The view clacked past as the trolley sped south to the International Border. I sat and watched mired in deep thought. My intention was to search for a permanent residence in Tijuana - settle down finally and live a sedate life befitting my progressing age. However, I did not feel comfortable. I am burned out with TJ, you know what I mean? I want to live in my comfort zone; yet in a Mexican border town.

Pulling into the San Ysidro station, humped it across the bridge - the sky was that bright sunny blue. - the wind was biting cold. As I passed the metal turnstiles into the city and trudged along to Plaza Santa Cecilia - I wished to find some old friends that hopefully worked in a restaurant there - I thought and thought and thought as I journeyed to the arch at the base of El Revo.

I kinda like Juarez City more - it is cheaper, more tranquil, the cops don't fuck with you as much and the boys are well behaved.

I strode up to the restaurant El Patio and found Felipe sitting there - it seems with the new law of Americans possessing passports to return from Mexico has taken its toll on the tourist trade. The Plaza was a dead museum - as I had predicted a year ago. Felipe and I shot the shit and I half inquired about an apartment for rent but I wasn't feeling it. It just didn't seem right - the thrill has been squeezed out.

I sat and drank coffee with Felipe and Victor as I explained my good fortune with SSI. Damn! Where is everybody? No hustlers, drug pushers, hookers clopping around...the place was damn depressing. The street vendors and roving musicians stood blinking in the sun slackjawed with no tourists about to hustle. A great era apparently has come to an end.

I said my adioses to them and moved on. Stepping in a side shop to buy a pack of Faros - I noticed Old Chuck huddled in a cafe table nursing a cup of ever present coffee. Blabbed with that relic for a few minutes - boring. Moved on and returned stateside. After standing in a line half a mile long to cross, I made my decision to definitely return to Juarez, buy a laptop and write that stupid book. Who knows - I might find success and fame down that avenue.

Para la mayor parte, he ensamblado a filas de los camareros y de los asesinos infelices del tiempo. ¡El dios del Oh, está allí tan mucha de ellos en nuestra tierra! Estudiantes que no pueden ser felices hasta que han graduado, mecánicos que no pueden ser felices hasta que se descargan, sola gente que no puede ser feliz hasta que ella ha encontrado a compañero, los trabajadores que no pueden ser felices hasta que ella se ha retirado, los adolescentes que no son felices hasta que la crecen, la gente enferma que no es feliz hasta que ella está bien, las faltas que no son felices hasta que ella tiene éxito, agitado quién no puede esperar hasta que él sale de ciudad, y en la mayoría de los casos, viceversa, gente que espera, esperando el mundo para comenzar.

Soy tan triste. No puedo conectar con cualquier persona. La soledad come lejos en mí como un estómago por completo de gusanos. Cada uno aquí es así que impar y yo no puede relacionarse. Imanes polarizados gusto. Deseo ir a casa. ¿Hrumph... casero? No tengo ningún hogar. Por diez años no he tenido ningún hogar. Por diez años he flotado en un incapaz actual malsano encontrar un puerto seguro. Me siento como estoy en una campana de salto, golpeando el fondo de los cables de un Mar Negro... separados. Mi solamente línea de conducta es escribir mi salida.

Waiting...

Waiting...

Waiting...

But I saw this yesterday and it was damn good.

Waiting...

Waiting...

My life is so fucking great! This morning I walk into the social security office expecting to be spat upon and ridiculed by some insane office clerk during my first SSI benefit interview - instead I walk out with a check for ten grand and one thousand dollars a month for the rest of my life.

I was approved for my SSI one year ago and I never followed up on it and they couldn't contact me - the government owes me a little over ten thousand dollars which I get on the first of February.

I have no idea what I will do with all that money.

Costa Rica? Argentina? Thailand?

Surely you will stay tuned and find out? I know I will...

(Sorry - I am so excited right now I can't write.)

I know how you feel, Fred.

"So?"

"So."

"What's the diagnosis?" I sat in the stuffy office of the mental health clinic. The smell of chloride and mildew.

Dr. Pap leaned back in his chair - creaking loudly. He pressed his fingers together and looked at the ceiling. Eyes boinging around his skull like loose marbles. Drawing it out for dramatic effect, I reckon.

"Manic depressive with schizoid tendencies." His face as calm and remote as a card dealers. "Bi-Polar."

I pursed my lips, "I see." Damn, I thought, I must be a real loon. But the life I lead? Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?

The next course of action, lit a cigarette tromped down to the Social Security office to get my SSI benefit papers. Long waits in shadows of coughs and soft mutterings of tramps and schizophrenics. Obese black woman babbling about her urinary tract. I sat there waiting for my name to be called and I smiled, yeah - it was bound to come to this someday.

I get the form and cut. Walking down 5th street I bumped into an old friend, Rafael and after what ever happened to so and so and Rafael was really up on knowing what ever happened to so and so I offered him to a pitcher of beer at Chee- Chee's. Entered that dark din on Broadway, fetid old transvestite propped up on a stool - garish in the glow of neon, looked like a predatory bird. Rafi and I talked and played music in the jukebox. It was mid afternoon and the joint was a mausoleum.

"Let's get outta here - how bout Balboa Park?" I said looking at my empty glass.

Stopped at the 7-11 for Cokes and added vodka to them before zipping up to the Park. Walking through the arboreal tranquility with an alcohol buzz, Rafael split on account of a booty call so I was left to my own devices in that massive park.

Decided to cruise the filthy public restroom and tall skinny Mexican offered his erection for my inspection. Did my crime and in that stall he came to some sort of climax. I cut and followed the jogger's trail and was propositioned by Anglo marine and I sucked his big and nasty in the hidden brush of the trees. Next up was a cute Philippine jogger - "Hey."

