El Gordito
By Kim Farleigh
El Gordito’s stomach arched from his pelvis to his neck. His pimple head topped a humanoid egg. His flame eyes flared with trepidation. The unusually enormous bull he faced had unusually high horns that resembled reverse divining rods sucking force from above.
El Gordito ran across the beast’s line of sight. No confidence made his insides feel empty. His banderillas, swiped at the charging bull, missed, hitting sand. His short, stubby legs flashed like panicked pendulums towards the barrier. The sprinting bull’s head smacked rock-hard wood where El Gordito launched himself over. BOOOOM boomed around the ring. Timber splinters flew. The ring’s steep sides turned crowd mirth cracks into explosions.
A joker screamed: “A clown’s on today’s bill!”
El Gordito’s diminutive stature metaphorically shrank. He hoped that somehow the next banderillas would become potent fangs. But wondering if flair has gone eliminates flair.
El Juli told him: “ You’ve done it before. You’ll do it again.”
A pink cape lured the bull to where the monster would face the creature it had just chased. That creature, raising fangs, ran in an arc before the horned beast. The crowd sarcastically cried: “Woooo……” at El Gordito’s “technical brilliance.”
Thrashing the banderillas at the charging bull, El Gordito missed again. The bull fled after egg-humanoid prey. Lacerating grins gashed faces. Sand, erupting in a line under hooves, imitated the results of machine-gun fire. Laughter grenades cracked. Mortar mirth blasted from canon mouths.
El Gordito’s panicked pendulums swung. Both hands on the barrier’s top he launched himself over. Horns bashing the barrier created BOOM where El Gordito had just been.
Laughing heads swayed. Slapstick incompetence entertains equally as stylish competence.
El Juli said: “Transfer hate for these laughing bastards onto the bull.”
El Gordito muttered: “Give me those things.”
The now serious joker screamed: “Vamos, hombre; do it.”
“Give it to him,” someone else yelled.
“Go for it!” another man yelled.
A new moral climate gripped the crowd.
“Come on, man,” someone screamed. “Don’t hold back.”
Finding failure amusing became small-minded. Collective cooperation reigned.
EL Gordito, raising the banderillas, flicked his head and stomped. Revenge became therapy.
“That’s it,” someone shouted.
Supportive, rhymical clapping made diminutive El Gordito suddenly feel gargantuan. The limits of possibility expanded towards a peak, like a body achieving terminal velocity. Confidence, like a magical drug, flooded El Gordito’s mind, crushing doubts.
He pierced charging hide with a panache born from distaining risk. Ecstasy, like sunlit chrome, flashed inside his head as those sticks held. Rising people applauded. El Gordito, raising a triumphant fist, screamed: “Si, si, si.”
The mockers finally revered what they and most others would never be able to do.
Author’s Notes: One day in the main bullring in Madrid I saw a banderillero who was so short of confidence that on two occasions he missed the bull twice with the banderillas, making clean swipes that left the sticks on the sand. The crowd’s initial ridiculing of this banderillero suddenly turned to arousing support, as if a totally new moral climate had arisen from nowhere. It was a beautiful thing to see. It gave the banderillero the confidence he needed to complete a task that most people would never be able to do.
