Location: Chicano Studies Resource Center Archives
University of California, Los Angeles
Latitude: 34.072831886975216
Longitude: 118.44114765872189
Date: March 29, 2015
Time: 8:49 pm PST
Rae woke up gulping for air. At first he thought a tremor had woken him. Another goddam earthquake he thought. It would have been the third this month. March was earthquake season after-all. But this was not the case, at least not by the standards of any richtor scale. No no, Rae was up to his only tricks again. Late nights and early mornings working in those dusty archives up at the University had gotten him into a nasty amphetamine habit. The moment he felt the fatigue overcoming him, he’d place one of those tiny blue pills on the tip of his tongue. Baby blues, he’d call them, and he let it slowly dissolve inside his dry mouth, savoring the oddly sweet, poisonous flavor that seeped into his taste buds. Just a quick nap he’d think, and would nest his head gently atop his desk. Just like that, he’d sleep for five, perhaps ten minutes.
But the thing about Adderall is that it doesn’t take naps, and like an internal alarm clock, it would shake Rae awake. Like always, he dreamt of Selena, just like he had been for the past five years. It was not a wet dream, never a wet dream. She didn’t suck him off or anything. No, no, nothing like that. It was all very civilized. Very decent. He awoke with the faintest recollection of eggs. The eggs were of all shapes, sizes, colors and materials. They were falling, falling all around him. He would extend his hands to grasp them, but they would slip through his fingers, or hover just out of reach. Selena was beside him, mumbling something about rings. Rae couldn’t make out what she was saying. She wasn’t enunciating well and her accent sounded oddly disembodied. Was that British English she was speaking? Rae turn to face her, to ask her to repeat herself, but it was too late. It was always too late. Selena was gone and Rae woke up with a racing heart and that sickening, yet all too familiar feeling, that he had received and lost an infinite thing.
Rae knew what the eggs meant. He wasn’t an idiot. He had been working on the Selena archives at UCLA for the past 2 years, collecting every magazine, newspaper, doll, clothing item, poster, CD, cassette, VHS, every known item on the Selena scavenger hunt. Some items were harder to get than others. The Quintanilla family had so much of this stuff on lockdown, hidden in different places around Corpus Christi. But Rae had done a decent job collecting what he could, and the archives were set to open in about two weeks. It would have been her 44th birthday. But Rae already considered the archives a failure and the egg dream, nightmare rather, was just a reminder of that.
Rae surveyed the the flutter of post-its, news clippings and court reports tacked above his desk. For what felt like the five billionth time, he re-read the excerpt from the Houston Chronicle that was published in late 1995.
According to official records, Yolanda Saldívar shot and killed the Queen of Tejano in March of 1995 at the Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, Texas. Saldívar had been the president of Selena’s fan club and the manager of her line of boutiques. Accused of embezzling money from the family, she was fired and told to leave Selena alone. Three weeks later, on the morning of March 31, 1995, Selena agreed to meet Saldívar at a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi to retrieve financial records Saldívar had been refusing to turn over. Saldívar once again delayed the handover by claiming she had been raped in Mexico. Selena drove Saldívar to a local hospital, where doctors found no evidence of rape. They returned to the motel, where Selena again demanded the financial papers. Saldívar took a pistol from her purse and pointed it at the singer. Selena tried to flee, but Saldívar shot her once in her right shoulder, severing an artery. Critically wounded, Selena ran towards the lobby for help. She collapsed on the floor as the clerk called 911, with Saldívar chasing her, calling her a "bitch". Selena died in a hospital from loss of blood at 1:05 p.m, two weeks from her 24th birthday.
Since October of 1995, Yolanda has been serving a life sentence in a Texas prison and will be eligible for parole on March 31, 2025. Saldívar has maintained her innocence throughout, claiming that the shooting was an accident and that she would never hurt someone she loved so much.
The CSRC had been closed for hours at this point and Rae hadn’t made any decent research progress, unless you’re counting that very strange dream from earlier. He decided to call it a night and left the overflowing pile of papers on his desk untouched. Grabbing only his journal and his favorite blue ballpoint pen, he turn off the lights in the room and locked the door behind him. He was grateful to have his own office on campus. Such things were rare at public universities. But it was foolish to pretend that the space was anything but a converted closet that had been cleaned out for his use. “Back in the closet,” Rae would muse to himself. He would laugh if it weren’t so close to the truth.
