你的女友名叫阿尔玛，她的脖温软修长，她的臀浑圆结实，像多米尼加舞女，裹在牛仔里，春光荡漾在四度空间里。她的臀美得连月亮都按捺不住出轨的冲动。不过她从不喜欢，直到遇见了你。如果哪一天你的脸没有贴着她的臀，你的牙没有轻咬她的细滑颈腱，这不能算是美好的一天。你喜爱轻咬时她颤抖的躯体，惹火的双臂。她的胳膊极细极瘦，这样的胳膊只会出现在课外青春剧场。
阿尔玛是梅森格罗斯艺术学校的学生，是Sonic Youth的歌迷和漫画迷，如果不是她，你也许永远也不会失去童贞。阿尔玛长在拉丁美洲区域的霍波肯。八十年代，这片区域的心脏地带燃起大火，出租房屋随即化为一片火海。少女时代的阿尔玛每一天都在下东城区度过，她以为这里会是永久的家，直到纽约大学和哥伦比亚大学对她说不，于是她离城区愈远。
她在学画，她画的人都是一种色调，看上去像刚从湖底捞上来。她最后一幅画画的是你，你倚着前门，一副颓废的样子，只有那蹙眉和眼神可辨，它们像是在说，我的童年在肮脏的第三世界，我就是这个态度。她向你展示过前臂的肌肉。“我说过我会绷出肌肉来。” 几个星期前——现在还留有余温——阿尔玛一改黑色装束，开始穿起薄纸般可有可无的衣服，一阵大风就能让她一览无余。她说是为了你，“我现在要回归多米尼加人的传统。”（这不绝对是骗人。为了照顾好你的妈妈，她甚至开始学起西班牙语。）当你看她走在大街上，花枝招展，艳丽袭人，每一个路过的黑鬼心里想什么你都明白。你们是在新布伦瑞克人间天堂吧的拉丁周聚上遇见的。她从不参加那些聚会，只是被高中最好的朋友帕特丽夏——还在听过时的TKA音乐——拉过去的。你终于有了展示自己的机会，你的身体健壮，她的春心激荡。
阿尔玛纤细得像一根芦苇，你是类固醇成瘾的大块头；阿尔玛爱开车，你爱看书；阿尔玛有一辆土星（做木匠的爸爸买给她的，他在家里只说英语），你的驾照上记分还是零；阿尔玛的指甲太脏做不了饭，你的意大利鸡丝面却是她的最爱。你太与众不同了——每次你打开新闻，说她忍受不了政治，她都眨巴眨巴望着你。她不愿意称自己为西班牙人。她在女伴面前宣称你是激进的，真正的多米尼加男人（虽然你的尺寸不包括在内，阿尔玛却是你真正意义上约过的第三个拉丁女孩）。你对你的男孩帮们夸耀她的唱片比你们的都多，她在你身下像白人那样肆无忌惮地叫喊。她在床上比你其他的女孩都富有冒险精神。第一次约会，她问你要不要对着她的脸和胸口。也许从男孩到男人的特训期，你缺少如此深刻的一次，不过，你好像，嗯，并不缺少。每个星期至少有一次，她会对着你跪在床上，不许你碰，只是独自一人放纵。她一只手拽着深色的乳头，另一只手在柔处搅动，脸上是不顾一切的狂喜。她纵情的时候喜欢喃喃地说话——你喜欢看着我对不对，你喜欢听着我……至顶峰的时刻一声崩溃的啸音后，她才准你把她搂入怀抱，顺便把黏手往你胸口抹。我就是这样，她说。
是的——有异性间的引力，有最美好的性，有自然而然的本能。太美妙了！美妙啊！直到六月里的某一天阿尔玛发觉你同时还和这个叫莱克丝美的大一漂亮女生混在一起，发现了她和你的事迹，因为她，阿尔玛，你的女朋友，翻开了你的日记。（看来，她起了疑心。）她在门廊等你。当你开着她的土星过来，看到她手中的日记，你的心扑通坠下，就像绞刑台上的肥胖土匪落入刽子手的陷阱。你磨磨蹭蹭地熄火，充满无际的悲伤。你被她发觉，懊恼不以；你确信无疑认定她不会原谅你，心里难受。你盯着她的美得出奇的双腿和腿间空隙，目光移向那片更加迷人的区域，在过去的八个月里，你爱它爱得是如此不坚定。直到她怒气冲冲走过来，你才走出汽车。你拿出仅存的气急败坏，让自己在草坪上踱来踱去。嘿，小洋娃娃，你这样称呼她。你想搪塞了事。直到她开始尖叫，你才问，亲爱的，至于这样吗？她冲你喊，说你是：
男同性恋
猥亵妈妈的小流氓
假屁股多米尼加男人
然后一口咬定：
你那很小
你那没有
最糟糕的是——你喜欢撒了咖喱的女人（这么说不对，你想解释，因为莱克丝美按理是圭亚那人，但她不听。）
你没有低下头像男人那样爽快承认，而是捡起日记，像拎起婴儿的湿尿布，像捏着泄气的避孕套。你怨恨地撇了一眼走廊。然后转向她，送出一个微笑。那张虚饰的脸孔会永远记得那个微笑，直到死日。宝贝，你说，宝贝啊，我只能在小说里回忆这一切了。
就这样，你失去了她。
You have a girlfriend named Alma, who has a long tender horse neck and a big Dominican ass that seems to exist in a fourth dimension beyond jeans. An ass that could drag the moon out of orbit. An ass she never liked until she met you. Ain’t a day that passes that you don’t want to press your face against that ass or bite the delicate sliding tendons of her neck. You love how she shivers when you bite, how she fights you with those arms that are so skinny they belong on an after-school special.
