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 THE HISTO RY OF

M
Essays on the History
en
of American and British
Masculinities

M I C H A E L S. K I M M E L
THE HISTORY
OF

MEN
This page intentionally left blank.
 THE HISTORY
OF

MEN
Essays in the History of American
and British Masculinities

Michael S. Kimmel

State University of New York Press

 Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2005 Michael S. Kimmel

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including elec-
tronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, record-
ing, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press,

90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Dana Foote

Marketing by Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kimmel, Michael S.
The history of men : essays in the history of American and British masculinities /
Michael S. Kimmel
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–7914–6339–7 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 0–7914–6340–0 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Men—United States. 2. Men—Great Britain. 3. Masculinity—United States.
4. Masculinity—Great Britain. 5. Sex role—United States. 6. Sex role—United
States. I. Title.

HQ1090.3.K552 2005
305.31'0973—dc22 2004060670

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 For Lillian and Hank,
and the families we create
This page intentionally left blank.
 Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction

1 Invisible Masculinity 3

American Masculinities

2 Born to Run: Fantasies of Male Escape from

Rip Van Winkle to Robert Bly 19

3 Consuming Manhood: The Feminization

of American Culture and the Recreation
of the Male Body, 1832–1920 37

4 Baseball and the Reconstitution of American

Masculinity, 1880–1920 61

5 Men’s Responses to Feminism at the

Turn of the Century 73

6 The Cult of Masculinity: American Social

Character and the Legacy of the Cowboy 91

7 From “Conscience and Common Sense” to

“Feminism for Men”: Pro-Feminist Men’s
Rhetoric of Support for Women’s Equality 105

British Masculinities

8 From Lord and Master to Cuckold and Fop:

Masculinity in 17th-Century England 125

vii
viii Contents

MUNDUS FOPPENSIS AND THE LEVELLERS 143

9 “Greedy Kisses” and “Melting Extasy”:

Notes on the Homosexual World of Early
18th-Century England as Found in
Love Letters Between a certain late
Nobleman and the famous Mr. Wilson 191

LOVE LETTERS BETWEEN A CERTAIN LATE

NOBLEMAN AND THE FAMOUS MR. WILSON . . . 197

Notes 231

References 241

Index 253
 Preface

The title of this collection, The History of Men, is intended to be somewhat

ironic. The essays contained here hardly constitute a full-scale history of
American and British men. Indeed, much of my historical work has been to
join with others in beginning such a project, to begin to see historical devel-
opments involving men through a gender lens—much the way feminist
women had been viewing women’s historical and contemporary experiences
for the past three decades.
The title is also intended to be somewhat provocative. In no way is a his-
torical interrogation of American and British masculinities the same thing as
a history of actual, corporeal men. These essays investigate the various ways
that the ideology of masculinity—the cultural meanings of manhood—have
been shaped by the course of historical events, and in turn, how ideas about
masculinity have also served to shape those historical events. (I emphasize this
only because the single negative review of my book, Manhood in America, con-
fused the two, as a graduate student in creative writing seemed incapable of
understanding the distinction between men and manhood, and thus accused me
of writing a one-dimensional history of men.)
Even though it is about masculinities and not about men, this work can-
not even begin to encompass the history of the idea of masculinity in Britain
and the United States. In part, I think, it’s because the field of Gender Stud-
ies has expanded so dramatically over the two decades in which these essays
were written. It’s an exciting time in intellectual history, as the voices of those
who have been so long silenced and marginalized are finally being heard.
Women, working-class people, people of color, gay men, and lesbians are all
demanding to be included in the historical pageant; indeed their silencing and
marginalization constitute some of the most important stories in that great
historical narrative. These groups are at last becoming historically and cultur-
ally visible.
This struggle has opened a space for those who have historically been
superordinate to begin to retheorize their invisibility. While white people, men,
heterosexuals, and middle-class people have been hypervisible—indeed, the
traditional narrative contains nothing but those groups—these superordinate
groups have also been invisible as specifically constituted groups. To be white, or
male, or heterosexual was to be “American,” to occupy the only raced, gen-
dered, or sexual space available in the great story.
In a sense, what happens to superordinates is the obverse of what hap-
pens to subordinates. For years, minorities and women would try and explain

ix
x Preface

the peculiar ways in which they felt both hypervisible and invisible when they
were virtually the only one of their “category” in a group. Being a token links
two experiences: On the one hand, one is extremely visible as a member of the
minority group. On the other hand, one is utterly invisible as an individual. So,
for example, historically underrepresented groups, like women and blacks,
would constantly hear a question put to them by a well-meaning colleague or
coworker, “So, just how do black people (or women, or Jews, or gay men, or les-
bians) feel about this issue?”
That’s the moment of hypervisibility (as a member of the group) and
invisibility (as an individual). Typically, one would respond by saying, wearily,
“I don’t know how all of that group feels. You’d have to ask them. I can only
tell you how I feel.” (Such a process attempts to reclaim a position as a distinct
individual separate from group membership.)
By contrast, the superordinate is usually hypervisible as an individual;
indeed, to be a straight white man is to embody exactly what an “individual”
is. As a result, one is invisible as a member of a group; one rarely considers race,
gender, or sexuality if you are a member of the dominant group.
In a telling experiment several years ago, groups of college students were
asked to write down the 10 most important words that describe their identi-
ties, who they are. Invariably, women all listed “woman” in the top three, gay
people listed their sexuality, and African Americans almost always placed
“black” as their number one descriptor. Yet not one heterosexual put that word
in their top 10, not one man listed “male,” and only one white person put
“white” as a descriptor—and that was followed by “Aryan,” perhaps indicating
that the person identified as a racist.
To see only the subordinate as “having” a race, a gender, or a sexuality is
exactly the process that reminds the superordinate that he has none, that he
is universal, the invisible norm against which others are measured.
I regard my work as an attempt to make masculinity visible, to begin to
explore how the particular historical and social definitions of masculinity have
developed, from whence they have come and where they might be going. This
is more than a project of a historical sociologist: it is a political process. Just as
the dynamics that have marginalized “others” is a political process, so too is the
process of decentering others as the unexamined norm. As my work has evolved
over the past two decades, I’ve sought to contribute to that political project.
The lead essay in this collection, “Invisible Masculinity,” describes the
process by which I became aware of class, race, and gender in my own life, and
the political dynamics that keep those categories invisible to those who are
privileged by them. I then extend it outward to explore the ways in which
many of the classic texts in Western social and political theory—the canoni-
cal works by Marx, Weber, Freud, and Tocqueville—relied on that invisibility
as they spoke about the degendered, the ungendered bourgeoisie, the modern
rationalist, the ego, the “American” respectively.
 Preface xi

My effort in this field has been to contribute to a historical investigation

into the construction of American—and to a lesser extent, British—masculin-
ities. Many of these questions were taken up in my book, Manhood in America,
published by the Free Press in 1996. But many of the central questions I raise
there were developed at greater length in other venues, for other purposes, and
for other audiences. These were published as essays and articles in scholarly
and popular journals and magazines.
This book gathers many of those articles, including revisions of essays
published in books now out of print, to enable readers to find, in one volume,
a collection of the writings upon which the books were based. Since the essays
in this book are based on historical topics, I have also reprinted three of the
documents on which the research was built, both to suggest to readers the
kinds of evidence I was working with, but also to invite readers to examine the
documents for themselves and to use them as a resource to develop their own
readings of these texts.
Most of the essays in the first part of the book explore the ways in which
the models of masculinity developed in the United States in the 19th and 20th
centuries were, in large part, efforts to set American masculinity against the
identities of various “others”—immigrants, men of color, working-class men,
upper-class men, and, of course, women. Women’s struggles to enter the pub-
lic arena have prompted dramatic reconsiderations of the meaning of mas-
culinity among American men. Women demand entry because they believe
that their biological sex should not disqualify them from voting, or going to
school, or getting a job, or serving on a jury, or joining a union. But if these
positions were only open to men, as all have been, and women’s sex doesn’t
disqualify them, then what does that mean about those who have historically
monopolized those positions? Who are they? Women’s demands for equality
provoked a kind of “crisis” among American men. If masculinity no longer
meant unchallenged monopoly to positions of power, what did it mean?
In Manhood in America, I discerned three patterns of men’s response to
this perceived crisis. To some men, masculinity became a relentless test,
demanding that it be proved in increasingly physical demonstration. From
19th-century health reformers to contemporary bodybuilders, some men have
pumped up to regain lost confidence. Others have actively resisted women’s
equality; from 19th-century antisuffragists to VMI cadets and promoters of
“men’s rights,” some men have staked their manhood on the continued exclu-
sion of women from the public sphere, and their relegation to the home. Often
this has also meant the continued exclusion of other minorities from claiming
their manhood; often anti-immigrant nativism, racism, anti-Semitism, and
homophobia have disparaged their opponents’ masculinity. And finally, others
have simply run away, escaping to some pristine homosocial world, whether
mythic or real, as an all-male solace against encroaching dissolution. When
the going’s been tough, the tough have run away.
xii Preface

