no reason. no reason at all

Couldn't sleep and the gin had worn off. I pulled on my clothes and walked out into a still night. The only sound was the distant barking dogs and the thumping of the ranchero music issuing from passing cantinas.

It was chilly. The cold winds of fall had already began to blow grit and tiny swirls of loose garbage into eddies catching in doorways of crumbling adobe masonry. With hands in my black hoodie in a vain attempt to thwart the dirty, cold air, I strode quickly over the smashed sidewalks sidestepping fresh feces and urine puddles. I walked with purpose, I knew exactly where I was going.

The park lay six short blocks from my sordid flat. I had to dash by the Hotel Juarez with its peeling paint and shattered windows, ignoring the catcall whistles from plump hookers. They writhed with tiny hands on obese hips, flashing of silver teeth with intentions that would terrorize any homosexual to the core.

I cross Calle Obregon and the park lay ahead - dark and menacing with island pools of dim yellow light. The trees were all black skeletal hands grasping up into a twinkling navy sky. Already I notice shadows lurking in the night. Silhouettes lumbering between the dim lights of the metal lamp posts and the decaying gazebo which commanded the center of the park. Here and there the red cherry of a cigarette broke the monotony.

I, too, lit a cigarette and exhaled up into the dusty, dark night.

"You gotta smoke?" Was asked in Spanish.

I turned. Standing under a street lamp with hands in pockets and hip hooked stood a wiry, young man. Black, shiny hair parted down the middle hung limply obscuring his face in malevolent shadow. A well worn green t-shirt and frayed, baggy jeans were draped over his bony, copper-colored torso.

I approached him, fishing a cigarette out of the pack, handing it over. He mumbled gracias or something like that and then asked for a light. When he lit up, his face was blasted clear in an orange flash. Young. A somewhat malnourished look with the faint hint of acne scars. It was a moment, but it was enough. I turned to hunt better choices, but he stopped me with a "You live in El Paso?"

"No." I croaked. "I live here."

"I have a room nearby. You want to be with me?"

The desperation in his voice is what lured me. The wanting. Of money for food to be certain. More likely, for a habit. I took a long drag and said sure, He silently began walking. I followed with my hands in my hoodie.

We turned a corner down a dark, quiet street. Accompanying the wind, which caused the flotsam of discarded plastic bags to sing, was the buzzing sound of a monstrous conductor attached to a bent light pole. A myriad of thick power cables webbed outward in every direction. He stopped at a steel door under the conductor and with a jingling of keys and a push of his thin shoulder opened the door.

We silently walked across a small, walled courtyard filled with shadowy heaps of junk to a row of ragged wooden screen doors. He opened one, stepped in and flick on a light. Cockroaches scattered across the bare concrete floor littered with cigarette butts and candy wrappers. A soiled mattress with rumpled bedding took up most of the room. The green walls were grimy and scuffed. A rickety bureau sat in a corner, the drawers half open cascading in waded clothes. There was no bathroom, no kitchen. The room smelled of sour linens and dead bugs.

He stood in the middle of the room. In the light I got a better look at him. He was attractive in a rough way. Full lips and the sparse black hairs of a moustache. His eyes, though. His eyes projected such fierce anger and sadness mixed with insanity.

I stepped closer. He unbuttoned his jeans and slid them to his calves, He wasn't wearing any undershorts. I gawked at his penis. It was...huge. Even flaccid, it hung a good five inches. He took my hand and placed it on his sagging balls.

"You like it?" He smiled with small, stained teeth.

"It's very big." I complimented as his organ swelled in my stroking palm.

I mechanically dropped to my knees and placed the monstrous, uncircumcised fucker in my mouth and began slowly stroking the shaft with my tongue. Finding a rhythm, he thrust in a corkscrew motion as I slobbered and sucked with my mouth, his thin brown hand placed on the back of my head, guiding me. Eventually, his breathing quickened and he yanked his glistening organ out and squirted ropey streams of semen onto the dirty, concrete floor.

I stood and he pulled his jeans up, flinging the residue off his hand and wiping what was left on the tattered blanket.

I lit a cigarette, offered him one. He asked for twenty dollars and I agreed, slapping the folded bill into his scrawny hand with dirt under the nails. We shook hands under the conductor and I made the lonely, silent walk back to my apartment filled with sadness and depression.

