(Oscar was a stout kid, heading straight to fat, but his mother kept him nice in haircuts, and before the proportions of his head changed he’d had these lovely flashing eyes and these cute-ass cheeks.) The girls-his older sister’s friends, his mother’s friends, even his neighbor, a twenty-something postal employee who wore red on her lips and walked like she had a brass bell for an ass-all fell for him. You should have seen him, his mother sighed. During the parties-and there were many, many parties in those long-ago seventies days, before Washington Heights was Washington Heights, before the Bergenline became a straight shot of Spanish for almost a hundred blocks-some drunk relative inevitably pushed Oscar onto some little girl, and then everyone would howl as boy and girl approximated the hip-motism of the adults. Because he was a Dominican boy raised in a relatively “normal” Dominican family, his nascent pimpliness was encouraged by family and friends alike. Always trying to kiss them, always coming up behind them during a merengue, the first nigger to learn the perrito and the one who danced it every chance he got. It’s true: Oscar was a carajito who was into girls mad young. Except for one time, he’d never had much luck with women.
Oscar de León was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about.
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