The essays here about American masculinity explore these reactions in a

variety of historical settings. And I also document a fourth response, one far less
historically celebrated—support for women’s equality as a way to resolve the cri-
sis of masculinity. Since the founding of this nation, and in every arena and every
struggle identified by women as important for their equality, there have been
pro-feminist men, men who have stood up for gender equality. Some did so
because it was right and the cause was just; others did so because they believed
that women would help purify the mess that men had made of things. And still
others supported women’s equality because they saw that gender equality was the
only way that they, too, could live the lives they said they wanted to live—as
men. I have included the introduction I wrote for my (coedited) documentary
history of such men, and included a few of the more than 2,000 documents I
found in archives and libraries.
To a lesser extent, I’ve sought to examine a similar process among British
men—but at a much earlier period in British history. While researching the dis-
mantling of the democratic movements of the mid-17th century and the insti-
tutionalization of the limited monarchy after the Glorious Revolution, I became
aware that a significant renegotiation of gender relations was also underway.
Women were demanding a form of political and social equality never before seen
in Europe, based on the new principles of liberal individualism then being artic-
ulated by writers such as John Locke and David Hume. And some men got some-
what confused. The two essays in this section explore the construction of
masculinity and male homosexuality at the turn of the 18th century, and I
include archival documents that help to illustrate the themes I have raised.
Of course, these events in late 17th- and early 18th-century Britain had
enormous consequences for the types of masculinities under construction in the
American colonies. After all, the reigning metaphor of the American Revolu-
tion was that of the sons overthrowing the tyrannical father, as in the Sons of
Liberty in their protests against King George, and their resolve, in the Declara-
tion of Independence, to resist tyranny “with manly firmness.” In a sense, then,
the essays about British masculinity introduce the issues that the colonists would
later take up. It was against the screen of the two major British masculine fig-
ures—the aristocratic “Genteel Patriarch” and the independent “Heroic Arti-
san”—that American men began to carve out a distinctively American identity,
one grounded more in what one did than in who one was at birth. The “Self-
Made Man” of the first decades of the 19th century was America’s signal contri-
bution to the world’s stock of masculine archetypes.
This book will enable students, scholars, and general readers to have easy
and ready access to the historical essays and articles from the past decade of my
writing and research. I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Michael Kimmel
Brooklyn, New York
 Acknowledgments

That this book is being published by the State University of New York Press,
the press at my “home” institution for the last 15 years, makes me very happy.
I am grateful to all my colleagues and students at Stony Brook, as well as my
various editors at the State University of New York Press, including Ron Hel-
frich and Jane Bunker.
In the past 15 years, as I’ve defined and explored this area of research,
I’ve been guided by many colleagues and friends whose work has been inspir-
ing, irritating, and so constantly important to me. I am so grateful that so many
of these scholars have become my friends, intellectual collaborators in defin-
ing a new field of Gender Studies, the Critical Studies on Men and Masculin-
ities: Harry Brod, Bob Connell, Martin Duberman, Krin Gabbard, Jeff Hearn,
Michael Kaufman, Terry Kupers, Mike Messner, Joe Pleck, Tony Rotundo, and
Don Sabo. I am glad to acknowledge them, as much for their companionship
as for their fine work.
My family and friends have been constant. I am especially grateful to
Mary Morris and Larry O’Connor, Lillian and Hank Rubin, Mitchell Tunick
and Pam Hatchfield for friendships that span the decades.
Amy Aronson is my North Star, the axis around which my world
revolves, its constant center. And Zachary’s laughter lights up the skies.

The author acknowledges the following journals and edited volumes, in which
the chapters in this volume originally appeared: Chapter 1, Society, Septem-
ber/October, 1993; chapter 2, masculinities, 1(3), 1993; chapter 3, Michigan
Quarterly Review, Fall, 1993; chapter 4, Sport, Men, and the Gender Order
(Human Kinetics, 1990); chapter 5, Gender & Society, 1(3), 1987; chapter 6,
Beyond Patriarchy (Oxford University Press, 1987); chapter 7, International
Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 17(1), 1997; chapter 8, University of Day-
ton Review, 18(2), 1987; and chapter 9, Love Letters Between a certain late
Nobleman and the famous Mr. Wilson . . . (Harrington Park Press, 1990).

xiii
This page intentionally left blank.
Introduction
This page intentionally left blank.
 1
Invisible Masculinity

A
merican men have no history. Sure, we have stacks of biographies of
the heroic and famous, and historical accounts of events in which
men took part, like wars, strikes, or political campaigns. And we have
group portraits of athletes, soldiers, and the men who run unions and political
parties. There are probably thousands of histories of institutions that were
organized, staffed, and run by men.
So how is it that men have no history? Until the intervention of
women’s studies, it was women who had no history, who were invisible, the
“other.” Still today, virtually every history book is a history of men. If a book
does not have the word “women” in its title, it is a good bet that the book is
about men. But these books feel strangely empty at their centers, where the
discussion of men should be. Books about men are not about men as men.
These books do not explore how the experience of being a man structured the
men’s lives, or the organizations and institutions they created, the events in
which they participated. American men have no history as gendered selves; no
work describes historical events in terms of what these events meant to the
men who participated in them as men.
What does it mean, then, to write of men as men? We must examine the
ways in which the experience of manhood has structured the course and the
meanings of the activities of American men—great or small. We must chart
the ways in which meanings of manhood have changed over the course of
American history. And we must explore the ways in which the pursuit of that
elusive ideal of manhood, and our relentless efforts to prove it, have animated
many of the central events in American history.
This is not to say that simply looking at the idea of manhood, or inject-
ing gender into the standard historical approach, will suddenly, magically, illu-
minate the American historical pageant. We cannot understand manhood
without understanding American history—that is without locating the chang-
ing definitions of manhood within the larger context of the economic, politi-
cal, and social events that characterize American history. By the same token,

