Moving without Moving.

La Vida es Dolor.

The Old Queer squirm on a lime stone bench in Chapultepec (Indian adolescents walk by, arms around each others' neck and ribs), strain his dying flesh to occupy young ass and thighs, tight balls and hard spurting cocks. A boy turn, grin at him and yell "Que tal, chief?", their boy innocence aching whip across his sagging buttocks and drooping loins. He scream, an enigmatic Sybil with dark glasses and grey face. Piss blood warm on his withered thighs.

I set my pen down on my notebook and look at the clock on the cafe wall. There was a vato at the counter giving me the eye and I delineated a vague good impression like something half seen from a bus window - back from the screaming, shuddering sickness, everything so sharp and clear it hurts, suddenly smeared with grey smoke - the clock had jumped ahead like the time will after 4pm even for a sick junky - and I don't want to know about him or anybody...

"Pepe." I mouth the name silently finish my coffee and cigarette - cross the frontera; take a late train to downtown San Diego and catch a screening of Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel.

Review: This movie is definitely a thinker. It'll twist your mind - scare your mind - truly wake your mind in such deep ways. Definitely a smartly made movie and refreshing. Some scenes may seem long but all intentional. You delve into each character's thoughts during these detailed scenes. Babel will expose the many differences in these modern day civilizations and display one gigantic uniformity that each has always had. The story is one artistically woven masterpiece that you will definitely be talking about on the way back home. Detailed was this movie. Inspiring for sure. Walked out knowing it will be remembered and will be worthy of Oscar winning for best picture, director, and screen play. It will walk away with all.

Outside the cinema counted the feria and put the plan in motion - long wait in Vinnies - pain and suffering for that Central American venture - now in la-la-land all is feasible. Attain some sort of employment and into regiment - keep vigilant, stay focused. If and only with the hopes that my guardian angel would get up offa his fat an lazy ass...cause bad times ahead.

interzone

A bus was boarded and after a year of numbing comfort - El Paso has become a double exposed memory. Transfixed on the monochrome landscape of New Mexico it saddened me to think I was leaving a place that I would be missing no one. A year of my life has been wasted. And yet, I traveled to a destination with high anxiety - my mind has been altered. Will I be able to cope? Have I changed so much that that lifestyle I gave up a year ago will spit me out and I am doomed to live in mental institutions?

A brief stop in the gray frozen waste of Demming - desolate and colorless - a lone Mexican sat huddled in his meager coat in a futile attempt outside the McDonalds to brave the biting winds - nibbled stale fries - wonder if he shared the same consternations that I did. He looked so sad and forlorn. Several hours later - I had to share a seat with a smelly drunk named Lloyd who went into explicit detail of all his girlfriends in Montany...nearly passed out from his halitosis - was relieved when he disembarked on our four hour layover in Phoenix.

And I hate Phoenix. Every time I traveled there I have experienced bad luck. Psycho was filmed there - twice. This time I was cruised by a blond strung out teen aged speed freak in the men's room - he dropped out when an old codger came in and the coot decided to pick up where the speed freak left off.

Long hours later - had watery eyes of relief as San Diego crept into view. Salty clear air of the sea assailed my nostrils. Clean modern streets - skyline pleasing to the eye! I immediately left the Greyhound station and took the trolley to the border. clikclakclikclakclikclak. My heart was in my throat. The millennium arch rose in the distant - I got that feeling like when you meet an old lover you haven't seen in a long time and you know you are going to have sex again.

Cross the border. You are past the frontier where all the Aztec pitchmen and Mayan street peddlers, chilango quick con artists of the world spread out their goods. Old pushers, embittered by years of failure, mutter through the endless grey lanes of junk amok with a joint (i.e., a syringe), shooting the passerby. The tourist is torn to pieces by Short-Change hypes fight over pieces. Candy Colored Neon tubes glow in the blood of the world. Everyone clear on the shit house wall stand out in white flames of a burning city.

