{"id":8962,"date":"2021-11-01T00:00:09","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T04:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/?p=8962"},"modified":"2022-03-22T19:48:30","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T23:48:30","slug":"literatura-feat-musica-hotel-singapur-fragmento-gerardo-fernandez-fe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/literatura-feat-musica-hotel-singapur-fragmento-gerardo-fernandez-fe\/","title":{"rendered":"Hotel Singapore (excerpt)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span>For years, I later learned, as a teenager and even as a young adult, Modesto spent entire days imitating Michael Jackson. He wore his same pants above the ankles, his white stockings encrusted with fake fireflies, his narrow silver jacket, a shirt with the lapels raised, his hair straightened, not quite touching his shoulders, worked for hours with hot combs , with concoctions made from water with sugar and with oils that he himself had invented. It wasn't just Modesto, but El Maikel, one of the many who imitated the most famous of the Jacksons. He repeated the gestures of his model in front of a mirror, always hidden from his father and despite his mother's complaints and mocking laughter. He was not embarrassed to go out in his outfit, with his little gangster hat tilted forward, the marshal's gold braid, so like hairbrushes embossed in antique brass, his cheeks powdered, his lips lightly painted, shiny, his hair worked, where later the mustache would come out, and a tender gesture, nostalgic and demonic at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the back pockets of his trousers, when he went to the party, he kept a pair of beige gloves, full of shiny beads that he had embedded himself. When he arrived at the place where he was expected, El Maikel put them on and got much more into his character. That was magical. Little or almost nothing mattered to him the giggles of the incredulous, of the morons who knew nothing of the art of simulation. Many of the teenage fans in the neighborhood wanted to have something to do with him, they wanted to meet him, touch him, be by his side. On more than one occasion, some of them took off their clothes with the glee with which the rookie pilot receives the applause of the passengers as soon as the plane touches the ground, ready to be possessed by the best Michael Jackson impersonator in the whole city, the the only one who had won all the contests on the subject. He, between two, three and even four contenders, rivals who executed the steps of their idol before the racket and the applause of those present, and then, after the acclamations, the collection of the bets, the delivery of a bottle of The only prize, from the praise of the comrades, was to be lucky enough to undress in some corner the most sympathetic of the little princesses of the neighborhood, with her short, fine-tipped breasts, at 14 years of age. Sometimes the mess was armed with the honoree of a party of 15 who had escaped from a father sufficiently soaked in alcohol and a mother too euphoric, tired after so many months of preparations, in search of resounding happiness. Then El Maikel would return home, on foot, because at that time there was no transportation, with his hat under his arm, his patent leather shoes squeezing his feet, his nails digging into his flesh, with skyrocketing self-esteem and the certainty that that same scene would be repeated the following week, on Friday, Saturday, sometimes also on Sunday, and as long as he had life left.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0"There was no one in the whole country who imitated the <\/span>moon walk<\/span><\/i> better than him," Orchid said ironically, and I was so amused that, hunching forward from suppressed laughter, I spilled a little water on the floor. That was his moment of glory.\u201d He came back. At one of his last parties he ended up impregnating a much younger girl. That's where the countdown began, with the scandal, the pressure of the parents, who threatened to call the police and "walk" the case in court, with the determination of that family that, if they did not agree to marry to end the matter, he would be accused of rape.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0According to Orchid, <\/span>Modesto always assured that he had a critical view of the artist he was imitating. His position was among the most orthodox. He did not even admit to verifying on television or in a magazine passed from hand to hand that his Michael Jackson had slightly modified his <\/span>look<\/span><\/i>, which would have left the classic, gimmicky and slum model, of <\/span>Thriller<\/span><\/i>, from <\/span>beatit<\/span><\/i> or of <\/span>Billie Jean<\/span><\/i>. The fact that The King, as he called him, trimmed the length of his increasingly straight hair, or that he whitened his skin through strange treatments, implied for him a certain anguish, the feeling that other times were better and the certainty that that he would continue to be a strict soldier among the many that the original Jackson would have on the planet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There came a time when Modesto felt that he was disappearing as a person. Occasionally he had dreams in which he hugged his idol, that he saw him go up the stairs that led to his house, and that he entered through the threshold merging into a hug, both observing each other in the stained mirror of the living room. When this happened, none of those present were able to distinguish who was who, where the original was, and to whom the role of the simulator corresponded.