And The Hippos Where Boiled In their Tanks...

After a raucous night out with Alfredo and the Juarez Irregulars, I had a hangover me but nothing a black cuppa joe and a steaming bowl of menudo couldn't fix. To wear my troubles away, I took in a Sunday afternoon once again, solo, at Banos Romas for a spot of unclean fun. One dark skinned lad in cubicle across from me enticing with hard on so I was stretched like taffy in all sorta inneresting positions. Steam and semen and sweat were the order of the day well into the late afternoon until I stumbled outta that concrete structure with an empty scrotum and throbbing asshole. Home I must return, rest, I thought, for tomorrow I take flight to Puerto Rico for a week and my Grandmothers funeral.

But, no. Fate had different ideas. I staggered into Bar Buen Tiempo and the joint was rockin' with Sunday afternoon revilers, young hipster queer boys and old sugar daddies vying for their attention, laughing, talking drinking under the red and blue neon and the bouncing jukebox. I ran into both Ricardo and Esperanza, two I have not seen in a while and both were drunk offa their asses. After three caguamas I soon caught up to them and the night was a blast of drunken partying. We three soon hit the cracked pavement and skipped over to the nearest fag disco and boogied down to the latest tribal and local beats. Soon though, the festivities came to a screeching halt with an impromptu Erotic Girl Dance contest. Ech...what an eyesore. Bloated bitches swung their lungs and pansas at you in an vain attempt for thunderous approval. I liked the girl that looked like Morticia Addams with the mosquito bites on her ankles.

Walking around the darkness, I was accosted by Tralala who attempted to put makeup on my face. Funky bitch. I somehow found myself tongue wrestling with some skinheaded cholo by the backwall, short thick hardon pressed against my hip, all going well until he asked for twenty dollars. Moved on. Danced with crazy laughable, lovable Esparanza. Around two thirty, the disco closed, and we three drunkenly exited and stumbled to the corner hamburger stand and gobbled down a few. I was hit on by a rather handsome cowboy in a white hat, all legs and jeans so tight you could see his circumcision. Well, making his move, I threw up offa the curb, which didn't impress the vaquero that much and saying adios to Ricardo and Tralala, Esperanza walked me to my house. I flipped a Lucky Strike to the cowboy and said I'd see him when I get back to ol' Mexico. He smiled that smile.

Outside my door a car pulls up with two young Mexican guys, the passenger asks me, "Do you speak English?"
"Fluently." I slurred.
"We are kinda lost...which way back to El Paso?"
I leaned down to the passenger window, "Well, you drive that way two blocks and take a right on Ignacio Mejia, then a left at Avenida Juarez..."
"Qeres Mamar? (Want a blowjob?)" The passenger blurted.
"No." I said. "You take Juarez Avenue to the bridge then to El Paso."
"You don't wanna fuck me?" He asked meekly.
"Look, yer drunk, I'm drunk...and I gotta plane to catch in two hours. Go home and get some sleep." The car pulled off. I said good night to Esperanza and crashed on my couch.

The next morning in a frosty rosy fingered March dawn; I ran for the border and took a taxi to the airport; boarded the plane. It was exciting. I couldn't remember the last time that I'd flown anywhere. The flight to Puerto Rico took seven. But, the view was fantastic. Several thousand feet below us the ocean was a bright turquoise and as calm as a lake. Up ahead I saw an island, bright green in the mid-morning sun. There were white beaches along the edge of it and brown swamps further inland. The plane started down and the stewardess announced that we should all buckle our safety belts. Moments later we swept in over acres of palm trees and taxied to a halt in front of the big terminal. Once we landed I telephoned my father to hear if he called my Aunt Carmen to see if she knew if I was coming. He said he didn't so I called her myself. I was to stay with Aunt Carmen for the week of my stay. My parents were not to arrive until Tuesday. Aunt Carmen was surprised to hear from me. I got the directions to Bayamon, a small suburb five miles south of San Juan. I told her that I'd take a city bus and be at her house in about an hour, she being a feeble old woman. Plus I wanted to see the sights.

