Fabio G. Martinez
01/08/2021 22:00
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 01/08/2021 22:00
Tomi fell home one afternoon.
In the course, in Tartagal, we hardly greeted each other, but since kindergarten we went to school together and you could say that we were friends.
If she looked through the old photos that Mom kept in a drawer, she would surely find several of him.
Tomi - perhaps his real name was something different - was half unbalanced: Dragon Ball Zeta, the Knights of the Zodiac;
Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat burned his brain cells.
He wore a red headband just like Ryu's and the bums made fun of him, telling him that he looked like Gauchito Gil.
They made it envious because
Tomi was a fachero and whatever he wore suited him well
.
Sometimes they would get heavy on the worn ones, then Tomi would square himself in a karate pose and lift his leg above his head and launch an upward kick that sliced through the air.
Those who made fun there just lowered their heads and stopped laughing.
I kept reading
The condemnation we inherited from the century of lights
Society
In the course he always sat in front of the blackboard and never opened his mouth except when the boys were talking about Dragon Ball.
I never understood the passion they had for that cartoon.
I watched "Friends are friends" and "Videomatch."
I remember one morning that the course looked like a wake.
Tomi sat in the usual place, put the backpack aside and turned around.
His eyes were red as if he had cried all night.
"What's wrong with this one?" I asked Nazarena.
"Krillin died."
-And what does that have to do?
That time.
Fabio Martínez, guitar in hand, adolescent, in the years when he met Tomi very often.
—He's Goku's best friend.
It's as if Pablo, Carlin's friend, died, ”he said and I realized that not only Tomi was wrong.
At recess, all the kids talked about was the death of that anime character.
Tomi, like an asshole, spent the whole day playing video games and when the consoles arrived, he was playing for twelve hours straight, stopping just to eat something or go to the bathroom.
All his life he related it to fighting, power, fighting techniques, fatalities and ki.
He respected his colleagues who, according to him, fought well, and those who were "weak" he treated badly, in a contemptuous way.
One would ask him anything, as if he were going to the Negro's house and he would reply:
"I'm going, because the Negro is a fighter," and he added as if he were Ryu in battle:
"Shoryuken!"
He never loved Luchito because he didn't hit a fly and Hugo only banked him because he was funny and skinny like Dhalsim, the Indian fighter from the Street Fighter.
What's more, at the end of the first year, I had problems with the Mataco Marcos and Panzón, (two shoe shiners who always walked around the square) and Tomi came to talk to me so that we could confront them.
-
Let's fight in the river, hand in hand.
You with Marcos.
Me with Panzón,
”he said.
Bariloche.
The author during the trip of high school graduates.
From then until recently, he had no further contact with his partner.
"Could be," I replied, as if to go along with it.
"It's going to be an epic fight, like the one between Cachito Cortez and Martín O'Fredy."
We're going to kill hadouken, ”he said and threw a pair of hooks into the air.
Cachito Cortez was a short muscular man, a black belt and a quilombero to die for, at one time he had been my brother's best friend because he lived right around the house.
But I got smaller and Tomi found out.
He spent several days without speaking to me.
Only one thing told me:
"I thought you banked it."
Tomi started coming home some afternoons.
Sometimes it became unbearable.
In addition to the chapters of Dragon Ball, the fighting techniques and the sounds of the Street Figther, his other great topic of conversation was the meteorite that according to him was going to fall on the ground I do not know when or where, but only the strongest were going to survive.
That is why
he trained from Monday to Saturday night for two hours: he did push-ups, barbells, sit-ups, squats
and lifted homemade weights made with pieces of bottles and sand to raise his power to the maximum and become a great fighter.
He locked his arms and showed me his inflated and marked muscles.
It looked like his veins were going to explode.
"The world is divided between the weak and the strong."
And I train to be on the side of the strong, because they are going to be the only ones who are going to survive, ”he said seriously as he adjusted his headband.
He always thought about when it became like this.
As a child he played ball with us or talked about other things, although I admit that he was always very self-absorbed, sometimes, his gaze would get lost anywhere as if his mind were elsewhere and one had to call him firmly so that come back.
According to Naza, who seemed to know everything about Tomi, the fight and training came to him in the middle of seventh grade when they robbed him of a block from the plaza.
Tomi had bathed and perfumed and was going to electronic games.
Two shoeshiners crossed the corner.
They were boys, like him.
One of the polishers put the drawer on the floor and reached back as if he were about to remove something from his waist and said:
"Gringo, the wallet and the watch."
Tomi hesitated, looked at the street, the sidewalk in front, looked back but it was the siesta, the sun was in full swing, the tar on the asphalt was melting, no one was walking at that hour and the shoeshine made the pretense of taking something out and Tomi He detached the watch and gave it to her.
He took out his wallet and wanted to choose the bills and coins but the other polisher grabbed it at him and they left
.
They turned around and neither had anything on their waists.
Tomi went home.
He cried the entire way because of the anger he had.
That was what Naza told me and according to her from that day Tomi promised himself never to be a weak boy again.
That is why it was so.
Usually in the afternoon, I was always alone.
So we would go out to the patio, take off our shirts, leave them spread out on two chairs, put on the boxing gloves my brother had and do a couple of rounds.
With the sun blazing over our heads, we beat each other from the waist to the neck.
We threw hundreds of shots without any technique, on the fly, with low defense and badly stopped.
He could never hold out for three minutes.
He ended up with purple arms and tired.
