Plaza Santa Cecilia.

It was a cold day yesterday. I was bored and decided to go to a bar and maybe meet someone after that train wreck with Alfredo.

So, I dressed in my black leather coat, black jeans, grey shirt, and Kenneth Cole boots and walked downtown to Plaza Santa Cecilia. Plaza Santa Cecilia is the meeting place, the nerve center, the switchboard of gay Tijuana. Virtually every fag in town shows up there at least once a day. Many a gay resident of Tijuana spends most of their waking hours in The Plaza. On all sides you see hustlers from all over Mexico washed up there in a hopeless, dead-end situation, waiting for job offers, acceptance checks, visas, and permits that will never come. All their lives they have drifted on an unlucky current, always taking a wrong turn. Here they are. This is it. The last stop: Plaza Santa Cecilia.

There in The Plaza is the notorious bar Villa Garcia. It is well known for its seediness and blatant cruising of homosexuals and rough hustlers. A hotbed of American pedophiles and drug addicts. The interior is a long low-ceiling room. On one side is a long bar tended by two tough lesbians. On the other side of the bar are old rickety metal chairs and tables where sex and drugs are bought with indifference. There is a jukebox that plays the same tunes over and over again. And in the middle, the main floor where hustlers and queens stand and pose gazing out with probing insect lust. The restroom is a virtual bathhouse in which drugs flow as easily as the piss. Oral sex is openly common back there. There is a little dance floor that caters to strippers and tired drag shows. Oh, and you can dance on it if one felt inclined.

As I found a seat and settled into a drunken stupor with a cold caguama Sol, I noticed a familiar face in the crowd. It was Hector R., an old friend staring at me out of the smoke-choked darkness. He smiled, got up, and approached me. We shook hands. Hector was tall and skinny, sporting a black pencil-thin mustache.

"My, God, Hector! How have you been?" I blurted over the deafening disco beat.

"Bueno, amigo, bueno." Hector put his arm around me and led me over to his table. "Please join me and my friends."

At his table was an assortment of the biggest transvestites I'd ever seen! They ranged from six foot two and up! After the introductions, I sat down next to Hector and enjoyed the company of an old friend and four huge Drag Queens. We all had a ball; we joked and laughed and danced. Sasha, this titanic mess of a blue sequined drag (If you took Anna Nichole Smith, held her underwater for three hours, and when she came up gasping for air - that is what Sasha looked like.) Well, Sasha was high and would not keep her hands off of me, which was a little annoying. Then, from the bowels of her costume, she pulled out a bag of cocaine.

I smiled at Sasha, lifting my wrist up to her, "May I sample your wares?"

Sasha tried to focus on me through fluttering fucked up eyes. She handed me her little baggie.

Snort---Wheeee!!!

The beer and tequila and cocaine flowed and everyone got pleasantly toasted. Around four in the morning, we all said goodbye and I took a Taxi Libre home. It was good seeing Hector again and he was as handsome as ever. I first met Hector when I moved to Tijuana so long ago, it seems. I had a schoolgirl crush on him then. He always has a smile and never a bad word about anybody. He was always a beacon of light in the darkness that enveloped me. Maybe if I play my cards right...? He owned his own beauty salon and invited me over someday for a haircut. I've been in such a slump lately and it is good-natured people like Hector that make life all worth it, you know?