The following day, I purchased an airline ticket to San Diego, California. For no reason. No reason at all.

halting on a corner

A vast expanse of dusty, crumbling structures made up of red brick and adobe sprawled out into a smog-choked horizon. Many seemed to still be standing from the early 1900’s, deteriorating slowly under a brutal, desert sun.

Ciudad Juárez definitely was not a tourist attraction. Few curio shops catered to the international visitor. Juárez Avenue was the main drag which began at the international bridge of the Rio Grande and stretched sixteen blocks south, lined on both sides with a few discos, small cantinas, and fly infested restaurants. To the constant tune of a mambo beat, taxi drivers sat inert in the intense sun, shop owners languidly read newspapers, and mangy dogs zigzagged between pedestrians who clogged the cobblestone sidewalks.

I made my way south on Juárez Avenue to the towering Guadalupe Cathedral, a pile of ancient stone which dated back several centuries. From what I gathered, Juárez sprang up around the cathedral like growing fungus and spread outward.

Turning on Avenida 16th de Septiembre, I approached the fortress of worship down a dusty sidewalk. As I crossed towards a crowded plaza in front of the church, my senses were on alert.

Encompassing a large, concrete square - Plaza las Armas, it was called - sat a multitude of people on long, stone benches under sporadically placed trees doing nothing but socializing as they had for countless years.

It was near mid-afternoon and the sun beat down in shimmering heat upon the concrete thoroughfare. A legion of shoeshine boys fluttered through the masses as vendors sold flavored ice and sunglasses. Two young men did a clown act at the base of the cathedral stairs to an applauding and laughing audience. The stalls were an arabesque of multihues selling all types of candy colored curious. The air wafted with smells of spoiled garbage, automobile exhaust, and seared taco meat. Local families strolled with their giggling children, bewildered tourists gawked, and in cooling shadows a band tootled and twanged music indigenous to Sinaloa. I stood for a moment and appreciated this idyllic scenario of Mexican life which took place against a backdrop of the cathedral’s mammoth, twin-spires topped by neon crosses.

Interwoven among this picturesque scenery was the clandestine hum of rentboy activity and the old farts in Stetsons who loved them, squatting in the roasting shade, shivering with lust. I knew this type of place all too well.

As on cue, I was swarmed over by guides strictly on the hustle:

“Taxi, Meester?”

“Pussy women? Titty girl?"

“Massage?”

A group of stern and rugged campesinos peered down at me from a rustic, graffiti splattered gazebo in the middle of the plaza with far away eyes filled with curiosity for the wandering foreigner.

Covered in grungy clothes, the gaggle of stoic men waited silently and patiently for the sun to set and make the run across the border. At the base of the gazebo, lonely queens idly sat and lingered for the chance to snag one of those studs as countless, cheap hotels lay nearby.

I stood there taking it all in when a young man hobbled on crutches up to me. As he approached, he wore a forced smile upon his face.

He introduced himself and said his name was Edgar. He was a young man with shaggy, brown hair. His face was handsome yet held a visage of some unknown and long suffering. He was dressed nicer than the other beggars, so I assumed he wasn’t. The crutches were fairly new and gave me the idea his malady was recent.

“Hello there, Edgar.” I grinned, attempting to be cordial. “What happened, man? What’s with the crutches?”

His face grimaced in pain and mumbled something about having a hard time standing. After purchasing us both a soda, I invited him over to a vacant spot on the concrete benches.

Again, I lightheartedly inquired what was wrong with his legs. He stared at the passing multitude, took a sip of his drink for dramatic effect, and began his tale of woe.

With a determined look deep into my eyes he said, “I was walking home from work two days ago - you know, out by Parque Independencia. A squad car pulled up and two officers began harassing me. They had me sit on the curb as they began going through my backpack. I had nothing in there but my uniform, right? They asked for my ID - which I had. It was current - but, this one pendejo accused it as being fake.” He took another sip of his soda. “They started all kinds of shit that I looked like some runner for the cartel they had been looking for and right in front of me cut my ID up with a knife. Then, they threw me into the back of the squad car.”

“Damn. What happened next?” I asked.

His eyes became misty, “They drove me out to the middle of nowhere, man. Still cuffed, they dragged me out behind this building and had me take my shoes off. I was sitting in the dirt when they took their batons and began beating my feet.”

