happy birthday to me.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
whore street
The area in which I worked was on the
fringes of skid row. Trash lined streets with old liquor stores and porno shops
and cut rate hotels. The throng of deviants who prowled the night were out in
full force. Junkies squealed and meth addicts howled at the yellow moon as
prostitutes of both sexes did their orchestrated ballet back and forth in front
of the Rialto Theater. Florescent shadows played along cracked walls.
“Hey, man - ya lookin’?” White boy in hip-hop clothes asked through
crooked teeth.
“Nah, I’m cool.” I kept walking.
Dark avenues packed with filthy, tattered hobos lay in their own piss
and well-dressed, hip blacks on the hustle, clenching crack rocks in quivering,
cold hands dominated the carnival atmosphere. I stealthily passed liquor stores
and blue red purple neon of porno shops which peddled it real nasty all night
with all kinds of sick junkies screaming in the back alleyways of the world.
I walked along discolored, spotted pavement and found a bar full of hip
kids and fags. I sat there at the counter savoring my beer when a middle-aged
black man - tall and rail thin - barged in and sized me up as an easy mark. He
plopped next to me on a stool and began gesticulating with over-sized, boney
hands.
“Now, what you need is a safistamacated woman.” He breathed liquor and
halitosis into my face.
I glanced indifferently over to him and croaked, “What?”
“A safistamacated woman, boy. One’ll fuck ya all night.” When he said
‘all’, his yellow eyes rolled around a bulbous, ashy head.
I mumbled fuck off or I don’t have time for your stupid shit or
something equivalent and he stared me down all gangsta and shit, but opts to
jet, leaving me to my beer. I quickly finished up, paid the man, and headed to
work.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
apocalyptic lust
A young man named Juan Carlos moved in next
to my room, asphyxiating me with futbol scores...thin and sickly and
continually fidgeting with candles and religious icons of that condescending
bitch Guadalupe, goes on and on about his novia and lack of funds to support
her...A cockroach crawls slowly up the blue chipped paint wall...I look out my
window to the hotel across the street. A dark-skinned whore of Mayan descent
with floppy breasts and discolored teeth stood in the door and asked for a
cigarette from a scrawny young man... She steps in and takes off her yellow
slip and stands naked...the young man drops his ragged pants - erection
swinging free - and lies down on the dirty bed, smoking a Delicado, hard and
waiting...
Friday, March 20, 2015
nightcrawler
I walk down
the garish arabesque neon of Juárez Avenue. Not a soul. Drunken corpse lies in
someone else’s overcoat, shiny over the dirt. Mexican cowboy a foot away
converses to Durango via cellular. Taxi drivers don’t even bother me. The wind
blows harder. Trash and dirt swirls in eddies across the street up into the
blank dark. Dirt in my eyes. Fucking desert!
I curse as I cross a street in front of
Tequila Derby - weekend be-bop joint for teenage revilers and high school
hipsters. Look down the alley. Taxi? Asked meekly. He acknowledges I require
nothing. I stop and purchase a pack of Lucky Strikes from an indigenous Mexican
Indian huddled in a cove of crumbling masonry, small television emitting black
and white images of The Simpsons in Espanola. We chat on the weather. Nasty. Muy feo.
Two queens saunter by and give me the eye as
I pass café 656. I stride up to the corner and cut down a street, hands in
jacket pockets, cigarette hanging from mouth in a real James Dean fashion, you
dig, giving the fags their B-movie production. Down a silent street. Lampposts
emit yellow glows...intermittent areas dark and foreboding with shadow-like
phantoms fluctuating within the gloom. Black dog drags something grisly and wet
in its maw. It whines and stops. Scratch. Scratch. Picks the black wet thing up
again and trots off down the dark street lined with brick and adobe houses. Was
it meat?
I light another cigarette and amble to the
corner, the wind is howling fierce. I stand under the lamp and listen to the
buzzing of the condenser. I think of Saul. I think of Hector. I think of all
the myriad things I had done the previous years.
I wish I never had left Tijuana.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
amber thoughts
4pm. At the
bar three regulars sat and sipped drinks. They sit apart. Three or more bar
stools between each of them. The leather padding on select bar stools were
cracked, exposing yellow foam underneath. Another customer entered and moved
methodically to one such worn seat. The maroon padding sighs deeply under
familiar weight.
