*fiction

My father's family learned of my existence many years after I was born. He lived with his wife and children in a rural village in the state of Jalisco, a peculiar place in Mexico where the country men are very handsome.

My father kept my mother and me a secret in the capital of the country; when my mother died, he told his wife and children about me; since I was already of legal age, I didn't have to move in with them, but my father always took care of me and continued to visit me occasionally.

No one in his family showed interest in getting to know me, though I sporadically got to know my three half-brothers.

My father knew he was gay since he was a teenager; for some curious reason I don't know, his entire family occasionally found out, and it never bothered me that they knew; on the contrary, it always made me feel special to be the gay half-brother living in the capital.

My grandfather's birthday, my father's dad, was the special occasion my progenitor had been waiting for to introduce me to his family; it wasn't just any birthday; the old man, whom I didn't even know, was turning 80 years old, and uncles, cousins, and distant relatives gathered at the family ranch to celebrate. At that time, I had just turned 25.

The ranch was large; the family set up many long tables in the central patio of the ranch, and slowly, the guests began to arrive. My father asked Paco, one of my half-brothers, to introduce me to the whole family.

Paco is just two months younger than me; my father's bastard had both his women pregnant at the same time. I can understand that my half-brothers' mom wouldn’t even want to see me and that she would reproach my dad in front of me for bringing me to the party. But my dad, like a good country man, turned a blind eye.

During the meal, I took a seat at the table with my half-brothers and our cousins. Next to me was Braulio, my older half-brother, who was then 38 years old and had just gotten divorced; he is a very tall and burly man with bronze skin, big honey-colored eyes, and enormous black eyelashes. He wore long sleeves that showed off his thick, hard biceps, and his hands are large and hairy; he has the hoarse voice of a true rancher, a broad back, and exudes testosterone. Braulio spoke to everyone at the table, and I noticed that he tried not to speak to me at all, even to ask for a napkin he preferred to have the man across from us, the husband of a cousin who was, by the way, the most handsome of all the handsome men at the table, pass it to him.

It’s fair to acknowledge that my father’s genes have also done justice to me; I’m the only dark-skinned one in the “family” and I’m quite handsome: slender, long-legged, with very nice round and meaty buttocks, standing at 1.70 meters tall, with a flat nose and a harmonious face. I inherited my father’s light eyes and my mother’s sharp hips and thick legs. My name is Ju...