He lifted one pant leg and his skin was mottled with large purple and blue bruises. His tan skin ashy from scratch marks.

I scowled. “Goddam!”

Edgar rolled his pants back down and continued, “They threw me in the back of the car again and drove me out to my neighborhood and dumped me about six blocks from my house.

With the utmost contempt peppered with fear, Edgar eyed two police patrols meandering through the Plaza - one a hulking, apish looking man and the other a stone faced, dumpy woman. At that moment I could not help feeling Edgar’s emotions. I loathed them, too.

“Wow…that’s tough.” I mumbled. I mean, what could I say?

“That’s not all of it.” He spat, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “As I was walking home - the best I could - another patrol car cruises up and they started their shit. I explained what happened, right? They laughed, accused me of not having an ID after I had told them what happened - threw me in the back of the car and drove me around awhile - all along not saying a word. Once at a substation, they put me in a cell and beat my legs as other prisoners silently looked on. It was horrible!”

As tears began to trickle down his brown cheeks, I asked, “Then what did they do?”

“They let me go.” He stated flatly. “They drove me a block to my place and let me go.”

Edgar sat there for a moment, silently reminiscing the terrible ordeal. He gulped another mouthful of coke, “The next day, I told my neighbor and she gave me these crutches. I took a taxi over to the police station on 8th and tried to explain what happened. The receptionist just said it was my word against the cops. And they would believe the cops - since I had no ID. After that, I went to the Human Rights building and tried to explain it to them - but, I got the same response. Man, I tell you, amigo - you gringos have no idea how fucked up it is for us here.”

Indeed.

He stuttered out the words, “I was hoping…since I’d lost my job because of this, if you could help me with any pesos? I haven’t got anything and,” He jerked his chin down to his legs, “I don’t think I’ll be working anytime soon.”

I stood up and took out my wallet. Removing two twenty dollar bills, I placed them into Edgar’s hands.

Edgar’s eyes misted up again, “Gracias, amigo. Mucho gracias.”

He excused himself to return to his apartment and use the money to pay rent. As I watched Edgar hobble away, it was my first taste of the dire circumstances in which the cartels and the local police were suffering onto the people of this city.

The sun ultimately boiled away into night and I walked out of the plaza. As twilight fell, the downtown area burst into a carnival atmosphere. All types of crazy hipsters assembled wearing woolen, Peruvian ski caps and hip-hop paraphernalia and pacheco haircuts in every doorway and on every corner.

I strolled down Avenida 16th de Septiembre and passed tiny, sweltering carts where they prepared churros and cut them for me from sizzling grease baskets. I crunched voraciously from a bag I purchased as I planned to cover the Mexican night ahead on the cracked and trash strewn sidewalk.

Wandering aimlessly, I rambled down the crazy hooker infested street of Calle Mariscal and pushed and dodged through the phantom night of activity.

Mariachis stood on lamp lit corners or in front of closet-sized cantinas and blew beautifully into shiny trumpets. Taxis crawled along pot-holed pavement, sweaty American perverts from El Paso aimed for their Dark Prey as children huddled hungry in the shadows with wary eyes. Transvestite prostitutes minced through the night with their coiling fingers of Come On as young, heterosexual Aztec men passed. The youthful drunks stumbled with flashing smiles and gave the trannies the once over.

Ranchero Music drummed from a thousand neon-splashed cantinas. Down mysterious side streets, antique and crippled buses built in the 1950’s waddled in mud holes, flashes of fiery-yellow transvestite whoredress in the dark, in shadowed alcoves assembled pimps and pushers of flesh and junk who leaned against walls of naked mortar. Pretty boys passed, every age. I turned to watch them, far too beautiful, my God - they smiled back a smile that was a siren which could sink any ship, cabron.

Macho men dressed in flashy vaquero gear or grimy rags with huge, floppy straw hats entered and exited smokey bars occupied with howling people, drinking Indio from tall water glasses, coolly smoking mota in crumbling alcoves, shamelessly pissing into open sewage ditches along dark alleys. Whores by the hundreds lined along the adobe walls of Orizaba Street and in front of their dank, sweet scented cells of disease, beckoning coyly as I passed.

A scrawny prostitute with long, straight raven hair approaches and flashed me a smile of silver-capped teeth.

“Oye, baby, want to fuck?” She beams.

I look down and noticed she was several months pregnant.