Location: METRO Bus at Hilgard and Wyton
Latitude: 34.07439392435016
Longitude: -118.43791745634462
Date: March 29, 2015
Time: 9:17 pm PST
He was bored, and despite his profound fatigue, he was not ready for bed. So he went where he always did whenever he was broke, which was often, and looking to score more amphetamine, which was always. He caught the number 2 bus on Hilgard and Wyton and road it until East Hollywood at Sunset and Vermont. He almost missed his stop. As was customary, Rae’s nose had been buried in his journal, revising the revision of the revision of Selena’s death. It was a type of archival re-mapping that he was called The Real Amor Prohibido. From an outsider’s perspective, his pages were filled with conspiracy theories, wild and blasphemous allegations about who Selena why she was killed.
Location: METRO Bus at Sunset and Vermont
Latitude: 34.0977390433285
Longitude: -118.29172408856203
Date: March 29, 2015
Time: 9:41 pm PST
Lost in thought, Rae didn’t even realize he’d been waiting almost 30 minutes when the
DASH 217 bus finally screeched to a stop at his feet. It was the last shuttle of the night and the rows of seats were empty, save for a few conspicuous looking characters who were headed up the hill for reasons similar to Rae’s. As far as he was concerned, urban public parks like The Griffith Observatory were good for two things after dark: sex and drugs. Rae was interested in only one of these two things, but the unofficial rulebook of the park demanded his full participation.
Location: The Griffith Observatory
Latitude: 34.118434
Longitude: -118.30039399999998
Date: March 29, 2015
Time: 10:11 pm PST
Tonight was a quicky, temporally and otherwise. Rae went to his usual spot, up the hill from the Observatory, to a tree that stood next to a wooden bench. From the vista, one could see an old white water tank, tagged haphazardly by years of graffiti. Beyond this this hill, one’s gaze got lost in an endless sea of twinkling lights than crept eastward, into infinity. It had barely been five minutes before a husky voice whispered in Rae’s ear, one filled with urgency and desire. Rae got down on his knees and went to work.
Even in the cover of night, Rae knew better than to let these men touch him. The tight binder he wore did a good job of flattening his breasts into what was a convincingly male chest. But just one grope underneath the shirt and the illusion was revealed. Men didn’t like being tricked like this. They didn’t like being sucked off by a young boy who was really a girl.
Almost as quickly as it had started, it was over. Rae walked back down the hill, the jingle of pills in his pocket distracting him from the sour taste in the back of his mouth. It’s speed, the guy had told him. The raw shit like we had back in the 90s. They took a bump together before parting ways. There’s never an easy way to tell the purity of street pharms, but Rae was flying high, gliding, no, levitating down the dirt path. The way you move only in your dreams.
Location: Mid-City, Los Angeles
Latitude: 34.0553094
Longitude: -118.35863230000001
Date: March 30, 2015
Time: 1:13 am PST
It was past 1 am by the time Rae arrived back at his apartment in Mid-City. The last shuttle down the hill from the park had stopped running at 10 pm, so he had to walk a few miles before finding a bus that was still in service. He hadn’t dressed for such a late night and the desert air had left him cold and stiff. These excursions to Griffith always began as exotic, as if Rae was just a tourist in the illicit land of queer, perverted drug addicts. He was better than these people he told himself. He was a broke graduate student, but he came from a good family. He was educated and well-spoken. And yet, he knew he was only “passing” in the normal world. If only in his mind, Rae tried to distance himself from those queer freaks that haunted the hill above Griffith Observatory. And yet, he couldn’t shake the sickening feeling that the park was his home, and those “freaks,” his chosen family.
Inside his apartment, Rae felt sick to his stomach. The drugs were starting to ware off and the memories of the last few hours left him with a dirty, dead, melancholy feeling. He got into the shower and turned the dial as hot as it could go, exhaling with relief as the water scalded his shoulders and neck. At least he could still feel something. Trying to shake his thoughts of Griffith Park, Rae began to hum Como la Flor, his favorite Selena song. It was like his own personal nursey rhyme, rocking him gently back into his past and imagined future. The day after tomorrow would be March 31st, 20 years since Selena’s death. His archival project was static and despite his unorthodox research methodologies, he had gotten no closer to proving his theory of queer Selenidad. He had yet to visit Corpus Christi and it was becoming painfully obvious that this was a major gap in his research. Fuck it, he thought, as he got out of the shower and quickly wrapped himself in a towel. He opened up an old piece of mail that Wells Fargo had sent him. A credit card to help with student loans! Yah, right. This was as good a reason to go into debt as any he thought. Anything for Salinas...