I inclined my head toward the bartender.
Neither of us speak. I let my eyelids fall, listening. Three cubes drop into a
short glass. Trickling nectar. The slightest crackling. I inhale, a faint burn.
Scotch. Finally, soda fizzes and the glass slides across slick mahogany to rest
against my forearm. My lids flicker and I thirstily sip. Satisfied, gulps.
As I drank, I listened with one good ear. A
cue ball strikes another sphere. I reveled in the sharp, audible sound. I enjoyed
it because it permeates and resounds inside my skull. Many sounds do not. In
loudness - bustling, mingling noise - sounds don’t reach me. I hear them but
they are nonsense, a scrambled blur of meaningless racket. I enjoy this bar for
its softness of sound. Most nights the cracking of billiard balls being the
dominant utterance.
And I enjoy the regularity of my visits, how
I needn’t to verbalize. Needn’t strain my puny voice to gain what I desired.
The bar was one of the few public places I don’t avoid. Most others are loud.
Busy.
I removed my pen from my laptop satchel and
scribbled onto a soiled napkin: He sat
alone in an unfamiliar bar listening to the static of the night. A grim smile
hidden behind his shallow features. He held a glass of vodka to his lips and
hesitated. His small penetrating eyes watch the room. He liked the bar. He
liked the vodka. He liked the sound. He hated the people. He hated the smell.
He hated the loneliness. His head was a maze. He could no longer separate his
fantasies from reality. He tried, in vain, to find an anchor, yet none stood
fast. He withdrew. His faults maximized, and his skills began to minimize. His
observant, determined, independent behavior began to diminish, as a sad, cold,
foreign sense of emptiness overtook him. His sense of being was no more. He
felt empty, cold, lost. Gone.
I finished my vodka and waved to the bar
tender for another.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
class act
Later, I stumbled out of the bar into the
dank Tucson alley which smelled of rotted garbage and festering urine. The
night was halfway over. While I was in the tavern, it must had rained. The
uneven bricks of the back alley were glistening in translucent reflection. I
retrieved a cigarette out of my pocket with intoxicated, numb fingers, lit up.
I leaned my head back and blew great plumes of smoke up into a dark and cloudy
sky. The undulating clouds parted here and there so the stars could look down
and judge me.
“Fuck you.” I mutter and almost fell. I held
onto a lamp post covered in flyers to support myself. The beers and tequila
shots were taking their toll. I was truly screwed. Truly damned.
“Hey.” A voice out of the darkness hissed.
“You spare a smoke?”
Goddammit, I don’t want to be bothered. I
want to get home. First, I gotta piss.
I didn’t answer the phantom and wobbled over
to the filthy dumpster, whipped out my junk, and relieved myself. Cigarette
precariously dangling from numb lips, I zipped up and half-assed a scan for
police patrols. On one end of the alley, a group of loud frat boys stumbled
past gregariously as they often are.
“Can I bum a smoke off you?” The voice asked
again.
I gazed over to a dark corner filled with
shadows and dread. He slithered out of the inky blackness in grungy clothes and
frayed sneakers. His blond hair was disheveled and he was sniffling. The boy
was on something. It was his eyes. His eyes gleamed in the half-light, burning
with sadness and despair and evil as hell addiction.
“What?” I croaked.
I felt like Fagin all hunched over and bitter
and shitty.
“Do...you...have...an...ex-tra...cigarette?”
He asked slow and drawn out as if speaking to a retard. Funny thing, he was.
I mumbled ‘Oh yeah’ or something like that
and handed him one. He took it in slender fingers, dirt under the nails. He was
slight of build and I wondered the last time he ate.
“So, what are you looking for?” He asked
coyly.
Ah yes, the standard ice-breaker question of
every male prostitute in every alley of the world.
“Death.” I grunted.
“Oh don’t say that. Life is good. It is full
of great times.” He smiled broadly.
I blearily gazed at him and saw him in a new
light. Here standing in front of me was a beautiful, homeless youth and in lieu
of all his hardships he currently endured, he remained positive. I was like
that once. Before being beaten down by lovers and friends and trust and mishap
decisions and misguided circumstance. Before my mind went and became toxic and
corrosive in embittered self-loathing.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, pointing towards
the 24 hour café on the opposite end of the alley. “I need to get some food in
me to suck up this alcohol.”
