Fetishists Anonymous
by Cristina Peri Rossi
Translated from Spanish by Tobias Hecht
On Saturday afternoons, I'm the only woman at the Fetishists' Club. Otherwise it's just men.
We meet on the weekends, before Sunday, stupid old Sunday, the gloomiest, most depressing day of the week. Sundays are a lost cause: reality plain and simple, unadorned. If you're lucky, you can sleep a little longer, between one noise and the next-the neighbor's shower, the elevator full of children (children are let loose on Sundays and there's no telling what can happen with all those exploding hormones), the telephone (which is always ringing to announce the ritual visit of your parents-in-law, someone's forgotten birthday, or that your great aunt who suffers from, among other things, the eighty years she's already been alive, is sick). The full weight of reality, that's Sunday, when you have incontrovertible evidence that your apartment is too small for four people and that lack of space creates hostility (or at least puts it on display), when you can eat paella or baked lamb, go to movies with your husband and feel lonely or go alone and feel lonely.