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Hola amores!
Welcome to María Pero No Santa, a column where I will be answering your questions about everything from sex and relationships to mental health, wellness, friendship, y mucho más. I am María Saldana (she/ella), but some know me as “María Pero No Santa” — “Maria, but no saint.” Fun fact, I earned that name at a perreo in Miami. There I was, ass in the air, when someone gave me and my butt a blessing; they looked me up and down (duh), got down on their knees (damn), and put their palms together, bowing to me (amén). The name has stuck ever since.
As a bisexual, Indigenous Charapa Peruana and femme, my life has long revolved around questions of queerness, femininity and masculinity, Indigeneity, and so many other complex and messy things. Over the years, I learned to embrace the messiness. And in this column, I’d like to teach you to do the same; to learn to love — and navigate through — your pendejadas y puterías.
What the hell does that mean? Let’s go back.
I remember many things from my upbringing in South Florida, but the memory that always comes to mind is being called a “puta,” or “whore,” when I was a child. I heard it from a random man and when I asked mi mamá what the word meant, she simply told me that I wasn’t one. And as for pendeja, roughly translated to “asshole” or “idiot,” that term came whenever I, like most of us, made a mistake. Whether it was messing up in school, my job, relationships, or connections, it didn’t matter. I was a pendeja, who engages in pendejadas y puterías.
Today, I can honestly say that both are true. I have learned how to make peace with both of these terms. I cannot say it was easy, or that I’m necessarily grateful for the experiences that brought me here, and still, I am so glad to be here. I have arrived. So this one is for my putis, the pendejes, the perres, and those still trying to make sense of what those words mean.
As queer folx, we are constantly engaging in pendejadas y puterías, whether that be by keeping close friendships with ex-lovers, turning roommates into new paramores, or kissing our best friends. Queerness, like pendejadas y puterías, is messy. And because for many of us queerness guides our lives and how we love, the ways we live and love are bound to be a little messy too.
