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Message-ID: <50536asstr$1109023803@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: El Sol <munster@eden.rutgers.edu>
Subject: {ASSM} Michelle's Story: Alejandro Me Dijo (EK Version) By ElSol (MF, Coll, First)
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Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 17:10:03 -0500
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	ElSol

<1st attachment, "sELKABONG.txt" begin>

Michelle's Story: Alejandro me Dijo (EK Version) By ElSol

   Author's Note: This EK versions mean all characters are of legal age;
additionally this version has an alternate ending to the original.

   ----

   Dedicated to Michelle

   ----

   Nobody expected it, least of all me.

   I was a freshman scholarship student at a university with an excellent
music program and, to my misfortune, a nationally ranked football program.
One of my professors, Dr.  Smith, sweat blood to get me the scholarship
money over an athlete or academic wunder-kid.  She was the older sister of
my first guitar teacher, and had followed my musical growth with interest.

   To stop her nagging, I agreed to perform at the Winter Recital, a
quasi-talent show that the Music Department put on every fall semester.  I
also wanted feel what it was like to be alone in the spotlight.  It was the
future I had chosen and getting used to the glare seemed a necessary step.

   The Recital was a social event at the university.  The schedule of
performances was printed a month before, and I was the only soloist with
freshman in front of their name.  Nobody asked why I was awarded the spot;
they formed the opinion that best fit their collegiate religion.  I guess I
was a heretic of the established order to most of my peers; students worked
hard for those performance slots, and it must have seemed like I was being
given mine.

   Walking in the arrogance of a destined future, I made it worse.

   I touched my first guitar strings before "Ma-Ma" came out of my mouth.
My mother could lay a guitar on the floor and forget me for a morning or
afternoon.  I looked at the other Recital performers with the arrogance
that if our individual practice hours were summed up and compared they
would be years in deficit.  They cried for toys when they were children; my
punishments always involved taking away the guitar.

   Puking twice in the half-hour before I performed was not a favorable
omen.  Professor Smith tried to make light of my clammy, pale skin.

   "I cannot believe that you've never performed in public," she said
brushing imagined lint off my shoulder.

   "It never seemed important," I replied.

   "Not to you!" she said.  "Nothing is as important to you as the guitar,
but those idiot instructors should have known better."

   "One those idiot instructors is your sister," I reminded her.

   "Then there's no one that can judge her capacity for being an idiot with
more authority!" she said, putting the guitar in my arms.

   I felt grounded again and must have looked it because she nodded with
confidence.  I performed near the beginning of the Recital; Professor Smith
wanted me to close the show but was shouted down.  I was singing in Spanish
to a predominantly Caucasian audience went the argument.  I laughed when
she cursed about the prejudice of that stupidity since the final soloist
was singing from an Italian opera.

   They announced my name and even the guitar could not stave off the
return of stage fright.  I walked towards my fate and nodded to the
audience as soon as I was out of the curtain's protective cover.  I moved
to where the stagehands had placed the bar stool in front of the
microphone.

   The lights were painfully bright, and I could barely make anyone out.  I
crooked my neck to the side trying to release the tension.  The microphone
was too high so I adjusted it with trembling hands.  There was a snicker as
the silence extended past what an experienced performer would have allowed.
I looked behind me at the people who would be accompanying me.  They looked
bored, which did not bode well.  I turned back and squinted my eyes to see
if I could make out anyone.  One of the lighting technicians took mercy and
pulled his light away so it did not shine on me directly.

   The silence was broken by feedback when I tried to say hello.  There
were a couple of laughs, increasing my nervousness.  The sound of those
laughs nearly cramped my stomach.  A line of sweat broke out on my brow,
and I cleared my throat nervously.

   She saved me that day.

   The technician moving the light let me see the audience.  Directly in
front of me, a few rows back was Samantha Jones, or 'Miss Samantha Jones'
as the unprivileged called the captain of the dance squad and Undisputed
Campus Goddess.  I thought guys would have left behind the concept of an
Unattainable Dream in high school, but they talked about her around campus
like she was the Hope Diamond.

   Knowing who had to be sitting next to her, Samantha Jones centered me. I
turned my eyes to her left to look at Michelle Debreau: junior, member of
the dance squad, and MY Unattainable.