“Oh, mami, it looks like someone beat me to it.” I smiled as I passed her.

She laughed heartily and calls at me, caressing her stomach with petite, brown hands, “For you, one price for two, papi.”

Arm in arm, packs of young Mexican men recklessly strolled down the main whorestreet of Mariscal, black hair hung limply over their eyes - borracho – as long legged women of calling in tight yellow-blue-red dresses grabbed at them and cocked their pelvises in, pulling at their shirts and pleading. The boys drunkenly wobbled and smiled shyly away as blank-faced cops patrolled the thoroughfare on little bicycles, rolling invisibly over broken sidewalks.

I eventually stopped on a corner under a flickering marquee and lit a cigarette, soaking all this wonderful madness in. With an optimistic grin, I realized with certainty that Juárez would make a mighty fine home for a while.

Sissy Boy Slap Party

"...Boys, boys, boys...I turn my back, and there you are...slapping each other again. I couldn't trust any of you for a minute..." 

Write on!

Writer. Homosexual. Junkie. Murderer. This will be my next novel. I might have not begun writing it, yet...but at least I have a cover! (Still working on a title, too.) I'm quite excited, this will be my first work that isn't based on my personal biographical material.
It's all set and I am ready. I have accumulated scores of notes and references. The angle is, it will be related as a dramatic story and not simply a dry, documentary account. I hope I do Joan and old Bill justice...

Don’t people write bestsellers on napkins?

I’m beginning to think he stood me up. Again. I made a reservation for two and I paid for it. It wasn’t cheap, either, not on a writer’s salary. I’ve been waiting here in this lobby for three days straight now, in the only suit I own – which I purchased at a second hand store, anyway - notebook open, waiting. Waiting for my Muse. I think perhaps I should change. I think perhaps I should check out of this place (and into a different kind of place)

It’s not like it’s anything spectacular, anyway. My room overlooks Highway 10. I’ve got a balcony over Highway 10 with a view of a vast New Mexican prairie. Discarded plastic trash bags play among the yellowed brush as a row of biscuit-colored mountains lay against an azure horizon.That’s not right. But I could live with that, if he’d only show up! I could draw the curtains and forget about the balcony! I don’t know if he’s coming, but I’ll give it another day or two. Call me naïve, but he will come, he always comes, just not when it’s convenient for me or in accordance with our pre-arranged plans.

I’m sitting in the lobby of a chain hotel. Patrons laze around with magazines and pastries as if they have nothing better to do. Not me, I’m tending to serious business. The concierges (two glorious old queens) keep asking me about him, since I’d told them what I’m up to. I state I’m waiting for a man. That’s all I said at first. Howerever they keep asking, as if it’s twenty questions. As if it’s the most fun they'd had in weeks. It’s fun for them because they’re making fun of me, at my expense. I think they think he’s either a prostitute or an imaginary friend because yesterday, when they asked me his name, I said I didn’t know. Well, I don’t. But hey! Lots of people have sex with people they don’t know the names of so I don’t see why it’s so different to be in a long-term (if somewhat erratic) relationship with a man whose name you don’t know. Go on, judge me.

I haven’t written anything in weeks. I keep trying. My own imagery bores me. My conceits bore me. They’re stale, they’re moldy, they stink. They beg to be composted. I keep comparing seashells to fists when really they’re nothing alike. I keep making religious pronouncements. Those don’t belong in stories (unless you’re Rimbaud, and even then) It’s this thirst for grandiosity. It’s exhausting. I’ve been feeling hollow, dissociated, like I’m out of my body but I’m not anywhere else. And my Muse, who knows where he is? Perhaps he’s found another writer. Maybe even a painter! Maybe he’s posing for his portrait right now and that’s why he’s so late for our date. Or maybe he’s a musician and they’re in the middle of a duet. Composing together. Perhaps he’s his muse, too.

Perhaps he simply desires me when I’m unavailable. Isn’t it clear to him, though? I’m always available. I could be dying. I could be on the brink of death, about to consummate my union with God once and for all and I’d hear his voice and tell the Almighty to fuck off, I'm busy.

The concierge I dislike the least is a small old queer with gray waves and gray troublemaker’s eyes. He’s mopping the putrid green linoleum diamond-shaped floor tiles and doesn’t seem to notice how putrid they are. The shape, the color, clichés, clichés.

“And how did the young man sleep?”

