A New Hope.

Traffic in my apartment was hectic. If I am asked one more time how I am feeling by an agent by MHMR I swear I'll kill myself.

Visited by several caseworkers from the loonybin to see if yours truly is okay - Monday I hafta go to Kook Central for a check up of the noggin and as most likely will have to spend the night downing all types of psychotropic drugs and tolerating anal probe after anal probe. The good thing is I will be granted SSI benefits - that's free money monthly from the gov folks gratis in large amounts for the rest of my miserable life. And what do I plan to do with it? Well, along with some part-time employment I'm sure to land - God knows what that will be - scrimp and save for a year and do The Secrete Project - it has become my obsession - my single propose in life. With burning desire, I will focus all my attention onto this endeavor - I have nothing else to lose.

It will become my life. It will be my new hope.

Lost.

The night is dark and the stars blanket me. I look up and I see nothing. Under me - far below are the tracks - I can hear the rumbling of the approaching train - I feel nothing. The wind has picked up and the dust has caked into the sweat mixed with tears stinging my eyes. I don't even know why I am sobbing - I feel nothing. My body is frigid and my insides are cold. The sounds of the trains' klaxon is deafening as it rushes under the concrete bridge all I have to do is to take one step - one small step and all this misery - all this loneliness would end. The bridge is shaking from the force of the black iron engines as the locomotive rumbles at great speeds under my feet - black smoke swirls around me. I take a deep sigh - look up and gaze at the stars. It really is a beautiful night. What a wonderful God we have to create something so beautiful. The train passes and I turn away and walk into the black swirling dust.

What a loser - can't even kill myself.

I even failed at taking my own life.

The Cold Inside.

When I arrived in this Godforsaken desert back in August of last year I sat across the desk of my counselor a quivering swallowed eyed wreck. He asked me a simple question: "So, what are your plans for the future?'

Let me try to explain this - and I am not being theatrical - this is the best I can come up with: a big black cold nothing. No vision of anything. No fantasy of nothing. Blackness - inky darkness - empty silence. And the feeling from it sadness and cold loneliness.

That's it.

When I was a kid my mind popped - over flooded with images of what my future would be like. Bright lit candy-colored tableau. A famous film director making blockbuster hits like Lucas and Lynch. World famous - my name a household word.

Now - nothing.

I started with MHMR - the local nut factory here in El Paso - and began their treatment program, took their psychotropic medications, went to their therapy - and several months later...

I feel the same. Nothing. So empty and cold inside.

I feel like a corpse waiting to be sent to the grave - I've done so much in the past decade - what is their left to do? I have no impulse to go in any other venture - no drive or spark for any project. I don't want to do anything, talk to anyone...

At this point perhaps termination of this borrowed flesh is the only step forward.

Traveling without moving.

The funk that I have been feeling lately is really getting awful. Is this the depression? My sickness? How insidious. I have no drive to do anything - anything at all. Today I planned to look for work - nothing.

I worry that when I find a job my psychosis will return - I will have an attack and somehow lose it - same old story...like the pea under the shell trick - now you see it; now you don't. Of coarse my greatest fear - and this has been gnawing at me for over a month since I came back to El Paso and got this free apartment from MHMR - that right when I am on the brink - right when I am at the cuspice of getting ahead, it will blow up and fall apart and once again I will lose it all like I always have so many times before. Everything taken away - so what's the point?

Let's face the facts - I am a loser in this life, folks. And not just petty ones - I have fucked up in some grand humdingers! I should have been a famous film director, or manager of a resort hotel, or television station supervisor, or drug runner, or cartel - but always ended the same...right at the brink of success, just as my fingers were to grab that trophy - splat! Boom! Everything crumbled around me and within a matter of days if not hours - I was either living in some transient shelter or on some bus to some damn slum in a foreign locale.

I sit here poised - staring at this screen...wondering even if I should join the work force again. The paranoia consumes me. Just last week I applied at a company that had a reputation of hiring anybody but me - denied. A blow to the old withered ego - I tell you. And me being over qualified for almost everything I apply for - problem of being to smart for your own good.

I have this dream - and at the moment all it is is a half hearted fantasy that will probably flounder like so many other of my projects - I want to open a bar - a gay bar on the beach down in Costa Rica. A place like the Copacabana 'cept queer where the fag jet set would lounge sipping mai tai's and half naked native boys frolic - with me behind the bar looking like Cap'n Carl from Pee Wee's Playhouse. But - as I said, a dream - how can an insane man with no ambition make this happen?