3
4 Invisible Masculinity

American history cannot be fully understood without an understanding of

American men’s ceaseless quest for manhood in the evolution of those eco-
nomic, political, social, and cultural experiences and events.
Such a perspective should shed new light on the events that dot our his-
tory and the lives of the men who made them. Composer Charles Ives insisted
that Impressionistic music was “sissy” and that he wanted to use traditional
tough guy sounds to build a more popular and virile music. Architect Louis Sul-
livan, the inventor of the skyscraper, described his ambition to create “mascu-
line forms”—strong, solid, tall, commanding respect. Political figures, like the
endless parade of presidential hopefuls, have found it necessary both to proclaim
their own manhood and to raise questions about their opponents’ manhood.
Think about the 1840 presidential campaign, when William Henry Har-
rison’s supporters chastised Martin Van Buren as “Little Vanny,” and a “used
up man.” Andrew Jackson vented his manly rage at “effete” bankers and
“infantilized” Indians. Theodore Roosevelt thundered about the strenuous life
while he prepared invasions of Panama and the Philippines. Then there was
Lyndon Johnson’s vainglorious claim during the Tet offensive of the Vietnam
War that he did not just “screw” Ho Chi Minh, but “cut his pecker off!” After
the vice-presidential debate with Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, George Bush
boasted that he had “kicked a little ass.” Then he squared off with television
commentator Dan Rather in 1988 to dispel his wimp image. From the found-
ing of the Republic, presidents have demonstrated their manhood in the polit-
ical arena and have sent millions of America’s young men to die to prove it.
If the pursuit of manhood has been a dominant theme in American his-
tory, at least rhetorically and metaphorically, why do American men still have
no history? In part because they do not even know what questions to ask.
In the past 25 years, the pioneering work of feminist scholars, both in tra-
ditional disciplines and in women’s studies, has made us increasingly aware of
the centrality of gender in shaping social life. In the past, social scientists would
have only listed class and race as the master statuses that defined and proscribed
social life. But today, gender has joined race and class as one of the axes around
which social life is organized, and through which we can gain an understand-
ing of our own experiences. Feminist scholars rightfully focused their attention
on women—on what Catharine Stimpson calls the “omissions, distortions, and
trivializations” of women’s experiences—and the spheres to which women
have historically been consigned, like private life and the family.
Women’s history has sought to rescue from obscurity the lives of signifi-
cant women who had been ignored or whose work had been minimized by tra-
ditional androcentric scholarship. It also has examined the lives of ordinary
women of the past, the struggles of laundresses, factory workers, pioneer home-
steaders, or housewives in carving out lives of meaning and dignity in a world
controlled by men. Whether the focus is on the exemplary or the ordinary,
feminist scholarship has made clear that gender is central to women’s lives.
 Invisible Masculinity 5

Now, we need to go further. We need to include men. Historian Natalie

Zemon Davis urges us to be “interested in the history of both women and
men.” She says, “We should not be working on the subjected sex any more
than a historian of class can focus exclusively on peasants. Our goal is to under-
stand the significance of the sexes, of gender groups in the historical past.”
The problem with such advice is that, to men at least, gender often
remains invisible. Strange as it may sound, men are the “invisible” gender.
Ubiquitous in positions of power everywhere, men are invisible to themselves.
Courses on gender in the universities are populated largely by women, as if the
term only applied to them. “Woman alone seems to have ‘gender’ since the
category itself is defined as that aspect of social relations based on difference
between the sexes in which the standard has always been man,” writes histo-
rian Thomas Lacquer. As the Chinese proverb has it, the fish are the last to
discover the ocean.
This fact was made clear to me in a seminar on feminism I attended in
the late 1970s. There, in a discussion between two women, I first confronted
this invisibility of gender to men. The two women, one white, the other
black, were discussing whether all women were, by definition, “sisters,”
because they all had essentially the same experiences and because all women
faced oppression by men. The white woman asserted that the fact that they
were both women bonded them, in spite of racial differences. The black
woman disagreed.
“When you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, what do you
see?” she asked.
“I see a woman,” replied the white woman.
“That’s precisely the problem,” responded the black woman. “I see a
black woman. To me, race is visible every day, because race is how I am not
privileged in our culture. Race is invisible to you, because it’s how you are priv-
ileged. It’s why there will always be differences in our experience.”
This startling exchange made me groan—more audibly, perhaps, than I
intended. Being the only man in the room, someone asked what my response
had meant.
“Well,” I said, “when I look in the mirror, I see a human being. I’m uni-
versally generalizable. As a middle-class white man, I have no class, no race,
no gender. I’m the generic person!”
Sometimes, I like to think that it was on that day that I became a mid-
dle-class white man. Sure, I had been all this before, but it had not meant much
to me. Since then, I have begun to understand that race, class, and gender do
not refer only to people marginalized by race, class, or gender. Those terms also
describe me. I enjoy the privilege of invisibility. The very processes that confer
privilege to one group and not to another group are often invisible to those
upon whom that privilege is conferred. What makes us marginal or powerless
are the processes we see, partly because others keep reminding us of them.
6 Invisible Masculinity

American men have come to think of themselves as genderless, in part

because they can afford the luxury of ignoring the centrality of gender. So
military, political, scientific, or literary figures are treated as if their gender,
their masculinity, had nothing to do with their military exploits, policy deci-
sions, scientific experiments, or writing styles and subjects. And the disenfran-
chised and oppressed are those whose manhood is not considered to be equal.
It is impossible to speak of historical reconstruction of gender without speak-
ing about power.
By contrast, the quest for manhood—the effort to achieve, to demon-
strate, to prove their masculinity—is one of the animating experiences in the
lives of American men. That men remain unaware of the centrality of gender
in their lives perpetuates the inequalities based on gender in our society, and
keeps in place the power of men over women, and the power some men hold
over other men, which are among the central mechanisms of power in society.
Invisibility reproduces inequality. And the invisibility of gender to those
privileged by it reproduces the inequalities that are circumscribed by gender.
The centrality of gender and the process by which it has come to be seen as
central are political processes that involve both power and resistance to power.
It was feminism and gay liberation, and feminism’s academic sister, women’s
studies, that brought gender into public discourse, making femininity and mas-
culinity problematic, and demanding a transformation of existing gender rela-
tions. It was feminist-inspired research that made social and cultural analysts
aware of the ubiquitous yet subtle way in which the gender factor permeates
the social fabric.
To speak and write about gender is to enter a political discourse, to
become engaged with power and resistance. It is about the resources that
maintain power, the symbolic props that extend power, and the ideological
apparatuses that develop to sustain and legitimate power. The historical con-
struction of gender is a process through which various forms of power are repro-
duced and power becomes indelibly inscribed onto everyday life. It is
impossible to speak of the historical construction of gender without speaking
about power. In fact, power is so central to the historical construction of mas-
culinities that it has been invisible to most social scientists who have studied
it. Thus social theory and social science have done exactly what cannot be
done: analyze masculinity without discussing power.
The historical construction of masculinities, the reproduction of gen-
dered power relations, involves two separate dimensions, each of which was
rendered invisible—first by classical social theory, and more recently by the
academic discourse that made “sex roles” appear as historically invariant,
fixed, static, and normal. Masculinities are constructed in a field of power:
1) the power of men over women; 2) the power of some men over other men.
Men’s power over women is relatively straightforward. It is the aggre-
gate power of men as a group to determine the distribution of rewards in soci-
 Invisible Masculinity 7

ety. Men’s power over other men concerns the distribution of those rewards
among men by differential access to class, race, ethnic privileges, or privileges
based on sexual orientation—that is, the power of upper- and middle-class
men over working-class men; the power of white and native born men over
nonwhite and/or non-native born men; and the power of straight men over
gay men. The constituent elements of “hegemonic” masculinity, the stuff of
the construction, are sexism, racism, and homophobia. Masculinities are con-
structed by racism, sexism, and homophobia, and social science has been ever
complicit.
These dimensions of power were embedded within academic discourses
by a sleight of hand. A version of white, middle-class, heterosexual masculin-
ity emerged as normative, the standard against which both men and women
were measured, and through which success and failure were evaluated. This
normative version—enforced, coercive, laden with power—academic social
science declared to be the “normal” version.
Making the normative into the normal has been the discursive mecha-
nism by which hegemonic masculinity was constituted. As anthropologist
Maurice Bloch writes, “It is precisely through the process of making a power
situation appear as a fact in the nature of things that traditional authority
works.” It has been the task of academic social science to make this power sit-
uation appear as “a fact in the nature of things.”
This process has not been a single, linear process, but a series of empiri-
cal specifications of the traits, attitudes, and behaviors that define vague social
science concepts like “identity,” “self,” or “deviance.” These, in turn rest on a
series of theoretical inversions and appropriations whose origins lie at the cen-
ter of what we commonly call classical social theory. From Thomas Hobbes
and John Locke through Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Sig-
mund Freud several currents run consistently. All proclaim “man” as his own
maker; the phrase “homo faber” is more than a metaphor, it is about men’s
reproductive capacity, men’s ability to give birth to themselves. This man
exists originally outside society—hence the axiomatic centrality of the prob-
lematic relationship between the individual and society—and he has to be
brought into society through socialization. This passage—from the state of
nature into civil society—is a gendered creation myth. It is about men’s power
to give birth to society.
The myth goes something like this: Originally, there was chaos, but
men created society to get out of this chaos. As political theorist Carole
Pateman writes, “The conventional understanding of the ‘political’ is built
upon the rejection of physical birth in favor of the masculine creation of
(giving birth to) social and political order.” Just as John Locke made a dis-
tinction in his Second Treatise on Government between “the labor of our body
and the work of our hands,” so too did social theorists claim a difference
between labor that produces no lasting product because its possessor is
8 Invisible Masculinity

