Word Hoard 2013

"Get your shit together" was the comment left by some asshole on a social network. And what shit is that, Mr. Man? As the Internet meme goes You don't know me. You don't know my life. I only reveal ten percent on that fucking page. The rest is fucking and madness soaked in shame. Shame that I try to hide. But is utterly impossible in this day and age of Big Brother always watching always listening. For four years - four years after twenty of aimlessly wandering hither and yon - I lived like you motherfuckers wanted. And it drove me mad. What came of it? Depression and five published novels depicting the coldness within. Old hobo hacks up blood and phlegm as I attempt to relate this journey, but he don't care. No one cares. And to tell you the truth neither do I. Except maybe a sole doctor who is nuttier than squirrel shit as it is. "Get the fuck out of Dodge!", he commands. So I do. I wanted to retire in Puerto Rico but I go the other way to Tucson with a brief stop in Mexico for some ass and booze. Gotta calm the nerves, you understand. And nothing is more calming than a cock up your ass, right. So, I fall in Tucson and get really fucked. Not by a boy this time, but from my old arch enemy Fate. Fucking bitch. Always out to get me. So, staying true to form, I swallow my pride and live amongst the homeless population scribbling out notes for another novel no one will ever read and am awarded another hand in becoming stable and responsible like you. Ugh. makes me want to vomit just thinking about it. But, I have an ulterior motive. Fate wasn't looking...shh! Don't say anything, don't look. That nosey bitch is just waiting for an excuse to fuck with me...what i am going to do is stay in this housing program designed for a bunch of retards following the American Dream. I will nod. I will smile. I will jump when told. All the while I will save my money and use it to jet off to the Isle of Enchantment. Fuck all you naysayers. I do what I want, go were I want. You are powerless to stop me. Old queen squeals hatred at me already here because I befriended his boy. I don't care. He is only to wile away the days. His only purpose is to fill a hole, you understand. hehehe. Oh, but I forget, you don't understand. What's your fucking problem, anyway? You stupid or something? It's very logical what I am doing. Why is it crazy? So, as I was saying, biding my time, trudging around in one hundred degree weather past construction workers and tweekers and crack heads and howling fat bitches spitting out black babies like a baseball machine. I even turned the fag off in me. various street hustlers prowl around me like aroused Tom Cats but I have no time for their diseases and bullshit. I have a plan! A plan I will not deviate from this go around. Ha! If i know me at all - which I don't - I'll most likely wind up in a ditch somewhere babbling to a cactus about the finer points of the beat generation. At least I'll get my free donuts and coffee handed out every morning by the grinning preacher. Swell fella. Speaking of changing the subject, I am up for an evaluation soon by the prestigious Dr. Ahmed Taylor. based on the real wingdingers I have encountered on the street since my arrival to this burg, I am certain he will deem me sane and it's back to the sweat shops I go. Vacation over. Time to go home. And all I got to show for it was a stupid t-shirt - bedbugs and all. "Hey, ya got any spice?" The teenage girl croaks as the sun is raising it's lazy ass over the horizon. It seems everyone is a junkie nowadays. But do you blame them? Do you? I don't. It's a mad world and a sad one at that. To keep me grounded I meet a young blond fella, short but with a big and willing cock. The only problem is he never shuts up. Talks worse than those women folk. Sulky, too. I guess I don't like him, either. Bothersome little shit. But, I like his long Irish cock, so that's something right? A real ceiling squirter that one. He states that I give the best head he ever had. he should. I've seen a photograph of the fat bitch he is dating. Or sort of dating. She's in Oklahoma now taking truck driving classes. Going to be a man hating bull dyke before the training is done. So he better learn the way of the queer and quick if he's going to get anywhere in life. Well, the good thing is I finally do move into my apartment on the 3rd of June. Old derelicts and crazy ass fat men swarm around the smoking tables of the patio bumming cigarettes from bums and bitching that they have it so bad. I've seen poverty! I've lived utter disillusion! Don't whine to me, you fucking pampered American. You don't know pain and sorrow. Not the real thing, anyway. Just a faded cut out of it. The conversations of this downtown joint I reside in at the moment is a real bore. They all talk of the same thing: Jail and dope, dope and jail. Shut the fuck up already! There is an entire world out there - go see it! But they won't. They - or us - excuse me - are too fat, lazy, and ignorant to step out of our comfort zones. Shit. Ain't that something. What a sad thing not to experience all the wonders of life. To be content with just your cellphone, ipad, and a pack of rollies. Why won't a goddamn asteroid just go ahead and smash into this planet already and end all this suffering? Nah, too easy. Can't always have it your way, I reckon. So, I sit and I wait - sipping delicious coffee served in a big ass beer mug at the 24 hr coffee shop I found and continue posting stale jokes and gags on facebook because those arrogant assholes don't care about nothing else. Really should delete that thing, I have grown beyond bored with it. It's all part of the programmed control system set up by this wonderful Police State that we are mired in. Ho-hum. I know when the revolution finally does arrive, I'll be one of the first lined up against the wall and shot. A man can have dreams, can't he? Old dog sniffs through a pile of garbage and shit as his master lays on the grimy sidewalk. People stroll buy and do not notice. Too busy text messaging and checking status updates. That person is me. I am somewhat out of the loop - I am one of those colorless phantoms you see shuffling down the street toting back pack, duffel bag, trash bag or pushing a shopping cart. It is the only way you can be truly free in this country. Unfortunately, I have a shackle. An old ball and chain. It is preventing me from departing this great nation once and for all. Well, not really stopping me - we have that one thing in common. Fear of change. I have the fear in me, I will admit. It has kept my hand for the past four years. Kept me from really doing what I want. A train moans in the distance and I just want to jump on it. But, the day of the free hobo is extinct. Sorry Jack K., you did it all for nothing. So, my present assignment is to wait. Wait until the time is right. Then I will make my move. Until that time, just bare with me.

