Constrictor

I am dangling a small rat above Sidney, my Ball Python. I have moved him into a separate enclosure to feed. This helps in the taming process. They associate the second enclosure with meal time so they are less likely to bite your hand when you reach in their terrarium to pick them up. The rat is squeaking desperately, flailing for its life while Sidney slithers forward and waits.

I drop the rat into the box. It scampers around the edges of the enclosure, hugging against the walls for a way out. Sidney is motionless. He patiently watches. When the rat draws near, Sidney lashes out with one strike and has the rat’s head in the clutches of his jaws. Within a split-second Sidney’s body is wrapped around the torso of the rat, squeezing the life out of the creature. For a while the rat doesn’t move. It is struck with fear and lost for breath. One might think it is already dead. And it might as well be. Eventually the rat kicks it’s back legs in desperation. Sidney constricts tighter.

The rat chokes to death and Sidney begins the process of swallowing the body whole. It can take up to ten minutes for this to happen. Sidney slinks forward and opens his jaws wide. He takes a minute to fit the rats face into his mouth and begins to choke the body down. His neck expands, stretched by the body of the rat. You can see it slide back beneath Sidney’s skin as it goes further and further towards his stomach. Soon all that is left is the pink of the rat’s tail jutting out of Sidney’s mouth like a surrogate tongue.

I am standing in front of the terrarium watching the heat lamp glow in the dim of my bedroom. It illuminates my face red and casts jagged shadows up the wall behind the enclosure. Sidney curls around my limbs. Slithers across my arms and silently flicks his tongue. I can tell he is very happy. I like to keep people happy. Generally, I consider myself an introvert. But I am outgoing in this way. I think of how Sidney kept the peace within the box until the rat fucked up and drew too close. I relate to it. I respect it. Sydney slides down my shoulder, forearm, and wrist, and slinks under his log where he watches me from the shade. I am imagining him smiling behind his beady eyes. But Sydney has no way to smile.

I am walking down Leavitt Street. Late September in Chicago. I pass the liquor store on 21st and a voice calls behind me. “Ey brother!” Three old drunks are across the street on a stoop of a condemned building drinking malt liquor out of brown bags. They are ex-gangbangers. Old heads of the neighborhood now wasted away on booze, drugs, and lingering traumas. “Come here brother!” the man in the middle of the group yells to me. “It’s been a long time! I’m glad you’re alive!”

I approach and bump their fists with mine. The man in the center has two faded blue tear drops tattooed in the wrinkles of his leathery cheeks. His beard is grey and white and scraggly. His eyes are glazed over and look past me. The man to his left is curled up with his knees to his face backed up against the brick wall. He doesn’t look at me but occasionally lifts his head up to drink. He has symbols tattooed and equally faded on the crease between his thumb and pointer finger on his right hand. He grunts along with what we are saying. It is unclear if he is agreeing with or protesting the conversation.

The man to his right is in an oversized hoody soiled with dirt, the hood pulled over his head. His brown eyes are mourning. He looks like he is going to cry. I remember that the last time I saw these men their friend had just been murdered. Shot in the street in the night. The SD’s had shut out all the street lamps on the block and when he came stumbling through the darkness, they gunned him down and escaped into the black. I remember the prayer candles glowing on the corner. The empty bottles and smashed glass. The destitute men drinking and crying sad songs on a half-busted guitar long into the night. I had heard the sound of sirens. The shades of my apartment window were flashing red and blue. Yeah, there used to be four of them. These old drunks. Now three.

“Be safe out there, papá,” he says to me. “It’s no life to live…” I nod and walk away. The man with his knees to his face appears to have fallen asleep.

I am at Martin’s Bar now. Home away from home. My second enclosure. This is where I eat and drink with my friends. Ernesto is there. My girlfriend, Nadia. And Chuy, too. Modelo is on tap. Hot wings and their bare bones sucked dry of meat fill our plates. The Bears’ game is on television. In the far corner a group of young Mexicans sing Vicente Fernandez songs acapella over the narration of the football game from the speakers. They are drunk, proud, and deeply saddened.

