Playing Pretend

Stephanie Gaitán

photo credit: Stephanie Gaitán

In the nineties, two little women loved each other, and they expressed their love with a makeout session, their heads angled just right, painted-on smiles and lipstick rubbing. A hallowed glow enveloped them. birds warbled, palm trees swayed, salt hung in the air.

But the birdsong came to halt and the atmosphere, a spell of love, turned sour when a woman stomped across the room and smacked the dolls out of a young girl’s hands.

“No te hagas la sangana!”

If she had the power, she would’ve smacked the homoeroticism out of me. Girls don’t kiss girls, not even pretend plastic girls in pretend plastic love. Barbie was bound to Ken. Summer never had a chance.

I’m my pa’s first biological child; he held my older sister like his own the day she was born. From him, I inherited his love for tortillas con frijoles y crema, his eye for fashion, his love for movies, an ache for adventure. I have my pa’s dark hair. My eyes crinkle at the corners when I smile, the same as his. My skin browns under the sun and is speckled with moles, like his. I grew up with an affinity for the outdoors, the ocean, No Doubt, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera—all because of him. Growing up with Papi meant snow-covered knees and saltwater-drenched hair; it meant learning New Jersey’s seasons and discovering the year-round warmth of Miami. It meant not knowing, until I was eighteen, that my father was gay.

Pa is Nicaraguan, born into a country that criminalized homosexuality. Had he come out in his home country, he would’ve been called un cochón, un maricón. A circus act. Although Pa left Nicaragua at the age of nine, he carried that culture of toxic masculinity, and the fear of ridicule, with him. And he continued his long-endured repression, holding the secret so close to his chest that he fathered four children the old-fashioned way. (Incidentally, the year I was born in Harlem was the year sodomy was established as a crime in Nicaragua).

I’m glad he had us—because he loved us regardless of the circumstances that brought us into the world. But even so, he couldn’t play pretend forever. In 1999, he decided to stop living a lie.

When he told his mother, she cried. When he told my mother, she dismissed it. Their arguments over money and parenting responsibilities outweighed his confession. For her, it was far from the primary reason for the breakdown of their relationship.

When he told me, I shrugged. Rather than throw my world out of orbit, it was like adjusting the lens on my memories into a clearer focus. Pa’s reverence toward divas, that cool friend of his who took us out to the fancy pizza place and who bought me my first comic book – V for Vendetta – at Virgin Megastore on 42nd Street. Pa’s role as our hairdresser and stylist, and his obsession throughout the nineties with giving me bangs. Pa was as meticulous about our appearances as he was about his own. And just as I had grown up seeing his image in the reflection of my own dark hair and brown eyes and love of pop princesses, his coming out made it possible for me to understand my own stubborn resolve – the willingness to endure and the resolve to live in the world exactly as I feel I am – through my father.

At twenty-three I married a boy, with our one-year-old daughter beside me—a funny little kid with my brown eyes and a mischievous smile who we named Helena, our bright one. For some time, I thought our issues were rooted in the evolution of my own sexual awakening. I had never officially come out, though close friends knew. It wasn’t that I couldn’t love men or hadn’t loved him – I did – but I couldn’t deny that I wanted to know what it felt like to angle my head just right and press my lips against the lips of another woman.

I proposed an open relationship, but he couldn’t do it. I understood. When I said I do I hadn’t said anything about sharing myself with other lovers, but I was left with a longing. When our marriage eventually dissolved it was a matter of those years of living a lie, of emotional co-dependence, of neglect—starved roots hollowing out the tree from inside. We’d been rotting, quietly, for some time. But to dissolve that relationship was to come clean with myself, even if it left me uncertain of what would come next.

Eventually, my grandmother accepted her son. She’s a tough Nicaraguan woman who playfully smacks you on the behind and tells you “ponte las pilas!” I inherited her facial structure, her wide hips, and her jodidos in my use of language. I also inherited her resilience. She left Nicaragua, left the tremors behind, and started a new life in a new country with only Spanish on her tongue. She doesn’t know I’m Queer. She used to ask “y tienes novio?” but these days she’s stopped asking. I already gave her a great-grandchild.

Helena is now six. She watched as I played pretend with two dolls this afternoon. I told her what I was doing: re-enacting a memory. She picked the dolls up and angled their heads just right, rubbing together their painted-on smiles. I didn’t slap them out of her hand.

Stephanie Gaitán is a poet, fiction writer and editor at 433. She believes in direct action through community efforts. Her past-times include uplifting indie artists and time-traveling to the 90s and early 2000s with her daughter, via childhood touchstones. Her work has most recently been featured in InQluded and Palabritas. She lives in the Bronx, New York. @myeyesarebooked