dependent, and labor that transforms nature into something of value, the
work, which is independent of the producer’s survival needs and may outlast
him. Labor, as in women’s work, as in “going into labor” does not count; what
counts is work.
This process of self-creation is fraught with anxiety and tension. If we are
a nation, as Henry Clay coined the term in 1832, of “self-made men,” then the
process of self-making, of identity formation, is a public enactment, performed
before the valuative eyes of other men. Nineteenth-century masculinity was a
masculinity defined, tried, and tested in the marketplace. This was potentially
terrifying, since the market is unstable, and it is potentially a “site of humilia-
tion” as Henry David Thoreau called it just before he tried to escape to Walden
Pond. A definition of manhood based on self-creation in the marketplace is a
masculinity specific to an industrial capitalist marketplace. The generic man
turns out to be a very specific construction: he is a white middle-class entre-
preneur.
It is this man’s chronic anxiety that forms the backbone of the canon of
classical sociological theory. Consider this passage from Tocqueville’s Democ-
racy in America (1835):

An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it
before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees
are coming into bearing; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the
harvest; he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and
soon go off elsewhere with his changing desires . . . At first sight there is
something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in
the midst of abundance.

What a lucky man, indeed—chronically restless, temperamentally anx-

ious, a man in constant motion to prove what ultimately cannot be
proved: that he is a real man and that this identity is unthreatened by
the actions of other men.

Now consider three more passages from the same canon. Marx and
Engels writing in The Communist Manifesto (1848):

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the

instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and
with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes
of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition
of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of
production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlast-
ing uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all
earlier ones.
 Invisible Masculinity 9

And Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
(1905):

Where the fulfillment of the calling cannot directly be related to the

highest spiritual and cultural values, or when, on the other hand, it need
not be felt simply as economic compulsion, the individual generally
abandons the attempt to justify it at all. In the field of its highest devel-
opment, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its reli-
gious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely
mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport.

And finally, Freud in his essay “The Dissection of the Psychical Person-
ality” (1933):

We are warned by a proverb against serving two masters at the same time.
The poor ego has things even worse: it serves three severe masters and
does what it can to bring their claims and demands into harmony with
one another. These claims are always divergent and often seem incom-
patible. No wonder that the ego so often fails in its task. Its three tyran-
nical masters are the external world, the super ego and the id . . . Thus
the ego, driven by the id, confined by the super ego, repulsed by reality,
struggles to master its economic task of bringing about harmony among
the forces and influences working in and upon it; and we can understand
how it is that so often we cannot suppress a cry: ‘Life is not easy!’

These descriptions of the bourgeoisie under capitalism, of the fate of the

Protestant work ethic under the ever rationalizing spirit of capitalism, or of the
arduous task of the autonomous ego in psychological development are a com-
mon part of social science training. Does anyone ever mention that in all four
cases the theorists were describing men? And not just generic mankind, but a
particular type of masculinity, a definition of manhood that derives its identity
from participation in the marketplace, from interaction with other men in that
marketplace—a model of masculinity whose identity is based on homosocial
competition?
How could men feel secure in their manhood? How could men deter-
mine that they had made the grade and were successful as real men? If the mar-
ketplace, the very arena which they had established to demonstrate manhood
was now so fraught with peril and danger, where could they go?
Enter academic social science at the turn of the 20th century. Academic
social science was, in part, an effort at historical restoration that would rescue
a model of masculinity that structural change had rendered anachronistic and
reapply it to reestablish traditional power relations between women and men
and between some men and other men. Academic social science provided the
10 Invisible Masculinity

empirical measures for masculinity. If it could not be achieved in the market-

place, it could be demonstrated by the display of various gender-appropriate
traits, attitudes, and behaviors that have become associated with masculinity.
It was social science’s task to enumerate those traits and attitudes, and then
generalize them as the normal traits associated with adulthood, thus problema-
tizing women and “other” men—men of color, gay men, non-native born
immigrant men.
This did not take place in a vacuum. The turn of the century was a time
of dramatic change, in which the traditional foundations of gender identity—
control over one’s labor, ownership of the products of that labor, geographic
and social mobility, domestic dominion over women and children—were erod-
ing. Rapid industrialization, which brought changes in the scale and process of
production; the closing of the frontier; challenges by women to the separation
of spheres; new waves of swarthy immigrants and black migrants to the cities;
and the emergence of a visible gay male subculture in the northern cities—all
threatened hegemonic masculinity’s sense of empowerment. Many efforts to
resist proletarianization in the late 19th century—from the Knights of Labor
to the Populist movement—used images of the Heroic Artisan to animate
their defensive gender resistance. Everywhere, cultural critics observed mas-
culinity to be in crisis.
This was as true in private life as it was in public discourse. No sooner
were the structural foundations of traditional masculinity eroding than it
became clear that women had taken over the “making of men.” The “feminiza-
tion” of culture included women’s control of the chief institutions of child-
hood socialization—church, school, home. Women were teaching boys to be
men. Not only did classical social theory posit the primacy of production over
reproduction, it set about reappropriating reproduction as well. Like the frater-
nal orders of the 19th century, in which men imitated women’s reproductive
powers and gave symbolic birth to one another through initiation rituals,
20th-century American and European social theory marginalized women’s
sphere and then colonized it.
How did academic social science go about this process of propping up a
threatened gender identity for American men? Most often, it meant pushing
those potential threats to the margins, to reestablish the public arena as a safe
space for men to be men with other men. This meant marginalizing women,
and reasserting the dominance of middle-class white men over men who were
nonwhite, nonheterosexual, non-native born. Immigrant men, homosexual
men, and black men were all tainted with the same problem: they were not
properly manly. Some were unable to exercise manly self-control over primi-
tive impulses, others were overly refined and effeminate; both effeminacy and
primitivism were indications of insufficient manhood.
The more explicitly racist political agenda was left to the anthropolo-
gists. Just as sociology was taking on the central problem of measuring man-
Other documents randomly have
different content
 LIBRO PRIMERO
LA RECÁMARA VERDE

¡Famosas aquellas ferias de Santos y Difuntos! La Plaza de Armas

Monotombo, Arquillo de Madres eran zoco de boliches y pulperías
ruletas y naipes. Corre la chusma a los anuncios de toro candil en los
Portalitos de Penitentes: Corren las rondas de burlones apagando las
luminarias, al procuro de hacer más vistoso el candil del bulto toreado
Quiebra el oscuro, en el vasto cielo, la luna chocarrera y cacareante
Ahúman las candilejas de petróleo por las embocaduras de
tutilimundis, tinglados y barracas: Los ciegos de guitarrón cantan en los
corros de pelados: El criollaje ranchero —poncho, facón, jarano— se
estaciona al ruedo de las mesas con tableros de azares y suertes
fulleras. Circula en racimos la plebe cobriza, greñuda, descalza, y po
las escalerillas de las iglesias, indios alfareros venden esquilones de
barro con círculos y palotes de pinturas estentóreas y dramáticas
Beatas y chamacos mercan los fúnebres barros, de tañido tan triste
que recuerdan la tena y el caso del fraile peruano. A cada vuelta saltan
risas y bravatas. En los portalitos, por las pulperías de cholos y lepes
la guitarra rasguea los corridos de milagros y ladrones:

Era Diego Pedernales

de buena generación.

