"Why do you want to leave this country so bad?", He asked. "I am from Central America and we are all trying to come to the States." He points around Balboa Park - laughs. "It is Land of the Free, homie, anything can be done here."

I took a long drag from my Lucky. Cough - take a deep breath and retort, "American jobs are being shipped out to foreign countries, gasoline prices are skyrocketing, our civil rights are being violated under the Patriot Act and its data mining projects, race-specific bio-weapons have been documented to be real such as the HIV virus that was created to kill Africans in the Congo and gays in New York and San Francisco, all under the guise of small pox vaccines, the intentional dumbing-down of Americans through a corrupt educational system, children being forced to take vaccines under gun-point, the devaluation of the dollar, the destruction of the family unit through government agencies that will take your child if they arbitrarily think you're unfit to be a parent....all this is done to destroy the middle class and to force us into a society where we are being treated more and more as if we are all illegal immigrants with no civil rights. A sex and drug obsessed society that's controlled by scientists and bureaucrats.

Land of the free, indeed. Take it from a wise guy, kid - this country is a shit poor Police State. Take off while you still can. Myself - as in me - I am going to hide in some third world jungle."

I pause and watch a jet scream in for a landing over dusty trees, “‘SHOOT THE BITCH AND WRITE A BOOK! THAT’S WHAT I DID,’ I say, breaking the silence - possessed by cold fingers of a beat ghost.

He blinks in the afternoon sun - the blazing blue sky hurts my eyes. He rolls over in the grass next to me, "Let's go get a fifth of vodka."

"Smartest thing you mumbled all day." I grin casually.

He wiped the excess coffee from his dark lips and looked off into the distance, smiling. "I can't believe you still refer to women as 'broads'".

I sat there a long moment listening down into myself. "Yup.", I croaked.

Victor and I were sitting in front of a little cafe in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego when this middle-aged Mexican walked by, and Victor gasped: 'My God, that's a harmless looking person!' I'd noticed him around town, and spotted him as a real M.O.B.ist: which is nothing special, just minds his own business of staying alive and thinks that what other people do is other people's business.
The old hop-smoking rod-riding underworld has a name for it: 'a member of the Johnson family.' Wouldn't rush to the law if he smelled weed in the hall, doesn't care what fags in the back room are doing, stands by his word. Good man to do business with. They are found in all walks of life. The cop who slipped me a joint in a New Orleans jail, for instance. Or when I was pushing junk in Juarez, the hotel clerk who stopped me in the lobby: 'I don't know how to say this, but there is something wrong about the people who come to your room.' (Something wrong is putting it softly; ratty junkies with no socks, dressed in three boosted jackets puffing out, carrying radios torn from the living car, trailing wires like entrails. 'This isn't a hock shop!' I scream. 'Get this shit out of here!' Regaining my composure I say severely, 'You are lowering the entire tone of my establishment.) 'So I just wanted to warn you to be careful and tell those people to watch what they say over the phone ... if someone else had been at the switchboard ...'
And a hotel clerk in Mazatlan; I handed him some money to put in the safe. He put the money away and looked at me: 'You do not need a receipt Senor.' I looked at him and saw that he was a Johnson, and knew that I didn't need a receipt.
Yes, this world would be a pretty easy and pleasant place to live in if everybody could just mind his own business and let others do the same. But a wise old black faggot said to me years ago: 'Some people are shits, darling.' I was never able to forget it.
Mexican druggist throwing a script back at me: 'We do not serve dope fiends.' It's like Mr. Anslinger said: 'The laws must express society's disapproval of the addict.'
Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a HIV virus has ...

After much deliberation and inward thought. I have come to the conclusion that I am a fucking mess. I have become quite secluded and antisocial. I rather be by myself all day than bother with people and their petty problems or malicious intents. I feel sick inside - my hands now shake constantly with acute nervousness. I sit hours staring out into nothing - while people talk to me on and on and on - I don't even hear what they say anymore. I just don't relate with them on the same psychological or telepathic frequencies. Nothing excites me. Nothing.

'How do you feel? Inside.' Asked my esteemed psychoanalyst.

Burned out.

Damn this. Damn all of this.

It's all become quite insidious.

I need a vacation.

Howl and such.

