In the spring of 1999, 10 years ago, it began the student work stoppage at UNAM. Even though Psychology School -and UNAM, in general- was closed due to political reasons, I went to school almost twice per week and I saw many students really involved in several activities to inform people about the situation. There was a kitchen in the school and everyone was helping out students. Students were organized and they seemed to have a purpose.
By the end of autumn, the student work stoppage looked endless. Ciudad Universitaria was a disaster. Tons of garbage surrounded the campus. Students and some other unidentified guys, lived in there. Laboratories and classrooms were small apartments. Entire basic research projects were dead. Experimental animals were starved and dirty, or dead. Sophisticated computers and Skinner boxes available for basic research experiments had disappeared, had been stolen, or simply didn't work. People taking drugs everywhere was common.
I started to feel sick. I was bored, desperate, tired and sleepy all the time. The physician told me I needed to get involved in some academic or physical activity. I had been for months just reading and writing at home, and visiting Ciudad Universitaria once in a while.
Didn't have real friends nor a girlfriend, so I was kind of lonely and depressed, too.
I went to a literary workshop, to get rid off my nerves, and there I met some guys interested in writing. After a while, we started to hang out. We drank alcohol and read our poems. It was nice, even though I didn't like their attitude. They behave like if they were a living poem.
Suddenly, a tiny little girl arrived to the workshop. Her name was Natalia, and looked pretty shy. She knew some guys at the workshop and she greeted them with a kiss in the mouth. It was a very hippie thing, to me. Hated it. I thought she maybe had sex with them regularly, too. It was disgusting.
Her poems were incredibly sordid and sad, but awesome.
One of the guys at the workshop, studied at TEC de Monterrey. He liked Xavier Villaurrutia and he wrote poems, too. When it was his birthday, he invited us to his house. We drank all night long. He studied physics and talked about Einstein. The other guys talked about Piedra De Sol and Muerte Sin Fin. I was more into suspense than poetry, so they kinda bored me.
At some point, Natalia started to kiss me. We were completely drunk. Her brackets drove me wild. I started to feel her hair in my lips and mouth, and I complained about it. She smiled and said that her hair was a part of her, too.
It was funny, but when we were sober, back at the workshop another day, Natalia started to behave as if she wanted to be my girlfriend. I was so prejudiced. Didn't like hippies, nor poets. Later, she started to write me letters and poems, and I always told her I didn't want to have a relationship with her.
She got my telephone number and called me up once. She was drunk and crying. Asked me why I didn't want to be her boyfriend. I told her that she was a very sad person, even to me, and that I didn't want to get involved with a sad person.
She told me that she didn't want to be a sad person, and tried to blackmail me. Natalia wanted me to know that she was able to kill herself, and finished rephrasing Dostoievski:
"I believed in God, but he doesn't believe in me".
Someone told me she's married to a junkie and that they lived in a small hippie village close to the sea. They make a living off of arts and crafts. I'm sure I'll never see Natalia again.
I still have her letters, at my mom's house. I'm curious about what they exactly say.
[Torn-Ednaswap]
Slip of the pen
Torn
