Torpor Quotes

“We pick up our shots and for the first time there's a total absence of sound in the room. From the ceiling, shy silver things blink and wait. Dennis doesn't sit, but hovers at the edge of the table, leaning in with a darkroom perfected slump. His hair hangs like its edges were dipped in lead. Thin spears pointing to the table. I'm looking at his face; we're both serious in a self-aware way, pretending not to notice.

"It doesn't even feel like I left. God, you look fucking terrible. But it's a terrible face that drinks tequila well. Down. And cheers."

We force a dull clash of cups and pour everything down at once. The hard tequila shudders that never happen in the movies. First your head feels light, then it starts receiving the distress signals from throat, lungs, belly. Your shoulders jerk to shake off the snake that wrapped around you and squeezed. It burns. The good burn.”
― Laurie Perez, Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm

“This room is crowded, haunted by the stale breath of the living. Until now, I have been able to imagine him dead, gloriously rotting in soil, on his way to Hell, perhaps, or stuck in the mire of nothingness that catches wandering spirits. In that image I have found small degrees of warmth, a tangible explanation for not knowing my father.

I look at the picture and enlarge it with my mind. It is impossible to sleep knowing the chance exists that I might still meet him. I feel the planet spinning under me, like a whirlpool, the surface shrinking so that everything must eventually touch. I resist until it shatters.”
― Laurie Perez, Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm

“I used to think I was in love with Mia because she was in love with me. Now when I watch her strutting down the runway, twisting and flouncing the way her mother trained her, I know she's just a human coat hanger. A wired body I hold late at night and try to fit into.”
― Laurie Perez, Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm

“Someday I want to go back to San Felipe de Jesus and find the Jesus in that place. Someday I want to trap myself in those washboard towns, Aconchi, Magdalena; I want to meet their saints someday. I would ask them if they have ever been in love.

I don't mean the syrup they lay on you in the media. I mean the meat of love, the hardness of it, the ice water that wakes you up into the heat of day. The Mexico of love, with rocks, pickup trucks, fat men and sugary children. Cock-sure, moonlit tequila, sweet lime, metallic bed for secret touching. Did they ever reach that side of life? Those mealy saints with their crosses on their backs, did they have enough stomach for the midnight lunch of love?”
― Laurie Perez, Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm

“I stood in the doorway and watched Dennis unbuttoning the blouse, pulling long shirttails out of her skirt and wetting her hair with his hands, letting hairspray clump together in long strands. Ruined like that, in front of me. It was hard to watch because it was so clean, so perfect.

The glow from the television screen crawls over their faces and it's hard to convince yourself they are breathing, living things.”
― Laurie Perez, Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm

“The landscape started hard, sharp black mountains over my shoulder and thirsty young saguaros hugging patchy dirt. Gradually it let go, began to green on me a little. I crossed a river, watched succulents get fatter and farmland start to wave, hoarding the blue above and the few clouds it had to spare.

I knew the route somehow, knew the curves, the directions, the exact way to go. I knew it the way you know the stars are still up in the sky even though white sun obscures them. Everything that had happened before Lukeville and Sonoita began to liquify in memory, feeling more like fiction than personal history. Funerals and pain, girlfriends and mothers, roommates and priests all tumble away with the desert behind me. The only thing that's real is the road I see ahead. The only person in my life is the man sitting silently beside me. The place I'm going is the only place I've ever wanted to go.”
― Laurie Perez, Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm

“There are many men out there who can see nothing but evil. It is on their vision like a cataract. Don't make yourself available to their interpretation of your worth.”
― Laurie Perez, Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm

“Dark and messy... No wonder the guy at the desk stared at me. I look like a pre-revolutionary vaquero who just slipped off his horse – dusty, thirsty, desperate to be laid pretty between clean sheets. I am most of those things.

—Peter Arellano”
― Laurie Perez, Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm

“Padre Huerta is so present when you ask him a question, you feel as if you've stepped inside of him to hear his response. He leans closer to me and takes my hand in his. I don't mind it. His hands are warm and soft, slightly fat. He doesn't squeeze, but just holds me steady. I'm being so careful not to look in the direction of the coffin on the other side of the room. When he touches me, I sense he knows that.”
― Laurie Perez, Torpor: Though the Heart Is Warm