Then again, I could just be talking crazy... 

NAKeD LuNCh

The late, great Dennis Hopper performs select passages from William S. Burroughs' seminal novel, where the physical world is melded with mind-blowingly surrealistic reveries and instances of slyly dark humor. Watching this made me squeal like a terminal junkie, like watching a million faggoty-ass boys jack off all at once in public toilets of the world, their orgasms bursting across the night sky like fireworks. Understand? Of course you don't. You squares never fucking will.

Hustler White

He smashed his cigarette out onto the pavement with the toe of his shoe. Thin, aquiline features seemed pale and ghastly under that strobing blue and white light of an over head marquee. He looked at me as I entered the bar. His eyes had that lazy gaze of crimson in them. Was he tired or inebriated? Probably both. American hustlers have to work long hours to make ends meet.

I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The pleasant old hag behind the counter stated that they did not serve Sol, "Only Coors. On tap."

For two dollars in a sixteen ounce glass, why not? The shit still tasted like a homeless man's piss. I looked around the bar - derelicts, old hookers, junkies. As I stared at my reflection in the mirror across from me, the kid at the front door slid onto a stool next to me. In the reflection, his image was sliced in half by the parting of the mirror plates. One pane was slightly higher than the other. the reflection was somewhat off putting. One good, the other bad.

The aging bartender placed a styrofoam bowl of popcorn between us. With thin, tattooed covered hands he scooped up a fistful and shoved them into a wide mouth. As I watched, I got a better look at him. He was tall, thin, and wore that look of annoyed petulance common to all Americans. It was a look designed to project aloof coolness to whomever cared to meet that gaze, but instead it simply reflected on how sad, beat, and completely bitchy a person could be. His torso was draped over by a green t-shirt with a red star on the chest, loose fitting jeans, and black leather work shoes. His light brown hair was buzz cut and stood out dark from pale skin. His eyes....his eyes, though blood shot, were a light blue when they were blue. He held a face of a young boy, smooth and clean, who seemed to be perpetually pouting.

I turned to him as he shoveled another handful of popcorn into his mouth.

"You hungry?" I asked jokingly.He smiled through discolored teeth that he was or to that effect. I offered him a beer.

"Sure, man. Thanks." He said sniffing. "You spare a smoke?"

I pulled a cigarette from my pocket and he went to stand outside again and smoked. I sat sipping my beer. When he returned, he drank a gulp and then asked, "You live around here?"

"I rent a room up on Oracle." I explained. "I am waiting for my housing vouchers to clear so I can get an apartment."

"Up on Oracle?" He repeated. "You rent a hotel room? Isn't that fucking expensive?"

I said nothing and took a gulp of beer.

"What do you do?" He asked.

"I'm a writer."

"A writer? Really? What do you write?"

"Garbage apparently."

He laughed, I chuckled and ordered another round. It was that time of early evening that the bar was kept very dark and cool from the insidious, dry one hundred degree weather outside. Even with the sun gone for the day and it being a full moon, it was hot. I can't seem to get used to these temperatures. I snatched a paper napkin off of a stack on the counter and wiped across my forehead.

"It's too fucking hot here." I said to no one in particular.

"Shit! It ain't even June yet." Stated an old man with a huge, cascading beard at the end of the bar. "Wait till yer ass gets stuck outside during August. Fuckin' shit's hot, then!" It was Buddy, the bar regular. Word has it he has been frequenting the joint since 1967. I simply smiled at him and turned back to the kid.

As I was about to speak, he slid off of his stool and walked to the mensroom. His jeans were pulled down and hung off a pair of bulbous cheeks hidden under gray boxers. As I watched him disappear into the pissoir, I thought, That's an ass just begging to get fucked.

Yeah, I was feeling it. I wanted to conquer someone. I was stateside now and did not have to placate some Mexican macho fuck who kept his sphincter clenched the entire time while we had sex. When the hustler returned from the restroom, I was going to casually pop the question to come back to my place. So, I waited...and waited...and waited. What the fuck? He fall in? I thought. I paid for two more beers then casually walked into the mensroom. Nice set up. Red light, dim. The crumbling walls were a mass of scrawled graffiti. There was a long piss trough and a toilet stall in which the boy stood. Fine, I'll take a piss while I was in here. As I stood at the urinal, for a moment it was silent, then I heard the rhythmic clanging of a belt buckle and the light raspy noise of skin sliding against skin. He was jacking off. I was already slightly inebriated, so what the fuck I thought and said, "You need help over there?"

Momentarily he was silent. Then he walked out from the stall and stood in the middle of the bathroom. His jeans were unbuttoned and one hand hung limply at his side as the other held his pants up. Pointing out and up from the hole in his boxers was a long, circumcised erection. His face was tense and determined as he spoke in the most crassest tone, "Yeah, man, I want my cock sucked."

I smirked and said, "Not here. Let's go to my hotel room."

Back out in the bar, we quickly downed our beers and headed by city bus in that insidious heat up to my rented room. He remained quiet on the bus, not saying a word. Even as we walked up to the hotel and entered, he said nothing. A professional. Not paid to talk, but to perform.

Opening the door to my room, we entered. I switched on the light, he looked around. Messed bed, open suitcase, clothes flung around, over filled ashtray.

"Take off your clothes." I said.

As he slid his t-shirt off and revealed a smooth white torso, he asked nonchalantly, "He, man, you think you can loan me twenty-dollars? I got this bill..."

You got this addiction, most likely, I thought, but I said, "I don't see a problem with that. However, depending on how nice you are, you could be loaned more."

He casually folded his jeans and placed them on the chair, did the same with the shirt. He lay his long body across the bed and smiled. "Nice, huh? I'll see what I can do."

