Maricón

Washing my hands in a crowded bathroom, a man walks up to the sink beside me. His friend is on the other side of me. The man glances at his friend:

Puta, hay bastantes gringos maricones en el país, ¿verdad?

Which translates to: Damn, there are a lot of Gringo fags in the country

My blood freezes, then boils. I want to say something, scream something, lash out, but I decide to pretend I do not understand Spanish. Somehow I find dignity in my feigned ignorance. I calmly rinse the soap from my hands, and leave the restroom.

Now let me back track a little bit. I have been in San Salvador, the capitol city, for about a week. I came in on Monday to meet with the doctors about my asthma, and they still have not authorized me to leave. Apparently I only use 80 percent of my lung capacity when I breathe. I feel fine, probably because I have lived with asthma my whole life, but the doctors want to see if they can improve my lungs. So, here I am with two days worth of clothes trying to make my volunteer budget last over an unexpected week in the capitol. Which leads me to Wednesday, the day of the gringo fag incident.

On Wednesday I decided to go see a theatre production in a Central American Theatre Festival. I was super excited to see some performance art. It has been about eight months since I have seen any form of theatre, dance, or musical performance, and I was praising my luck for being in San Salvador at the same time as a Theatre Festival. The theatre is inside of the Metro Centro mall, a shopping center catering mostly to middle class Salvadorans. There I was, washing my hands in the Metro Centro food court bathroom, when it happened.

It was the first time anyone had ever directed hate speech at me, and it hit me like a slap to the face. The word in itself did not bother me so much as the situation. Maricón is such a common word to hear. Just yesterday, I was waiting at a busy bus stop, idly watching a family of street vendors. They had an assortment of pirated movies sprawled out on the hot sidewalk. A little boy in the family was playing among the movies with his sister and somehow got glitter on his face. His mother notices and scolds, Mira como andas bien maricoñado con brillo en la cara. Brillo no es para niños varones. (Look how you are all fagged-out with glitter on your face. Glitter is not for little boys.) I frown. The mother notices me and sends a knowing smile, thinking I frown at the atrocity of a little boy with glitter on his face. A vast chasm of difference stretches between my dismay at witnessing the creation of gender roles in a machisto culture and the mother´s smile. The point is maricón is a word I am more or less accustomed to now. I am not accustomed to having it directed at me, nor to hearing it in the capitol.

I come to San Salvador to relax, to be myself, let down the act I put on in my community, to wear V-necks if I feel like it. I always imagined San Salvador as a safe zone for my identity, a place where I can be the Eric I was in the States - go out dancing, watch theatre, see movies in English, openly consume alcohol, sit in cafes with my legs crossed. Wednesday I had a major reality check. Even though San Salvador is significantly more cosmopolitan and diverse than my rural home, it is still in El Salvador and subject to all of the biases and prejudices that exist in the culture. It was a very sobering experience.