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At that point, Orqu\u00eddea pointed out, it didn't matter if he didn't earn a penny after the performances. The years had not yet come when everything was exchanged for a couple of bills. Modesto became El Maikel out of love for his idol and out of the need to be supported by the people. Nor did it matter those bad nights in which boos or jeers could make a dent in their convictions. Everything was offset by the applause of those who ended up admiring the neatness of his attire, the perfection of his steps, the detail of his choreography, the halo that distinguished him from the rest of the crowd.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Some years later Modesto began to understand the signs of despondency, the feeling that he was nothing more than a tartuffe, a braggart who made others amuse. In addition, the original Jackson had also taken to making changes to his figure, he was mutating into something else that was foreign to him. By the time it became impossible for him to avoid military service, Modesto had been imitating Michael Jackson for nearly a decade. Due to turns and subterfuges of life, because he had chained a couple of different daytime studies to delay entering the army, waiting for a miracle that would save him from complying, he had no choice but to dress in olive green after 20 years . It was there, with a pregnant woman he barely knew, that he looked back and realized how long he had been under someone else's skin. Even today, sporadically, someone sticks his head out the window of a bus and yells at him as he passes: "Wow, Maikeeeel!" Although less and less frequently. He has put on weight \u2014he admits\u2014 and the newcomers are occupying the best areas of innocence and activity in the city. No one knows him, almost no one remembers his exploits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0"The day it was learned that a Juan Gabriel impersonator had been murdered as he left a wedding," Orqu\u00eddea twisted, "Modesto was very affected." Didn't you hear? Because the news spread like wildfire! Many versions circulated: that if he had claimed more than the money agreed for his performance, that if he had addressed the mother of the bride "in a dishonorable manner"; that if they had caught him squeezing with a boy at the end of his show and if in fact he had always been the boyfriend's lover...<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0So many scattered stories, springing from the same core, shot the diameter of my pupils. It made me thirsty, very thirsty, and I automatically put the knob in my mouth.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0"That afternoon," Orqu\u00eddea resumed, "Modesto remembered some anecdotes, not from his time as a Michael Jackson impersonator, since he has never talked about it in front of us, but from his two years in military service." He regretted having been assigned to a radio battalion. He would have preferred to belong to a special brigade trained by psychologists and specialists to join the firing squads. Because if it would have given him a lot of pleasure \u2014he emphasized, charging the ink\u2014 to have shot the bastard who had murdered the imitator of Juan Gabriel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was precisely when he got out of military service, as Orqu\u00eddea told me, that Modesto began to reflect on his past, on his way of displaying his brilliant finery and his dance steps in front of people. Perhaps, beginning to understand himself, he became the pulpy, barbiturate-speed man I knew. As I learned, that was the time when he began to wonder who his father really was. It could be speculated on whether knowing the truth about Urbano made him abandon his skills as an imitator, if it was something that occurred in parallel, or if after being released from the army and with the responsibility of a son, he was first embarrassed by his years as an imitator and then he went in search of other truths, even more painful.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fragment of the homonymous novel, published by the Audere publishing house in 2021.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"For years, I later learned, as a teenager and even as a young adult, Modesto spent entire days imitating Michael Jackson." Thus begins this fragment of the novel Hotel Singapore that Gerardo Fern\u00e1ndez Fe, kindly, publishes in a new installment of our Literature feat. Music, almost an advance for the Cuban reader. <\/p>","protected":false},"author":1547,"featured_media":8963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[72,8906],"tags":[8613,8612,6467],"coauthors":[8611],"class_list":["post-8962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literatura-feat-musica","category-variaciones","tag-gerardo-fernandez-fe","tag-hotel-singapur","tag-michael-jackson"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/magazineampm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Gerardo-Fernandez-Fe-_-portada.jpg?fit=1520%2C695&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1547"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8962"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10522,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8962\/revisions\/10522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8962"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}