Thursday, July 30, 2015

alejandro

I met him sitting on a bent metal folding chair in the Opportunity Center surrounded by shabby, foul smelling derelicts and thugs. As with myself, he futilely attempted to drown out the over-bearing orchestra of manic cries issued from the insane and angry. He displayed an expression on his youthful Mayan face of deep sadness and paranoid regrets. I introduced myself, he said his name was Alex. We chatted. The stilted discussion casual and non-intrusive. Being soft spoken, he chose each word and thought carefully. Not letting his guard down. Certainly not with some unknown gringo whose obvious leering glances were of a lurid nature.
The weeks passed and we hung out occasionally. During the evenings, as three hundred or so transients lay on their filthy mats lounging in self-doubt, urine, and garbage, he would set up a make shift stand on the previously mentioned chair next to his tattered mat and vend cheap dehydrated soups, candies, and sundries he purchased with his food stamp card to earn money for real food. I didn’t blame him, the center’s food was foul-smelling, unappetizing slop.
If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything.
The money, unfortunately, rarely went to nourishing food and instead alcohol was purchased. He would saunter and sway inebriated, timidly laughing and scratching at the multitude of bedbug bites along his brown arms and neck. The center was indeed infested, but no one cared.
"What can you do?" He smiles and shrugs.
I hand him a dollar for a pack of crushed donuts. He looks at me with sad, crimson eyes and sincerely slurs thank you.
Being the only homosexual in the joint who didn’t constantly bother him with overt sexual advances, consequently we became friends of sorts. He would smile and laugh off the blatant chatter from the Chorus of Queens: “You need that cock sucked, hunty!” or “I’ll pay you forty dollars to cum down my throat, baby.” Usually blurted over tables during dinner or hollered right in the middle of the main dorm from some deranged, pot-bellied monster who gave up life decades ago. He casually shrugged the advances off. Alex looked like a seasoned hustler, a veteran of dark alleys, public restroom glory holes, damp truck stop urinals, back rooms of dive bars, the decayed reek of cheap hotels - but he wasn’t. And was not in the situation obviously to bend to any of their faggoty shit.
Be that as it may, through fate and the assistance of alcohol, I entertained the chance to masturbate him in the showers of the Center. Amid mildew streaked white tiled walls hidden behind a discolored shower curtain, he stood stoic and unmoving, water cascading down his dark and lithe form - legs separated, hands clenched behind his back, eyes closed with head tilted slightly back - the steam enveloped us as I stood to one side, slightly hunched, my eyes luridly scrutinizing his delicate facial movements as my hand worked furiously on his thick, short cock. Eventually, his chest heaved, he rose slightly onto his toes as he squirted globs of milky semen onto the tiled wall and floor.
Oh shit! splat! splat! damn, that was a lot...
One morning as we sat on a concrete bench in a park sipping cheap coffee - dead trees whispered in the chilled wind, yellowed grass crunching under our scuffed shoes - I asked why he seemed always so sad. He confided in stilted tones he was struggling with a problem concerning the authorities. The problem being accusations of sexually molesting an eight year old boy.
“Did you?” I asked earnestly.
“No.” He stated, staring at the five or six flattened cigarette butts at his feet.
“Then, there is nothing to worry about, right?”
Two nights later, an entire squad of SWAT barged into the center inquiring the where abouts of one Alejandro Montelongo. (I had known him only as Alex Esparza). Dirty fingers of all the Center's rats pointed toward the twenty-five year old who sat forlorn on the bent metal folding chair. Surrounded, thrown onto the floor, searched, and hand-cuffed, he was lead out, head hung low in shame and guilt under disdainful accusational glances and gasps of disbelief from the Chorus of Queens.
I stood emotionless near the entrance and watched as he was brutally shoved into the back of a van. Sex with an eight year old boy? I cannot wrap my mind around that concept. How does one choose to steal the innocence of a child like that? I seriously loathe pedophiles.

The following day, I sat in a cafe and sipped coffee as I read the local paper:
A man sought on child sex charges was arrested Wednesday afternoon at an El Paso homeless shelter, an El Paso County sheriff's spokesman said. The U.S. Marshal's Lone Star Fugitive Task Force arrested Alex Montelongo, 25, on warrants for aggravated sexual assault of a child and burglary of habitation, a sheriff's spokesman said. The task force includes members of the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, El Paso Police Department and other law enforcement agencies. The charges are out of El Paso and Montelongo was jailed under a total bond of $102,000. - El Paso Times

No comments: