The Asking Stone.

Being Chapter Five in the tale “The Only Way was East.”

The dirty pictures of Frida Kahlo on the wallpaper were the first things that caught my eye when we walked into the cabaret. But that wasn’t what drew us inside. It was that beautiful, aching voice.

After a bit of drunken wandering through the winter streets of Tijuana, Calluna looking forward for a place we could dance, and I glancing back for a stalking priest, we heard her. And after following her echoed cries through the streets, we found her too.

Through a huge glass wall, we could see the narrow cabaret, though it looked more like a cave with a clear door slapped on it. The bar at the back was crowded with people who cheered and funneled into the pit below the stage.

And there she was. Standing dead center with twelve spotlights on her, absolutely drenched in glitter. Her heels were twelve inches at the shortest, and they matched the same navy blue leotard that pinched her bony thighs and rode it’s way up her tight stomach into the golden shoulder pads that caught fire in the spotlight and glinted a shimmer all the way through that wind-tunnel-of-a-bar to the cold and lonely street where we stood watching.

Behind her, doing a dance of perfectly timed kicks and swirls and splits were four pale young men, with not a shirt between them. But they did wear black leather masks and matching pants that hugged their skinny legs as they twirled. All five of them moved with synchronicity and passion as the crowd cheered below.

“I think we need to postpone dancing a little while longer,” I said.

“Yes. She’s perfect. We have to go inside,” Calluna said. And that’s what we did.

There was a boom of warmth and laughter and music as we opened the door and left the cold. It smelled of beer and of sweat and of perfume. The singer was stamping her feet, and with tears in her throat she belted:

Por eso vete!

Olvida mi NOBRE, mi CARA, mi CASA

y pega la vueltaaaaaa!

We sat at the bar and bought drinks. I settled with a Corona but Calluna bought a huge michelada. I am forever impressed by her ability to throw them back, but even that dead field mouse from the underworld could outdrink me, and he doesn’t have a stomach.

The singer was really giving it her all, and the way she stomped those heels with each ‘Cara’, ‘Casa’, and ‘Nombre,’ I thought she might break them. Calluna leaned into me and yelled:

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t think she’s actually singing.”

“Oh my god, you’re right! She’s lipping it! Oh, and look at that in her leotard!”

“Is that a bulge?”

“Mhmmmmm.”

“Oh my god, are we at a drag show?!”

“Yes, I think it’s safe to say we are.”

“I’ve never been to a drag show before! This is so exciting!”

“Well, ¡felicitaciones!” Calluna said, and we slammed our drinks together and gulped.

With each sip and each drag queen, I descended down my tipsy slope into drunkenness. But while a husky queen in a long green dress began to sing “Rueda Mi Mente”, I head a different song. It came not from the stage, but from the stolen object in my pocket.

It sang in deep, low, slow vibrations that snaked up my spine and into the deepest parts of my lizard brain. The song did have words, but that wasn’t the point. It was the ambient chaos of the object's voice that lulled me.

I fondled its edges and caressed its smooth sides as I sipped my beer and stared at the drag queen’s bouncing double chin from her mimed vibrato. It had the snarl of a didgeridoo. It had the profundity of a cavern. It felt good to touch and to lose myself in its swirl. On occasion, some words would bubble up from the song it sang: “shame,,, guilt,,, slut,,, whore,,, suicide,,,” But the only constant chant that went on in the background of the song like an infinite rosary was clear and everpresent:

Y o U, , , a R E, , A , , B a D, , , p E R s O n , , ,

And I fucking loved it.

I should probably stop, I thought to myself as I drank. I could already feel myself starting to space out, something I do plenty of when I’m sober and that only increases when I imbibe. And then I noticed something from across the bar.

At the base of the stage, surrounded by a posse of gay men and drag queens, was the bruja. Glaring at me. Still taking obvious note of the flame above my head (although at that time it was no larger than the dead field mouse).

She wasn’t the only one who noticed us. One of the drag queens in her entourage was giving me a side-eye as she crossed her arms and cut her glare clear across the entire cave and right at me, whispering in the witch's ear. The bruja picked up the key to her house from her purse and began to talk into it, not breaking her fix on me for a second.

From my pocket, I heard the rusted echo of the bruja’s voice. It sounded like a walkie talkie. At first, I thought the voice was coming from that stolen object, but then I remembered what she had told us outside of her house that morning: “When you check out, use the key to lock the door behind you. Then, toss her on to the balcony. I have her twin sister and will come back to the house tomorrow evening. After you’ve left Mexico.”