I stood over him and reached down to his flaccid penis. After a couple of strokes, he was fully hard. I leaned over and began blowing him. He rhythmically gyrated his hips, sighed, even grunted a couple of times.

"Get undressed." He whispered.

I did. He lay me down onto the wadded blankets and began to suck my cock. Damn, he was good. "Slow down." I said. "That mouth...oh shit, you gonna make me cum fast." He popped up, slowly massaging my chest with one hand and slowly stroking my wet cock with the other, he repeated, "Nice, huh? I'll show you what I can do." With him on top, we began to sixty-nine. He sucked like a champ as I blew his cock, licked his balls and tongued his hairless asshole. He began to pump his cock down my throat, slowly at first then with a faster rhythm. He really got into it. I didn't mind because his penis wasn't that long. I thought he might have something else in mind, I mean, I really wanted to fuck him. I was about to suggest that as he lay straddling my head and thrusting, but before I knew it, his cock became very rigid and then suddenly began emptying semen down my throat.

He fell next to me, gasping, "Sorry, man...oh fuck sorry. That shit was too good. Didn't think I was gonna bust one so quick." Semen dangled from a string from the wet head of his dick to the sheet, creating a damp pool. "Damn." He smiled, "You suck cock way too good."

I looked down at my glistening erection, "Well, we ain't done yet."

"Oh fuck, you're right." He stated as he slithered up and took my cock in my mouth. He sucked and bobbed so good and I was so comfortable, I forgot about fucking that ass. Soon, my head jerked back as a wave of orgasm washed over me and I ejaculated into the boy's mouth. He dutifully leaned over the bed and spat the matter onto the carpet between the mattress and the wall.

"Hey!" I said jokingly.

"Sorry." He chuckled as he rolled off the bed and reached for his clothes. I also got up and dressed. We both put on our clothes without saying a word. I pulled out my wallet and removed three twenties. He took them, smiled.

"Well, uh, see you later." And he was out the door. I waited a minute before leaving and walking over to the corner Jack in the Box for a hamburger and soda...

No Where Near the End.

I can’t bear this deafening silence anymore. Its calmness seeps through my pores, it’s hurting me. Like the thorns of a wild rose, so sharp and precise, it can cut through skin with ease. The sound of silence, boggles my mind with thoughts of the past, it’s unfathomable. The wind, the wind that blows everything in sight, it makes movements I can’t comprehend. It’s weird and creepy, it compliments the solitude that is present everywhere. The thunderclaps, that sound of raging heavens, like a gunshot, not too far away, it’s frightening. It is really scary in here, I want to break free, if only I’m actually imprisoned.

But, after all the harshness, why am I feeling contentment deep within this secluded fortress? Why is it that somehow, this solitary confinement soothes my mind? Is this my body adapting? Well, probably because sometimes, being left alone makes you realize things. And yes, maybe in that momentary solitude, you may begin to love that idea of you being unaccompanied. Till, reality hits you with a large palm straight to your cerebral cortex; It’s sad to be alone, you may deny that fact, you may act like I can handle this, I’m strong enough, but there’s this one thing human beings can’t do and will never do because they just can’t — to walk this Earth with all their moments awake, alone.

Happy Memorial Day!

Strong and peaceful, wise and brave,

Fighting the fight for the whole world to save,

We the people will ceaselessly strive

To keep our great revolution alive!

Unfurl the banners! Look at the screen!

Never before has such glory been seen!

Oceania! Oceania! Oceania, tis for thee!

Every deed, every thought, tis for thee!

Every deed, every thought, tis for thee!

Every deed, every thought, tis for thee!

Damp Cigarettes

I’ve pissed away all good judgment.

He came at me, carelessly swaggering, exhaling smoke like butterflies.

I whispered to myself, “Beauty always catches on fire,” and with that, our minds became damp, and I wanted to inhale him like the cigarette of my dreams.

I whispered upon fire,

that beauty always catches me.

They Call Him Shy.

Life is cruel. Yet, once in a while you meet someone who is kind and that makes it all better.

Early morning in Tucson. I sat in the park adjacent to the library puffing on a borrowed cigarette. The bums and tramps and haggish alcoholics were out in full force. They waited like I waited. Every morning exactly at 8:30am, an Asian man arrives and doles out fresh donuts and delicious hot coffee free and gratis. Really...it is worth the wait.

As I sat watching that freak show, a shadow came across me. Looking up, it was a ruggedly handsome, blond boy. His tight, boxer physique was silhouetted by the glaring and yellow early morning sun.

"Hey, homie, you spare a cigarette?" He asked in a course voice dripping with a hard urban accent.

I stated that I did not but offered him a couple of puffs off of my own. I sat up straight to get a better look at him. He was young, late twenties, but I saw the worry lines and mysterious addictions have aged his face. A face that I was certain was once boyish and fresh. His stocky frame was a mass of prison and street tattoos. Blue eyes emitted warmth and compassion from an otherwise sad and grimacing face.

He grabbed the cigarette and took a couple of puffs, said thank you, and handed it back.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"They call me Shy." He croaked.

"Shy? Really? Is that what it says on your birth certificate?"

He laughed, "No. It's Kyle."

Kyle. How Anglo. It has been so fucking long since I heard a name that wasn't Gomez, or Rodriquez, or Lopez, or didn't end in a goddamn 'ez'. I commented on his name and he stated that he was full Irish. He pulled up a right sleeve and brandished an amateurish tattoo stating the fact that he was Irish. Well, there was a green clover embroidered in there somewhere. From his mannerisms he screamed of musty truck stop bathrooms and cheap, bed-bug infested flop houses, and dingy, back-alley grottoes. He was a poster boy for a legion of American male youths who were raised in the system and knew of nothing else. A hustler and a thief, a rentboy, and a breaker of old queens hearts. I really liked him from that moment on.

