Dark Is The Night, Cold Is The Ground

Sitting in the bright ass Texan sun with a hangover trying to patch together the kaleidoscope of images from last night. I squat on a low brick wall in an alley downtown - Camel Wide in one hand, tall boy in the other - the small menudo gurgling in my stomach. Lying nearby, Robert snores in the shade of a saguaro bush. I lean over - bleeech! I stare down at my steaming vomit. Oh yeah, now I remember...

For being good trustees at the mish, Robert and I scored night passes and hit the bars. All dolled up we, we jumped the bus and headed downtown. The first place we hit was Po-Po's - an old joint with the bathroom downstairs where you could smell shit and piss and vomit wafting up through the floor boards from the past fifty years. We got ourselves a booth and ordered two pitchers and scoped out the place. Jukebox wailed country and ranchero, crowded with bikers, cholos, excons, drunks, junkies, b-girls, barflies - all you'd expect from a dive of this sort and I was eating it up.

Robert and I talked and laughed and had two more pitchers each - he was smiling at this fat bitch and I was making eye contact with this Mexican farm worker, all was going great.

I excused myself and took a leak. The bathroom was rancid. A large brown turd floated in the toilet as I pissed and no matter how I closed my eyes and turned away, the smell punched me in the nostrils. Even when I flushed, that disgusting fucker wouldn't go down!

When I got back to our booth, Robert was in some animated confrontation with a scrawny tattooed cholo - there was some shouting, some shoving then whack! The cholo went skidding across the filthy bar floor. He jumped up like a jack rabbit, but a friend held him back.

Robert roared, "C'mon, motherfucker, start some more shit!"

The owner asked us to leave. Out we went, both drunk - one crazily excited and one Mexican behemoth madder'n hell. So, we hit the Tap and relaxed with beer and a game of pool until screwy yet handsome rentboy Stevie shows up. Eating all my nachos and in the john teasing me with his flaccid penis. In the stall see, says I can have my way with him. And I do. Right through mid suck he pulls out and scampers out back to the pool game leaving me leaning aginst tiled wall laughing and frustrated.

After more beer, us three decide to stumble over to bar Sante Fe for more kicks in this no where night. On the corner of Stanton and Mills stood Tralala and her fairies in the dark cold like a brood of vultures. She took a shine to Robert, so I invited her along.

Tralala - how to describe that? If you took Marilyn Monroe and shoved her under a fountain for ten minutes, what came gasping up for air would be Tralala.

With it's sagging asbestos roof, and spotted mildew carpet, and the smell of a thousand beer farts, the Sante Fe at least had good music on the Juke Box. And the clientele just don't give a shit.

We drank and drank and talked and laughed. The alcohol really started taking effect. Talala met this short old man with one arm named Roy that started buying whiskey shots for our table. Robert - that titanic Mexican pig fucker fell out of his chair and was a bitch to pick up again, Tralala was sitting next to Roy cooing and giggling, playing with his hair, Stevie was popping boners at me left and right, going outside smoking my smokes - us sneaking in the toilet stall - standing behind him, jacked him off twice - damn you, Stevie - and us closed down the bar.

We all - and I mean all - pile into Roy's Fiat and spin out to a Waffle House and made a drunken ass scene that upset old Roy and I don't blame him especially when Robert grabbed the waitress' ass, I asked the busboy if he had a big cock and literally goosing him, Stevie stealing shit off the table, and Tralala kept standing up pulling the panties out of her ass, and at one point his penis flips out.

Roy excused himself to the bathroom and never came back. Robert and I did the same. As the sun crept over the frosty El Paso Franklin mountains, we stumbled down Mesa Avenue for breakfast of good menudo hoping Stevie and Tralala had funds to pay that outrageous bill...