EL PRIEST NO BUEN MOSO

My mom tells me the priest was neither good looking, buen moso, or homely; he was neither skinny nor tall, it's almost as if he had a face destined to get swallowed by fatherland forces. Or, maybe, he had the look he would always wear, as is what transpires between those that die young and those that die regrettably. I have to trust mother filtering his physical resonance because it's been over forty years since she's had to think about this man.

I also know he was disappeared shortly after my parents left Buenos Aires on that freight ship. I can only assume that had they not left, my parents would have also been disappeared, and chances are I would not have been born in Brooklyn in 1975. I would have remained an idea, an eye glint, an apostrophe without a sentence.

Therefore, this priest might knowingly unlock some another large province of conjecture and so finding him and or at least finding out what happened to him sometimes grabs me by my lapels. Either he was murdered by the military, but not before being summarily tortured for months on end; or, he was tortured by the military, incarcerated until the country went Democratic in 1982, and then reintegrated into society.

I imagine him a 40 year old of youthful hue, an Eternalist, someone who makes aging look facile and studied. Dark skinned and raven-haired, he was probably from the interior of the country, a sect of people already under scrutiny in a country where the caudillos openly walked over the provincials. I imagine him having a terrible memory, requiring the services of tiny notebooks and manuscript receipts in his pockets at all times, plus a ball-point pen.

I imagine him an hincha of Boca Juniors. Nothing too fancy. They call the hinchas of Boca Juniors bosteros, or manuremen, because the team was situated in the port and its fans were the laborers that made their living from the port. They were garbage men and stevedores, pick pockets and petermen. In other words, the priest could not have gone into the villas or slums without being an hincha of Boca.