Alma is a Mason Gross student, one of those Sonic Youth, comic-book-reading alternatinas without whom you might never have lost your virginity. Grew up in Hoboken, part of the Latino community that got its heart burned out in the eighties, tenements turning to flame. Spent nearly every teen-age day on the Lower East Side, thought it would always be home, but then N.Y.U. and Columbia both said nyet, and she ended up even farther from the city than before. She is in a painting phase, and the people she paints are all the color of mold, look like they’ve just been dredged from the bottom of a lake. Her last painting was of you, slouching against the front door: only your frowning I-had-a-lousy-Third-World-childhood-and-all-I-got-was-this-attitude eyes recognizable. She did give you one huge forearm. I told you I’d get the muscles in. The past couple of weeks, now that the warm is here, Alma has abandoned black, started wearing these nothing dresses made out of what feels like tissue paper; it wouldn’t take more than a strong wind to undress her. She says she does it for you: I’m reclaiming my Dominican heritage (which ain’t a complete lie—she’s even taking Spanish to better minister to your mom), and when you see her on the street, flaunting, flaunting, you know exactly what every nigger that walks by is thinking. You met at the weekly Latin parties at the DownUnder in New Brunswick. She never went to those parties, was dragged there by her high-school best friend, Patricia, who still listened to TKA, and this was how you got the chance to strike while, as your boys put it, the pussy was hot.
Alma is slender as a reed, you a steroid-addicted block; Alma loves driving, you books; Alma owns a Saturn (bought for her by her carpenter father, who speaks only English in the house), you have no points on your license; Alma’s nails are too dirty for cooking, your spaghetti con pollo is the best in the land. You are so very different—she rolls her eyes every time you turn on the news and says she can’t “stand” politics. She won’t even call herself Hispanic. She brags to her girls that you’re a “radical” and a real Dominican (even though on the Plátano Index you wouldn’t rank, Alma being only the third Latina you’ve ever really dated). You brag to your boys that she has more albums than any of them do, that she says terrible white-girl things while you fuck. She’s more adventurous in bed than any girl you’ve had; on your first date she asked you if you wanted to come on her tits or her face, and maybe during boy training you didn’t get one of the memos but you were, like, umm, neither. And at least once a week she will kneel on the mattress before you and, with one hand pulling at her dark nipples, will play with herself, not letting you touch at all, fingers whisking the soft of her and her face looking desperately, furiously happy. She loves to talk while she’s being dirty, too, will whisper, You like watching me don’t you, you like listening to me come, and when she finishes lets out this long demolished groan and only then will she allow you to pull her into an embrace as she wipes her gummy fingers on your chest. This is me, she says.
Yes—it’s an opposites-attract sort of thing, it’s a great-sex sort of thing, it’s a no-thinking sort of thing. It’s wonderful! Wonderful! Until one June day Alma discovers that you are also fucking this beautiful freshman girl named Laxmi, discovers the fucking of Laxmi because she, Alma, the girlfriend, opens your journal and reads. (Oh, she had her suspicions.) She waits for you on the stoop, and when you pull up in her Saturn and notice the journal in her hand your heart plunges through you like a fat bandit through a hangman’s trap. You take your time turning off the car. You are overwhelmed by a pelagic sadness. Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertible knowledge that she will never forgive you. You stare at her incredible legs and between them, to that even more incredible pópola you’ve loved so inconstantly these past eight months. Only when she starts walking over in anger do you finally step out. You dance across the lawn, powered by the last fumes of your outrageous sinvergüenzería. Hey, muñeca, you say, prevaricating to the end. When she starts shrieking, you ask her, Darling, what ever is the matter? She calls you:
a cocksucker
a punk motherfucker
a fake-ass Dominican.
She claims:
you have a little penis
no penis
and worst of all that you like curried pussy.
(Which really is unfair, you try to say, since Laxmi is technically from Guyana, but Alma isn’t listening.)
Instead of lowering your head and copping to it like a man, you pick up the journal as one might hold a baby’s beshatted diaper, as one might pinch a recently be-nutted condom. You glance at the offending passages. Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel.
This is how you lose her.
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