Location: Corpus Christi International Airport
Latitude: 27.772424
Longitude: -97.502183
Date: March 30, 2015
Time: 3:04 pm CT
It was barely 3 pm, and the sun was threatening to check out early. Rae had landed a few hours earlier at the Corpus Christi International Airport, an institution that had more of a regional than global feel to it. The Dollar Car Rental had given him the great Texas welcome he had anticipated, but had hoped to avoid. The clerk had refused him service for having reserved a vehicle under a name that didn’t match his license. The discrepancy between his legal name and his chosen one was becoming a bureaucratic nightmare. The man grumbled something about Rae’s ID phone not looking like him, and how maybe if he dressed in different clothes, it would be less confusing for people. Returning the man’s cold gaze, Rae collected his driver’s license and credit card.
Wallet in hand and self-assurance a little worse for wear, Rae made his way down rental car row and stopped at a tired looking woman wearing a yellow, short sleeved polo and a blue scrunchy. Rae turned his eyes downward and practically in a whisper, requested the smallest cheapest car on the lot. To his delight, she didn’t even look up from her computer while she asked for his license and credit card. He stood there holding his breath, the only sound was the clickity clack of her keyboard. Gingerly, he glanced up and saw that the woman had pushed a scratched and worn set of keys in front of him. Soon after, he was behind the wheel of a 1992 red Toyota pickup. How was it that in 2015, Alamo was renting cars from 23 years ago? Not that he was complaining. Rae loved and missed driving manual transmission cars and he felt at home among the worn cloth seats, pocked marked with cigarette burns. The cigarette lighter element under the dash board had not been disabled and Rae thought how this trip might be the perfect excuse to pick up the habit again.
Driving along the narrow innerstate, the glimmer of neon motel signs guided Rae through the streets of the seaside town of Corpus Christi. He had stopped at a gas station to get coffee and Trident gum, resisting the urge to buy that $1.75 pack of Marlboro menthols. He knew tobacco ran cheap in Texas, but this seemed excessive. Hell, all the pricing had seemed off since he arrived. The rental car alone cost him just $16 for the two days he’d requested it. Sure it was the most rickety car on the lot, but the engine ran smoothly and he quite liked the faint smell of fried potatoes and bug spray that emanated from the back seat.
Rae drove towards the water, as he always did when he felt lost and aimless. Somewhere along the way he knew he’d find that famous Selena Memorial statue, Mirador de la Flor. The curious structure, at once saintly and hyper-sexualized, overlooked the Corpus Christi Bay. She was like a siren seducing some poor, lost, lovesick sailor. Though he doubted he would recuperate any actual artifact for his collection from the Mirador, Rae figured it would be worth the trip just to eavesdrop on his fellow fans. Local gossip had always worked in his favor and chisme was always easier to come by when you were androgynous and new in town.
Location: Mirador de la Flor
Latitude: 27.79673
Longitude: -97.39103
Date: March 30, 2015
Time: 3:56 pm CT
Rae parked the car alongside the promenade that divided the city from the sea. Walking towards the Mirador, Rae was struck with a wave of deja vu and a distinct feeling of reconocimiento. How many times had he seen the statue and where? Online? In books? In magazines? On television? Never in person, and yet it felt as if he had been here before. Nostalgia without memory. The bronze reproduction was just as he’d imagined it. The awkward blending of piety and raw, carnal desire. Standing there, Selena was La Virgen de Guadalupe de la music Tejana who had shed her holy manto for a leather bustier. Circling the statue, Rae overheard the excited chatter of tourists taking pictures and leaving flowers.
“They’re closing the museum early,” he heard someone say in a hurried tone.
“¡Ya sé! I hear that someone tried to break into Suzette’s office.”
Missing his tongue by mere inches, Rae bit down hard on his gum. When he got to chewing and grinding like this, a combination of nerves caused by amphetamine, caffeine and general adrenaline, it was only a matter of time before he bit his tongue clear off.
Suzette was/is Selena’s sister. The second child and the oldest daughter in the Quintanilla family, Suzette has lived her entire life in the shadow of her dead sister. Pobrecita had to play the drums in the family band, Selena y Los Dinos. Abraham Quintanilla, had tried to put as much distance as possible between Suzette and his beautiful, charming, golden child.
The fact that there was a break-in at the Selena Museum was news indeed. But what shocked Rae even more was the particular site of this attempted robbery. Before leaving, he had meticulously studied the floor plans at the Selena Museum and he knew the exact location of Suzette's office. It was located in the main showroom, the one filled with dozens of iconic outfits, albums, awards and posters. Among the plethora of memorabilia was a glass case containing the line of Selena Barbie dolls, and more importantly, her porcelain egg collection. Suzette's office was directly behind the case. Rae imagined her sitting behind that closed door, like a mother poised to protect her nest from unwanted predators.