We hit it off quite well. Spent the entire day yapping and joking and confiding each others secrets. We spoke of my writing, his recent break up with a girl, my past trips to Mexico, his boxing classes, my love of travel, his passion for poetry, my homosexuality...Oops. Wait. Did I just tell him that? I did. Why not. Get it out in the open.

He confessed with a straight face, like a little boy who knew he had done something wrong, but at the same time wanted to come across apathetic about it, "That's cool. I don't care. I had dudes suck my dick before."

As we ate lunch at a sidewalk cafe, he mentioned that he had no place to stay. As a fact, he strongly needed to take a bus out to a nearby Indian Reservation to retrieve his personal items.

"What were you doing on an Indian reservation?" I asked.

He took a deep breath and stated that he was shacking up with "some old gay guy". Yet, the old queen was horribly jealous. He - as many shitty faggots do - went out of his way to break up Kyle and his girlfriend so as to have Kyle all to himself, slowly feeding off his youth like a spider in a trap. Through an intricate web of lies and deception, the old queen did succeed. Kyle left after the fact that he couldn't put up with any more of the old queens shit and continuously demanding sexual acts.

I agreed to go with him to the reservation. After I paid for lunch, we hopped on a city bus and traveled the 9 miles out of town. I sat silently watching the shrubs and pipe organ cactus pass until we entered the San Xavier Reservation. Departing the bus we clomped the mile to this old queens trailer. Two white boys out in the middle of an Indian reservation...no, nothing suspicious about that. Several Native Americans did give us a scowling look, other than that we both walked unmolested and unscalped.

The trailer sat in a yard congested with dying bushes and discarded junk. As we approached the door, that crazy bitch flung open the screen and tossed Kyle's bag at him. The blue duffel landing loudly at his feet.

"I told you I don't want your mooching ass around here no more! You goddamn gay-for-pay son of a bitch!" His scrawny, bird-like face turned towards me. His pony-tail tossed like a serpent. "And who is that? Your new cum dumpster?! That bitch gonna take care of you now?"

I stood there silent as the dried up, old queen ranted. Kyle grabbed his bag and mumbled, "Let's go. Fuck this faggot." We walked away as the old queen howled obscenities under that unrelenting Arizona sun.

As we waited for the bus, I inquired, "Well, Kyle. I stay at a hotel for the moment. My apartment through housing won't be available until the 3rd of next month, but you're welcome to crash at my place."

Of course he accepted. Once back at my room, he unpacked and asked if he could take a shower. I lay on the bed, smoking a cigarette, watching some damn stupid talk show as plumes of steam issued from the bathroom while Kyle showered.

As I smashed the stub of my cigarette out into the ashtray, I heard Kyle turn the water off and dry himself. He then walked out of the bathroom completely naked and stood at the foot of the bed.

I lit another smoke and grinned, "Well..."

"I want to show my appreciation of you letting me stay here." He said in the most masculine of looks.

I gazed at his torso. The tattoos. The hairless body. The blond trail leading from his belly button to a flaccid, circumcised penis. Those muscular legs. Those abs. All were burned into my retina in a flashbulb of certainty.

After we both came from sixty-nining with one another, he said it was too hot in the room. I laughed and quipped it was his fault. Kyle mentioned that he suddenly became inspired to write some verse and asked if I didn't mind joining him out by the hotel's pool. We dressed, sat and drank sodas as Kyle scribbled class conscious pornographic prose into his ratty book.

I sat smoking a cigarette and thought, this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship...

An Afternoon in The Park

Old queen sat cross-legged on the concrete bench cackling and guffawing under one hundred degree weather. She smoked her final cigarette and continued to confess her ailments: hepatitis, tuberculosis, schizophrenic sexual habits and anything else that would make you seem interested. She would flip her long ponytail streaked with gray and husk through a toothless mouth about being a hairdresser in Hollywood before it all fell to shit.

I explained that the mental clinic in which I spent the last three hours stated that they would literally bend over backwards in helping me get an apartment. She giggled and smoothed out a wrinkle in her cargo shorts.

"Call me Rodney! Everyone does!" She would coo at any swaggering ex-con who happened to saunter by and hit her up for a smoke.

She blew cigarette smoke and halitosis into my sweating, sun-tanned face, "Oh, dearie, thank you, oh thank you, for letting me read that book of yours! Oh dearest, how I related to every paragraph you wrote."

I had loaned Rodney a proof copy of Hobosexual and wanted to gage her/his reaction. Never thought it would cause her to react in such an over-dramatic emotional manner. Her rheumy eyes leered over the torso of young Kyle, the blonde skater slash street hood who had befriended me a few days prior. He stood next to me with hip out, puffing on a borrowed rollie, thick tattooed hand rubbing across his exposed stomach. His white Irish Catholic skin glowed in the mid afternoon sun.

"I'll be getting me apartment through housing tomorrow." Rodney drooled. "Why don't you and your friend come over for lunch?"

"Sure." I agreed. I wanted to see the place anyway because it would be the same complex I would be renting in. Kyle scratched his balls as a chunky girl with jiggling boobs lumbered by.

As Rodney and Kyle went into a heated discussion of the pro's and con's of the fair sex, I recalled how fast events had occurred this past week. I had accomplished all that I had set out to do and had attained benefits of my labor quicker than I had expected. So, at the moment, I think I will remain in Tucson for a while. Weather is pleasant and the people are nice. A 100% turn from that wasteland of El Paso. I really am glad I made that final decision to leave.

"I'm thirsty. Let's go to the store and get something to drink." I offered Kyle. Rodney declined on account he was yapping with a young Mexican cholo who had recently been released from prison and decided to be a "kind ear."

