Beloved Disciples is a dazzling gay love story, by our guest curator Mario Elias, where devotion sparkles in memory, obsession dances on the edge of reality, and a young man discovers the power of first love. He has gifted us with an excerpt of the book - out now and available at your favorite bookstore.
Mario is on the road. Catch him at one of his upcoming book readings:
NYC - P&T Knitwear
May 21st, 7pm with Zach Grear
San Francisco - Fabulosa Books
May 26th, 7pm with Karl Soehlein
Los Angeles - Skylight Books
May 28th, 7pm with Manuel Betancourt
BELOVED DISCIPLES - Excerpt for Bader + Simon
Mario Elías
The night I met Albi, I had a vague thought my old life might end, and some new, truer life had already started forming its spinal column and fingernails.
At the end of a street on the edge of the city, I balanced on the curb, floating inches above the wet pavement, blinking violently. Streetlamps sprayed light into the humid air, casting a shadow at my feet that could have belonged to anyone. The ragged palms crunched against each other. A frog chirped nearby. I needed to remember who I was in that moment before I changed.
Lenita clapped her hands in front of my face and pulled my arm as she led me toward the dark house in front of us. Fence posts circled the yard with no proper fence connecting them; chicken feet and other unrecognizable bones hung from the posts and clacked in a witchy way as the breeze stirred them. Just beyond the sound of rattling bones, the faintest rhythm drummed underground.
"Please welcome to the stage our hostess with the... Well... with just enough, I guess..."; Muffled laughter filled the spaces around the introduction. “They say beauty fades, but talent lasts forever. Lucky for her, she doesn't have to worry about either. Her latest one-star review said, ‘Wow, bigger snooze on stage than in bed.’ Cariños, give it up for Isabel Panocha!”
We heard the introduction as we descended into El Palomar for the first time. The worn wooden steps creaked beneath us, scratches revealing layers of faded color. I imagined the stairs crumbling under a mass exodus, bodies climbing over each other to escape. My pace slowed, but Lenita’s grip tightened, a handler guiding her cowardly horse.
The song began while the crowd continued erupting in whoops and whistles. Waves of sound bounced up the staircase around us as her muffled voice clawed its way out of the rumbling din below.
“Hurry up, Simón! The show's already started!” Lenita hissed, quickening her pace and leaving me trembling on the steps. I could feel the heat first in my feet, and as I continued down, it moved up my legs and overtook my body entirely with its tidal weight.
The performer, Isabel, weaved her way through the crowded dance floor, plastic costume jewelry twinkling in the dim light. As the applause subsided, everyone quieted. She continued singing a cappella; the clatter of her bangles was the only sound accompanying her husky, smoky voice. It was a song about being a woman like any other, about living with her defects in defiance of what any man thought. Everyone knew the words. Everyone knew what they meant, and I wondered if they understood them the same way I did.
On the steps above, I stood frozen, watching the sea of people sway, singing with her in hushed, reverent tones. Above them, the air hung thick like river water, and we were all being held beneath its surface by this siren. Her hair was piled high, the sides slicked and glued into place. Her gown, simple in silhouette, clung to her curves. Thick layers of makeup carved features into her round face.
Then... the illusion clicked.
I had never seen anyone like her before, and my first reaction was to look away. Shame had been tucked into the folds and valleys of my brain, but I immediately defied it. A small ember took hold, once smothered by all the garbage inside me. I might have shaken my head and opened my eyes wider, absorbing more of the sight. I might have cheered as she crescendoed.
I might have wanted to run away. I might have wept.
Sweat trickled down her chest, carrying trails of makeup from her face, now softened like a reflection in a foggy mirror. And, as she hit the final note, Isabel flung her arms above her towering hair, scattering beads of sweat like holy water.
The crowd erupted in yells and applause, surging toward her. They wanted to touch her, press money into her hands, as if she were a prophet or visiting saint. She slithered through the throng toward the back of the bar, gliding like it was all part of the act.
Bodies rearranged themselves with practiced urgency as the music kicked back in with a
merengue brass and scratch punching through the heat.