“As a matter of fact, I am hungry.” He
stated, smiling. “Been drinking, huh? You drink a lot?”
“It’s all I have left and even that
proclivity is becoming a bore.”
I began stomping down the alley; expertly
dodging pools of iridescent, oily water. He paused, then followed.
We cut into the shop. Ordered food and
strong coffee. Took a booth at the wall. The place was empty excluding a lonely
hobo with a panting dog and a deranged homosexual on a laptop. My guest and I
both sat for some time not speaking.
“I’m James.” He finally stated.
I introduced myself the best I could, with
the exception I was so drunk and depressed, instead of coming across cordial,
my words and tone came out loathsome and obscene. I drank my coffee in silence
until our sandwiches arrived. The boy ate with gusto.
“Haven’t eaten in a while?” I asked as I
watched him devour his meal.
“Not good anyway.” He managed between chomps
of pre-processed flesh.
Outside the rain began and late night
revelers dashed under awnings and into doorways. I observed James. Rentboy to
be sure. Then again, I think it was forced in way of certain living
arrangements. Or perhaps he was simply a sex addict. A lot of them are. They
won’t admit it. But, they are.
“I was thrown out of this place today.” I
divulged, glancing around the coffee shop.
“The café? Why?”
“There were a couple of heroin addicts I was
chatting with in research of a new book. On account I was in association, and basically
because the barista was an imperialistic bitch, I was asked to never come
back.”
“And, yet here you are.” He laughed. “Wait.
New novel? You’re a published writer?”
“Yes.” I croaked. “A curse.”
“Wow!” James gushed. “I never met a real
writer. What do you write?”
“Garbage.” I grunted.
“Oh...come on. It can’t be that bad.”
I sighed. Took a sip of coffee, poked at my
sandwich. “You have a place to stay, James? It’s raining outside and it’s late.
I need to get some sleep.”
“Actually, I was couch surfing with some
friends over on 4th. A bunch of fucked up tweekers. The bitch who runs the
house and I got into an argument. So, as of right now...the rain is my
blanket.” He extended an open palm towards the street.
I looked off into the darkness beyond the
grime streaked pane window. The intermittent flash of summer lightning. The
glow of yellow lamps igniting sheets of cascading rain. I took a cigarette from
my pocket, offered it to James. Removed one for myself, lit both.
“You can stay at my place if you wish.” I
stated. “No monkey business. Unless you’re into monkey business.” I raised a fey
eyebrow, took a drag.
James leaned over the small table and asked
in hushed tones, “Are you gay?”
I continued to look out the window, slouched
against the wall in the booth, “I haven’t been gay a day in my life. I am, however, a homosexual.”
We finished our meal and then found
ourselves briskly walking over incandescent pools and dribbling rain to my
rented room a few blocks away. I opened the door and invited him in. He took in
the place like a good hustler, making certain there were no sinister weapons or
weird sex gadgets. I noticed in his face he was relieved the place was somewhat
bare - bed, bookshelf, table, a couple of chairs, clothes neatly hung in an
open closet. Nothing to hide.
He turned to me, “You mind if I take a
shower? It’s been a few days.”
I said sure and gathered him a clean towel
and an unused bar of soap. I lay on the edge of the bed, smoking a damp
cigarette, watching the shadows move across the ceiling from passing cars
outside and listening to Miles Davis on the CD player. Through my experiences
in Mexico, as long as he was in my house, I wasn’t going to let him out of my
sight. I could use a shower, too. However, I believed as soon as I exited the
bathroom, anything of value would had been long gone.
James walked out of the bathroom with a
green towel wrapped around his scrawny torso.
“Let me see if I can find some pajama
bottoms for you.” I offered.
“Don’t bother. I like to sleep in the nude.”
Convenient. I offered him a beer from the
mini fridge and we chatted a bit as he lay under the thin blanket. He mentioned
something of getting enough money for a bus ticket to return to Las Vegas. He
had family there. I didn’t bother questioning why he didn’t hit his family up
for the fare. After I finished my beer, I peeled off my damp clothes and slid
under the blanket.
He was shivering and so was I. Wordlessly,
he snuggled next to me, briefly muttering that my body was warm. His torso was
so boney. In the half-light of the room, he turned towards me and slid his arm
across my chest, his erection thumping against my hip.
