The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Maybe I’d always had the wrong idea as to who I really was.

Everyone has to find a way to even up the score.

WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE LIVES HERE.

And it’s not as if you don’t know that I’m not exactly a numbers guy. Me and numbers equals no bueno. When you give me stats, my eyes glaze over.”

“Maybe they don’t. But we have to find a way to discipline our hearts so that their cruelty doesn’t turn us into hurt animals. We’re better than that. Haven’t you ever heard the word civilized?”

Not everyone who walks around on two legs is good and decent. Not everyone who walks on two legs knows how to use their intelligence.

“It’s not a good idea to jump into the sewer to catch a rat.”

MIMA SAYS YOU should never forget where you came from.

Like him not buying me a car, even though we had enough money. That really annoyed me. And it didn’t matter how many times I brought the subject up—​he’d shoot it down like it was a duck in hunting season. “But we can afford it,” I’d say. And then he’d say: “No, I can afford it. You, on the other hand, can’t even afford to pay for your cell phone.”

“Every generation thinks they’re the coolest canoe that’s ever come down the river.”

And I wondered how Fito got to be so decent when there wasn’t anybody around teaching him how to be decent.

I guess life hurt everybody. I didn’t understand the logic of this thing we called living. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to.

“I’ll love you till the day I die, Sally.”

“I told you that there were only two things you needed to learn in life. You needed to learn how to forgive. And you needed to learn how to be happy.”

I saw guys like Enrique Infante and that idiot Eddie, guys who had no respect for anybody. It pissed me off, and there were little explosions inside me, and I even wanted to hit God because He was taking my Mima away, which was super stupid because God wasn’t someone you could hit, and what kind of guy was I anyway, a guy who wanted to hit God? My father didn’t believe in hitting or punching. And I guess I did. I mean, that Eddie guy, I had my sights on him. And I knew my father would say that hurting another human being just because he hurt you is no way to live your life. And maybe he was right. But that thought didn’t live inside me.

it’s not other people who make you feel like you’re alone. You do it to yourself.”

the summer morning when I was throwing rocks at a wasps’ nest and wound up in the ER,

geblek bwaahsjakhsahsa

A lot of people in the world had really shitty lives, and it wasn’t even their fault. Like Fito. Some people were just born into the wrong family or adopted by the wrong family, or they were born with something broken inside them.

And then I thought that maybe life was like that—​there would always be something scratching at the door. And whatever was scratching would just scratch and scratch until you opened the door.

“Yeah, don’t have that many words living inside me today.”

If I were a poet I would write a poem that would make the oceans clean again. I would write a poem so pure that it would rain for days and when the skies were clear again, a million stars would fill the summer night. I would write a poem to make the people see guns are guns and unworthy of our love. I would write a poem to make all the bullets disappear.

said I was sorry, Vicente.” “Cheapest word in the dictionary.”

He kept talking and saying that he’d find a way to get by, and that nothing was gonna stop him from going to college, and it made me feel like an idiot because college was this gift I had, like a present under a Christmas tree, and I didn’t want to open it.

You know, someone decent. Someone who resembles a human being. I think a lot of gay guys are like I be a girl, or they’re the opposite and they’re like I be an animal and shit like that. Why can’t they be like I’m just a guy?” I don’t know why, but that made me and Sam laugh.

What made you a man? What exactly made you a man?

There’s something going on inside you, son. And you need to figure it out. It’s not something I can do for you. I can ground you. I can punish you. I can give you a lecture. I don’t think that’s going to solve what’s going on with you.”

“Whoever said growing up was easy? But using your fists doesn’t make you a man. You already know that. I guess I just had to say it.”

“I gave you everything you needed. But not everything you wanted. I didn’t want you to grow up to be an entitled brat. A lot of kids, their parents get them everything and the kids do a new kind of math: I want equals I get.

“Is that faggot with one g or two?”

There was nothing wrong with getting angry. It was what you did with that anger that mattered.

“If you make a mistake, don’t live in it.”