goodbye

day 32 of quarantine

My neighbor was kind enough to check up on me.

all

I

see

everywhere

are 

the

dead

i made it this far

abstract trepidation

I roll over in the musty sagging bed and attempt to piece together the night before. The dank room I occupied was windowless; graffitied walls painted pink with the lingering stench of a million Mexican hookers. I lay naked on an old spotted mattress, itself smelled of mildew and various indescribable aromas. The bathroom was down the hall. I arose slowly and staggered to the sink next to the bed and took a piss, washed it with water from the tap then splashed my stubbled face.

Gravity took over and I slumped uncontrollably back onto the bed. I lay there dizzy and aching - head pounding as I stared at the naked light bulb dangling from a wire coming out of a hole cut in the plaster in the ceiling. Directly above my face, there was a bright yellow spot in the plaster. That's rat piss, I thought, not water damage. Rats always piss in the same spot. Humans don't - unsanitary fucks...

My mind throbbed with the kaleidoscope of a million images. It had to be round nine at night, the bars were in full drive cause the sidewalks were pregnant - crawling with twinky Mexican fags. They swaggered and cooed to and fro from one disco to the next - Albatross, Bananas, Riches - all glaring and giggling at every crotch. The disco and chacha beats thumped as outside between the clubs agile hustlers lurked in the shadowy shadows to rob the unwary tourist or desperate old queen with time worn accuracy. We stood outside Bananas and smoked and laughed until I was invited inside for some much needed drinks. He said his name was Arturo. Short in stature with a thin build and black curly hair cut short. I loved his smile - heated me pants every time he did.

The place was lit, you dig. Wall to wall boys lined up and jumping to the beat, swirling and dipping and cruising around like aroused Tom Cats. The sexual tension was thick like only it can in these Mexican gay joints.

Arturo introduced me to his friends - all fine characters and there was one cutey - a thin twink named Manuel and he really took a liking to me. And the boy really liked to drink his drink. On that note - beer and tequila began to flow.

Arturo, Manny and I hit the dance floor and boogied until the joint closed down at 2am when the lights snapped on immediately followed by the shrill cries of trannies hiding their melting faces in dispair. The waiters ushered the entire lot out into the streets where continued the frenzied socializing, fags, trannies, and lezzies huddled in groups talking and laughing all wondering where the next party was - a yellow hummer drove by and invited me to a fiesta in the hills, I refused.

Arturo, Manny and I jolted drunkenly across the street to a chicken restaurant and devoured delicious chicken tacos and made out in the booths - where the waiter snarled pinche jotos but we just laughed under the sneering glare of the fat mamacita that was running the joint - and that's when Arturo came up with the idea to rent that cheap ass room. First we stopped to buy a fifth of cheap tequila.

Down dark, trash littered alleys of mangy dogs and bums with quivering hands reaching out forever, past shady characters glinting eyes under fedoras twinkle in the moonlight and hissing hookers with silver teeth and bruised thighs - we stumbled up worn wooden stairwells to a nameless hotel in an unknown place and slapped down the twenty in front of a fat receptionist chewing on a cigar so nasty.

With difficulty, Arturo pries the wooden door open, flicks on the light and the cockroaches scatter. We ritualistically pass the tequila bottle around - tastes so good going down. I retch. Little Manuel jumps up and down on the bed - something breaks inside with a muffled boing - we all laugh.

Tongues and fingers probe as clothes were peeled off and erections exposed. I sat on the bed as Arturo laid me back and began to suck my cock like a champ and that fucker knew what he was doing. Manny played with my nipples as he continued to kiss me talking all dirty like in Spanish. Arturo's fingers found their mark and were slid up in me and I didn't need to instruct this horny fucker in anything, he puts my feet up over his shoulders, spits into his palm, lubes his cock and slides in with slow deliberate movements. Thrusting and lunging, Arturo fucked me as I gasped and grunted through clenched teeth. Manny jacked me off, kissing and massaging me - talking oh so dirty. Manny was the first, kneeling over me - he squirted his cum across my chest...then it was me, with Manny milking it out, I gasped and squirmed in an intense orgasm. Pounding faster and harder, Arturo pulls his cock out and squirts his semen all over my stomach, too - falling next to me in a sighing plop.

We lay there talking a bit sharing a delicado cigarette. Eventually both had to split and they did. They got dressed, we shook hands and said good night - I finished the bottle of tequila we had purchased and fell onto the bed.

the gay agenda

We think we want sex. It’s not always about sex.

It’s intimacy we want.

To be touched. Looked at. Admired

Smiled at. Choked out. Laugh with someone.

Feel safe. Feel like someone’s really got you.

That’s what we crave.

That's what I crave.

l'obscurité est mon seul ami

Okay, here goes: I am not normal and I have never been normal and I’ll never be normal and please don’t ever say I’m a nice guy because being a nice guy is the last thing I consider myself. I am a horrible, damaged monster doing his best to stagger through this shit storm I was born into. I suffer crippling manic depression and have been diagnosed as borderline schizophrenic. I can almost never go to sleep. After a childhood and adolescence filled with continual abuse and violence, I literally feel as if I’m dying when my body does something stupid like try to rest. I see demon or monster faces when I close my eyes. This is similar to meth addicts who have stayed awake too long and probably just a product of my insane insomnia. I am not a person. I do not do things a person does. I haven’t been a person in years.

I don’t want your pity. I don’t want a fucking thing from you. I’m not posting shit to look cool. I’m a garbage person attempting to expell through written word what I’ve done with my life. Simply allow me to write and make my jokes. This is all I have, understand? Ah yes, I forget, you cannot understand.

I have been, and inevitably will always be, trapped alone in this black diving bell at the bottom of a lightless ocean...cables severed...

homeless, hungry, happy

An age such as ours is the most difficult one of all for an artist. There is no place for him. At least, that is what one hears on all sides. Nevertheless, some few artists of our time have made a place for themselves. Picasso made a place for himself. Joyce made a place for himself. Matisse made a place for himself. Celine made a place for himself. Should I rattle off the whole list?

