Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for that wonderful introduction.
I can tell this looks like some mandatory shit.
There's a lot of young people.
I'm so sorry.
I really actually am.
Yeah, we'll see if we can make this tolerable and swift.
It's always useful that way.
OK, I wanted to thank the University for having me--
all the folks who worked hard to make this event.
I mean, these are kind of funny because you just
kind of show up and the chairs are already fucking out.
And the moistest cake you ever ate is waiting in the back.
[LAUGHTER]
But of course, it's like a bunch of young folks
who get no zero--
they get no money, zero money, who put this together usually.
I want to thank them.
I want to thank Professor Jason Brown because he really
brought me out.
And Jason's known me for a long time.
So as I said before, bears repeating, that Jason's like--
he knew he had to lean on me to make sure that I made my flight
and got all the things taken care of.
And of course, again, finally, to y'all, like I said,
twisted arms for some of you.
Some of you are here because you all just said, fuck it,
I'm bored.
Let's see what's up.
And either way, thank you for taking a little time.
And it's a dwindling custom to go and do
anything with the arts for a few minutes.
So sort of one of our great threatened,
but I think beloved, customs.
So yeah, thanks you all because I know some of you guys
have got other things to do.
And I'm sure there's some people who had to get babysitters
or brought the babies, which is always cool.
So I'm going to read briefly and then take some questions.
How's Arizona?
I got to ask.
I haven't been here in years.
The weather is good.
So how are you youth doing?
[LAUGHTER]
You all right?
The school seems to treat you all right,
or is this a lie perpetuated by the faculty.
This is the nicest part right here.
This is-- someone up front said this is the nicest time.
Anybody know how many students are in this school?
Not from the front row, please.
In the back, how many kids are here at the school?
35,000.
Holy shit, 35,000 is enormous.
OK, I went to a big state school.
I went to Rutgers, so we had about 42.
Yeah, part of this book--
guys one thing about going to a big school-- probably
some of you all wanted to go to a small school, maybe.
But one thing is that you can date somebody,
and they won't know anybody you fucking know, right?
[LAUGHTER]
At a small school, your exes will end up
being roommates and shit, so this is a little easier.
So you should appreciate it, young people.
All right?
So I'm just going to read something small
and then take some questions and call it a day.
Again, I'm a writer, and every now and then
I force myself to write in forms that I,
myself don't like to write.
And so this is a part of that.
I hate writing in the second person.
The you form-- you know that shit?
You do this.
You do that.
So I always try to write one piece in second person,
and here it is.
You don't have to know much about it
except that the person who's the "you"
is like a 13 or 14-year-old girl living in New Jersey.
Her name is Lola.
This is in the 80s when I still had tons of hair.
And this is all you need to know, and that'll be that.
It's from a section called "Wildwood,"
and it goes like this.
"It's never the changes we want that change everything.
This is how it all starts with your mother
calling you into the bathroom.
You will remember what you were doing at that precise moment
for the rest of your life.
You were reading Watership Down, and the rabbits
were making their dash for the boat,
and you did not want to stop reading.
But then your mother called her again louder--
her I am not fucking around voice--
and you mumbled irritably, 'sí, señora.'
Your mother was standing in front of the medicine cabinet
mirror naked from the waist up, her bra slung around her
like a torn sail, the scar on her back as
vast and inconsolable as a sea.
You want to return to your book to pretend you hadn't
heard her, but it is too late.
Her eyes meet yours, the same big smoky
eyes you will have in the future.
Ven acá, she commands.
She is frowning at something on one of her breasts.
For the record, your mother's breasts
are immensities, one of the wonders of the world, yeah?
The only ones that you've seen that are bigger
are in nudie magazines and on really, really fat ladies.
They're 35 triple D's, and the areolas are as big as saucers
and as black as pitch.
And at their edges are fierce little hairs
that sometimes your mother plucks and sometimes she
does not.
These breasts have always embarrassed you,
and when you walk in public with her,
you are always conscious of them.
After her face and her hair, her chest
is what she is most proud of.
'Your father,' your mother likes to brag,
'could never get enough of these.'
But given the fact that he ran off on her,
it seemed that in the end, he could, yeah?
You dread conversations with your mother,
those one sided dressing downs.
You figured that she has called you in
to give you another earful about your diet.
Your mother is convinced that if you eat more plátanos,
you will suddenly acquire her same extraordinary
train-wrecking secondary sex characteristics.
Even at that age, you were nothing if not
your mother's daughter.
You were 12 years old and already as tall as she was,
a long slender necked ibis of a girl.
You had her green eyes, clearer though,
and her straight hair, which makes
you look more Hindu than Dominican,
and a behind that the boys have not
been able to stop talking about since the fifth grade,
but whose appeal you do not yet understand.
You have your complexion too, which means you are dark.
But for all of your similarities,
the tides of inheritance have yet to reach your chest.
You have only the slightest hint of breast.
From most angles you are flat as a board.
And you are thinking that your mother
is going to order you to stop wearing bras again
because in her words, they are suffocating
your potential breasts, discouraging them
from developing.
You are ready to argue with her to the death
because you are of possessive as your new bras
as you are of the pads you can now buy yourself.
But no, your mother doesn't say anything
about eating more platanos.
Instead, she takes your right hand and guides you.
Your mother is rough in all things,
but this time she is gentle.
You did not think her capable of it.
'Do you feel that,' she asks you.
At first, all you feel is the heat of her
and the density of the tissue like a bread that
has never stopped rising.
She kneads your fingers into her.
You're as close as the two of you will ever be.
And your breathing is what you will remember.
Don't you feel that?
She turns towards you.
Coño, muchacha del diablo.
Stop looking at me and feel.
So you close your eyes, and your fingers are pushing down.
And you're thinking, of course, of Helen Keller
and how when you were a little girl,
you wanted to be like Helen Keller, except a little
more nun-ish, yeah?
And then suddenly, without warning,
you do feel something, a knot just beneath her skin,
tight and secretive as a plot.
And at that moment, for reasons that you will never quite
understand, you are overcome by the feeling, the premonition
that something in your life is about to change.
You become lightheaded, and you can
feel a throbbing in your blood.
Bright lights zoom through you like photon torpedoes,
like comets.
You do not know how or why you know this thing,
but that you know it cannot be doubted.
It is exhilarating.
For as long as you have been alive you have had bruja ways.
Even your mother will begrudge you that much.
Hija de Liborio, she called you after you picked
your tía's winning lottery number for her.
And you assumed that Liborio was a relative.
That was before Santo Domingo, before you knew
about the great power of God.
'I feel it,' you say too loudly.
'Lo siento.' And like that, everything changes.
Before the winter is out, the doctors
remove the breast that you were kneading along
with the axillary lymph node.
Because of the operation, your mother
will have trouble lifting her arm
over her head for the rest of her life.
Her hair begins falling out, and one day, she
pulls all that's left out herself
and puts it inside of a plastic bag.
You change too.
Not right away, but it happens.
And it is in that bathroom where it all begins,
where you begin."
That's it.
Thank you.
Short.
[APPLAUSE]