“Por tu maldiiiiiiiiito amor! No puedo terminar con tantas penas!” They sing.

“He was El Rey,” nods Ernesto. He pulls his glass of Modelo up to his sagging cheeks and pouting lips. On television a Bears linemen sacks Aaron Rogers. The announcer’s excitement is drowned out by off key singing.

“He lived a hard life.” I say.

“So does everyone,” Scoffs Chuy. He looks to Nadia and she laughs.

“All we can do is appreciate the beauty while it lasts.” I look from one to the other.

“To Chente!” says Ernesto. We raise our glasses to toast. The group in the corner cheers with us. The bartender turns off the volume on the television giving way to customers playing classics on the jukebox. They have had their say.

“Por tu maldito amor!” I nudge Nadia. She rolls her eyes and I smile. I think about the sadness of this song. The music is religious to us. I buy my companions another round of beers and shots. They spout fair-weather rhetoric and drunkenly sing while I ponder the religious cult of sour love. The temptation of snakes. The fleetingness of paradise. The forbidden apple’s desire burning behind all of our eyes. I hear the hiss of a serpent but it is just the sputtering of the soda gun pouring a vodka tonic. I look at Nadia, mi novia, and Chuy, my friend. I see the way their eyes meet when they sip from their glass cups. I see the way their hands graze when they reach for the plates I have put in front of them. I see their comfort in each other’s smiles and comradery in their laughter. I say nothing to them. I am calm like Sydney presented with a rat. And I know they have been unfaithful.

When their glasses empty I have them refilled. I let them drink on my dime. I keep their pints as full as mine. The beer in my cup has not dipped an inch in two hours. They are too self-involved to notice, indulging in their feast.

A scrawny white art student type with green hair and black painted fingernails sits a few stools down drinking a Topo Chico Hard Seltzer. Chuy is eyeing them up. He scoffs once more. His eyes are sunken. His skull is heavy.

“I remember,” he begins to say. “I remember being on the block as a kid. Riding my bike. A gangbanger motherfucker walked into the street and punched me right in the face as I rode by. Knocked me off my bicycle. He got on it and rode away. This neighborhood was something else back then. You couldn’t walk here. White motherfuckers didn’t come through here unless they wanted to lose their life! They move in here now and live in our buildings, drink in our bars, and eat at our spots, but they don’t know what this place was!”

“Back then I seen a dude get shot for a pack a smokes just right across the street!” adds Ernesto

“These kids don’t know. They don’t know,” Nadia says shaking her head. Chuy rubs his hand on her knee and thinks that I don’t notice.

“Who fucking cares anyway?” I ask.

“Strike a nerve, milkweed?” laughs Chuy.

“Pinche güero!” jokes Ernesto. Nadia rubs her hand on my shoulder and clenches her nails in twice.

“Ey! Bartender! Another round for my friends!” I shout, snapping my fingers at him from down the counter. He shoots me a glare and slaps the bar in front of the woman in which he is having a conversation with and comes over to replenish our pints.

“You’ve hardly touched yours,” he nods to me.

“Please,” I tell him. “My friends are thirsty.”

“You’re too kind to us!” smiles Chuy. I hold my glass up and stare into his eyes.

“I’m getting tired,” Ernesto admits, “I’m too drunken to drive my car home.”

“I’m hardly even buzzing,” I tell him, “I’ll drive you all home then park at my place. I’ll bring your car back in the morning.”

“This is why I love you, Milkweed,” says Ernesto.

“Looks like we have a designated driver,” laughs Chuy.

“Baby, are you sure you’re not too drunk?” asks Nadia, rubbing my shoulder with her free hand.

“I’m sure baby,” I say, “It’s really no problem.”

I drive Ernesto home. He sits in the front. Chuy and Nadia sit in the back. On the way we listen to Molotov rap over rock anthems. I watch Nadia’s facial expressions from the rearview mirror at every stop sign and red light. She laughs as Chuy enthusiastically mouths the words along to the songs and bangs his head. By the time we reach Ernesto’s apartment in Back of the Yards, Ernesto falls out the side door, and self-consciously fumbles to pick himself off the ground, his body overwhelmed with alcohol.

