Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You

It is a known fact that the queens who refuse their destiny are haunted. Rejection turns itself inward, a bullet to the heart of said queen, and unleashes, per Travesti Lore, a river of curses. Cloistered in a dreary Bogotá apartment, Ignacio’s light has dimmed, leaving his teenage daughter, Valentina, to raise herself in the wake of her mother Alma’s death. Lonely and love-starved, Valentina aches to discover the details of her mother’s drowning, and for her father to snap out of his depression. But Ignacio can’t. He spends listless afternoons smoking cigarettes in long blonde wigs, telenovelas humming in the background, haunted not only by matrimonial guilt, but by memories of a young man he once loved and betrayed. From Ignacio’s tragic past emerges the luminous queen of Bogotá’s queer underground, Mamadora Eléctrica, the wise travesti who he first met under the silvery lights of Club Aquario when he was just a shy country boy. With Alma gone,