El Palomar is not a nightclub, but rather a basement where music is played and there's booze to drink. A concrete box. A self-fueled furnace. Tiny, narrow windows line the back wall, drawing fresh air in, while a fan at the front door sucks moist heat out. This method barely suffices on a weekday, let alone a Saturday, when the place is packed full of bodies like plastic bags stuffed with more plastic bags in a kitchen drawer.
Lenita waved me in, and I imagined my new life developing a heartbeat, growing hair. I gathered my resolve, stepping down, level with the crowd. Bodies crashed. The stairs disintegrated behind me. I couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe. I backed into the wall, my hands dripping with sweat.
The rough concrete was clammy against my palms. I pressed harder into it, settling into the blooming pain while I watched. The dancers had all paired up, hip to hip in the syrupy, semi-opaque air. Women spun, guided by disembodied hands held overhead. Whistles punctuated the music as men swirled and collided with debauched abandon, ducking low to dodge elbows here or a revolving blade of hair there. A singular, hive-like rhythm hummed under the chaos.
Then, I noticed the nudges exchanged between some of the men, the flirtatious glances
shared by others. Asses colliding. Crotches brushing against thighs. The lust, the abandon. I could almost taste it in the air. The sweat was sweeter. Tension building below the belt, electricity creeping down legs, pooling at the clavicle and wrapping its fingers around throats. It teased every follicle, clung to each back rubbing against a bare arm.
I had never seen men express such genuine, unguarded happiness. I took inventory of every face. Mustaches stretched across upper lips. Eyebrows lifted, not furrowed. Hair glistened with sweat. Clothing stuck to skin.
I was an orphaned anthropologist encountering a tribe he had no idea he belonged to. I felt lied to. Kept out of a secret conversation. I wanted to remember the design of every man’s shirt and whether it was tucked in or not. I wanted to remember the girls in high heels and the ones brave enough to dance barefoot.
A group of older men sat around one of the tables flanking the dance floor. Four women leaned on another. A third table held a gaggle of flamboyant guys around my age, clucking and cawing at each other. Conversations crossed, pinging off one another like a tennis match, a glorious cacophony of insults and laughter peppered with profanity even my cousin Camilo would blush at.
“You wouldn't know good dick if it came with arroz con leche, maricas,” one of the older mensaid before swigging his beer and groping himself.
“If that's what you're offering, cagalitroso, you can keep it. Sounds like something else has expired besides your dusty brain,” one of the younger guys snapped back, flipping invisible locks over his shoulder. Laughter erupted.
And then...behind the chaos, like a holy apparition...there he was.
Maybe it was the way he stood just beyond the cackles and screams, arms crossed over his broad chest, that struck me dumb. Or maybe it was the veins in those arms, protruding and alive, pumping blood just beneath the surface.
His glowing skin was draped with a fine, translucent blanket of black hair, hovering just above the flesh. The hair stopped above his elbows, but the veins and skin carried on, and I ached to touch the parts of his arms I couldn’t see.
I looked up to his face and recognized him instantly: the altar boy from my childhood church. His beautiful, strong nose. His honey eyes, dark one moment under a furrowed brow and gleaming the next.
I had stared at him every Mass as he carried the cross and placed it next to the altar, cleaned the blood from the gold chalice, swung the thurible with hypnotic precision. While other boys fidgeted and yawned, Albi moved with purpose, reverence.
I’d watched his hands cradle sacred objects as if they were extensions of his own body, hands that now lay tucked defensively against his chest. I’d dreamed of those hands touching me with the same care, fingertips leaving marks on my skin like the smudges he wiped away from the reflective surfaces.
My gaze hovered around his mouth. A sly twitch of his lip as a smile spread. My eyes met his, and my face caught fire as I darted along the concrete wall, hoping to disappear. A roach scattering at the flick of a switch.
I edged toward the bar. The surface was cluttered with bottles, glasses, and puddles of spilled liquor. People crowded around it in mounds. Some leaned in, jostling to keep their place for drinks, while others simply loitered, shouting over the music.
