Michael Nava Quotes

[Henry Rios] I went down to my car, got in and sat, waiting for something to happen, some tidal wave of grief or anger to overwhelm me, but all I felt was a kind of dazed fatigue. It was the mental emptiness of effort I used to feel when I was a distance runner on my high school track team, and everything got reduced to putting one foot in front of the other. What was I then, fifteen, sixteen, pounding the dirt path along the river that ran through my home town? I sought refuge in that emptiness from my first awareness that I was different from other boys. What had Chris told me about his own adolescence, that he didn't want to be different? I didn't, either. I watched my classmates being initiated into the world of men and women where everything was planned and the outcomes known: marriage, children, family. That world was closed to me. I didn't have a plan, didn't know where I would end up or with whom. So I ran, mile after mile, until my body ached and my mind went blank. What happened is that I realised I could not outrun this thing. I remember that day, staggering along the path after a stupendous effort, darkness falling in the summer sky, racked with the dry heaves, gasping "I'm a queer," the only word I knew for my condition. I was full of fear and I felt completely alone, but I could not deny the truth and there was a kind of relief in that. I had now reached the same point with Josh's disease. I couldn't outrun it.

He felt like Hercules at the Augean stables commissioned to clean out the accumulated filth of centuries.

After he left, the three of us sat on a bench worn to the wood by all the fidgeting bottoms that had occupied it before us.

[Paul Windsor, with Henry Rios] Holding up a red M&M, he added, "I thought they'd stopped making these." "Someone started a letter-writing campaign and got the candy company to start making them again." I opened a 7-Up and took a swig. It was as warm and thick as the air in the room. "It's funny what people get themselves worked up about."

Sarmiento waited for Luis at a sidewalk table at the Cafe Colón on the Reforma. Two sumptuous carriages filled with beautifully dressed women passed beneath Columbus's monument. They were the advance guard of the daily procession of the rich that wound its way up the boulevard and around Chapultepec in a stately and pointless show of opulence. Meanwhile, ragged Indian men swept the sidewalks with branch-and-twig brooms, bent over at their labour and ignored by the passers-by. The distance between the silk women and the pauper Indians was the true history of México, Sarmiento thought.

[Alicia Gavilán, to Miguel] "We are all birds in cages, but some of us find reason to sing."

The rich are different, I thought: condemned to live their lives in public, they go through their paces at the edge of hysteria like show dogs from which every trait has been bred but anxiety.

[Gus Peña] "It's time for me to take care of me."

[Josh, and Henry] He sat down again and looked at me. "I just really wanted to see you again." I looked at him. "Why?" "I've seen you before," he said. "I beg your pardon?" "Two years ago you gave a speech at a rally at UCLA against the sodomy law. Remember?" "I gave so many speeches that year," I said apologetically. He smiled. "I remember. Afterwards I came up and shook your hand." The smile faded and he looked at me gravely. "You gave me the courage to be who I am. But it didn't last." "Few of us come out all at once," I said, gently. "It's not the easiest thing to do." He shook his head and frowned. "I never came out at all." "We are at a gay bar," I said. "It's easy to come out in a bar," he said, "or in bed." A shadow crossed his face. "Are you alright?" He stared down at his hands and said, "No." There was a lot of pain in the little word. He grabbed my hand, clutching it tightly. "What is it Josh?" I asked. "He drew a shaky breath. "My life's a lie," he said. "No one knows who I really am, not my friends or my folks. I can't live this way anymore."