Those who are perpetually talking about the inability to communicate with the world, have they made every effort? Have they learned how to be as wise and cunning as the serpent, as well as strong and obstinate as a bull? Or are they braying like donkeys, whining about some ideal condition in the ever-receding future when every man will be recognized and rewarded for his labors? Do they really expect such a day to dawn, these simple souls? I feel that I have some right to speak about the difficulty of establishing communication with the world since my books are banned in the only countries where I can be read in my own tongue. I have enough faith in myself however to know that I eventually will make myself heard, if not understood. Everything I write is loaded with the dynamite which will one day destroy the barriers erected about me. If I fail it will be because I did not put enough dynamite into my words. And so, while I have the strength and the gusto I will load my words with dynamite... You want to communicate. All right, communicate! Use any and every means.

one more tomorrow

horrible horrible horrible i cannot take this anymore i need to escape this prison i have encased myself in 

i am not living 

i am waiting to die xxX

recollections

On the dusty sidewalk next to me squat my black duffel bag overstuffed with clothes, notebooks, and personal items I just couldn’t live without.

A few feet away, the massive silver and mauve bus lay idling. The passengers - all Mexican citizens - stood silent and pensive just like me. Mostly elderly - stooped old men wearing tattered yellow Stetsons and faraway looks clinging to cardboard boxes tied with nylon string. I mulled over what they were thinking about. New lives? New vistas? The simple fact of spending their remaining years with loved ones? I envy the dead.

Then it dawned on me what I should have been thinking about and the thoughts were this - I had wasted a year of my life in a numbing existence of relatively comfort and normality. A day hadn't passed my mind screamed, "How can people live like that? Doing the same thing day in and day out - year after year. The same friends, the same conversations - polite patter over warm cappuccinos on a frosty morning – languidly walking the boulevard window shopping for items you could never afford. How can people go on?" Without hesitation I forced myself out of that early death - Change is Life. Chaos is Change. Live to experience and not to simply exist. I made the decision to turn this stale life up a notch. Plan? Eh? A couple of weeks in Tucson, a few in El Paso, maybe San Antonio via Laredo then onward to New Orleans to finish and settle for a bit in La Perla, Puerto Rico. No time limit - just travel and write. Sounded good to me.

At the bus station, I took another long drag from my cigarette. Glanced at my watch - the bus was running twenty minutes late. I struck up a conversation with an elderly mother in a faded yellow granny dress with red wicker purse waiting silently next to me, “I hope this bus gets going.”

Her face wrinkled into a smile - skin the color of a rumpled paper bag - and nodded, looking out into nothing.

In her tinkling voice she said, “You will get to where you are going, joven. Not only that, you will come back and then go someplace else.”

The words of a Guardian Angel.

The fat, mustachioed steward poked his head out of the reception window and announced in Spanish it was time to board and with ten other passengers, we herded onto the bus. Taking my seat in the middle - as I always do, right side - pleased in the fact that the bus was not packed and that all the passengers, including myself, had a seat to themselves. I stowed my overhead luggage and hunkered down to the long, unknown future.

With a blasting fart of black soot and whining of gears, the bus shuttered and slowly rolled its way through congested street traffic to the on ramp of the 5 freeway north.

camptown ladies never sang all the doo-dah day

The sky was illuminated by incandescent blue bursts of electrical fire. Rain fell hard from tumultuous, darkened clouds, drenching me and the scrawny hooker tittering on the corner in see-through plastic platform pumps. She resembled a melting wax figure, like she had acquired some hideous cancer. She squawks at me and through a rainy haze and the sound of her voice revealed she was a he. I press on home - streets now had become rivers and sewage outlets vomit forth a dry winters worth of back up.

I cut the corner to my trap, soaked to the bones, turn the key and slop my wet shoes into my house. Lights are turned on and I peel my clothes off like a used condom. Stove burns blue flame, water boils and steams, and a cuppa hot coffee is made. I hunker down and watch David Lynch’s Eraserhead just to make sure my life isn't that bad. The credits roll and I slip into bed. Rain always made me drowsy.

Had a headache, me, and took a handful of aspirin before knocking off for the night.

Poom! Poom! Poom! Somebody was knocking at my door. The clock read 2:36am. Poom! Poom! Poom! I fling the covers off and reach for my pajama bottoms (I always slept naked. Can't have it any other way. Wouldn't you?) I pull the front door open to find Jose, a teenage kid from the neighborhood standing on my landing with kind of a glow. Eyes all pupil and sniffing constantly. He went into some tirade about how he was in need of money and his grandmother was sick and that...Basta! Can't you tell how late it is!? I was sleeping! Some of us hafta work for a living instead of staying up all night taking dope! Don't bother me again! Slam!!

Had a hard time sleeping after that. Put some Juliee Cruise on the stereo - she always makes me drift away.

The alarm goes off, reggeaton blares forth; it is 5:20am. I stagger to the shower and bathe in tepid water, dress and hit the dark streets - still wet after last night’s storm. I purchase two burritos pulpa from the plump smiling woman on the side of the road - traffic whizzes past us going toward the United States - there is black dust in the cracks of her face. I gobble down one burrito before vaulting the turnstile to the International Bridge. Wait grudgingly in the long line to be waved through by a red-eyed and bored looking customs officer. Once on the Other Side, a phone call is made and a coworker picks me up, stopping first at Starbuck's for a Frappuccino mocha.

Work dragged like a wounded snail and I was nearly comatose by the time I clocked out. I hitched another ride back to the border and jet across that long divide. Shriveled, shit covered junkies in rags and grime coated ponchos, hands outstretched, looking like beat Christ's begging for change down under the bridge. You can hear their pleaful cries...they go unnoticed, as all I saw in front of me was an impenetrable wall of bouncing, fat asses en masse as we trudged across that hump.

Stopped by Burrito Row - I ordered a burrito mole with manzana fresca and shoot the breeze with Beto, the hottie who works at one of the stalls. I chomp my mess all the while wondering what it will take to nail that fine ass. I digress...I was still extremely sleepy and decided to make my way home. Mumbling adios, I walk through the muggy air - the occasional tsk tsk from the prowling chunky chilango hooker - dodging the kamikaze bus, the suicide taxi.

I reach my humble flat and snatch the $150 I stashed under a beat copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars. Down stairs, I pay rent to the slightly crazed landlady as her oily son looms silentky in the corner, arms crossed, watching me - the old haggish bitch counts the money and miscounts twice before agreeing it is the correct amount.

Back at my place, I languidly sat with a Sol cerveza and switched channels on my 32inch flat screen telly recently purchased with my tax return. Nothing but crap. There was a rap at my front door and was surprised to find Oscar standing in the street.

Inviting Oscar in he began bleating the same old same old and needed cash and, well, one thing led to another and I found myself sucking that cock - not ten slurps up and down his stiff brown shaft and he was squirting gobs of semen into my mouth; clenching the bed covers with one hand and grabbing the back of my head with the other.