Find a taxi libre and to Hotel Balem - $15 a night joint. Old lesbian shows me to my third floor trap - cockroaches scatter as she cliks on the light and I say gracias - take the keys throw my gear on the red tiled floor. I lay down on the hard bed and sigh. Too excited to sleep, I hit the streets and head to the Plaza. I am looking for a certain rent boy - my favorite rent boy at that. If Saul is working tonight - Plaza Santa Cecilia will be his lurking grounds. When the actor John Leguizamo was young and if he was a hustler - Saul and him would've been twins.

Standing with hip hooked under the lamppost by the McDonald's and sucking on a Baby Ruth so nasty I find said Saul - skinny and tall with big shiny shades and yellow scarf - he sees me and bounds to me like a gazelle flinging arms and legs around me. Laughter, kisses, hugs. I see Saul and the sparks deep in his eyes - he is on.

“Where you been?”

“El Paso".

"Tejas? Por Que?"(Why?)

I shrugged. He grabs me and pinches my stomach.

“And you got a little fat. But we fix that quick."

We walk over and take a seat at cafe El Norteno and have a couple of hot coco's. As foreign and local faggotry whips past us to the various clubs, bars and bath houses - the nights evil sodomy begins to blossom, we update each other on what ever happened to so and so and Saul really know what happened to so and so and I can't take it no more with his little pencil moustache and short black curly hair and amber eyes and slim frame and I close my eyes and when I open them we are on my hotel bed fucking like hyperactive porn stars. Sweaty. Breathless. Painful. Beautiful. Hot. And hour passes, we lay there, covered in each others semen and sweat - he goes limp inside of me. Cleaning up, we share a Lucky and Saul asks if I wanta come to a party. Yeah. Wouldn't you? - and we go out into the clear brisk night with the big orange moon...

All the streets of the city slope down between deepening canyons to a vast, triangle-shaped plaza full of darkness. Walls of street and plaza are perforated by crumbling dwelling cubicles and cafes, some a few feet deep, others extending out of sight in a network of rooms and corridors, hidden by mist and steam - smells of beans, seared meat, mota, and shit. Catatonic emaciated whores stand gray and whithered in the doorless diseased cubicles of Death – beckoning with flashes of silver teeth. Salsa music wails – cops stand with ominous sneer and truckload of them rumbles by kicking up dust with the screams of the prey wail in anguish – drunk loud Americans stumble groped by transsexual deviants of all sorts - Americans need it special. Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon.

Oh there’s tequila and vomiting in the streets and the groans under heaven, spattered angel wings covered with pale blue dirt of heaven – angels in hell we, our wings huge in the dark. Entering an apartment building dark and sinister like you don't know, we travel down feces ranked hallways - the green walls flake like sclerosis. We come into a garden in the middle of the building with an opening to the sky. Then I see ten, maybe eight other people all milling around the corners with spoons and matches – all of them junkies, that rugged tenderness, those rough and suffering features covered gray sick slick – the eyes alert, the mouth alert, hat, suit, watch, spoon, heroin, working swiftly at shots. Everybody is shooting up.

Saul grabs two beers and introduces me to faces I don't wanna know but he does and then to

Tonoch - the head of this debauchery. Short, obviously queer and in his mid-forties - though junkies always hide their age. There was no mistaking the neurotic hostility in his eyes, the fear and hate of life. He sat there in his black uniform nakedly revealed as the advocate of death. A business man without the motivation of avarice, cancerous activity sterile and blighting. Fanaticism without fire or energy exuding a musty odor of spiritual decay. Tenoch looked sick and dirty - though I guess he was clean enough actually - with a suggestion of yellow teeth, unwashed underwear and psychosomatic liver trouble. I wonder what his sex life would be.

