Hullabaloooooo!!!

Merry Christmas!

And so.

It has been a year since I have arrived in El Paso. Since then, I have actually been living a quite comfortable life. 390 degree turn of how I used to live and I am utterly bored. Slothful, lazy, fat - yup, everything I have feared had occurred.

Understand, I live in a town where NOTHING happens, absolutely nothing. I do not associate with the same type of people that I was accustomed too - and that also took the thrill of living away.

So, the paper work has been filed and all I need to do is wait. You see, I am living in an apartment sponsored through HUD - a quite nice place for $190 a month all bills paid. However, after a year in one spot - you are allowed to transfer to anyplace in the States without starting over. The wait for an apartment in larger cities could take up a decade - but, since I will be in the system, I believe it shortens to weeks.

In May, I will be making the move to San Fransisco. I think it will be awesome.

Death.

Ten years old and I had just barely overcome the great move to California. My family was crashing on the various couches in my sister's home in Lakewood, California and I distinctly remembered she pretty much had enough of our shit. Thinking back, I don't blame her.

It was a hot day and I sat out in the dry grass of the front lawn in a stucco house that sat at the end of a culdusac. I sat, as I said, in the heat playing with my well worn Luke Skywalker and C-3PO action figures and that's when I first got whiff of that horrid stench. I am not talking of the usual stench that permeates the green tinged air of the Los Angeles area, no this was a horrible smell that wafted over the carcinogens of car exhaust and rotting garbage.

Suddenly, there was a squad car that pulled up next to a green van that was parked down the street. I do recall the van had been there, unmoved, for at least a week. It was one of those groovy vans - colored avocado green with a brown racing stripe painted along the side of its squat frame. The van tilted upward from the raised back fat tires in a vain attempt to make the ugly machine look cool. And yes, it had a wing on the roof..

Like a spattering of curious neighbors, I found myself standing outside the van as an ambulance wheeled up. Fat, bored housewives stood sweating in the heat - arms crossed, gossiping at what could be in the van. One of the police officers pulled the side door open and that pungent stench of death knocked us all in the face like a physical blow.

The chatter became louder as the ambulance attendants pulled the body out of the van. I stood there fascinated and in silence - the bloated, purple belly protruding out of a stained Hawaiian shirt, the stiff arms bent at the elbows, discolored in purples, dark blues, and black to the clawing fingers. But it was the face that held my attention - his eyes were black - no color in them at all. The face encircled by a mane of shaggy black hair. His mouth was frozen open - caked in dried black blood and vomit. The stench from the heat was becoming unbearable.

The attendants wheeled the stiff body into the ambulance and drove away. Slowly, the neighbors of the culdusac dispersed back to their lives as I returned to my sister's house.

It was the first time that I had ever seen a dead body in my life.

Dust in the Cracks.

Why do I waste time doing things I particularly do not like doing? I have squandered four months of my life setting up an apartment that was granted almost free and all I can think is: So what?

I exist in paranoid fear of long, dark nights and sun blasted days of waiting.

Most of my money has been for rent and buying furniture - no socializing, drinking, craziness. I sit in my contemperarily furnished tomb and I wait for the next check to buy something.

My body has started to soften - flabby, jiggly blobs of time wasting flesh forming around my abdomen. Memories are distant, fuzzy halucinations in my numbed brain. I see no one - talk with no one. My money spent on a life of comfort and luxury. Alone.

This is fucking worse than when I was on the road!!

Insanity

I think the same way, Doctor.

Bitter, Bitter People

Spent the evening at Sonny's Bar with that neanderthal Manny. It was a very calm night drinking and listening to the Cantina Band tootling away in the corner until this bloated drunk drag queen swished in.

Now Manny, much like myself, does not enjoy the company of transvestites - you long time readers will remember that I have knocked flat or set fire to a few in my time. This drunken thing sits all lady like at the bar next to Manny - who is handsome in his own right - and proceeds to paw at my friend. Much to his agitation and to the point he growls, "Fuck off, ugly cunt!".

Well, this bedazzled monster didn't take his cold shoulder in stride and began causing a full on faggotty scene of overly dramatic proportions. She began with the snide remarks that degenerated into out and out insults on Manny's and my person. Enough of this shit - I stood off my stool and smacked him/her across the jaw with a right hook. Then it was on.

Screaming like a wounded banshee, Ms. Thang came at me like a wolverine, clawing and slapping with unbridled fury. I had to admit - the cunt got in some good licks. We did our ballet around the center of the bar swinging fists into each others faces. During the drunken smackdown, Manny grabbed a chair and crashed it across her back - said tranny fell to the floor as Manny continued to viciously smash her face with his boot. Blood began to splatter on the dirty tile as appalled patrons gawked on. The bartender began yelling "Stop! Stop it now! She's had enough!" Then the cops showed up.

Thrown up against a squad car outside as the battered tranny was hoisted into the back of an ambulance - the cops inquired what had started it. We both explained and thank baby jeebus those pigs were homophobic (they thought we were straight and the tranny got what she deserved) and were about to let us go - that was until Manny's outstanding warrants popped up.

So, as I stood there - pain numbed by alcohol - I watched as the squad car peeled off into the humid darkness with a forlorn and pensive Manny cuffed in the back seat.

I just stumbled home - after being told that I was barred permanently from the bar - and made plans to visit Manny in the Detention Center downtown tomorrow.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Just learned my FaceBook account has been disabled for unknown reasons. If it was some vindictive person - I am flattered that they went out of the way to do this. But, much like their lives - they have failed. Either it will be re-instated or I will create a new one. All my close contacts I kept their email accounts - so, their attempt has fallen flat.

See ya soon back on FaceBook!

Maudlin living.

I tell ya, living this sedate life has it's disappointments. Take my blog, for instance. I have been concentrating so much on my novels, that I really have been ignoring it. I think it has run it's course. I really have nothing to write or report anymore since I really don't do anything. What do you want to read? How I am buying new furniture for my flat? Setting up the film co-op at the Cafe every Wednesday? Lounging around in my place watching TV? Nope - my life has settled down monumentally and you know what - I am happy.

I knew I had changed when I walked over to Juarez a few days a go to buy three packs of Luckies (They had stopped making them here in the States, so I must get them on the black market) and after I had gotten them, I fancied the notion to rent in my old building. Man, my outlook on my life and mind have changed. I stood looking at the crumbling building - a place for years that i saw as exciting, romantic, and adventurous. What a smelly, filthy dump. Though the landlady had a apartment to let and I said I would take it - on the walk back home I told myself a resounding hell no.

Yes, I think the days of wandering and subterranean living is over in my life. I realize, you judgemental ass, I had said that before - but, this time I believe it is for real. I just don't want it, anymore. The thrill has dried up.

I had contemplated shutting this blog down - but, no. I think in the coming months, I shall be blogging of my attempts to size up and infiltrate the gay and artistic lifestyle here in El Paso.

So, sorry - at the moment it's all going to be mundane from here. But, you know my life - it can change at the drop of a hat...

not worth it

Times are tight and disappointments routine. Dig what I mean, cabrones?

Stood in a soup line cause I'm broke. Nothing at the house through no fault than my crazy, manic depressive ass.

So, as I was saying - standing in a soup line in the sweltering afternoon sun with about one hundred other sad, sweaty beat tramps. The stench from unwashed bodies - coughs of TB and Hep filling the stagnant air around me. Not enough though to overpower the wafting aroma of the boiled gainish hens down in front of the patient que.

A church had set up a field kitchen in an arboreal park - a long table with gas stoves and great silver pots containing boiling chickens, smells of grease and pepper. Loaves of fresh bread and stacks of warm tortillas set to one side next to a cauldron of baked beans.The church volunteers moved with supersonic speeds in heightened moods preparing the hobo banquet - smiles and back slaps and high fives. Assholes. Though, I had to admire their energy, the sun was fierce.

I stood there sweating in my straw fedora and shades and raggedy ass jeans and wrinkled t-shirt, glancing around at the people nearest me. Shabby men in sweat stained clothes, holding their backpacks, their bundles or carts crammed with nostalgic memories of what life was before it all fell. Most chatted to themselves, others stood catatonic - stomachs grumbling in the heat - others screamed at demons that I imagined screamed back. I lit a cigarette as two old bums behind me passed a fifth of bourbon back and forth. Guffawing and spitting on the dusty grass.

