I HAVE BEEN STARING

I have been staring directly into the sun and I haven't been blinded. I have been eating from taco stands on the streets of Matamoros and I haven't been sick. I have been farting in front of my wife and she still hasn't left me in disgust.

I have been living dangerously, carelessly, foolishly, but I haven't paid the price. Despite my sense of omnipotence, I feel death all around me. I smell death. It has an acrid scent. I feel I'm covered with a body odor and I can't scrub myself clean.

I dreamed I was sitting in my mother's front room crying in her presence, but when I looked at her for comfort, she was indifferent, almost ashamed of me. I asked myself what I had done to deserve her scorn, but then I realized what hadn't I done to deserve her scorn.

The blogs are right. I am scum, but it isn't my fault. My parents never gave me enough attention. I married into one of the most powerful families in Brownsville and learned that stabbing people in the back and stealing from the poor were the expected acts from a future leader.

I am the Robin Hood of the wealthy, fleecing the powerless to give to the powerful, but we can't let government fall into the hands of the rabble. There are only a few of us fit to govern.

As a millionaire friend once told me, "You may be a jerk, Pancracio, but you're our jerk."