Miguel Dasso

Avenida Miguel Dasso. San Isidro. Beta Video Club.

At the corner of Avenida Miguel Dasso was a restaurant we never entered. Curtains always drawn. A man always standing outside. He didn’t seem to be working. He didn’t seem to be leaving.

Further up the street, on the left side, before the park, the Beta shop.

(They say VHS beat beta because of porn. I didn't care. Betas were better. And I was too young to know how porn helped video tapes.)

No sign. Just a door. Inside, original Beta tapes in their stiff plastic cases. Handwritten titles. Soft-spoken ink. A kind of reverence, even for Blade Runner (Versión original).

We rented two. Always two. Never three.

One would eat itself. One would make sense. That was enough.

The stall was quiet. Small. A wall of betas. Someone in between them and a counter. Then me.

Outside, the street moved: buses, shoe shiners, a woman selling lúcuma ice cream in a metal tray under glass.

Butifarra on wax paper from the stall down the block. Jamón del país, onions in lime, bread that disintegrated in your hands. A taste of pork and heaven.

The Baños Turcos Windsor always fogged, always quiet. Men came out softer than when they entered. Towels tucked like regrets. And then home.

To the den, where the Beta machine groaned to life on a low table with missing corners.

On the window a crooked “United States Marine Corps – Semper Fi” sticker that had nothing to do with anything. No one ever removed it. We had a suspect. We never spoke of him.

The screen flickered. The tracking drifted. The voices lagged behind the lips but still made sense somehow.

And when it ended, the tape sat warm in my lap. The label curling at the edges.

Still legible: Avenida Miguel Dasso. San Isidro. Beta Video Club.