II

El congal de Cucarachita encendía farolillos de colores en e

azoguejo, y luces de difuntos en la Recámara Verde. Son consorcios
que aparejan las ferias. Lupita la Romántica, con bata de lazos y e
moño colgante, suspiraba caída en el sueño magnético, bajo la mirada
y los pasos del Doctor Polaco: Alentaba rendida y vencida, con
suspiros de erótico tránsito:
 —¡Ay!
—Responda la Señorita Médium.
—¡Ay! Alumbrándose sube por una escalera muy grande... No
puedo. Ya no está... Se me ha desvanecido.
—Siga usted hasta encontrarle, Señorita.
—Entra por una puerta donde hay un centinela.
—¿Habla con él?
—Sí. Ahora no puedo verle. No puedo... ¡Ay!
—Procure situarse, Señorita Médium.
—No puedo.
—Yo lo mando.
—¡Ay!
—Sitúese. ¿Qué ve en torno suyo?
—¡Ay! Las estrellas grandes como lunas pasan corriendo por e
cielo.
—¿Ha dejado el plano terrestre?
—No sé.
—Sí lo sabe. Responda. ¿Dónde se sitúa?
—¡Estoy muerta!
—Voy a resucitarla, Señorita Médium.
El farandul le puso en la frente la piedra de un anillo. Después
fueron los pases de manos y el soplar sobre los párpados de la daifa
durmiente:
—¡Ay!...
—Señorita Médium, va usted a despertarse contenta y sin dolor de
cabeza. Muy despejada y contenta, sin ninguna impresión dolorosa.
Hablaba de rutina, con el murmullo apacible del clérigo que reza su
misa diaria. Gritaba en el corredor la madrota, y en el azoguejo, donde
era el mitote de danza, aguardiente y parcheo, metía bulla el Coronelito
Domiciano de la Gándara.

III

El Coronelito Domiciano de la Gándara templa el guitarrón: Camisa

y calzones, por aberturas coincidentes, muestran el vientre rotundo y
risueño de dios tibetano: En los pies desnudos arrastra chancletas, y
se toca con un jaranillo mambís, que al revirón descubre el rojo de un
pañuelo y la oreja con arete: El ojo guiñate, la mano en los trastes
platica leperón con las manflotas en cabellos y bata escotada: Era
negrote, membrudo, rizoso, vestido con sudada guayabera y calzones
mamelucos, sujetos por un cincho con gran broche de plata: Los torpes
conceptos venustos celebra con risa saturnal y vinaria. Niño Domiciano
nunca estaba sin cuatro candiles, y como arrastraba su vida po
bochinches y congales, era propenso a las tremolinas y escandaloso a
final de las farras. Las niñas del pecado, desmadejadas y desdeñosas
recogían el bulle-bulle en el vaivén de las mecedoras: El rojo de los
cigarros las señalaba en sus lugares. El Coronelito, dando el último
tiento a los trastes, escupe y rasguea cantando por burlas el corrido
que rueda estos tiempos, de Diego Pedernales. La sombra de la mano
con el reflejo de las tumbagas, pone rasgueo de luces en el rasgueo de
la guitarra:

—Preso le llevan los guardias,

sobre caballo pelón,
que en los Ranchos de Valdivia
le tomaron a traición.
Celos de niña ranchera
hicieron la delación.

IV

Tecleaba un piano hipocondríaco, en la sala que nombraban Sala de

la Recámara Verde. Como el mitote era en el patio, la sala
agrandábase alumbrada y vacía, con las rejas abiertas sobre e
azoguejo y el viento en las muselinas de los vidrios. El Ciego Velones
—nombre de burlas— arañaba lívidas escalas, acompañando el canto
a una chicuela consumida, tristeza, desgarbo, fealdad de hospiciana
En el arrimo de la reja, hacían duelo, por la contraria suerte en los
albures, dos peponas amulatadas: El barro melado de sus facciones se
depuraba con una dulzura de líneas y tintas, en el ébano de las
cabezas pimpantes de peines y moñetes, un drama oriental de lacres y
verdes. El Ciego Velones tecleaba el piano sin luces, un piano lechuzo
que se pasaba los días enfundado de bayeta negra. Cantaba la
chicuela, tirante las cuerdas del triste descote, inmóvil la cara de niña
muerta, el fúnebre resplandor de la bandejilla del petitorio sobre e
pecho:
 —¡No me mates, traidora ilusión!
¡Es tu imagen en mi pensamiento,
una hoguera de casta pasión!

La voz lívida, en la lívida iluminación de la sala desierta, se

desgarraba en una altura inverosímil:

—¡Una hoguera de casta pasión!

Algunas parejas bailaban en el azoguejo, mecidas por el ritmo de

danzón: Perezosas y lánguidas, pasaban con las mejillas juntas po
delante de las rejas. El Coronelito, más bruja que un roto, acompañaba
con una cuerda en el guitarrón, la voz en un trémolo:

—¡No me mates, traidora ilusión!

La cortina abomba su raso verde en el arco de la recámara: Brilla en

el fondo, sobre el espejo, la pomposa cama del trato, y por veces todo
se tambalea en un guiño del altarete. Suspiraba Lupita:
—¡Ánimas del Purgatorio! ¡No más, y qué sueño se me ha puesto
¡La cabeza se me parte!
La tranquilizó el farandul:
—Eso se pasa pronto.
—¡Cuando yo vuelva a consentir que usted me enajene, van a tene
pelos las tortugas!
El Doctor Polaco, desviando la plática, felicitó a la daifa con
ceremonia de farandul:
—Es usted un caso muy interesante de metempsicosis. Yo no
tendría inconveniente en asegurarle a usted contrata para un teatro de
Berlín. Usted podría ser un caso de los más célebres. ¡Esta experiencia
ha sido muy interesante!
La daifa se oprimía las sienes, metiendo los dedos con luces de
pedrería por los bandos endrinos del peinado:
—¡Para toda la noche tengo ya jaqueca!
—Una taza de café será lo bastante... Disuelve usted en la taza una
perla de éter, y se hallará prontamente tonificada, para poder intenta
otra experiencia.
—¡Una y no más!
—¿No se animaría usted a presentarse en público? Sometida a una
dirección inteligente, pronto tendría usted renombre para actuar en un
teatro de Nueva York. Yo le garanto a usted un tanto por ciento. Usted
antes de un año, puede presentarse con diplomas de las más
acreditadas Academias de Europa. El Coronelito me ha tenido
conversación de su caso, pero muy lejano, que ofreciese tanto interés
para la ciencia. ¡Muy lejano! Usted se debe al estudio de los iniciados
en los misterios del magnetismo.
—¡Con una cartera llena de papel, aun no cegaba! ¡A pique de
quedar muerta en una experiencia!
—Ese riesgo no existe cuando se procede científicamente.
—La rubia que a usted acompañaba pasados tiempos, se corrió que
había muerto en un teatro.
—¿Y que yo estaba preso? Esa calumnia es patente. Yo no estoy
preso.
—Habrá usted limado las rejas de la cárcel.
—¿Me cree usted con poder para tanto?
—¿No es usted brujo?
—El estudio de los fenómenos magnéticos no puede ser calificado
de brujería. ¿Usted se encuentra libre ya del malestar cefálico?
—Sí, parece que se me pasa.
Gritaba en el corredor la madrota:
—Lupita, que te solicitan.
—¿Quién es?
—Un amigo. ¡No pasmes!
—¡Voy! De hallarme menos carente, esta noche la guardaba po
devoción de las Benditas.
—Lupita, puede usted obtener un suceso público en un escenario.
—¡Me da mucho miedo!
Salió de la recámara con bulle-bulle de faldas, seguida del Docto
Polaco. Aquel tuno nigromante, con una barraca en la feria, era muy
admirado en el congal de Cucarachita.
 LIBRO SEGUNDO
LUCES DE ÁNIMAS

—En borrico de justicia

le sacan con un pregón,
hizo mamola al verdugo
al revestirle el jopón,
y al Cristo que le presentan,
una seña de masón.