   She was popular with the guys because she liked sports and could laugh
about guy things.  Unlike Samantha, Michelle looked at people and smiled
when they walked by her around campus.  I got a dose of that smile everyday
of the week because I made sure to be in the dining hall at the same time
that she ate.

   I looked at Samantha, and then at Michelle.

   I had to smile.  I always had to smile when I saw 'Miss Michelle
Debreau'.  I could not see her brown-green eyes, but I knew they would be
shining with sympathy.  I turned around, looked at the musicians behind me,
and waved them off.  I didn't need them to accompany for this.

   I smiled at Michelle again.  She reflected it with a wide one of her
own. Our smiles reduced the world to the two of us, at least for me.

   I didn't have my own words, but hours of Alejandro had put his inside
me.

   Alejandro Sanz was Spanish singer-songwriter, who had captivated me with
'Amiga M'a'.  The subject matter was the most original I'd ever heard.  I
bought every one of his albums, and learned every song by soul.

   He gave voice to what I wanted.  He gave voice to what I wanted to say
to the Dream's handmaiden.

   "Y solo se me occurre amarte" (And it only occurs to me to love you)

   It began with my guitar.  I watched as Michelle leaned forward in the
way she did when something captured her attention.  I touched the guitar
strings lovingly, drawing the music I wanted to give her.

   "Yo quiero darte mi alegr'a, mi guitarra, y mis poesias" (I want to give
you my happiness, my guitar, and my lyrics.)

   I sang the words to her, for her.  She didn't understand a single one,
but that was okay.  I did not understand all of Alejandro's words either. I
hadn't done enough to know what they meant.  I felt each word when I was
near Michelle though, and that night I found a way to make one part of the
song true.

   I showed Michelle my soul.  It ended with the guitar.

   Everyone's silence came into focus.  I nodded at the audience and gave
Michelle a last smile before I walked off stage.  Professor Smith hugged me
tightly and kissed my cheeks hard.

   "God!  You are so fucking beautiful!" she whispered into my ear.

   I knew it wasn't me though.  I couldn't help smile, when I was near
Michelle.

   ----

   The details don't matter, not to me.

   Samantha Jones was envious of the few minutes that I raised Michelle
above her, and even worse because the Winter Recital was such a major
social event that I had done it in front of all her friends, so what?

   Michelle's ex-boyfriend was a junior and a hulking brute of a football
lineman with jealousy running through his veins like acid, so what?

   The ex had two sycophants who would follow him into hell not realizing
that was searing heat they felt, so what?

   The important thing was the second night that Michelle and I came
together, and fell apart.

   She and I became friends.  Not friends in public, but friends in the
privacy outside the doors of the rest of our lives.  She was waiting in her
car when I came out of Professor Smith's class a week after the Recital. 
She smiled and waved me in.  I enjoyed the walk through campus, but the
invitation was not something I could turn down.  She drove to her dorm and
led me into her room.

   Michelle liked to talk, and I liked to listen to her.  She said even if
I did not talk back, she felt like I heard what she wanted to say.  Those
visits to her room ended the same way for two months: my guitar and
Alejandro's words.

   Our last night, it did not end like that.  She was on the floor, and I
was sitting on her bed.  She took the guitar out of my hands and placed her
face close to me.  She kissed me, but I was too overwhelmed to kiss her
back.

   "Kiss me," she encouraged.

   She put her lips on mine and I gave her what felt like my first kiss, or
what everyone's first kiss should be.  She placed her hands on my hips and
moved them underneath my t-shirt.  She separated our lips and took my
t-shirt off.

   I was afraid, not stage fright but virgin discomfort.  The words
Michelle knew me by weren't mine.  I could not live up to them skin to
skin. I was a boy, too much in love with the guitar to have cared about
girls until Michelle.  She deserved a man, and that thought almost made me
flee.

   She stopped me with another kiss.  I drowned in the lavender smell of
her perfume.  I was going to fail, but I had to stay, like I had to smile
when I was near her.

   I had to be inside her even if just once.