I saw him standing there young and virile
Latin and in leather
Encountering your liquid beauty moves in
Infinite pleasure
I would hold him - the warmth of life would
Pour into me,
I would kiss him - the electricity of Zeus would
Consume me,
I would fuck him - the passion of Vulcan would
Burn in me.
Years flow like leaves in autumn winds
How gracefully you turn away from
Love and reject
It ends as quickly and abruptly
As it began -
He disappears into a dark hole,
Last Words as steel doors slam shut,
"Why don't you look me up in ten years - tell me how ya been."
Quick flight to the Border of Reality
Ten years! A million lost sunsets!
Ten years! Huddle shivering in cockroach slums and know the
Long Black Shadow of Terminal Addiction!
Ten Years! Took the Heavy Metal Fluid down that Lost Highway to Mexico in quest of seclusion!
Ten Years! Flop houses in Norfolk Rent Boys in Juarez Transvestites in New Orleans Bath Houses in Peru!
Ten Years! I run and I romp and I roam to find that which I had lost
But I can't so I won't and I don't.
A little bit older
A little bit colder
By greed, by madness
It goes out inside -
I go out inside
And I am never coming back.
Ten years pass! And he contacts me! Me! Oh!
But too late - he is too late
That boy he knew - dead.
That heart he knew - turned to stone
The stone turned to dust
Blown out into the void.
He returns to his hole and I my madness -
Only way out is to write -
A writer conquered with the legacy of
Burroughs and Kerouac.
A writer conquered by
Hatred, pity, greed madness
I write
I write
I write
I write
For four years
I write.


I checked my map. There is only one person I know that lives in Pomona. Are you reading my blog, F.M.? I am truly flattered if you are.

Lean brown side turn - light a cigarette. The Chinese takeout festering on the hotel endtable. Half empty bottle of Fundador next to it. Cheap $15 a night joint. Had to get out of Vinnies for a day, get me a rent boy - couldn't take the badgering of those damn psychiatrists anymore. Enough to drive you mad.

We both got dressed and I walked him to the corner pulled a couple of crumpled bills outta my pocket handed it to him - we shook hands parted and I headed to a cafe for a coffee. Shot the shit with Daniel and he still was trying to convince me to relocate back to Tijuana. I don't know...just don't know. Been checking out Mexicali. Sounds real tasty. Kinda the rough edges of Juarez City but not as fucked up as Tijuana - if that makes any sense. Of course it doesn't. How the fuck, you The Reader, can possibly ever understand?

So, I light a Lucky and sip some coffee and eat a taco and yap in my atrocious Spanish as some naco puto eyes me from the plaza but I am definitely not feeling it. I have grown so cold inside. So distant from the human race I don't think I am ever coming back, you feel me? You dig what I am saying? No? Fuck you.

I spot Ivan on the corner and after a backslap and a hip handshake I cop some weed from him and we walk around the corner to his no window single room trap and smoke that shit. Now I am already dosed up on psychotropic medication - add some chronic to the mix and I am one happy cowboy - yeehaw!

We bust out onto the street and that fucking Mexican sun is big and bright under that dazzling blue sky and we trump down El Revo and cascade into El Caliente and hit the slots but don't win shit but I hit it with this hot little fucker that works there and he says he wants to meet me tonight after he gets offa work round seven but thatsa no can do cause I gotta be stateside at seven and back at the Hive for buttcheck - I mean bedcheck.

So I smile big and say adios to Ivan and that hot little fucker and make the line to the border and there is a big ass fucking line at the border with the assholes barking - "Five dollars taxi! No wait to cross!" - which is a scam, I took it once and had to wait two hours. Assholes. So, I wait in line and I cross and hop the trolley back to Vinnies and grub some dinner - puke on a plate - hob nob with some hobos, hang around the computer room and bang this shit out. Waiting for the first of the month so I can get active and do something.

Lay in The Hive on yellowed old sheets - around me the mummer of voices don't know if they are real or my imagination cause the meds are kicking in and I tell you they are a real loo loo! I lay there anyway on my bunk and at that moment my skin gets all tingly like ants the old saying goes or something like it but it's crawling - just the cheeks anyways - on my face not my ass, you goofy bitch. My arms are a different matter - they take on the weight and substance of granite - slabs of solid granite that I can barely move and I find this fucking curious because the next moment they are bone thin - feel like they are void of skin and muscle and veins. I stretch my fingers and hear the joints pop and snap and I look at my hand but they appear normal. The voices they - they continue to whisper. Drift off into a sleep and I dream of a tomb stone on a hazy gray rain can't make out the inscription on the heading. What does the dead say? Can they talk? My eyes blink open and I feel sluggish - like I am drunk or something.