Both of us showered, I gave him one hundred pesos and he split. Vibrating in meloncholy, I dressed and marched out - the late afternoon streets teeming with life. Fat fag in pinstriped jeans checks me out as I pass the shoe store; smells waft of mouthwatering rotisserie chicken displayed in neon blasted windows with blackened filthy bum pissing on the outside wall. Small Indian children, snot caked on their copper cherub-like faces, grab my pant leg as I walk by - moanay! moanay! - a clown, a fucking guy dressed as a circus clown, DJ's in front of a record shop. Three tattooed toughs slouch under a street lamp - flicking of cigarettes and toothpicks click between teeth - side eye me as I saunter along. My way is clogged by a group of young boys in soccer outfits - they stand laughing and talking in front of the dusty pane windows of an ice cream parlor, I stare at them with shattered limitless lust. Shoeshine boys call out to shine me leathers as I stroll past blue, yellow, pink adobe houses and crumbling buildings erected a hundred years ago. Shop vendors hawk their wares - vying for my attention. The music from various cantinas is deafening - I cut into a cafe, order a coffee americano, and scribble these words out...

- excerpt from handwritten journal, 

cuidad juárez, march 1998

one from the vaults

Ceasar was only interested in the financial aspects. His concerns more focused on supporting his wife and newborn daughter.

don't do it

"If it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. Unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. If you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. If you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. If you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. If you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. If it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. If you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. If you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. If it never does roar out of you, do something else. If you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. Don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self-love. The libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. Don't add to that. Don't do it. Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. Unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. When it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. There is no other way. And there never was."

 - Charles Bukowski

are you there, francisco?

The sky was a mottled grey from the drizzling rain. The wailing of an ambulance below, distant rumble of air hammers, always building and repairing in The City.

I sat naked in the rickety hotel chair and watched the boy sleep. 1:47pm the clock read. Could be wrong, felt later. Lighting a cigarette, I sat transfixed as his erection melted away in the early afternoon. Francisco, he said his name was and looked enough like a Latino Leonardo DiCaprio from Gangs of New York to pass as his brother, floppy light brown hair and scraggy goatee. He lay naked on his back amid rumpled yellow sheets in this ratty hotel embraced in the arms of Morpheus and content as a nodding junky. I took another drag and scoped him out, hairless thin frame, eyes shut, pouty lips parted in sleep breathing.

We met last night at a dive bar on Broadway called Chee Chee's and struck up a conversation amid the thieves and the dykes and the just released cons and Atomic by Blondie blasting over the juke box. Next day had brunch with him at a local Chinese restaurant - afterwards we walked over to a bar. Chit-chat ensued over drinks and then walking drunkenly to the Hotel Pickwick, a flop that by American standards can't get any shittier. Looking at me and smiling, Francisco said he needed to score for some meth and would I front the twenty? Sure, why not? Walking down several alleyways covered in shit, bums, and abandon shopping carts, copping his dope from a slick black with gold caps, we soon entered the dank hotel lobby. Flaming old withered fag with bad purple-tinted permed wig at reception.

"How much for a room?" I croak.

"Two Queens?" The receptionist asked.

"Nah, just two boys that need some sleep." Quipped Francisco. 
I laughed with cigarette between my lips and the warm glow of five whiskey sours in my gut. The room was occupied by large black roaches and bad tattered furniture. Yellowed walls stained by second hand smoke. The pillow casings had the faded tell-tale blood spots of bed bugs. The television got three channels; English, Spanish, and soft core porn.

I lay on the bed and watched Francisco take a shower, water running down his long thin smooth frame, over an ass that was like a peach. He sits naked on the bed and asked if I wanted to try a bang. Nah, not in any condition. Needle clogged twice, thin line of blood from inner elbow to wrist. I look away, always freak me out watching someone probe for a vein. He sighs as it goes in sweet and pure. I sure can pick 'em.

The sex was much needed - hostile, violent, hot - the bed creaked and rattled with our fucking. Your basic crimes against nature. Several nasty positions later, covered in sweat and semen we lay embraced as the rain pounded down outside our fifth floor window.

Like I said, sat there and watched the boy sleep. Finished my cigarette, gargled with what was left of a can of Steel Reserve, got dressed and left twenty dollars on the nightstand. Sweet dreams, kid.

I dart out of the hotel onto wet sidewalks and incandescent lagoons. Shifting through time and The Long Wait. Cigarette smoldered down to a butt - the cries and shouts and hacking of a hundred hobos echo in my mind. I stand and I wait. Waiting for the world to turn.

I am up to speed with the necessities of my quest - that long walk to Nowhere. But I am doing it anyway, you dig? The natives are getting hostile and I am quite drained from their antics - I don't wanna here of your pathetic problems, got my own.

Nothing to write - cause nothing’s going on.

- handwritten journal entry, 
San Diego, September 12, 1993

tijuana bohemia

cuidad juárez

My foul smelling hotel room rests on the garbage cliff overlooking the poor Juárez barrio, tin shacks and white roofs of crumbling adobe, crisscrossed in dusty wire cables and television dish aimed up high with little dirty gardens down below bounded by the rusty metal wall and superhighway nightmare 20th century I-10. I stand on my garbage cliff under the setting sun rays of Huītzilōpōchtli and understand I am at the end of Mexico - the longing pulls at me, depression of a million nostalgic images inundate my withering mind.

The town is so noisy – dirty and trash laden, streetfulls of wild boys all night brandishing their erections under chino pants, drunken nacos in yellow Stetsons and sagging pot bellies, vulgar restaurants, nasty whore hotels, musicians, half American stores, jumping beans and tortilla concessions, Chinese Masonic lodges and barbers too. Big halls for hip-hop discos and ranchero music, painted crudely with monolithic donkeys. A portrait of a Chihuahua glares down at me donning Sante Fe style kerchief and bejeweled vaquero hat.

I light up a cigarette and walked through the border at night back to my sad, lonely apartment, a dead silent fairyland of U.S. dusk - deserted ghost streets and sad quiet air-cooled diners with white capped waitresses joking softly and no one on the streets.

A dream. We live inside a dream.

- handwritten jounal entry,

march 3, 1997

and so it goes

He lives in my neighborhood. You know the type, languidly hangs out in front of the liquor store, bumming smokes, spitting on the sidewalk with another sulky vato or two, doing nothing but dreaming through time. He drops by my place now and again. Mostly when his mother is giving him flack to get his lazy eighteen year old ass out and get a job. A listless loser. But, a sweet kid, too. And so it goes.