He took one last long look at the statue, almost praying for Selena to speak to him, to confide in him about the eggs, the ring, and that unnamed desire that has been buried under years of cultural memory. But all he could hear was the crooning of a recording playing on repeat from the speakers that hung from the ceiling of the Mirador:
“lo mas importante es que ella era familia. Una presencia inspiradora en la comunidad y un artista que trajo felicidad y alegría a sus inumerables fan a traves de sus presentaciones y carisma. Ella ha superado la tragedia y se convitió en un icono para las generaciones. Corpus Christi … Selena vive siempre en nuestra cultura y nuestras corazones...Selena vive.”
His next move was clear. Rae broke into a light sprint and quickly made his way back to his truck. His forehead and upper lip were moist with seabreeze and his lungs heavy with humidity. The sun was dipping its lower half into the horizon of the bay, as if testing the water’s warmth. It was late afternoon, too early for sunset Rae thought, even for March. But then again, time seemed to be on it’s own, independent schedule here in Corpus. Not quite linear, nor circular, but somehow three dimensional. As if multiple worlds, stories and narratives were occurring simultaneously along different planes of reality.
Location: The Selena Museum
Latitude: 27.797872
Longitude: -97.46133800000001
Date: March 30, 2015
Time: 4:45 pm CT
The Selena Museum lies on the outskirts of town. Rae took only the side streets on his drive over. Highways scared him, an extremely unfortunate phobia given that he lived in Los Angeles. When he was a few blocks away from the building, he pulled off the road and parked in a patch of dirt, overgrown with weeds and sprinkled with empty cans of Tecate beer. Rae knew better than to attempt to drive into the parking lot of the museum. It was sure to be packed with media vans, police cars and eager fans. Rae approached the building from the backside, walking through a dirty alley riddled with potholes and misplaced blocks of cement. Police had roped off the entire main entrance to the museum, as if some truly grave crime had actually occurred. Given the chisme he heard, nothing had actually been stolen and by the looks of it, the cops had the perpetrator in custody.
Scanning the police vehicles, Rae saw the shadow of a human in the backseat of one of the cars, chin slumped against the chest, gazed fixed downwards. Pushing through the sea of people, Rae moved closer to the car and saw a young Latino man with a gentle face and a closely cropped haircut that looked hastily done. He was handcuffed and clearly quite uncomfortable. What light there was remaining from the day glossed over the man’s face, illuminating his dark red lips and a sparkle of glitter that glossed over his high cheekbones. The man looked as if he’d been crying, and there were black smudges under his eye. It reminded Rae of how a girl’s face looked at dawn, after a long night of partying and an even longer night of sex. That haunting, dirty, but beautiful look they get in the morning, when they have forgotten to remove the make-up from the night before.
Above the cacophony of the crowd, Rae heard a female reporter from Univisión talking frantically into a microphone.
“La policía de Corpus Christi tiene el hombre bajo custodia. Hoy, a las tres de la tarde, él fue atrapado forzando una morada en la oficina de Suzette Quintanilla. El hombre dijo que es de Dallas y se identificó ante la policía como Blay Negrete de Aztlán, información contradictoria con su licencia de conducir. Según sus documentos oficiales, los cuales se identifican como Jorge Hernández de la ciudad de San Antonio. En ese momento, estamos intentando de ponernos en contacto con algún miembro de la familia para confirmar su identidad. Si alguien tenga información sobre el sospechoso, por favor, llame nuestro “hotline” de consejos. El número está situado en la parte baja de la pantalla.
Rae continued to weave his way through the buzzing crowd and began to fantasize about this mysterious Selena fan, simultaneously from Dallas and San Antonio. And what to make of his names? de Aztlán? Was Rae to consider this part of his name as a third, perhaps imagined homeland from which the young man hailed? Before falling too deep into his own imagined rabbit hole, Rae was pulled back into the present by the loud chatter of network news reporters, all of whom were wrestling to get the attention of one, unremarkable looking women. Her voice was shrill, amplified by the near half dozen microphones being pushed into her face. Standing a few steps behind the crowd, Rae titled the right side of his head towards the women, hoping she would provide more information about this Blay/Jorge figure.
“I was suspicious of him immediately, ‘cause like, when he paid the museum entrance fee, he was talking British. Well, English, but like, with a British accent. And I thought was just, weird, you know? I don’t got anything against those people, but it’s just that we don’t get many of their kind around here. British people, I mean. Or English people. However you call them…”
Her voice trailed off, buried beneath a firestorm of questions.
Who was this man? Two names, two homelands, (perhaps three, if you’re counting Aztlán) who spoke with an accent that matched neither. In his years researching Selena fandom, Rae had been particularly fascinated about Diva worship, a practice that he felt featured prominently in the whole “Selena Inmortal” narrative. According to some scholars, dialect is an embodied method of diva worship, and the most direct way through which fans can access the glamorous world that the diva inhabits. In certain circles, queer ones, Selena was a diva. Yes, without question. But an English diva from across the pond? She most certainly was not. What was this Blay/Jorge character after? And why?