"Whatcha looking for?"

I grab him and pull him close, "Looking for that dick, man - I want to suck it."

He smiles, "Wow you are so bold. You're crazy." I glare at him and chuckle, obviously.

Pecks on the cheek, ear nibbled, pull out his brown erection back in the brush and he moans and squeals because I give it to him like a champ.

The sun goes down over the trees in a blast of orange and yellow fury and in the lingering chilled shadows I walk the line to the crazy part, the sleazy part, the Hot Spot. The place is a god damn fag feeding frenzy! Nameless cocks are offered and some taken some denied. The night crawlers do their stylized silent ballet in the never ending quest for that perfect cock. Get my share, I reckon. My jaw gets tired so I return to downtown, and I think. Think long and hard. What an uncertain future I have...what to do? What indeed. I guess I will calmly go through the motions and get this SSI shit...then again, maybe not.

Unfinished cigarette. Rain comes down in sheets. Morning dark and wet and sordid. He stood under the awning to the adult novelty store - glanced with that hazy cloudy look of intoxication. Unfinished cigarette. I stood there silently watching the cars splash by. The rain bounced up and hit my pants leg under the awning. He had the look of a predatory lizard.

"I don't think they are open yet."

He shrugs. Looks at me then away.

"Wanna go get some Starbuck's?"

Wind howls sounds like whispers through dead trees we slip in and served hot coffee by imperialist fag. Julio reads his name tag. Stupid American queers. Wanna give him a B production dramatization and slam four pennies onto the counter for a tip, but I digress. I digress.

We sit in the window in big comfy warm chairs and - what was his name? Thomas, yes - thank you. I inquire why he was hanging in front of F Street Books and he smiles - eyes yellow pinpoints of fire - "Nothing else to do - was gonna jack off to some movies, I guess."

Three old queens swish into the cafe and eye us like rabid dried up vampires. I glare hostile back - one of the bloated hags fidgets, looks away.

"Where you stayin', Thomas?"

"Hotel Gateway above Horton Plaza. I't's a rinky dink small room but it's warm." He says and goes into a novella of coming down from Washington losing all and living on the streets. Not bad looking - half black half Chinese. His is wirery thin and I wonder if he's on junk.

Order a double espresso and sit watching the fools rush through the grey windy haze outside as the be bop jazz wails from hidden speakers. Snooty fag barista wipes down the counter.

Thomas looks up from his blueberry muffin, "Let's crash at my room. Get outta this rain."

Sure. Wouldn't you?

Make the two blocks through incandescent pools of shit and trash to his tattered old hotel adjacent to the fabulously rich Horton Mall. Through the cavernous lobby and up the ancient elevator. The room is a closet - cot bed, end table dresser - closet. Candy wrappers and take out food containers litter the room and an ash tray brimming over with butts, Dr. Pepper can used for the same purpose. Smell of ashes, mildew and dried semen.

Thomas lays back on his bed and I sit on the end table. His long skinny frame in worn jeans and frayed Dickies jacket. I can't help glancing at that crotch protruding like an obscene tumor but he gets it and starts talking about the porno shop and jacking off and coming...

"What some relief?" I ask lighting a cigarette. No time for pleasantries I guess.

"Yeah" Stretches and that lump in his jeans starts to expand. I hand him the unfinished cigarette an lay next to him with one fluid motion of unbuttoning his pants. No underwear. Thick cock flips out moistened at the tip shiny and transparent. Grab it and lick the head and he says ahhhh. Smell of musty clothes and rectum I suck and lick and stroke in mechanized movements of unpeeled raw lust. His toes point outward and down as he ejaculates in my mouth. Acrid - gooey. I swallow - whatever.

We lay smoking and talking and he puts the soft touch on me for five dollars. Hair products, he says. I smack the fiver into his brown bony hand and excuse myself. He mumbles something about sleeping. He hands me the unfinished cigarette.

I walk back out into the drizzling rain the sky the color of a dead channel and I head to the movies. Think I'll take in an afternoon of cinema - perfect day for it...

Decided it was time to visit a croaker at the local nut house - got a bag of dope offa him. Psych meds only, you understand - nothing habitual.

"There will be side effects."

"Such as?"

"Oh nothing that should surprise the addict."

I have decided - and life is a myriad kaleidoscope of decisions, Fair Reader - that I shall recover and retire on SSI benefits alone. Keep part time jobs to smooth me out and stay stable. Yup, settle down in Calexico or Laredo and live a leisured life.

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard.
This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.
This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?”
“Nah I had to go relieve myself.”
After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.
Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.”
After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole’s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes you dig. That's one thing the asshole couldn't do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eyes on the end of a stalk.

Decided to spend the night of New Year's Eve with the boys. But, the excessive whining due to young Enrique taxed my nerves and I lopped them off. Left them on the concrete wall of the marina - goodbye, kids, so long.

Walked into the Hyatt Regency to use the toilet and was pleased to see free drinks and hors dourves. Got drunk - wasted - and with a constituent hobo slovenly entered that piss elegant restaurant and ordered a lobster. Before The Man got wise, we split, but not before snatching a wine offa the table of Ms. Richenasty.

Stood behind the warehouse - tipsy and horny - he drops my pants and starts sucking in the new year. Splatter of semen among rubbish and the smell of urine.

Fireworks at midnight to the dead sky and I return to The Hive and crash. Next morning a hangover me, and Father Joe, the hobo czar holds a feast of roast beast. Depression hitting full swing and there is only one course of action I decide on - I am waiting to see the loony doctor and am in need of starting my SSI again. I am going quietly into the woodwork....