Standing outside in the shivering night - the Plaza was pregnant with the twilight people. The bar adjacent to my frozen form thumped with laughter and merry making. Two old Negro queens’ cumpleanos. And they flipping the bill for this swanky fiesta. Complimentary booze and vittles guzzled by nameless arrogant faces. I danced a little - scrawny attractive boy swirled with lithe movements - what was his name? Who cares? I drank a little with RJ and Derrick and Miguel - too many bodies that poured in from the street so I stood outside in the shivering night.
Ivan, rentboy turned waiter knew him for years passed sobbing that someone had stolen his money as Miguel sucked some stranger up in a cheap hotel. Big boobed hooker clops up to me as I stood there watching Ivan’s scrawny frame tilt and droop in drugged out grief.
“Whacha looking for?” She asked.
“You don’t got it - plus I like men.” Puffed on that cigarette like a cock.
“I am a man.” She croaked and it was time to cut.
Ivan fades in and invites me to his trap - why not? Old friend knew him for years you understand. In the dark streets leading up to his shabby hotel phantoms lurk offer me junk - “Nope, I’m all right” I mutter as Ivan cops a paper. Up worn wooden staircase the small room had a bed and a squat bookshelf wadded with crumpled dirty clothes.
He takes out a glass pipe and crushes the crystal into it lights up and smokes - billowing out huge plumes of that grey tinny smell. Hands me the charred pipe - I falter, reassuring myself I can quit at any time.
One inhale, two, three - we pass it back and forth in junky silence like a galvanized ritual. Been so long and so much it really doesn’t affect me - at first.
Ivan on the flipside degenerates into a shaking teeth grinding wreck - face sunken in skull like eyes open peeled raw. When it is gone, he stashes the blackened tube under his stained mattress lies back and listens to banda on his CD walkman. I sit on the edge of the bed glancing around at the bare dirty pink walls as the tweek sets in more on Ivan than myself. That acrid heavy metal taste in my mouth the cigarettes don’t erase.
I sit and study Ivan in pity as he convulses in mechanical galvanized jerks - he had already dragged the bookshelf barricading the door from paranoia Dream Police. Ivan retrieves his pipe again - scraping the residue from the stem for another round. Heavy boots and jingling keys pass the door and Ivan's schizophrenia flares - we sit a moment in silence, waiting for the stranger to pass. I decline the second dose and enough of this sad hopeless Fallen Angel - he was once strong and virile. At least the boy has retained his looks of strong angular Aztec features. However, that soon will decay.
I stand - extinguishing my cigarette on the filthy warped wooded floor. “I gotta go.” And leave that wretch to his horror.
Walking the few blocks in that dark cold night - eyeing for patrols on account my own paranoia is kicking in. I think of my future and of my plans - I cannot allow those past demons to control me. Reaching my room - I undress and get into bed unable to sleep as the drug takes hold. Eventually I drift off, horrid nightmares abound. I wake up depressed and disappointed that I even committed the act.
I walk through the Plaza - Ivan sits on the steps - in the flashbulb of urgency his eyes went out. A whiff of meth drifted in the clear night riding on the banda music. An old hag muttered over her candles and alters in one corner. A dingy white cat pulls at my pant leg and runs onto a concrete balcony. The moon ominously floats by.
“Ivan!” Rentboys look up from card games, coffee houses, and sullen hooked stances under metal light posts as the name whistles by and slowly fades away. “Ivan!! Saul!! Diego!! Jose!!” The rentboy cries drift in on the warm night.
“Need you to do me a favor,” I croaked, wiping away the more obvious signs of distaste with a stained paper napkin, seeing the yellow of meth in Ivan's face, “Don't ever invite me to do that again.”
His body moved in little galvanized jerks as the junk channels lit up. “Okay - okay. Ya sure?”
“I know what I’m doing.” Breathing the residue of methamphetamine out of my already scarred lungs.
I walk alone down Avenida Revolucion to my room amid the carnival of blaring neon and pounding discos - everyone looks like a drug addict.
Stopping to sit on a metal bench in front of El Torito disco - wanna sit alone and smoke a cigarette and think. Depression rising again. Moments pass and handsome cholo pelon sits with me - smell of dirty linens and unwashed bodies - we don't talk but he cackles and grins into his Styrofoam coffee cup - he laughed, black insane laughter as patrol after patrol roamed by eyeing us.