   She popped the buttons of my jeans and tugged on their waistline.  I
pushed myself up with my arms.  She pulled my pants and underwear past my
hips.  She took my shoes off and finished stripping me.  Michelle put her
hands on the inside of my thighs and created a space between them for her
body.  She winked at me and took my hard dick in a gentle grip.  She kissed
and stroked me slowly.

   I could not have held out against the first touch of a foreign hand; the
hand I wanted touching me.  I groaned, and my eyes felt hot as I failed
her.

   "It's okay, Miguel," she whispered, and I believed her.  "This is
exactly what I want."

   She tightened her grip and milked the last of the seed from my body. 
She pulled away and looked at me.  She stroked my face with her other hand
and touched my lips with hers.  Michelle moved downwards, and I thought I
was going die.

   I did die, more than once, as she licked, kissed, and then took me into
her mouth.  I wanted to live when she kissed my testicles.

   She stood up and looked down at me.  I was on my back with my legs off
the bed.

   "Stay right there," she said.

   Oh yeah...  like I had somewhere else I wanted to be!

   She stepped backwards with a smile on her face that I would have killed
to make mine forever.  Michelle had a single with its own bathroom; she
stepped inside and closed the door.

   I wished I could have watched her.  I didn't want Michelle to leave my
sight.

   I lay my head back and stared at the ceiling.  I heard the bathroom door
open and looked towards it.  Michelle walked to me naked.  I got hard and
bit my teeth down on each other.  I lost focus for a minute as tears
formed. I blinked them away and looked at her again.  She stood between my
legs and touched her nails to my thighs.

   "Professor Smith told me what song you sang at the Recital," she said.
"I tried to do a word for word translation, and ended up paying to have it
translated right.  I bought every Alejandro Sanz album so I knew each song
you sang to me in the last two months.  I paid to have each one that you've
sung translated too."

   I nodded.

   "Are you ready for your first time?" she asked me.

   I wondered how she knew, but there was no shame in the fact that she
did.

   I nodded.

   "Good," she said and climbed on the bed, then past me.

   She lay down on her back and looked at me.  I scrambled up and got
between her open legs.  She kissed me and took me in her hand.  She guided
me to her center, and I thrust.  She must have winced as I penetrated into
dryness.  I did not know it wasn't supposed to be like that so I pulled
back and thrust harder.  I was fully seated inside her before I looked at
her again.

   Her eyes stopped me.  Michelle wasn't feeling what I did, and the desire
to flee returned.

   "It's okay," she whispered.  "There'll be more times.  This is for you."

   But that wasn't the dream so my body and heart fought over which would
control the rest of my life.

   "Tan pura la vida y tu" (So pure life and you)

   In whispered lyrics, my voice was not deep or dark.  It sounded as
heartfelt as my heart felt living Alejandro's words for the first time. 
Michelle opened her legs wider and gripped higher up my body.

   Gracias Alejandro, por esa noche.  (Thank you Alejandro, for that
night.)

   It was the unattainable as I sang for us.  She pulled me down and I gave
her the song with my lips beside her ear.  She moaned softly as I finished
the first chorus.  She moved her hips beneath me.  She was wet and warm.  I
put my forehead on hers and pulled my hips back.  She squeezed me hard with
her arms as I moved into her.

   The song kept me in place.  I could not move and sing, so I sang and she
moved.  She danced beneath me and as the last amarte (to love you) left my
lips, I kissed her.  She came and I knew...  knew it was the first time she
had done that with a male inside her.  It was in her eyes, the tears and a
small part of what I felt when I looked at her around campus.

   It didn't make me a man, but it felt like it.

   "Your turn," she whispered.

   I was lost for a second, my turn for what?

   She stroked my hips with her hands, and my sex answered the question.  I
pulled back and thrust hard into her.  There was no dryness, only
invitation.

   I came inside Michelle.

   -----

   I guess the tears that touched both our eyes at one time while we made
love meant we cried.  We definitely loved, even if not completely.  We also
laughed afterwards, with each other, about nothing.

   I walked out of her dorm feeling alive.  I could smell the night air. 
I'll remember the clean smell of it for the rest of my life.

