CHAPTER 16 -TWISTED

My parents decorated our basement as a nod to places my dad loved: Tucson, Arizona, where he went for pre-med, and Nogales, Mexico, where he went for the Latin beauties.

Mom said Dad left college regularly for the border town - for sin, because of a Madonna/Whore complex. My mother was good, and the women my father had liked were bad, and he was wrong to like them. 

Now I wonder if any Maria or Isabel might have fallen for the gringo college boy who, after he pawed them and paid them, spoke a little Spanish with them. I wonder if he fell for any of them --if a Mexican half-sibling might one day show up on 23andMe. 

Our basement's stucco walls boasted authentic posters of toreadors stabbing bulls. Maracas, masks, lassos, and horns of animals with attached skulls abounded. My parents had installed a fully stocked bar, where dad got dreamy, strumming and singing Gonna Take a Sentimental Journey on his ukelele, or, as he called it, his 'uke.'