Funerals in México are also about drowning sorrow with liquor. The coffee is spiked with tequila - Rigoberto González

Their beloved priest must now wander for all eternity chained to this earthly purgatory—a warning to all that God forgives only that which is confessed to Him through true repentance and atonement. I walked down the church steps, keeping my secret stitched to my tongue. After the ceremony I would have no one to answer for my yearnings but myself, even if after my death I would have to lag behind that priest until the end of days, a pair of branded souls dragging the heavy burdens of their sins, like cows roaming the foggiest dawns, the first guiding the second with its dangling rosary of a tail.

I had flings with married men or men with girlfriends, with men who had children, sometimes as old as I was. They went to church on Sunday, drank beer, and eyed the teenage girls in gym shorts. They appreciated a good woman-on-woman porno. They showed me photographs of their fiancées and sent me wedding invitations.

I sought out clandestine affairs of my own, which wasn't hard in a Mexican community, where it's possible to be a fag and not a fag. Men satisfy their urges secretly, confident that their public sexuality displaces any suspicion or speculation about their private one.