“Simo! Simón! Over here!” Lenita's voice boomed from inside one of the mounds, and I dove toward it.
“This is insane!” I gasped, wedging myself between people. “I don’t want to close my eyes. I don’t want it all to disappear.” I rubbed one eye and wailed theatrically before wrapping my arm around her, pretending to weep.
“That’s so funny ‘cause you looked like you were going to make a run for it. I thought we’d lost you for sure.” She shoved her elbow into my ribs and nodded toward the altar boy. “I knew you’d love it here,” she added, moving her tongue obscenely against the inside of her cheek.
“Sucia! You knew what kind of place this was?” I shrieked, louder than intended. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve dressed differently!”
I smoothed one hand over my hair while the other tugged at the hem of my shirt, one size too big and five years too old, fidgeting like a toddler about to piss himself.
“Look around, Simo. Everyone is a sweaty mess. You actually look better than most of these guys in here.”
“Actually, huh?” I pushed her backward as she chortled and hit the bar. “Anyway, they looked better than me when they walked in. Imagine how disgusting I’ll look when we leave.”
Lenita leaned close, her breath hot on my neck. “I’ve known you since we were six. You’re the worst fag I’ve ever met. You’d have found some excuse to bail.” She twisted her hair up and away from her shoulders. “You’ve gotta pop that little cherry sometime. We’re not leaving until you at least kiss a guy.”
The memory of our awkward teenage fumbling flashed through my mind: her detached
expression as I tried desperately to be good at something that left me completely cold. She’d shrugged afterward and said, “Nothing. I felt nothing at all.”
Now, ten years later, I stood in a sea of beautiful men in love with each other, while the only person I’d ever been with was laughing at my discomfort. Twenty-five and still a virgin in all the ways that mattered.
“Okay. Let’s do it,” I said. “Not you and me. Me and a man. I’m gonna find a man.” “Literally
any man!” Leni screamed over the music, and I ducked down again. A woman came around the corner behind the bar, balancing two bottles in each hand.
It was the host who had introduced Isabel Panocha. Tall and elegant, she had an aura that demanded attention, like a leading lady whose unflappable resolve wins everyone over by the end of the film.
She set the bottles down without glancing at the tables, already deep in conversation with two women at the end of the bar. As she poured them drinks from unmarked bottles, she smiled and gave us a casual chin-lift. A cool “What’ll it be?”
“Two shots of whatever you’re pouring!” The words bumbled out like a caricature of some
womanizing beer drinker, and my cheeks flushed. Who was I posing for?
“Two shots, eh?” she mimicked. “Loosen up, bebé. This is just water. I think you need
something stronger.”
She poured three glasses of a dark liquid before ambling over to Leni and me. “It’s your first time here, right? Just have fun. Leave that macho bullshit with your tíos. These are on me. Salud.”
We clinked glasses and took the shots.
“I don’t want you to get in trouble for giving us stuff for free.” I kept my eyes low as I fumbled for my wallet.
“Don’t worry. The boss is a bitch, but she can surprise you.” She winked. “I’m Simón, by the way. And this is my best friend, Lenita.” “Encantada. I’m Coco.” She poured us another round. “Coco Tazo. Now go dance before I give you one.” Her hand delivered a light slap to my cheek, playful but firm.
We knocked back the shots, and I folded some cash under an empty glass. Shaking off
my awkwardness, I grabbed Leni’s hand and pulled her into the crowd, all pivoting to the
merengue scratching through the speakers.
In the maelstrom, I saw him again. This time, he was laughing, swiveling and swirling his body with a curvy girl. Her face glistened with sweat, and her hair coiled in on itself like a buñuelo. Every movement they made, she controlled, whether he realized it or not.
Smiling over her shoulder, she butted into a nearby conversation. Then, with a glance back at the altar boy, she rolled her substantial ass in a slow, flirtatious circle, hands resting loosely at her waist. There was a savage poetry to the way she moved, a crude etching of self- assured passion. A swipe of ochre. Charcoal on stone. The Venus of Willendorf, hypnotically swaying her hips and clapping her hands to the rhythm.
