I Do My Best to Smile.

When routine grows old and emotions run cold, so the song goes. This depression is insidious. Like standing in the ocean close to shore and buffered by one huge wave after the next. How can anyone that understands this depth of cold loneliness can even stand going on living? For the past few days my mind has been reeling in blank thoughts - I have felt faint, dizzy, lightheaded - I don't want to speak with anyone. Yet, where I reside is an utter impossibility - I am constantly being accosted by worthless cocksuckers and their banal chatter.

I am completely lost - I have no sense of direction, no goal, or plan. Even though, I must admit - I have options but I ponder the possibilities that they too will fall to ruin and failure like so many many plans in the past. So I hesitate to commit myself to them. A while ago, back in San Diego, I called my Father and tried to explain my mind set to his simple ass and he just stated, "It sounds like you've given up."

That is the point I have reached - I have given up...

Run of The Blue Meanies.

Sun was startlingly yellow on a brisk morning in the Plaza. Sat in with good friend Mike Lewis and Scott Goodgame chain smoking and shooting the shit - hacking and coughing like good hobos should. Tramp near us turns and asks, "Wanna beer?" Why not? Only 8:35am - it's Happy Hour in France, I reckon.

I shuffle to el bano publico - warren of old perverts and geriatric penis wavers - as the two acquired two forties from the convenient convenience store. Swig that shit like it was God's own piss water. Scott's girlie girl was there and decided not to take part in this debauchery, so I walk with her to the corner Walgreen's and stock up on junk food and ciggies. (Only the essentials, you understand.)

We return and two bike cops are writing my esteemed colleagues a ticket for an open container in an urban area under State Code 666.

"Do you have to sign up for bicycle detail?" Scott slurred, vain attempt at casual levity. Cop not amused.

Little Mike quivered in his shorty-shorts in lieu of warrants pending in New Mexico - but, with the luck of the Irish, both were only issued a citation for $200 each. Land of the free, home of the Brave...

Sat baking in the hot sun for awhile and yakked some more - I tell ya El Paso is not the spot for excitement. I call it The Saddest City in the World, mentally. My mind started to wander for other locals as the first of the months slowly creeps forward. Mikey even pondered the idea to move to Denver. Why not? I really thought the deal might be good - especially with this wild one.

The roaming just won't stop - you see, I gots it in me blood.

Walrus Meat.

Not only am I hellishly lonely - read into that horny - but bored outta my head waiting on this fucking money! "Well, you could go out and get a job." You snip, wallowing in your self loathing to others more fantastic than you. NOT YET YOU WHINY BASTARDS - I GOTTA M.O.!!!!

Okay, gather around, tender lumplings, and Unca Lou will educate ya: You see, I have already picked a freaking awesome flat to dwell that I will rent on the first of the month - balcony over looking the teeming metropolis, hardwood floors and high ceilings, with bathtub to soak my tender flesh - all for a mere 350 smackaroonies a month. Yeah - old Desolation Angel is truly dead, gone the way of free television - have decided with my free government money for life (God, I love saying that out loud!) to stay put for eternity and write and make movies. And even get a little part time trabajo

But don't fret you armchair thrill seekers, I won't disappoint your amyl sniffing flabby asses - cause El Paso and Juarez City is filled bubbling to the brim with weirdos and the sexually freakish.

Even though, my good friend Casper - not the ghost but a street thug - has invited me on a road trip with him and his hot cousin Capone - both bisexual cholo pelones by act of Fair Trade Agreement - to go by Impala to a move to Miami on the first of April.

Decisions...decisions....

Easterday Be-bop

Wind blew harsh and cold over the sad dry landscape of The City. Them stainky ass hobos were in full production with their wining and bitching so - alone - I took a long walk downtown with the dirt biting my face, my eyes watering and my bones quivered under that big dead gray sky.

Everything closed - it was a beat day in a dead museum. El Paso. El Paso has the knack to suck your very soul out of you sometimes. Sat on the chilled metal bench smoking cigarette cigarette cigarette in the Plaza - wind howled and the dead leaves twirled and soared like the garbage that accompanied them. One boy - gray saggy dressed cholo - worked the uninterested park for a Easter Sunday pick up and he gave me his sad hook but I wasn't interested either. He moved on.

