|
 Published October 2004, The Overlook Press. An excerpt from the beginning of the novel. Chapter 1 Número Uno East Village 101 The night that Omaha Bigelow’s life changed forever began quite badly. At around midnight July 4, 2000 he was thrown brutally out of the Friendly Fire Club on Allen Street in the East Village. Technically, Allen Street is the Lower East Side since it is the southern extension of First Avenue after it crosses Houston Street. The East Village esthetic, however, has seeped across Houston two more blocks to Delancey Street. This is an odd area of New York City. The Chinese are marching northward from Chinatown and the yuppies and artists are marching southward from the East Village. Bars and restaurants where young women thespians average 8.7% trips to your table to determine whether everything is okay, and boutiques where you may purchase frilly slips to wear as a dress with combat boots, have sprouted along Ludlow and Orchard Streets, traditionally the site of shops where Yiddish has been spoken by merchants and shoppers for over 150 years. A bit further north, in the middle of the East Village, is Loisaida, which is the name Puerto Ricans have given the area. The name Loisaida is a combination of a town in Puerto Rico by the name of Loiza and the Lower East Side. Linguistically exotic, Loisaida is a gallant and quixotic cultural attempt to dominate the geography even though renting is not the same as owning. Omaha Bigelow was as high as a kite. Having consumed ten Rolling Rocks, taken no less than twelve tokes on several joints laced with a number of enhancements and having innosed a line of Coca Cola at the 10th Street apartment of his friend, Richard Rentacar, the leader of Carsick, the punk rock band in which he played bass, he was feeling no pain. Instead, Omaha Bigelow was feeling much too mellow to be permitted to remain in the club. The reason? He peevishly insisted on getting up on the stage and demanding from the bassist in Clowns Desirous, the featured girl’s band, that she let him sit in. Between licks on the bass while they played their hit single “Lick This,” the insulted bassist, Rita Flash, backhanded Omaha repeatedly with her spiked right glove. She eventually managed to position him so that as the drummer slammed a cymbal she jumped up, and, as she was coming down, she kicked Omaha in the chest and knocked him off the stage. The dancers, delighted by this spontaneous entertainment, did not attempt to catch Omaha Bigelow as he was used to in punk rock venues. Rather than receive him in a welcoming gathering of upraised hands, they parted in tune with the music and watched him helicopter through the air and land thudly on his back. He crashed to the floor laughing, rolled around, grabbed at people’s ankles and attempted to get back up on the stage. Mooko Pelujillo, the big dude who acts as peacekeeper inside Friendly Fire, intercepted Bigelow. The term big is too generic. Mooko makes Refrigerator Perry, the onetime three hundred pound plus, pachydermian tackle of the Chicago Bears football team, look like a water cooler. With an appropriate bending of the left arm so that Bigelow’s hand was up around the nape of his neck, Mooko escorted him to the door. Mooko explained to Omaha that he should stop fucking around and leave the bass guitarist of Clowns Desirous alone. When Omaha protested and said that he knew Rita Flash and she had given him head plenty of times, Mooko increased pressure upward so that Omaha said fuck seven times in a row. Mooko then opened the door and spoke in Spanish to Tony Manganzón, the outside dude who was deciding who was coming into the club and who was not. Mooko outlined Omaha’s behavior. Manganzón didn’t respond in Spanish. “Throw him the fuck out,” he said. “Word,” Mooko said. “Fuck,” repeated Omaha. When he tried to resist, Mooko grabbed Omaha’s spiky greenish hair with one hand, the back of his leather pants with the other and lifted him up off the ground. Omaha Bigelow said he had as much right to get up there and play as that stupidass, Sting-looking Rita Flash. And who the fuck was he, big, stupid-looking, Puerto Rican doofus to be ordering him around, a fucking Nazi stormtrooper motherfucker? Mooko had no choice. Without even unhooking the velvet rope he heaved Omaha Bigelow in a rather majestic arc out into the summer night, catapulting him almost to the curb. Insult and injury, thought Omaha Bigelow. Fuck, he thought. Far out, he thought. What now? he asked himself. The Overlook Press |
 “Vega Yunqué has written a remarkable novel tracing the life of a young bruja (witch), Maruquita Salsipuedes, and her love relationship with a white punk rocker, Omaha Bigelow. Part Piri Thomas, part Gabriel García Márquez, and part J.D. Salinger, this picaresque tale forces us to think about, and laugh at, the absurdity of our various cultural stereotypes.” --New York Post "If Edgardo Vega Yunque's latest novel is any indication, the man is a piece of work. How does he make the connection between American life and politics and tell the tale of an under-endowed punk-rocker and an unlucky-in-love bruja? I promise you, he makes it work. This definitely is Yunque's world, and I for one liked living in it - if only just in his book." --The Hartford Courant "Mr. Vega Yunqué shines a bright light on subjects that aren’t explored nearly enough in the mainstream media, and offers readers a vicarious walk on the wild side while he’s at it.” --Dallas Morning News. |