I struck up a conversation with the black guy that stood in front of me - he being mid-twenties, scrawny and draped in hip-hop gear. Not bad looking.

"You're not from El Paso, huh?" I asked when I met his sympathetic gaze.

"Nah." He smiled. "Nah - I'm from Chicago. I got stuck here, coming from Ft. Lauderdale on my way to Phoenix."

I laughed, "Yup, that's El Paso for ya - the trap of the great southwest."

Then, the old fucker behind me started pushing and bumping into me as he gesticulated his retarded drunken conversation to his friend.

I commented this offending fact to my black friend, guess the old fucker behind me heard and replied with a hardy "Fuck you."

I rolled my eyes and as the guy I was talking to was taking a cigarette from out of his pocket - he dropped it by accident onto the ground. The old fuck bent over to pick it up - blatantly throwing his flat ass up in the air towards my face. He farted.

Amid chuckles of his friend and not to lose face with this idiot, I pushed him, causing the old tramp to almost fall over, but he caught himself. Popping up like a jack in the box, he growled, "What, mother fucker - you want your ass kicked?"

I thought this asshole was more bark than bite - I stepped away two feet and reached in my front pocket of my baggy jeans as if I was holding a weapon - instead, I just clenched my keys. "Let's go, asshole - I'll cut you."

Without a word, the old tramp whipped out a huge butcher knife from the folds of his jacket, grabbed me by the neck, threw me into the dirt, and held me by the neck with his knee on my back.

"Watch it, motherfucker - or I'll gut you right here and now!" He growled - I could feel the blade pressing on the side of my throat.

Damn, that's a big fucking knife, I thought. I think I smiled.

People nearest us began yapping to stop it and calm down.

The old fuck slapped me across the back of the head and got up saying, "You ain't even worth it, prick."

The soup line began to jerk forward and I tried to get back in my place - but, the others wouldn't have it - harsh glares and silent tightening of space so as I could not pass back into my place. I have been ostracized from this element. Outcast from the outcasts.

I just stomped back to my house and crawled into the coolness of my bed. Indeed, I thought, this is my life and I am not worth it.

He's coming!

My next novel entitled "Puta" will be ready by the end of this month! Stay tuned!

Clouds of Dope.

Tonight is the Longest Night

The wind blew dust and garbage down the long dark streets. The gusts were so fierce, the lamp posts were wobbling - causing the shadows to play against silent lonely brick walls.

We slipped through the cracked glass door of the De Soto hotel, but not fast enough not to let in a woosh of gritty wind. The door snapped shut.

"Hey!" Roared a voice. "Can't smoke in da lobby!" It was the fat receptionist behind the desk.

I turned quickly and flicked the half smoked cigarette out the door. It didn't even hit the ground, zipping off into the gust.

The lobby was a small oblong room with flaking paint, bare with the exception of a well worn red carpet, and faded dusty prints of bullfighters on the wall. The yellow light from the high florescent lamps gave the room a ghastly tint.

We three - Manny, Juan, and I - walked up to the old dark wood reception desk cluttered with paper work and dust. Manny was the skinny, handsome friend I had known for a while, his friend Juan was a squat cholo with a boxers physique - wife beater and khakis with shaved head and gold steel rimmed glasses. He claimed he was a member of the Aztecas - local charter group of wannabe gangsters here in our fair city. Couldn't finish a sentence without the word fucker in it.

A fat Mexican with a lined face full of moles sat there eyeing us in hostile contempt. His baby blue t-shirt was soiled and spotted from sweat and food and God knows what else. He stank like baloney and farts. "Whattay boys need?"

We explained we were here to visit a guest named Kamal. He grudgingly grabbed a phone, dialed - dialed! - a few numbers, "Kamal...yeah...yeah...well, they're three guys here to see ya...yeah...ok." He hung up the receiver and buzzed us through a metal gate. "Go on up, room 219."

We started up the old wooden stairs that creaked under us to the third floor, we walked along the dark shadowy halls on faded red carpet that smelled of mildew and bleach. Here and there, small bags of garbage sat neatly tied outside a few doors. Reaching Kamal's room we knocked.

Kamal answered the door - a grotesque, pot bellied redkneck in torn black t-shirt and dirty jean shorts. I knew him from my time at the mission. He was unshaven with a buzz cut. His teeth were long and discolored. What he lacked in outward offensiveness he made up for his sociability. With loud gaffaws and back slaps he invited us into his room.

There were two old hotel chairs, an antique bureau with a small television perched on it, a worn bed was against the wall with the smelly blankets and sheets wadded up into a corner exposing a sagging mattress. The carpeted floor was littered in food containers and cigarette butts and unwashed clothing thrown about. The room smelled of sweat and dried semen mixed with tobacco ash.

Kamal asked blubberingly if we had it and Manny pulled out a little baggie of coke.

"Awright! Let's get this party started!" Kamal stood up and took the mirror off the wall placing it on the bed, wiping the dust off with a soiled, ratty towel. With a Cosco card, Manny cut out four fat lines of the whitish powder. Rolling up a dollar bill into a cylinder, we took turns snorting that stuff.

First Kamal - it was his room - so, I guess the fat fuck went first, then Manny. I stood there and watched as they snorted the dope up into their nostrils - Juan watched too, with concentrated hostile glare on his face.

I leaned over the mirror, glancing at the other anxious faces lit by the dim light of the sole lamp in the room and said, "No body sneeze."

Juan snapped, "Just do it, fucker, and stop playing around!"

Kamal made the off kilter comment stating as matter of factly, "Man, Juan - lay offa my buddy, Louie. He's my bestest friend - he may be gay and all, but he's cool as fuck!".

Juan glared at me as I inhaled my line in a steady intake, "You gay, man? Shit, you don't act queer."

I just shrugged it off and lit a cigarette. The effects of the coke popped and tingled up my spine and activated in my brain. Everything sharp and clear. I snorted and hacked the residue down my gullet.

Manny cut out four more lines and we repeated the ritual - almost silently, with reverence. We did more after that.

"Fuck! We need beer." Kamal blurted, the effects of the drug showing in his face - his jerking movements.

"What's open?" i asked.

"There's a Chevron gas station open near - we can get a thirty pack there." Manny said, taking one of my smokes.

Kamal and Manny took donations to make a beer run, leaving me alone with Juan. Juan plopped on the bed and I sat twitching in a chair. Juan was still lit from the fifth of whiskey he bought before we found him wondering the streets earlier that night.

Juan sat up and turned on the television. We switched on the set and found a channel playing porn. Two lesbians went at it. I started making gay cracks and Juan just mumbled shut the fuck up. He was horny, laying on the bed, back propped against the wall with one leg up obstructing my view of his crotch.

He lay there, uttering comments at the screen, "Yeah, bitch - eat that pussy. Yeah - like that. Go ahead, put them fingers up there. Oh, yeah, that's right."

"You never ever done anything with a dude in your life?" I asked, taking a drag, blowing blue smoke up to the peeling ceiling.

He briskly shook his head. Eyes blood shot, squinted - feet twitched in amped convulsions. Silence. Another lesbian scene started as Juan continued with his commentary.

"What you need is a blow job." I said. "When was the last time you came?"

"Shut the fuck up, dude!" He snapped, eyes glued to the images flickering onscreen. "Fucking faggot..." He pronounced it 'feggit'.

Long silence as I sat there watching this brute watch the porn. The scene ended and another started with some tired looking guy getting his cock sucked by a coked up blond.

"Fuck yeah, suck on that shit." Juan whispered - head full of liquor and coke.

I finished a cigarette in silence - vibrating off that great coke. Manny always has good shit and was always liberal with it. On various occasions we would meet in bars and with a look in the eyes, we were in the bathroom stalls snorting that shit off of the toilet paper dispenser cover.

Eventually, Juan twitched and mumbled something that sounded like "C'mere."

"What?" I said softly.

He lowered his leg exposing his erection in his khakis. "C'mre, you wannit - c'mere?"

I stood up from the chair plopped next to him, placing my hand on his cock, it was long and throbbed through his pants. I reached for the zipper, but he pushes my hand away. "Nah...nah, just play with it."