My future once again seems black and dark - a huge void. Cold and empty - and I see no light at that other end.

Plaza San Jacinto.

Decided to wile the afternoon away at the Central Park in downtown. Ran into Abel and Bubba – Bubba is a local character, crazy ass Negress that gets his living offa the government tip, i.e. his social security checks. So – the girls and I sat in the stifling heat and watched the parade of boys.

Sitting across from us was a group of heroin junky cholos and their two bitches. Much chit-chat about the three attractive ones – the cholos I mean. There was one that was sitting directly in front of me with shaven head, wife beater, and baggy black pants – real hot except for the chunky beeotch that clung to him like a deformed monkey. However, as the old vato gangster with weary eyes and drooping moustache with the boom box blasted oldies – this younger cat kept eyeing me tugging at his crotch and popping a boner. But alas, their bus showed up and the whole troupe left with it.

It would have been a peaceful day in the plaza if that asshole about town William Wiggins did’t pollute my gaze with his presence – why? I hate him so much for treating me so bad for nothing. My only satisfaction is that his life is truly shitty – living at the O.C., unemployed, and contracted chlamydia. Brilliant.

Bubba – who knows of this loudmouth pretty boy – wanted to start shit, but I explained that if anything started, I would go to jail for murder – my hatred for Wiggins is that intense. Dear Reader, you know what a savage wildcat I can become in a fight. Luckily nothing came of it.

So the boy watching continued and the stories of sexual conquests and the ungodly heat. Bubba – who reminded me of myself years ago, had no qualms of talking to handsome boys who walked by on the way to the bus stop. One green eyed Mexican guy – who is extremely handsome in a model kind of way and is known for selling his wares in the public mensroom – walked by and Bubba blurted out, “Hot! You’re hot!”

“What the fuck does that mean?” He growled back.

Without missing a beat, Bubba returned, “Whataya think it means? You’re hot – shit!”

The guy just stormed away. Oh well – we all just laughed it off. Bubba and I made a date to visit Banos Roma in Cuidad Juarez in Mexico next Tuesday – can’t wait to see how that pans out.

Our Taxes at Work.

Public transportation has always been overrated. Even though the El Paso bus system has to be in my opinion the worst in the country – it does at times transport an entertaining assortment of characters. And I like how everything on the bus – from the plastic chairs to the aluminum railing is slimy and/or sticky.

As I waited for my route 15 in the dimming twilight of the Central Plaza – the hot winds began to blow and that crazy ass black lady started to get too close. The heat caused the flies to come out at Biblical proportions and I sat there swatting them fussily. With a squeal of gears, the old bus farted black smoke and halted at the station.

Already I took inventory of the people that were waiting – mainly the two hot young Mexican boys that I have noticed before waiting for this line. Especially the younger one with the highlights – always checking me out.

Well, flashed my free and gratis bus pass compliments of MHMR and sat way in the back – with the cool kids. And then wish I hadn’t. The bus idled for twenty more minutes as I cooked on the engine where the seat I was perched sat over. It didn’t help that the air conditioner didn’t work – then again the air never works on these buses.

The two hot Mexican boys sat adjacent to me providing eye candy – the one with highlights kept taking digital pictures of his friend (lovers?) It was too cute. A filthy ass drunk that lumbered back and sat two seats away ruined it – he smelt of piss and sour beer. Then two bloated teenage hoochies in miniskirts sat back with us, also.

We were also joined by three real handsome Mexican cholos that were high on heroin – they sat in the back – all three…silent, legs crossed, eyes drooped, sniffing. One, the thinnest and by far most attractive, pulled a small crossword puzzle book from his back pocket and began to figure out the games. I sat there taking it all in – simmering from the heat of the engine until finally with a grunt and protest of gears, the bus lumbered up Mesa Avenue north to my apartment.

It would have been a quite ride if the drunk didn’t clomp up front and start grating loudly, “Goddamit! Whydoya hafta shtop at ev’ry fuckin’ shtop? Yur fuckin’ shtoppin’ at evr’ry fuckin’ shtop! Ya Goddam muthuh fukkuh!!”

All through this I kept checking out the skinny cholo in the white wife beater who appeared completely oblivious to what was going on and didn’t falter from looking up from his crossword puzzle – not only hot, but intellectual.

