TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Immigration: The Contest

young soldiers on leave strolled by—their dark, menacing dicks hanging between their legs, like a battering ramwaiting to punch a hole through the back cavern. Then the memory of the path toward the Moorish café where, months later, I would captivate the Spanish writer with my dance of womanly undulations, although that was something I still didn’t know as I looked over the café’s terrace; no, that day I just saw the smattering of old queens who had returned to the city after the end of the war, sitting on the balcony, watching out for adolescents like me who were about to open up to life, subtle invaders of their intimacy; all so shameless: Sexy, lovely, calling me kid again; that threw me off balance, the memory of the expat Spanish writer returned and, suddenly, I met the eager gaze of the Scandinavian; I would meet him soon, the Spanish writer introduced us days later; the Scandinavian told me he was a connoisseur for whom Africa held no more secrets; but I felt his gaze penetrate my body in search of the resounding secrets that must have resisted him on other occasions; I don’t know how to explain it. The Moorish café was the place where the Spanish writer claimed to have found “young men with copper skin and white teeth, with little,wandering,affectionatesouls: normallywithnoeducationor employment: but open and understanding,” young men towhom he also introduced me; he did so while I lived in the aristocratic mansion that served as the scene of my first true encounter with him, at whose doors I arrived with delight that morning I still treasure in my memory. I remember the route from the Moorish cafe that I had reviewed online until I could remember all the instructions: get to the covered gallery: contemplate the decrepit foosball tables that go unmentioned on Google Maps: advance around the wall in front of Hotel Cuba: continue down 121