I stroked it a few times, going for the zipper. His cock throbbed three times up through his pants. He pushed me away, "Nah...I'm done...I'm done."

I noticed a big wet splotch on his pants. The fucker shot off in his pants! No grunt, no heavy breathing. So fucking masculine...

"Why don't you go wash yourself off?" I recommended.

"Man, you better not fucking say anything to fucking anybody - got that?" He stated, pointing at my face.

You can count on me!

I returned to my chair and sat watching a big, giant cockroach skitter up the wall disappearing behind a framed picture of the sea. As Juan walked out of the bathroom - the splotch still noticeable, flipping the channel to Rambo. We sat in silence a few minutes watching the movie as suddenly the door banged open with Kamel and Manny charging in with several cans of Steel Reserve.

"All right!" I said cheerfully. "About time! What took you maniacs so long?"

"Dude!" Kamal stuttered. "That bitch at the store was giving me the heat about all those pennies ya'll gave me! Fuck that cunt!"

We sat for the next two hours drinking and bullshitting. I sat quietly as they stated how they wanted to fuck every woman that popped on screen in every commercial - Juan even more dramatically so.

Manny busted out four more lines and we all took our turns. Kamal howled his conversations in a drug fueled frenzy. The discussions fluctuated back and forth between girls, Mexico, girls, beer, girls, coke, girls, movies, girls, sports, girls...

Round 3:30 in the morning - my mind swimming from beer and dope - I said my good byes and started out, down the silent stairs and past the fat asshole glaring at me through the lobby. Fuck you, too.

Dark winds were blowing in the night, a train howled echoing in the distance, and somewhere a dog barked. Feeling that burn of solitude gnawing away like a stomach full of maggots. Strutting with hands in pockets and shoulders up to my ears in a vain attempt to hide from the vile gusts, my mind raced, reflecting on past loves. Where have they all gone? This life is long and inside it is getting colder...

The Town and the City.

Last night the storm passed over The City and washed away the filth leaving lakes of smelly garbage. Old Indian women wrapped in grey rags against adobe wall. The rain fell in buckets. Into a dirty muddy taxi. Pablo and I raced through puddles of sewage to several small nightspots until we reached El Mansion. Small but obviously the spot. Rent Boys poised with hooked hips by the jukebox. Sugar Daddies flutter around them in a stylised ballet. Towering Drag Queens in The Darkness. Smokey with the red fireflies of cigarette cherries. Purple and red and yellow flashes fill the air sparkling off of the walled mirrors. Bodies gyrate and simulate fucking on the small dance floor. Danced and swirled and drank. Several heroes sided up to me and asked a million questions in a foreign language. I nodded and smiled with brown hands touching my arm, my leg, my face. Guapo. Mumbled several times like natives around a fire.
Beer flowed, conversations stuttered, words found and then lost in a disco beat. Entered the men's pissoir, was cruised only as Mexicans can. A foreign tongue hit its mark and was pushed against the white tiled wall and kissed with passion and hatred. Pablo enters and stopped the luche amor.
Drunk I was, tittering, dropping my beer, knocking over a chair. Still more alcohol was bought for me, seems I was the Guest of Honor. El Primo Faggito. Macho Rent Boy, hot with square jaw and Poncho Villa moustache the eyes alive with cocaine fire tapping my chest hard, "What ya want, gringo? Want my beeg dick, joto?" Only straight men say dick, fags say cock. Funny. I am jerked away by four hands onto the dance floor and showed 'em my moves. Doin' The Elaine--Ha! My pack of Lucky Strikes are emptied by begging hands and the beer flowed.
Stumbled out into the night, Pablo and some other wrapped around me giggling and talking in the dialect as we stomp through the rushing water. Flop into a booth in an all night food joint - neon arabesques flicking in purple - and I slouch down zonked into the booth, eyes fuck'd up, held up by Pablo. Or maybe his friend, who cares. Coffee is ordered for me and can I get a fucking cigarette, please? Chatting. Blah. Blah. I look at Pablo and Pablo looks at me and I place my hand behind his head and brings him near and our tongues touch. Tastes like coffee and cigarettes. Warm and wet. Pablo's friend - what the fuck ya say yer name was, cutie? Ah, yes, Manuel - Thank you. Wanna take turns on Pablo, I say in English, Manuel just shrugs and shakes his head, no intiendo. I like Nintendo, I say in English and Pablo tongue wrassles me some more and the waiter comes over and tells us to knock it off. Putos.
With a grunt of stripped gears the taxi (Driver mumbles pinche jotos) whirls away into the night, the three of us in the back seat. Me in the middle, Pablo embraces me and we kiss, as my wondering hand gropes Manuel's well endowment. Screech of old fucking tires in front of my hotel. A debate of what to do with this gringo. Manuel sinks into the seat, arms folded stare into the back of the driver seat, the cab is paid and takes off into the downpour with one sad Mexican.
Up three flights of tiled stairs, shoes sloshing, and slamming the door behind us. I pull my shirt off and lean on the wall as my pants are yanked down and I say, Fuck yeah. Pablo sucks my American cock like a champ. He stands and undresses his self, hard on poking out straight and free, I wrap my arms around his thin brown torso and we plop onto the bed. A rubber is applied as I rip open a small packet of lubricant. Lay onto my stomach. Pablo glides on top of me. Little bites on the back, fingers sucked. I grab the pillows as Pablo grabs my shoulders and lunges and thrusts. I grunt through clenched teeth as Pablo jacks me off from behind. Si, tu gusto, baby? The bed creaks and squeeks and boings and thumps, pillows fall onto the tiled floor and sheets and blankets are twisted as much as my body. Thwap-thwap-thwap-thwap-thwap his brown hips smack against my ass doggy-style and then Aiiiieee! He squirts his semen and lays there ontop of me kissing my back with his penis still in me for a long time. I roll over, still a little tipsy and we kiss and fall asleep, ass throbbing and sore.
Morning. Coffee in the corner shop and he goes to work. I sit in the Internet cafe and I watch him work. He keeps smiling. "What are you writing", he asks in Spanish, smiling his smile. "All is lost. All is lost. That is all I ever write", I say in English. No intiendo. Afterwards, I go to my feelthy hotel room and sleep.
Mexico is a dream.

FEARLESS

"You gotta admit, Oscar - it's some good kicks"