“Badly,” I reply, hospitably.

“Nightmares?” He asks, sort of conspiratorially, like it’s an inside joke or something. I haven’t told him anything about my dreams. “Because it couldn’t have been the pillows. I arranged them myself!”

“It was the pillows,” I jab. “My dreams were excellent.” At least this last part is true.

“My, dear, young man....” His mop stops moving and he’s looking at me and I’m looking at the floor because I’d rather look down at the putrid green diamonds then up at those blazing gray circles. “You look exhausted. Maybe you should take a nap. And put on something more comfortable. Do you have pajamas?”

That does it. Like I’m going to meet my Muse—the love of my life—in fucking jammies. Of course sometimes I can’t help it like when he shows up unexpected at two in the morning and I’m sleeping. That’s the thing about writing. Every time you sleep you’re sleeping on the job. I need a cup of coffee. Then I’m going to tell this bitch exactly what...

outlaw queen

The cold and equally bitter winds of fall wash over The City. The sky is a crisp, midnight blue speckled with pinpoint lights of long dead stars. My hands in my black jacket pockets and my shoulders hunched up to my ears, I dart around the corner of an adobe building with exposed yellow brick in a vain attempt to thwart the offending gusts.

Fucking desert, I mumble. Spitting grit from my dry mouth, squinting watery eyes. Loose trash swirls in eddies as I stride past a blue tiled wall of a whorehouse. The neon sign of the marquee had given up decades ago and the building is lit in ghastly yellow from the towering street lamp.

A gaggle of plump hookers stand leaning by the entrance. Their tight, spandex attire fail to cover their protruding love-handles, sagging guts, and cottage cheese thighs. I walk by, they smile through silver capped teeth, mutter lascivious offerings. One grabs my arm, I stop, look Imperiously down on her.

Her face is a heavily made up face of a woman of sixty five or more. The make up is applied to allude the impression she is younger. It doesn't work.

"You wanna fuck me, baby?" She quacks.

I grin, "Why would I want to that?"

"You wanna fuck me, baby?" She repeats.

I then understand that is the extent of her English, so I simply mumble no and turn to continue on my way.

"Yo no gusta." (I don't like it) I say calmly.

She glances into my bloodshot, dry eyes and smiles, asking in Spanish, "You don't like women?"

"I simply do not like prostitutes," I answer in Spanish.

"Why? We are people, you know, earning a living." She states with mounting anger. "You are no better than us."

I realize by her defensive stance on the topic, it was not her first time having this discussion with an American. Most likely with a stereotypical ugly American. However, as with me, she was missing the point entirely.

I began, smiling warmly, "I have complete respect for you and all the ladies of your ilk. With that said, my reason being, you sell a fantasy. However, every time I am propositioned by a working lady.."

At that moment, an obese slob of fifty shuffled out of the whorehouse entrance. His buttoned shirt hanging out of stained, filthy trousers. His sagging face unkempt and covered in a fine layer of grease. His salt and pepper hair receding over a large, misshapen head. He smelled like a compost heap. He actually snorted and spat a huge loogie onto the sidewalk.

I look at the old whore, then nod at the slob shuffling away down the sidewalk, "...for me, the fantasy you sell is destroyed because I know...no matter how beautiful and pleasant said girl is...someone like him just fucked her before I did."

She cackled, placing a small, wrinkled hand on my chest, "Oh, mijo, we are all clean!" Her witch-like laughing echoed against the surrounding buildings.

I smiled broad at her and said, "And I prefer men, anyway."

She actually hugged me, "Oh...I knew it! My son is un joto (is gay). Maybe you can meet him?"

I stuttered and laughed, "Maybe another time?" The very fact that an old prostitute was attempting to fix me up with her son in the middle of a Mexican slum struck me as completely and utterly surreal. I had to dodge this woman, most likely her son was a simpering, sullen drag queen who performed in some dive bar nearby. Nope.

I bid her goodnight and continued through the gathering dirt storm towards the cantina I haunt. I sat nursing a cold caguama amid cackling queens and preening vaqueros. As I lit a cigarette, a drag show on the tiny stage in the corner began. A frail thing of about twenty-two years old dressed in a black and silver glittery gown came out from behind grimy, red velvet curtains and began belting out a forlorn Mexican love ballad. I watched and mused, I wonder if that is her son? Their faces look similar. I thought sadly how rough these peoples lives are compared to our privileged existence on the opposite side of the border.