Rae wracked his brain, trying to wrap his head around the contradiction of a British Selena, when he remembered his dream from a few days before. In had been in a soft and subtle whisper that Selena had spoken to him about eggs and rings. And her accent? It had been unmistakably British. This young man, a man with many names and no name, knew what Rae knew. He, like Rae, knew that egg ring still existed and that it was the missing link between Selena and her queer past that the Quintanilla’s had tried their best to bury. Rae had long suspected that Suzzette would be the link to this family secret. He had heard whispers about her visits to Southern California, Long Beach specifically, where she would frequent seedy, nameless dyke bars far from the downtown area.
Rae looked through the crowd in the off chance he could find Suzette, but instead his eyes landed on Abraham Quintanilla, II., the patriarch of the entire Quintanilla clan and the reigning patrón of the Corpus Christi Tejano music scene. His back was facing the group of reporters, all clamoring to get his attention, waving microphones and notepads in his direction. His body language suggested that he was full of rage. His shoulders were hunched and his elbows and fingers poked quickly and sharply at the air. Standing quietly in the shadow of his rage was Marcella, his wife and mother of the three Quintanilla children. Rae had a clear view of her face and saw that her eyes met her husband’s with a mixture of apathy and boredom. Numb was the only word Rae could think of to describe her. He watched as droplets of spit left Abraham’s mouth and landed softly on Marcella’s face.
The crowd began to thin as a flash of lightening illuminated the vast, South Texas sky. Pushing against the current of people, Rae kept his eyes on the Quintanillas, trying his best to catch any bit of their conversation. He watched with growing interest as Marcella, in an unexpected moment of pure candor, slapped her husband clear across the face before walking back into the museum through an unbarricaded side door labeled: Employees Only. Abraham was left dumbfounded and remained motionless, despite the growing cries and camera flashes coming from behind him. To Rae’s great surprise and even greater discomfort, Abraham turned around and immediately locked his gaze with Rae’s. It was a brief moment, but the two shared a flicker of mutual recognition, one mixed with disgust and fear.
And just as quickly as they had connected, Abraham pushed through the crowd of reporters and walked back into the same alley from which Rae had emerged earlier. Three men, each taller and fatter than the other, jumped to the front of the crowd and barricaded the reporters, preventing what was sure to be a stampede towards Abraham. These unlikely security guards were uniformly dressed in oversized white polo shirts and sagging black jeans; the “muscle” of the Quintanilla family no doubt. One of the men had been standing near Rae earlier and he saw the outline of a egg tattooed onto the side of the man’s face, like a perfect white oval of sweat.
Among this push and shove of the crowd, Rae was able to back up and walk, unobstructed, into the side alley. But when he reached the other side of the street, Abraham was no where in site. The only movement came from hungry group of seagulls, resting atop the slack wire of a stop light. Cursing himself for not having chased after Abraham more quickly, Rae got back into the front seat of his car and slammed the door. Letting himself melt into the seat, Rae took a few deep breaths and for the first time during the trip, noticed how tired he was. He adjusted the rearview mirror to see his own reflection. His pupils were huge and his left eyelid was twitching. There were faint bite marks on his front lip, giving it a raw, meaty look.
Rae reached into his pocked and pulled out a blue pill and quickly popped it into his mouth. He let it dissolve on his tongue; a junkie’s communion. He closed his eyes and let the chemicals absorb into his blood. He loved to sit very still and feel his heart start to race and his sweat glands dilate. His mind would tighten and expand simultaneously, as if he was seeing both sides of his periphery through a microscope.
A clap of thunder woke Rae from his trance and he shook off his fatigue with renewed clarity. The flash of lightning that followed lit up the street just long enough for him to see a large, black Cadillac Escalade peel out from behind a building and drive clear through a red light. The license plate read “DINOS” and Rae knew it had to be Abraham’s car. Acting on pure instinct this time, Rae turned the key in his ignition, and put the car in gear before lurching out into the street. Night had descended on the town without his realizing and he couldn’t see past the hood of the truck. He turned on his high beams and the imagine of the black car driving a few blocks ahead came into focus. It seemed to be heading towards the I-37 and Rae swallowed hard at the thought of getting onto the interstate. As the first drops of rain began to splash against the windshield of the car, Rae knew he was in for one of the worst rainstorms of his life. They were coming down slowly at first, hot and full bodied, like the kind of rain he’d envisioned in Garcia Marquez’s imagined town of Macondo. Living in drought ridden California means you can effectively forget that rainstorms exist, let alone the real kind of rain like they have in South Texas.