Through the sunless cobblestone streets of The Market, whores, fat and nasty, sat and waited forever. Old vatos cried out selling razors and socks, lottery tickets and batteries. Teeming with a mass of people doing their shopping.
Oscar and I stopped for chicken tacos, slop on a plate, chugging cold agua tamarindos then down Calle Mariscal, evil glances from pushers who spat on the side walk as we dodged junk buses and hurtling taxi cabs air so dirty that it clogged your pores.
Up to Burrito Row. Ten corrugated iron shacks in a row that catered to puta, junky, and fag alike - they don’t discriminate.
Crazy lady sat in shit and filth and babbled as a mongrel looked on speculatively under that big blue Mexican sky. Pimp eyed me and nodded, I nodded back, he took a toothpick out of his mouth examined it, his shades turn the other way.
Door attendants at a titty bar across the street caught sight of my gringo ass and started the hustle:
“No cover!”
“Nice lady!”
“Pussy girls! Titty women!”
I waved them on with a poker face through my dark wraparound sunglasses, cause I meant business and they sulked away only to pounce on two other American assholes. A ver.
Oscar couldn’t score, so we jetted across the corner to a pool hall. Dark, smokey and the air filled with blaring Pink Floyd.
Fat Mexican with a mullet shook his head - eyed me with suspicious contempt - sneered through silver capped teeth, “No got.”
So, we walked half of a block over to El Arbolito, one of the oldest bars in Juarez City. Oscar and I swung through the rusted metal door and slide up to the bar. All action stopped in the little cantina and all eyes fell on us.
With a loud scrape of stools, we plunked down and both ordered double tequilas each. The owner, ancient and obese, scrutinized us with glassy eyes, crouched in the dim corner like a khaki clad Buddha.
With a flashbulb of urgency, I took in the trap - small; three booths, three metal tables with chairs, a piss trough at the base of a goddamn huge mahogany bar warped to Dr. Suessian contortions.
I asked the owner’s son about the warped bar - to break the ice unnerstand - and he related that was is due to the constant flooding of the Rio Bravo - that’s the Rio Grande to you pinche gabachos.
The sprinkling of working stiffs sat indifferently around the cantina chatting with each other, laughing, drinking, ignoring us. The atmosphere was very relaxed.
Oscar and I ordered another tequila with a cold cerveza chaser. As I lit a Lucky Strike and drank, Oscar and the owner’s son were in an animated conversation. Then Oscar handed him some crumpled pesos, which were placed under the till, a small packet of wax paper was placed in Oscar’s hand and we walked out the door; both saying, “Gracias.”
“Gracias.” Everyone said back.
The sky was a clear blue, the air clean and pure. The pedestrians happy and carefree. An old man smiled toothlessly at a joke from a young friend, a cop bent down to hand an ice cream to a child, two lovers strolled embraced down the avenue.
We cut across Juarez Avenue, winding through cars of tourists bitching to get back to the U.S. of A. goddammit, and down my dead end street paved in blackened beer bottle caps, clanged through the metal door, up the green concrete stairs, unlocked the deadbolt - ah, home!
Clothes were flung off and a snort or two off of the dresser - wheeeee! - fell onto the bed naked, clinging to each other, kissing passionately. Fingers, tongues, and cocks were sucked. Rolled onto my stomach and lubricant was applied, Oscar slid himself in so long and nasty.
With quick savage thrusts he pounded my ass for a good half hour, more or less - bed springs boinging and pinging - his muscular brown hips slapped against my smooth and tenders - smack-smack-smack-smack! Ground his cock up in my ass so hot and savage; whispered into my ear, “I’m almost there, baby, where you wanit?”
“You kidding?” I groaned. “On my face!”
He yanked himself out of me and flipped me onto my back.
Sitting on my chest, he masturbated wildly. “GODAMGODAM!” I felt hot licks of semen splatter across my face. He rubbed his erection across my lips, my tongue licked the head. I looked up at him. Pause. Laughter.
“Let me get a towel, baby.” He said and went into the bathroom, cock semi-hard and glistening, swinging free.
After I cleaned up, we lay side by side and shared a joint. Oscar lay on his back with his arm folded back under his head. My head was propped up by a pillow by his side. Silence.
Everyday is Like Sunday by The Smiths warbled over the radio. Oscar took the joint from his mouth and placed it in my lips. I stared up at the ceiling fan whirling slowly.
He is the one, I thought, He is the one. If not…the prototype. I think I am in love...again.
3:45am. Lo que paso, paso by Daddy Yankee bopped over the hi-fi. Only the fluttering light from two scented candles and the orange flame of the gas heater lit the dark room. Shadows jiggled and danced.
We lay naked in messed sheets, with drained scrotum, embraced. Oscar stretched on his back and I lay on my side propped up on one elbow. My thumb brushed gently across his thick black eyebrows. I looked deep into his brown eyes, distant sparks deep inside. My finger glides down the bridge of his nose, notice the light freckles, to his thick lips, he kissed my finger. No words were uttered.
What if he is just playing me? He sees a lot of girls, what if he just is using me? Or worse, fucking some other person behind my back? The doubt surged in my heart, I could not control the rush of blood to my face and I blushed. When he leaves my apartment, does he go to lie in someone else’s bed?
I kissed his lips, so sweet, a peck on his chin, a smooch on his neck. Mmmm, God, he smelled so good. Slowly, up and down his neck. I nibbled his earlobe, my nose brushed against his neck. My hand brushed across his pecks, down across the rib cage, the hard brown stomach.
Is he just after my money? Does he plan to steal my things? My CD’s? My DVD’s? My cell phone? If I gave him the key to my apartment, who else would he fuck on my bed when I am at work? Would his friends help him carry out my television...my stereo? Steal my clothes? Sell it all for junk?
With his hand, he held my chin and reached up and kissed me, his thick tongue flicked in my mouth and we exchanged saliva. Sweet and warm. He pulled away and laid his head deep into the pillow. He stared into my eyes, my soul. There was admiration and serenity in his face as he stared at me. His thumb caressed gently across my lips. His other hand stroked my back and it felt so good. It made me feel so comfortable, so calm. I lay my head on his chest and I heard his heart beating, beating, beating. So warm. So smooth. No words were spoken.
Does he shoot up like his brother? Is he infected with diseases? AIDS? Hepatitis C? Will he kill me with a virus?
Presently, his breathing went calm and regular and I noticed he had fallen asleep in my embrace as I cradled him in my arms. I casually stroked his shaved head before I drifted off into sleep. All is well in the universe at this moment.

"Create"

Schitzophrenic Freak.

And now I unleash my Word Hoard:

Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.

I came to realize the reason that I am in El Paso is that I thought at the time that I was very lonely. Let's face it, in Tijuana I was spiraling into a full fledged junky..."Addicts are as boring a bunch of people as I ever encountered. They've got this one track mind.''...and that was a path that no one wanna slide down, ya dig.

So's I find myself in Chuco Town - flat on my bloody sore ass and see a shrink who thought after I told my tales of woe of the last five years of my life thought that I should be locked up and throw away the key no rampaging roaming queens aloud in my district, sweetypuss, but I digress the now is happening and the thought of returning to San Diego and all points south has been tempting my wondering baby blue eye and I have been suffering from insomnia for the last 48 hours with these fucking thoughts: I want to go back to Tijuana but I don't want to go I want to stay in Juarez City but I don't want to stay the lure of drugs and corruption seduce my being on both sides and both decisions have their good points and their bad points which of coarse sucks like a fairy in a bath house...an old ugly fairy. So I went to MHMR and talked to my shrink and she took notes and scribbled little scribbles never looking at me you understand coz I'm soooo feelthy but wanted to put me back on mind-fuck medication and I told her she can stuff it up her wrinkled snatch and stormed out because more or less and generally more I like my self I always say if I die tomorrow I'd die happy I have no regrets but I will write these events my purpose in writing it as "shitting out my educated Southern California background once and for all. It's a matter of catharsis, where I say the most horrible things I can think of.

This stream-of-consciousness spewing is apparently an attempt to free myself from the social and familial conditioning that controls me, that hems me in, that ultimately drives me - in desperation or rebellion - to self-limiting and self-destructive choices but I am evading the issue I can't make up my mind what to do Juarez City pretty much offers the same as Tijuana but without the high-paced stress but the pay rate in El Paso is below poverty level and I am a faggito that has high standards, bitch, and I won't get fucked behind any old dumpster so I talked to my shrink "Urgent warning.

I think I'll stay here in shriveling envelopes of larval flesh...

One of the nastiest cases ever produced by this department." and wailed I feel so lost I can't think there is only a big fat blank as far as my future is concerned I mean, Dear Reader, I wish I could be like you and go to work regularly and pay rent regularly and have a big screen television and a PS2 and an electric can opener and a mustang convertible with all the trimmings and go to prim and proper little dinner parties with polite laughter at stupid jokes made by simpering fairies but I can't and the fucking problem is that I don't know why I know what I do is not normal, I mean the blog that I spill forth is not fiction how can anybody make this shit up continuously for a EIGHT whole fucking years I was there I seen smelled and touched everything that happened so I know it's real, so fuck you you faithless philistines anyways ever tell ya the time I was in Tijuana I once saw a seventeen year old Mexican Indian boy Azteca who could play the flute with his ass, and the fairies told me he was really an individual in bed...ahem, I read other blogs and I wonder am I the only one in the world who travels and has a sex life (I miss you so much Saul "muthafukuh makes love like a pimp!") and enjoys everything that this big blue marble has to offer ah, yes but therein lies the problem...

Do you see a contradiction here? Perhaps the essential writer's contradiction? It is making me crazy and so I guess I will continue to roam and drink and smoke and fuck to the bitter end and the only way I will be able to save my soul is to write my way out.

A word to the wise guy.

damned

Well past midnight and I lay here in a cocoon of darkness. No sound but the tapping of these keys and the steady hum of the air conditioner. It doesn't work to well. As I said - I lay here in paranoid angst. I feel if my chest is going to explode - as if my very heart is going to give out. Is it too late, I wonder - too late to fix this train wreck of a life that I had created? I can not take this existence much more. A long list of failures and let downs on all fronts. My life has been a poisoned river and I think I have come to it's end. Maybe I want it to end. Really, what is left?