   They jumped me behind the freshman dorm.  They pulled me in between the
garbage dumpsters, and the two sycophants held my arms as Michelle's ex
opened my guitar case.  I knew my life was over when he smashed the guitar
against one of the dumpsters.  It wasn't jealousy in his eyes, but raw
hatred.  He pulled out a hammer and stroked the head.

   "Samantha says you should have sang for her," he told me.

   They never proved that Samantha knew exactly what the three were going
to do.  She admitted egging them on when they told her they wanted to get
even for my stealing the football star's girl.

   I struggled as they lay my hand down on a garbage can.

   "Let's see you play now, asshole!" the ex taunted gleefully as he raised
the hammer.

   It came down in slow motion.  Inch by inch, I watched its path until the
pain lanced through my heart.

   They shattered my hands.

   ----

   'Not Guilty' was my second death at their hands months later.

   'Not Guilty' means 'It never happened' when the person it happened to
hears them.  I never woke up in the hospital.  I never screamed at Michelle
to get out of my room.  I never cried in my mother's arms.  I never heard
the words 'You'll never play the guitar like you did, Miguel' come out of a
doctor's mouth.  I never dropped the guitar from the pain.

   I never.

   I NEVER!!!

   "It's over, Miguel," Professor Smith whispered into my ear as she hugged
me when the jury spoke those words.  "Let it go, sweetheart, please!"

   The jury looked at me with pity in their eyes.  Later, one of them
called it, a 'youthful indiscretion' that had to be looked at in the
context of the situation and what was best for everyone's future.  The
truth was that the boys were a part of a team with hopes of a national
championship the next year.  It made the crime forgivable, and even my
fault in the eyes of some.

   Those two words were worse than 'Not Guilty', but I smiled at the
television when I heard them.  I was young too, and I did not have anything
to live for anymore.

   ----

   "Hello, Joseph" I said before I threw the bat in the ex-boyfriend's
face.

   I had been waiting for them inside the weight room by the school
stadium. The three of them liked to lift as a group.  They did it late
enough that there was no one else around so I could watch for Joseph's car
from the window.

   I counted seconds and opened the door when they were about five feet
away.  They looked shocked, but Joseph had the reflexes of a star athlete.
He caught the bat easily.

   He should have been looking low.

   My dad looked on my music with masculine distaste and tried to make sure
I was not going to turn into a maricon (faggot).  He drove me to martial
arts classes Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.  I thought he
looked funny sitting among the moms, but never said anything.

   The youthfully indiscrete boys had taken me from behind and in numbers,
but I had the advantage this time.

   The kick was perfect.  I had practiced it a thousand times when I
decided to be indiscrete.  It angled downward and struck at the knee.  I
hit Joseph with my shin in a kick that would have hurt even if it had
struck higher.  The human body is so fragile, hands and knees break
irreparably with so little pressure.

   Joseph went down with a horrendous scream that mirrored the one my
throat had produced that night.  I took the bat out of his hands and
pointed it at the other two.  They froze seeing their fate in my hate and
rage.  I pulled the bat back and hit Joseph with as much of the barrel as I
could strike his chest with.  His scream died as the air was forced out of
his body.

   One life for one life: my guitar, a pro-football career.  Even Steven,
as any kid might say.

   The two sycophants turned tail and ran when I looked at them again.  I
smiled as I threw the bat end over end at the smaller.  He tripped and slid
a few feet.  He tried to get up, but I smashed his jaw with another one of
my thousand-times practiced kicks.

   He was out.

   I looked up and saw the back of the last one.  I knew where he was going
so I picked up the bat.  I walked back to Joseph, who was also out, and
took his car keys out of his jacket.

   I didn't know how to drive, another unimportant thing compared to my
guitar, so Joseph's car was the worst off for my first attempt.  Somehow, I
made it to the third boy's house before the cops did.  I knew he was
running to mommy and daddy.  They were the ones that paid for the lawyers
and the campaign in support of my attackers.

   I hit the door at the lock with the bat.  It popped open, and I walked
inside.

   "I've already called the cops!" the father yelled at me.  His son was
standing behind them.

   "Sit down, or I'll kill him instead of just hurting him," I said to the
man who had bought his son's innocence.

   "Not my baby, please!" his mother pleaded.