Kyle and I dashed across the street talking of horror movies - he stuck on Saw, The Ring, Paranormal Activity and me on I Spit On Your Grave, The Devil's Rejects, and Salo - we entered the liquor store and the joint was empty. Unnerving, like in a horror show. Eventually, this tiny, gray haired old lady hobbles out from a hidden room and greets us.

"I'm getting a water. Get whatever you want." I said to Kyle.

"Hmmm...I don't know what I want..."

"Ohhh, I know what I want." Husked the old granny checking out my friend.

We both laughed and said, "Whaaaat?"

"A hamburger from Wendy's, that would hit the spot, don't you boys agree?" She quickly added.

"Nice save." I mumbled.

I purchased the beverages and Kyle and I returned to the park. Rodney sat alone still on that bench, tan skinned shrink wrapped over crumbling bones. She looked like a mummy. I mentioned that, she didn't think it was funny.

A truck pulled up and a kind Korean family emerged and began handing out bag lunches to the homeless. Like pigeons, the tramps flocked towards them - some running, grasping hands extended, stomachs loudly rumbling. The father Korean doled out the bag with a "God bless you" to each one as a shabby, beat drunk pissed on a religious statue behind them.

I slowly nodded my head as I witnessed this frenzy and inwardly smirked, I may be insane. But, at least my life is never dull...

That Which Is Below

Cigarette smoke swirls up to a white washed ceiling as lights from passing cars create moving patterns of phantoms. Phantoms who laugh at us.

It’s 2:30 AM and you ask me why you’re so scared all the time. And I look at you and you remind me of an Indian headdress. You’re not scared, sweetheart. Your fears ride the wind but the feathers stay.

It’s 2:32 AM and you command I write about you. There is India ink on the nightstand and a safety pin on your pillowcase and I spend the next eight minutes marking you with the proximate vocabulary of how I want you.

It’s 2:40 AM and you can’t sleep. We’ve spent the last three hours crushing the sleeping pills into ash and we’ve blown it into soda bottles of strawberry cola but you say it still tastes of resigned escapism.

It’s 2:41 AM and time is a bag of bones that drags itself over cracked asphalt. It takes too long even though we’re not waiting for anything - but we’re the liars in room 618 because you’re waiting for the forest and I’m waiting for you to get out of it.

It’s 3:00 AM and I’m reading. You grab my hands and trace the folds in my fingers where the rhymes hide. I’ve been trying to put it on hold, telling you I’ve lost them.

It’s 3:17 and it’s just another night threatening to tear at the seams to reveal a morning I can’t will into being easier for you.

Neither of us have had much luck with relationships. For years he’s been on-again, off-again with the same shitbag, the same abusive scum. I would kill just to be “on” with anybody at all. Two lonely losers lost in a night of unrelenting sadness and paranoia. At least for now, we have each other…

It's Different This Time

…"It’s different this time."

Loneliness crushed his cigarette beneath his black boot and stared at the evening sky. It was still drizzling and the night had turned cold. I could see his breath when he sighed. "Have you ever stopped thinking that you are never enough? Have you completely exterminated the thought that you don’t deserve to be loved? Have you ever felt beautiful? More importantly, my good friend, when I started talking, did you ever stop thinking that you will lose again?”

I took a long drag of my cigarette, tossed it over the bridge, and watched it falter in the wind before disappearing in the river. I looked Loneliness in the face and saw the hint of a smirk. That damn smirk. I opened my mouth to present an argument. I had none.

"Don’t struggle anymore," said Loneliness, laying a firm hand on my exhausted shoulder, on my disenchanted and disintegrating soul. "Just give in. You know you eventually will. Why fight such an innocuous inevitability?"

Bath House Blues

I haven't been to a bath house in quite a while. I felt not only a little ashamed but also self conscious of my white, pale body. As I walked through the dingy corridors searching for a cubicle to get undressed and set my stuff, the few patrons in the building were so brown and fit. Or at least, that was how I saw them.

I located a small room near the back. It had a cot which was falling apart. The yellowish foam was bursting out of the ripped seams. Several hooks on a white-tiled wall which was covered in lewd graffiti in a language I didn't really understand. The light was not from the sole fixture up near the mildew encased ceiling, but from the row of glass bricks which ran above the cot. The entire room smelled of damp clothes, bleach, and sweat.

I undressed, folded my clothes, placed them on my shoes, and slid them under the cot. Wrapping a towel around my waist, I wandered out into the dark halls. Several of the doors to other cubicles were open revealing empty, sad darkness. No one was hardly there at this time of the day. Just us creepy creeps, I reckon.

As I turned a corner in the dank maze, I caught glimpse of a naked man lounging on his bed. He didn't seem old - maybe in his mid-thirties - languidly stroking his flaccid penis. His skin was smooth and copper colored - the way I prefer. Our eyes met and he smiled. More like grinned. The face lined up into a ghastly mask of twisted evil. Like the face of a tortured man. I continued walking, ignoring what I saw.

Casually strolling through the dingy, moist halls - above me mighty pipes hissed and gurgled - I made my way to the steam room. Dark and lurid. Barely discernible through the mist, I noticed two phantoms sitting on the tiled bench, gazing vapidly into space. Not moving, afraid to call attention to one another. It made me depressed. I sat alone on the other side off the room, removed my towel and relaxed. The door flung open and a young man in his early twenties walked in. Tall, handsome and with a scrawny physique. He plops down near me on my side and casually begins to fondle his drooping testicles. Then a flood of pudgy, grey haired vampires entered, flocking around him to devour their prey. I sighed, wrapped myself in my wet towel and strolled over towards the secondary sauna. That one didn't use steam so as you could at least see from one side to the next.