I am so bored of it all.

Everyone is Gay

I paid for the cigarettes and as the sun came down and the stars faded out I started home with my bundle. Turning the corner on my street, I stopped to light a cigarette and I hear, “Hey, guero, got a smoke?”
I looked to see a short skinny guy in wife beater, baggy khaki pants, with a skinned head. His brown eyes are large and sparkle with inner youth, brown freckles splashed across his cheeks and nose. He had a smile like a predator, showing small white teeth. Nice toned pecs. I hand him a cigarette.
“Thanks. Where ya going?” He asked, lighting up.
“I was thinking of going to get a bowl of menudo. There is this restaurant that I know and the menudo is quite toothsome.”
“For reals! I love menudo. Let me go with you.” He smiled that smile again.
“Uhm, what's your name?” I asked.
“Oscar.” He said.
I told him mine and we walked the couple of blocks to Cafe Central, a ratty joint but have the best menudo in greater Juarez. We sat and talked. He is twenty-one years old and he used to live in the States for eleven years, hence his perfect English, but was deported with his illegal parents two years ago. He can live in the States, but prefers to stay with his ailing mother. He then went into a long tirade about how he was hit by a truck while crossing the street and lay in a coma for three months, showing the scars here and there on his lean torso to accent his story.
“I'm a little crazy. They took some of my brain out.”
“Really.” I said, slurping down my menudo. This person is cute but definitely a strange character.
Several cups of coffee later, he asks, “So, watta ya gonna do right now?”
“I was thinking of spending a day at the movies.” The porno movies that is. Juarez has a nefarious porno theater that is legendary - seemed like a nice way to while away the afternoon.
“Can I go with you? I haven't been to the movies forever.” He asked, lighting up another of my cigarettes.
“Well, I'm going to the porno theater. You might not like it...a lot of fags go there and suck each other’s cock.” I stated matter of factly putting on my sunglasses and reaching for my wallet to pay the bill.
“Oh, man,” He smiled. “I haven't had a blow job forever. If you don't mind...can I go with you?”
Sure. Why not?
Cross Park Independencia and pay the lady the sixty pesos for us both and enter the two-theater building. The inside smelled of mildew and semen. Several Mexicans walked out of one theater into the other one, looking at me with a raised eyebrow. Oscar and I walked into the cavernous first theater. Once a grand movie palace, now it was in ruins with huge gaping holes in the roof and great cracks rendered the flaking cement walls - looked as if the building would collapse at any moment. Feeling our way in the darkness, we found the balcony and sat next to each other in old wooden seats.
Flickering on the torn screen was an old American porno from the eighties, dubbed in Italian with Spanish subtitles. Scattered around the large theater sat several Mexicans, some in pairs, some alone, others cruising up and down the aisles.
Oscar noticed some young guy blowing another a few rows away. “Hey, look! Omigod! Is he sucking that dude’s dick?” He whispered.
“No, he's probably looking for his lost contact lens. Of course, tonto, what do you think they're doing?” I joked.
“A guebo, that's hot.” I heard Oscar whisper from the darkness.
I felt Oscar take my hand and place it onto his crotch. He was very excited. Zip and pull his penis free of his boxers, playing with his foreskin and the little drop of lubricant that formed at the tip. With the wacka wacka wacka music of the porno movie wafting through the stale air, I leaned over and gave Oscar a blowjob. Hissing “Aye que rico!” emptying his semen into my mouth.
“Wow, that was the best head I'd ever had in my life!” He blurts out way too loud.
“You need to get out more often.” I say.
We sit through two movies and five blowjobs later, the young boy is getting comfortable and clings onto me like a little monkey.
I look down into his face in the gloom, “You know, when I first met you I never thought you would be gay.”
“Everyone is gay.” He said flatly and held my chin and gave me the most sweetest of kisses.
We sat there, arms wrapped around each other until the movie was over.
Outside, I invited Oscar to dinner and as we ate our burritos al fresco with a Sol cerveza each - we talked of Nike sneakers and science fiction, fat transvestite hookers and the fact that he never has seen the ocean, Mexican wrestling and the latest model of Mustang. Getting late, he had to take the bus back to his barrio that was a million miles away. I walked him to his bus stop.
“Can I see you again? I really like you.” He said, eyes looking deep into mine.
We made a date for tomorrow night, to go to the regular movies. With people bustling around us, shaking hands, he squeezed my fingers, and boarded his bus. As the old bus farted out black smoke and chugged down the bumpy road, I turned and walked away wondering why I am such a sucker for love. Yet, my lust is drowned out by doubt and mistrust from a thousand nameless assholes.
Just the same, I want to see him again.

Devendra Banhart Foolin' lyrics

Cold Twilight

I'm hungover trying to write this, so fuck you. Mornings when you wake up with that flashbulb of terror - did I do that last nigh? Did I say that? It is normal, I suppose to black out - everyone does. Well, everyone who lives on the edge of madness.

Spent the evening at Sonny's Bar with the El Paso irregulars. sitting out back in the dusty dirt with mismatched, rickety chairs sinking into the litter of a million cigarette butts and chewing gum wrappers.

As Joe and I drank our dollar mugs, thirsty hobos would stand at the fence gawking like at a zoo with desperate dry eyes blinking in the midafternoon sun in dirty shabby dark clothes - a few had the cajones to ask for a dollar. Shooed them away.

Gotten drunker, you bastards and with the alcohol came brazen unhinged faggotry. Hollering hello's and flirting and waving at passing neighborhood boys and slinking bebopping cholos swaggering in packs of two or three who either waved back or yelled, "Pinche jotos!"

That eye candy Jacob slithered in and plopped at our table - his pink eye had healed nicely. However, he was already shit faced from downing High Gravity tall boys all day in some dank alley with his homies from the Opportunity Center. Indeed, nice and drunk and an easy target, me thinks.

So, the next couple of hours I laid the sexual innuendos thick - slamming them onto the boy like a mallet. He kept droning on that he was straight and would never have sex with a man as I just kept ordering beer after beer. Joe, thank God - returned inside to stalk some other barrio boy that he had his eye on.

Finally, after hours of sloppy, drunken seduction - I guess it paid off.

Leaving the smokey bar, Jacob and I walked the two blocks through trash and dusty shrubs, no sidewalks, to my humble trap . Dogs bark ferociously out in the darkness. Door unlocked and step in room with white cracked walls and thin gray blankets with cigarette holes hosting the stale aroma of mold and unwashed linens.
Jacob goes to take a piss, door closed, I sit on the bed and light a joint. He exits wearing his boxers.

"Don't waste no time, do ya?" I mumbled.

I'm pushed down on to bed, he on top, thick oily tongue probed my mouth. Before I am naked several marks are branded onto my neck. Hickeys make me hot! They are my Achilles heel.
Clothes come off and I am sucking his short thick cock, holding on to his large brown balls as his thick fingers wiggle up my ass. On my stomach, spit is applied and Jeeeeeeeesssssuuuussss! He begun rutting like a overheated bull. Thwapthwapthwapthwapthwap! Our bodies smacking together rapidly in that unbearable humidity - writhing flesh began to sweat - sheets are messed, pillows knocked onto floor, bed springs overworked and loudly sing. Grunting and sweating, muscular hands brush my body, bulging muscles are kissed and stroked. The sagging bed squeaks in protest as my ass takes a pounding like I haven't had in a long time. My breath is quick, hissing through clenched teeth and behind my closed eyes I see stars. I can feel his penis growing and quivering, the thrusts becoming more frantic.

"Can I come in you, dude?"

"No.", I manage to grunt through clenched teeth - erection yanked out and gobs spurt onto my ass and upper back.

Jacob lays on top of me and strokes my hair with his coarse hands. When his breathing subsided, he slid off of me and lay in the dark shadows on his side, his back towards me with arms crossed. I could feel the guilt emanating from him like television broadcasts. I dare not touch him and in any case moments later he fell into a deep, drunken sleep.

Next morning, I awaken with Jacob snoring next to me. I sit there a bit, studying his long muscular body - tattoos, pale torso. Clothes are put on and I slip into the kitchen to make coffee. Sun blazes in the early morning as storm clouds roll in from the distance. Jacob stirs and staggers silently into the bathroom to take a piss. I offer coffee, but it is declined. The conversations fall flat and stilted. He mumbles he has to go. Without shaking hands and diverted eyes we say goodbye and Jacob softly leaves the apartment.