Four friends periodically came through huddled in their ragged coats in a vain attempt to keep out the cold of the world - each made small patter then hit me up for smokes. Billy Martinez. Gilbert De Soto. (Thanks for the doughnuts - ate two fed the others to voracious pigeons.) Steve passed loaded on goofballs spat cotton as he yapped. Fernie swished by with boring pansy chatter. Ugh.

Decided to call my father just to wish him and my mother a good Easter. Wind swirled cold around the telephone booth.

Ring. Ring.

"Hello?"

"Hi, dad - it's me."

Click.

Damn you, father - I don't need your tyrannical ass anyways.

Trudged in the whirling cold wind back to the shelter and lay in my bunk with the bum kicks - really feeling it low and sad, you know? The other faggotry that reside in this dump started annoying me - along with the obnoxiously obese. Just wanted to head to the nearest highway stick out my thumb and go till I can't go no more.

Only reprieve was a newbie that staying there now - actually my bunky - a little piece of eye candy named Mike Lewis. Hopelessly heterosexual but real good conversationalist and that supersedes any form of homo hanky panky, you dig? Really a lovely fella and a good friend. Been decades since I could place that moniker on someone.

Fell asleep to the snoring and the farting and the stench of unwashed bodies dreaming of the first when I can finally escape.

El Paso City Doldrums

What to do? What to do?

Sure, you may think I enjoy living in squalor bunking in a shelter's dormitory with a flea bitten dog, and bed bugs, and the disgustingly obese who lay in there bunks day in and day out eating boxes of doughnuts and pizzas (smell of halitosis and flatulence and sour feet.) all the while belching the rules and regulations on those they do not favor - them rules being no eating in the dorm and no animals. But, I digress...I digress.

Years ago - when I started this experiment - I had a obnoxiously low opinion on our nation's homeless populace. It has not gotten better over time - but progressively worse. I still believe we should ship the entire hobo population to Catalina Island (Changing it's name to Trampylvania.) off the coast of California and then declare war on them and bomb it.

Ahem.

So, where was I? Ah yes - what to do. I really need to get down south to The Golden Countries - but our grand State won't let me attain a passport because of a warrant in San Diego. Didn't pay a buck fifty for a couple of trolley fares over two years ago - so I was cited, disappeared and now the warrants are a thousand dollars. In land of the free, home of the brave....

Okay - so, decided to relocate back to El Pisso to attend a class on teaching English as a second language to fall back on just in case my venture goes awry in Central America. However, I am met with hostilities at said Mission and it is time to go. On the first I will rent a room in some sleazy junky hotel, of course and see what happens then. Attending said college course, writing The Novel on my scuffed up laptop, and scoring kicks along the way.

How am I spending my days you ask? Pffft! Walking around giving the glad hand, talking with the indigenous faggotry, flirting with the boys from the local halfway house that haunt the Placita. Troll the feelthy back alleys for a lil' hoodileehoo (Thanks Alejandro - you suck like a Hoover!) Or I stare out into space - plotting my next course. Gads. At night - I lay in my bunk and read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and I get antsy - gotta go gotta go...Gotta meet Moriarty and Paradise in Mexico!!

Though, the idea of staying in El Paso is also pleasant somewhat for these weary bones - fancied opening a bar here.

I'll call it The Horny Toad.

The indigenous natives of this fair State of Texas are something else! How I love them in their sad beat way. Horny as all get out I tell you. Already are making flirtatious contacts with a couple of the boys - sweet and conning mooches to the bone, to be sure - but little Stevie is quite hydraulic in the hips.

The boys of the Plaza Central are all bisex - the ol' don't ask don't tale brigade - but they play and play they do. Much to the rue of their pinched faced and flabby girlfriends.

At the mission - high sexual tension between myself and a cat from Albuquerque named Fernie. Keeps tweaking my nipples so tenderly as I walk by - is that a good sign? Hahahaha!