He has a girlfriend - a plump little number with the gift of gab who lives with her alcoholic aunt in a shitty, red-brick building over by the dusty warehouses with the occasional cholo shootout. She seems to love him. I'm certain he loves her, too. And so it goes.

I met him a while back coming out of said liquor store - asked for a dollar, said he was hungry. Brought him home, fed him. He likes to lounge on the couch, immobile as a lizard - playing video games or watching movies. He really likes the Bruce Willis and Jackie Chan flicks. Mindless entertainment for one so mindless. Once in a while, we'll sit and talk for hours about stupid shit. He'll sometimes ask to pop in a porn and watch with that frozen, slack, poker face every straight guy displays when watching porn. I blow him when he want to. He asks and seems quite happy to leave it at that. And so it goes.

I gave him the nickname Squirt on account of one afternoon we were on the couch jerking each other off to straight porn and when he came, his semen squirted over his head and splattered the wall. He still laughs about it. I was upset for I had to clean it up later, cursing the virility of a twenty-one year old, cursing my faded years. And so it goes.

Today, I was crossing the street and Squirt and his girlfriend were walking in the opposite direction towards me. He caught my eye and guiltily escorted her quickly in another direction into a shop. The meaning is quite clear, my friend, our worlds can never cross.

And so it goes.

i am the fury of my own momentum

melancholy memories

Maybe when our story's over

We'll go where it's always spring

The band is playing our song again

All the world is green

- Tom Waits

It was bitterly cold and we stood in a circle under silver clouds passing beneath a dark navy sky full of stars. Two trains roared on either sides - great monsters of steam and metal - one going to Tucson, the other towards San Antone. Our stomachs were warm from the thin potato soup that was just served for chow. Near our shivering forms, huddled in knots, men stood in dirty coats - collars turned up in a vain attempt to thwart the vile wind - smoking, spitting, coughing, talking. All black shadows in the dim lamps of the shelter.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Sitting in the bright ass Texan sun with a hangover struggling to patch together the kaleidoscope of images from last night. I squat on a low brick wall in an alley downtown - Camel Wide in one hand, tall boy in the other - the small menudo for breakfast gurgling in my stomach. Lying nearby, Robert snores in the shade of a saguaro bush. I lean over - bleeech! I stare down at my steaming vomit. Oh yeah, now I remember...

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Went to Juarez yesterday. Old boy had changed. It was kind of like once, long ago, when you scored a sexy lover - had a lot of good kicks, you separate and after a few years you meet up again and seeing that the person had degenerated into a disgusting, obese slob hard on the eyes. Well, crossed the bridge spanning the Rio and first thing noticed was the bomberos missing (The old fire station - use to stand and watch the hot firemen play soccer) walked down Juarez Ave. Military soldiers stood four deep; AK-47 strapped to the hip on every corner - looked like Nazi occupied France. Not one taxi asked me for a lift, not one vendor beckoned me to enter their shop - it was...weird. The streets were teeming with pedestrians - life was continuing, however the tension was there - fear was there.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Woke up at 3am amid farting and snoring of one hundred sleeping hobos. I slipped my feet into my plastic shower shoes and put on my coat and shuffled outside to smoke a non-filtered Camel. The sky - the sky was fulla stars! Beautiful! Finished, shivered and came back inside.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Gasping up from troubling, insidious nightmare. Suffocating in a black steel box. Charred walls of my iron tomb pitted with pock marks and scratches. Woke with the putrid taste of metal on my tongue. Put me straight into a funk. I roll out of my bug infested bunk and shuffle bleary eyed into the mensroom. Already occupied with seven or eight terminally addicted hobos washing, shitting, pissing. The room smelled of farts and soiled socks as I stood in a pool of piss at the urinal taking a piss. Showered, dressed and ate a nameless slop served for breakfast under the glare of the snarling kitchen staff. Even the Victory Coffee tasted especially rancid this morning.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

How many cigarettes does it take to wait? How many cups of coffee? I sit in the dead end diner with napkin firmly under coffee cup - I was told in that style, you can tell when someone is waiting - watching nothing out of the big dust streaked pane window. Long shadows stretched across the gray tiled floor like the bars of a prison. It was the exact moment between melancholy tunes on the cafes radio - that hushed quiet. Outside, it was cold and colorless. Gritty wind whips eddies of trash down a lonely street. A long cry from the sunny, warm surf crashing against the beach only two weeks ago. Here the sky was a harsh cold blue - though dazzling bright, gave no warmth - only a bitter cold; you can feel it in your marrow. I sip more coffee, took another drag.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Diego and I cut out of the bar into a humid Tijuana street and swing next door to a $5 a night hotel. Pay the fat mamacita behind the black bars and dash up warped wooden stairs to a room with an overpowering effluvia of mildew. The yellowed, tobacco stained walls were a multicolored kaleidoscope of scrabbled graffiti of both marker and spray paint and, plopped in a corner, was a tired, slutty mattress sprawled onto the floor. Diego smiles and whispers some dirty shit as we peel off our duds and flop onto the mattress - bedbugs and all. Diego - this short shit - flings my legs up over his shoulders, spits on his palm, lubes his erection and whammo - begins rutting like his sad poor beat life depended on it. After a bit, he squirts and I giggle 'Again!' and he does with me flopped around lying on my stomach. Afterwards, forementioned Diego confides his fantasy was to screw a gringo and I was his first. Awwww, I smile inward.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

The fat taxi driver sat wordless - hating me (the foreigner) or his life in general as we hurtled over the hills toward the ocean. The cold wind blew in my face and whiped my hair as I sat deep in the back chair and I thought, Fuck - I'm not going anywhere...I live in the coolest place in the world!

power cut. end transmission...

room to dream

a junkies journal

The sun slowly crawled over the horizon. Off in the mist, a dog barked - a car passed. The depression hit me full force. I had been up for days now and my mind felt like mayonnaise.

The apartment – what’s left of it - was a filthy, dank den smelling of burnt metal and musty farts. The mattress lay exposed from messed sheets - stained in sweat, semen, and God knows what else. Without all the furniture I used to possess - all sold for dope - the cramped room had become empty harboring the long shadows of a prison.

I lay on my bed with a cigarette in moist hand staring at the spotted ceiling. I had nothing. Nothing. My family hated me. I could not, would not, fall in love with anyone. Yet, then again, what was left to love? Every relationship I attempted since my move to Tijuana ended in psychotic fights usually instigated by my own sick mind.

The loneliness draped over me like a cold, black shroud. My mind spun with the few dozen hits of dope I took throughout the night.

