THE BETA

-What are we going to do tonight, Brain?

-The same thing we do every night, Pinky; try to take over the world!

Pinky and the Brain, Warner Bros. Entertainment

*****

It’s a flying rumba, one of those that boils down to perfection. The zurriburri of humans in the cathedral. A kid breaking a Jesus statue. Everyone watching, nobody saying a thing.

Sadness was humiliated that night. Spirits marinated in a strange, natural wine: life, spoken idiotically. Fright! Some men dressed as gray wolves dancing against women disguised as red blood cells. This is beautiful. The youngest prostituted to chatting. Word-slinging and receiving words, like robots: HOPE, HOPE, HOPE... but still they dance with all the metals of their fire and melt weapons, leaving diamonds in their brains, silently screaming: this is the present, pandemonium heading everywhere.

Ok. It was too much. I forgot what happened last night, but there are videos floating all over social media, with the night’s meows still in my head. Meow, meow, orgasms of inner goddesses. Meow, in front of the mayor, who started getting excited, causing the rupture of the heart that represented the night, meow, as I look at internet images of the cosmos with a headache, the university on strike, the country in crisis, people starving, insecurity. Meow, meow, plo, plo, plo. Globalization of crap. The corn sandwich got cold, just like my head. Can someone help me and make me transcend?

The flies move toward the unattainable, decentralized toward their destiny, my body practicing. I fall asleep drooling on the keyboard, like a black hole, and QWERTY. To make it more magical realism and mainstream, let's say the black hole vomits what I lost from the night, and I remember I wore my mother’s green bras, and danced for three girls who watched the end of my spine through a mirror. Everyone enjoyed themselves sadomasochistically, because that was the way to break hardships and make a new identity, part of the new world order, in an assembly of crazy squeals, with oil well costumes and words of smoke from joints filling the landscape.

At the beta party, I kissed a Chinese girl dressed as a 19th-century flamenco dancer, and I didn’t get turned on. But there was a panda bear plushie, way too sexy. I kissed it, and even if its fabric was made in China, I didn’t care. I squeezed its tail and nipple. A feminine voice sounded like a horse. I didn’t get it, but I kept kissing. Every fifteen minutes something super random happened. My life is just too beautiful, even with a homeland. My stomach is intensely dry, but chill, I don’t have that hunger. And I chew the air of love voices, alcohol-soaked, with half a like and an e-book.

I remember the Pope was at the party, along with some world leaders and aliens. Two-meter-long hands hugged the bodies of seventeen-year-old girls. It was wild, but I was having fun watching some lab rats spinning in a dance representing the solar system. Whoever played planet Earth had drunk a lot of milk with sugar.

I don’t get why the decorative flowers were wilted. But the primary colors layered in them in spectacular ways. Neon lights and smoke created holograms of the participants’ moods, so I managed to see a monster with a gorilla face and a kukuxklán member dancing reggaeton. Humanity was crazy, the aliens kind of bored. But it was fun and I enjoyed the party so much, even though now my ribs truly hurt.

A band arrived, dressed in liquiliqui, and even though they danced as if they’d taken ten thousand sleeping pills, their music sounded awesome, the opposite of sleep. It was a strong “wake up!” Above you there’s a bunch of people diversifying your pain. Rise up and diversify your joy. I thought of climbing the stairs until I became the absolute owner of the world. I laughed like an artist imprisoned in a madhouse, and went to sleep.

Ok, ok, ok.

Eliseo Villafañe.