In the darkness of El Colón movie theater,
larger than life and superimposed on a giant screen,
Pedro Infante, the Mexican movie star,
stares straight at me with his dark smoldering eyes.
It is here, in the sensuous shadows,
that I forget all about my life as Teresina "La Tere" Ávila,
teacher's aide at Cabritoville Elementary School.
Maybe that's why I like Pedro Infante's movies so much.
They make me think to stop thinking.
Or stop thinking to really think.
It is here that I prefer to dream,
seated in the middle of the people that I call familia.
To my right is my comadre, Irma "La Wirma" Granados.
And next to her is her mother, Nyvia Ester Granados.
Ay, it's dinnertime on a hot July night,
and I should be at home, and yet I find myself here,
lost in the timeless transparency of El Colón,
watching Pedro Infante in the movie, La vida no vale nada.
Pedro plays a melancholic loner named
Pablo who keeps leaving any number of possible lives behind
and all sorts of women who might have loved him.
He is a good-hearted vato who goes
on these life-changing borracheras
whenever he feels overwhelmed, which is pretty much
most of the time.
Ay, Dios mio.
Pedro's lips part slightly with that naughty nene--
little boy-- grin of his as he breaks into song, Oh, ay, ay
ay!
He knows me.
He knows that I crave his arms, his touch,
his deep voice in my ear, his knowing hands
on my trembling body.
Aye!
Hijole!
The great flames of my dreams billow up
to meet the flickering screen as a wave of intense light
consumes the sweet, painful, and familiar song
of my untold longing.
Oh-hoo-hoy!
The man has me going!
Revved up like a swirling green, yellow, silver, and blue top,
I can barely sit still in my seat.
And I sit up straight, and then I shiver down
and melt to hot plastic, trying to find a comfortable position.
My legs are itchy, a sure sign of the troubled
state of my mind and my restless body.
There is no relief.
I admit, years after he died tragically in a plane crash,
that I am still in love with Pedro Infante.
Who isn't?
In the movie, Pedros-as-Pablo meets
Cruz, the widowed owner of an antique shop in the market.
And he carries her groceries home for her.
But he can't help but notice how voluptuous Cruz
is in her widow's garbs.
After exchanging glances that would have worked
on any other woman, Cruz can still not
admit that she loves Pedro-as-Pablo.
But she is thrilled to know that he wants her.
His lust naked, unadorned.
It is only when she's behind closed doors in her room
that she can admit the terrible truth.
Now, what can I tell you about Pedro Infante?
If you are a Mexicana or Mexicano,
and you do not know who Pedro Infante is,
you should be tied to a hot stove with yucca rope
and beaten with sharp, dry corn husks,
as you stand in a vat of soggy fideos.
Now if your racial and cultural ethnicity is Other,
then listen up.
It's about time you learned about the most famous
of Mexican singers and actors.
Pedro was born on November the 18th, 1917, in Mazatlán,
Sinaloa.
And he died in 1957 in a terrible plane crash in Mérida,
Yucatán, when he was only 40 years old,
at the height of his popularity.
He was known as "El idolo del Pueblo."
Some people even call him the Dean Martin of México,
but he's much more than that.
His real life was just as passionate
as the one he played on the screen.
There was his first girlfriend, Lupita Marques,
who bore him a little girl.
And then there was his long-suffering wife,
ay pobrecita, Maria Luisa de Leon.
Then there was Lupe Torrentera, the young dancer
he met when she was 14 and had a child with him when she was 15.
And then there was Ima Dorantes, the young actress
who starred in many of his motion pictures
and became the mother of his daughter, Irmita.
And the list goes on and on.
If I'd had a chance, and I had been born earlier
in a different part of the world,
I might have taken up with Pedro Infante too.
But I was born in Cabritoville, USA,
on the Tejas-México border near El Paso.
The closest that I will ever come to Pedro Infante is in El
Colón on a Thursday night.
In here, time is suspended.
In here, I want to imagine the impossible
and to leave, for an hour or two, my life behind.
Nyvia Ester, she's sitting behind a woman who
keeps talking when Pedro-as-Pablo
does something cute on screen.
Or he makes ojitos with his beautiful eyes
which makes us all sticky and hot like the popcorn
with the butter that we're holding even though we
know he's been dead for years.
[LAUGHTER]
All I need is a little quiet and a lot of darkness.
[LAUGHTER]
And for the man across the aisle from me
to stop smacking his lips and murmuring under his hot breath.
When Pedro-as-Pablo suddenly takes Cruz in his arms,
there is a profound and sacred silence.
Ay!
I hear a sharp intake of breath from Nyvia Ester.
[GASP] Irma sighs, oh, a barely perceptible sound
of pure pleasure.
And I slide down in my seat, my hands momentarily resting
on the plastic chair back, then nervously rise
with dreaded anticipation with what is to come.
This is the scene where Cruz gives Pablo her father's gold
watch.
I know what's going to happen.
Ay, it breaks my heart every time Pedro-as-Pablo leaves Cruz
in the middle of the night after she's given him
her father's gold watch.
Later, she wakes to find him gone.
And she runs down a set of dark stairs, calling his name.
Pablo!
But he will never come back.
Pedro-as-Pablo is the kind of man
who will never be faithful to one woman.
It's not that he doesn't want to, he just can't.
He can't stay with Silvia.
No, he can't.
Can't stay with her, with Silvia, the prostitute that he
befriends, and eventually he earns enough money
as a baker to free her from the brothel
where she has been working and where she's indebted to.
But when she finally finds him to thank him
and to hopefully spend the rest of her life with him,
he doesn't want her.
Ay, more adventures, more women, a life out of control.
And now, raucous with laughter, the man across from me
applauds as Pedro-as-Pablo awakes
to find himself in bed, again, with Silvia.
Not even Cruz could stop Pedro-as-Pablo,
make him stand still, find a life of peace.