What is wrong with me? I thought.

I began reflecting on the myriad of routes in life I could had taken - remaining in Los Angeles, keeping a menial job, becoming a writer, or perhaps making movies. All those nostalgic plans in due course collapsed into failure. Everything I attempted ran to ruin. Never any moral support from a vile and vindictive family, never any trusting friendship from money-obsessed, conning friends, and I won’t even go into an explanation of the dope addicts I associate with. All they cared for was their drugs and whatever they do have, it was never enough (As for me, it was never enough - ever) – so, they would hone in after my supply like a shark to a wounded, bleeding sea creature.

I wanted to sink deeper into the mattress. I just wanted to go away - get out.

I attempted to focus on the future.

One time, long ago, I harbored great plans. Living in some posh house in the Hollywood Hills with a handsome young lover, famous from my literary achievements, attending parties, television spots on celebrity talk shows, getting written up in the papers - all faded into mist. I had no future.

Over the years, I apparently acquired a mental state of such downward bleakness, whenever I did deliberate of that hopeful future, I was confronted instead with a dark, cold abyss in my mind’s eye.

The depression sunk me lower on those spinning memories. I never felt as sad, alone, and hopeless as I did at that moment. What was the point of going on when there was no point? I should simply die. It struck me as quite logical. Who would miss me? I would miss no one. I wouldn’t have to worry about jobs, rent, my shit being stolen by these damn naco junkies.

My face wrinkled into worry and melancholy. I glanced over to my end table - scorch marks, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, and empty meth bags strewn across it.

I picked up my only meth pipe, held it between thumb and forefinger. Inspected its charred glass sides - precious residue hid in some streaks along the shaft, behind black char. My rage blossomed. It was this shits fault. All the blame of this fucking addiction I acquired. God, how it controlled me! In anger, I flung the pipe across the room and shattered it against the white-washed concrete wall.

I yelped and leapt out of bed toward the shards lying on the dirty carpet. I picked up two big chunks, cradling those precious pieces. What have I done? Oh jeez! Now I have to go buy another one from some bitch I couldn’t stand. I examined the pieces and felt an emotional pity for the broken parts. I felt a dismayed, kindred spirit toward the little fucker and I just killed it!

Feeling so sad, so sad. Especially at the stupidity of the situation, it coursed over me. There was nothing. I had nothing.

Nothing.

I rose and stumbled into the kitchen and, removing a butcher knife out of the drawer, I knew what I wanted to do. Why not? What reason was there for me to continue like this? Nothing. Who would care if I was still around? Nothing. My friends would had forgotten me in a week. Nothing. My parents didn’t give a shit, so why should I? Nothing, nothing, nothing…

I stood grasping the knife, clutched it in my right hand. I balled my left fist and raised my left arm. The steel felt cold against my skin as I made that first slice. A trickle of blood formed and streamed a thin line down to the elbow.

Suddenly, I was terrified. What the fuck was I doing?! I threw the knife into the sink and grabbed a ragged towel to stop the bleeding. Then the tingling pain began to throb. I was embarrassed more than anything - mortified at the foolish attempt I had committed.

I dashed into the bathroom and grabbed a wet towel - it seemed I didn’t cut that deep.

I went to the corner farmacia and purchased a roll of bandages from an unconcerned clerk; returned home to wrap my arm.

Shortly afterwards, I sat in a nearby park. Kids jovially played, vendors sold balloons and frozen flavored ice, couples strolled in love, the sky a bright, cloudless blue. Around me the ever present heartbeat of life.

I sat there; a disgusting stain on this idyllic painting - a vulgar mark on the world. Such a depression.

Trembling, I held my head, cigarette dangling from my chapped lips - what a failure I am. Such a failure. I have failed at so many attempts to better my life and today I failed at ending it.

Composing myself, I stood up and walked over toward Coahuila Avenue to buy some more junk and get a new pipe.

- Tijuana, 1992

all tomorrows darlings

We’re all rocked by the waves of struggle when it comes down to those circumstances that change us from within. Whether you’re hurt, angry, jealous, or longing from afar, they prompt you to keep on fighting.

You’re carried on such currents from somewhere that was once near-perfect in a moment, and permanently tattoos every moved thought and emotion that traverses through the delicate fibers of which you are composed. Your downfalls are brought about by the hesitance to loosen the grip and let things be as they may. Returning to an existence that is uninspired is feared, and so you try to run from it by holding on to that short time when reality seemingly dissolved away.

You do whatever we can to chase down a fond memory, and in doing so, you bring out the worst in yourself. Your own emotions dig craters that go bone deep, and you’re left as cold and hollow as a winter’s night lacking even the slightest breeze. You begin to loathe time itself and the cavernous distance it creates between the past and present.

The moment you realize that it will only continue you corrode you from the inside out is the moment when you stop putting up a fight. Like even the best of times, the worst can be carried off with every stroke of the second hand as long as you make amends with what is, here and now.

The fondest moments will always bring longing bubbling to the surface, but loosening ties with it and accepting where you are is the only way to keep being and moving on up. Perhaps if time is on your side, such moments will reoccur.

Only the rise and fall of the passing days hold that answer.

birdbox orchestra

rockets red glare

I think a lot about Holocaust victims who neatly packed their suitcases, took their children by the hands and boarded the trains, believing as long as they listened, as long as they complied, everything would be okay. The lies compound until, by the time you realize what’s going on, it’s too late.

“We’re just moving you to another town.”

“We’re just taking your children for a bath.”

Authoritarians count on our trust and us believing it’ll be easier to comply than resist. The fight ahead is going to be hard, but we can never give in to our better nature and compromise with monsters.

You do not appease authoritarians. You destroy them.

I apologize that this entry isn't "funny" or dripping in sexual skirmishes. But things have been getting way out of hand for this Nation.

into each life some rain must fall

It was an hour after sunrise in Park Ingerente Guerrero. The ftt-ftt-ftt of sprinklers momentarily shut off and the grass glistened from early morning dew. The sky was an overcast gray common to early summer months in Tijuana, which carried with it the lingering chill from a brisk night. Glimmering palm trees – their trunks painted white - swayed slowly in a slight breeze.

The old queer lit a cigarette. A faro – spitting the flecks of tobacco from a moistened mouth. He stood on the corner - the sidewalk damp from the lifting fog - pulling his beige sweater tighter around a potato-shaped frame. He casually waited to see if any of the young rentboys were still around. Many did stay up all night and eventually filter toward the park in search of a free breakfast from kindly gentlemen such as himself and perhaps some quick cash for a room to sleep in lieu an all-night romp of disreputable debauchery.