Rae was white knuckling the steering wheel, eyes reduced to slits and face pressed so close to the windshield that the breath from his nostrils began to fog up the glass. The windshield wipers were working at maximum speed and the radio was stuck on an AM station playing old norteño from Sinaloa. Rae was trying his best to follow the black Escalade, while avoiding the heaps of soggy trash that had rolled off the sidewalks and into the street. The sudden illumination of his surroundings did nothing if not remind him of his solitude, his utter lack of direction, material and otherwise. “I should pull over,” Rae thought. “I could hit someone,” he told himself. “No seriously, I could crash any second and kill myself.”For some reason, these ruminations only made him want to keep driving. What was it about this night that made him feel invincible?
Rae paused the car at what he assumed to be a stop sign, while another crack of thunder and lightning happen almost simultaneously. The light from the electrical current lasts just long enough for Rae to see the unmistakable flicker of neon. Abraham wasn’t getting onto I-37 afterall, but rather, pulling into a dimly lit motel parking lot situated just before the freeway on ramp. Glancing upwards, Rae found the source of neon light from before. The dusty old sign read:
Days Inn Motel
***
Vacancy! Come Enjoy Our
Color TV, VHS, Jacuzzi.
Location: The Days Inn // The Knights Inn Motel
Latitude: 27.80153
Longitude: -97.45426
Date: March 31, 2015
Time: 6:30 pm CT
Impossible, Rae thought. This hotel was no longer the Days Inn. It hadn’t been for years. The ownership had changed, along with the name of the hotel, in an effort to throw off Selena fans looking to visit the site of her murder. Rae followed Abraham into the lot and parked in a far off corner. He sat in the cab of his car and watched as Abraham ran through the downpour and into the dimly lit lobby of the motel. A few minutes later he emerged, and Rae could see he was carrying a set of custodial keys in his hand. Abraham walked down the row of first floor rooms, his stony gaze piercing through the haze of the storm. In total disbelief, Rae watched as Abraham walked swiftly into room 158. But room 158 no longer existed. How could it? Along with the name of the hotel, this room number too had changed. According to all his research, this room was now 150, but the black numbers stared back at him unabashedly.
Almost as quickly as Abraham had walked into the room, Rae saw the door open again and watched as three figures walked outside. Rae’s windshield was fogging up and it was becoming harder and harder to see, but he was able to make out the shape of three women standing in a circle. They all had the same short hair cut and spoke in hushed tones. Rae used the sleeve of his shirt to clear an opening in his windshield and he nearly choked on his own tongue as the faces of the three women came into focus: Suzette Quintanilla, Marcella Quintanilla and Yolanda Saldívar. In what world was this possible? Yolanda should be in jail. Suzette and Marcella? Well, Rae didn’t know exactly where they should or should not be, but it was certainly not at the Days Inn Motel in room 158.
It was undeniable. Since the day before, from the moment Rae had that dream of Selena and the eggs, time had begun to change, ebbing and flowing between past and present. This moment in the parking was the site of total collapse, where history and reality had warped together to create some sort of portal. It was 1995 again, but not the 1995 read about in the history books. Rae was operating within an alternative time and space in which an infinite number of possibilities could spring forth. A feeling of invincibility overcame him. Feeling almost ghostlike, he left his truck and raced across the parking lot to Abraham’s car and hopped into the back seat. He didn’t know quite what he was looking for, but he groped around the dark carpet hoping to find some hint, or clue that would guide his next move. Rae climbed into the trunk when suddenly he felt a cold, damp blast of air rush through the center of the car. Abraham hurled his body into the front seat and slammed the door behind him. Paralyzed with fear, Rae held his breath and closed his eyes so tightly that he began to see stars. The car started with a roar and Abraham peeled out of the parking lot and into the street, heading towards the interstate. He did not slow down when he got to the freeway on ramp.
Location: El Huevo de Oro, Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico
Latitude:
Longitude:
Date: March 30, 2015
Time: 9:45 pm CT
It seemed like hours before Rae opened his eyes. When he finally did, all he could see was the black night through the window and the sparkle of stars off in the distance. It was a desert sky, which meant they must have been heading South. Maybe it was fear, or maybe it was the drugs wearing off, but Rae drifted off to sleep and did not wake up until the car came to an abrupt stop. He could hear Abraham’s breathing in the front seat, heavy and methodical, as if he’d been holding back tears for a long time. He turned off the car, grabbed something from the side glove compartment and stepped out into the road. Rae sat up, stretching out severe cramps in both his legs and watched Abraham through the front window. The rain had stopped, giving him a crystal clear view of the street in front of him. Cracked, cobblestone sidewalks and neon lights lined the road and food vendors were stationed on every corner frying hot dogs wrapped in bacon. Rae noticed the stop sign ahead of him read ALTO. They must have crossed la línea in Brownsville, into the border town of Matamoros, México.