My gaze then fell to his hips, swirling like a slight breeze to her hurricane. Where the Venus was a demand, he was a quiet wish. An inclination. Undulating fluidly, he moved effortlessly through the pulse of the music, each motion dripping with slight and surprising femininity, with power.
My stomach tensed as I watched him move. I let my body mirror his rhythm, following the curve of his motions. I spun Lenita a little too forcefully and tried to reposition us for better viewing.
“Let’s get over there,” she said, responding knowingly to my odd behavior.
We moved closer and closer in a frenzied descent. His gravity, so irresistible, sucked me
out of my slumberous orbit and catapulted me around him. He burned hot and bright, this newborn star in my galaxy.
He laughed loudly as he dodged some brazen dancers slicing across the floor, then reunited with the Venus, spinning her three times in one direction before darting to avoid a collision with another couple.
Lenita broke away, spinning herself in a circle, bored of my neglect.
He looked at me. Not accidentally in my direction—but at me. His smile grew, and the music swelled in my ears, pounding with my heartbeat.
The Venus whooped. Lenita clapped her hands.
He glanced again. The smell of smoke and sweat thickened. His curls traced the shells of his ears, each one perfectly placed, like someone had measured them. The vein in his neck pulsed. His hand gripped around her body.
I imagined that hand on the small of my back...leading me through the crowd...spinning me and smiling before holding me close again. So close I could smell the rum on his breath. So close I could feel his heartbeat in his thighs, zippered tightly against mine. He could press his chest into mine, and I could breathe in the steam between us.
Leni slapped my shoulder. I’d been holding her too tightly, breathing too hard into her neck.
“Now that I felt,” she whispered in my ear, raising an eyebrow and glancing down at my crotch. She gave my ass a slap, turned herself, and suddenly, there he was. We were side by side. I could lean over and sniff him.
He spun around, and so did the Venus. Her shoulders collided with mine, and she grabbed me, made me twirl her in a circle as Lenita danced next to my altar boy.
His cheeks raised. His teeth sparkled.
I clumsily fumbled the rhythm out with my suddenly numb, cinderblock feet. He looked into my eyes again, and I looked down.
Lenita yelled into the Venus’s ear, “¡Oye, perra! Let’s get a drink. I’m buying.” Then she turned to me and the altar boy. “No boys allowed, though. My mother always told me never to take money out in front of a man...”
I finished her sentence without looking up. “Yeah, yeah, or he’ll never go get his own.”
The two women slipped away through the crowd, and when I looked up, he was standing in front of me, blinking expectantly. His eyelashes were long and thick. They could reach for me, pull me in close.
“I’ve never been here before. Have you?” I yelled over the music, scrambling to say something, anything.
“No, it’s the first time for me too,” he said, his voice carrying a slight formal precision that
hinted at starched collars and sacristies. “That girl I’m with is my neighbor. She asked me to take her dancing, but she’s mostly just been flying around the room, yapping and dancing with everyone else.” He shrugged, small and controlled. “But that’s fine. I’m—I’m doing alright now.”
He stood close, arms crossed over his body again. My eyes involuntarily darted down to the layered view of flexed chest behind bicep and then back up to his eyes. His mouth twitched. He’d noticed my gaze. But instead of backing away, he let his arms fall to his sides, opening himself again.
“Yeah, I saw you standing by yourself earlier,” I said, my voice shaky, “and wondered if
maybe you were dragged here. If you wanted to get out of here, I could cover for you. You
know, if this place wasn’t what you expected...”
“You’re a funny one.” His shoulders relaxed. He smiled, slow and easy. “It’s not at all what I
expected. But if I were to get out of here, I was hoping you might want to come with me.”
His words hooked into my stomach and reeled me in. I blinked wide-eyed, dragged gasping to the surface.
