I had a funny thing occur to me a couple of nights ago. I’ve been waking up at around 5am lately for work, and as a result have been going to bed around 8:30 or 9.
A beep twice, I had received a text message. Groggily I checked the time. 11:45pm. Who on earth could be texting me now? I checked it, slightly concerned that something bad had happened to a friend or something. It was from Mary, a woman in my town I met once before for about 15 minutes. "Hey José, I’m standing outside your door. Come outside so I can give you a goodnight hug.” Signed, “The Moon.” Frankly I didn’t believe it, put my phone down without responding, rolled over, and was asleep again in less than 10 seconds. Work comes early, I barely knew this girl, and highly doubted that she would be content with just a goodnight “hug.”
Another double beep signaled the arrival of a new message. It was 11:48pm. “Hey, are you sleeping or what? Come outside.” I briefly debated going outside to tell her to go away and let me sleep, but decided that playing “comatose” was the better course. It was still mostly true, after all.
I don’t bring up this little crumb of an anecdote to illustrate my (nonexistent) sex life, or even to support my earlier, slightly humorous assertion that I am the most eligible bachelor in San Se. Rather, it provides a reasonably-related entrée to my main topic for this week: Sexual identity and practices. There’s a lot here that doesn’t fit the expected mold.
When I first got to Guatemala, the first thing that struck me was the hyper-masculine culture and its chained attack dog, machismo. In the name of machismo, men catcall women to tears, retain mistresses to prove that they’re real men, and expect executive control over the family. Drinking only further exacerbates this, as I’ve never seen a middle ground; drinking in moderation is for wimps and huecos (an ugly epithet for people who are GLBT...and whose English translation I despise too much to include).
If you stay here awhile, you might begin to see the hallmarks of an idealized feminine type too, at least within a chauvinist construct. Women, especially in the areas where I live and work, stay in the traditionally female social spheres—usually limited to the house and the market. When I volunteered for the afternoon with another organization to interview teenage girls about their knowledge of HIV/AIDS and prevention, most professed no knowledge of condoms or birth control. Whether it was true or not is almost arbitrary; what struck me was that this image of ignorance was what they thought I wanted to hear. After all, isn’t the morally-pure woman supposed to know nothing about sexual safety and practices?
With this as a starting place, imagine my surprise then when I was in Xela for the first time and saw a woman dressed in a tight miniskirt, an even tighter tang-top ending well above her navel, heavy makeup, and long, flowing hair. To say “extremely provocative” is an understatement. Was she a prostitute? No.
She was a man; a transsexual to be exact.
One of the few places it seems that the male and female halves intersect is in the castigation of alternative lifestyles. In large cities there are a few, well hidden gay bars, but every so often, not unlike the US, you hear about a hate-crime being committed against its patrons. Strictly speaking, GLBT lifestyles are not illegal, but they do receive less support from the authorities than those who are straight. Shocker, I know.
Peace Corps does a lot of sexual lifestyle-related outreach and, as a result, several of the more outgoing transsexuals are friends with a few of my own. Last week there was a Peace Corps-sponsored gay-pride event, and afterwards several of us, the more daring ones, agreed to go to the after-hours gay bar.
I had been to the area before. Hell, I'd walked past this very club each and every time I went to the expensive-but-luscious Indian restaurant across the street. Still, I had never noticed it. Then again, I’m sure that was the point.
The entrance was on the lower level of a strip mall, under a gym and next to a gun store. It was tucked into the corner, so the stairs leading up to the second level partially hid its comers and goers from street view. When we walked up to the door, I noticed that there was a locked grill—like prison bars—further securing the entry, along with an armed guard to monitor it. My friends were known here, and we had no trouble getting in.
When I entered, it was an interesting sight. I’ve been to a gay bar in the US before, but I really dug that it was so…illicit. There were probably 40 people in the club, of which 15 or so were obviously transsexual. Everyone looked up as the pack of gringos walked in, and then went back to what they were doing as soon as they saw we were not there to cause trouble. My friends knew a few, and they waived us over.
After five minutes, the music stopped, the lights were turned off, and everyone was sternly told to shut the fuck up by the bartender. The cops were rolling past outside. I never found out if this concern with the law was bred from their lifestyle, or simply because the club was operating after hours. In either case, it was made clear to me that if they found this club, bribes would most likely be the solution.
A minute or two later the door guard blinked his flashlight twice and everything started back up again. People behaved as if nothing had happened; it was just a tiny breather in between dances. This happened six or seven more times before we left, though they never found us.
I don’t know quite were this post is going, or by now where it was supposed to go. It feels a little more rambling than I had hoped. Reading over it, it would appear that my thesis is that “there are all kinds of sexual orientations and norms in Guatemala,” which feels rather obvious for my tastes. I don’t think there’s a huge epiphany coming in the next few sentences while I wrap everything up, but I would like to comment on how interesting everything is when you’re able to see below the surface. Had I just taken a weekend trip here I never would have seen what I have seen, or done what I have done. I never would have been privy to the invisible gay club that I walk past almost every time I’m in Xela, and I certainly never would have been welcomed into it.
It’ thrilling.
I didn’t take pictures of this week’s topic for obvious reasons, so you’ll have to be content with pictures of a few of my schools instead. The two shown here, Tuitzquimac and Chichiná, are applying for funding to build hand washing stations at their schools. Each has only one faucet for 57 and 153 students, respectively. Please forgive the notes on some of them, they’re for Ronald McDonald and his foundation. Find them here: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week21?authkey=Gv1sRgCJjy6Jes5NqNzgE#
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