This is too tiresome, and I drift home lost without purpose or meaning.
So I lay in my bed, naked, on top of the covers smoking a cigarette watching a black cockroach scale the faded baby blue wall of my room - national sponsored program in Spanish mumbles from the radio - and I think I need to change.
But do I want to?
Ivan, rentboy turned waiter knew him for years passed sobbing that someone had stolen his money as Miguel sucked some stranger up in a cheap hotel. Big boobed hooker clops up to me as I stood there watching Ivan’s scrawny frame tilt and droop in drugged out grief.
“Whacha looking for?” She asked.
“You don’t got it - plus I like men.” Puffed on that cigarette like a cock.
“I am a man.” She croaked and it was time to cut.
Ivan fades in and invites me to his trap - why not? Old friend knew him for years you understand. In the dark streets leading up to his shabby hotel phantoms lurk offer me junk - “Nope, I’m all right” I mutter as Ivan cops a paper. Up worn wooden staircase the small room had a bed and a squat bookshelf wadded with crumpled dirty clothes.
He takes out a glass pipe and crushes the crystal into it lights up and smokes - billowing out huge plumes of that grey tinny smell. Hands me the charred pipe - I falter, reassuring myself I can quit at any time.
One inhale, two, three - we pass it back and forth in junky silence like a galvanized ritual. Been so long and so much it really doesn’t affect me - at first.
Ivan on the flipside degenerates into a shaking teeth grinding wreck - face sunken in skull like eyes open peeled raw. When it is gone, he stashes the blackened tube under his stained mattress lies back and listens to banda on his CD walkman. I sit on the edge of the bed glancing around at the bare dirty pink walls as the tweek sets in more on Ivan than myself. That acrid heavy metal taste in my mouth the cigarettes don’t erase.
I sit and study Ivan in pity as he convulses in mechanical galvanized jerks - he had already dragged the bookshelf barricading the door from paranoia Dream Police. Ivan retrieves his pipe again - scraping the residue from the stem for another round. Heavy boots and jingling keys pass the door and Ivan's schizophrenia flares - we sit a moment in silence, waiting for the stranger to pass. I decline the second dose and enough of this sad hopeless Fallen Angel - he was once strong and virile. At least the boy has retained his looks of strong angular Aztec features. However, that soon will decay.
I stand - extinguishing my cigarette on the filthy warped wooded floor. “I gotta go.” And leave that wretch to his horror.
Walking the few blocks in that dark cold night - eyeing for patrols on account my own paranoia is kicking in. I think of my future and of my plans - I cannot allow those past demons to control me. Reaching my room - I undress and get into bed unable to sleep as the drug takes hold. Eventually I drift off, horrid nightmares abound. I wake up depressed and disappointed that I even committed the act.
I walk through the Plaza - Ivan sits on the steps - in the flashbulb of urgency his eyes went out. A whiff of meth drifted in the clear night riding on the banda music. An old hag muttered over her candles and alters in one corner. A dingy white cat pulls at my pant leg and runs onto a concrete balcony. The moon ominously floats by.
“Ivan!” Rentboys look up from card games, coffee houses, and sullen hooked stances under metal light posts as the name whistles by and slowly fades away. “Ivan!! Saul!! Diego!! Jose!!” The rentboy cries drift in on the warm night.
“Need you to do me a favor,” I croaked, wiping away the more obvious signs of distaste with a stained paper napkin, seeing the yellow of meth in Ivan's face, “Don't ever invite me to do that again.”
His body moved in little galvanized jerks as the junk channels lit up. “Okay - okay. Ya sure?”
“I know what I’m doing.” Breathing the residue of methamphetamine out of my already scarred lungs.
I walk alone down Avenida Revolucion to my room amid the carnival of blaring neon and pounding discos - everyone looks like a drug addict.
Stopping to sit on a metal bench in front of El Torito disco - wanna sit alone and smoke a cigarette and think. Depression rising again. Moments pass and handsome cholo pelon sits with me - smell of dirty linens and unwashed bodies - we don't talk but he cackles and grins into his Styrofoam coffee cup - he laughed, black insane laughter as patrol after patrol roamed by eyeing us.
This is too tiresome, and I drift home lost without purpose or meaning.
So I lay in my bed, naked, on top of the covers smoking a cigarette watching a black cockroach scale the faded baby blue wall of my room - national sponsored program in Spanish mumbles from the radio - and I think I need to change.
But do I want to?
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