“I want to feel you inside of me.” He
breathed into my ear.
We began kissing. The taste of saliva mixed
with coffee, beer, and ham swirled in our mouths. James kissed my chest, making
his way down to my own erection, and sucked my dick like something I needed in
a long time. It felt as if I was in heaven. He definitely was a professional. I
got to the point I couldn’t take it anymore and rolled the blond onto his
stomach. I parted his cheeks and rimmed him for a good ten minutes. He squirmed
and gasped as I loosened him up. I flipped James over onto his back, placing
his feet up onto my shoulders. Spitting into my palm, I lubed the head of my
penis and slowly pushed it in. He clung to me like a baby monkey as I rapidly
rutted and lunged. His ass muscles tightened and grasped as I thrust -
literally sucking my cock into him. I couldn’t hold back any longer. I yanked
out and sprayed him with semen. He masturbated wildly, unloading his pent up
frustrations onto his self. It was a work of art. I snatched my cell phone and
snapped a pic before he could hide his face.
“Hey!” James laughed. “You should ask before
doing that!”
“It’s for the archives. Dr. Windom needs it
for my reports.”
“Dr. Windom?”
“Ford Windom. PhD. Never actually passed the
bar exam. Faked various psychoanalyst credentials with Photoshop. He once
committed a friend to an asylum because he laughed at his eyebrows. Another
nearly overdosed on a prescription from the good doctor when he swapped the
patients lithium with Viagra, he then notified the guy’s parents and told them
the patient was a sexual deviant with a bad case of crabs. Crazy fuck needs to
be arrested.”
“He sounds weird.” James chuckled.
“You have no idea.” I plopped next to him,
placing my phone onto the end table. “How about first thing tomorrow morning,
we head over to Greyhound and get you that ticket to Vegas?”
“For reals?!” He beamed, lying next to me,
propped up on his elbow. “You’ll do that?”
“And more.” I said esoterically. “Now, let’s
get some sleep.”
Friday, March 13, 2015
missed the shot
He smashed his cigarette out onto the cracked pavement with the toe of his shoe. Thin,
aquiline features seemed pale and ghastly under the throbbing blue and white
light of an overhead marquee. He peered at me as I entered the bar. His eyes
ascertained a lazy gaze of crimson in them. Was he tired or inebriated?
Undoubtedly both. American hustlers work long hours to make ends meet.
I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The
pleasant old hag tending the counter stated 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 glanced around the
bar – lost derelicts, antiquated hookers, furtive junkies. As I stared at my
reflection in the mirror across from me, the hustler 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 amateurishly tattooed covered hands he scooped up a
fistful and shoved them into a broad mouth. As I watched, I got a better look
at him. He was tall, thin, and wore the expression 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 large red star on the chest, loose fitted jeans, and black
leather work shoes. His light brown hair was buzz cut and stood out dark
against 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 toward him as he shoveled another
handful of popcorn into his mouth.
“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 fished 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 hotel room up on Oracle. I’m
waiting for my housing vouchers to clear so I can get an apartment.”
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 chuckled and I ordered another round. It
was that time of early evening when the bar was kept exceptionally dark and
cool from the insidiously dry one hundred degree weather outside. Even with the
sun gone for the day and it being a full moon, the climate was uncomfortably
hot. I snatched a paper napkin from a stack on the counter and wiped it across
my forehead.
“It’s too fucking hot here.” I expressed 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 had it he had been frequenting the joint since 1967. I simply
smiled at him and turned back to the hustler.
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 grey boxers. As I watched him disappear
into the pissoir, I thought, That’s an
ass begging to get fucked.
Yeah, I was feeling it. I wanted to conquer
someone. I was stateside now and did not require to placate some Mexican macho
fuck who kept his sphincter clenched the entire time while we had sex. I
decided 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 and then walked
into the mensroom. Nice set up. Red light, dim. The crumbling walls were a mural
of scrawled graffiti. There was a long, metal piss trough and one toilet stall
in which the boy stood. Fine, I’ll take a piss while I’m in here. As I stood at
the urinal, for a moment it was silent, then I heard a light rhythmic clanking
of a belt buckle and the muted raspy sound 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. He then walked
out from the stall and stood in the middle of the restroom with jeans
unbuttoned. 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 stunted, circumcised
erection.