With rheumy eyes, the old queer scanned the vast park. No one. No one worth his attention, for that matter. He took another drag off his cigarette and glanced over to a crazed, ancient Chinaman selecting a greasy slice of half-eaten bologna out of a cascading garbage can; washing it off with a discarded bottle of water.

The Chinaman cackled to himself, mumbled something in a squeaking pitch, and began to nibble. The old queer looked wearily away. Blew smoke out into the brisk air. Off in the distance, a dog barked.

The park was occupied with about thirteen, ratty immigrantes - darkly clad phantoms, their  grimy collars turned up to ward off the night's chill, slouched over on the cold, metal benches, snoring loudly. The misty, early morning air was a light blue with overcast dew, the sharp tang of stale urine wafted past him.

The old queer curiously peeked back as he witnessed the scrawny Chinaman rummage through something behind a bush - watched as the demented hobo hooted and shoved objects into the pockets of his bulging, tattered jacket, shiny over the grime. The Chinaman’s head popped up like an animal sensing danger, quickly looked around, and then scrambled off into the post-dawn mist.

The old queer casually, curiously ambled over to where the Chinaman was previously hunched behind dirty bushes. He stopped in his tracks, a gasp of disgust jerked out of his throat, hissing through stained dentures.

A body of a twenty-two year old man lay akimbo in the slimy muck under the shade of a dusty bush. His pockets turned inside out - the white cloth of the front pant pockets poked up like obscene tongues. Both shoes missing; one foot had a dirty, white sock, the other bare. The young man’s lank, shiny, black hair cascaded into a pool of sprinkler mud, urine and old, dog feces. His thick, chapped lips were bluish-white, the look of astonished horror frozen on his inert, handsome face - scattered near his torso was a syringe, trash, a few old condoms. His attractive and masculine face, the color of a brown paper bag was mottled with splotches of blue, discolored white around the open, grimacing mouth. His dirty shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a lifeless tattooed torso.

The old queer flashbulbed the image of the youth’s face into his brain, a look of shocked, unmitigated horror frozen on that young, cold face. He recognized the boy: a popular hustler who prowled Plaza Santa Cecilia hooking the drunk old men and bloated American tourists who frequented the bars and cafés.

The old queer pursed his lips in disgust. Oh, dear! What did you see the moment before you died, sweetie? Whatever did you see?

The old queer glanced toward a pay phone on the corner – a fleeting thought of calling the police.

He faltered, then casually strolled toward the Plaza, decided to score for a boy, instead. He was certain the rentboys would be working the breakfast crowd at the cafés. Possibly young Cesar would be there. Cesar always knew how to make a drab day turn exciting…

rest in peace Juan Carlos, tijuana 1992

other things not pertaining to things

Suddenly, a bit away, Kyle hears something moving in the brush. A beast the size of a Shetland pony but resembling a palpitating, white grub worm on six crab legs and sporting a nasty scorpion-like stinger drops onto the branch stalking Kyle. Behind the thing, two more of the same beasts creep into view. They emit a piercing shriek as they lurk forward to attack. Without any weapons, Kyle turns to run when the first thing springs through the air and lands onto his back. He can feel the hot saliva from the thing dripping on the nape of his neck as he is pinned down by powerful claws. Suddenly, he senses intense heat and then smells burning flesh as the thing falls off him. Glancing back, he witnesses the second monster leaping at him, but in mid-air, an almost invisible ray of white light fires from out of the fog and kills the beasts. The last monster screams and charges only to be torched by a second burst of the mysterious heat ray.

A group of ten men appear in bizarre body suits and using herbs found in the jungle, revive Thark. They leave before Thark awakens from his venomous coma. Thark explains that the mysterious men were Kzinti and live scattered out in the Great Wasteland. The suits they wear protect them from the harsh climate and residual radiation from fallout. He explains he sent an ambassador, his best Commander named Aris Eddor to speak with them seven years ago. Aris never returned. The Kzinti, also known as tek-hunters, scour the wastes scavenging for tech and machines to barter for food at settlements. They are generally mistrusted and despised by the citizens of the settlements and mostly keep to themselves.

 - Excerpt from the 19 page draft summary of novel in process, Across the Galactic Lens

Inspiration reveals itself in a myriad of forms and will lead to a great many good things. It being from life trauma, reading a book, or simply laying in the grass and staring up into a vast, blue cloudless sky. The stories I have penned which eventually wound up in novels, magazines, online writer markets – they are all well and good, I suppose, but for the longest time I have wanted to author a science fiction story. One of epic scale. Inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs A Princess of Mars and Buck Rogers, I jotted down a decade ago a one page story outline about a United States Marine fighting in the Gulf War of the mid-90’s suddenly transported to a distant and savage planet. The planet, blasted and cratered from decades of atomic war had it all: spired palaces, exotic beasts, silver and sleek rocket ships, swords and laser guns. I first mentioned this early idea in Tweeker about blond space fairing heroes battling sentient black octopi from Orion or some other silly idea.

Eventually, this one page idea morphed into nineteen pages of a world rich in irradiated and mutated life, religion, customs, factions, all revolving around political deceit and conquest. I have completed three chapters. I say completed but they are far from done. I am penning the first version of the novel extremely bare bones – some description and dialog. I will, of course, go back when all is done and re-write each chapter fleshing out the described locales, actions and what not…I daresay, when completed, it will be as thick as War and Peace or Lord of the Rings. (I really do dispise the editing process)

I am finding writing this novel more of a challenge. Previously, my writing was simply dictating what transpired in my life to simple words for others to read. I write beer bottle and the reader sees a beer bottle. But with this made up work; I have to describe in detail, the blaster guns, the smells, the colors, the furniture, the clothing, the rocks, the trees, the sky. And, I am enjoying it every step. Literally a ball. John Carter was Edgar Rice Burroughs, Den was Richard Corben, and Kyle Foster is myself (or who I wish I could be)

I sat and watched the video below last night. I hadn’t seen the cartoon since I was seven or eight years old. But, I remember, it inspired me to draw from that came photography from that to direct movies to that to write…inspiration is seldom linear and always emanates in various forms and will inevitably lead to a great many things.

all the world is green

I stumbled out into the dim, predawn grey with a head full of coke and a stomach full of semen. My jaw still ached from the punch I received in the theater. My side throbbed with a dull pain. The silver-blue of a rising sun was on the horizon not yet clearing the silent dark of the skyscrapers which caste long prison shadows across the few catatonic forms of proto humans shuffling down the black spotted sidewalk. I quickly made a bee line to 3^rd and Spring to catch the MTA back to the shelter. Paranoid my absence would be noticed.