Yeah, life is pretty good, but for schizophrenics and manic depressives a sad one, too.

Beer and Boys

Sonny's Bar is a crumbling adobe building nestled in the skaggy outskirts of downtown El Paso. Surrounded by vast stretches of dirty, trash strewn lots, gargantuan rusting warehouses and humming power cables.

It's also just a few blocks from my apartment.

I strolled into the dim joint and it was all you would expect - long ratty bar with a row of aluminum stools, a scattering of about four or five mismatched wooden tables and plastic chairs, walls adorn with Mexican soccer posters, neon lights and an over volumed jukebox. At that time there were perhaps six shoddy old drunks and a couple of illegal aliens lined along the bar. Their claim to fame was they sold one liter mugs of beer for a dollar all day. That was why I was there.

Wasn't sitting two minutes and as I took the first sip of my beer was being slapped with a booming, "Hey, man? Wazzup?!" from behind.

I turned to see Joe - if Uncle Fester was Mexican and flamboyantly gay, it would be him in a basketball jersey and shorts. I knew Joe from a week prior at a friends open house party and soon the what-ever-happened-to-so-and-so broke in.

He invited me out back to the patio he called it to drink and smoke. Patio...it was a crumbly dirty dusty lot with mismatched lawn chairs scattered about and an ancient, rusted table. But, it was in the shade from that horrible bright ass Texan sun, so I was relieved. And also, Jacob was sitting there. I had casually spoken to Jacob at the Opportunity Center waiting to see my shrink - okay, spoken as in he would always hit me up for change to buy single smokes. A twenty-two year old white guy from Illinois, goatee, tall, slim boxers physique and very handsome with short brown hair and blue eyes. I noticed that he was already plastered - I am sure this was through the help of Joe and his vain attempt at seducing the lad.

For, throughout the conversation with Jacob - he kept reiterating every three sentences, two things - how straight he was and how he would never be with a gay guy "Though, gays are cool as fuck" and his pink eye. Indeed, his left eye was inflamed with some type of affliction. However, Jacob knew how to work his drinks and he was funny when drunk. (Sober, as I recall, I found him wooden and uninteresting) He would go on about his boxing days, flex his well developed arms and even went as far as letting me feel his upper torso to the glaring jealous stares of Joe. My withered hand casually glided over his rock hard torso feeling with the blind fingers of a braille reader.

The drinks flowed as the sun swung around to the horizon and the chill set in. As we three were about to go inside - two cholos popped out of nowhere and flatly stated they were there to kick Jacobs ass. Apparently, earlier that morning, Jacob and some guy were walking down an alley to the store when the other guy threw a box of juice on this little kid. Why, I didn't get the details - but, the kid knew the Aztecas, so. Okay. These two - who, I was informed later, were part of the gang Aztecas, El Paso's biggest and powerful street thugs. Then again, every Mexican youth here claims they're part of that gang to install fear and respect - so, half the time I don't believe them.

Joe popped up and became the bleeding mediator and tried to diffuse the confrontation as Jacob stood tall, muscles tight and ready for battle, glaring with steel blue eyes. Okay, one blue eye - the other was pretty fucked up. The two gangsters eventually backed down - I knew they were bullshitting. Being from L.A. as I am - no real gangster would had done that.

So, we three entered the bar and what just occurred out back dragged out for the next hour or so as I sat quietly listening gulping mug after mug.

Then he walked in. Manuel. I had known him from my stay at the mish - tall, thin Mexican with black wavy hair, boyish good looks and a surprisingly adorable Colgate smile. I secretly had a crush on him. I recall at the mish the first day he was there, he was asleep in a chair in the dayroom, feet propped up on another chair, head against the grimy wall and a huge throbbing hardon in his dirty khakis - made a good first impression. He didn't know I was gay and back then hung out a few times joking and talking.

In the bar, he stood in front of me dressed in all hiphop clothes, wrinkled and all one size too big and carrying a clear trash bag filled with what looked like garbage. We shook hands and as he sat at the table, he related that he was just released from jail for domestic violence with his wife - who was apparently still locked up. Bought him a beer - he stated he needed one, I agreed. As Joe continued his vain seduction of Jacob - I sat and talked to Manuel about general crap.

The night progressed and everyone got lit. A marimba band showed up and played actually decent music. The beer started bringing out the gay in everyone. This old Cuban wouldn't leave me alone, Ruben - another ex-missionite - began getting grabby. Another drunk young cholo was getting belligerent, grabbing my side and ass and when I asked him to knock it off, he jabs me in the ribs and utters obscenities. Guys and girls and guys swirled and jumped and dipped with one another as the band played on like the Star Wars cantina band on crack.

We closed the bar - for RJ, the manager actually had to tell Joe, Manuel, Jacob and I to leave. Outside in the cold empty street, Joe actually got Jacob to go to his apartment 'just to sleep off the alcohol'. Said goodbye and started the few blocks to my place.

As I turned the corner, Manuel walked up behind me and flatly asked, "So, I'm staying at your place or what?"

I tottered and said. "I don't have a problem with - but, I believe you would."

"Why's that?" He grinned that grin that melts hearts.

"Dude, I told ya, I'm gay. I'd be trying to milk you like a cow."

He paused drunkenly and smiled again, "So?"

We entered my place in the dark quiet and I said something to the effect that he needed a shower he smelt like a prison. I gave him clean underwear and socks. As he showered I got into my PJ's. I was so wasted that I thought I really didn't want to do anything but sleep.

He walks out of the shower and I gawk at his smooth lithe frame and six pack - penis flopping around in those blue boxers so nasty.

He laid next to me and we both hunkered in under the gray comforter. After drunken conversation for what seemed forever I said goodnight. Manuel surprised the hell out of me when he snatched my hand under the covers and placed it on his erection. Damn. In one swoop, he kicks off his boxers and lays back with a "You still wanna?" Yeah, I wanna.

I slid his cock in my mouth and sucked like a champ, his hips slowly grinding, breathing through teeth, his hand stroking my back. He said he was in jail a month and didn't even jack off - I believed him, for when he came he pulled me away and squirted great globs onto his stomach, chest and shot into his eye! Laughing at his pain as he darted into the bathroom to wash the stinging matter out of his eye.

"That's not funny, dude!" He says from the bathroom sink. "This shit burns!"

I mumble, "Don't be such a pansy. Just war wounds."

He returns to the bed, snuggles under the blanket, "Damn. That was good - my nuts are still tingling."

But, before I could say anything the drunken fool fell into a much needed comfortable sleep.

Manuel woke me up the next morning face to face, "Morning, brother - what's for breakfast?"

As I prepared pancakes and coffee the now sober Miguel started and it was painful. Apart from the religious guilt he was feeling from the previous night (He stated that several times that it was a sin) he also began droning on and on about his locked up wife. All through breakfast, all through me getting prepared to walk down town, all through cigarettes and coffee. Enough! I thought. I explained that he needed to return to the mish and get his shit together so when his wife was released, he was ready for her. I gave him an old luggage bag so the 'garbage' in the plastic bag (Which were actually all his possessions in the world) would look like garbage.

He asked if he could stay in my place waiting the fifteen days until his wife was released. I explained that it would be best if he did this on his own and stayed at the mission.

We walked downtown together and shook hands on the corner as I wished him good luck.

Walking through the people in centro, I wondered how Joe fared with Jacob....

Sweet and Tender Hooligan

Stood in the back of the movie theater smoking on that cigarette so nasty - complete darkness in the little alcove among the smell of dried semen, unwashed genitals, and at my feet the black floor was littered with cum coated tissue and shit stained used condoms. Lurking like the three other sexually frustrated assholes that hovered nearby.

Around the corner, the screen flickered a sad blue light onto the warn, warped seats of the theater. The stale air permeated with the screechings of some coked out bimbo being fucked long and nasty from a tired looking stud. In the sixty or so seats sat five catatonic looking patrons - some smoked, some drank from smuggled tall boys, one was masturbating like an idiot. Towards the entrance stood a row of four bloated old monsters ready to pounce on anything willing coming through the door - nothing came.

