard. The first face I see, of all people, is Vincent’s mother, the infamous Virgin Peralta.
This isn’t my first night with Virgin though, we’ve been together a few times before. Always the classy dresser, this eve she has packaged herself into a spider web-meets-fishnet top that highlights her every stop, drop, and roll. Moreover, she is taking a verbal poll as to if “anyone can bee-leed I is fitty yeas ol?!” To this day it’s a mystery how this woman still manages to spill herself into a size two red pleather pant and not somehow overflow onto someone’s Worst Dressed List. In between jiggles to the salsa soundtrack perpetually playing in her head, she showers me with enough affection to last a blancita a decade and a gringa a lifetime. A lifetime Virgin may never see care of the HIV she’s carried for years, the majority of which she’s spent threatening death. Yes, she threatens her family with proclamations of her imminent demise. I always found it synonymous to that whole Jewish mother guilt trip thing. “Virgin threatens to die from AIDS”. Talk about a headline, huh? A global menace like the AIDS virus couldn’t be further from comedic relief but c’mon, you gotta admit that’s an ironic motherfucker right there.
I offer up a swivel or two to appease Virgin’s ever-gyrating hips and continue my way through the Boricuen maze. But before I can make it to my cheese filled empanada I have to endure the wrath of an aforementioned mama and her dramas. Enter Theresa. Mother to Maria, ex to Vincent, and last year’s regret to much of the neighborhood, Theresa is your typical hood rat ho and there are no color barriers when it comes to a moniker like that. Black, white, yellow, or brown, a ho is a ho no matter where you go and for the past few years, Theresa has reigned supreme around these here parts with her there, um, parts. Virgin, ever the affectionate grandmother, often refers to her as a puta or caminante de la calle, that is a whore or streetwalker. Again, I can’t stress enough that stereotypes come from somewhere and with Theresa they used to come at about 20 bucks a half-hour.
She’s slumped low on the couch, a Coquito resting on her two-months pregnant belly, and she slurs something that sounds like “Hey”. Knowing the vomit reflex that standing up can induce all too well at moments like these, I insist she stay sitting and join her on the couch. I’ll take a pass on sedated baby parts swimming in puke on this particular evening, thank you. (We mocked AIDS people, the path to hell is well paved by now, drunken zygotes or not.)To be continued...