Trampgardens.

Scuttled out of the hotel and did what I had to do, by God - I grabbed my gear took the choking bus up the hill and walked that desolate sky down to the Rescue Mission of El Paso. Like a yellow puss filled cancer it grew out of the festering cracked dirt of the feathered edges of this nowhere Tex-Mex town. Outside the wind howled and dust blew as old rail riding pete men and desolate fallen angel hipsters sat blinking in that God awful bright glare sniffing and sucking on rollies.

Entering the dilapidated building the smell alone was enough to knock a vulture offa a dung wagon. Hacking and coughing of halitosis hung in the air like a thick fog. Ran into some old traveling buddies, though and talked and spat on the cracked ground - smoking smoking smoking.

Dinner was puke on a plate and as night crept the damn joint was full of steaming hobos so I was issued a spot on the tiled floor in the television room wrapped in rags and spent the better half of the night swatting off cockroaches and bed bugs until coughing up the predawn cold.

Gulped down three mugs of Victory Coffee - standing outside shivering and smoking - and waited to be processed by hostile idiot desk clerk. He glared and he sneered with animal stupidity - queer for certain but as attractive as a wet mop.

Will sit here on my rusty dusty until the first of the month and then it is head first into J-town.

Note: As of this writing it just happened. Sitting next to me at the library in the computer lab was a very handsome tough cholo like hood all rock hard prison torso. Guess he saw the pictures that I was scoping out on MySpace - to be a bit racy to say the least. Welp, after his session he momentarily returns and asks me how to transfer the pics of him from his cell phone onto his MySpace page. As I showed him the ins and outs - I notice that most of them are of him naked with an erection posing in a bathroom mirror. He shows me these with a straight face, eventually muttering, "They are for my wife, homes."

I blatantly tell him the obvious, "Nice cock." He smiles shyly.

Well, he asks and then takes down my email and shoots out the door for a meet with said wifey - he looked back and there was a definite rise in them thar khaki pants.

Silly heterosexuals.

Tin Roof Rusted.

The draw back - okay the downright fucking annoyance - since my return to El Paso has been the five people that I have ran into are miserable mooches. "Hey! When did you get back? Got five bucks?" Jeez, what am I the Homeless Benevolent Society, ferthecrissakes? But, then again there are actually friends of that boy I took and left in San Diego - so what did you expect?

Contacted William Wiggins via cell and am anxious to see the outcome, if it come.

Eating my dinner at the local Jack in the Box, I was reacquainted with an old friend - Scott Goodgame. He, his girl, and I sat and shot the shit as only we can shoot with laughter and insidious gay double entadre - afterwards, his girl had to meet up with family and Scott and I returned to his hotel room to drink Steel Reserves and we watched The Absent Minded Professor. Scott got antsy and asked if I wanted to go to a bar and play pool. Sure, I said and we walked the short blocks to Briar Patch - the local fag joint.

We sat in the back patio, but it was wall to wall screeching snooty queens and I wasn't in the mood fer their shit - so Scott and I trodded around the corner and downed a couple of pitchers at Chiquita's.

Drunk and dangerous, we wanted some local flavor and seeked out a joint called Chico's - but it was shut down. Eventually we found our way to the San Antonio Mining Company - had some good kicks there. Scott saddle up to these two broads - one straight other a liz - and actually we had a great time. Karaoke was on the menu and some short dyke with a buzz talked me into singing Love Shack by the B-52's - and I tell you we cleared the room with that one! The indigenous locals all hooted and hollered the DJ was quite impressive in his music selections as we belted out drunkenly and did our nutzo production number. Scott, however was not feeling it and turned in early - so I hailed him a cab and he split.

Up next, I crooned my off key rendition of Blue Velvet - as this tall hot black guy named Spencer smiled and eyes glittering egged me on. It was a fucking drunken night, I tell you.

When the bar and the beer stopped, I said my good nights and stumbled the two blocks to my hotel room.

I understand this post is a little dry - but I am hung over, so go fuck yourself. I'm gonna watch a movie...