“Thank you, brother,” he tells me, digging his pockets for his house key. “Goodnight.”

“We’ll wait until you are inside,” I say to him, “You can never be too safe.”

“Not like anyone’s comin’ to rape him or nothin’,” Chuy jokes. Neither me or Nadia laugh. Ernesto is in his apartment. A yellow light turns on behind his blinds.

I put the car into gear and start driving towards the highway. I flip through my phone and play slower, sadder music. The kind where the singers croon to smoke filled lounges lit by flickering neon lights, holding rocks glasses of Jack Daniels in their hand free of the microphone while a stoic bartender rubs a glass with a pale gray rag, and women with diamond earrings, pearl strings, and men with bow ties sit at circular tables covered with white cloth, enchanted by the haze of jazz age romance. By the time I hit the on ramp, Nadia and Chuy are passed out snoring. The heavy food and alcohol have equally done their jobs.

On the side of the expressway a car is flipped and burning. A miniature inferno. The flames dance like cobras. Black smoke coughs into the cool of the breeze. I can almost feel the heat on my face as I turn my head to keep my eyes on the crash. In the rearview, blue and red apparitions wail, growing brighter with the passing seconds.

Sometimes everything plays out like a dream. High keys of a piano cascade on the stereo and what’s left of the constellations, not brutalized by urban light pollution, shine dirty like blood diamonds in the bastard black of God’s vapid galaxy streaked with gas.

Not much longer and I pull off at 87th Street and Lake Michigan. Steelworkers Park. I drive down the access road towards the parking lot by the lakeside. The silhouette ruins of the old steel mills stand like rotting tombstones and mausoleums under the orange glow of the autumn moon. I park in front of the bronze statue of a faceless Union steel worker with his arms around his family, fronted with a plaque reading “A Tribute to the Past”. Nadia and Chuy are still in a daze, hardly recognizing where we have driven to.

One thing I know about my friend Ernesto is that he keeps a Smith & Wesson 9mm Luger in his glove compartment at most times. Living in Back of the Yards hasn’t been easy for him. He gets fucked with a lot. Thugs, bangers, dope fiends, petty theft. He likes to have protection. I pull a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of my jacket and slide them on my hands, snapping the ends at the wrist as each fist fits in. I reach for the glove compartment and pull out the 9mm. Then I call back to my two companions, snoring on each other’s shoulders to the smoky reverberations of a saxophone blazing a solo over delicately swinging cymbals and popping snare.

“Wake up guys. We’re here.”

“Wuh…argh…Whuh? We at the lake?” Chuy mutters, stretches, yawns.

“There’s a full moon out,” I tell him. “We’re going for a swim.”

“What the fuck?” grumbles Nadia, opening her side door. “Which beach are we at? You’re fucking funny man. I thought we was going home.”

We are all standing outside Ernesto’s car when I flash the gun. Chuy grunts and charges me and I whip him in the face. He falls back into the dirt holding his bloody cheek. Nadia screams and curses desperately but there is no one around to hear.

The two snivel in protest as I lead them towards the concrete walk on the lakeside which drops off into the icy waters with no ladder to get back up. “Take off your clothes.” I order them.

“Fuck you!” shouts Nadia, cracking her voice in anger. I put the 9mm up closer to her head. Chuy jukes like he is going to charge me again and I whip the gun towards his face causing him to flinch. He staggers back, and with a feminine bay, trips off the concrete and plunges into the lake.

“Help! C’mon! Help me!” Chuy treads water in the tide of the lopping waves. His clothes are visibly weighing him down. There is nothing to hold onto.

“Pinche cobarde!” Nadia weeps. I see through her crocodile tears. She sounds straight out of a novella. Like Soraya Montenegro or something.

“Take your clothes off!” I command, shaking the gun at her in my right hand. She does not budge. She is scanning like a rat for a way out of her trap. Chuy sloshes in the water, crying for his mother while the current bobs him down beneath the surface. Mami! Mami! Mam- Oof!

