WEBVTT

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So I first met Rodrigo Restrepo
Montoya at a coming out party.

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It was a coming out party
for a desert tortoise--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--a desert tortoise
named Juliettete.

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And Juliettete was coming
out of hibernation.

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I had been to a party for
Juliettete's coming out

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the year before, and maybe
even the year before that, too.

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The thing is that Juliettete
doesn't always actually come out

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from under her rock
at these parties.

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They're anticipatory parties.

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In fact, I don't think
she's ever actually come out

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in one of these parties.

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Usually she emerges a few weeks
later, once everyone has gone

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and the warmth of spring has
grown a little bit stronger.

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Someone who did come
out for this party,

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however, was Rodrigo.

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I did not know then
that Rodrigo was

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the author of The Holy
Days of Gregorio Pasos.

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I didn't know that
his work had appeared

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in the Kenyon
Review, The Offing,

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or in Diagram. shout out
to Diagram U of A. Or

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that he would later be named a
finalist for the 2025 DAG Prize

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for Literature.

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I also didn't know
that his partner

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Morgan was a novelist, too.

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Working on a book
with the coolest title

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you've ever heard,
The Oldest Bitch

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Alive, which is about a dog.

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Look for it next month.

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It comes out next month.

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But anyhow, to me, they're
in Juliette's yard.

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Rodrigo and Morgan were
just a couple of cool guys.

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Friends of a friend.

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Sometimes when I
meet cool people

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who also happen to
be writers, I almost

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don't want to know
what they write,

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because I just
want to be friends.

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The way that we used to be
friends with people before it

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mattered what we did
or what we wrote about.

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And for a while things
went according to plan,

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and I remained oblivious
to Rodrigo's writing.

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Meeting up with him to watch
Champions League Soccer matches,

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or inviting him over for
decidedly un-writerly hangout

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sessions in which we
mostly played video games.

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I remember one night
playing Mario Party.

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Every time it was
Rodrigo's turn,

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he would sit
straight up and make

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everybody stop
talking to him, saying

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that he needed to lock in.

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As he ignored everyone
else in the room

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to focus on rolling his
dice, or chopping an onion,

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or swinging on a
vine, or whatever else

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you end up doing
in a Mario Party.

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And one thing's for sure,
Rodrigo is good at locking in,

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because he definitely kicked
everyone's ass that night.

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And y'all should watch out
because I see him locking

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in the front row right now.

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Anyhow, a months after this, I
finally bought Rodrigo's book.

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And I ended up reading it in
a pretty locked-in environment

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as it happens, during a
self-made writing retreat

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at a Benedictine
monastery nestled

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at the end of a canyon
deep in New Mexico.

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The Holy Days of Gregorio
Pasos opens in Tucson.

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A 21-year-old goalkeeper is
reflecting on his life after

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a soccer injury.

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His thoughts turned to
the years he spent adrift

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as an 18-year-old in Washington,
DC with the first Trump

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presidency roiling
in the background,

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as he struggles to place himself
within an immigrant identity

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in a time of
xenophobic upheaval.

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The book hit close to home.

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I once lived in
Washington, DC when

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I was 18, in college
during the Bush years,

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as the Iraq War rattled on,
and the power of border hawks

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grew in the halls of Congress.

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I probably felt more
adrift in those years

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than I've ever felt in my life.

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And as I read, I
saw myself clearly

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in the book's
narrator, Gregorio,

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who seemed like a
past self I had almost

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forgotten about entirely, until
cracking the spine of this book

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under the red walls
of that canyon,

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with the sound of
beavertails slapping

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against the waters of the
Chama River in the distance.

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It's no surprise
that I had largely

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forgot about that time in my
young adult life, a time when

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our heads are filled
with questions

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about our place in the world.

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Here on the grounds
of a university,

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this time is a
perpetual present.

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As Gregorio prepares to
say goodbye to his father

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before a visit to
Colombia, he worries

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about leaving his old man
alone with all of our ghosts.

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He means the ghosts of
an immigrant family.

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But the ghosts were here first,
Gregorio's father tells him,

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as if to let this
young person know

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that there is no life without
the churning questions of who

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we are and where we come
from looming overhead.

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All there is to do, his
father seems to imply,

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is to decide when and how to
come out from underneath them.

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Please welcome Rodrigo
Restrepo Montoya.

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[APPLAUSE]

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