The metal dinosaur continued and picked up and dropped off corpulent women and goofy looking homosexuals. I like how in the back this one bloated fairy would dart his eyes around from one guy to the next and look away in nervous shame – especially at this young white guy with travel bags that was either homeless or coming back from a long journey.

Well, the drunk started up again and the driver slammed on the brakes and threatened to call the cops. “I don’t givva fuck!” was the response.

About this time I had reached my stop and debarked. I wonder what would’ve happened if I stayed on? I try to imagine that the whole bus had to team up to subdue the enraged drunk – in a fit of anger the drunk takes the wheel of the bus and drives it over a ravine…passengers screaming, carriage bursting into flames…

Lost in Diseases.

Haven’t been feeling well of late. Stomach cramps, diareah, vomiting, and lack of sleep. The heat has not helped and I have been drinking large amounts of water – yet I still continue to have dry sticky mouth – foul and evil tasting. Perhaps I should call the free clinic and get an exam – a full blood test. These symptoms have been going on for some time and I would hope I haven’t contracted some STD…

Dark Dreams of Nostalgia

Nights fraught with fear and confusion. Gunshots in the distance – stabbings in the shadows. A week of humbling debasement – huddled outside on the cracked and black spotted pavement, I slept with the other unfortunates under the flickering neon glow of the San Diego Rescue Mission’s sign.

Crack addicted phantoms patrolled the sidewalks around me, fires were lit in metal garbage containers as cheap liquors passed from callused hand to callused hand, palm sized cockroaches skittered too close, and cat sized rats rustled in the piss-drenched gutters. Couldn’t sleep anyway – concrete biting cold and hard. I stayed awake at night and slept in Balboa Park during the day.

The fight for survival was a necessity. We shuffled to the corner of “C” Street and Island to stand in the soup line. An hour passed and the waiting area filled with about one hundred people. Some shuffled aimlessly, others stood slack-jawed; others jabbered and screamed at nothing. The reek of sour clothes and unwashed bodies. A ratty black woman of titanic proportions yanked down her black sweat pants and deposited great gobs of rancid shit next to the sidewalk. The mob looked on with apathy. Wouldn’t you? My fears anxiously rolled high – I was at the end of my rope. I honestly had no idea how I was going to get out of this one.

Macho naco- fat and nasty- drunkenly terrorizes a young college type white boy down on his luck or perhaps just a speed freak on the skids, who knows? Threats, a yell – whap! – the Mexican whelps the white boy across the temple with a meaty right hook. White kid stands there pink faced and passive. He looks at me for sympathy – I look away. Naco turns machismo to me – seeing to impress his already impressed Mexican cohorts – this fucker under the impression that he can now take on the whole Anglo race. But, dear Reader, I will not be mired in such debasement; I mean I have a reputation to upkeep – your reporter grabs a brick from a nearby crumbling warehouse wall to which I am standing and states plainly at his advancing foe, “C’mon, you drunk cocksucker. You wanta make problems? I got a whole world of problems for ya.”

Seeing no fear in these blue and bloodshot eyes, said drunk backs down. To save face asshole extends his hand in friendship – no hard feelings? Go fuck yourself is the only answer he is given. It made for great dinner conversation. Much back slaps and high fives where given that night – I was accepted into a circle of multi-racial hobo friends.

I always don’t get away with it, though. I recall the time a well known crack addict was scooting by in his wheel chair with me sitting on the steps of the shelter enjoying my Dr. Pepper and conversation with new found fellow hobos. Old gray haired Negro in the wheelchair flings out of his chair onto the phlegm coated concrete and goes into a spastic fit on the sidewalk a few feet in front of me. I quip in my best Bill Burroughs drawl, “Well, I guess the drugs are kicking in.

”Well, by a miracle of little baby Jesus this junky coot stops his spasms and foaming at the mouth in one swoop grabs the stainless steel foot rest from his chair crawls the few feet over to me at lightning speed and whacks me across the side of the head with his bludgeon, smashing my glasses all the while screaming wild eyed, “I ain’t no Goddamn junky, you fuckin’ honky!”

I love that word. Honky.

Ech.

Feeling pretty damn down right about now.

Ever since I moved from Juarez City to El Paso it has been a slow muffled nightmare - like suffocating. Will attempt manana to seek employment again. Bleak in this city. But then again my work record is not exactly perfect - in fact it's horrifying. I wouldn't hire me. The sicko evil pervert I am. Or obviously the way society sees me...

