The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood

One day during sophomore year, Julio picks Blanco up in his new Corvette. Julio only has his permit, but his parents are out of town. Blanco is simultaneously “thrilled” and “petrified” (190). Julio talks about the girls he’s been with and asks Blanco why he hasn’t kissed a girl yet:, asking, “You gay or something?” (190). After Blanco’s denials, Julio vows to find him a girl.

At a party that weekend, Julio introduces Blanco to his friend Anita. Blanco and Anita chat and dance together.; Blanco “tried to feel how Julio said he felt whenever he danced with a girl” (193) but feels nothing. He convinces himself he’s simply too nervous. She gives him her number, and Blanco and Julio leave the party., Blanco wondersing “why I[he] couldn’t feel what [he]I was supposed to feel with Anita” (194). That week, Anita and Blanco talk on the phone nightly. ,Ttheir conversations becoming increasing more and more personal. Blanco confesses to Anita that Abuela “was an awful and mean person” (194), something he’d never said to anyone before.

Blanco and his family are devastated when Julio is killed in a car accident. Blanco, “too young, too naïve, too full of life to understand death” (197),” struggles with “[a]n unanswerable why” (197). He and Anita see each other often. Weeks pass, and Blanco doesn’t understand why he hasn’t kissed her. When he finally kisses her at the homecoming dance, he doesn’t feel “the passion that Julio had described” (199). At that moment, he knows “that Ihe] wasn’t, and never would be like other boys” (199).

In algebra class, Blanco is confused and mesmerized by the concept of imaginary numbers and for the rest of the day “question[s] the reality of everything else” (200). In his English class, he is entranced by the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” entrances him. He writes an essay on Prufrock’s questioning whether he dares “[d]isturb the universe” (201), how the mermaids in the poem “represented man’s most unattainable dreams and desires” (201), and how, like with imaginary numbers, Prufrock must “make up answers to make sense of his life” (201). After, “Julio’s life and death started to make a little more sense” (202). Unlike Prufrock, “Julio dared to disturb the universe […] [” (202) and]  “had heard the mermaids speak to him” (202). Blanco wonders if he could hear the mermaids, whether he would “ever dare to disturb the universe” (202).

When sophomore year is over, Blanco goes back to working at El Cocuyito full time. He has grown much taller, and diligent exercise has toned his body. Don Gustavo and Abuela both claim to have made him a man. One day Blanco is instructed to train Victor, a newly hired man in his 30thirties who recently emigrated from Cuba. AltThough Blanco can’t acknowledge it to himself, he finds Victor “sexy” (204). Victor teaches Blanco to smoke, and the two frequently sit and talk in the loft, forming a quick bond.

Victor reveals that he’s an artist and that after he and his best friend Omar were thrown in prison, he never saw Omar again. Blanco wonders if Victor’s relationship with Omar was more than a friendship. Victor admits he used to be married “but that it wasn’t for him” (210). He introduces Blanco to opera, which Blanco says sounds like mermaids.; Blanco reads Victor “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and admits he feels “[l]ike nobody understands [him]me” (211). One day they take their shirts off working outside in the heat. ;In hhelping each other clean up, Blanco feels a romantic spark, “nothing like when I[he] had kissed Anita” (212).

Victor invites Blanco to his house to help him celebrate his birthday;. Blanco buys him art supplies and dresses up to see him. When Victor kisses Blanco on the cheek and tells him he adores him, Blanco changes the subject. He and Victor both know that Blanco isn’t yet ready to “disturb the universe” (217), to acknowledge that he “was a gay man, un maricón, just as Abuela had feared” (217). Victor tells Blanco he was in love with Omar and that one day Blanco will be able to acknowledge who he is. Meanwhile, he should “be yourself as much as you can” (217). Blanco hugs him and leaves, thinking “about all [he] I hadn’t dared to say to Victor” (217).

Monday, Blanco learns that Victor quit his job, but not before leaving for him a portrait with a note reading,: “Keep listening to the mermaids. You’ll know when you know” (218).