   I pointed to the sofa and pulled the knife out of my back pocket.  The
father's eyes showed that at some point he had known right and wrong; he
understood they had pushed me too far.  I was owed a pair of hands and a
guitar, but I was willing to accept a knee, a jaw, and an arm instead.  He
gathered his wife into his arms and looked away.

   "It's time to make a man's decision, Robert," I told the last of my
guitar's destroyers.

   "I'm going to give you a choice, your head or your arm," I said.  "You
have to the count of three."

   "We didn't mean it!" he begged.

   "One!"

   "I'm sorry, I didn't know Joseph would go that far," he whispered,
echoing Samantha's words.

   "Two!"

   "Put your arm out, Robert," his father yelled.

   "Dad, help me!" the boy cried.  "Mommy, please!"

   "Three!"

   The arm went out automatically as his mind chose life.

   I brought the bat down on his elbow.

   ----

   "Hello, Miguel" said an instantly recognizable voice as I sat with a cup
of tea warming my aching hands at the college coffee shop.

   I looked into brown-green eyes.

   "Am I disturbing you?" she asked sitting down.

   I scanned the room.  Her friends were looking at her curiously while she
stared at me.

   "Hello, Michelle," I said with a sigh.  "I thought you would have
graduated by now."

   I spent three years away hoping I would never see her again.

   "I'm attending the School of Medicine," she told me.  "My father didn't
appreciate the extra year he had to pay for me to take all the
requirements, but doctor is a better career choice than professional
cheerleader so he did it anyway."

   She looked over her shoulder and waved at her friends to go on without
her.

   "How have you been?" she asked, turning back and looking at my hands.

   "I hurt everyday," I told her honestly.

   Somewhere in the years between, I lost the need to smile around her.  A
faint sheen of tears covered her eyes as I got up to leave.

   ----

   She had something to say and regardless of my not wanting to see her,
Michelle was not going to let it go.  She was in my dorm floor lounge every
day or at the cafeteria when I had breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

   "He sang a song for me once," I heard her tell her friends when they
asked why she was pursuing me when I was obviously not interested.

   She had more patience than I did, and finally made it into my room.

   "Do you blame me?" she asked sitting on my bed.

   "No, Michelle," I said.  "I don't blame you, I don't even blame them
anymore.  Something bad happened; I have to live with it for the rest of my
life."

   "I was glad you got even," she said ferociously.

   I nodded.

   "Do you know how sorry I am?" she asked softly.  I nodded again; I knew
exactly how sorry everyone was.

   "I couldn't stay away from you back then," she said.  "I wanted what I
saw in your eyes too much to care that I was doing something wrong by
trying to be with you."

   "There was nothing wrong with what happened between us," I said wearily.

   "It caused that," she said angrily, pointing at my hands.

   I nodded.

   "Do they hurt?" she asked with concern in her eyes.

   "They ache in room temperature," I replied.  "If I hold a cold glass for
too long, they hurt."

   The tears rolled down her cheeks.  I closed my eyes to steel myself
against them.

   "You looked at her, and you looked at me," she said softly.  "And you
chose me."

   I opened my eyes and stared into her.

   "Nobody ever did that," she said.  "I was never someone's choice when
Samantha was around."

   I didn't know what to say.

   "You gave me something she wanted, probably more than anything else in
her entire life because you didn't want to give it to HER," she said. 
"Professor Smith said you played and sang beautifully, but she didn't get
it.  You made me feel beautiful, more beautiful than every other woman
there."

   "They weren't my words, Michelle."

   "No, Miguel," she said.  "But you meant every one, even the ones you
didn't understand, and you sang them all to me."

   I looked away.

   "Everyone in that auditorium felt it," she said.  "With your voice and
guitar, you were better than most of us could be at anything.  We weren't
angry though.  Someday, we would be able to say we were there at Miguel
Sanchez's first public performance.  'You think he's good now, you should
have seen him then.  Young, innocent, and so pure when he sang that first
time.'"

   "I had a recording contract," I told her.

   "What?" she gasped.

   "A Spanish album," I said with tears in my eyes.  "Professor Smith and
her sister got me the audition a couple of weeks before the Winter Recital.
It was all women when I walked into the room.  I thought about you when I
sang for them."