Tenoch is blind from shooting in the eyeball, his nose and palate eaten away sniffing heroin, his body a mass of scar tissue hard and dry as wood. He can only eat the shit now with that mouth, Tenoch surrounded himself with pretty junky boys - they prowl him like aroused Tom Cats. Tenoch had the expression of a masturbating idiot. The man wants to touch these kids – young faces in the blue alcohol flame, invaded, possessed by the Substance…Tenoch sits eating the young blood, his face in the blue flicker cruel and sated and sexless, Aztec Earth Mother, Priest and Agent of Junk…

Life is a dream in which the same person may appear at various times in various roles. Saul approaches with two syringes and a spoon. Trace a line of goose pimples up a thin young arm. Slide the needle in and push the bulb watching the junk hit him all over. Move right in with that shit and suck junk through all the hungry young cells. Sauls eyes go slack. I roll up my sleeve. It goes in so sweet and clean. I fall back and sit onto a milk crate. And I gave them all a sleepy benediction…and snuggled down into my junk and went on the nod…last thing I remember was feeling Saul's hot breath on my ear, seeing not seeing behind fucked up eyelids his Aztec face in mine and him whispering, "Welcome back, guero - this is where you belong. This is where you've always belonged."

The Absence of Self.

Tomorrow I return to Tijuana - back to what I left.

Hustlers of the world,
There is one mark you cannot beat --
The mark inside.




And of course I will file a full report strung out on a syringe of lost hope and bring downs. I won't worry though, The Zone takes care of it's own...

Bargain Basement Traveler.

MHMR - that nuttiest of nuthouses, has went and pulled a wild card out of the proverbial Madhatter's hat. The high muckitty mucks have graced me, deeming it in my best interest and continuing sanity, to purchase me a one way bus ticket back to San Diego. I think it is just to shut me the hell up. I leave December 9th.

Man - what a relief. To finally wipe away the stink of this desolate desert. I have accomplished what I came out here to find - to conquer my inner demons; but I had stayed too long and I yearn for the sweet sweet calling of Tijuana and all that it offers. Of all my journeys that is the only port that I ever feel homesick for - the only place I ever feel safe and secure. Screwy ain't it? It will be so good to be home. I realize it will be hard at first and my plan? You faithful readers know the routine, I will attain refuge at St. Vincents, acquire employment and then settle into Tijuana and pick up where I left off - only this time with a more level head.

Recently, I have attained an online romance with someone via my arch nemesis MySpace. This person is sweet and bring out emotions I have not felt in years and that is because we all know online you can be yourself without those barriers you usually uphold when you are with live people - especially fags. Yeah, this guy makes me feel good - down deep, he makes me feel alive again. Ever changing me. May Desolation Angel forever rest in peace.

Went to the Porno Theater for some kicks. The weather was nasty - horrid dirt storm. If you never experience an El Paso dirt storm - go outside and have a friend throw dirt in your face by spinning out the back wheels of his car all on you. Anyhoo - went to the Porn Theater and must've had an AARP discount because it was wall to wall geriatrics, man! I hate old people - so squishy!! One Mexican guy came in and he was cute so we did the old suckaroo with each other but that was it - to old for me so I split.

Just went home and prepared a Cesar salad with a nice glass of Merlot - slice of Muenster cheese (my favorite cheese. Cheese is made from milk.) and hunkered down to a quiet night of telly. Thought of all the positive thoughts of leaving...all good.

All good.

Hollywoodland.

Was lounging around my trap sipping green tea and thumbing through old photo albums. Especially my pictures of when I lived in Hollywood, California a million lifetimes ago. It seemed a different life - a different person. Nowadays and for the past ten years I never talk of my life in Hollywood because when I do relate any brush with the famous it is usually responded with a raised eyebrow of disbelief to a downright, "Stop lying." So, I never speak of it anymore.