I have this plan to open a bar in Costa Rica in two years and through the will of God I have acquired a rent free apartment for two years - will attempt to stick it out. Just bitchy that's all. Low on funds. No friends. Cause I'm an ass - I'm so mean to people sometimes...

And yet I can be so generous. Where are all these people that I helped now? Where are my friends? I am so alone. And the loneliness is eating away at me.

I guess I hafta stick it out. Like my psychiatrist said - the one that just quite, third one since I started with MHMR - I really need to follow through and accomplish that dream of opening that bar. And besides, who am I going to rely on? It seems no one - I'm the only one left.The only one left.

Klowns are Scary.

That Which is Below

Normally I would have left by now. But, I am a changed man. These long months in therapy with MHMR, the local nut house here in El Paso has changed me.

Why am I so bitter - so empty?

I used to be somebody. Once.

I stand on street corners and as cars scream by the drivers stare at me with malicious intent so nasty. Today - I am on the hunt for employment being the exact opposite of that at the moment - I decided to take the bus to West Corporation, a telemarketing gig that has the reputation of hiring anyone.

Now, I get on the bus that is jammed packed with housekeepers and - get this: the fucking bus driver is a germaphobe! Every time a passenger enters, she cringes in repulsed fear or she cowers behind her jacket wrapped around her head to obstruct her view of the passengers that so much disgusts her gaze. Amazing. So, anyway - get to West and after jumping through their hoops for two hours the manager drops the bomb that they have records that I used to work there six years ago for about half a month and before considered for rehire he wants me to write a letter letting them know why I want to work for thier company. Thank God they're not holding a grudge, right.

After wiping the blood from my ass, I trudge home, hack the chicken carcass to bits left over from last nights feast and fry 'er up. My caseworker calls to cheer me up with a 'things are going to get better' pep talk before letting me know she just quit and is moving on to another job. This is the only person I ever trusted. She's gone now, too.Sigh.No money. No cigarettes - I would suck cock right now for a Lucky Strike. I am one depressed cowboy. I am contemplating if the outcome don't come by the end of the month, I shall pull up my stakes and return to San Diego.

At least there...the people are pretty.

El Paso City Blues.

With the paid assistance of Salvador the Gimp – Sally to his friends – I finally moved my personals to my free and gratis trap stateside. Swanky new digs, I tell you by standards of past living. Central air, carpet, and cable, ferthecrisakes – I feel like the Johnson’s, now. All antiseptic and hermetically sealed for your protection. Free of charge for the next dos anos per MHMR, your friendly neighborhood loony bin.

So, after snuggling into my digs I took a long hard look at the situation and noticed something quick – boredom soon began to set in. El Paso, mind you, is not the bright center of the Universe. But, it is from here I will use my springboard for my venture.

Sitting in the Central Plaza, I lolled the days away talking to old acquaintance Abel – drag queen of ancient glory. We sat in the park like days of old and watched the trickling of boys parade by. I was approached by Billy Martinez, self-proclaimed manwhore and part-time dishwasher, being a sociable fellah we exchanged cellphone numbers and sat and joked the day away.

The heat is unbearable – this damnable desert climate! Luckily I slunk back to my sparkling flat and spent the evening cable surfing until I fell asleep.

The following morn found me bathed and whisking across the border to purchase three – count ‘em three – packs of Lucky Strikes. Can’t for the life of me find them here stateside. Stopped first at the duty free store to see if I could score fore a discount but the three rude bitches ignored me so I roared that I’d take my money elsewhere and stormed out like any good queen should.

Returning to the states, I once again hung around Central Plaza with Abel and boy watched. Was invited to tomorrows Street Fair by young yet daffy Angel – he an old friend of William Wiggins, who of coarse decides to make a guest cameo a few minutes later. No words were exchanged and Wiggins and Angel toddled off into the shimmering heat.

Was entertained by a group of hot Brazilian boys from UTEP – the university here. The Brazilian musicians were quite good and Abel and I gawked at the erotic dancing as the jungle beat permeated the dead museum of downtown. Hotties all. Brazil I must visit one day and get away from these flabby Mexicans.

Returning home, I was called by Sir Billy Martinez and several minutes later his scrawny cute ass was at my doorstep. We sat and talked and watched a couple of movies – Kung Fu Hustle and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. After said flicks, we took the bus to purchase groceries like giggling lovers. Once returning home, Billy napped on my bed as I edited a screenplay. He heavily hinted to move in. Maybe, Billy, maybe.

So, that is the last few days. El Paso is the negative film of Juarez, no?