   We never told anyone.

   "No!"

   "They were looking for the right songs," I said closing my hands in
pained fists.

   She hugged me tight and sobbed into my shirt.  We were skin-to-skin
moments later.

   I was on top of her like our first time; it was only my second.

   I waited for her body to warm as we kissed.  She was the one who led my
dick to her.  I pushed in slowly, and her pussy welcomed me.  She was like
the warmth from a cup on my hands; the pain fell away.

   I pulled back and thrust into her fully.  She wrapped her legs around my
waist.  I pulled back and fucked into my lost dream.  She had been waiting
those years too.  It felt like her body heated and then released all of it
into me.  I loved the pressure her pussy surrounded me with and the sound
of Michelle's pleasure.

   She kissed my hands before she fell asleep.

   There was no music, no laughter, but plenty of tears.

   ----

   I woke up as the sun hit the window of my dorm room.  They had given me
a single because I needed to keep the room warmer than most people liked.
Michelle was still asleep beside me.  I climbed out of bed and went to the
bathroom to brush my teeth.

   I opened my closet door and pulled out my guitar case when I came back.
My father had commissioned my new guitar.  There were tears in his eyes the
first time he heard me on it.  I pulled the chair out to the middle of the
room and turned my back to the sleeping woman in my bed.

   The guitar, the music, and me held back the pain as long as we could. 
It always won in the end though.

   I couldn't touch the strings like I had before.  The music sounded off,
stilted, over-precise, and hesitant.  The weakness in it grew with each
passing minute until I gasped as the pain became too intense.  I put the
guitar back in the case and looked out my window.

   "I thought you couldn't play anymore," Michelle asked.

   "I can play now," I said.  "Pero no puedo tocar.  (But I can't touch,
play a musical instrument)"

   "It's the same thing," she said.

   I turned to her in surprise.

   "I took a lot of Spanish classes in between those requirements for
medical school," she explained.

   "Do you remember when I sang to you?" I asked her.

   "I remember every night," she answered.

   "Did you think I was playing?"

   -----

   "Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.  It has been two days since my
last confession."

   "And a good two days those were, Miguelito," he replied.

   We were sitting face to face like the new confessional rules said we
should; I preferred the screen.

   "At least, there were forty-eight hours for you to do something young
and foolish," he said with a sigh.

   I went to confession every day after the judge announced in open court
that he would not imprison someone who had been failed so grievously by the
justice system because of a game.  My mother had prayed even though we were
only as religious as going to church every Sunday made us.  I found some
comfort afterward in the silence of confession and the prayers that our
priest set as punishment.

   "So exactly what is it that you've done, Miguelito?" he asked.

   "I lied to a woman," I confessed.

   He was silent for a moment before nodding.

   "She asked me if I blamed her for my broken hands; I told her I didn't,"
I said quietly.  "I told her I didn't even blame those boys."

   "Why did you say that, Miguel?"

   "Because I thought it would make her think I was a better man than I
am," I replied.

   He nodded and looked away.

   "Do you blame her?"

   "Yes."

   "But you want her to think you're a good man?" he asked.

   "I know I'm wrong," I said.  "How much I blame her is nothing compared
to those boys or myself."

   "And God, of course," he finished for me.

   I bit my lip.

   "It's what you've never said.  What you've never asked since you started
coming here every day, Miguel."

   I bit harder until the pain in my lip matched what I felt when my hands
touched guitar strings for too long.

   "You've been coming here hoping I would tell you why God did this to
you," he said.

   I shook my head.

   "Don't lie to me, Miguel," he warned.  "You're not good at it, and I've
been in here with the best."

   I smiled at him.

   "I prayed for Michelle.  I remember lying in bed, and saying 'God, if
you give her to me, I'll be happy.'"

   "And you think, he gave her to you and took away the guitar."

   "He gave me a gift, and I spit on it because I wanted her."

   "That's not the way God does things, Miguel."

   I was silent.

   "You're going to have to bring this girl to Mass," he said suddenly.  "I
like her.  She makes you feel and that's good for you.  She's good for
you."

   I looked at him angrily.

