"Mexican Manifesto" by Roberto Bolano published April 22, 2013 in The New Yorker

Roberto Bolano (1953 to 2003, Chile)  is a great writer, a chronicler of the dark side of life and love in the closing years of the last century.  Toward the end of his life, knowing he was dying of liver cancer, he, it is reported, began to write at a frantic pace to leave money for his family.  Ten years after his passing new translations are still coming out.  I do not know the compositional history of "Mexican Manifesto' but I am grateful to The New Yorker for making it available for all to read for free.  

Readers of his major novels will recognize his style in this story about a man's near obsessive interest in exploring the bath houses of Mexico City in the company of a female friend and occasional sex partner, Laura.  Bath Houses in Mexico City serve several functions.  One is the purely utilitarian one of providing a place to bath for those who do not have facilities at home.  This is, I guess, how they started.  In most big cities they have evolved to places for sex with no name strangers, orgies, drug dealing and other fun activities.  They are often primarily frequented by Gay men.  Some say the aids epidemic in America started in the bath houses of San Francisco.  

As the narrator gets more and more in exploring the very large number of bath houses in Mexico City with Laura, he enters deeper into a homoerotic miasma.  There is a very harsh scene where he and Laura pay for two young men to put on a sex show involving mutual masturbation for them.

As the story opens, in his first bath house, there  is a mural of the Aztec emperor Montezuma.  He is in a pool of water up to his neck.  There are other men and women in the pool.  Montezuma is troubled, it seems, but the others are not.  Later the narrator will begin to ponder deeper into the meaning of this mural.

Bolano is about exploring hidden worlds, admitting we love things we are taught are wrong, about seeing a very dark angel on our shoulder, about death as the ultimate aphrodisiac.  Remember Montezuma ruled over a death cult.  

I have since I began blogging read and posted on Nazi Literature in the Americas, By Night in Chile, and another short story.  Preblogging, I read 2666 and Savage Detectives.  All these works I classify as very important reads.  

You can read "Mexican Manifesto" here

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2013/04/22/130422fi_fiction_bolano?currentPage=all