Just then, the older man with the expired balls and brain approached us, looking only at my new companion. “Ey papito, let me buy you a beer. I can introduce you to some people around here. What’s your name?” He stood at an angle that made it quite clear I was not included in this invitation to the other side of the basement.
“It’s Albi. But, actually, me and...”
“Simón,” I said faster than I’ve ever spoken. “We were just headed out.” Albi grabbed my hand and pulled me across the dance floor.
Lenita sent a piercing whistle into the moist air as we passed her and went up the stairs out of El Palomar.
Outside, the air felt thin and light. The pavement dully reflected the streetlights glowing over our heads. Albi turned around and looked at me. “So...I’m not usually that bold.” He picked at his cuticles, clearly nervous now that we were alone.
“Me neither,” I said. “Not that I did anything bold. I’m not bold either.”
Albi stopped fidgeting with his hands and let out a chuckle. “You crack me up. I don’t think I’ve met anyone like you before. Are you always so...quirky?”
“I think so?” My shoulders slumped, but I built them up quickly again. “Yes. Yes I am.”
He smiled, shaking his head and puffing air through his nostrils. “You seem familiar in some way. I just can’t figure out from where.”
“I went to school at St. Sebas. I saw you every Tuesday and Sunday at mass for like four years.” I tried to say this coolly and not betray that I did not merely see him twice a week, but that I’d been collecting moments of him for years, a reliquary he’d never known he’d given me.
“Wow.” His thumbs scraped at his cuticles again. “Now I feel like an ass for not recognizing you.”
“Why would you? I was one of a hundred, and you're like one in a million.” I felt oddly at ease. All of my nerves had calmed, seeing him squirm.
He laughed, ducking his head to hide his blushing cheeks. “You’ve been saving that one up, haven’t you?” He laughed again. “What a line,” he said softly, kicking a rock across the
glistening yellow pavement. “You’re good.”
“That came out cornier than I thought it would.” I smiled back. “But it’s true. Why would you remember me? We never spoke. The only interaction we had was this one time when I passed out in the pews after all the standing and kneeling for the Stations of the Cross. You and some other kid helped me off the floor.”
Albi snapped his fingers. “I do remember that! Wait...you would also sit and stare up at the altar and blink really fast.” He laughed hard. A little too hard? “I do remember you! Why were you always doing that?”
“I honestly didn’t think anyone was ever looking at me.” I laughed out loud, joining Albi in my humiliation. “I used to do the blinking thing when I really wanted to remember something. It was my way of cementing a memory, I guess. It sounds dumb. Apparently looks dumb, too.”
“It’s not dumb. Just funny.” He stepped closer, his voice soft. “I guess it was like you were
taking pictures of the scene or something. That’s kind of cute.” He grabbed my hand, ran his thumb over my knuckles, and then let it go. “What were you trying to remember at church, then?” He stood close. His body heat hit me in waves.
“You,” I said without hesitation, blinking just once. “It was always you.”
We walked through the empty town. Aimlessly at first. We talked and talked. Albi laughed at the way I formed sentences, the strange ideas that popped into my head and flopped out of my mouth. And I just couldn’t stop smiling.
“Do you always obsessively inspect things like that?” he asked as we walked, catching me
checking my back pocket for my wallet for the hundredth time and looking left to right.
“I’m not the only one obsessively inspecting, if you noticed me doing it,” I said in a huff. “I
don’t usually. Maybe you inspire neuroses in me.”
“Oh no. The change is happening too fast.” I grabbed his arm and shook him. “What monstrosity will you become in a year?”
“I hope to find out,” Albi said simply, and I stopped talking for the first time since we left El Palomar. Albi knocked his knuckles against mine and laughed.
“I wanna take you somewhere,” I said on impulse, taking a sudden right down a street that ran to the bay.
“Don’t worry. No one comes here. Not even in the daytime,” I told him as we climbed down to my beach. His eyes darted. His hands fiddled. But his smile never faltered.