The few hours of sleep had been good for Rae, but nevertheless he reached into his pocket and placed another pill on the tip of his tongue. Chewing this time, he felt the chalky substance cling to the space between his molars. His whole body quivered with anticipation and before he had time to think, he jumped out of the back of the car and followed Abraham down the quiet street. The air was sweet, and smelled of fried fat and burnt palomitas. One behind the other, they walked into a inconspicuous looking bar, El Huevo de Oro. Norteño music played inside and cigarette smoke hung low over the bar area and pool tables. Looking down, Rae made his way to a corner table, feeling many eyes on the back of his head. When he finally looked up, he saw Abraham talking to the man behind the bar. Rae could see the look of fear in the bartender’s face, but he was too far away to hear what Abraham was saying to him. The man looked at his watch and mumbled something before pointing towards the door. Rae watched Abraham grab the nearest beer bottle, smash it against the wood of the bar and pull the bartender into a close chokehold. The shards of glass were cutting into the man’s neck and the few patrons nearby looked dumbfounded at this sudden scuffle that seemingly materialized out of nowhere.
Rae heard the man stammer, “¡Se lo juro! No sé dónde fue ella. Por favor, no me mata.” He must had realized that the man in fact was telling the truth, because Abraham released him and hurried out of the bar. Looking relieved, the bartender grabbed a large bottle of tequila from under the bar and took a long pull, a few drops running down his cheeks. The music had stopped and he watched as a slim figured approached the jukebox and placed a few coins inside. The speakers popped, as if coming back to life, and Selena’s 1994 hit, amor prohibido began to play. Rae kept his gaze on the person, unable to see, or tell if it was a man, or a woman. The mysterious figure sat back down and pulled out a fresh cigarette from a box that read Faros. The person lit a match, bringing it close to their lips, and the light from the flame illuminated the sharp contours of their face and the green of their eyes. It was like Rae was looking at himself. A slightly boyish, yet distinctly feminine face, sat atop a slight body that was covered head to toe in blue denim. He knew he needed to talk to this person and he approached the bar, figuring it would be polite to buy them a round. But then he remembered that he had left his wallet in his car. And besides, he didn’t have any pesos. He was nervous, but the kind of nervous you feel as if you’re meeting up with an old friend whom you haven’t seen in years. That longing for things to be exactly as you had left them, coupled with the knowledge that time cannot help but change the both of you. Cautiously, Rae approached the table where the person sat and to his delight, they gestured for him to sit down. They looked for a long time into each other’s eyes, locked in a moment of reconocimiento. With a flick of her hand, she ordered a bottle of Oaxacan mezcal and poured them each a shot. As she raised the glass to her lips, Rae noticed a flash of gold on her left hand. It was a small golden ring and nestled right in the middle was a small oval. It was the egg ring.
Raquel was the first one to speak, breaking the silence with her hard, fast Spanish that was characteristic to Northern Mexico. She seemed to know exactly who Rae was and why he was there. She told him that she knew what he was chasing, and that he could stop looking. “¿Cómo?” Rae asked, circumspect, but convinced that Raquel had some sort of window into his soul. Raquel explained that she was Selena’s lover. They had been for years. They had met at a show Selena had played long ago with Los Dinos, at a small public park in Monterey. For very obvious reasons, their relationship had been confined to desolate motel rooms and seedy, remote bars, on both sides of the border. But the world was changing and Selena felt like it was time to live her life, every facet of it, out in the open. “¿Entonces, dónde está en este momento?” Rae asked. “Imagino que ya está de vuela a Corpus,” Raquel said. “Quería juntarse con sus comadres antes de anunciarlo a sus fans.” Confused, Rae asked to whom she was refering. “Pues, sus comadres. Tú ya sabes quienes son.” It hit Rae like an avalanche. The group of comadres hiding out in the Days Inn; the young boy in drag in the back of the cop car; the one security guard with the egg tattoo... They were all part of Selena’s queer familia, and they were rallying around her. Everything was about to change. The Chicano community had found their Reina de la música Tejana, and she was a woman loving women. This announcement would mean Tejano music, fuck, even U.S. popular culture, was about to change forever. But Raquel didn’t know Selena’s fate. How could she?
They talked for hours, sparing no details about each other’s lives and taking sips of mezcal between stories. Rae looked at his watch. It was nearly 4:30 am. In less than 12 hours, Selena would be killed. Though he did not explain this to Raquel, he insisted that they leave immediately and drive to Corpus together. She asked no questions, finished the last of the mezcal, lit up another cigarette and motioned for Rae to follow her to the back parking lot. They got into a white truck, almost identical to the one Rae had rented back in Corpus, and turned on the engine. Raquel let the motor run idol with the heat on and their bones and muscles began to relax against the cold desert air.