Wind Blown Meester

A gray cold windy afternoon and I stood outside of Eva's Adult Theater - alone and tired of being pawed by the withered pedophiles inside - so like I said, was standing outside in the setting sun smoking and as a freight train came chugging down the track that ran adjacent to the theater blowing its ominous horn enough to make you deaf - across the main street, long and empty as a silent museum, a young Mexican boy stumbled down the granite strewn path next to the tracks among the long dead and vacant warehouses. Not another person in site. He kept staring at me as he walked by, nervously fumbling at the MP3 player dangling at his side. I followed him as a lizard follows the course of an insect. He kept staring and quickly turned down a dirty alleyway. What the hell?, I thought - and followed.

I lit another cigarette and turned down the alley - heaps of garbage were strewn about broken beer bottles used condoms, here and there yellow shrubs struggled for existence. On the far end of the alley he stopped and looked back - noticed I was following him. The wind began to howl and dirt got in my eyes.

Making my way almost to the other end I stopped under a rusted lamp post. He turned and mumbled something. "What?" I asked.

"You got a spare smoke?"

I pulled the crumpled packet from my coat pocket and as he came nearer I noticed he was a young Mexican Indian boy of no more than fifteen or sixteen - I wanted to split - but he was so handsome, so angelic looking. Big brown eyes, small hooked nose, his skin copper colored and flawless. Shaggy black hair was tucked under a baseball cap and his clothes sagged on his scrawny frame.

He smiled wide and his teeth were a row of braces - my heart jumped. He thanked me for the cigarette and we made small patter of talk how it is so dead in the streets he was bored with nothing to do how all his friends where at 'the flea'. He let me listen to some of the rap tunes he had on his MP3 player - Daddy Yankee, Cyprus Hill among others.

He asked casually, "Do you like boys or girls, meester?"

"Uh, well - I like men." I stumbled, taken back by his boldness, I smile, "Why are you asking me this question?"

Arms spread, he shrugs, "I dunno - just ask everyone that, that's all." That smile again. "Hey, I know an abandoned house close by - I kick it there and party sometimes. Wanna go?"

"Sure, why not?" Wouldn't you?

Following him down the yellow and brown colored alley we strode the two blocks to said house. "Can you jump a fence?" He asked.

"I guess I'm going to hafta." I laughed.

And sure as shit we both lept over the rock and barbed wire gate to this white dilapidated house. Entering - empty with not a scrap of furniture, walls with massive holes, plaster and dust littered the floor exposing rotted wood frames. He led me into a back room that used to serve as the kitchen where there was a school room chair with no back. Cautiously he closed all the doors to the room and asked me to take a seat. Outside in the next house, kids played and jabbered in Spanish.

As I sat watching him nervously peer out of the window, he reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out a scrap of paper. "Look, I got some porn." It was a meer snatch of a photo of a cock going into someones ass - the wax paper creased and worn.

"How do you know of these things?" I stated coyly.

He expanded his chest, "Shit! I know how to fuck!"

"Come here." I whispered - he hesitated. Then inched closer with his back to the wall. I reach out and unzip his pants - pull apart his blue boxers and his erection springs free. Long and uncut and dark with a tiny pearl of lubricant forming at the tip. Without words, he grabs the back of my head and shoves his stiff cock into my mouth. I suck like my life depended on it taking in the delicious taste of this boy this youngness - his hands rubbing the back of my head, him rising on his toes. He unfastens his belt and drops his pants - pulling my hands up and around onto his ass. Firm and shaped like a peach, My God. Long strokes of delicate fingers I suck and lick his hairless sagging balls and he pulls back, "Wait - wait, meester, you gonna make me come fast. You wanna fuck me?"

"I just wanna blow you." I breath - guess I am getting old.

"What happens when I come." He asks looking down, smiling.

"I'm gonna swallow it - all of it." His eyes widen, those fiery Innocent eyes - damn he is going to be a heart breaker when he gets older.

He pushes his throbbing cock back into my mouth and I give him what for. After a bit, his balls tighten and with a little grunt hissed through his clenched teeth I feel the hot spurts squirting across my tongue.