En la Recámara Verde, iluminada con altarete de luces aceiteras y

cerillos, atendía, apagando un cuchicheo, la pareja encuerada de
pecado. Llegaba el romance prendido al son de la guitarra. En e
altarete, las mariposas de aceite cuchicheaban y los amantes en e
cabezal. La daifa:
—¡Era bien ruin!
El coime:
—¡Ateo!
—En la noche de hoy, ese canto de verdugos y ajusticiados, parece
más negro que un catafalco.
—¡Vida alegre, muerte triste!
—¡Abrenuncio! ¡Qué voz de corneja sacaste! ¿Veguillas, tú, vista la
hora final, confesarías como cristiano?
—¡Yo no niego la vida del alma!
—¡Nachito, somos espíritu y materia! ¡Donde me ves con estas
carnes, pues una romántica! De no haber estado tan bruja, hubiera
guardado este día. ¡Pero es mucho el empeño con el ama! Nachito, ¿tú
sabes de persona viviente que no tenga sus muertos? Los hospicianos
y aun esos porque no los conocen. Este aniversario merecía ser de los
más guardados: ¡Trae muchos recuerdos! Tú, si fueses propiamente
romántico, ahora tenías un escrúpulo: Me pagabas el estipendio y te
caminabas.
—¿Y caminarme sin aflojar la plata?
 —También. ¡Yo soy muy romántica! Ya te digo que de no hallarme
tan en deuda con la madrota...
—¿Quieres que yo te cancele el crédito?
—Pon eso claro.
—¿Si quieres que yo te pague la deuda?
—No me veas chuela, Nachito.
—¿Debes mucho?
—¡Treinta Manfredos! ¡Me niega quince que le entregué por las
Flores de Mayo! ¡Como tú te hicieses cargo de la deuda y me pusieses
en un pupilaje, ibas a ver una fiel esclava!
—¡Siento no ser negrero!
La daifa quedose abstraída mirando las luces de sus falsos anillos
Hacía memoria. Por la boca pintada corría un rezo:
—Esta conversación, pasó otra vez de la misma manera: ¿Te
acuerdas, Veguillas? Pasó con iguales palabras y prosopopeyas.
—Pudiera.
La moza del pecado, entrándose en sí misma, quedó abismada
siempre los ojos en las piedras de sus anillos.

II

Percibíase embullangado el guitarro, el canto y la zarabanda de

risas, chapines y palmas con que jaleaban las del trato. Gritos
carrerillas y cierre de puertas. Acezo y pisadas en el corredor. Los
artejos y la voz de la Taracena:
—¡El cerrojo! Horita vos va con una copla Domiciano. El cerrojo, s
no lo tenéis corrido, que ya le entró la tema de escandalizar por las
recámaras.
Siempre abismada en la fábula de sus manos, suspiró la romántica:
—¡Domiciano toma la vida como la vida se merece!
—¿Y el despertar?
—¡Ave María! ¿Esta misma plática no la tuvimos hace un instante?
¿Veguillas, cuándo fueron aquellos pronósticos tuyos, del mal fin que
tendría el Coronelito de la Gándara?
Gritó Veguillas:
—¡Ese secreto jamás ha salido de mis labios!
 —¡Ya me haces dudar! ¡Patillas tomó tu figura en aquel momento
Nachito!
—Lupita, no seas visionaria.
Venía por el corredor acreciéndose la bulla de copla y guitarra
soflamas y palmas. Cantaba el valedor un aire de los llaneros:

—Licenciadito Veguillas,
saca del brazo a tu dama
para beber una copa
a la salud de las ánimas.

—¡Santísimo Dios! ¡Esta misma letra se ha cantado otra vez

estando como ahora acostados en la cama!
Nacho Veguillas, entre humorístico y asustadizo, azotó las nalgas de
la moza, con gran estallo:
—¡Lupita, que te pasas de romántica!
—¡No me pongas en confusión, Veguillas!
—Si me estás viendo chuela toda la noche.
Tornaba la copla y el rasgueo, a la puerta de la recámara. Oscilaba
el altarete de luces y cruces. Susurró la del trato:
—Nacho Veguillas, ¿llevas buena relación con el Corone
Gandarita?
—¡Amigos entrañables!
—¿Por qué no le das aviso para que se ponga en salvo?
—¿Pues qué sabes tú?
—¿No hablamos antes?
—¡No!
—¡Lo juras, Nachito!
—¡Jurado!
—¿Que nada hablamos? ¡Pues lo habrás tenido en el pensamiento!
Nacho Veguillas, sacando los ojos a flor de la cara, saltó en e
alfombrín con las dos manos sobre las vergüenzas:
—¡Lupita, tú tienes comercio con los espíritus!
—¡Calla!
—¡Responde!
—¡Me confundes! ¿Dices que nada hemos hablado del fin que le
espera al Coronel de la Gándara?
Batían en la puerta, y otra vez renovábase la bulla, con el tema de
copla y guitarro:
 —Levántate, valedor,
y vístete los calzones,
para jugarnos la plata
en los albures pelones.

Abriose la puerta de un puntapié, y rascando el guitarrillo que apoya

en el vientre rotundo, apareció el Coronelito. Nacho Veguillas, con
alegre transporte de botarate, saltó de cucas, remedando el cantar de
la rana:
—¡Cua! ¡Cua!

III

El congal, con luminarias de verbena, juntaba en el patio mitote de

naipe, aguardiente y buñuelo. Tenía el naipe al salir un interés fatigado
Menguaban las puestas, se encogían sobre el tapete, bajo el reflejo
amarillo del candil, al aire contrario del naipe. Viendo el dinero tan
receloso, para darle ánimo trajo aguardiente de caña y chicha la
Taracena. Nacho Veguillas, muy festejado, a medio vestir, suelto e
chaleco, un tirante por rabo, saltaba mimando el dúo del sapo y la rana
La música clásica, que, cuando esparcía su ánimo sombrío, gustaba de
oír Tirano Banderas. Nachito, con una lágrima de artista ambulante
recibía las felicitaciones, estrechaba las manos, se tambaleaba en
épicos abrazos. El Doctor Polaco, celoso de aquellos triunfos, en un
corro de niñas, disertaba, accionando con el libro de los naipes abierto
en abanico. Atentas las manflotas, cerraban un círculo de ojeras y
lazos, con meloso cuchicheo tropical. La chamaca fúnebre pasaba la
bandejilla del petitorio, estirando el triste descote, mustia y resignada
horrible en su corpiño de muselinas azules, lívidos lujos de hambre
Nachito la perseguía en cuclillas con gran algazara:
—¡Cua! ¡Cua!

IV

Con las luces del alba la mustia pareja del ciego lechuzo y la chica
amortajada escurríase por el Arquillo de las Madres Portuguesas. Se
apagaban las luminarias. En los Portalitos quedaba un rezago de
ferias: El tiovivo daba su última vuelta en una gran boqueada de
candilejas. El ciego lechuzo, y la chica amortajada, llevan fosco rosmar
claveteado entre las cuatro pisadas:
—¡Tiempos más fregados no los he conocido!
Habló la chica sin mudar el gesto de ultratumba:
—¡Donde otras ferias!
Sacudió la cabeza el lechuzo:
—Cucarachita no renueva el mujerío y así no se sostiene un
negocio. ¿Qué tal mujer la Panameña? ¿Tiene partido?
—Poco partido tiene para ser nueva. ¡Está mochales!
—¿Qué viene a ser eso?
—¡Modo que tiene una chica que llaman la Malagueña! Con ello
significa los transtornos.
—No tomes el hablar de esas mujeres.
La amortajada puso los tristes ojos en una estrella:
—¿Se me notaba que estuviese ronca?
—No más que al atacar las primeras notas. La pasión de esta noche
es de una verdadera artista. Sin cariño de padre, creo que hubieses
tenido un triunfo en una sala de conciertos: “No me mates, traidora
ilusión.” ¡Ahí has rayado muy alto! Hija mía, es preciso que cantes
pronto en un teatro, y me redimas de esta situación precaria. Yo puedo
dirigir una orquesta.
—¿Ciego?
—Operándome las cataratas.
—¡Ay mi viejo, cómo soñamos!
—¿No saldremos alguna vez de esta pesadumbre?
—¡Quién sabe!
—¿Dudas?
—No digo nada.
—Tú no conoces otra vida, y te conformas.
—¡Vos tampoco la conocés, taitita!
—La he visto en otros, y comprendo lo que sea.
—Yo, puesta a envidiar, no envidiaría riquezas.
—¿Pues qué envidiarías?
—¡Ser pájaro! Cantar en una rama.
—No sabes lo que hablas.
—Ya hemos llegado.
 En el portal dormía el indio con su india, cubiertos los dos por una
frazada. La chica fúnebre y el ciego lechuzo pasaron perfilándose. E
esquilón de las monjas doblaba por las Ánimas.