I sat alone for a bit. An obese man wandered in, lay on the bench opposite me and fell asleep. I sat thinking why I was here. It has passed the point where I do not even enjoy the contact of other people. For me it is bliss simply to be alone. Why? I kept asking myself why. How did I become this way in such a short time? I thought about how I wanted to just go away, far away from people and never to be bothered again.

At that moment, a short guy came in and sat a few feet away. He must've worked out, because his squat frame was in shape and he sported several tribal tattoos. I liked his hair. Shaved on the side and back, faded into short spikes on the top and black as the blackest night. We sat a few moments, I could hear him breath it was so quiet.

"Tan caliente?" He mumbled.

His timid voice shocked me out of my pensive revelry. Was I horny? Not as such. I just wanted to relax and think.

"Poco." I grinned. "Y tu?"

His thick hand reached over and landed on my right thigh, slowly slithering up until it wrapped around my penis. He casually stroked it. I couldn't get hard, but he slid over, bent down and placed my dick in his mouth. My hand caressed his broad, muscular back. I began to get paranoid at not being able to get an erection. He began to suck with gusto. That did it. My cock shot straight up. I reached down under his towel and messaged his foreskin over his engorged head. My fingers sticky from his precum. This guy was sucking and sucking good. I began to get so hot, sweat was beading down my face. Shit! It was good! Never had I'd been blown like that. After a few minutes, I stood up and splattered semen onto the wet tiled floor. I looked down at him, smiled. He sighed happily then got up and walked out.

I returned to my cubicle and lay down. Wow. I really wasn't feeling it. I wanted to go but I actually enjoyed lying there. Alone. With the door closed. An hour must've passed as I lay there swimming in depressed thoughts of loneliness battling with the want of solitude. I felt truly ugly. And not just in the physical sense, but emotional. Silently I screamed at how much I wanted to simply die. To end this mortal coil...all this angst, and paranoia, and doubt, and tension. I wondered if anyone had died in a bath house by suicide? How could I do it? Being the only white ass in the joint, death by gang rape, I mused.

Fuck! I shot up, wrapped the towel around me and headed back to the steam room. I sat in the murk and as I glanced to my left, I noticed some old, fat guy fucking that young man, his long feet rhythmically bouncing above the fat guy's shoulders, toes curled. Several ancient queens formed a semi-circle around them, tugging at their withering genitals as they watched the show. I sighed and stared down at the semen splotched floor. This shit is sad. There was a time when I sought out the bad in life, the over the top, the unseen, the outcast. Now I am becoming prudent. Detesting it. Or maybe not.

I felt a hand slither down my spine. Looking up, a skinny guy in his mid-twenties with classical good looks was smiling down on me in the mist. Wordlessly, he sat next to me, leaned in and began kissing me. As his tongue brushed my teeth, I thought how many cocks have been inside that mouth today. Millions? I reached down and fondled his short penis under his towel. He began to breath harder. He gently grabbed the back of my head and guided it towards his waiting crotch. Why not? I thought. I gave him the best I could which I guess worked because within minutes he was squirting semen across my tongue. I spat the matter onto the floor and as I was getting up to leave, he pulled me down next to him and said in broken English, "Hold me for a while...please."

We sat there not uttering a word embraced in a bath house surrounded by perverts and sex fiends and cockjunkies of all shapes and sizes and my eyes began swelling in tears and my heart sank as I came to the unmentionable conclusion that the way I was feeling - all that self loathing and doubt - I wasn't the only one. I wasn't the sole specter walking this world who was too afraid to reach out and touch someone in the paranoia of being rejected and hurt. To be simply held by another from someone who actually wanted to reciprocate.

We both remained entwined with one another, our breathing calming us, each others heart beats ticking away, counting down when this moment of wondrous, beautiful togetherness would end. He eventually stood and walk away. Not saying a word.

I remained silently on the bench surrounded by the gulps and slurps of random, broken lust.

I don't want to be alone...

the Death of Romance.

I knew today would be a good day when I stood in the mirror and slid my undershirt over my head, backwards.

It’s so hard to think that every single day you want to take a blade to your throat, but you never end it.

He was in my shirt and boxers in the other room, cup of coffee steaming in both hands. Like every movie you’ve ever seen.

It was another day and I couldn’t help but see them blurring together, him standing in that light, right before the doorjamb of the bathroom, his toes hugging the thick carpeted floor.

He looked so damn perfect I almost stayed. But I couldn’t.

I kissed his cheek as I passed, placing my hand quickly on his hip as I did, refusing his touch as I passed. He stopped and watched me walk away. He never does that.

He liked to watch me shave and would always be excited when I accidently nicked the skin on my neck. He liked to see the thick red dot smeared on the blade then mixing with the perfectly clear water from the tap.

He always remembers our first date, when I actually asked him out and picked him up and held the door and his chair for him. And my ugly thrift shop shirt, white with a kind of floral pattern, button up with short sleeves rolled up like I was from the fifties. I guess that’s why he liked me.

I remember his body playing with mine, allowing itself to be felt and held and covered and riddled with sweat. I remember his kisses and his sweet stare, the way he looked in my eyes as I enlarged myself inside of him.

He knew I was destined for disaster, I just wish I’d seen it first. His coffee once a day, to wake up, was diminished in the eighty or so ounces I drank a day. Plus a pack of cigarettes. And six or so beers to end the day. But he never complained about the smell of my clothing, the way the smoke clinged to it. He never questioned my alcohol and nicotine breath catching his in the small moments we had time to kiss.

So why haven’t you done it yet? Just killed yourself? What keeps you here?

I didn’t have an answer so instead I kissed his forehead and headed to the kitchen to make myself a breakfast of black coffee. He asked if he was the reason and I couldn’t answer that either, so I slapped his ass and told him I’d see him later.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d never thought about it until he mentioned it.

