>> Both of these stories are from my Prieta [assumed spelling] manuscript,
Prieta A Tu Historias.
And it's a collection of short stories that pretends to be a novel
or should I say it's a novel that pretends to be series of short stories.
The stories stand alone separately but they also hang together as a novel.
And they are -- they range from entirely autobiography to auto --
fictitious autobiography, fantasy and dreams, and then there's even --
and the author, Prieta, is in there creating fiction.
So then you have all these different types of realities, different worlds.
And this is the other extreme fantasy, Puddles.
This was -- this is dedicated to Rodrigo Reyes [assumed spelling], a gay man who has AIDS,
and Jay Miller [assumed spelling], a white gay man who just died of AIDS.
When I write -- when I was writing it, he was alive.
The Chicano gay man was back.
He caught Prieta's eye as he slipped into his regular table out in the patio.
His eyes tracked Prieta's movements as she waited on tables.
He always left a green puddle on his chair along with a tip on the table.
¡Íjole qué curioso!
How long had he been coming in?
Two weeks.
After a while, Prieta ceased being surprised.
With one hand, she'd wipe it up with a towel.
The puddle wasn't very big.
And with the other, pocket the quarter.
The tip was always a quarter no matter whether it was coffee he had ordered or a full meal.
After half a dozen times of wanting to, Prieta finally dipped her finger
in the puddle and brought it up to her nose.
Cautiously, she sniffed it.
Not piss, not water, though it looked clear.
She put the wet finger in her mouth.
It didn't taste like wine nor coffee.
The next morning, as she washed her face, she noticed that the tip
of her finger and her tongue had turned green.
She scrubbed her tongue with toothbrush.
Still green.
She rinsed her mouth -- - she rinsed with mouthwash.
No changes.
She was running late for work.
Never mind the green tongue.
She planned to speak to the man whose puddle had turned her finger green, anyway.
He was different.
There was a look of gentle strength and a terrible vulnerability about him.
Along with a pink triangle and earring in his left ear,
he always wore an olive-green parka that covered him past his knees.
Did he leave some kind -- did he have some kind skin disease?
Though he never spoke to her, just pointed at the menu when he ordered,
nodded or shook his head when she came around with a coffee.
His soft brown eyes held hers.
An annoying look would pass between them.
He always picked her table instead of one of Amy's.
Both were mestiza dykes but Amy was the one who smiled and cracked jokes with the customers
who were mostly students at UT, while Prieta complained about the 25 wars.
Imagine. 25, being fought on the planet.
"What's wrong with your finger?"
asked her friend Amy when she got to Les Amis cafe.
"Why is it green?"
"My finger?
¡Ay, no!", she said looking at her finger and giving a frightened yipe.
The green had begun to creep from her finger to the back of her hand.
"Would you believe I have a way with plants?
¿Tú sabes?
A green thumb."
Amy looked at her funny.
"Imagine you with a sense of humor.
The always serious Prieta.
Oh, and your face is so lighted up.
You're wearing some kind of fluorescent make up?
But the colors' all wrong.
Got some sort of greenish tint.
And your knees look sort of wrinkled."
she said, bending down to get a closer look.
Prieta craned her head to look at her knees.
Though a voice called out, "Oh, waitress."
She snuck into the washroom and peered into the broken and dirty mirror over the sink.
Yeah, her face looked different even though she couldn't pinpoint the changes.
She stuck out her tongue.
She could see -- she could almost see the green slowly spreading to cover the whole thing.
She bit down on it testing it for soreness.
It felt normal.
All day as she bustled cheerfully from table to counter to kitchen, she kept her eye on the door
but the maricon who made puddles did not come in that day nor the next.
She noticed the customers kept eyeing her gloved hands and the thick wrinkled skin
over her kneecaps, which was beginning to look like the back of a horned toad.
Su piel se convertía en cuerpo de lagarto.
Una nueva piel crustácea.
By the fourth day she knew what each customer was going
to order before they opened their mouths.
She also knew that the gay green man was never coming back.
He didn't have to.
He'd accomplished his task.
She felt a pang at his absence.
On the fifth day, she had to wear trousers, long-sleeved shirts that buttoned all the way
to her neck and heavy beige make up.
But it was her gloved hands that cast suspicion on her.
And at the end of the week, her boss told her he had to let her go
because she was spooking the punk-clothed and coiffured customers.
By then, she had only to cast her eyes over some man hunched over his lunch or dinner
and she'd know if he was planning to surprise his lover with gift
or if he was sticking it to his daughter.
She would slap the check along with a napkin, face down on the table.
The bold green letters on the napkin would read, "We know what you are doing to your daughter.
If you do it again, your thing will turn green and fall off."
By the end of the week, she did not need this particular waitressing job.
[ Laughter ]
A few days later, the green skin began to flake off.
Underneath it she could see otra nueva piel begin to emerge.
She was molting again.
She began to get -- she began to lock gazes with other afflicted people.
Something in the eyes marked their difference.
Some left footprints edged with green, others wore green raincoats.
She thought of the green gay man going from restaurant
to restaurant spreading his contagion.
She dropped by Les Amis, sat at his table under the flapping awning and waited for Amy.
If Amy was ready, Prieta would leave her the gift and say goodbye.
Prieta had found out what her real work was.
To move from town to town, work in restaurants, catch glances of recognition, uncover her knees,
and, when no one was looking, touch an exposed kneecap in the vicinity
of a likely candidate, and let slight puddle.
Nine hundred and twelve words.