Nacho Veguillas también tenía el vino sentimental de boca babosa y

ojos tiernos. Ahora, con la cabeza sobre el regazo de la daifa, canta su
aria en la Recámara Verde:
—¡Dame tu amor, lirio caído en el fango!
Ensoñó la manflota:
—¡Canela! ¡Y decís vos que no sos romántico!
—¡Ángel puro de amor, que amor inspira! ¡Yo te sacaré del abismo y
redimiré tu alma virginal! ¡Taracena! ¡Taracena!
—¡No armés escándalo, Nachito! Dejá vos al ama, que no está para
tus fregados.
Y le ponía los anillos sobre la boca vinaria. Nachito se incorporó:
—¡Taracena! ¡Yo pago el débito de esta azucena, caída en el barro
vil de tu comercio!
—¡Callá! ¡No faltés!
Nachito, llorona la alcuza de la nariz, se volvía a la niña del trato:
—¡Calma mi sed de ideal, ángel que tienes rotas las alas! ¡Posa tu
mano en mi frente, que en un mar de lava ardiente mi cerebro siento
arder!
—¿Cuándo fue que oí esas mismas músicas? ¡Nachito, aquí se
dijeron esas mismas palabras!
Nachito se sintió celoso:
—¡Algún cabrón!
—O no se habrán dicho... Esta noche se me figura que ya pasó todo
cuanto pasa. ¡Son las Benditas!... ¡Es ilusión esta de que todo pasó
antes de pasar!
—¡Yo te llamaba en mis solitarios sueños! ¡El imán de tu mirada
penetra en mi! ¡Bésame, mujer!
—Nachito, no seás sonso y dejame rezar este toque de Ánimas.
—¡Bésame, Jarifa! ¡Bésame, impúdica, inocente! ¡Dame un ósculo
casto y virginal! ¡Caminaba solo por el desierto de la vida, y se me
aparece un oasis de amor, donde reposar la frente!
 Nachito sollozaba, y la del trato, para consolarle, le dio un beso de
folletín romántico, apretándole a la boca, el corazón de su boca
pintada:
—¡Eres sonso!

VI

Tembló el altarete de Ánimas: El aleteo de un reflejo desquició los

muros de la Recámara Verde: Se abrió la puerta y entró sin ceremonia
el Coronelito de la Gándara. Veguillas volvió la nariz de alcuza y puso
el ojo de carnero:
—¡Domiciano, no profanes el idilio de dos almas!
—Licenciadito, te recomiendo el amoniaco. Mírame a mí, limpio de
vapores. ¿Guadalupe, qué haces sin darle el agua bendita?
El Coronelito de la Gándara, al pisar, infundía un temblor en la
luminaria de Ánimas: La fanfarria irreverente de sus espuelas plateras
ponía al guiño del altarete un sinfónico fondo herético: Advertíase
señalada mudanza en la persona y arreo del Coronelito: Traía el calzón
recogido en botas jinetas, el cinto ajustado y el machete al flanco, viva
aún la rasura de la barba, y el mechón endrino de la frente, peinado y
brillante:
—Veguillas, hermano, préstame veinte soles, que bien te pintó e
juego. Mañana te serán reintegrados.
—¡Mañana!
Nachito, tras la palabra que se desvanece en la verdosa penumbra
queda suspenso sin cerrar la boca. Oíase el doble de una remota
campana. Las luces del altarete tenían un escalofrío aterrorizado. La
manflota en camisa rosa —morena prieta— se santiguaba entre las
cortinas. Y era siempre sobre su tema el Coronelito de la Gándara:
—Mañana. ¡Y si no, cuando me entierren!
Nachito estalló en un sollozo:
—Siempre va con nosotros la muerte. Domiciano, recobra el juicio
la plata de nada te remedia.
Por entre cortinas salía la daifa, abrochándose el corsé, los dos
pechos fuera, tirantes las medias, altas las ligas rosadas:
—¡Domiciano, ponte en salvo! Este pendejo no te lo dice, pero é
sabe que estás en las listas de Tirano Banderas.
 El Coronelito aseguró los ojos sobre Veguillas. Y Veguillas, con los
brazos abiertos, gritó consternado:
—¡Ángel funesto! ¡Sierpe biomagnética! Con tus besos
embriagadores me sorbiste el pensamiento.
El Coronelito, de un salto estaba en la puerta, atento a mirar y
escuchar: Cerró, y corrida la aldaba, abierto el compás de las piernas
tiró de machete:
—Trae la palangana, Lupita. Vamos a ponerle una sangría a este
doctorcito de guagua.
Se interpuso la daifa en corsé:
—Ten juicio, Domiciano. Antes que con él toques, a mí me
traspasas. ¿Qué pretendes? ¿Qué haces ya aquí sofregado? ¿Corres
peligro? ¡Pues ponte en salvo!
Se tiró de los bigotes con sorna el Coronelito de la Gándara:
—¿Quién me vende, Veguillas? ¿Qué me amenaza? Si horita
mismo no lo declaras, te doy pasaporte con las Benditas. ¡Luego
luego, ponlo todo de manifiesto!
Veguillas, arrimado a la pared, se metía los calzones, torcido y
compungido. Le temblaban las manos. Gimió turulato:
—Hermano, te delata la vieja rabona que tiene su mesilla en e
jueguecito de la rana. ¡Esa te delata!
—¡Puta madre!
—Te ha perdido la mala costumbre de hacer cachizas, apenas te
pones trompeto.
—¡Me ha de servir para un tambor esa cuera vieja!
—Niño Santos le ha dado la mano con promesa de chicotearte.
Apremiaba la daifa:
—¡No pierdas tiempo, Domiciano!
—¡Calla, Lupita! Este amigo entrañable, luego, luego, me va a deci
por qué tribunal estoy sentenciado.
Gimió Veguillas:
—¡Domiciano, no la chingues, que no eres súbdito extranjero!

VII

El Coronelito relampagueaba el machete sobre las cabezas: La

daifa, en camisa rosa, apretaba los ojos y aspaba los brazos: Veguillas
era todo un temblor arrimado a la pared, en faldetas y con los calzones
en la mano: El Coronelito se los arrancó:
—¡Me chingo en las bragas! ¿Cuál es mi sentencia?
Nachito se encogía con la nariz de alcuza en el ombligo:
—¡Hermano, no más me preguntes! Cada palabra es una bala... ¡Me
estoy suicidando! La sentencia que tú no cumplas vendrá sobre m
cabeza.
—¿Cuál es mi sentencia? ¿Quién la ha dictado?
Desesperábase la manflota, de rodillas ante las luces de Ánimas:
—¡Ponte en salvo! ¡Si no lo haces, aquí mismo te prende e
Mayorcito del Valle!
Nachito acabó de empavorizarse:
—¡Mujer infausta!
Se ovillaba cubriéndose hasta los pies con las faldetas de la camisa
El Coronelito le suspendió por los pelos: Veguillas, con la camisa sobre
el ombligo, agitaba los brazos. Rugía el Coronelito:
—¿El Mayor del Valle tiene la orden de arrestarme? Responde.
Veguillas sacó la lengua:
—¡Me he suicidado!
 LIBRO TERCERO
GUIÑOL DRAMÁTICO

¡Fue como truco de melodrama! El Coronelito, en el instante de pisa

la calle, ha visto los fusiles de una patrulla, por el Arquillo de las
Portuguesas. El Mayor del Valle viene a prenderle. El peligro le da un
alerta violento en el pecho: Pronto y advertido se aplasta en tierra y a
gatas cruza la calle: Por la puerta que entreabre un indio medio
desnudo, lleno el pecho de escapularios, ya se mete. Veguillas le sigue
arrastrado en un círculo de fatalidades absurdas: El Coronelito
acarrerado escalera arriba, se curva como el jinete sobre la montura
Nachito, que hocica sobre los escalones, recibe en la frente e
resplandor de las espuelas. Bajo la claraboya del sotabanco, en la
primera puerta, está pulsando el Coronelito. Abre una mucama que
tiene la escoba: En un traspiés, espantada y aspada, ve a los dos
fugitivos meterse por el corredor: Prorrumpe en gritos, pero las luces de
un puñal que ciega los ojos, la lengua le enfrenan.