The sky floated clear above us, the water calm against the shore. The air smelled different there—the towering eucalyptus in the park above, the salt of the sea, the steam rising out of my shirt as we moved through the summer humid heat. The sweetness of the mango trees, miraculously growing in the sandy soil. His hair, vanilla and mint. I breathed it all in deeply, wanting to remember this scent forever, to bottle it and carry it with me.
“My mom used to bring me here when I was super small. She stopped coming with me after a while.” I found us a place to sit and watch the water. “She stopped doing a lot of stuff, I guess. But this has always been my secret spot.”
“It’s beautiful. I can’t wait to see the sunrise,” Albi said, settling in next to me with a wink.
I told him a few stories, and he told me some too. The clouds started rolling along the crystal sky, but I can’t describe any shapes they might have made; I just saw them tumbling around his face, floating in the center of it all. All I had to do was turn, and my nose might brush his hair. I could breathe deeply and smell him.
“I imagined dancing with you earlier,” I confessed, “before, when I saw you at El Palomar.”
He stood, brushed sand from his pants, and extended his hand. As he pulled me up, he began humming a half-remembered song. He moved to its uneven rhythm, and I followed. His hands found my hips, drawing us closer with each stumbling beat.
He looked like a cat to me, and I looked like a little boy to myself.
Each time I glanced back up, his eyes were already there, waiting. His hand settled into mine as if it had always belonged there. He spun me as he had the woman earlier, keeping me in his orbit.I was spinning with him through a landscape now painted in shades of gold.
I wanted to know how he thought we looked together, to know every thought that had ever crossed his mind. I wanted to know him completely while pretending to know nothing, just so he would tell me everything again—one of those silly feelings when you first fall in love and realize that’s precisely what is happening.
His face pressed against mine as we gazed in opposite directions. His body moved mine with each breath. Starlight caught his skin as I imagined lifting him skyward, turning him through the night air, his body reflecting every color an imaginative person could think up. I could see that scene in infinite variations, then and every day after. A stop-motion time-lapse of First Love in Perpetual Motion.
Albi shifted closer, so that our foreheads almost touched. I could feel the way he hesitated, as if weighing the moment in his hands, afraid to drop it.
His lips brushed mine. So softly at first, I wasn’t sure if it had really happened. Then again, more certain. His tongue tasted sweet; his upper lip was salty. Everything was heat and softness and Albi’s quiet hum against my mouth.
The mango leaves clattered rhythmically against each other, and the waves crashed in time, while the world rearranged itself around us. New and familiar at once.
I kissed him back with a wild hunger that scared me—when his hands found the small of my back and pulled me closer, when his mouth opened just enough to breathe me in. I was crazed. I craved to be enough for him, to adore him, to eat his consecrated body. I wanted to place roses at the base of his altar, to make a pilgrimage on his feast day. Kiss his blessed feet and wash them with my hair.
When we finally broke apart, his forehead rested against mine, and he laughed, soft, breathless. “I didn’t know it would feel like that,” he whispered, brushing his thumb over the pulse in my throat. He guided our bodies onto the sand and kissed me again and again.
“I can never not be like this again, Albi,” I said, panting on the sand, not really knowing what I meant by it, but hoping he did.
He said no one had ever spoken to him that way, that it felt like a spell.
Walking back to town, the trees passed their song from one to the next, a subtle trilling, like the tentative burning in your gut after love begins. The naïve hunger to experience every pendulous possibility. The silhouette of imminent pain swinging closely overhead.
His fingers intertwined with mine under the dim rosy light of this new morning, and I followed him back toward a city that suddenly seemed too small to contain what was growing between us.
I try to remember every second exactly as it happened. I want so deeply to go back, travel
through time to where the grass meets the sand meets the ocean. I will always hold him up to that starlight. The leaves rustling, the wind whistling the tune as the clouds make their way around him. It was golden, and it was beautiful. My heart. My Albi.
Mario Elías is a multidisciplinary artist of Cuban and Syrian descent based in Chicago. His work spans fiction, nonfiction, photography, painting, and printmaking, often exploring themes of identity, memory, and cultural inheritance. His visual work has been featured in Vogue, San Francisco Magazine, Dazed, and others.