Juarez City Blues

After a comfortable nights rest, I called the Amtrak Station to see if my luggage has been located. Not yet. So, I dressed and went to a cool little diner called Tejas Cafe for a mess of eggs, toast, and sausages. The coffee was quite good. Ran into an old Drag Queen friend named Noah. Whatever happened to so-and-so set in and believe me Noah really knows so-and-so. After breakfast, I headed towards that great concrete bridge that links these two cities together. Pay the thirty five cents and hump over. Downtown has not changed one bit.

The Central Zone of the city is sprawled out along a flat mesa lining the Rio Grande just opposite her sister city of El Paso. Multicolored buildings, some new, some old, some never fully completed with the iron scaffolding jutted into the smog-choked sky spreading across the landscape. The chipped and graffitied buildings were dwarfed only by the blaring billboards announcing everything from cheap tequila to the cure for herpes. To the west of Juarez proper was a large mountain range that was blanketed at the base with the residential colonias. These multicolored neighborhoods ranged from elegant haciendas to cardboard shacks. There was always one fire blazing night or day in the poorer quarters so that a choking gray haze hung over the city. The air was thick with the cloying blare of honking horns and high decibel Mexican music.

I started south on Juarez Avenue to the old Guadalupe Cathedral; a pile of ancient stone dating back a couple of centuries. From what I remember, Juarez sprang up around the cathedral like growing fungus, spreading outward. The sidewalk was bustling with people; all dashing to and fro in their various affairs. As I strolled down the dusty sidewalk I was swarmed over by ten taxi drivers all on the hustle:

“Downtown, Meester?”

“Pussy women? Titty girl?"

“Donkey Show?”

“Best pussy…no like pussy? I got boys…twelve years old!”

Oh God, I thought. “I gotta get some smokes.”

I noticed a couple of boys selling cigarettes at the base of the missions’ steps. Good ol’ Mexico, I thought. I looked around; the area favored nothing stateside for sheer filth and poverty. Among the indifferent mass of pedestrians, people shit all over the street and then lie down and sleep in it with flies crawling in and out of their mouths. Entrepreneurs built fires in the street and cooked up hideous, stinking nameless messes of food that they dispense to passers by. Hot and dry like a Turkish Bath, and vultures eating a dead pig off a side street and everywhere you look there is some baboso scratching his balls. Yep, good ol’ Mexico.

I crossed the busy plaza in front of the church, I new this place well. On weekends the plaza was packed with hustlers cruising for a few bucks. This was the meeting place for all the local men who wanted an afternoon diversion. Under the blazing sun, the teeming flesh eyed one another with unbridled macho lust. After the sun went down, the hustlers were a bit seasoned and more professional.

I looked at a young Mexican boy that looked back and smiled, I thought on how this city changed me, when I first moved to Tijuana, the thought of paying for sex appalled me. My attitude was that I was looking for love and not sex. Guys should love me for who I am and not for what I have. This is a vulgar lie. In this gay life, there is no love…only sex. And for the most part that’s a disappointment. So, over the years I have come to look at the sex act as a commodity of necessity that can be purchased like a pair of shoes or a pack of cigarettes.

Next to the gazebo in the middle of the plaza a group of performers dressed as Aztec Indians dancing to a tribal beat. They were surrounded by locals and a scattering of curious tourists.

A swelling cry went up from the kids who sold cigarettes in the streets. “A ver lookies!”—“Look here Luckies!”—Nightmare fear of stasis. Will they be saying “A ver lookies” 100 years from now? Horror of being stuck in this place. The fear followed me like my ass.

Vultures circle over and roost on the low dusty buildings. I walked by an empty shop with a vast rubbly lot all around. You see this all over Juarez, a city of vast open spaces, shit strewn lots and huge parks, vultures wheeling in a violet sky and young kids spitting blood in the street. Some interesting monuments. One to Chavez—whoever he may be. Naked boys with wings twisting around a cone straining up as if to goose each other.

Really, Mr. Chavez!

And alone on a pedestal in the island separating two wide streets a life sized bronze 15-year-old boy, completely naked playing marbles. Heats me pants as I pass him.

The reason I headed to The Plaza because it was right around the corner from about five gay bars and discos. And down the street there was an adult theater. I had to check that out. A worn down theater with rotting wooden stadium seats and dirty red curtains. They showed scratchy prints from the late ‘70’s in Italian with Spanish subtitles. It was pretty pathetic compared to the porn-palaces in Tijuana.

Then it started to rain. Hard. I hung around some bars trying to wait out this deluge. All the streets in downtown Juarez were flooded. Talk about a horrible situation. To get back to the bridge that crossed to El Paso, I had to wade through hip deep polluted water with the chance of electrocution from downed power lines.

Once crossing back, I returned to the hotel. I decided that I will reside at the Rescue Mission until I am employed and then return to Juarez.

Here I go again.