His face was tense and determined as he
spoke in the crassest tone, “Yeah, man, I want my cock sucked.”
I casually walked over to him and placed his
erect penis in my hand. I read the callous warts lining the shaft like braille.
I jerked my hand away, looked up at his
despairing face and said, “Not today, man. Don’t feel the need.”
“You don’t want it?” He asked. I saw in his
eyes that his affliction disgusted me. Obviously, I wasn’t the first to recoil
from his advances today.
“No.” I left him standing frustrated in that
empty bathroom.
Sunday, March 08, 2015
saturday ramblings
Even though it being the eighth of March with the hope of
oncoming spring, the skies were a mottled grey which only prolonged the unrelenting
freezing winter. I decided to alleviate my current malady of obsessing over my
early demise with a simple cure: a cup of coffee.
However, not simply any cup of coffee would do, of course,
but a fine cup at a decent café. As I shuffled over the shattered sidewalks of
this decaying city, the cold winds chilled me to the marrow and I had to admit,
I was feeling somewhat hungry. Around me lay the visage of a post-apocalyptic
wasteland. The City always held the appearance of what the world would look
like after an atomic war – vast panoramas of rotting, crumbling buildings,
heaps of mortar and trash congested bricks. Dead dogs, cats, and human feces
scattered about great rubbly lots rimmed with bent telephone poles. Antique school
buses leftover from the 1950’s chugged by coated in a fine layer of white dust –
sad, brown faces stare out at me through cracked and broken windows. In a vast
concrete park, several boys play futbol yelping and hollering. Two lovers sit
on a chipped marble bench and stare silently into each other’s eyes. I glance
up at the skeletal trees and grin as I notice the tale-tell signs of buds forming
on the long, spindly branches. It will be warm soon.
I entered downtown and slithered through the congested promenade
on 16th de Septiembre, the locals were out in mass. Along with a
legion of vendors, shoe shine boys, and sellers of glistening, soot covered
concessions. Several live bands positioned at intervals along the lengthy way
wailed various styles of music ranging from standard ranchero to 60’s oldies to
big band bebop – all competing with the obligatory asshole with a bullhorn
screaming about Jeeeeeeesssussss on the cathedral steps…so it goes.
I dart into the dusty glass fronts of Café Central. It too
was congested with Saturday afternoon revelers. The long hall was a cacophony
of polite chatter, clinking utensils, and the roller-rink type music emitted
from an enormous jukebox next to the cashier. I sat at the long, curving
counter and ordered caldo de res.
As I waited for my order, I utilized the massive mirrors which
lined the walls just below the ceiling to observe the deluge of life around me.
Laughing, chatting locals communicated their ideas and passions to one another
with such vitality. Why can I not be like them? Why have I alienated myself so
far from the simple pleasures of humanity? On an emotional level, I had
successfully pulled all the wires and become such a passionless robot. I leered
at the animated people around me - how I envied them.
I suppose what really upset me and brought on this chain of dubious
thought was I have begun work on my next novel. The quirky love affair between William
Burroughs and his wife Joan which resulted in him putting a slug in her
forehead. The only problem being, I’m penning it as a love story. How am I to
write that? In all sincerity, it has been so long since I have loved anything,
I have forgotten what it feels like. Honestly. And the back memories on past
relations pulls up black blanks in my mind. How am I to write on something I do
not attain any memory of?
I quickly ate my food and stepped out into the bustling
streets. I still wanted a coffee, so I made my way over to Café 656. I pushed
open the door and was met with silence. There was no one there. I had thought
perhaps owner Coco was in the restroom or in the back washing dishes, so I sat
at a table and waited. And waited. An entire hour passed. I was becoming
concerned by the fact that she would simply leave the café unattended. Her
laptop sat on the counter, the lights were on. During my wait, several other
customers entered. Two elderly women on canes wobbled in and attempted to make
pleasant conversation. One of the plump women stated she was returning a book
she had borrowed from the shelves. I explained I had no idea where Coco was and
on how I found the café empty.
Mario, a mustachioed street singer – his shtick was to peruse
the cantinas and strum ballads on a guitar for pesos – entered and inquired the
whereabouts of Coco. He too became alarmed. With luck, he had her number on his
cell and gave her a buzz. He eventually stated, she stepped out to make copies
and was in her car returning to the café.
