Todo sobre mi Ra/ All about my Ra

[Due to some of the matured contents in the following story, the reader is advised to use his/her discretion in reading it. The characters and the circumstances are fictitious. I am sure to earn the wrath of a few of my more conservative friends for writing this piece.]

When Ra told that he was going to tell me his life’s greatest ‘secret’, I had been a bit puzzled, and wondered what it could be, for I had always thought that we didn’t have any secrets between us. I had felt a little betrayed. We were each other’s confidants, and had been very close friends for more than ten years, in fact quite intimate.

When his mother left the house for the day to visit her ailing sister, we went into his bedroom. Normally at this time we would either play cards or end up debating on social issues, or discussing Lorca (1). I stretched out myself on his bed, which I had always found to be softer than mine, and indignantly demanded to be informed about his secret. Ra kept silent. Then he pulled out a low stool and sat down at his desk. I was waiting for him to begin, but he started rummaging through the lowest drawer of his desk and brought out some boxes that were lying hidden under a pile of junk and old newspapers. From another drawer he brought out a mirror and placed it on the desk, supporting its back on the wall. I kept watching him curiously. Ra made two big paper balls with the old newspapers and then stood up, stealing a quick glance at me before undressing himself. Since we almost grew up together, we weren’t much ashamed of our body. I watched his curly dark hair, flowing gently down his long neck and resting on his shoulders, his big shiny eyes, his sharp nose -in all, he reminded me of Michelangelo’s David. To us, being comfortable with each other's nakedness or being bawdy at times was just another aspect of our closeness, rather than anything sexual. We were lovers as in the Platonic sense (which unfortunately most people simply don't seem to get). ‘Ra is quite beautiful…,’ I briefly wondered – and then abruptly jerked the thought out of my mind, suddenly shocked and a bit ashamed on realizing how unexpectedly these thoughts had silently crept up in my mind and taken over its fantasies. I quickly diverted my attention to a book by Andre Gidé (2) which I found lying on his bed. Ra went away to his mother’s room, but came back in a few minutes, dressed in a white petticoat and a pink blouse, probably inflated with those paper balls. I was about to laugh out loud at what I thought to be a stupid prank, but then I looked into his eyes and froze. I sat up quickly, bewildered. He walked up to the desk and sat down in front of the mirror. He opened the boxes; they were full of eyeliners, rouge, face-powder and other cosmetics. I watched him with surprise and a slight disgust as he brushed the powders on his cheeks, coloring them red, blackened his eyelashes, and applied purple eye shadows, gradually changing into something revolting; something that escaped my reasoning. He wore red lipstick and pressed his lips against each other twice in quick successions, smoothing out its effect, before carefully wiping off the borders with a soft handkerchief. Having finished his make-up, he remained seated silently, gazing at his reflection. I walked up to him slowly, dragging my feet a bit, as if under a trance. I could see myself in the mirror, standing behind Ra. He didn’t turn back; instead he raised his misty eyes to look at me in the mirror. I kept staring at my dear friend Ra, somewhat painfully, as I struggled to accept his new feminine appearance –ugly and inexplicable. My heart was beating faster and my head felt heavy. Old memories rushed in and the frightening uncertainty of future posed doubts and threatened me with questions. Disgust, surprise, shock, fear, and a gamut of feelings that probably have no names, rose and ebbed in my mind. They were tearing off my nerves, gnawing at my heart, and thwarting my reasoning. I took a deep breath and waited for it all to subside.

After a while when I had overcome my initial revulsion, I slowly whispered in his ears, 'Ra, I will always be your friend.'
I heard his faint sobs, but I turned around and left the room silently, closing the door behind me.

(1) Federico Garcia Lorca was a famous Spanish poet and dramatist, who was killed by Falange militia in 1936. His executioner proudly commented, 'I shot two bullets into his arse for being a queer.'

(2) Andre Gide was a Nobel Prize winning author who championed the cause of homosexuality and Platonic love through his works as early as in the 1920s.

*This story was inspired by Pedro Almodovar's film, 'Todo sobre mi Madre'; the title goes as a tribute to his films.