No. Let’s go back seven hours. I was residing at the Salvation Army in Bell, California. They held special rooms for students and the employed, four to a room, set aside from the three hundred army cots of snoring, festering hobos in the main dormitory and since I was attending a cable installation class simply to stall for time and relative comfort as comfortable as a bed bug infested warehouse would allow, I was allotted a rickety, metal bed in one room. The staff were ignorant. Abusive and derogatory, but ignorant. After the ten o’clock bed check and the main lights were switched off, I slipped out the open bay doors and into the night to feed my insidious urge. The aching in my loins; the burning lust of the sexually deviant. Recently, I had found in my wanderings of downtown Los Angeles a 24 hour adult theater. Not one with booths, mind you, but a full on, decaying theater from the Golden Age of cinema. I jumped a bus line, transferred to the light rail, and made a connection to skid row Los Angeles.

My adrenaline was pumping, not from the anticipation of sexual escapades I anxiously looked forward to, but the fact if my absence was noticed, I would be tossed out into the street. Fuck it, I thought. You only live once. Yolo before yolo was an axiom.

At five to midnight, I quickly walked down Spring Street passed watchful stares of pushers and the addicted, vendors of vices with faces changing in neon flashes of liquor stores, pawn shops, dive bars. Blacks howled into the night, helicopters swooped and patrolled, sirens wailed, fires burned. I approached the seemingly vacant box office of the theater. The marquee was lifeless and gritty from decades of abandonment. The only sign advertising the business was a crudely painted sign adjacent the entrance. I rapped on the cracked glass window of the box office. From below, a huge hand slapped onto the wooden shelf on the other side of the glass. With straining effort, and obese man of fifty or so, with greying beard and long locks of greasy grey hair pulled himself up into my view. Wheezing from years of a pack a day, he snatched up my five dollars and buzzed me in.

The lobby, its faded red carpet spotted black with grime, vomit, and nameless substance stank of mildew and bleach. There was a concessions counter, unattended and bare of stock. Neglected for decades. The faded, red neon strip behind fluttered and buzzed. Apart from the muted moaning of the movie issuing from the theater proper, it was vacant and somber as a mausoleum. I parted the thick, dark purple velvet curtains and entered the cinema.

It being already night, I needn’t wait for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The theater was huge. It could easily accommodate five hundred patrons. I slid into a chair to take in my surroundings. The chair was ratty, crimson upholstery frayed. The auditorium stank of cleaning chemicals, vomit, and dried semen. There were ten shadowy figures spread throughout, staring blankly at the screen, sleeping, smoking dope, or languidly jacking off. On the creased and sullied screen, some blond coked out bitch screamed and moaned as a middle aged gym bunny mechanically rutted without an iota of passion, his face blank and unreadable, both glistened in a fine film of sweat. The bleating soundtrack blasted from static spewing speakers hidden up in the black curtained rafters. On each far wall, worn gilded frescoes offered winged cherubs who, in the darkness, grimaced down onto the current audience in judgement and pained dismay.

I sat there for a half an hour, waiting. Listening to the buzzer of the entrance go off several times, realizing full well that meant even more were entering the cinema. The first was a lanky man in his early thirties wearing spandex bike shorts, a thin jacket, and baseball cap. He sat in the row in front of me down on the opposite end. In the meager yellow glow of the dimmed lights in the theater, I had an unobstructed view as he slid his shorts off, tossing them into the chair next to him, and began to slowly masturbate a long and thick, uncircumcised cock. With eyes focused on the screen, with his free hand, he fished out of his jacket pocket a glass pipe and, holding it between two fingers like a cigarette, casually lit up and began smoking crack. His other boney hand slowly stroking his impressive erection and blowing great plumes up into the dark, never averting his gaze from the screen.

A few minutes later, a fit, college type character quickly marched down the sloping aisle towards the front row. He seemed so out of place, as if he’d be more comfortable in some frat house drinking beer with his football buddies on the UCLA campus. Well-groomed and dressed, he swaggered past me followed by a short, rotund and dumpy man with a balding head and thick glasses. The college guy plopped into a seat as immediately the dumpy man kneeled down between the youth’s legs. I made out a silhouette of a pudgy hand pass something to the college guy. As the pudgy man unzipped the front of the youths khaki pants and slurped and bobbed on his stiffening prize, the youth lit up a crack pipe and began smoking. The wisps of smoke swirling between me and the twelve foot erection sliding in and out of a glistening vagina the length of a station wagon. As I sat mired in voyeuristic fascination, ever so often the pudgy man would place more dope in the boy’s palm and it eagerly smoked up.

Feeling the cold burn in my loins, it was time to satiate my own sordid addiction. Behind me, at the entrance, there was a darkened, modest area without seats. It was there, I fully was aware common to all porno theaters of the world, were ill acts against cultural norms were carried out in anonymous fervor. As I approached, I already saw a tall, brawny man of white hair leaning against the wall as a black youth was down on his knees sucking on the white man’s stunted erection.  An even older codger, stooped and ashen with time, stood next to them furiously beating his meat as he watched. Two others lurked in the corner, obscured in shadows, the cherry of a glass pipe ignited on and off like a siren of a brothel. At arm’s length, I posted against the wall on the opposite side of the two getting it on. Immediately, a hand squeezed my flaccid cock. I glanced over to see a smiling and perspiring fat man. I pushed his hand away. No one at the moment deserving of my attention. Then, the main door buzzed and a twenty-something Mexican man swaggered through the curtains. Stocky with a shaved head and black goatee, he wore the striped shirt and baggy khakis uniform of urban Latino youths. Now, that was more like it.

I scoped out where he sat. The back row. Sidled two seats over from him. My ass wasn’t in the chair two seconds before he whipped out his hard and nasty. I slid next to him, grasping his full erection in my sweating palm. I leaned over, pulled the foreskin back, and began sucking and swirling my mouth up and down the shaft. His hand caressed my back as he squirmed and breathed heavily through flaring nostrils. Eventually, the head of his penis puffed-up and I felt the acrid taste of his semen spurting in my mouth. I leaned over and spat the matter with a loud plop onto the bare concrete floor. He stood and shoved his still erect penis back into his pants. He towered over me, unmoving.

“I need some money, homes.” He stated.

“Money?” I repeated, sitting back whipping saliva off my lips.

“Yeah, man, gimme some money.”

