Port of Pobres.

"There are opportunities in life for gathering knowledge and experience. In order to do this, one must take a risk."

---Jeffrey Boumont (Blue Velvet)

As of this writing, I am sitting in a small internet cafe, The Cafe Metropol, in Matamoros, Mexico, sipping a Pepsi Light and staring at the extremely handsome guy running the cafe. He glances at me with those big brown eyes and smiles his smile that melts hearts of man, woman, or beast. It is so freakin' great to be back in ol' Meh-hee-co! Let me report the last two days, okay?

The Greyhound bus departed Gotham City with a blast of black sooty fart and grinding of gears around 2 a.m. I waved adios to New York and hoping never to see that ominous city again. I slept all the way to Washington, D.C. There wasn’t much to see on the way except trees and rural farmlands. But in Washington...man! We rolled in around thirty minutes after the sun rose it's lazy shiny ass over the horizon. The monuments were very impressive. The bus station was around the corner from the Capitol Building and you better believe my digital camera was working overtime. I remembered all those sci-fi movies I had seen of Martians blowing up these time-honored monuments. I stood there gazing across Pennsylvania Avenue and I felt proud to be an American hoping a flying saucer would buzz by. A quick bite to eat at Micky Deez and it was back on the bus.

The rest of the trip was relaxing; the bus wasn’t crowded and I had two seats to myself. The country side was idyllic, it being the beginning of Fall; the colors in the trees were beautiful…oranges, reds, copper, rust. The cities were impressive. Atlanta. Mobile. New Orleans. Dallas. Corpus Christi.

Past Corpus Christi the greenery changed to flat oil fields. Silver refineries belched flame into the blue cloudless sky. Armadillos zigzagged out of dead bushes and islands of trash. All the way down to Brownsville. I started up a conversation with this one kid named Juan Carlos, a street wise cholo of about eighteen years old and told him my intentions in Matamorros. He agreed to help me out once we reached there. He said he knew Matamorros well. We chatted all the way into Brownsville and he could tell that I was queer, for he kept giving me a coy look and joked several times laced with gay sexual innuendos.

Around seven in the evening, we arrived in Brownsville, Juan Carlos rushed me across the bridge that separated Brownsville from Matamorros, whisked me into a taxi, and took me to a real cheap hotel. The Hotel Don Felix. He said he was going to stay with friends so after I checked in and got to my room, he took off. The room was dirty and there was graffiti on the chipped blue walls, but I was tired. So I unpacked and then fell asleep on the squeaky sagging bed; pleased with the fact that I was back in Mexico.

A whorish-looking landlady ran the hotel. Her husband was a man of about forty, powerful and vigorous, but there was a beat look in his eyes. They had seven daughters and you can tell by looking at him he would never have a son. At least not by that woman. This giggling brood of daughters kept coming into my room (there was no door, only a thin curtain) to watch me dress and shave and brush my teeth. It was a bum kick. And I was the victim of idiotic pilfering—a catheter tube from my medical kit, underwear, vitamin B tablets.

The following morning, I was awoken by knocks and when I answered the door it was the kid, Juan Carlos giving me some lame story about being robbed and that he needed money. I gave him ten dollars and he shot out of there. I never saw him again. Shoulda fucked 'em first.

I spent the day checking out the city. It was a beautiful coastal town. Much better and cleaner than Tijuana or Juarez. Cobblestone, muddy streets, one-story buildings mostly shops.

I walked up to the main square. There was a statue of Bonito Juarez, "The Liberating Fool" as I call him, shaking hands with someone else. Both of them looked tired and disgusted and rocking queer, so queer it rocked you. I stood looking at the statue. Then I sat down on a stone bench facing the Rio Grande. Everyone looked at me when I sat down. I looked back. I don’t have the American reluctance to meet the gaze of a stranger. The others looked away, lit cigarettes, resumed conversations.

The town looked old, dirty saloons crowded with sailors and dockworkers. A shoeshine boy asked me if I wanted a "nice girl." I looked at the boy and said in English, "No, and I don't want you either."

I got up and walked around, taking pictures and smoking a good pack of Lucky Strikes. I passed a bar, a large colonial looking building of concrete and teak wood, and decided to go in for a drink. The split bamboo walls shook with noise. Two middle-aged wiry little men were doing an obscene mambo routine opposite each other, their leathery faces creased in toothless smiles. The waiter came up and smiled at me. He didn't have any front teeth either. I ordered a cognac.

A boy of sixteen, who said his name was Paolo, came over and sat down with me and smiled an open, friendly smile. I smiled back and ordered a refresco for the boy. He dropped a hand onto my thigh and squeezed it in thanks for the drink. I looked at him speculatively; I couldn't figure the score. Was the boy giving me a come on, or was he just friendly? I know that people in Latin American countries were not as self-conscious about physical contact. Boys walked around with their arms around each other's necks. I decided to play it cool. I finished my drink, shook hands with the boy, and walked out into the bustling streets.

A hunchback with withered legs was playing crude bamboo panpipes, a mournful Oriental music with sadness of the high mountains. In deep sadness their is no place for sentimentality. people crowded around the musician, listened a few minutes, and walked on. The musician coughed from time to time. Once he snarled when someone touched his hump, showing his black rotten teeth.

The city produced a curiously baffling impression. I feel there is something going on here, some undercurrent of life that is hidden from me. This is the area of the ancient Chimu pottery, where saltshakers and water pitchers were nameless obscenities: two men on all fours engaged in sodomy formed the handle top of a kitchen pot. What happens when there is no limit? What is the fate of the Land Where Anything Goes? Men changing into huge centipedes...a man tied to a couch and a centipede ten feet long rearing up over him. Is this literal? Did some hideous metamorphosis occur? What is the meaning of the centipede symbol?

I walked down the main drag. a pimp seized my arm. "I gotta fourteen-year-old-girl, Jack. Puerto Rican. How about it?"

"She's middle aged already, "I told him. "I want a six year old virgin that loves takin' it up the ass...don't try palming your fourteen-year-old bats off on me." I left him there with his mouth open.

I walked around the local shops and sat in the main park lined with palm trees watching the parade of guys go by, sipping on my jamaica. There was a large gazebo in the middle of the park where a huge band played Ranchero and Salsa tunes all day. At night, I prowled the park for some unclean fun. Was cruised by a couple of fags, but they were a little ugly. Sitting under the stars with a warm breeze blowing I want to move here. I returned to the Hotel Don Felix and checking my wallet ($653.28 American) I decided to move to a better hotel and got a room for a week. It was the Hotel Mexico in the main shopping plaza. Not bad, but at night I had to keep swatting palm size cockroaches off of my bed.

I dined on mouthwatering tacos al carbon and found this Internet cafe. I think I'm going to ask the guy that works here to show me around. He is rather hot and I wouldn't mind a little Mexican in me.