However, of you Dear Readers that live in Hollywood and the Los Angeles area know as a fact that it is all that the outsider has heard about - movies and television production are going on all over the place and at all hours of the day or night and the locals; you just become jaded to it. Like the time I was walking home late and was upset that I had to detour because of the filming of Barry Levinson's Bugsy with Warren Beatty at the main post office on Wicox Avenue; had it all dressed as some 30's government building - only some tourists were thrilled to see Beatty and Harvey Keitel who were present, but a local elderly woman shared my annoyance, we stood there and bitched long and hard. Or the time I was walking to work at Macy's in Beverly Hill's and Nicholas Cage drove up to the curb and asked directions - directions were given as if he were a average citizen. No big whoop. Or like eating at a Sizzler steak house on Highland Ave. and seeing gay porn star Jeff Stryker there - okay, that was something. Your steak did seem a little tastier.

And working at that Beverly Hills Macy's had it's perks. I was in the women's accessories department - had a wacky time selling a leopard print hat to Roseanne Arnold and chic sunglasses to Terri Garr which jazzed me to see her wear to some comedy awards she attended on television that very night.

At one point I was a volunteer at the Teen Canteen on Hollywood Blvd. and Vine. Back in it's heyday, the Canteen was a nightspot of entertainment for G.I.'s of WWII by the Hollywood Stars, such legends as Bob Hope and May West performed there and many more. Now it was a day shelter for runaway teenagers - a safehouse for all the youth that flocked across the country to become stars but wound up junkies or prostitutes on the boulevard of broken balls.

Famous actress Shelley Winters, star of The Poseidon Adventure and A Place in the Sun - found it in her heart to teach afternoon acting classes. I remember the few short weeks that took place was a hoot - she brought with her once the legendary Don Knotts and the whole day was improvised hilarity. And obviously I am not alone - here is another blogger I found writing about his time at the Teen Canteen with Ms. Winter's:http://maxsparber.blogspot.com/2006/01/shelley-winters.html

Shelley Winters and I hit it off well and when she complained of the drive from her home to Hollywood I stepped up to bat and offered my free services as chauffeur. This lasted only a period of three weeks because she turned out to be a tyrannical dotting old weirdo.

Case in point - driving down Hollywood Blvd. and I mention I'm hungry cause I been dragging the cow all over town on errands, right? So, she bleats in her famous whine, "Let's pull into Musso and Frank's for a salad." So, we pull into this famous restaurant of the stars and she orders a small side salad. One. And we both share it. Ugh. Cheap ham.

But, it was all done for networking. I was a young filmstudent and I saw her as my key to hobbnobbing with some Hollywood hopefuls. Around this time, cable television was young and for $30 you could air a thirty minute show of almost anything on public access. The Edison Diego Show was born. My bizarre brainchild - a cross between PeeWee's Playhouse and The Tonight Show. A talk Show far before it's time - highlighting Hollywood's seedy underbelly - on Tuesday nights at 10:30pm on channel 3, Los Angeles was treated to Edison Diego, a slick talking greaseball with pencil mustache in a Beetlejuice suite, his wacky black transvestite co-host Velveeta Jones, and Duane Thomas and his all Asian orchestra decked out in black shades, berets and turtlenecks. Formula was simple, Edison opened the show with jokes and schtick, followed by a guest star, a comedy act and then a local rock band - peppered by real strange "about town" spots. Lasted five episodes - the first guest was Shelley Winters, followed by Don Knotts, Joyce DeWitt, Robert Culp, and then Oscar Dela Hoya.

Oscar Dela Hoya was the cause of cancellation. After some sweet talking to his agent, he agreed to be on the show. This was right after he had won the Olympic gold medal and would tub thump on anything - I told him it was a project for kids to stay off drugs of some stupid lie. I was shut down for accusing him of being homosexual...in so many words. It went like this -

ME - So, Oscar, there are many of our female fans that would like to know is you have a girlfriend?
HIM - No. Not right now. I am on the road a lot...I have the support and love of my trainer and agent to keep me occupied.
ME - Oh, so...you prefer the company of older men? Hmm...Sugar Daddy's are en vogue these days.

