CAMERON MOTEL

No hotel played a more profound role in my life than the Cameron Motel. It was a smaller and nicer version of the Milner. I lived there for three years. Colombians used the motel as a base to move drugs and women north. There was an assorted crew of blacks, browns and whites with gals who were both beautiful and accessible. The pussy and coke flowed unabatedly. The operators of this ring opened their doors to me. I accepted their hospitality. With salsa blaring, I would partake of the abundant coke and return to my room with a woman in tow. But after all the fucking was said and done, this is where I seduced Iliana. The first time I saw Iliana, the minute I stepped inside her car as she picked me up in front of the hotel, I knew that I wanted her to be the mother of my children. Always one to fall instantly, I have been an ardent adherent of the philosophy that two people should marry while they are in love. I've dragged them to the altar as quick as possible before the ardor subsided. Iliana thought of herself as a delicacy, a piece of caviar rather than a piece of meat. She was protected by a close-knit family that saw themselves in a battle for survival in an unaccommodating world. At first glance, I felt like God seeing the Virgin Mother. If I hadn't been afraid of embarrassing myself, I would have fallen on my knees in the car and thanked the heavens for their blessings. We went to Gio's for an Italian dinner and that restaurant became the locale from which our relationship evolved from boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife to father and mother. There was no going back for me. I commenced my arduous journey to the top of the mountain, which I didn't surmount for another seven months. She would do everything but make love to me and the strain of trying to seduce her broke me and I slept with past loves and one-night stands. I could not convince her to fuck me. The more frustrated I became, the more vengeful I became. "This is your fault for not fucking me," I would say to myself as I laid someone else. We had gone that first date to the cathedral to celebrate the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. By the time the first of June had rolled around six months later, I hadn't bedded her. I had planned a trip to Spain before our meeting and after sitting with her at a Dairy Queen and fretting about our future, I flew to Madrid and suffered through two of the most horrific months of my life. I endured wave after wave of anxiety attacks. I suspected Arabs were following me wherever I went in the capital. I hyperventilated on the flight across the Atlantic and my nervousness forced me to beg for tranquilizers from a pharmacist. I could never calm my nerves as I spent my time walking the streets, stopping at museums, parks, bars and restaurants, but never finding anything more than a brief cessation from the anxiety attacks. Iliana further worsen my condition by sending me a photograph taken from behind her head as she stared into a mirror. She had cut her hair and and stood there running her hand through her thick mane. I stared at that icon and chastised myself for leaving her, but I had promised myself this trip for years and knew that I might never again find myself in a position to travel to Europe. And I was right. I have never found my way back to Europe and more than 25 years later I find myself without her. She sits in a small, three-bedroom house in a middle-class neighborhood cultivating the same flowers in her front yard that we once cultivated together in the many apartments and two houses that we shared together. When I returned from Europe she perceived my desperation and two weeks later, after dinner and wine at Gio's, we returned to my room at the Cameron Motel where I planted my flag in her. We married three months later, cognizant that our careless lovemaking would have its consequences. César arrived two months before we celebrated our first anniversary. We survived together one year as "lovers", 13 years as a married couple, one year separated and two years divorced before I called her and delivered the fateful news, "I've met someone and I'm going public with her." All the animosity that any relationship engenders through the passage of time has receded with the passage of time. The only memories I have are filled with melancholy. You can never forget the happiness that a mother and father shared with their children. There were long trips to California and Florida, and glorious summers in Quebec. We would watch our sons play and we thought these moments were going to last forever. Now they are gone forever. She told me several times that no matter the circumstances that I could count on her. I crushed her when I left her and I remember listening enviously to a friend lamenting his wife's sudden departure for another man. "You don't know how lucky you are," I told him. "The humiliation someone causes you can never compare to the guilt you feel after inflicting pain on someone else." Whenever I am sitting in my backyard and watching the bats swooping through the night air or I catch the smell of burning wood, I'm transported back to my country home with my boys at my side. We had an acre of land, but it was a narrow strip that stretched back from the road. As the land dropped toward the river, there were a half-dozen ancient mesquites that gave way to a stand of scraggly palo blancos. They reminded me of Robert Frost's birches, but distant cousins from the poorer side of the family. I would hire gardeners who would come in their tractor mowers and cut the yard. They would dump the grass in a small open area between the mesquites and the palo blancos. The gardeners would also dump branches and limbs on the pile. In a matter of months, the pile would grow to six or seven feet high. During this time it wasn't uncommon for the growing mound of debris to become home to birds and rabbits. The time would come for the annual bonfire. I would pour gasoline on the dry pile, place newspapers in strategic locations and then strike the matches. Within minutes I would have a roaring fire that would singe some of the nearby palo blancos whose destruction didn't disturb me, but it was the cries of the birds and rabbits that echo in my mind now. I have had an instinctual hate for animal life and have gone out of my way to squash any critter that dared venture in front of me on the road. Like cheating on a wife and dealing with the guilt afterwards, I have felt pangs of guilt as the animal tumbled against the bottom on the car, but the guilt has never been sufficient to prevent me from cheating or killing again. From the pile would dart a jackrabbit with its ears on fire or a bird would take to air with its wings ablaze and spiraling out of control like a Jap Zero falling from a WWII sky. The boys, their faces bright with the fire's reflection, would look at me with wonderment and puzzlement. Were they witnessing something good or bad? They had to decide for themselves. I was a wild man with crazed eyes as I danced around the pyre in homage to the mysterious and savage spirits that were a part of my inchoate world. "He will never be happy without his sons," Iliana warned Fabiola as part of her final offensive to save her family. I couldn't resist Fabiola and I wanted the final split with Iliana, but she was right. She has savored her revenge on two levels. Losing my sons was a mortal blow. And she predicted that I would pay the consequences for being with others when she had been faithful to me. I laughed at her. I was too liberal and too experienced to care about anyone's previous relationships. Nevertheless, she recognized the animal in me and that animal wanted to possess. And every day, sometimes every hour, I wrestle with the Apostles who are relentless in their attacks. They never stop fucking Fabiola. They never stop coming in her. They never stop ravaging every pore of her body. As much as I desire her, I can never forgive her. I want her to cheat on me so all my worst fears will be realized and I can call her every name in the book: "The reason you never slept with your children and insisted that they sleep in their own rooms is because late at night you would allow your lovers into your bedroom and dismiss them in the morning before the children stirred. How many guys have you fucked in this bed that we have shared for six years? You whore! You fuckin' whore!"