I get up all dizzy like and walk out onto the balcony and light up a Lucky Strike. The sun is bright like it is late in the afternoon. I stand - blink and I wait. Wait to do something.

Something.

My life is so esoteric so weird so funny so beautiful. One week my neck is covered in hickeys from a night of sweating passion from a platonic friend and the next week I have a black eye from a night of drunken stupidity from a jealous fallen angel.
I love my life!

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night ...

The best film ever about polish whores.

Carlos lay next to me in the cool grass of Balboa Park. The sky was a bright blue - clouds drift under a startling sun. We talked and joked and drank the fifth of Popov - got really toasted. There were two other fags lying a few yards away with their dogs - kissing and embraced like two lovers. Won't upstage us, I thought.
Slowly and like a dream Carlos and I inch closer and I feel his warm lips on mine - organs stiffening from the warm glow of alcohol looseness. Laugh shyly, sighs. The sun goes down in long black shadows and I am rolled onto my stomach the back of my pants slowly pulled down and he climbs on top and slides in. Our moans permeate the chilled air as he thrusts and lunges into me - like a heated cat I tongue his arms, hands. His cock stiffens more the head expands slips out and he lets loose hot white squirts across my pale backside. Clean up with napkins from our lunch and lay entwined silent under that big white moon. I point out Orion's Belt and small patter about Sirius."I'm leaving for Yucca Valley tomorrow." He says with that cute shyness. Yucca Valley up by Palm Springs? Seems he has broken parole to come and work in San Diego. I take another swig from the bottle and smile and say okay.
We stumble back downtown and munch in a Subway - cops eye us as we gobble the food with drunken voraciousness. At the corner of Broadway and "C" we shake hands and say our goodbyes.
"Walk me to the Greyhound?"
I wait as he purchases his ticket. I mutter that I will miss him or something like that. I hop a trolley back home and leave him on the corner - wondering why I can never meet a long time partner. I am ready for one. Finally.
Last Friday I had gotten the first of my SSI benefit checks. Spent the next day shopping, buying $400 in clothes and a cell phone with a camera, took in a screening of There Will Be Blood.

Good flick - Daniel Day Lewis has to get the Oscar for that one. Spent the rest of the day being ravaged in a porno theater by a young black guy and some Mexican thug - was great. I broke a sweat in that back row seat. After they were done with me I quip pulling my pants back up, adjusting my shirt, "That was free, right?" They laugh.
It is strange - I am truly free now. Free to go and do whatever I want for the rest of my life. I believe at the first of March I may take a road trip - from San Diego to Miami and then who knows? I really want to start enjoying life. To truly live.
I feel so complete now...

He was shocked - shocked and mortified - when I said I was queer.

"I have never been gay before," he droned nasally, "But I am always happy, I guess."

We casually strode down Market Street towards downtown under the blast of clear morning sun bantering back and forth like only a confused heterosexual and confirmed homosexual can - I wanted to check the rates for a hotel tomorrow night. I had requested a night out from Vinnies and decided to get a room with a tub, some wine, and relax away from that madhouse.

I explained this to him and he begged to come and stay the night with me - but I guess he didn't know. Niether did I.

I met him sitting on the curb a week ago outside a soup kitchen in skid row. He is so attractive - dark cut body, handsome hairless face - too bad he is nuttier than squirrell shit. A street dweller, but keeps himself physically fit somehow - and is working them Dickie shorts something fierce, grrlz! But, don'y look like anything will occure with him tomorrow night. No matter though, I have a backup guy - he being Carlos. And Carlos is hip to my plan of debauchery and relaxation tomorrow evening.

So, the wind up is the conversation turned sour and I left that fool in the public library and headed up to Balboa Park for an afternoon of evil sin. But the place was a wasteland as far as I am concerned. In that oh so cruisy public mens room, I had nary a hook up except with one guy and he was, like, eh. Slobbered that hard on in the pissior like a champ, though. Not much of any interest after that.

I swallow my pride and trudge back downtown to Border's Books and waste time reading.

Time. It seems a lot of that I have. Since you need a passport to cross the border as of today - I have decided to wait in Vinnies until the first of March before going on any adventures - paying my dues and obtaining my papers while I stir in my own evil. I recieve the first of my SSI checks tonight and sometimes during the month my back pay of ten grand. Then and only then will I make any sudden departure to who knows where - though Juarez City is still looking good - I also would like to take a vacation to Puerto Rico for a couple of weeks.

I don't know. My age is definatley catching up to me...