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12/19/2006: "Sage Advice at the Carnicería"

Get It While You Can

As I walked up to the meat counter, one person was ahead of me. He had a cell phone to his ear and a pained look on his face. He glanced at me, as if seeking sympathy, and without saying a word, reached across the counter and handed the phone to the butcher.

He gave me a mournful look. “I’ll just screw it up,” he said, as if I was a buddy that had arranged a meeting with him there. “I’ll let her tell him herself what she wants.”

He sighed. “My wife, she makes a great caldo. You know what a caldo is?”

I nodded.

“I’ve got diabetes, so caldo is good for me. But I let her choose the vegetables.”

He began to examine imaginary potatoes. “If I do it she says, ‘This one is too ripe. This one has a bruise. This is one–’ there’s always something wrong with what I try to do for her.”

I agreed with him.

“Yeah,” he continued, “the women, they’re in charge. I told my son, ‘You better let them do what they want or you’ll be miserable.’”

The butcher listened intently with the tiny cell phone jammed against his heavy head. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

My new friend gestured in exasperation. “Look how long it’s taking her to tell him what she wants. I can’t believe it.”

He gave me a long hard look. His eyes bore into me with anxiety and determination. “That’s why Mexican men run around on their wives.”

I must’ve had a surprised look on my face. Well I was surprised. Do people tell you things like this in the grocery store?

He pressed on. “Yeah, their wives, they’re driving them crazy.”

Then he had a thought, like maybe he had incriminated himself before me. I mean, we hadn’t really done any male bonding at all. No drinking, no feats of courage, no bawdy jokes.

“I’m older now,” he said, a little apologetically. “I’ve mellowed.”

So did he or didn’t he do what Mexican men have to do?

He turned to face me. “This is how they are,” he began. “My wife and I, we went to Paris. We did the whole thing, the Louvre, what you call it, the Champs d’Elysse, Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, all that crap. She got tired of museums and sight seeing pretty fast, but she always found energy and time for shopping. She had to get something for everybody. And you know what, on the last day, she dragged me out again. I told her, ‘Now what? You’ve got a gift for every cousin you’ve ever met.’ And you know what she told me, ‘I’ve got to get some things for people that I’ve forgotten about.’”

I started looking at the meats to make my choices, figuring that my lack of attention might slow my new brother’s confession.

“That’s the best cut right there,” he told me. “Get the chicken too. That’s better for you. Humans aren’t really meat eaters, you see. Lions and tigers, they have a really rough stomach. But humans don’t.”

The butcher carefully handed the phone across the counter. “Did she tell you?” my pal asked.

The butcher nodded.

“You know what she wants now?”

The butcher patiently said yes, yes, and wandered off to get whatever it was.

For some reason, I imagined that my new friend was retired U.S. Navy. Maybe it was the authority with which he told me things, or the way he seemed so firmly planted on the ground, or the tight little mustache that graced his upper lip.

“My wife told me, ‘You can go out with the boys on Wednesday night,’ but the trouble was that I didn’t want to go out with the boys. I wanted to go out with the girls. I wanted to smell perfume, touch some skin. And you can’t play that game, going out with the girls, or just ‘the girl’ because, you know, that’s another woman. The second woman is not a third species. They want the same things. They want you to pay attention to them, they want you to make little gestures, so they know they’re wanted. Either that, or it’s just ‘show me the money.’ Yeah, get down to brass tacks.”

He backhanded me on the shoulder. “Except for these young ones,” he said, with a knowing, gnome-like sneer. “The ones who want to deny all that—that old-fashioned stuff about women being from Venus. Yeah, they use bad words and think nothing of mentioning farting. They sit and dress any way they want. They even talk about the ondas, sex, fucking, just like men—with men around. TO MEN! What happened to courting for God’s sake?–la movida-eh? How do any of them fall in love?” He was shouting now.

In a softer voice, he went on. “There’s trouble there.” He nodded and pointed his finger for emphasis.

He shook his head. “I’m out of my league there, anyway.” Smiling as if it took some effort, he continued. “All I want,” he paused. “All I want from her now is my own space, that’s it.” He drew his hand down and across the air.

“And in that space, what does she care if I go down to Mex from time to time and rent a little.” He held his hand up, his eyes wide and innocent. “I’m no don Juan, no. And I’m not putting on airs with another woman. Just want a little affection on my own terms. What’s wrong with that? They’re clean.”

The butcher handed two bundles across the counter. As my buddy reached to get them the butcher said, “She told me to give her two, but for six people, I thought that wasn’t enough, so I cut her three.”

“Too bad you aren’t the one paying for that,” my friend growled, but not in an unfriendly way. “Is that it?”

“No there’s another one,” said the butcher. “Just a minute.”

My friend rolled his eyes. “It was going to be one piece of meat. I’m glad it was him and not me.” He turned to set the packages in his basket. Passing a shelf of hot salsa, he gestured to the hottest one. “Get one of these,” he said, smiling. “Chile is good for you.” He made a tight fist and pushed his forearm taut. “Get it while you can.”