The Beatiful Martin

15 Apr The Beatiful Martin

The Beautiful Martin

By Carlos Carrión

Martin was so beautiful and discreet that the ambassador wives from the diplomatic corps attended the dictator’s celebrations, only because of his son, despite his slight doggy smell. And, the ladies did not care much about being within their husbands’ earshot: they would say hello to beautiful Martin, and he would thank them and smile so seductively, that even the most forewarned ambassadors were fascinated by him. He glistened with elegance, beauty, and the palace halls’ discretion, so that women believed him indifferent, like a celestial Brad Pitt, and that made him breathe only feminine sighs.

That was not all, and with the excuse of one or two Bourbons or so, Martin got fed up listening to the indecent proposals of those boring and perfumed seals: they reeked to the point that their sickeningly sweet enveloping cloud caused him to sneeze uncontrollably. Many of them even ended up in his bedroom.

Of course, on the love’s battlefield he consummated no battle because, at the crucial moment, the soldier’s gun remained low to the ground. Martin, however, was very good at subterfuge in bed, and those eager ladies ended up stunned with more Bourbon, Swiss chocolate binges, anecdotes that he told them about handsome fag contests to name ministers and advisers held in secret by his father, and tales of torture for those who gave him the middle finger, or shouted sonofabitchin’ tyrant, as he drove in his armored car through the capital streets. Other times, he told them that he dreamed of traveling to countries that they and their husbands represented, and asked them to describe the countries’ geography, history, food, science and martial arts until he zapped their desire and they ended up asleep.

Actually, it was not that the guy did not want to get to know these land seals in the biblical sense, but he was born a counterpart to God’s gift of masculine beauty, and being the dictator’s only son, with the misery of congenital impotence.

The official historians knew, but said nothing; nor did they reveal that his father suffered from the same affliction. They didn’t say anything, not because Martin was the dictator’s son, but because of his mother’s laboratory scams. His mother, a Swedish platinum blond, and proud as a peacock, had married his father reluctantly, because, behind the dictator’s back, her eyes were on her husband’s favorite adjutant, a black cyclopean with a rock hard butt and golden eyes.

Martin had a beautiful Doberman named Daffy. At six p.m., he used to go out with the dog as his bodyguard, even though at a distance there was always a squadron of hidden elite protecting him, and he used to tell his dog things, instead of confiding in his mother, whose Nordic beauty was somewhat elusive.

Men stopped to watch them pass by. Some said, “Is the dictator’s son his mother’s child?” And others cautiously exclaimed in lowered voices as they scanned the horizon for a hidden henchman, “Is the dog? Don’t insult the animal!”

Girls, were even more reckless than men, when they would approach Martin and say, “Wow what a cute dog! What is his name?” and if they could pet him. He, very coldly, “Daffy.”, and that they shouldn’t, because he could bite their hands. They screamed saying that should have called him Tribilin instead of Daffy and they didn’t care if he was going to bite them or not. Martin said nothing.

At the beginning, Martin did not say anything about his problem to the Doberman; he even thought about something else because Daffy was so clairvoyant that he could read his thoughts, and that, being horny as any dog, humiliated him. Hornier than clairvoyant, Martin said. Well, when the aide who looked after him was distracted for a minute, Daffy would race into the presidential kitchen to try out the dirty tricks of a dog without a mate, and would go through the legs of the cooks and even the ambassadors’ women when they were invited, sniffing around the menu, and they screeched blissfully.

He also never told the Doberman about his impotence because he always attributed it to the lack of inspiration those foreign seals offered him; even more so because they tried to seduce them without the subtlety that women use to persuade a man, but with commanding tactics resulting from excess Prozac, or as desperate women who, in their roles as queens of diplomacy, were themselves enemies of all forms of seduction. And, as if this weren’t enough, they bathed in perfume.

However, Martin could handle it up to the point when these seals brought their daughters along: baby seals of raw meat from heaven’s seas, and they tried the same thing with him as their mothers had.

Then he began to worry and made Daffy his confidant. He listened with his cars pricked up, as if sniffing danger or a bitch in heat. Finally, the beautiful Martin secretly consulted a psychologist. He was thick, old, and dark as a clandestine priest, with magnifying glasses on the up of his nose. Unaware of who he was, he made him lay down on the couch, as all his patients did, and asked about his childhood…about the games with his girl classmates in kindergarten; then he asked him if he knew that the girls had nothing to urinate with, and yet, they urinated… if he had told them he had a couple of balls to urinate with to impress them. He inquired if he hated girls and called them nasty nicknames. He also asked about school contests to see who urinated further.

