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Mustache Wish
by Ryan Lawson
It pains me, brother, to hear of your troubles with the
Bullfighting Committee of Spain.
The bastard sons of
But do not fear brother, I have a secret. Enclosed, with this letter, is an
address written on a napkin.
You’ve probably already looked at it and wondered what it could
be. It is the address to a
company that grants one wish to whoever sends the request. I realize that you will be very
critical, and I accept your skepticism. I held the same attitude when I
was approached with an addressed napkin by a drunken American man at a bar
in Huesca. He smelled horribly of alcohol and told me about how he had
come to Huesca to paraglide and ski but wound up seeing the pig
slaughtering in the Bielsa Valley and was
horrified.
“Take this,” he said with his head buried in my armpit. His
thinning, white hair brushed up against my chin. He was deliriously drunk
and sobbing. “Make a wish to
get yourself out of here.
This is a
horrible, horrible place.”
I took the napkin and stuffed it in my
pocket.
He then disappeared into the night air only to stumble back into
the bar one hour later and beg me for his wish back. I lied and said I had already
mailed it. He cursed me and
told me he would love to beat me senseless had I not been so big and he so
old. He called me Muchachote
Gigante, not knowing that was my given name.
A few days went by before I decided to try the wish. I wrote my wish on the napkin,
which was to change my name from Muchachote Gigante to Pablo, and sent it
to the address. Two weeks
later, I received government issued papers with my new name, Pablo Garza,
as well as another napkin with a new address and orders to give it to
someone in need of a wish. It
said that once the napkin with the new wish was received, the address
would be changed and sent to the new wisher. Go ahead, brother Ademar, make your wish. Proudly,
Pablo Garza Dear Pablo,
I must say that the wish granted to me was not quite what I had
expected. This is what I
wrote:
I wish for a mustache!
I cannot grow one.
People say to me, “Oh, Ademar, you’re a bullfighter,
no?”
And I tell them yes.
Then they say, “Where’s your mustache
then?”
I have no answer. I
can fight bulls, I say. I can
fight the biggest, meanest bull in all the world, but they don’t
listen. They only laugh, and
then they tie me down, dress me like a harlequin, and throw me in the
arena to distract the bull when other matadors are in
trouble.
“Look at Ademar!” the peones and picadors yell. “He’s a big pussy
cat!”
So, I waited and waited for my mustache to grow. Every morning, I woke up and
stumbled to the bathroom to examine my upper-lip in the mirror. Everyday, I convinced myself that
something was growing. I
would see stray hairs peeking from the pores. I even prayed for it to
grow. But then a package came.
In it was a napkin with a new address and taped to the napkin was a
thick, fake black mustache.
“What is this?” I howled and threw it across the
room.
For three days I looked at it as it lay there mocking my
insecurity. I cursed it. I vouched vengeance against the
wish granter. I planned to
travel to the address and murder the mimickers. I even packed my bags, and on the
fourth morning I prepared to leave.
However, when I went for the mustache it was no
longer on the floor.
Instantly, I felt like something important was lost. Tears swelled in my eyes. I panicked and wondered where it
could be. Throwing myself on
the floor, I looked under the rugs and couch. In defeat, I lay on the ground
sobbing like a man that had lost his mustache. Then, in the corner of my eye, I
saw a mouse dragging my mustache across the floor. I lunged and snatched it up, ran
to the restroom, and put it on.
I was happy at last.
The committee has now accepted me and soon I will be in the
spotlight of With love,
Ademar Garza “The Bullfighter” Dearest Ademar,
It makes me happy to hear that you have embraced your new
mustache. If I were not ill,
I would gladly go to support you in Sincerely, Pablo Garza Dear Pablo,
Forgive me brother for not responding sooner. Something horrible has
occurred. I shall tell about
the great fight between your brother and the
bull.
The day of the fight, I put on my mustache and went with my
Picador, Virgil, to the apartado.
This was held in the bull stalls. I met the two other bullfighters
that I would be performing with.
They were both silent men with thin, sparse mustaches. They looked at me suspiciously as
if they knew my secret. I
decided to not linger too long for fear of being found
out. After Virgil and I were out of the company of the two
suspicious bullfighters we wandered the pens looking at the six bulls
chosen for the afternoon’s event.
Each bullfighter would have two bulls assigned to
him.
It was a crowded and dusty place. Men yelled across the corral at
each other calling bets on who was going to get what bull. The air was filled with static
noise and dust. The ground was dry and cracked except for the corrals
where the bulls stood. There
it smelled like livestock and filthy cow hide. The big beasts stood on top of
their piles of dung and pissed on themselves as if to claim ownership of
their manure mountains. Four of the bulls were huge, ebony monsters with red
eyes. Their horns stuck out
like a long ship’s mast escaping a leathery, dark wave of flesh. Their muscles were grand, and the
humps on their necks were solid. But there were
two more in the back that stood next to each other, and they were stone
grey. I say with confidence
that they were the four others’ nightmares. Anytime one of the grey bulls
moved, the others flinched and moaned with terror. Their muscles were monstrous and
pulsating while their hides looked tightly sewn on as if stitched together
at breaking points where the massive bulks of meat tore through the
flesh. They were all numbered
one through six, and the two twin bulls were five and
six. |