Nadia reacts to this by turning towards him. Without a word I lift my leg and boot her in the back. Her body crumples like a cheap toy. She briefly shrieks and splashes into the lake.

My heart is racing. I am surging with adrenaline. But I know to be patient. I know this adrenaline is a bodily reaction. I feel like I might explode. I might cry. But I have to meditate in the moment. In real time. Keep a sharp mind. I have to know that things are going to be okay. And as my two old companions asphyxiate in the water, I have to constrict them further. And I have to do it in a focused calm.

Nadia is a better swimmer than Chuy. She makes it to the edge of the concrete walkway and scratches at the wall, trying to hold herself above the water. I think fast and grab a loose cement chunk scattered on the ground with the trash and empty liquor bottles. She cries out as I drop it down on her. It hits her head and she sinks below the surface and does not come up. I pick up a glass bottle and look for Chuy, but he is long gone. All that is left are the rolling waves and the glow of the moon on what’s left of the decaying steel mills lurking off in the dismal expanse of the industrial park. I sit by the lakeside for another half hour watching the water. I listen to it lap against the concrete and I breathe in and out slowly, to bring my heart beat down. I do my best not to shed any tears.

Life to me is all about control. If you don’t have control then you aren’t truly living. And really, most people don’t have control. They are raised to be the controlled. I was like that once. But I had a burning desire to be alive.

“Ey’ papá! How are you?” the hooded old drunk asks as I pass 21st and Leavitt. He is drinking Cuervo from the bottle. I have parked Ernesto’s car on a side street. I walk home like I never left the neighborhood.

“It’s cold.” I tell him, “September never gets this cold. My friends, they wanted to swim in the lake. But I said, ‘Nah, you guys can though! You can go together. Me? I’m going home.’”

“They swam in this weather?”

“Nude as a full moon. They’re still swimming there right now.”

“A la verga. Is crazy!”

“Stay warm, brother.”

“Stay warm and stay safe, mijo. Be careful out there. I tell you, always. This life...This life… It’s no life to live, my friend. There is no way…”

I bump his fist and make my way down the block to my apartment building. In the distance I can hear him singing his own wisdom to himself, off key, and mellow, his voice gritty with tequila. Despite the events of the evening, I feel good. I contemplate this good feeling. I step towards home with swagger and confidence. The conversation with the old man has brought my nerves back down with a sense of normalcy, a display of routine.

I enjoy my relationship with this old man. I see him on the street and we catch up. It is nothing more than that. It doesn’t need to be. In this sense I often appreciate my vague acquaintances more than I appreciate my closest friends. But in this moment, I mostly enjoy the thought that Nadia and Chuy are floating together. They are out in the open. Where they need to be. They bit the hand that fed. Got too close and paid the price. Constricted. Asphyxiated. Shed. There can be nothing more behind my back. I can finally get some sleep.

Some men charm snakes. Some snakes charm men. I think to myself, turning the key to the front door of my building, imagining an old Indian market, a Sapera man in robes, playing the pungi for a dancing cobra rising from the lid of a bamboo basket. Like most of life, it is all a show.

The snakes can’t hear the music, but they’re intimidated by their perception of the instrument. It’s a predator to them. Their dance is a balance of fear and aggression.

Most men can hear but don’t listen. They see something beautiful, are intimidated, and are unable to understand it. They can’t admit this to themselves, and likewise respond in fear cloaked in an expression of hardness. In this way many men are just like snakes. Many men that I know. They slither around me thinking I can’t hear the music either. It’s best to keep them close. Tame them. Feed them by the hand. Toss them rats to keep them happy.

Sidney is soaking in the pool of water I have placed in his terrarium, next to the wooden log which gives him a dark place to hide. This soaking will help in the process of shedding his skin. He has outgrown his old body. It is time to move onto something new. My bedroom is shadowed with the light of his heat lamp. I too like to lay in the darkness. It gives me a place to reflect. To meditate. To reject the skin of past sins and move onto a better life.