He popped out of no where stood in front of me in the murk and grabbed my crotch. Instantly, he began mumbling in drug fueled lust, "Fuck - so horny, man. I wanna see your ass." All the while fumbling at my belt, unbuttoning and pulling down my jeans.

In the half dark, he was handsome - black short cropped hair, moustache, dark skin, well built, in early twenties - but, something wasn't right. Another younger fag sided up to our groping and my seducer ordered, "Suck his dick, man - get down there, suck his dick." The other fag knelt in front of me and took my semi erect member in his mouth and began sucking - slurps that could be heard in the theater. My seducer began kissing my neck, my ears. I reciprocated and he pulls abruptly away, "No hickies, cabrone."

"Don't worry 'bout it." I smiled in the dark.

Whirled around and the guy starts kissing my ass, pulling out his fat, flaccid uncut cock - grinding it against me. Still, something wasn't right. So, I'm standing there with my jeans around my calves with some twink blowing me and this hyper-sexual groping me.

The fag stops and whispers in my ear, "Watch your money." Before he slinks back into the theater proper.

My seducer orders me to start sucking him off and I do. his cock - though quite nice - wouldn't get hard. He mumbles something to the effect that maybe if he watches some more of the movie, he can get hard. I compose myself as he walks over to lean against the wall watching the movie. I check my wallet - my money is gone.

I walk over to him and state, "All that just for seven dollars?" That's all I had on me.

He returned back to the alcove, me pinning him in, writhing and cooing, "C'mon, man - suck me some more."
I stand there, fists clenched, "Give it back."

He mumbles obscenities and something to the effect that he is an addict - but, the handsome fucker knew he was trapped. Even got the old "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Look." I snarl, "You could have just asked for it - I would have given it to you...you really want your ass kicked over seven dollars?"

He spits, "What? You want it back? Here..." And hands me my bills from his shorts pocket. He starts to say something else, I just walk away.

I leave the theater and start the few blocks back to my apartment. Down that lonely stretch of crumbling warehouses and razor wire with the barking dogs and I think, Damn...I really need to get out of El Paso...

Ride a Painted Pony

I light a cigarette and look over as the crazed old Chinaman picks a slice of bologna out of the filthy garbage can and washes it off with a bottle of water. He mumbles something in a squeaking pitch and begins to nibble. I look wearily away. Blow smoke out into the air. The room is occupied with about thirteen old, ratty hobos - most slouched over in the folding metal chairs, snoring loudly. The air is blue with cigarette smoke the sharp tang of stale urine.

I lean back in my chair, crossing my legs, thinking, Where is he?

I am sitting in the Opportunity Center. The first floor - unfortunately - is a flop room for El Paso's transient population. In the floors above me are the mental and health clinics. I was waiting to get my prescription for my monthly antidepressants from my shrink and for Lalo, who invited me for beer across the border in Juarez, Mexico.

As on cue, Lalo walked his lanky form into the room from the heat outside. Tall, thin Mexican with hawk like features, scraggy goatee - I met him while I stayed at the mish, he since had moved to Juarez and shacked up with a stripper he had impregnated. We had played around a few times.

He plops next to me in baggy black denim jeans and jacket, "What up, man? You ready to go?"

I explained that I had to get my meds and then walk the two blocks to my flat for my passport. That took only ten minutes and we were on our way across the border.

We slapped our two quarters down at the turnstile and walked that long bridge across, dodging the Indian women wrapped in grey serapes, hands outstretched forever blinking in that bright desert sun. Down into the congested streets of el centro - the crumbling discos and beer halls with fading facades, walking through traffic of chugging old buses farting black smoke and dust crusted cars that amazingly still run.

Lalo mentioned he was hungry and we darted into a hole in the wall taco stall on the strip. He munched tacos desebrada as I gobbled down my hamburger with juicy fries - all the while shooing away the parade of dirty chicle vendors and sad, beat wondering mariachis.

Strictly out of a fit of nostalgia, we wound up at Bar Buen Tiempo, afterwards. Striding past the Cathedral, through the mob in Plaza las Armas and across to the bar, Lalo and I passed through the yellow swinging doors into the murky den and as soon as the door slammed shut, Rosie - my old fag hag bartender from the last time I lived here - came clopping and bounding up to me arms spread open and all smiles. Smooches on the cheeks and what-ever-happened-to-so-and-so resumed as Lalo and I sat at the bar and ordered two big frosty caguamas. Rosie confided in me that the owner, Chuey was shot two weeks ago out front of the bar - another nameless statistic to the death toll in that city. I really liked Chuey. Nice old fart. Rosie explained that things have changed - that the clientele has disappeared and that not many people visit the bars anymore.

The bar was sprinkled with a few old drunks, a couple of lesbians, and three pretty boys gesticulating at the end of the bar. Even for a Monday afternoon, I remember the place was a little bit more active - where's the rentboys? As Rosie and I were in deep conversation, Lalo just blurted out that he wasn't feeling it in this queer joint and he was in dire need of some bitches.

I turned to him and camped, "Oh, I'll show you a bitch!"

So, to indulge the part time hetro, I said goodbye to Rosie and made vain claims that I'd try to return Saturday. (Maybe I will, why not?) Lalo and I once again stumbled out into the blaring dusty streets and marched through the old market through the crumbling alleys smelling of shit and urine, shabby bent, sad taco stands sweltered with the wafting stench of seared meats and tired salsas and wilted vegetables with mangy dogs and small infants playing in the dust between stalls. Late afternoon pedestrians clogged the way - hip hop boys with arms around hips of their brown thick hipped sweet hearts with sad eyes drooping up to Guadalupe, vendors with leprosy and missing limbs called out selling leather belts, key chains, balloons, condoms - as tank like para military vehicles rumble down the street slugging slowly past the ancient, creaking buses.

Passing a row of tired, fat hookers flashing their silver capped teeth and unappetizing bloated bodies, we hit some joint that Lalo knew called Bikinis. I must of passed it a million times - but never went in. This time I did. Wish I didn't.

First, complete blackness - until your eyes adjust to the dark. And mine didn't in time. I careen head on into a table - I feel the bump, then hear the smashing of beer bottles shattering on the floor. Luckily, the two guys at the table understood, when I kept saying in Spanish that I couldn't see a damn thing - they laughed and said it was all right. I made it up and bought them a bucket of beer.

As my eyes focused there was a stage and a squat rotund blond in a black bikini and thong spinning on the brass pole - jiggling in all the wrong places. I mentioned to Lalo as I gawked like the other ten or so drunk and horny men circling the stage, "It's like a car accident - I can't stop looking."

The place itself was a all that you'd expect in a dive of this sort. Dark, with a row of red Christmas lights strung over the bar, small stage with smeared cracked mirror and spinning disco ball. Though there was five or so metal tables, the bulk of the audience sat in the semi-ring around the stage watching the whirling tart.

Obviously, this was Lalo's circus - everybody that worked there shook his hand, patted his back, high fived. Assholes.

Yet, after a few slugs of beer, it wasn't so bad for a straight joint - the girls didn't paw me and ask for beer. The DJ and security guard (Both fucking hot!) were friendly and fun to chat with. The damn DJ - a muscular skin head with a goatee - during acts, kept flirting with the other strippers - they would walk by and rub his erection or give him a quick lapdance. The strippers were all from two to four months pregnant...

I tell you though, Dear Reader - at one point as I stood out in the back alley and as I smoked a cigarette, I was panged with nostalgia and wanton desire to return to dear old Juarez. I sure do miss it - however, I reckon it has become best just to visit now a days. I dunno.

It was time for us to split because the money dried up and saying adios to the strippers and all, Lalo and I drunkenly stumbled back to the bland security of El Paso. What a difference from night and day - the streets at 9pm in Juarez were teeming with vibrant life - yet, downtown El Paso echoed empty in long lonely shadows of silence.

Eh. Just swallowed my angst, went back home and watched Alejandro Jodorowski's Sante Sange before falling into a twisted sleep....

Dreams of Nostalgia.

The sky is illuminated by blue bursts of electrical fire. Rain falls hard, drenching me and the scrawny hooker tittering on the corner in her see through plastic pumps. She looks like a melting wax figure, like she has some hideous cancer. She squawks at me and through the rainy haze and the sound of her voice that she is a he. I press on home - streets now have become rivers and sewage outlets spew forth a dry winters worth of back up.