“I don’t have any money on me…”

He roughly grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me up into a standing position. Then began aggressively digging through the front pockets of my jeans. My hand was gripping my back pocket that held my wallet.

Finding nothing, his face scowled. “You need to come up with some fucking money, man. You think what you just did was free?”

“Well…yeah.” I said.

His face leaned into mine. The stench of alcohol on his breath. “I’m keeping my eye on you. You find some fucking cash or I’m kicking your ass. You try to leave, I’ll follow you out and kick your fucking ass.” With that, he pushed me aside and strode into the lobby towards the mensroom.

“Damn. You gunna let him treat you like that?”

I glanced over to the opposite side and sitting on a folded metal chair at the second entrance of the theater was a tall black man in his early thirties. He sat hunched over, elbows on knees, fingers touching in steeple.

He stated, “How can you do that? Just walk up to someone and start sucking their dick?”

I nonchalantly approached him. Not bad looking. “Well, I’m not giving that fucker anything.” And then asked half incredulously, “Is this your first time in one of these places?”

His name was Thomas and a couple of hours prior he’d been released from County Jail which was a couple of blocks away from the theater. With nowhere to go, and this place being opened all night, seemed a logical place to lay low until morning before moving on. Seemed legit to me. He offered me a seat and I removed another metal chair from the lobby.

He glanced at the screen, then down toward the college guy still smoking, still getting sucked. “They don’t mind folks doing dope here, huh?”

“Obviously not.” I replied.

“Or doing that gay shit.”

I smiled, “You don’t like getting your dicked sucked?”

“Not from a dude.” He said.

“Fair enough.”

“Hey,” He began. “You do coke?”

I grinned. Bad ideas are seldom boring. “Yeah.” I said.

He reached into his shirt and pulled out a small, plastic ziploc of cocaine. “Cool. Do some shit with me. Been locked up so long, I’m bored of being alone.”

For the next hour or so, Thomas and I snorted lines off our wrists with the aid of a rolled up dollar bill and chatted of things. The coke was good. Activating all pleasure senses, my mind was incandescently alert. Every sound, every detail in the theater was amplified and came across crystal clear as glycerin. We talked and laughed, swapping tales of our times spent in the Los Angeles County lockup, the pros, the cons (mostly cons). Relating the brutality of the guards, the comradery of the inmates, on how it seemed (to me) homosexuality ran rampant – openly performed in cells when the lights went out for the night. (Not for me. I kept to myself, though more than one penis was wagged in my direction. But, that is another story…)

“That’s what my right hand was for.” He wisecracked, holding an open palm up to me.

His fingers were long and sinewy. Palm massive. The image of his allegedly huge dick burned in my mind. But, I kept it cool. Shaking and the lust mounting, I excused myself to take a piss.

Head full of coke, I entered the mensroom and stood in front of the backed up urinal and relieved myself. The Mexican was nowhere to be seen. I guessed he must had left. More bark than bite, I supposed. Turning to leave, I noticed a short white guy about twenty with a Flock of Seagulls haircut standing at one of the stalls waving a full erection at me. He was doped to the gills, obviously, blue eyes large and pupils dilated. He wore a white tank top and cargo shorts. Wordlessly, I approached, smiled while stroking his erection. In ritual silence, I dropped to my knees and began to go to work.

As I was getting into it, a hand touched my shoulder from behind. I was expecting to see the angry Mexican standing there, but instead it was a skinny black youth waving his overtly long and floppy member at me. In a room reeking of shit and piss, kneeling on a filthy tiled floor covered in grime, wadded toilet paper and smashed cigarette butts, I took turns sucking them both as they stood and kissed each other, probing one another’s mouths with saliva lubricated tongues. The young black guy was first to climax. I swallowed all of it. The white guy then roughly grabbed me by the side of the head and with furious, drug fueled passion, face fucked me. He shoved my face into his blond pubes as his pulsating erection deposited gobs of semen into the back of my throat. With watering eyes and gagging gasps, I gulped it all down.

Composing myself, I returned to sit with Thomas.

“Where you been?” He asked. He noticed my flushed face, the wet spots of saliva soiling the front of my shirt. “Oh. Never mind.”

I took a seat next to Thomas and the sweet baggie (now nearly depleted) offered once again. We got laughing jags as I spun into a routine about Hitler who was still alive and working in a donut shop in Florida. Won’t get into it now, but believe me when I say it’s a hilarious riot!

“What’s this fucking shit, homie?” Snapped a voice out from the fetid shadows. It was the Mexican thug. “You got money for blow from this nigger, but not me?”

“Dude, you need to chill.” Thomas warned.

The thug quickly strode up to me, yanked me from the chair and popped me across the chops so hard, I slammed violently back against the wall. Thomas sprang up like a jack-in-the-box (Taller than I thought!) and planted a right hook dead into the thugs left eye which ensued a slug fest. As Thomas and the thug scuffled, I leapt up and grabbed one of the folded chairs and slammed it across the thug’s upper back and head. He fell over in turn allowing Thomas and I to violently stomp him.

As he writhed dodging our kicks, we heard a raspy, “What the fucks going on in there? Stop that shit or I call the cops!” Yelled the box office attendant.

In coke fueled rage, I screamed crimson faced, “Get the fuck out of here!”

The Mexican, face bloody and covered in scratches and filth, hobbled defeated and beaten out the entrance issuing a steady stream of obscenities in his wake.

The obese attendant snapped open the various locks to the door of the box office and wobbled with labored breathing over to us. He smelled like a stale ashtray and his breath stank even worse. “What the fuck was that all about?”

“That motherfucker tried to rob me!” I stated in a coke frenzy.

He let out a deep, wheezing sigh and turned back to the safety and seclusion of the box office, “I say it alla time, you boys gotta be careful in here. All type a assholes will try to take anything.”

Thomas sat back in his chair and asked for a cigarette. I passed him one, he lit up. Noticing the time, I thanked Thomas for the dope, the help, and mumbled something or another I had to go in lieu of curfew. Saying goodbye, I made a dash to the mensroom to clean up. Three men stood at the urinals beating off as a young Asian guy was getting fucked in the stall by a hefty, middle-aged black man with bulging eyes as yellow as urine. I cleaned up the best I could contesting the urge to suck one last cock, feel one last piece of borrowed flesh.

I made my way weary and in pain back to the shelter and, sneaking quickly in, fell into my cot an hour before the lights snapped on to the symphony of hacking and coughing from three hundred hobos. The following weekend, I packed my gear and moved to Tijuana…