The Blind Mouth

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico:

My room is on a roof. I can see blue mountains across from the City which sprawls out like a simmering, colorless vista in every direction, occasionally dotted by cell-phone towers. After work, Hector comes to my room and brings a packet of griefa, "Muy bueno para follar guero." We are sitting on the edge of the roof, our legs dangling in the air. I point to the sky above the blue mountains and tell him "Some day I will go away in that direction."

He looks at me and wrinkles his forehead like a dog and says I shouldn't think such things is muy malo. I can see he is sad, feeling the sky between us.

Later, I am in the shed behind his house where we change and take showers. Hector is there. The others - his mother and visiting cousin - have gone because it is a fiesta. Hector has his shirt off and his skin is smooth like polished brown wood. He peels an orange and the smell of orange fills the shed. He breaks the orange in two and gives me half and pulls me down to sit beside him on the bench. He finishes the orange and licks his fingers. Then he puts his arms around my shoulders and I can see his pants sticking up between his legs.

"Yo muy caliente, guero. Very hot." He rubs his forehead against mine. "Quiero follarte."

His body is warm like an animal and I feel a soft tingle in my stomach and I say "Muy bueno." We take off our clothes. There is a musk smell from his tight brown nuts. He brings out a little tin of Vaseline he carries in his hip pocket because sometimes he would fuck a tourist for money, he has always carried it. I take the tin and rub Vaseline on his cock feeling it jump in my hand like a frog, he is standing there teeth bared, gasping..."Vuelvete y aganchete, guero"...I turn around and bend over, hands braced on knees and let myself go limp inside as he slides it in. I could see out through a little dusty window the junk filled, back yard and the setting sun on the tiled roofs like bits of silver paper, and when I spurt the the world seems to stretch out and then snap back pulling my eggs together and I am spurting out, silver spots boil in front of my eyes and the window blacks out.

I am sitting on the bench my head against the wall and he is rubbing a towel on my face. "You black out, guero." He touched my cheek and looked at me showing the red gums and belched a smell of oranges. "You very good for fuck."

Darkness falls on the ruined suburbs. A dog barks in the distance. Dim jerky stars are blowing away across a gleaming empty sky...