The Stemmler/Dennis LGBT& Award, established by Sigma Tau Delta members Dr. Kevin Stemmler and Dr. Larry Dennis, honors exceptional creative and critical works that represent or celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. This annual award addresses the historical marginalization of LGBTQ+ voices in academia, providing recognition for both creative and scholarly contributions. The award’s name incorporates an ampersand, inspired by GLAAD’s “&Together” campaign and the work of G&LR, symbolizing inclusivity and unity among diverse identities. This year’s winners were selected from over 120 eligible submissions for presentation at the annual Sigma Tau Delta/English Honor Society Convention. Submissions were evaluated by LGBTQ+ faculty judges in the Society. For more information, see English.org, “Awards”
As part of Lambda Literary’s partnership with Sigma Tau Delta, we are proud to celebrate the achievements of Stemmler/Dennis Award winners like Ash Guerrero.
Papá, looking at your hands for the last time, I noticed that your fingernails are clean for the first time since I’ve known you. Your job was unkind to your body, especially to your hands. Motor oil and dirt clung to the creases of your calluses, as if from beneath your skin. What did the morticians do to get it out?. You used to hate dressing up, but you’re wearing a crisp tuxedo as you lie in your mahogany coffin. Did you coordinate your own funeral? Did you even have a will?
Tías, tíos, and primos, some of whom drove here from Mexico, are here for you, sitting in the chapel, waiting for mass to begin. They don’t know about our cold war; Most of them don’t want to talk to me. I tried to stay away from them, as well as the few who wanted to grieve with me. It was impossible to avoid everyone. Warm hands clapped against my hollow body. Lips pressed against my cold cheeks. Blessings, some of which were meant for the girl our family used to know, were passed to me through the sign of the cross, always in those same four spots: forehead, chest, right shoulder, left shoulder. I bow my head and accept their prayers.
I’m more prepared to face the disgusted looks of people I hardly consider relatives than the consolation of those who love me without knowing me. It’s like being trapped in a revolving door and missing the exit, over and over. I should have told them that the last time you and I spoke was almost eight years ago, so that they wouldn’t feel bad. They’d hate me if they knew that that time away from you allowed me to grow as you quietly rotted away.
Bundles of flowers decorate the funeral parlor you and I are in. These will be our last five minutes together, alone, before I have to join everyone else. There are white roses. Lilies, baby’s breath. White, white, white. Too clean. Everything is too clean. The last time you hugged me, I was sixteen years old. You reeked of beer and sweat, having worked a long shift. You left a black smudge on the shoulder of my shirt, clear enough that I could make out your fingerprints. You made me feel brave. You were a real man, I thought, and I was your blood. There was no reason that I couldn’t be like you.
I want to shake your shoulders to tell you that. To get you to open up your eyes so that we could pick things up from where we’d left off and find your wild bush of beard covering up a grimace meant for me. That’s impossible now. Your beard is tamed, shaved down to a neat stubble. I didn’t get the chance to say this to you either, but I’d envied how easy it was for you to grow it out. I hoped to be able to have a beard of my own, to let the few hairs on my body spread down to muscular forearms, and to work so hard with my hands that they, like yours, got dirty.
From a few feet away, over the edge of the coffin, I can see that the yellow tinge of your brown skin gives away the cause of your death. You wouldn’t recognize me if you saw me today, with my sharp jaw, thick brows, and short hair dyed. Would this have been enough to finally get you to call me ‘hijo’?
I notice a few items when I approach your coffin, placed there by relatives. A plastic bead rosario had been slipped into your outer breast pocket with the cross sticking out, acting as a sort of badge to flash for Saint Peter, a plea for him to unlatch the pearly gates. What upsets me is a toy-sized bottle of alcohol, Jack Daniels, resting in the crook of one of your arms. Who placed the poison that killed you next to your dead body? I stare at it hard, hating it, despising it. Briefly, I imagine myself drinking it then and there, suffering through the burn of it out of resentment. I don’t, though. I slip it in one of the pockets of my dress pants, thumbing the ridges of the aluminum cap. Before I can realize that my eyes are filled with tears, they’re already running down my face.
I don’t know what it is that you found at the bottom of each bottle. I will never find what you saw, no matter how hard I look, and will never discover what it means to be me in the dark grime of your palms. If we had patched things up earlier, how many more conversations would we have had? How many more arguments? How much would one more month, one more year have done to get you to change your mind? The funeral attendants are coming. Soon, they’ll lower you into the ground. The answers to all of my questions, along with our cold war, will be six feet under. I can’t be mad at you anymore. I am your son, a self-made man, living the life that was meant for me. Adiós, papá. Goodbye.
ASH GUERRERO is a senior studying English at the University of Texas at Arlington and lifelong writer dedicated to LGBT+ fiction.