Next Morning after that aired his agent called the cable company and said if they ever run The Edison Diego Show again they will sue for slander. Goddam faggot! Hmmm, years later Jay Leno made similar quips when Oscar was a guest and Leno was never cancelled. I hate Dela Hoya to this day. This show was getting a good following and it was nipped in its infancy - I still wonder what would ever happened if it continued. Really must contact Mother, she has the only copy of those episodes on tape...

Speaking of hate. I landed a gig for Miss Kitty's Koncessions, dressing as a Bellboy and serving cigarettes, candy, water, and dope from a box slung around my neck at the underground clubs to those crazy club kids. Our group was asked to be at the opening of Club Arena on Santa Monica Blvd. It was a hip star studded event. I was working the crowd - selling cigarettes from my box when has been 80's pop star Madonna purchased a smoke from me. It is customary to light ones cigarette, hoping for a tip - but as I reached out with my lighter a dozen fag hands slapped my hand away and a black queen screeched, "Ms. Madonna don't need no light!" And the lackey lit her cigarette. Not to be upstaged, I retorted, "How about a tip?" She began to walk away. "C'mon, Bitch, you can buy Disneyland but you can't give me a tip?!" Can't stand that cunt even now.

Another bitch that worked me was Molly Ringwald. I was at a party in the Hollywood hills and got pretty toasted and decided to lay down on the couch. Next thing I know this red headed tart is snatching my beer out of my hand and yelling, "You had enough! You're making a fool out of yourself!" I pointed straight into her face and slurred, "I got two words, bitch "Space Hunter". Her boyfriend pushed me back into the couch and they just walked out. Lucky for them! Not so lucky for Kevin Dillon, brother of Matt. At another party weeks later, a gay one at that, I had made a pass at him and instead of saying no the fucker smacks me in the jaw with his fist. It was on like Donkey Kong, baby! We thrashed around the room knocking blows and smashing furniture and smashing priceless faggy artifacts until the host broke us up - cross eyed bitch left with Robert Downey, Jr. - probably to do dope and then to fuck him in the ass.

There are many other occurrences - after the Northridge earthquake (I was housesitting for a friend and his 50 pound metal framed portrait of Madonna hanging over the master bed would have smashed my brains in if I was over just a couple of inches - I swear that bitch is out for me!) Anyway, Northridge Quake - L.L. Cool J and I serving breakfast in the hotel adjacent to the apartment I was sitting. (He was attending the premier of House Party 2 and staying at the hotel.)

Yeah, so many more...do I miss it. Nope. Memories are sweet. Candy colored memories. I don't mind if people don't believe me nowadays. I know these things happened - like the bulk of this blog - I have been ridiculed about it's validity. Fuck those faithless philistines - it's not my fault they live boring dreary lives. I have lived these incidents firsthand - I know they happened. I can't control my life - it controls me.

And it continues.

Doe-me-Doe Duds.

With any luck, this will be me in my Golden Years.

Red Skies at Night.

I am doomed to live a life of repetitiveness. It may be my depressive sickness - it may be the curse of the fates, but whatever it maybe I am damned to it.

Roberto never arrived from Idaho to transfer to San Diego - I text him and his response was that his father had fallen ill and he was now asking for another week. Muddled, I text him back asking if he was dicking me around - I had already waited three weeks for this boy, he assured me that he really wanted to move to San Diego so I am giving the little schister his week. Why? I am having my doubts. My logical rational side is saying to stay here in El Paso and take advantage of the two year free rent I am getting from MHMR. Get a job, bank my feria and figure out what to do the rest of my life. But on the flipside, Desolation Angel, that swaggering wacky bitch - wants to sell all my shit, race to San Diego to suck cock in that homeless shelter Vinnies again only to wind up moving back to Tijuana getting banged by every Mexican hustler he comes across. Sigh. I will let things take their course. As Major Grubert says, "What is meant to happen will happen."