When the psychologist reached Martin adolescence, he questioned him about his wet dreams and his ability to detect a feminine scent. He asked him If he had ever tried on woman’s clothes when he was alone, and if he had visited the ten dollar tarts or tarts of any other price. When the questioning finally got to his young adulthood, the elderly delved into his philosophical, artistic and political interests: Kant, Picasso, Gandhi. Into the concepts of monogamy and bigamy…into his belief in God and the sanctity of Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer. And, if he had dreamed of killing his father. And Martin, like a little saint, answered him, “… yes, no, yes, doctor.”

To complete the consultation, the doctor asked Martin to show him his private parts. The old man adjusted his glasses and observed them carefully, part by part. Then he took off his rubber gloves, asked him to get dressed, and to have a seat. Everything seemed right, since he was a spiritual young man, which, nowadays, in a society exempt of values to which they belonged, far from being a flaw, it was rather a virtue. He also said that in the event that he did suffer from impotence, it wasn’t his problem to fix, but was up to the woman he chose as his wife.

He gave him a prescription for vitamins and told him he was a capable macho and to treat the matter philosophically. His only problem was not impotence, but his rampant male beauty that he must learn to manage wisely.

Martin was not satisfied and, thinking that maybe the female diplomatic animals and their daughters or their inhospitable perfume intimidated his birdie, he took a platypus to his bedroom, but the same thing happened. And, to get out of trouble, he had to speak of spiritual love, which is better than the other kind: a love that had no likelihood of venereal infection at all. On the other hand, speaking was a human act superior to that of going to bed. The souls communicated with words and what we know, only with bodily fluids. When his resources to cure, his impotence were almost depleted, Martin began to think about God, about giving one’s life for one’s brother as the catechumens did. Or the cows.

Another time he visited an erudite sexologist woman who prescribed Strong Viagra. She even gave him a drink as a free sample with a glass of water and he waited the required amount of time; she wanted him to try it out right there in the office, in exchange for a free office visit… her husband was an old useless man unable to urinate, let alone the other thing. Martin was as helpless as he had come in, and he had no choice, but to run out of there.

At any rate, he decided to try the drug again; but without as much pressure and before taking the Doberman for a walk, he put a handful of the blue tablets in his pocket to he ready at the first opportunity. It was carnival time and as he passed under a balcony, someone threw a bucket of water on him. The water soaked the pills in his pocket, dissolved the Viagra, and one of his legs turned blue. With the heat, he began to feel the effects and his leg stiffened like a suck. Seeing that, he ran to try to test the drug with a girl, with two, with three, but nothing changed, it was as if Viagra only worked on legs.

Forever distrustful of medicinal sciences, Martin sought out sex shops: there they sold feminine pheromones to smell, orthotics devices to try on, and orangutan in heat pills to take. The disenchantment was the same, except that it was now disenchantment with all sons of unproductive goodies. His instinct led him to the market where he drank nerve broth, made with the member of the most ardent bulls. They made him eat sweet potato on an empty stomach. Avocado with brown sugar was useless.

On the other hand, Martin prayed to the Magnificent One every night. If it was a prayer capable of stopping earthquakes, maybe it would help to raise something else. It was an equally useless effort.

One day, his dog’s assistant, perhaps through his gossip, gave Martin last minute advice which was more effective than long term learning. He said okay, majo, as Spaniards say, “Dreaming doesn’t cost a thing.” And when he had girl in bed about to reach the mountain’s peak, he would say, “Wait for me a minute, my darling, and he would run to the bathroom: there he undressed at lightning speed, taking his inept creature in one hand, and with the other would show it sketches of wide-open nude women, while advising it like to silly child: “You see, little fool, off course that tiling is ugly and smells like a trout, but it is the most beautiful and delicious in the world. So, hold your breath for a little while, and that’s it. And when the alluded one stood to see, he flew back to bed.

The momentum would not last a minute. The girls were patient, however. They put their feminine wisdom into play, but nothing came of it. His man thing was a sleeping little animal, but when he was profoundly asleep, they pitied him and preferred to leave him alone, retreating from Martin’s bedroom on tiptoes so as not to wake him.

