The Theater of Noise.

I look up from my note book, pen ink still fresh on cream paper. The monilith of stone...that Cathedral of Guadalupe looms in front of me and down in front a little man; face contorted red in passionate lust screams doctrine into a megaphone. No one listens.

I adjust my Wonka glasses, the sun shifts, light a Lucky. Take a long slow drag. I watch a Mexican Indian guy with dark copper skin in a yellow and green soccer uniform glide by with vibrating lust. I stare at the notebook on my lap.

Anybody who can write a sentence such as "She beat on the table with the expression of a masturbating idiot.", knows how to express his thoughts in a powerful manner. Is it conceit? No. My mind whirls and memories swirl like a storm. Hafta write them down. I remember last night at the apartment of Mary's and my pen starts to glide across the paper and I vomit it out...

I falter. The Preacher has become a screaming gesticulating madman. Closing my notebook, I slip it into my book bag, sling over my shoulder and head for La Cabalita Cantina for a beer. Not too crowded, still early. Strike up conversation with my old waiter friend Cholo by name and by decree. Then I saw my junky friend Dupre. I looked at him a long three seconds before I recognized Dupre. He looked older and younger. The deadness had gone from his eyes and he was twenty pounds thinner. His face twitched at intervals like dead matter coming alive, still jerky and mechanical. When he was getting plenty of junk, Dupre looked anonymous and dead, so you could not pick him out of a crowd or recognize him at a distance. Now, his image was clear and sharp. If you walked fast down a crowded street and passed Dupre, his face would be forced on your memory - like in the card trick where the operator fans the cards rapidly, saying, "Take a card, any card," as he forces a certain card into your hand. Dupre was only twenty-three years old and looked pretty good. We stood talking, downing cold Sol cervezas.

As I squeezed a lime into my bottle, the steel door to the bar slammed open and a huge rotund woman stomped into the cantina, looked around, walked straight up to Dupre and I and began screaming at Dupre. She menacingly pointed her long fingers at his face like the Wicked Witch of the West. Then with one swoop, this woman grabbed him by the hair and pulled him from the bar, screaming and yelling at him, whopping him on his head. It was his mother.

Afterwards, the bar was silent. A silly faggy techno song in Spanish burst forth from the jukebox. The ugly drag queens continued to squawk as nothing strange has happened. I finish my beer and cut. Not before Cholo pinches me for twenty pesos. Why not? He's hung and hot.

I stop for a burrito pulpa and a manzana fresca and then to Cafe Internet to pound my thoughts out. Feeling mediocre. Remembering all the loves of my past...nostalgia is a disease!