Her twin sister? That didn’t make sense to me when she said it, but it did now. The keys could talk to each other! She can hear everything we’re saying, I thought, She’s been spying on us...

She motioned for me to hold the key up to my ear, and I did.

“Meet me in the bathroom in five minutes, fuegito.”

“Hey are you OK?” Calluna asked. She had seen me staring across the bar in fear.

“Yes,” I said. “I just need to take a piss.”

The walk to the bathroom was eternal.

I had to drunkenly dance my way through that hot and sweaty mob of people without getting swallowed. Not by the people, but by the noise. The loudspeakers blasting ballads, the laughs and screams of the crowd, and my own spinning head, so tired and filled with doubts. Suddenly and out of nowhere. I had the intense desire to be alone. To find a dark corner under the bar and ball up there until sunrise.

The only way I could make it through was to hold onto to that stolen object and focus on its song. It told me things that I’d been told my entire life. That I am a sinner. That the men on stage in drag were sinners, that all the people around me were sinners, that we’re all born bad and dirty, and if left to our own devices, we would burn. That the natural man is an enemy of God.

I knew these thoughts were wrong, but they felt so good to think, and I didn’t know why. I looked up through the sea of faces and hands and bodies and saw that naked poster of Frida•. It turned me on, and that didn’t make sense to me. She was from almost 100 years ago. As if people in the past weren’t sexual. As if that isn’t exactly how we all got here today. But the song of the stone in my pocket reminded me that people who do what they want with their bodies are evil. That hurt to hear, but it hurt good. As if I liked feeling dirty and evil and bad. And that hurt gave me enough focus to not have a claustrophobia induced panic attack and make it through that sweaty crowd to the bathroom.

Frida Kahlo’s giant bush was between us on the bathroom wall. It was covered in beer and dirt and piss. She didn’t waste any time.

“I know you stole the asking stone. Why’d you do it?”

“Hola Stacy, placer verte.”

“Cut the crap,” she said. “Listen, I know that an asking stone can be inviting. Especially to someone… like you” she said glancing up at the flame above my head in the way that one might steal a glance at the hairy mole on the face of your boss or at the swollen breasts of a pregnant woman. “But it’s not yours. You don’t know what kind of energy is loaded into that thing, or how it will mix with your own energy. Not to mention tonight is a full moon. You have to give it back. Tonight.”

“I didn’t take anything from you!” I said. I was playing dumb. I knew she thought I was stupid and probably thought that I hadn’t figured out that she could spy on us any time she wanted by simply holding that key up to her ear and listening to what we were saying. I wanted to keep it that way.

“Not from me,” she said. “You couldn’t steal anything from that house if you wanted to. The protective magic is too strong. I’m talking about that little black rock in your pocket. The one you stole from my neighbor.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Aye por favooor!” She rolled her eyes. “I could hear it screaming at me from across the room. Now listen, there’s still time —”

*BOOM. BOOM BOOM.*

“Oye! solo una a la vez en el baño! No sexo aquí!”

The bouncer was pounding his fist on the weak door so strongly I thought he might break it. The witch quickly flung open the door and the bouncer fell into the bathroom with us. Before he could scream at us she threw her finger in his face and locked eyes with him as if she was silencing a loud dog. “Essssperate. Ya vamos.” She hissed silently. Then she turned to me as she walked out of the restroom.

“Do what you want, chamaco. But if you don’t return what you’ve stolen it will only keep following you until you face it. And I don’t think you came to Tijuana to face anything. Like all the other gringos, I think you came here to run away into your booze. And I want that for you. But you do as you please, chamacito. Just don’t bring esa cosa into mi casa. You will regret that. I promise you.” She was gone as quickly as she came.

The bouncer, a Mexican Frankenstein’s monster with perfectly greased hair stared down at me. “Fuera de aqui gringito, vamanos.”

I was so angry and drunk and embarrassed that all I could do was stare at his eyes as I walked out and say “Ya voy.”

Back at the table, Calluna was clapping along to “ Tú Robaste Mi Corazón” by Selena and working on a new beer. She ran up and gave me a happy drunk hug. “You ready to find that place do dance?” She asked.

“Yes,” I said. Staring back at the witch who was reading the palms of one of the drag queens but giving me a very strong side-eye. “Let’s get out of here… Oh, and can you hold the Key? I’m afraid I might lose it.”

•After some research, I found that there are plenty of nude photographs of the mestiza muse, but the one in that cabaret is a famous phony. Frida’s head has been chopped off and placed on a much younger and much skinner model. In my drawing, I have given her a scar from the infamous accident but this isn’t there in the original image.

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