Last night walked over to Juarez City with Hector to extraordinary Arab restaurant that looked like a remodeled bus station. Bare, galvanized iron roof. A huge banana palm growing in the barn-like or hangar-like room with bamboo tables scattered here and there. Served by a snotty Arab queen who was barely courteous when we ordered two plates and one order of cous-cous. An Arab stew of chicken, nuts, raisins, and corn meal. Delicious. I was high offa mota and never got such taste kicks. We had just been in Bar Buen Tiempo, where I encountered a barrage of hostility. Oscar P. was there and wanted to cut me, but I am learning the practices of this dreary tribe. I never saw him, he never had the chance to cut me. Bruno - the owner, wanted not to serve me, rolling his eyes in disapproval, but there was Hector, a good customer. (Bruno has heard that I am a dope fiend. More than that, he instinctively feels me a danger, far out, an ill omen.) So I sat there, loaded on mota. Savoring their impotent disapproval, rolling it on my tongue with a glass of good, dry martini.

Two drunken faggots as faggots can be drunk - Hector decided he wanted some tacos and then some coke in that order. Ditching those lifeless bitches through dark cobblestone streets of the Old Market - whores, fat and nasty, stand and wait forever sucking on a silver tooth. Black phantoms lurk in the alleys between closed shops - reek of stale urine and vomit - house the quivering junky. We stop for chicken tacos, slop on a plate, down two glass bottled Pepsi - then jet down Avenue Mariscal - furtive glances from pimps as we dodge buses belching air so dirty that it clogs your pores.

Up to Burrito Row. Angelic Beto is working his stall - his fine ass smiles and greets us, Hector and I make small chit-chat. Some of the doormen of the titty bar across the street - Erma's - catches glimpse of my gringo ass and starts the hustle:
"Hey buddy - no cover!"
"Over here! Big pussy!
"Nice lady! Nice lady! Pussy women!"

I wave them on with a poker face, cause I mean business and they sulk away only to pounce on three other American assholes.

Heated conversation between Beto and Hector en Espanola that ends with Hector handing Beto some crumpled pesos, which were placed under the till - a small white packet of wax paper was placed in Hector's hand and we walked out the door - both saying, "Gracias!"

"Orale." Said back.

We cut across Juarez Avenue, past loud and drunk college touristas in hip-hop garb, past taxi drivers on the hustle under the glaring ugly neon of teeny bopper discos catering to the El Paso University crowd. Down the dead end street paved in beer bottle caps to Hotel Bombin - $20 a night trap, pay the haggish lady behind the grill, up the white tiled stairwell, unlock the deadbolt.

A snort or two of the coke offa the dresser - wheeee! - clothes are flung off fall onto the bed naked, clinging to each other, kissing passionately. Fingers, tongues, and cocks are sucked - lying on our sides in the position of 69, giving each other the best of the best. Rolled onto my stomach and lube is applied, Hector slides himself in so long and nasty. Shiiiiiiit! With quick jabs the Mexican pounds my ass for a good haffa hour more or less - bed springs boinging and I squeal and moan like the loud puta I am. His thin muscular brown hips smacking against my smooth and tenders, grinding that cock up into my ass hot and savage he grunts into my ear, "I'm almost there - let me cum in your ass!"

"No!" I groan,"Cum on my face!

He yanks himself outa me and flips me on to my back - my ass hurt and throbbing. Hector sat on my chest, masturbating wildly, "GODAMGODAM!!"

Creamy! Eyes closed, I feel the hot squirts splatter across my face and chest - hear Hector gasping. He rubs his erection across my lips, my tongue licks the thick tan head. I look up at him - that silly look on his face. Pause. Laughter. "Let me get a towel, guero." Hector retrieves a ragged towel from the bathroom, long skinny cock still hard and glistening - swinging free.

After I clean up, we lay side by side and share a joint. Hector takes it from his mouth and places it in my lips. As a mariachi band plays ghostlike down a dark street, I stare up at the ceiling fan whirling slowly - maybe I should stay off leaving. Rolling stones gather no moss - so they say...