He fumbles and pulls his pants back up. "Man, that was good." He stretches, flexing his scrawny arms. "Jeez, I am hungry. Whatcha gonna do now, meester?"

"Well", I said reaching for my wallet, "I'm going to go back to my hotel room. But I can help you with some cash for food. Here." I placed the wrinkled twenty into his slender hand.

After leaping back over the fence we walked to the alley, shook hands and said our goodbyes.

"Thanks, meester - I'm going for a hamburger. Maybe I'll catch you later?"

Indeed. I lit a smoke and walked the other way.

Fukbubble.

"You are exactly what we are looking for, my boy!" He smiled, looking at me with yellow eyes of rancid puss and hep C, face red and shiny in a thin film of grease. His wrinkled white cotton suit gave off the smell of chlorinated bath houses and unwashed genitals.

I sat slumped in the green leather office chair - his talking came to me in waves, fading in and out like Muslim mutterings - my fingers numb and I had a slight headache. He pushed the contract across the brown wooden desk towards me - it faded, snapped back into focus. The whiteness of the paper glowed in the dim light of the mahogany office.

"Now, as you realise your reports must be exact - written in painful detail, I believe are the words you have so often long windedly used. Leave out nothing - all the horror, pain, dread, and of course the random morbidity - Control needs to know all the details no matter how sordid. Do you understand, Mr. Blasini?"

A long pause and I lift my head up and look at him. I croak almost drunkenly. "Yes, of course." I take the green marbled pen in my hand and sign on the dotted line. "I won't let you down."

His face goes livid scarlet and animated, "What are you doing? You signed it with a pen - a pen?!!! Fuck that shit!! Blood, Agent Blasini!! Control needs it signed in blood. Your blood, you stupid little faggot!" He leaps across the desk grabs my limp hand and whips out a scalpel - I sit there motionless - face as blank as a card dealers - as he slices a small incision into my index finger. He milks out a few drops - masturbatingly slow and obscene - he presses my red dripping finger towards the contract and begins to coo orgasmically, "Yes, Mr. Blasini - oh, dear yes my baby - right there. Do it for papa."

Sloppily I smear my initials onto the onion paper - now yellow from time and use - he snatches the paper up, folds it neatly and slides it into his coat pocket. Standing behind me now, his withered hands on my shoulder, "You did the right thing, Agent Blasini - damn good thing. Don't look so glum. It will be all right. You are, as I said previously, the right man for the job. Cold. Calculating. Alone. Heartless. Sexually deviant and - uh - narcotico. Heh. heh. heh." He walks to the far wall looks askance over his shoulder at me - big insane grin of long yellow horse teeth, "Welp, kiddo - ya ready?"

"I - I'm not sure." I whimper. A small pain in my stomach. "Can't I think this over?"

"Don't be such a pansy!! Let's go!!" He points with his two index fingers into the air and traces the outline of an invisible door onto the wall. A door appears and he pushes it open, gesturing to the empty space beyond with an upturned palm. "Let's go, kiddo - no time to dawdle."

My eyes grow wet and I am overcome with waves of depressed sadness, I look up at him, "How long will this go on? When can I stop?"

He looks down at me and states solemnly, "You can never stop, Luis. You will never stop."

I wearily pull myself up from the chair and shuffle towards The Portal. "But, what if..."

He grabs me by the shoulder and shoves me in, "Welp, adios!!"

Instant cold. Darkest of dark. Flashbulb of images - crack addict missing the bus - cute boy serving coffee in Yuma doughnut shop giving a coy smile that melts my crotch - long waits in Phoenix - cigarette cigarette cigarette - man sets next to me, "Just do the right thing, make a difference in your life." Was that an angel's advice? - dropping through gravity darkness - I step out of The Portal into the lobby of The Gateway Hotel. The Gateway! That's in El Paso, Texas! I walk out into the crumbling cold dusty streets - I am in El Paso, Texas. I walk back into the lobby and rent a room. After snacking on trail mix and water I doze into a restless, tormented sleep.

I am back in El Paso.