That train of thought was broken as I felt a hand slide softly across my back. I turned to see a handsome, young man smiling holding a beer glass. Clean and well dressed, he leaned over and whispered into my ear, "Mind if I join you?"

"Not at all." I replied.

Outside, the wind howled and The City continued...

brave little cells

We are both under the influence.

The effects are perhaps slightly different but we are heavily drugged none the less. It’s the city and this is what happens to people who were meant to live like vermin.

Grow up.

Your heart is a fluorescent pink and your skin is worn and see-through, like rice paper wrapped tight around your rib case, pretty boy breaking, you are so intelligent, and now you look like a terrifying lantern, your emotions lighting up the concrete walls like warped little creatures in a shadow puppet play.

And my heart goes on and off like a siren, either dead silent, cynical bitch with a second hand attitude, didn’t they love you when you were little?, or roaring like an engine out of control, the screws coming loose, and there are tears under my finger nails and the chap stick doesn’t last nearly eight hours even though it said so on the tube.

And the old naco continues to stand on the corner wailing a sad Mexican ballad that no one wants to hear…

notes

Even after I told myself to take a break from writing, I find myself jotting down detailed notes on that science fiction piece. Though I am equally passionate about the work on the Joan Vollmer story, this science fiction thing is really becoming an obsession. One angle is, I want it to be rich in history and detail, kind of like Herbert's Dune but written in the quick, action soaked cliff-hanger style of E.R. Burroughs A Princess of Mars. It's coming along nicely...

Sarkova.

Sarkota.

Sarkobba.

Sarkojaa.

Attempting to find the right sounding (and in print, look interesting) name for a primitive tribe of seven-foot tall aliens native to the planet Karkoon who resemble diamond back gorillas with four arms...basing their culture on the Yanomami People who reside in South America...

I was at the cafe yesterday and my friend Omar was thumbing through my notebooks. Reading the twenty or so pages of hand scribbled ideas, he stopped and pointed out the title "The Adventures of Colt Corrigan: Book One: Across the Galactic Lens". He asked, "This is a lot of intense stuff, do you have any ideas for sequels?"

"No." I laughed. "It began as a joke. Years ago, a friend and I were stumbling down the street drunk, talking about books and a writer's life work, and I said of all the books I pen, my most famous would probably be some cheesy take on old pulp serials. It's title will be Colt Corrigan and his Adventures Across the Galactic Lens! A mashup of Buck Rogers and 70's chop sockey kung fu movies."

I seriously believe I was foretelling my future in hindsight...

Unlike my previous work which was based on true events and I required only to transcribe from memory, writing science fiction is daunting. The work going into creating everything from names to back history to random objects and how they function...I am actually enjoying it. I realize to some, if not all of you, that this sounds naive and perhaps tripe, but this is my first attempt at pure fiction and I am seeing it as an adventure. The true battle is to not make it overtly cliche. And that is where the frustration sets in...

I rather be depressed and feel that than be hopped up on meds that suppress all emotions.

like magic

I spend my nights hunched over the keys of my laptop, tap, tap, tapping away. Words flow out of me faster than I can type them, but I try to keep up.

Tap, tap, slide to a new line.

With every new page comes a new adventure, new sights and experiences that only I can bring. Page after page, I write. Year after year, I excel.

Tap, tap, slide to a new line.

I weave my stories layer by layer, twist after tragedy, tragedy by twist. Casts a spell. Images spill from my mind onto the page. Ink envelops white in a warm embrace.

Tap, tap, slide to a new line.

The images lie in wait on the pale screen until eyes slide over them like warm butter on toast, then explode in the mind’s eye like fireworks. Vivid and bright. Altered, yet intact.

Tap, tap, slide to a new line.

Bringing with them sound, taste, smell, and touch. Maybe even confusing those senses in favor of a better picture. That’s what it’s all about. Brilliant and pure. Like magic.

flash

As her voice rang through my ears I couldn’t concentrate on just one thing. My mind drifted from where I stood, in the bright room, to a place I hadn’t been in years. I looked back throughout my life and every single choice I’ve ever made. My childhood was relived in a few short seconds; I thought of my future and what I would become.  Her voice was reverberating off my ear drums, until I finally came to continuousness, “I’ll have a medium coffee.”