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Of course the President of Peru's daughter lives in aflower-glutted casona in the Barranco District, hands down the mostromantic in Lima. Of course she speaks four languages and has 50Kfollowers.
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Sometimes, after Special Forces murder a few dozen Shining Pathrebels in a remote jungle outpost, she'll tweet some pretty extremeviews like They should've eradicated three generations, the swine!and the number will decrease, but mostly it's on the increase.
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The PPD's fiance is a minimalist painter. They met last year atan organic spa in Patagonia. With the compression of a dream, I conjurethe May morning of their first meeting; how snow, like the thick bodiesof moths, pummeled the steamed glass of the sulfur bath.
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Contrast is a curious creature with teeth like tiny bowie knives.Alone in my Wisconsin kitchen I felt transparent with adolescentloneliness. There was no one to dissect, so I cut myself open. There wasno one to dissect, so I began my great study of everything that touchesher.
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The PPD's handle, @eskuinabaja, conveys an accessibility thatcounters her minor national celebrity. The professional performance ofgirl next door.
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After months of keen analysis, I succeeded in dividing her tweetsinto four categories:
1. The loss or gain of kilos
2. Television appearances and the agony of applying and removingstage makeup
3. Vehement denial of the hom*osexual conquests of former lovers,much to the chagrin of her 50K followers
4. Promotion of her memoir, an unflinching account of her childhoodstruggle with keloids
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The PPD's defect is that she over-heals! Certain facts cuttriumphant as the bed of potsherds and shattered glass upon which SantaRosa found God.
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The PPD's Twitter presence suggests a contrary and playfulworldview. The opposite of my own.
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My handle, @yourspectator, conveys both distance and desire. The waya dog's performance begs to be owned.
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I have but one thing in common with the PPD. We are both, alas,insomniacs. Nights before she begins menstruating, the PPD lies awakeconjuring the faces of her childhood bodyguards, extracting from theLimanese fog, the names of their wives, sons and mistresses.
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Last New Year's Eve, the PPD rapid-fire tweeted her resolutionsbetween 11:56 and 11:59:
1. This year, I'm going to be tall and blonde
2. I'll get a tattoo of Orozco's Prometheus on the smallof my back
3. My favorite color will be lilac
4. I will revel in an undeveloped roll of photos from a 1995 trip toSea World
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Faces mutate, birds migrate. For you I would install a machine tospew orchid petals each time you cross the threshold, I direct messaged@eskuinabaja at 12:01
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I lie awake with the Inquisition. The proximity to punishmentinterests me. Righteous breath crowning over the quemadero as thecondemned faces the crowd. Do I dare consider the question of eyecontact?
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The PPD tweets her fatigue from the dance floor of a weddingreception, holding each character hotly to my lips like a shot ofpisco.
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That Lima and Wisconsin are in the same time zone makes me want torub the mercury of a bitten thermometer between my legs.
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Extravagance, you will have by now confirmed, is a hallmark of mynature. Carnival comes from the Italian dialect meaning to remove meat.Farewell, flesh! Light, raise, remove. I have always been best atbleeding.
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The PPD is alone with her high-end curling iron. The curling irondesires her. There is so much desire in Lima. The curling iron scaldsher forehead like a prayer bruise or a flaming chakra to which themakeup artist points, throws up his hands, and shouts, How can I concealthis?
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What is the function of hemisphere? It is to divide. Somewhere inGreenland a glacier the size of Lima calves into the Arctic Sea.
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The month when I first followed the PPD they completed a cloudlessmap of Earth shot at millions of intervals. What body vivisected intostillness does not appear perfect?
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My cousin Annarita and I are seven and spying on her brother and hisgirlfriend through a low basem*nt window. Platoons of ants scatteracross our stomachs. Cobwebs and wet leaves still remind me ofpenetration. When I try to rise, she pinches my side, puts a finger toher lips, and whispers This is their punishment.
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To suffer is to fall without heresy. Ruined and envious I feelfullest. In me, the blackness of a burro's belly. Outside, joyridesaround the windlass.
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Look, Mother Earth, how my enemy makes me bleed it is said the lastInca king yelled on his way to the scaffold.
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Like piety, auto-da-fe was a performance. You must learn to pleadfor purity for sometimes the flame escapes.
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Thrashed by distance is how it feels when the PPD unfollows me. Buthow is the tourism convention in Cusco? I want to ask. What have Igained from this great study but sad, secret knowledge? Seen, unseen,gliding bodies of birds in the leaden skies over a particularhemisphere.
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What do I want? is a difficult question after a sustained period ofobservation. For 304 days, the PPD's tweets have annotated myMidwestern life.
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Though there are no more auto-da-fes in Lima now, I dream anall-night vigil in the esplanade. The PPD lifts my sackcloth and spreadsit like a marriage sheet across the stone, where she writes the names ofour sins backwards as if across cafe glass. Demons, dragons andFujimori's effigy emblazon the twin flames of our faces'touching.
Kara Candito is the author of Spectator (University of Utah Press,2014), winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, and Taste of Cherry(University of Nebraska Press, 2009), winner of the Prairie SchoonerBook Prize in Poetry. She is a co-curator of the Monsters of Poetryreading series and a creative writing professor at the University ofWisconsin, Platteville.
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