New Work in the Works

How many cigarettes does it take to wait? How many cups of coffee? Paul sat in the dead-end diner with napkin firmly under coffee cup - he was told in that style, you could tell when someone had been waiting - watching nothing out of the broad, dust streaked, pane window.

   Outside, it was cold and colorless. Gritty wind whipped eddies of trash down a lonely street. A far cry from the sunny, warm surf crashing against a beach that he anxiously anticipated to see. Not here. Not in this damn desert. Here, the sky was a harsh, cold blue - though dazzling bright, it emitted no warmth - only a bitter cold. You could feel it in your marrow.

   Paul sipped more coffee, took another drag. He glanced at the bus ticket which sat on the counter in front of him. He was to leave El Paso that afternoon and twenty-two hours from then, he would be in San Diego. He fantasized of the beaches and soothing temperatures and warm ocean breezes. It would be a positive beginning to a brand new life.

   Across the street, a bum, the same colorless shade of everything else, stood out front of the Roman Deco post office hitting up passerby for change with a withered, outstretched palm. Paul looked around the café - a cavernous, lonely room which only he occupied. Every sound was amplified with the soft echo of a mausoleum. A hip, bearded, college-type barista stood behind the counter with arms folded and stared out into nothing.

   This was too much. Paul paid his bill and wandered out into the dead, desolate streets. The sun was ruthless and bright. In the shadows of a few dead trees, it was frightfully cold - you couldn’t win.

- HOBOSEXUAL, a novel in progress

Working furiously. Without distractions or any type social life. Holed up days at a time in my sordid little one-room flat in a Mexican slum typing without end. Fifty-six pages so far and it is depressing the fuck out of me. Not bad as in writing or style, but the stories and incidents are excavated from my personal life. Nothing is more thrilling than living and then re-living your life's greatest failures. I am writing this in the most raw, eye-peeled way I can. If the world is shit - and it is - I want to reveal it in a hi-def close up.