The airport in San Juan is a fine, modern thing. Full of bright colors and sun tanned people and Latin rhythms blaring from speakers hung on naked girders above the lobby. I walked up a long ramp, carrying my coat and a small leather satchel slung over one shoulder. As I left the airport, I saw myself in the mirror, looking dirty and disreputable, a pale vagrant with red eyes.

Outside, the airport glistened in the sun. Beyond it a thick palm jungle stood between the ocean and me. Several miles out to sea a sailboat moved slowly across the horizon. I stared for several moments and fell into a trance. It looked so peaceful out there, peaceful and hot. I wanted to go into the palms and sleep, take a few chunks of pineapple and wonder into the jungle and pass out.

Instead, I continued to the baggage room. The baggage room was empty. I found my duffel bag and had a porter carry it out to the airports loading zones for cabs and buses. All the way through the lobby the porter favored me with a steady grin and kept saying: "Si, Puerto Rico esta bueno, ah, si, muy bueno..mucho Ha-Ha, si..."

I told him I needed to get to Bayamon by city bus, because a taxi would cost fifty dollars. He gave me some arcane directions and sent me into the center of Old San Juan.

I walked through downtown San Juan looking for the bus route to Bayamon. All manner of fearful deviations thrived in that muggy air. A legion of pederasts wandered the narrow sidewalks of the Old City of San Juan, giggling at every crotch. The bars, the beaches, and even the best sections of town crawled with rapists and crab dykes and muggers and people with no sex or sanity at all. They lurked in the shadows and foamed through the streets, grasping and grabbing like crazed shoplifters driven mad by the Tropic Rot. San Juan was a strange combination of old and new. As I weaved my way through the teeming throng of locals and tourists there was a fine, lusty tension in the air, a meeting and gripping of eyes at every corner. The local men were fabulously trim and tan. No fat on these guys, not like the Mexicans. Everyone seemed to be fit and healthy.

I found the bus route and was soon on my way to Bayamon. The scenery was beautiful. Such lush greenery of palm and banana trees. Wild flowers of exuberant mesmerizing colors grew everywhere. Bayamon was built along a river with many parks squares and statues. The parks are full of tropical trees and shrubs and vines. A tree that fans out like an umbrella, as wide as it is tall, shades the stone benches. The people do a great deal of sitting. The river looked as if nameless monsters might rise from the brown-green waters. I saw a lizard two feet long run up the opposite bank. Many of the houses were rusted corrugated iron. But, the neighborhood my Aunt lived in was made of squat concrete buildings covered in security gates.

Once entering the bus terminal, I meandered my way up the main streets to the side cull de sac my Aunt lived. I located her house on a quite street lined with palm and banana trees. It was a time warp. The house looked exactly like I remembered it so long ago lost in those fuzzy dim memories of my childhood. As I walked up the flower lined sidewalk my Aunt peeped out of the gated entrance and gave me a toothless warm smile. This short old lady still had her shock of red kinky hair. Hugging me she uttered in bad English, "Aye, you smell good. And you are so tall."

She showed me to my room and after I unpacked, we sat on the veranda and talked, drinking coffee.

"Where did you learn your Spanish, mijo?" She asked.

"Why? Is it really bad?"

"No. It is just that you talk like a Mexican."

I had to laugh at that one.

We talked about simple things, about my life, hers, Grandmother. Aunt Carmen introduced me to a friend that was visiting; an elderly man named George that I guess sort of took care of her.

A neighbor that lived next door came over to visit, a man named Omar. He was a tall, thin man in his early thirties. He had a black goatee and short cropped black shiny hair, green eyes and a killer smile. His stomach muscles rippled when he breathed. His torso was completely hairless and copper colored. Like most men on the island, he had almost no body fat. And the fact that he was wearing nothing but sandals and Speedo's just made my imagination run wild. Omar would visit my Aunt and help her with yardwork. He was tasty. He said hello and joked with my Aunt and then he left. Maybe it was my imagination, but I do believe that hottie was flirting with me.

Oh well, to the business at hand. Mother and Father and that wretched Sister of mine will be arriving tomorrow, so after a delicious meal of red beans, rice and chicken, I went to sleep early to prepare myself for tomorrow...