Instead, Tomi jumped from one side to the other and touched his nose with his thumb like Bruce Lee did.
The smell of sweat mixed with the scent of the Dufour Blue that we both used.
We splashed water on each other, wet our hair, and waited in the sun to dry ourselves.
We went home with a naked torso, T-shirt in hand and, in the room, we turned on the TV and put on MuchMusic or MTV which, unlike now, were music channels and had good songs.
You could stay twenty-four hours between Much and MTV, without the need to do so much zapping.
Tomi would lift the mattress and take out the Triple X Comics magazine or what was left of it
.
It was without a lid and many sheets were missing.
She turned the pages without paying much attention as if those huge breasts that appeared in various pictures didn't interest her.
I don't know when it started, who approached, at what moment the first touch happened.
The thing was, without saying anything, we locked the door with the nightstand, closed the curtain, hugged each other, and so we fell into bed.
We struggled as if to see who was the strongest, at first it was as if we were following the fight in the yard but this time hand to hand, we disarmed the bed, some pillows fell to the floor, our breathing quickened until I gave in and Tomi gave me turned and threw himself on top of me.
It rubbed on my body and I felt it, it came and went, it brushed my back and my tail.
His big hands on my shoulders, pushed down.
Sometimes I would bite the bedspread until I felt the dampness of my drool.
On the wall, our shadows were confusedly reflected as if we were one.
I tried to lower my pants and felt his hand caressing my buttock, squeezing it.
With an effort, I would turn and let go, and again the hand-to-hand fight began until Tomi was face down, with his arms outstretched;
I threw myself on top of him, I supported him over and over again, first slowly and gently and then with more intensity;
His thighs felt firm and his breathing was agitated, his pants were slightly lowered and his underwear was exposed.
And although at that moment what he wanted the most was to be inside him, we would get there and let go.
Still agitated, we lay on the bed, side by side, in silence, sweating, catching our breath and staring at the ceiling until Tomi talked about fighting, training, and Goku, and I pretended to pay attention to him.
"When I'm ready, I'm going to confront Marcos and Panzón."
The two of them together at the same time - she said and between the sheets she looked for the red headband, stretched it, adjusted her hair and adjusted it like Ryu.
It was beautiful.
"Bactactactuuken!"
I said to him as if to go along with him and he would correct me and teach me to pronounce the tornado kick well.
I don't know how many afternoons we did the same, how many episodes of Dragon Ball he told me, until one day, in that hand-to-hand struggle, I lowered his pants and briefs to his knees and supported him with my pants on.
I did it several times and Tomi went hard, lay down on his stomach and hid his face
between the pillows.
How could he put his pants up.
It took me a while to realize that I was crying.
I sat on the edge of the bed, lightly touched her shoulder, and asked, "Are you okay?"
"We're fucking," she told me through tears.
I didn't know what to say to him, I lay down next to him, hugged him and we stayed like that for a long time.
That was the last afternoon, Tomi stopped coming home and got a boyfriend with a girl who split the earth.
However, Dragon Ball, Street Fighter, training and the end of the world lasted until the fifth year.
I have never been with a man like that again.
Although, once, in the “Ojo Bizarro”, (a mythical bar in Córdoba already closed), a kid invited me a beer.
We talked for a long time in the bathroom while a bunch of guys came in to snort cocaine quite naturally
.
The kid smiled at me all the time and laughed at my stories, I liked that.
At one point we were very close, I felt his breath and we looked at each other's mouths several times at the same time, but nothing happened.
Almost fifteen years ago I shared my life with a woman, she is also from Tartagal but we ended up meeting in Córdoba.
We have two sons.
The oldest recently turned eleven years old and is a fan of the Arcade, he likes PacMan, Snow World and Street Fighter, he always chooses Ryu.
With him I saw Dragon Ball for the first time and when the chapter where Mr. Piccolo dies at the hands of the Saiyans arrived I understood Tomi's fanaticism.
It's a great anime.
I found Tomi again on social media.
He is an engineer and in several photos he is seen with a man as cute as him in different parts of the world.
There is an image that caught my attention, it is in China on a cobbled street, Tomi is standing like Chun-Li with his fists clenched close to his body and his gaze at the ground, behind there are stalls of a street market and even a cage with chickens
From time to time we text each other.
I told him that I saw Dragon Ball and that I am playing Street Fighter better and better.
Before writing this text, I asked him what he thought and he told me that he was grateful for everything that had happened in his life because each of those things helped him to be the person he is now.
Very early last Sunday, he sent me an audio on WhatsApp.
I heard it as soon as I got up.
They were the sounds of the Street Figther, those of Ryu, those of Ken, those of Honda and even the Guiles.
I was very amused and I answered him with several hearts and thanked him for making my day.
----------
Fabio G. Martínez
is a writer, coordinator of literary workshops and a mid-level teacher.
He was born in Campamento Vespucio, Salta.
He lived his childhood and adolescence in Tartagal.
At 17 he went to study in Córdoba and did not come back.
Writing about those years and the city in which he grew up is his way of returning.
In 2010 he published his book of short stories “Wake me up when it's night” (Edit. Nudista) which won third prize at the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 2013 he published his first novel "Los pibes suicidas" (Edit. Nudista).
In 2019 he edited with Borde Perdido “El Grupo anti-pop del norte argentino”.
In 2020, Kala ediciones and Color ciego published the same book with new and old stories "On the day of spring."