I don’t like to have girlfriends. I dated some girls, but it never worked out. Sooner or later they start to demand more time or ask me to say things I really don’t feel. One time I tried saying what I felt, and it was worse. Another time, one of them went completely crazy, and I hadn’t said absolutely anything. She decided I didn’t love her, that I was never going to love her; she forced me to grab her by the hair and started to hit her own head against the wall. I don’t think relationships like that are healthy.
Aníbal, who is my representative and the guy in charge of putting my paintings in galleries and deciding the price of each thing I do, says that the woman thing isn’t good for us. He says that masculine energy is superior, because it’s not scattered and it is monothematic. Monothematic means you think about only one thing, but he never says what that thing is. He says that women are fine at first, “when they’re really fine,” and also at the end, because he saw his father die in his mother’s arms and that’s a good way to die. But everything in between “is just hell.” He says that for now I have to concentrate on what I know how to do, which is saying nothing and painting. He’s bald and fat, and no matter what’s happening, he’s always talking nonstop and panting as if he were out of breath. Aníbal used to be a painter, but he never wants to talk about that. Since I spend all my time in my studio and he persuaded my mom not to bother me, he usually stops by at noon to bring me food and take a look at what I’m working on. He stands in front of the paintings with his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans, and he always says the same things: “More red, it needs more red.” Or: “Bigger, I need to see it from across the street.” And almost always, before he leaves: “My man, you’re a mega-genius. A me-ga-ge-nius.” When I don’t feel good because I’m sad or tired, I look in the bathroom mirror, hook my thumbs in my jeans, and tell myself: “You’re a mega-genius. A me-ga-ge-nius.” Sometimes it works.
And now comes the important part of the story. So, I’d always had a terrible hole between my back right two molars, in my “superior maxilla,” and at some point I started getting the food I ate stuck in there. I ended up with some unbearable cavities. Aníbal said I couldn’t go to just any dentist, because after women, dentists were the worst. He handed me a business card and said: “He’s Korean, but he’s good.” He got me an appointment for that same afternoon.