These Words.

My words have left me. I feel emptied and drained. The walls of this well are no longer moist with feeling and are already beginning to ache with the pain of drying. I wish the words would come back. They seem the be the most constant of remedies. the most effective of therapies. But I am an empty well that nobody visits anymore. Nobody visits you when you are no longer nourishing. Nobody wants to travel only to find emptiness; scream into you, only to hear their own voice echo off your aching walls. But I am going to be patient. My walls are not weak. They’re stone-strong and bruised. maybe I needed this draining, this emptying. maybe in time rose-scented water will fill up this body and every word I speak will be floral and beautiful, my scent kissing each passing cheek. 

I'm Tickled Pink...

To fully enjoy this report, please play the video during the following. Thank you. - the management.

Woke up in the hotel room with a shock of paranoia. I grabbed the phone and called Primavera, inquiring if they had any bunks. "Yes, we do." Oh happy day! Damn that was simple! After giving the voice my social security number, he then informed me that I was on a bedding list for yesterday and since I never showed up, I was marked as awol and cannot return for 30 days. In my mind I was screaming what the fuck as I calmly explained that the only thing I had signed up for since my arrival in Tucson last Friday was for housing. The voice stated, now that he looked over whatever paper work was in his hand, that what i stated was true and that I needed to come to the shelter at one in the afternoon for processing.

Checked out of the hotel, stopped for coffee downtown and made my way to the southside of Tucson to Primavera Men's Shelter. It hadn't changed much. A huge corrugated iron building housing 200 men on any given night. The building is centrally located with many shops, convenient stores, and fast food chains nearby. Unlike the mission in El Paso, Primevera is exceptionally clean and the staff are not only helpful but very positive. A far cry from the vindictive, hope-draining, soul crushing staff in El Paso.

After being process and receiving a bunk, mostly I sat around smoking and chatting with fellow residents. The first was Dakota - or "Cota" - a handsome, early twenties wing nut. His shaven head, blue eyes, black goatee, and slim body made you forget that he was nuttier than squirrel shit. Another was a small, white guy who's name I had forgot. But the aura of late night truck stop restrooms, back alley tricks, and flea-bag hotel whoring clung to him like semen on a pedophiles hands. After he bummed a smoke, the rough con look of him melted away as his inner faggot began to emerge. Lastly, there was a tall, thin black guy in his early twenties who definitely had the gift of gab. Very good looking, but there was pain and sorrow deep down in those big, brown eyes.

Dinner rolled around and I sat in the cafeteria eating as a slew of hobos around me devoured their meal like famished hyenas. It was some sort of gloop. Bread, broccoli, mystery meat, and gravy all mixed in together and surprisingly good. I even went back for seconds.

After dinner and after more smoking and chatting with my hobosexual friends, I lay on my cot and thought of what am I to do? I have already signed up for public housing through Primavera in which the caseworker stated that an apartment would be available in two weeks. I will save money for furniture and clothes - I definitely need new clothes! I like Tucson. It's small yet hip and progressive. And a thriving art community. Not anything like that laughable shit that was being passed off as art in El Paso. However, if Tucson does not agree with me, Los Angeles is always just a forty dollar bus trip away...

LOADS!!

It's movie time, children. I love old, independent films like this one sent to me by a friend. He thought it must of paralleled my penchant for straight street boys who have sex for money. Now, I'm going to share it with you, a little piece of celluloid nugget from a time gone by. Enjoy.

Some Day Soon..

As the late afternoon sun bathed the desert in a blinding yellow glow, I trudged from my hotel room at The Quail to Jack in the Box for some cheap dinner. Someone had just ordered thirty fucking tacos just as I arrived, so the three tweekers behind the counter where dashing around like chickens with firecrackers up their butts. Waiting for my order, old haggish woman wonders off the streets and starts drinking soda from the self serve dispenser. She did not have a cup, she slurped loudly with lips on tap. I looked away in apathy and dwelled on the days events.

The mystery on why Primavera wasn't answering their phone was revealed - their entire phone system is down. I learned this when I decided to visit their main offices. I spoke to a caseworker who processed me into their database via a shitload of paperwork. Being as insane as I apparently am, the caseworker at the main offices offered a plethora of services. I've said it once and I'll say it again, when you are homeless, you get a bunch of free shit thrown at you. I signed up and applied for one of their housing programs - it will take some time, but at least I am in their files.

I have decided that tonight will be the last night at this hotel. Tomorrow morning I will contact Primivera (the shelter) and attempt to get a bunk or I will stay at the Tucson Mission. Most likely I will sleep outside, but that is the fate that I have made for myself. remind me to change my socks, they are really beginning to smell.

On my way back to the hotel with my greasy burger and over boiled fries, I stared up into that big blue advance of post twilight sky, took a deep breath, and smiled. Things will work out...they always do. As I strolled down the sidewalk crawling with little lizards and cracked out hookers, I hummed Brazil to myself to lighten my mood...

Tucson.

And so here I am flat on my rusty dusty in the teeming oasis of Tucson, Arizona.

I had left El Paso with high hopes and stirrings of esoteric nostalgia, but as the old bard says "You can never truly go back to where ya been." Ain't that old fuck telling the truth.

Departed El Paso in a sandstorm and spent the next six hours listening to this bloated tweeker from San Diego spin horrid tales loudly for all to hear. He sat two seats back and the old tramp who was relocating from Florida to Washington kept mumbling "Shut the fuck up, wyoncha?" In which said tweeker continued his tirade using fuck after every other word. "I hid my fuckin' dope in the fuckin' fender of my fuckin' car when the fuckin' cops rolled up on me and fuckin' nailed me for a fuckin' shotgun I kept in the fuckin' back trunk." Ugh.