II

Al final del corredor está la recámara de un estudiante. El joven

pálido de lecturas, que medita sobre los libros abiertos, de codos en la
mesa. Humea la lámpara. La ventana está abierta sobre la última
estrella. El Coronelito, al entrar, pregunta y señala:
—¿Adónde cae?
El estudiante vuelve a la ventana su perfil lívido de sorpresa
dramática. El Coronelito, sin esperar otra respuesta, salta sobre e
alféizar, y grita con humor travieso:
—¡Ándele, pendejo!
Nachito se consterna:
—¡Su madre!
—¡Jip!
 El Coronelito, con una brama, echa el cuerpo fuera. Va por el aire
Cae en un tejadillo. Quiebra muchas tejas. Escapa gateando. A Nachito
que asoma timorato la alcuza llorona, se le arruga completamente la
cara:
—¡Hay que ser gato!

III

Y por las recámaras del congal fulgura su charrasco el Mayor de

Valle: Seguido de algunos soldados entra y sale, sonando las charras
espuelas: A su vera jaleando el nalgario, con ahogo y ponderaciones
zapato bajo y una flor en la oreja, la madrota:
—¡Patroncito, soy gaditana y no miento! ¡Mi palabra es la del Rey de
España! El Coronel Gandarita no hace un bostezo que dijo: ¡Me voy
¡Visto y no visto! ¡Horitita! ¡Si no se tropezaron fue milagro! ¡Apenas
llevaría tres pasos, cuando ya estaban en la puerta los soldados!
—¿No dijo adónde se caminaba?
—¡Iba muy trueno! Si algún bochinche no le tienta, buscará la cama.
El Mayor miró de través a la tía cherinola y llamó al sargento:
—Vas a registrar la casa. Cucarachita, si te descubro el contrabando
te caen cien palos.
—Niño, no me encontrarás nada.
La madrota sonaba las llaves. El Mayor, contrariado, se mesaba la
barba chivona, y en la espera, haciendo piernas entrose por la Sala de
la Recámara Verde. El susto y el grito, la carrera furtiva, un rosario de
léperos textos concertaban toda la vida del congal, en la luz cenicienta
del alba. Lupita, taconeando, surgió en el arco de la verde recámara
un lunar nuevo en la mejilla: Por el pintado corazón de la boca, vertía e
humo del cigarro:
—¡Abilio, estás de mi gusto!
—Me mandé mudar.
—Oye, ¿y tú piensas que se oculta aquí Domiciano? ¡Poco faltó
para que le armases la ratonera! ¡Ahora, échale perros!

IV
 Y Nachito Veguillas aún exprime su gesto turulato frente a la
ventana del estudiante. El tiempo parece haber prolongado todas las
acciones, suspensas absurdamente en el ápice de un instante
estupefactas, cristalizadas, nítidas, inverosímiles como sucede bajo la
influencia de la marihuana. El estudiante, entre sus libros, tras de la
mesa, despeinado, insomne, mira atónito: A Nachito tiene delante
abierta la boca y las manos en las orejas:
—¡Me he suicidado!
El estudiante cada vez parece más muerto:
—¿Usted es un fugado de Santa Mónica?
Nachito se frota los ojos:
—Viene a ser como un viceversa... Yo, amigo, de nadie escapo
Aquí me estoy. Míreme usted, amigo. Yo no escapo... Escapa e
culpado. No soy más que un acompañante... Si me pregunta usted po
qué tengo entrado aquí, me será difícil responderle. ¿Acaso sé dónde
me encuentro? Subí por impulso ciego, en el arrebato de ese otro que
usted ha visto. Mi palabra le doy. Un caso que yo mismo no
comprendo. ¡Biomagnetismo!
El estudiante le mira perplejo sin descifrar el enredo de pesadilla
donde fulgura el rostro de aquel que escapó por la lívida ventana
abierta toda la noche con la perseverancia de las cosas inertes, en
espera de que se cumpla aquella contingencia de melodrama. Nachito
solloza efusivo y cobarde:
—Aquí estoy, noble joven. Solamente pido para serenarme, un trago
de agua. Todo es un sueño.
En este registro, se le atora el gallo. Llega del corredor estrépito de
voces y armas. Empuñando el revólver cubre la puerta la figura de
Mayor Abilio del Valle. Detrás, soldados con fusiles:
—¡Manos arriba!

Por otra puerta una gigantona descalza, en enaguas y pañoleta: La

greña aleonada, ojos y cejas de tan intensos negros que, con ser muy
morena la cara, parecen en ella tiznes y lumbres: Una poderosa figura
de vieja bíblica: Sus brazos de acusados tendones, tenían un pathos
barroco y estatuario. Doña Rosita Pintado entró en una ráfaga de
voces airadas, gesto y ademán en trastorno:
—¿Qué buscan en mi casa? ¿Es que piensan llevarse al chamaco?
¿Quién lo manda? ¡Me llevan a mí! ¿Estas son leyes?
Habló el Mayor del Valle:
—No me vea chuela, Doña Rosita. El retoño tiene que venirse
merito a prestar declaración. Yo le garanto que cumplida esa diligencia
como se halle sin culpa, acá vuelve el muchacho. No tema ninguna
ojeriza. Esto lo dimanan las circunstancias. El muchacho vuelve si está
sin culpa, yo se lo garanto.
Miró a su madre el mozalbete y, con arisco ceño, le recomendó
silencio. La gigantona estremecida corrió para abrazarle, en desolado
ademán los brazos. La arrestó el hijo con gesto firme:
—Mi vieja, cállese y no la friegue. Con bulla nada se alcanza.
Clamó la madre:
—¡Tú me matas, negro de Guinea!
—¡Nada malo puede venirme!
La gigantona se debatió, asombrada en una oscuridad de dudas y
alarmas:
—¡Mayorcito del Valle, dígame usted lo que pasa!
Interrumpió el mozuelo:
—Uno que entró perseguido, y se fugó por la ventana.
—¿Tú qué le has dicho?
—Ni tiempo tuve de verle la cara.
Intervino el Mayor del Valle:
—Con hacer esta declaración donde corresponde, todo queda
terminado.
Plegó los brazos la gigantona:
—¿Y el que escapaba, se sabe quién era?
Nachito sacó la voz entre nieblas alcohólicas:
—¡El Coronel de la Gándara!
Nachito, luciente de lágrimas, encogido entre dos soldados
resoplaba con la alcuza llorona pingando la moca. Aturdida, en
desconcierto, le miró Doña Rosita:
—¡Valedor! ¿También usted llora?
—¡Me he suicidado!
El Mayor del Valle levanta el charrasco y la escuadra se apronta
sacando entre filas al estudiante y a Nachito.
 VI

Despeinadas y ojerosas atisbaban tras de la reja las pupilas de

Taracena. Se afanan por descubrir a los prisioneros, sombras
taciturnas entre la gris retícula de las bayonetas. El sacristán de las
monjas sacaba la cabeza por el arquillo del esquilón. Tocaban diana las
cornetas de fuertes y cuarteles. Tenía el mar caminos de sol. Los
indios, trajinantes nocturnos, entraban en la ciudad guiando recuas de
llamas cargadas de mercadería y frutos de los ranchos serranos: E
bravío del ganado recalentaba la neblina del alba. Despertábase e
Puerto con un son ambulatorio de esquilas, y la patrulla de fusiles
desaparecía con los dos prisioneros por el Arquillo de las Portuguesas
En el congal, la madrota daba voces ordenando que las pupilas se
recogiesen a la perrera del sotabanco, y el coime, con una flor en e
pelo, trajinaba remudando la ropa de las camas del trato. Lupita la
Romántica, en camisa rosa, rezaba ante el retablo de luces en la
Recámara Verde. Murmuró el coime con un alfiler en los labios, a
mismo tiempo que estudiaba los recogidos de la colcha:
—¡Aún no se me fue el sobresalto!
C U A RTA PA RT E
A MUL ETO NI G R O MA NT E
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