I cut the corner to my trap, soaked to the bones, turn the key and slop my wet shoes into my house. Lights are turned on and I peel my clothes off like a used condom. Stove burns blue flame, water boils and steams, and a cuppa hot coffee is made. I hunker down and watch David Lynch’s Eraserhead just to make sure my life isn't that bad. The credits roll and I slip into my bed. Rain always has made me drowsy.
I had a headache, me, and took a handful of aspirin before knocking off for the night.
Poom! Poom! Poom! Somebody is knocking at my door. The clock reads 2:36am. Poom! Poom! Poom! I fling the covers off and reach for my pajama bottoms (I have always slept naked. Can't have it any other way. Wouldn't you?) I pull the front door open to find Jose, a teenage kid from the neighborhood standing on my landing with kind of a glow. His eyes were all pupil and he sniffed constantly. He went into some tirade about how he was in need of money and that his Grandmother was sick and that...Basta! Can't you tell how late it is!? I was sleeping! Some of us hafta work for a living instead of staying up all night taking dope! Don't bother me again! Slam!!
Had a hard time sleeping after that. Put on some Juliee Cruise - she always makes me drift away.
The alarm goes off, reggeaton blares forth; it is 5:20am. I stagger to the shower and bathe in lukewarm water, dress and hit the dark streets - still wet after last night’s storm. I buy two burritos pulpa from the plump smiling woman on the side of the road - traffic whizzes by to the United States - there is black dust in the cracks of her face. I gobble down one burrito before vaulting the turnstile to the International Bridge. A phone call is made and a coworker happily picks me up, stopping first at Starbuck's for a Frappaccino mocha. Delish!
Work dragged like a wounded snail and I was nearly comatose by the time I got off. I hitched another ride back to the border and jet across that long divide. Shriveled shit covered junkies in rags and ponchos, hands outstretched, looking like beat Christ's beg for change down under the bridge. You can hear their pleaful cries...they go unnoticed, as all I see in front of me is a wall of fat asses, bouncing ahead of me. An impenetrable wall of flesh.
Stop by Burrito Row - I order a burrito mole with manzana fresca and shoot the shit with Beto, the hottie that works at one of the stalls. I chomp my mess all the while wondering what it will take to nail that fine ass.
But, I digress...I was still very sleepy and decided to make my way home. Saying adios, I walk through the muggy air - the occasional tsk tsk from the prowling chunky chilango hooker - dodging the kamikaze bus, the suicide taxi.
I reach my humble flat and reach for the $150 I stashed under a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars. Down stairs, I pay the rent to the slightly crazed landlady as her oily son watches over me - the old haggish bitch counts the money and miscounts twice before agreeing this is the rent. Heh - crazy ass bitch.
Back at my place, I sit with a Sol cerveza and switch channels on my big 32inch flat screen telly I had just purchased with my tax return. Nothing but crap, but there was a rap at my front door and was surprised to find Oscar standing in the street.
Inviting Oscar in he began bleating the same old same old and needed cash and, well, one thing led to another and I found myself sucking that cock - not ten slurps up and down his stiff brown shaft and he was squirting gobs of semen into my mouth; clenching the bed covers with one hand and grabbing the back of my head with the other. He squirmed and grunted as he nutted a mouthful.
What can I say, I'm a natural.
Both of us showered, I gave him one hundred pesos and he split. I dressed and marched out - the late afternoon streets teeming with life. Fat fag in pinstriped jeans checks me out as I pass the shoe store; smells waft of mouthwatering chicken displayed in neon blasted windows with bum pissing onto the outside wall. Small Indian children, snot caked black on their copper faces, grab my pant leg as I walk by - moanay! moanay! - a clown, a fucking guy dressed as a circus clown DJ's in front of a record shop. My way is clogged by a group of young boys in soccer outfits - they stand laughing talking, I stare at them with broken limitless insect lust. Shoeshine boys call out to shine me leathers as I stroll past blue, yellow, pink adobe houses and buildings erected a hundred years ago. The stores vendors hawk their wares - vying for my attention. The music from various shops is deafening - I cut into a cafe, order a cappuccino, and scribble these words out...

Fuzzy Moon.

I rolled over in the musty sagging bed and tried to piece together the night before. The dank room I was in was windowless, graffitied walls painted pink with the lingering stench of a million Mexican hookers. I lay naked on an old spotted mattress, itself smelled of mildew and various indescribable aromas. The bathroom was down the hall. I got up slowly and staggered to the sink next to the bed and took a piss, washed it with water from the tap then splashed my stubbled face.

Gravity took over and I slumped uncontrollably back onto the bed. I lay there dizzy and aching - head pounding as I stared at the naked light bulb dangling from a wire coming out of a hole cut in the plaster in the ceiling. Directly above my face, there was a bright yellow spot in the plaster. That's rat piss, I thought, not water damage. Rats always piss in the same spot. Humans don't - unsanitary fucks...

My mind throbbed with the kaleidoscope of a million images. It had to be round nine at night, the bars were in full drive cause the sidewalks were pregnant - crawling with twinky Mexican fags. They swaggered and cooed to and fro from one disco to the next - Albatross, Bananas, Riches - all glaring and giggling at every crotch. The disco and chacha beats thumped as outside between the clubs hustlers lurked in the shadowy shadows to rob the unwary tourist or desperate old queen with time worn accuracy. We stood outside Bananas and smoked and laughed until I was invited inside for some much needed drinks. He said his name was Arturo. Short in stature with a thin build and black curly hair cut short. I loved his smile - heated me pants every time he did.

The place was jumping, you dig. Wall to wall boys lined up and jumping to the beat, swirling and dipping and walking around like aroused Tom Cats. The sexual tension was thick like only it can in these Mexican gay joints.

Arturo introduced me to his friends - all fine characters and there was one cutey - a thin twink named Manuel and he really took a liking to me. And the boy really liked to drink his drink. On that note - the tequila started to flow!

Arturo, Manny and I hit the dance floor and boogied down until the joint closed down at 2am when the lights came on. The waiters ushered the whole lot out into the streets where there were some more socializing, fags, trannies, and lezzies huddled in groups talking and laughing all wondering where the next party was - a yellow hummer drove by and invited me to a fiesta in the hills, but I refused.

Arturo, Manny and I jolted drunkenly across the street to a chicken restaurant and devoured delicious chicken tacos and made out in the booths - where the waiter snarled pinche jotos but we just laughed under the sneering glare of the fat mamacita that was running the joint - and that's when Arturo came up with the idea to rent that cheap ass room. After we stopped to buy a fifth of cheap tequila.

Down dark, trash littered alleys of mangy dogs and bums with quivering hands reaching out forever, past shady characters glinting eyes under fedoras twinkle in the moonlight and hissing hookers with silver teeth and bruised thighs - we stumbled up worn wooden stairwells to a nameless hotel in an unknown place and slapped down the twenty in front of a fat receptionist chewing on a cigar so nasty.

With difficulty, Arturo pries the wooden door open, flicks on the light and the bugs scatter. We ritualistically passed the tequila bottle around - tastes so good going down. I retch. Little Manuel jumps up and down on the bed - something breaks inside - we all laugh.

Tongues and fingers probed as clothes were peeled off and erections exposed. I sat on the bed as Arturo laid me back and started to suck my cock like a champ and that fucker knew what he was doing. Manny played with my nipples as he continued to kiss me talking all dirty like in Spanish. Arturo's fingers found their mark and were slid up in me and I didn't need to instruct this horny fucker in anything, he puts my feet up over his shoulders, spits into his palm, lubes his cock and slides in with slow deliberate movements. Thrusting and lunging, Arturo fucked me as I gasped and grunted through clenched teeth. Manny jacked me off, kissing and massaging me - talking oh so dirty. Manny was the first, kneeling over me - he squirted his cum across my chest...then it was me, with Manny milking it out, I gasped and squirmed in an intense orgasm. Pounding faster and harder, Arturo pulls his cock out and squirts his semen all over my stomach, too - falling next to me in a sighing plop.

We lay there talking a bit sharing a delicado cigarette. Eventually both had to split and they did. They got dressed, we shook hands and said good night - I finished the bottle of tequila we had purchased and fell onto the bed.