Mano a mano means “hand to hand” in Spanish, as in hand-to-hand combat, but this loan term doesn’t just describe two people going toe-to-toe because they can’t see eye-to-eye. Most of the time, it’s any head-to-head, wire-to-wire competition. “They went mano a mano in a foot race!”
Sometimes gabachos say mano y mano, which translates to “hand and hand” and means nothing; or they think mano a mano means “man-to-man” (hombre a hombre in Spanish), which is a person-to-person talk between two guys, like the one I had with my dad when he abandoned us to become a door-to-door salesman. “It’s time for a heart-to-heart,” he told me. “Raising you is a day-to-day infierno, so I’m leaving you and your mamá to travel coast-to-coast selling used piñatas from house-to-house. I’m gonna see the world!” He was a monkey’s ass but he inspired my two life mottoes: “Back to life!” and “Keep on moving!” which are back-to-back hits I lifted from Soul II Soul.
For years my mom and I wandered from place-to-place hawking high-top chanclas from street-to-street until we could finally afford our own month-to-month rental: a downtown studio apartment (twenty feet corner-to-corner) with wall-to-wall carpeting and a lovely view of cars lined end-to-end on the freeway in bumper-to-bumper traffic. There’s graffiti on our building that reads “Earth-to-earth, ashes-to-ashes, and dust-to-dust,” like it’s a giant tombstone.
One day I was on the Metro, standing elbow-to-elbow with the same commuters that once gave me MRSA from skin-to-skin contact, and I saw this fine mamacita moving side-to-side like she was listening to “Side To Side” by Ariana Grande or “Side 2 Side” by Three 6 Mafia. I stared at her from station-to-station and when she smiled at me from ear-to-ear, I felt a soul-to-soul connection. “I’d let her give me MRSA,” I thought to myself and I got off at her stop thinking we’d be dancing cheek-to-cheek in the near future but some puto walked up and gave her mouth-to-mouth before they sauntered off mano en mano! That means “hand-in-hand” in Spanish, like my expectations and my disappointments, which also seem to go hand-in hand. Oh, well… it’s back to life, to keep on moving like the civilized changitos that we are… mono a mono (monkey-to-monkey).