Garza

Before I share this essay, Garza, an update: I’ve been writing a one-woman show called About Face, based in part on what you’ve read here. I wanted to share other pieces to the blog while working on that, but that’s been just a bit too much.

But I have to share this piece. I wrote it awhile ago, in May of 2021. I had just met my new friend María José Garza. I’m very sad to say that María passed away this week in San Francisco. Her mother was able to be here with her.

María’s passing is a loss for everyone who knew her.

I had visits with her that made me feel seen, connected, and real. Of value. A part of a community, one that loved me.

I’ll miss her.

Last night I met María José Garza. Her one name contains three distinct names, all of which she actively uses.

I know her as María, the name she gave herself as she began to transition. José is the name her parents gave her when she was born in Peru, and also the name by which the American government knows her. Garza she earned from her fellow ballet dancers. She is beautiful and graceful but tall and angular. She could not be a swan, so they called her Garza, Spanish for egret.

We met through our mutual friend Hamlet. When we got together, it was just the two of us. “Girls only!” María texted.

We went out for Thai. The couple sitting adjacent to us, still separated from us by an empty table because of Covid-19, were cis- tourists. They politely noticed us. I love being someone else’s San Francisco experience.

María works in public health, specifically in STI prevention. She goes to all the fun events of the year, but she’s working. I’m eager to go to my first ever Folsom Street Fair. What is it would be like to go that event and be on the clock?

She fights the good fight at the office. “You know how many girls of color like me were in HIV trials? Two. These hands recruited those two girls. These hands. The others, they all were white.”

She is not shy about expressing her femininity. She has season passes to the opera and the ballet, and when she goes, she wears long, elegant gowns. The staff greet her as “madame,” and they have champagne waiting for her at intermission.

She is tall, maybe six-foot-two. She uses height to her advantage. “I hold my head like this” — she tips her chin up into a regal pose — “and I can’t see them if they are looking at me.”

Because of her height and because of her face, too, you would not mistake María for cis-. But her energy is distinctively feminine. Other people see that too — she’s won beauty contests, like Miss Gay Latina 2003. She values her beauty, her elegance. “I always dreamed to be Miss Universe,” she says. She is only partly joking.

As we walk eight or so blocks to her place, I notice how vulnerable we are, how vulnerable I am. Last Saturday night, I walked a mile home from a bar. I crossed the street a couple of times to avoid people who could have been unfriendly. Would they have been? I don’t know. Probably not. I was just alone, and a member of a group that not everybody respects. Might as well play it safe.

Tonight we’re in the poorest neighborhood of San Francisco, the Tenderloin. (We’re also less than a mile from two of the nicest neighborhoods in the city, Nob Hill and Pacific Heights. Cities are strange.) I’ve seen some poverty and suffering both here and abroad, but not quite like this. Mental illness. Open sores. Filth. I’m not scared of the people I see here — I just notice and think we did not have this in suburban Minneapolis.

“I live half a block from the ghetto,” María tells me later. “I walk through there. And maybe I will go there sometime. Who knows what will happen?”

We stop at her corner store. “Now what do you really drink?” she asks. We’d had wine at the restaurant.

“Wine, actually — red wine.” María buys a bottle of Bacardi Gold, a two-liter of Coke and a pack of Marlboro Reds.

“Oh, you smoke?” She nods. I add a pack of American Spirits to my ten-dollar bottle.

“Have a good night, girls!” the friendly clerk says as we leave. That puts a smile on my face. María says he’s just practicing good business. I don’t care. I love it. Being seen.

María’s apartment is freezing cold. The windows, which make up the entire exterior wall, are wide open. It’s no warmer in here than it was outside. (And San Francisco is freezing, particularly in the summer.) Despite the active ventilation, the place reeks of cigarette smoke — the deep, rank smell you get only after smoke has penetrated every pore of every surface. And it’s small: one long rectangle ten feet wide and thirty feet deep. And the lighting is severe — either bright fluorescents or total darkness.

Her bathroom is warm and carefully arranged, though — the q-tips have their place, as do different lotions, bath salts, mouthwash. I wonder if this is her refuge?

We smoke and drink. She apologizes as she handwashes and passes me a crystal highball. “All my champagne glasses are in the storage locker.”

(For what it’s worth, I have reverse-snobbery regarding wine glassware. I will drink wine out of lowballs, highballs, fishbowls — the less like stemware, the more I’ll enjoy it.)

María is in this country on asylum. She’s a refugee from Peru and a citizen of the United States. The rules say she can never go home again.

She gives me advice in bulk — more than I’ve gotten from anyone, including my therapist. She waits until I look her in the eyes, then she delivers it straight at me.

“Others have suffered. Others have been rejected by their families — have been killed by their families. When you know them, you’ll suffer less.”

“This city, the people must give. They must share what they have. From being one cell, you join with others. Connect with them. You have to know this: What is your role in this city? What do you have to give?”

“You have to do what makes you happy. You have to be what makes you happy. Not for anyone else.”

That last one… that one lands. I mean, they all do, but I needed that one. Honestly, I have a hard time leaving the house sometimes. I’m afraid of what others might think of me, might say to me. I’ve built up some armor against that — I’d say I care less than ever before what other people think, but I still care.

What if I didn’t have to?

I ponder that as we keep drinking. For some reason — under certain circumstances — drinking is easier. Smoking is easier. It is here. I’m breathing cigarettes like they’re air. I’m drinking wine like it’s water.

We watch a video, a documentary made by a filmmaker as her graduate school thesis. It’s a ten-minute biography of María. I ask to watch it again — María complies without hesitation.

It’s about midnight. I don’t know what the rules of the city are. I don’t what María’s habits are. Easier to go home. Play it safe and get some sleep.

María has one more thing to say to me — the answer to a question she posed to me earlier.

“What you have to give is love.”

From the curb, waiting for an Uber, I study the neighborhood. It’s quiet now. From the inside of the car, I take in the people, the storefronts. I think about how many stories there are, stories I don’t know, all the stories I will never know, that none of us will ever know. I think about privilege—my privilege. I say thanks that I am able to visit this neighborhood. I pray I’m not a tourist.

I think about love, I hope that it is enough.