“They must’ve been some damn important copies to leave the
store open like this.” I quipped.
At that moment, for some reason, one of the fat old women
slipped off her seat and tumbled onto the floor. She lay there a moment like an
overturned crab with flailing arms and legs as her friend and Mario dashed to
her aid. I stood there impassively and didn’t care. I simply wanted some
fucking coffee. After a brief moment of awkward mumblings, the women excused
themselves and left. Mario stated something about being hungry and he too left.
A couple of young girls entered and sat. They looked at me and ordered
cappuccinos each with cheese cake. I simply ambled behind the counter and began
preparing cappuccinos.
At that moment, Coco bursts in demanding how I got into her café.
I simply stated that I pushed the door open and entered. She insisted on that the
door was locked and I asserted that it wasn’t. I had enough of this drama and
explained the two customers order and sat with my cup of coffee. An hour and a
half late. I still believe she was under the assumption that I broke in
somehow. I sat and watched the people outside. Happy and set in their ways. And
then my mind began to drift into the realization that I need to escape from
this city…not to escape this life on account that my life is abundant with
strange and wonderful things. I seriously desire to return to Tijuana. The only
place in all my myriad travels I ever thought as home. There are too many
painful memories here. I want to return and live, not merely exist, and write
about it. Convey my passions to other like minded cohorts.
You see, I’ve come to realize there are still faint glimmers
of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as
humanity. As writers, that's what we provide in our own modest, humble,
insignificant... oh, fuck it.
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
don't
Depression is insidious. Anxiety attacks - public attacks - on the other hand, are downright pure horror. If you, Dear Reader, have experienced such woe and understand, then you understand; if not, you never will.
Case in point: This afternoon I sat in a
café I usually haunt. I sat observing the passerby out the large and grime
streaked pane-glass window, listening and not listening to the polite chatter
of the other diners mixed with the clinking of utensils. It began as a swelling
in the chest – not a pain, but a sensation. A mounting sadness which consumes
your entire being. Why? What brought it on? Was it the chat with an age old
friend yesterday? The finality of accepting the dread soaked alteration from a
person whose only passion was to live free and delight in all the wonderments life
offered only to disintegrate over a period of a few short years into a non- compassionate
corpse whose only wish was to lay down onto the dusty sidewalk and stop breathing?
Why is death, a final termination of mounting emotional grief the only true reprieve
from such despair? I do not write about this, yet for the past few months – on
nearly a daily basis – I have been contemplating ending this sorrow, this
horrid loneliness I have trapped myself in.
I sat silently, attempting to cover this
emerging lament from the passing waiters, the chatty eaters. It grew and grew,
I was overwhelmed with such a feeling of utterly bleak despair. My eyes became
shrink wrapped in moisture as I vainly attempted to control the crimson flush
of my face. With quickness of breath, trembling of hands, the tears begin to
trickle down my cheeks and the added bewildered embarrassment associated with
the despondency as others began to notice my uncontrolled public display with
questioning looks and inquiries of “What’s wrong?” I could not answer, for the
reason that my mind was a kaleidoscope of shattered emotions. Sobbing
uncontrollably, my only escape was to get up and flee from the questing eyes
and out into the solidarity of the street.
I quickly rushed the few blocks to the
dim coolness of my apartment. Sitting in the darkness chain smoking as my mind
was bombarded with millions of nostalgic images. I have failed at so much. There is nothing left that inspires me. I seriously believe I am near
the end. An end that I so painfully covet.
Tuesday, March 03, 2015
in the future of darkness past
A man in a dark trench coat and fedora stood
in a poorly lit alcove. He relentlessly scratched his dry wrist in a smoky
haze. Skin flaked down to his dress shoes like drifting snow. He stepped back
into the shadows; only the cherry-red tip of his cigarette could be seen…“cough”…I drunkenly wobbled out of the cantina and down into the heart of
Zona Norte, cabron.
The Red Zone, for my Dear Readers who are
ill informed, is a diminutive patch of streets and alleys on the north side of
downtown. Walking along that district, I received a feast for the eyes: the
buzzing flash of iridescent neon, putrid drunks lay on the grungy, broken
sidewalk in their own waste as hawkers screamed at you to enter their bars and
strip clubs. Ugly, mangy dogs ate out of rubbish piled in dark doorways as
catatonic and filthy Mexicans dressed in rags glared at me as I walked by. The
smell of cheap, greasy fried food mingled with the stench of sour beer, piss,
and shit.
