Volume 01, Story 5
Chino is face-down in his own misery with a photograph of Destiny, his morenita, because she dumped him. Her verdict: the relationship wasn’t going anywhere, and she wasn’t about to get stuck with an ambitious pothead. Enter Homeboy, who forgot his key again and whose first prescription for heartbreak is to go find some chicks. Chino’s not in the mood. So Homeboy digs out prescription number two: a gnarled joint Uncle Rob hooked him up with, made from the alien plants they snagged off that spaceship and watered, according to Rob, from the cursed springs of Bayankala. Chino, who has never in his life turned down a bad idea, tells him to light it up and see what that bitch does. The cherry burns blue. Homeboy takes two deep hits and passes it over. When Chino looks up, the guy on the couch next to him is a gorgeous woman. Homegirl checks her hands. She checks her chest. Then she runs to the bathroom to check the one thing that really settles it, and the scream that comes back through the door settles it. Chino hands her the rest of the joint and declines, on the grounds that he’d rather not find out whether he turns into a pinche cucaracha.
Uncle Rob has answers, sort of. He knew the joint would turn Homeboy into something. He just didn’t know what, and he sure as hell doesn’t know how long it lasts. His career counseling is porn. So Chino and his newly female best friend go do the only sensible thing available to them and get tacos. King Taco is where Homegirl starts filing the paperwork on her new existence (is she trans now, is she a lesbian, was she retroactively a lesbian), and it’s also where Destiny walks in with three friends and clocks her ex sitting across from a woman he cannot explain. The truth (“this is Homeboy”) convinces no one, and Chino’s warning about whose PTSD everyone is about to trigger lands no better. Only the security camera footage gets through.
Which is how they end up at Mary Jane’s, who has three engineering degrees and no framework for cursed weed. Her curriculum for teaching Homeboy how to be a chick is short: chicks are human beings, just be you. It comes with a full makeover, because if Homegirl is going to move through the world she needs to pass as Homeboy’s super gorgeous cousin. It also comes with a party at a friend’s place, where they can finally score. The friend is Chris: tall, effortless, and the kind of host who kisses a woman’s hand on the way in. Homegirl short-circuits, blurts out the first name that comes to her, Juanita, and spends the rest of the night discovering that whatever Chris does to her has a name, which Mary Jane is glad to supply. Chino’s advice on the matter is exactly the advice you would expect from Chino. Two shots of tequila later, Homegirl goes looking for Chris and finds out he speaks just enough Spanish to be a serious problem.
Two shots of tequila later she’s whispering something in his ear that widens his eyes, and the next thing anybody knows he’s carrying her into a bedroom with their lips locked. It’s her first time, she tells him, so don’t go fucking crazy. While she’s freshening up in the bathroom she catches her reflection in the mirror, and the reflection is Homeboy. The curse lifts mid-hookup. He forces his voice up an octave for Chris through the door, squeezes out the bathroom window, and drops into the yard where Chino and Mary Jane are standing around kissing and sharing joints like the night went normally for them. Back at the apartment the three of them pass the long red-black demonic pipe and take stock: Homeboy almost got laid, Mary Jane points out she and Chino were about to bang each other too before he showed up, and the night closes on the highest possible note: Mary Jane offering herself to both of them at once, on the grounds that it’s not like they haven’t done it before, sealed with a three-way high-five for the Devil’s Triangle.
Featuring Chino, Homeboy, Homegirl, Uncle Rob, Destiny, Mary Jane, Chris, Destiny’s Friend 3, Anita.
Read the full story in The Adventures of Chino & Homeboy, Volume 01