When they got to la línea, Rae remembered that he didn’t have his passport. “No pasa nada,” Raquel told him, “eres una gringa. Tienes que decir, ‘Merican citizen.’ No más, no menos. Pero sigue actuando como hombre. No les permiten cruzar las lesbians...ni gringas, ni mexicanos.” Normally Rae would have been bothered by this. She had called him a ginga...telling him to keep “acting” like a man. But there was something about being on the border that made this hybridized existence feel ok, almost peaceful. The world at la línea felt unfixed, fluid and Rae’s entire being had to shift along with it. They crossed the border with little delay and continued chasing the sunrise.
Location: The Days Inn // The Knights Inn Motel
Latitude: 27.80153
Longitude: -97.45426
Date: March 31, 2015
Time: 8:00 am CT
Stopping only once at a gas station for a cup of coffee, they arrived in Corpus around 8 in the morning. They drove straight to The Days Inn Motel and knocked on door 158. They were both weak with fatigue and smelled of smoke and hangover. Marcella opened the door, and to Rae’s surprise, asked no questions and ushered them both into the room. It looked as if they had been living out of the motel for weeks. Empty doritos bags, coke bottles and half burnt candles littered the room. It looked like a haphazard altar to Selena. Rae sat down in a chair in the corner of the room, too tired to remember her manners. She overheard Marcella telling Raquel that Selena was at Q-productions, recording the final song for the new album. Raquel handed Rae a towel and they each took turns showering, trying their best to wash the alcohol from their pores and smoke from their hair. Rae came back in the room feeling new and alive. No one spoke to her as she sat back down into the corner chair, but she felt more at peace than she had in years. Like she was finally among family.
At around 11 am, Rae heard the click of a lock, holding her breath as the front door swung open. In the most surreal moment of Rae’s life, she watched as Selena walked into the room. She was wearing green sweat pants, and a tight black t-shirt that hugged every inch of her torso and breasts. She leapt into Raquel’s arms and as they gently took turns kissing every inch of each other’s face, Rae knew her loved her. It wasn’t the possessive, lustful type of love. No, Rae loved Selena for who she was, who she is, who she could have been. Perhaps, could be still? Rae began to imagine another world, a different world, a better world, a world in which Selena, in her truest form, was at the center of the universe. This was the world Rae longed for, one in which a brown skinned, bilingual, Chicana, femme from South Texas was the queen, not only of Tejano music, but of American popular culture.
Lost in her own private fantasy, Rae almost didn’t notice Abraham, standing in the doorframe, keys in one hand and a gun in the other. He had the barrel pointed at Yolanda and was shouting obscenities in Spanglish, calling her a puta de la chingada, a pinche malinchista who poisoned his familia with her sucia, marimacha ways. All four women, Suzette, Marcella, Raquel and Selena rushed towards him, as a shot rang out. Everyone in the room, including Abraham screamed. Just as quickly as Rae’s queer utopia had seemed within reach, it was gone. An ephemeral moment that went up in smoke.
Rae doesn’t remember leaving the motel. Doesn’t remember driving back to the airport, nor boarding the plane. He only vaguely remembers landing back at LAX, and stumbling onto a large bus, supposedly heading Downtown. Driving back through Los Angeles he replayed the last 36 hours over and over again in his head. Never in his life had he felt so present and absent, simultaneously. Was he even still alive? He had glimpsed his queer Selenidad, almost grasped it, but hatred and fear had once again prevailed and utopia had slipped just beyond his reach.
Location: The Oviatt Building
Latitude: 34.04760477
Longitude: -118.254789
Date: March 31, 2015
Time: 7:45 PM PST
The bus drove down Main street, past the Hotel Barclay. A bright neon light emanated from its marquee and reminded Rae of all that he had left behind at the motel. The driver made his final stop near skid row, parking across the street from the old, Oviatt Building. Rae stepped onto the cub and reached into his pocket to tip the driver. Between the few crumpled bills, he felt a hard, but smooth piece of metal, warm from being pressed so close to his body. He handed the driver two singles and rushed into the front lobby of the building. Under the soft light of the art deco ceiling, Rae pulled the egg ring out of his pocket, letting it rest peacefully in the palm of his hand. He stared at it in disbelief, knowing that he possessed in his hand, the key to infinite possibilities. He looked up and caught his reflection in the pieces of mirror on the wall. It was broken, incongruous, and fragmented and yet (s)he felt whole.