Borderline personality
Not to mention a borderline sense of humor.
Laughing out loud (or quietly, alone, driving) can save anyone’s life
but after so many of my young years in the midsection of the country—
that neighborhood’s Sunday clothes on all week, zippers up tight
—I know what no one laughing sounds like.
So I’m not only going to mention it, I’m gonna poetically describe it.
Two days ago two guys approached the casita, smiling sunny and easy,
they looked like fun, their big white delivery truck lounging on the curb.
One of them looked like the lead singer from Los Lobos and the other
guy looked like Frida Kahlo’s twice-cooked husband, the great Diego Rivera.
They dollied the new oven in, unwrapped the plastic and threw it
out the door into the after-Christmas snow;
the Los Lobos guy hooked up the gas hose, closed his eyes,
playfully bracing himself, testing the front and back burners, then
the Diego Rivera guy walked dramatically to the center of the cocina.
“Would you like to hear a joke now?” he asked, breaking the ice.
I looked around, the time seemed right, so I said yes.
“Do you know why Mexicans cross the border in twos?”
I was new to New Mexico, and he was still looking at me, so I said no.
“No TRESpassing.”
Alright, that was the poetic part, and now I’m so worked up
I’m going to write the rest of it straight out.
These Mexican men, who knows, I don’t want to be a know-it-all
and assume anything—maybe they really were Diego Rivera
and David Hidalgo—but here they were, making a high
piece of wit in my kitchen (wittier than anything from even Noel
Coward, who was a scaredy-cat anyway) about something insulting
that could have happened to them, or their friends and family.
I mean, I was enchanted. That joke was good, he did it well.
Of course, the idea of borders between people and places
has always been painfully hilarious (you cry until you laugh)
but it looks as though they’re hard and here to stay.
I come from a part of the country where the men and women
look around suspiciously, not all of them, but enough of them.
When you’re that scared out of the corner of your eye
you don’t ever dare change your mind
because it would sink the family boat
(and after all, they did their best, maybe)
and laughing at anything is inappropriate in that neighborhood.
A sense of humor is almost sexual!
When it was time to go, everybody hugged those two guys, the two guys hugged
everybody, the kind of hug where it feels like everything’s already alright, meanwhile
the truck flashed its lights at me and those guys weren’t even behind the wheel yet.
Do I smell gas?
No, but I’m laughing
and my oven is HOT.
