Un Giorno Chiaro

This is the third quinceañera I have been to this year for this man and I am getting tired of it.

As you no doubt already know, a quinceañera is a traditional Mexican coming-of-age party celebrated on or around a girl’s fifteenth birthday. This is why it is all the more bizzare to be attending a succession of them honoring a forty-three-year-old quasi-libertarian environmentalist.

I think you know who I am talking about. Yes, I am in fact talking about our local Green Party power broker, our “Mr. Rules are bad unless made by me” himself.

Yes, I am talking about Mr. Thomas Ache, who lately is loco for all things Mexique. I suppose we can thank his involvement with Fondelio Doquera, his current gay lover from Hermosillo, for this newfound enthusiasm.

In addition to his monthly quinceañera, Mr. Ache has met with rebels in Chiapas, has begun using an Aztlan address, disciplines the dog with rolled up copies of La Jornada and though not actually learning any Spanish, he is successfully cultivating an accent. Fondelio, on the other hand, seems content to spend his free time at Park Place Mall and the Sprint store. I suppose one cannot argue that in the short time that they have been together they have not achieved a symbiosis most couples only dream of after eating pizza in their beds at night.

I wish the two much happiness, but I cannot help think Fondelio is yet another passing phase for Mr. Ache.

Thank you for letting me tell you this here because no one else seems to want to hear it.

You see, when Mr. Ache drunkenly exclaims, “Fondelio! TAY AW-MOH hos-stuh EL phone-doh, Fondelio!” most people interpret that as a somewhat jingoistic expression of complete love by a politician in a language he neither speaks nor pronounces very well, whereas I view it with a morphemic cynicism. I think Fondelio is an ironic name for the man’s latest well-hung grope.

I also cannot help but recall Mr. Ache’s involvement with a certain masseuse he met in Sedona, a certain Paolo Ovnis. Yes, you heard me correctly: Paolo Ovnis used to be a Sedona spa boy.

And you probably know him only as the director of the critically acclaimed 1999 film, Un Giorno Chiaro.

I do not blame you. I mean, who can forget the heartwarming story of the spaceman blinded in a collision with a military satellite and left behind on Earth while his fellow space travellers, in a state of animated suspension, hurtle through the solar system on a collision course with Uranus? I know I cannot. And how sad that to manage even the cruelest survival the spaceman must rely on the picaresque whims of the temp agency ladies. But what a happy turn of events when he finally meets one who is different, his own special lady, his Mandita, and because of her love learns to harness the destructive forces of evil and channels them into the destructive forces of good.

Well, you may remember it somewhat differently. That is okay. There are many interpretations. The point in the film I am specifically referring to is when his vision is restored and he builds a nuclear-powered castle on Antarctica.

Such a triumph of the humanoid spirit.

Anyhow, Paolo strung Mr. Ache along for months until enough favors had been called in and the film had a producer. Then, Paolo headed straight for the airport where he phoned a pained Tommy Ache to explain that although the film was set in Winslow, it would be impossible to imbue Northern Arizona with a European sensibility without filming the picture in Milan.

No use denying that.

Anyhow, as I sit here bored out of my skull and wishing I had my camera with me but deciding — as I watch Mr. Ache change into a new dress, and Fondelio argues with his mother on one cell phone and the caterer on the other, and the children take turns making snow angels in the enormous cake — I cannot think of what I would photograph if I did have it.