Sunday, May 25, 2014

The Right to Write

Lean brown side turns - lights a cigarette. The Chinese takeout festering on the hotel end table. Half empty bottle of Fundador next to it. Cheap $15 a night joint. Earlier that morning, I went to the San Diego psychiatric clinic in lieu of my ongoing depression – couldn’t take the badgering of those damn psychiatrists anymore. Enough to drive you mad.
   We both got dressed and I walked him to the corner, pulled a couple of crumpled bills outta my pocket, handed it to him - we shook hands, parted and I headed to a cafe for a coffee.
   Shot the shit with Tomas and he was trying to convince me to stay in Tijuana. I don’t know...just don’t know. Been checking out Mexicali. Sounds real tasty. Kinda the rough edges of Juarez City but not as fucked up as Tijuana - if that makes any sense. Of course it doesn’t. How the fuck, you The Reader, can possibly ever understand?
   So, I light a Lucky and sip some coffee and eat a taco and yap in my atrocious Spanish as some naco puto eyes me from the Plaza, but I am definitely not feeling it. I have grown so cold inside. So inherently distant from the human race I don’t think I am ever coming back, you feel me? You dig what I am saying? No? Fuck you.
   I spot Saul on the corner and after a backslap and a hip handshake I cop some weed from him and we walk around the corner to his no window, single room trap and smoke that shit. Now I am already dosed up on psychotropic medication - add some chronic to the mix and I am one happy cowboy - yeehaw!
   I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle…
   We bust out onto the teeming street and that fucking Mexican sun is big and bright under a dazzling blue sky and we trump down El Revu and pour into El Caliente and hit the slots but don’t win shit. However, I got Saul by my side and to be quite honest, I sincerely believe I am falling for the boy.

- excerpt from novel in progress borrowed flesh from the first chapter, Tijuana Bebop

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