So, made it to fuckin' Tucson late, around fuckin' 12:30 in the fuckin' morning...ahem, sorry...and was saddened that not only they moved the station from downtown to the edges of the city, but there was nary taxi one waiting around. No big woop, I am used to this. I huffed it downtown dragging my little suitcase on wheels to the center of Tucson clack-clacking on the sidewalk. My intention was to get to the city bus terminal and make my way up to Oracle. It is widely known that there are a string of cheap hotels to stay in. Once at said terminal, and it being late, I missed the last bus by ten minutes. Okay. Off I went into the hot, muggy night. Found a reasonable hotel once I made it to Oracle Ave. (only sixteen short blocks, really) and after being checked in by the sleepy Hindi owner, I made my way to a convenience store for water and snacks.

One thing about Tucson: All the whites and Hispanics are spun out tweekers and all the blacks are on the hustle. And I thought Mexican hookers were ghastly, they do not compare with the flobby boobied beasts clomping up and down the Miracle Mile. Everyone wanted to fuck with the white guy. I guess living that pampered life the last four years had taken my street edge off. Need to get that back.

The following morning, I called Primavera men's shelter at nine o'clock as specified to attempt to get a bunk. For fifteen minutes that phone rang. Nothing. I tried three other times. At least answer the phone to tell me no beds!

Giving up, I set out to check out the downtown area. Great. Everything was closed on Saturday. Boo! I hung out in front of the public library to smoke and ask the general hobo population on the Primavera thing. Hell, what a knot of snooty, uninformative asses. Or maybe the fact that I looked like an undercover cop? I walked around downtown, mostly hipster bistros, art stores, and fusion restaurants. Returning to the hotel, I decided to nap before checking out this Folk Festival the barista at the cafe I had breakfast in told me about.

The Folk Festival was interesting, catering to the Sante Fe Art fetishes and mostly kids. I left to look for a drink, sure as shit needed one. I found a bar and had a ten dollar martini. The smug hipsters and short wearing college types gave me the jitters so I made my way to IBT's, Tucson's gay bar.

Typical American fag set up: crowded with screeching, gesticulating queens who sized everyone up on material gain. I really needed to find my ass a dive bar. But, Tucson went through some kind of renaissance, so all dive establishments have been wiped off the face of the planet or taken over by e-smoking hipsters. I simply returned to the hotel and watched Will Smith in I am Legend.

Next morning, I tried calling Primavera again. No answer. Went online and checked that I had the right number. Six websites all had the same digits I did. Maybe they think hobos don't need help on the weekend? Will go to their main offices this Monday morning. Need to act fast, this hotel is eating away my funds...

Days Gone By

My bus leaves for Tucson, AZ at five this afternoon. Here I sit at the Percolator Cafe in downtown El Paso for the last time. Yes. The last time! When I arrived three years ago I was shocked and saddened that all the good people I had known left for other destinations: San Antone, Austin, San Francisco, Tampa, other exotic countries. What were left was the dullest, most uninteresting lot of characters I could ever meet. And yet I stayed in a futile attempt to be responsible. I even left briefly to Tijuana on a miss-matched encounter to pursue a dead internet relationship which failed miserably and I still came back. It got worse. For me, anyway. To be certain, I had met a few people, yet they were never interested in staying on a close friendship basis, we still remain uninvolved friends via the internet. Not enough so to warrant sticking around.

I am quite excited on finally ridding myself of this insidious desert. I never liked the climate or the ignorant people. I will not return. There is really nothing to return to.

I remember back to yesterday, my last day in Juarez: A light wind rustled through green trees as I sat on a concrete bench munching on two burritos picadillo. As burly Mexican workers busied themselves constructing the various machines for the upcoming Cinco de Mayo celebration, lithe rentboys darted about through the dappling shade as the old men chased them. A stray dog, scrawny and with a look of utter sadness in its eyes stared at me as I ate. I threw him my scraps in which he devoured.

A smiling woman approached vending delicious packets of chopped fruit. I stated that I just ate and would have rather ate the fruit instead of those ill prepared burritos. She smiled and moved on.

While I watched the ever flowing stream of men and boys enter the Park’s restroom – a dark and vile place where willing cocks go unsucked under the lazy eye of the lounging attendant – a great gust blew plums of gritty dust across the vast park. A wave of absolute depression consumed me. Why am I leaving…again? Why am I here in the first place? I felt so severed – so utterly alone.

Here I am leaving a locale where I will not miss or be missed by no one. Under that sunny, azure Mexican sky, I felt so cold inside. I sat and pondered how I am literally throwing myself onto the streets once again to live in an existence of distrust, aloofness, and constant sorrow. I attempt to alleviate the decision by thinking that it is not how I get there, but where I wind up. That is the disturbing part – where am I to wind up? I am coming to the sinking acceptance that I truly am getting too old for this life. Too tired of living out of a suitcase from exotic locale to grungy grotto.

Though I have formed another wonky plan for this trip, I constantly weigh the other lines to travel down. Would I stay in Tucson and settle if they offer me a place through Public Housing? Will I continue on East to a far away tropical island? Or will I try to woo an ever suffering specter in Los Angeles to stay with him and pursue a fantasy inspired relationship with someone who I barely know?

Well, I have made the final step to go. Leave Mexico forever or at least the foreseeable future. I really don’t want to come back, anyway. There is nothing there for me. Though I will miss the open-mindedness on sexuality, the annoying attributes have out weighed the positive. Everyone staring in hostile contempt at my white gringo ass when I enter a public space. Rentboys banging on your door at all hours begging for pesos or being the obligatory free drinks guy every time I enter a bar really taxes ones enjoyment of the situation. Plus, my Spanish is not that good and I do miss having intelligent face-to-face conversations with people.

So, buckle up and see what fate will hurl at you, son – you made your bed. Sleep in it…