A Viral Infection Within Us

Irina Echarry

I’ve been a little more apprehensive of late. Everybody seems more aggressive, and I believe I’m less tolerant of people. To make matters worse, the death of several puppies a friend and I found has affected me. To feel those little hairless beings so close to me made me understand a lot of things (suddenly we can cease to exist) and it awoke other concerns. I won’t recount the questions that surround me; I’ll only explain how I feel.

Life of late turned very aggressive. People talk louder; they tell horrifying stories on the bus, like how a woman stabbed her son’s stepfather because he had drank the powdered milk she had bought the child after so much sacrifice. Plus people holler insults, like when a bus driver opened the door suddenly and caught the foot of some guy who then screamed “open the door you maricon (“fag”). After that, the driver did nothing for several minutes while the guy’s foot remained caught by the iron door.

Controversy arose among the passengers over whether the guy had demonstrated a bad attitude when he offended the driver.

But no one said anything about the time the door stayed clamped against the guy’s foot; it was normal for the driver to retaliate against someone who offended him like that.

All this is without mentioning daily life in the neighborhood, which is always present when we’re not alone.  A friend of mine, Gissel, was almost dragged to her house by another guy. Though she struggled, he held her with his hands and forced her to walk. Then he told her, “Who’s going to want to be with you if you’re a bitch?”

No one came to Gissel’s defense, though she’s just 16 and pregnant; on the contrary, all of the women on the block looked at each other with complicity and said smugly, “That girl is a lost cause.”

We’ve just ended the month of September, and after seeing all this I’ve realized that eradicating all the violence we suffer will be difficult, almost impossible.

Why? Because it’s not just a little animal that you can scare and that runs away in a panic. It’s not even a stain that will rinse away when we wash ourselves with the right soap. No, I’m talking about a plague that has infected us with a virus, and I don’t still know if we’ll find a medicine that can counteract it.