The sorcerer Tsáchila smeared it with shea butter mixed with boa cucumber, after which she gave him a massage with a glove made from hair of a great beast. He ended with a stinging so fierce that it left him lame, with open legs like a crab as if it had been smuggled into his groin.

He gingerly walked one afternoon by the flowery corridors of the palace guards while his father watched from afar.

—“Lieutenant Matamoros!” he shouted.

Martin knew his father’s military voice, and turned and snapped to attention like a soldier: “Your order my general.” The general with the cyclopean black covered by his shadow approached step by step.

—“Yes, Lieutenant, what happened?”

—“Nothing my General,” he replied, “Simply the result of a forced march on horseback.”

—“Very well done, lieutenant,” he answered. All for his country, he saluted in the air and took off. Nobody saw him smile thinking that his son wasn’t lame from riding horseback, hut from riding marcs.

—“Shitty old man”, Martin whispered.

He went to his bedroom, undressed, filled the tub with warm water, and climbed in like a sperm whale. The water comforted his private parts. From the tub, he looked at the posters of mysterious animals that adorned the wall of the bathroom, as if seeing them for the first time, and imagined a far-fetched plan for when he was well. It was an emergency plan, which could not fail. Rather than a plan, it was an ultimatum.

If it failed, he would stop fighting with women and would become a priest, even though he knew that the decision would anger his father and kill him: or his father would have him shot, or, at the very least, would torture him like he had tortured journalists, writers, and his political enemies in general.

Indeed, a week after that, he waited for nightfall, and he told the dog, “Come with me, Daffy.” He loaded him into the car and went to a special corner of a famous downtown street, next to a nunnery. He stopped and told the Doberman to behave like a gentleman with a lady that he was going to invite, and he lowered the window.

Immediately a beautiful girl appeared, and with her, an intoxicating perfume. She wore a leather jacket that left her navel bare, leather shorts, garters and riding boots. She bent over into the car window and said in a musical voice, “Hello handsome, can we go for a little stroll?” The dog let out an intimidating growl, and the girl told him, “Good boy… taking care your king,” and reached out her hand. To the astonishment of Martin, who had not yet managed to grab Daffy, the dog licked her band.

It seemed to be a good sign. Martin said to her, “Come in my queen,” and took her to the altar of frustrated sacrifices, trusting his emergency plan. The girl’s name was Gabriela, and she promised to make him happy as a clam. At the back entrance of the palace at the door from which he had left, he handed the dog to his assistant and took the girl to his resting quarters.

On the way, they heard the sounds of the security guard that patrolled the grounds of the government palace saluting on his path. The city was bursting with lights, and as Martin looked at it for a moment through the palace gallery. Like every happy man, he believed the lights were there to honor him and Gabriela. At the door, he carried her like a bride over the threshold, placed her in bed with unlearned tenderness and sat down beside her. As he lowered the chandelier, the eyes and mouth of the woman sparkled with otherworldly beauty.

She watched Martin’s fascination with her goddess buttocks, and he stopped breathing. When he could not stand it any longer, he crossed himself and turned her over. He touched her face with a fearful hand, as if he were touching God: not from the expectation of the moment when he would sink into her and forget about this doggy world, bur in order to muster the courage to say “Forgive me my darling,” and run to the bathroom to put his final strategy into play.

Without smiling, while also fascinated by the beauty and tenderness of Martin, the girl readied out to stroke his hair. It was then that he knew with seismic certainty that a miracle would happen without fail at that time and place, since the dormant part of his body had risen like Lazarus after three days. It was as if she had smelled the delight he had sought in vain. And because it was so full of life, it hurt so under his pants, ready to pay him back for all of the previous slights. Rushing, he removed the little clothes the girl was wearing.

Then Martin knew, perhaps without perplexity, that Gabriel was a man’s name and not a woman’s…that his impotence was something else, not congenital, but inherited from his father, the dictator, all the same: he, who was not himself without the iron hand of this his favorite assistant. And he allowed himself to undress.

— “All for the land of our fathers,” he whispered, as he closed his eyes and left himself to God’s mercy. That is to say, to Gabriela’s mercy. That is to say, to Gabriel’s.