Blanco’s large extended family picnics every Sunday at El Farito, or “The Little Lighthouse,” a state beach so nicknamed by Abuelo nicknamed because of the lighthouse on the cape. This week, it’s Mamá’s turn to cook. She informs them she’s receiving a pig from Ariel Jimenez, the son of her friend who along with his family had emigrated from Cuba when Ariel was 12twelve. Mamá, who Blanco has discovered has “a fairy godmother side—a soft spot for those in need” (220), has over the years helped the family over the years.

At the Blancos’ house, Ariel greets Blanco as “el primo gringo” (221). Blanco finds Ariel “very Cuban” (222)—he is “loud” and “fresh,” and he speaks with a “mix of English and Spanish” (222). Blanco is surprised that someone so Cuban has so many American interests. Ariel helps Mamá make mojo for the pig; he thanks Mamá for helping his family, and Mamá tears up thinking of the family she left behind in Cuba. Blanco, who doesn’t know how to make mojo, is jealous. For the first time, he sees his mother as “simply a her, full of loss and fear, love and charity—a complex woman, not just the family overlord” (224). Ariel promises Mamá he’ll join them at the picnic the next day.

The next morning, Blanco contemplates how he isn’t used to his toned man’s body; at the park, he swims in the ocean, questioning who he is. When Ariel arrives, Blanco notices his attire is simultaneously Cuban and American. He asks Ariel how he can like his school, which is “so Cuban” (231). Ariel says that’s why he likes it, that “it’s not easy fitting in when you come over like I did” (231). They discuss their favorite bands, and Blanco wonders if he’d be like Ariel if he’d been born in Cuba.

Ariel calls him beautiful, and Blanco is attracted to him despite trying “not to feel what [he]I knew [he]I was feeling” (233). After Ariel enlists Blanco’s hesitant help digging a pit for roasting the pig, the men barrage Ariel with questions about their homes and families back in Cuba. For the first time, the places and people of the stories Blanco’s heard all his life “come to life” (237). Blanco again is jealous of Ariel, who understands “[his]my family and their country in a way that [he]I probably never could” (237). He wonders why he’d never asked more questions about his family.

Ariel dances with Blanco, saying he’s “turned el gringo into un cubanaso” (239). When Blanco makes a joke that elicits roaring laughter from the men, he wonders if he “was one of them—a cubanaso” (240). He and Ariel carve up the pig, and Ariel asks Blanco to take him to the lighthouse. Blanco asks him about his life in Cuba; Ariel tells him he never knew how difficult his life was until he came to America. He describes the suffering they endured on the boat, how they “had to take turns sleeping on the floor” (242). At the lighthouse, Ariel talks about his brother, who stayed in Cuba. Blanco sees the same “faraway look in his eyes as I[he]’d seen in the old men that afternoon when they talked about Cuba” (244). Ariel asks whether Blanco wants to see his mother’s family in Cuba: “Don’t you want to know where you’re from?” (244). Blanco says he’d like to go one day.

Blanco and Ariel swim for a while until Ariel becomes anxious and swims back to the lighthouse. He explains that he’d fallen out of the boat and almost drowned on his way to America, and Blanco comforts him. When they stand up, they fall against each other, and Blanco feels they are one man. Each confused, they walk back to the party, where the partygoers disperse. Blanco doesn’t realize at the time that he’ll never see Ariel again.

Blanco relates how years later, he will lie in bed “without shame” (248) with his “first love, Carlos” (248). When Abuela dies, he’ll be by her side; she’ll offer apologies with her eyes and with a squeeze of her hand. He writes of Abuelo’s and Papá’s deaths and of his brother’s divorce, when he realizes how much he and his brother love each other. He describes how he’ll weep when he visits Cuba for the first time with his mother, how he will “find[s] an answer for the square root of negative nine” (249),” and how he’ll “hear the mermaids not only sing to [him]me, but carry [him]me away with them to the place where [his]my poems would whisper from” (249).