Maria Fuentes

Maria Catalina Fuentes - my Maria - is no longer nameless, no longer unidentified, no longer alone - I have finally found her after all these decades. Plot 214, Section III, Grave 8 on Hart Island does not contain "Unknown" any longer, and it never did. It held her, and it held a chunk of my heart.

Maria was my lover, my confidant, my co-conspirator, and my wife when two unashamed transwomen could not marry; when two uncontrollable whores passionately loving each other was impermissible; when two people as corrupt and debauched as society thought we were could simply not be permitted to live peacefully in this nation nor any other.

Maria was a product of New York City; of first generation Dominican and Haitian extraction, a child of the Bronx. She lived 5 weeks shy of 21 years, and of all her days she spent no more than a total of sixty away from the City she loved, and nearly all of those were with me.

On those days she and I were paid to be with each other, and paid to be with others as well. To get on a plane,  or a yacht, or to walk into the rooms that mattered. To know how to act in certain company, and to understand, and perform, the role that was expected.

She was suited for that life so much more than anyone would have thought. Maria was 5'8", graceful, mixed race, and bite-the-back-of-your-hand beautiful - that was the obvious part that brought her to so many of those places. But it was the whip-smart, fluent in four languages, well-read and deeply perceptive woman, who could stop the superficial conversations, and take control of those rooms, with just a few well-placed words. 

People readily underestimated her - saw only a tall Black woman moving in a just-a-bit-too-tight dress – and assumed her to be no more than a bauble paid to be on a particular arm for a particular purpose. But if they acted on that assumption, dared to make their derision public, it was a mistake they did not repeat.

And to the annoyance of more than a few people, when it was all over, when the money had been collected and counted, and the acts had been acted, Maria did not go home and curl up to the protection of a man. She came home to me.

I met Maria in May of 1989 and within two weeks I asked her for a date. That evening became the next morning, and each one after flowed into a series of days which were unlike any that either of us thought could exist. We knew love, and safety, and happiness in each other's arms.

As time goes on, I will tell Maria’s story, our story, and the stories of our friends. Because, eventually, our city and the trade we worked in would take all except me. And they will be told in the words as they were then and with all our imperfections on full display and unexcused. Because she and I were not characters in a play with three acts and a redemptive ending. We were adults that lived in New York City at the height of the AIDS epidemic; the crack years; when murdering only 2000 citizens was a lofty goal. 

We turned tricks, got into cars, got arrested, and were sometimes left beaten and raped on a loading dock on Gansevoort Street soaked in cold animal blood that ran off a meat packing floor and matted your hair. 

And yet, Maria was among the best of all the New York City streetwalkers, high-class call girls and tranny whores – not L.A., not San Francisco, not Miami or Chicago or Dallas – New York Fucking City, where being among the best really means something. She was good, she knew what she was doing, and she knew what she was worth.

There will never be another Maria Catalina Fuentes, and I thank the universe every day that I had almost two years with her out of her 20. Those years were a lifetime in themselves, and who I am, what I’ve become in these following three decades, would have never been imaginable if it wasn’t for her.

kmk~

Love knows no time nor suffers any restraints.