An entire block of malignant female
prostitutes lined up shoulder to shoulder grabbing and goosing as I walked by.
“Psst.
Psst.”
“Wanna fuck, meester?”
“Twenny dallah make you hallah.”
“Watch me fuck my brother?”
“Plo chob?”
What was next: Me so horny?
I was occasionally harassed by intimidating,
tattooed covered cholos asking if I needed to score any heroin or crystal. I
muttered no, smiled like the stupid gringo tourist, and moved on.
In Tijuana, female prostitution is mostly
restricted to licensed brothels - like Adelita’s Bar or the Hong Kong Club. On
the other hand, male prostitutes are everywhere. They assume all visitors are
homosexual and solicit openly in the streets. I had been approached by boys who
could not had been over ten. That aspect appalled me - I loathe pedophiles.
As I strolled past, tired and petulant
prostitutes breathed smoke out of chapped lips, teeth plated in silver, “Wanna
fuck me, meester?”
Preteen hookers cooed and grabbed at me as I
ambled by lost in the sauce - no...no cunt for me. I am out on the prowl for
some rough tattooed sex. Cause that’s the way I liked them - always been a
sucker for the bad boy.
A bent over, gnarled gentleman in drab
clothes approached me from the passenger side of a parked taxi cab. “Senor...one
moment, senor.”
I stopped. “Yeah? What is it?” I asked, looking
down on that shriveled sage.
He placed his withered hand on my arm and
confided through putrefied teeth, “I got the biggest pussy in Tijuana.”
“You!?” I asked incredulously, lighting a
Lucky Strike.
“Yes!” He cackled.
“Man, you’re in the wrong line of work as a
taxi driver.”
“No! No!” He chuckled, realizing his mistake
of words. “No, I take you to the big pussy!”
His brother sat next to him nibbling a
dripping taco. A scrawny, antiquated little man in a black police uniform. With
that fucking white police motorcycle helmet on his enlarged head he reminded me
of Gazoo. Which I stated. Thought it was funny. He didn’t.
I proceeded over to one of my favorite dives
called, Kin-kle. Thieves, deported criminals, junkies, pedophiles, cholo
gangsters, fags and lezbos - a good watering spot. I entered the dark, smoked-filled
den as a Spanish version of Achy-Breaky
Heart warbled out of a multicolored jukebox. I took a seat in the back at a
dented and rusted iron table with plastic lawn chairs. A cadaverous looking
waiter in a wrinkled white shirt and black bow tie approached and I ordered a
Sol beer.
The place was more or less empty for this
time of the day - the bored looking bartender wiped the counter under dusty,
torn soccer posters. The sole individuals at the bar were a fat cowboy groping
and finger banging an old whore in a stained, yellow dress. She wiggled and
giggled brown teeth at his advances. He smiled red eyed with a stunted hard on.
Nothing interesting here, so I decided to
hit other bars. El Dorado? The Happy Naco? Bar Vaquero?
I entered a smelly, dark den with pink coral
tiled walls. A short, chunky female in a black thong whirled and jiggled her
wares in all the wrong places on a tiny stage of glittered stucco. Bar had only
two others, junky cholo in white tank top and baggy khaki pants who sat on the
nod like a fool on a stool against the pink wall and a flabby, sweaty American
who eyed me fingering his camera so nasty.
I was about to take my business elsewhere
when a tall, handsome Mexican with distinctive Aztec features and pencil
moustache donning a blue mechanic’s tunic walked in and made a bee line for the
men’s room. Quickly downed my beer, it was on like Donkey Kong: I am in the
pissoir languidly jacking off with the guy in the mechanics uniform as the
obligatory old fart with the camera looked on. The hottie had the most exquisite
penis I had seen in many a moon. One hand on my soldier; the other traced black
hair on toned pecs. Me and the hottie cum in spurts onto lemons and ice and
left the quivering codger standing there wondering where his youth had gone.
The mechanic - Miguel he says - and I drank
a couple more bottles and I asked if he cared to go back to my room for an
afternoon of filthy, rotten sin. No, it’s back with the wifie and kids, he
claimed. Shake hands and part. Old queen leered at me from furtive shadows.