   "False piousness isn't going to make God give you your hands back, mi
hijo (my son)."

   "Then what is, Father?" I asked desperately.

   He looked at me sadly.

   "Todav'a puedes cantar, (You can still sing)," he said.

   "I don't want to sing, I want my guitar back."

   "God gave you a gift, Miguel."

   "TAKING MY HANDS IS NOT A GIFT!" I screamed at him.

   He closed his eyes and shook his head.

   "Your mother's going to like this girl too," he said finally.

   I looked at the floor.

   "She cried these last three years, and she cries every time you come
home," he said.

   I raised my eyes to him.

   "Your father and her stand outside your room when you sing, and she
cries," he said looking at me in wonder.  "She knows the pain in your
voice, not as your mother, but as someone that has suffered it and other
pains.  God gave you a gift, Miguel."

   I shook my head.

   "You don't want to blame Michelle, do you?"

   I stared at him in surprise.

   "I was there when you sang to her; your mother invited me.  I know who
Michelle is."

   "No, I don't want to blame her anymore."

   "Then let it go, Miguelito," he said.  "That's the gift, I'm talking
about.  God brought her back to you because with her you don't need to come
here everyday."

   We sat in silence for fifteen minutes.

   I got up and shook his hand.  I turned to walk out of his office.

   "Que vas hacer (What are you going to do), Miguel?" he asked.

   "I can only play for a half-hour before the pain is too much.  She was
in my bed this morning, and I played for forty-five minutes."

   "A woman that makes intolerable pain half-again as bearable.  She is a
gift," he said.  "But let's not talk about what she was doing in your bed."

   I turned to look at him.

   "Intolerable pain bearable, I didn't know you were a poet, Padre
(Father)," I said.

   "When you're ready to stop singing Alejandro's songs, and start singing
your own, come back.  I didn't always want to be a priest."

   I nodded slowly and turned around.

   "You didn't tell me what you're going to do now, Miguel."

   I opened the door and looked into the church.

   "Voy a cantar...  a llorar...  tocar mi guitarra y mi mujer.  Lo dem�s
se lo dejo a Dios.  (I'm going to sing, cry, play my guitar and touch my
woman.  The rest, I leave to God.)"

   ----

   "May I see them?" one of Michelle's colleagues asked.

   He was the twelfth that night so my hands were on the way to his before
he finished the question.  He held them gently, turning them this way and
that to study Michelle's work.

   "Seven?" he asked Michelle who was standing next to me.

   "Four to the left hand, and three to the right hand," she told him. 
"Miguel's left required more delicate work than I originally thought so I
needed the extra operation."

   "Wonderful work," he said nodding his head proudly.  "You are an artist,
Dr.  Sanchez!"

   "Thank you," she said beaming at his praise.

   "And you, young man," he said looking at me.  "An excellent
performance."

   I smiled and nodded.  The artists at our little celebration did their
praising in the reverse order of the doctors: my performance and then my
wife's surgical skills.

   "Here he comes," Michelle said looking over my shoulder.

   I turned to see our son, with his grandmothers in hot pursuit, weaving
through the crowd dragging one of my guitars behind him.

   "I hope that critic likes kids," Michelle winced as the guitar clipped
one of our guests.

   "Papa!" my son yelled, running around behind us to place bodies between
him and his grandmothers.  Michelle's mother looked at us expectantly,
while mine continued the chase.

   "Michael!" Michelle warned, bringing our son to a guilty halt.

   "I want to play!" he complained.

   "Lo tienes que pedir bien!  (You have to ask politely)," my mother
admonished before picking him up.

   "Please, daddy!" he pleaded reaching out for me.  I took him out of my
mother's arms and picked up the guitar.

   "You're spoiling him, Miguel!" Michelle said.

   "Oh yeah, I'm the one that spoils him," I said raising an eyebrow.

   She blushed, but didn't say anything else.  I carried Michael to a
nearby chair and sat with him in my lap.  I placed the guitar carefully so
he could reach the strings.

   "Para mi mama (For my mother)," Michael declared before beginning the
first song I had taught him.  Michelle's love, tears of joy, and kisses
were his only rewards for playing well.

   I understood why it was enough.
   The End 

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