The Road To Brownsville...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

The rococo age of border feminism has its center in Brownsville. It is said, at times proudly, that the women of Brownsville are all Libertines able to please even the most naked and lecherous of brown-skinned devils. Historians will say, no insist, that modern moans originated in this town of some 140,000 love-starved souls, moanings of the midnight variety, those that speak not of pain, but of pleasure.

In this most chimerical community, it is the woman who labors at work, who offers herself as mule, who cannot help but know that she is the vehicle for what does its best to appear as sangfroid comedy. Was it here, a visitor from the north was driven to ask upon arrival, that the utilitarian condom was invented, that sheath of protectant rubber that allows a man to go at sexual escapades with all the bold panache of a skilled, main-corrida bullfighter, and that allows a woman to go gently, willingly, into the soft rockings of the bedsprings?

Was it here?

In fact, there is no answer to that and to an avalanche of other pertinent questions one could ask the locals, all flailers at the brightened phantoms that arrive as dreams. One dare not ask: Who invented this awful place? The reply would be as if a symphony of a murder of crows, so loud and painful to the ear as if to drown out the very screamings coming from the spousal whippings that move across town like mini-tsunamis soon after suppertime.

The acknowledged Bard of the Barrio, one Dr. G.F. McHale-Scully, has been studying the entire female aspect of his neighborhood. He has begun what promises to be the last & final tome to do with characterization of dusty, sleepy Brownsville in his blog, http://www.browntownnews.com/. Mssr. McHale-Scully, known for partaking in the essence of border life, is traipsing across the local geography like a detective in search of the lost hymen. He has been especially kind in writing about Herminia, a gregarious young prostitute from the innards of the poor, but proud Southmost sector.

In describing that affair, he notes that the skilled Herminia is really the daughter of a washerwoman who has, of late, been taking-in his clothing, black cape included. He remembers her for piety and a coyness unexpected in a profession whose representatives are regarded as fair game in area motels. Perhaps her coyness, he noted in a report titled Long, Long Night With Animals, could be explained by a singular characteristic she displayed when she had succumbed quickly to his advances at the Inn of The Camerons: in the absence of underwear, Herminia proceeded to fart in time to his every thrust. She continued to do so 'like the bass of an orchestra marking time in a piece of music', thereby reducing him to helpless and impotent laughter.

"I remained there sitting in the lobby for more than a hour before I could shake off the comedy, which makes me laugh even now every time I think of it," he wrote at dawn.

That giddy prostitute's experience is but one vista into the women of Brownsville. It is, say many, a road still being charted, mainly by the vagabonds, the politicians and the dispossessed, of which there are many.

Central to the region's women is a certain psyche lapped on them by the very men they serve. Some will say that things are changing in favor of the weaker sex, but a closer look at their claims yields profound suspicion. The women pictured in the photograph atop this report are leaders in Brownsville governance. They represent a recent surge, a stab, at belonging. Yet, as could be expected in a priapic town, they have been mentally undressed at most turns, their efforts to be and act like men stunted at every oportunity, even by the aforementioned Dr. McHale-Scully, a bon vivant who admits he chronicles things, women included, as he sees them, especially late at night and when drunk.

Still, the writer has plowed through more than his share of local women, marrying a half-dozen and fathering almost a band of kiddoes. But, and this is important, he is but one of the musketeers! There is an entire male army of swordsmen in town, each and every one of them quick to stake his claim as the Biggest, Baddest Sword in the Kingdom. What say the women?

To date, their story has been largely ignored, as countless reports have sailed to the high skies telling of the male escapades. Has that been fair? Is the town's recorded history reflective of woman's contributions? Nyet, says the local politician aware of some Russian lingo. Not even close.

Woman, in this town, has been the mother to a thousand and one bastards.

They have, as the French might say, been the ones to "ecarter" their lower limbs; that is, they have pushed their legs aside for the benefit of the whole, birthing the very men who have as yet not granted them even the slightest of praise.

In time, the Brownsville woman will write her story.

In time, the ledger will be balanced. Pray for Brownsville men...

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