Frustrated fruit. Short cholo with shaved head and wife beater is hip to the
fact and smiled with silver capped tooth, hard on a-pulsing in dirty khakis. I
exit - leaving the cholo to the whims of that withered vampire.
Sunday, March 01, 2015
El Puta
Hunched over the bar, El Puta sat naked on a
frayed, red leather stool. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. An
emaciated hand grasped a high-ball glass of black, oily liquid. A
proboscis-like mouth slurped the fluid in a lurid, unspeakable manner with a
pink-black tongue.
Insipid, withered buttocks were openly
exposed to passive intercourse. His pungent rectum resembled a gaping wound of
brown, glistening gristle from decades of taking it up the ass from drunken and
desperate machos. Every so often, black clunks of putrefied feces would drop
onto the floor which in turn, was quickly swept up by a terrified assistant.
Parched, mocha-colored skin stretched over protruded
bones and swollen ligaments…purple blue in places… interspersed with sickly
liver spots and boils of unnamed diseases. His skin flaked off in drifts like
sclerosis. Greasy, lanky black hair was combed over a burnished, misshapen
head. Sitting immobile as a lizard, two large, disk-like eyes scrutinized the cantina
via the enormous mirror situated behind the counter. Four lurid youths stood at
his call, hips cocked to one side. One emaciated waif placed dirty fingers of a
delicate hand to El Puta’s shriveled penis, languidly fondling his putrid
foreskin.
“His face is science fiction, nothing like
mama used to make…”
Rumor had it El Puta dwelled in an abandoned
water closet at the end of a dead-end, shit strewn alley tended by a blind,
armless boy.
The youth, despite his handicap, was
extraordinarily beautiful – the classic beauty eighteenth century fags would
compose epic sonnets about. Always dressed in a pristine white loin cloth and
silver high-top sneakers that sported little wings at the ankles, the petite
and armless lad would warmly smile with tiny white teeth towards anyone he
sensed was near. In contrast, El Puta would fly into a screaming rage in the
chance encounter any other queer in Tijuana even glanced in his boy’s
direction.
Bitter and resentful, El Puta made it his
business to discern every detail of the private lives of each expat who entered
the Plaza. If you fell in disfavor (which was inevitable and usually for no
reason at all) the evil old fuck, exercising telepathic waves like a bat’s
sonar, would smear the most outlandish and disreputable rumors of ones person
throughout the Plaza causing the bewildered citizen who fell into his disfavor
to be marked as untouchable by the legion of hustlers. If a rentboy disregarded
his telepathic commands of sexual cordon (downright cockblocking), he would
corner them in the bar toilet stall and forcibly rape them – sucking semen,
blood, and entrails from their screaming torso leaving behind an emaciated
carcass. It was whispered El Puta slept on the piled desiccated corpses of past
offenders.
An unattractive old queen, who sat at the table next to me, noticed my dismayed look. He continued to leer at my person with liver sick eyes - eyes dead and preditory. I fidgeted uncomfortably amid his vain advances, did my best to arrogantly ignore the old fruit. He
smiled through long, yellow teeth, “Be kind, guero, or I just might have to inform El Puta how you are behaving
towards me. You don’t want to be labeled as an ugly American, do you?”
The words ‘ugly American’ drifted through
the cantina. Several expats and hustlers lifted their heads like animals
sensing danger. El Puta’s semen engorged pot-belly gurgled in apprehension.
“No.” I said. “No, that would be insidious.
I’m actually a nice person.”
The old fag began bouncing up and down in
his seat, baying like a famished sheep, “Then fuck me! Fuck me now!”
Several rentboys heard his call to arms and
slithered up, surrounding the old fag.
“Hola,
papi. You horny for beeg dick?”
“Buy me beer, papi, I need your company.”
“One cigarette for me?”
“One beer for me?”
“Presteme
dias pesos?”
The old fag continued his halitosis infused
chant fuck me, fuck me now! as the
boys swarmed in and ripped him to shreds - leaving a bitter, penniless old
American in their wake. His ashy-pink face draped with a cascading lank of silver
hair, he sat slumped in his seat. Shoes stolen. Pockets emptied and turned
inside out. A trickle of piss ran down his khaki pant leg, past soiled socks
and onto the dirty, tiled floor...
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