constant sorrow

Zona Norte: Easy to get in and hard way out…meth sickness stands at the corner with bilious and yellow eyes pupils a pinpoint, the yammering boy need intercepts an American fag’s rush for the Frontier, the federale warrant in Oaxaca…

In the gathering grey twilight…borrowed flesh hangs on the bones of the untenanted body, and then I am back inside moving and I walked through Avenida Coahuila…rich yellows and blue marijuana smoke in the streets like deep stone canyons, red doors yellow lights…little cantinas where sad old vaquero drunks sniff pensively…tapas and futbol scores on the wall…taxis crawl ferreting for prey, ambiguous pimps drift under dull street lamps eating mouthwatering tacos from dingy stalls, lean against outcroppings of crumbling red brick, talk in silent, introspective gestures, frescoes of delicate depravity, flat two-dimensional, Aztec hieroglyphics…plaintive boy-cries drift through the night…”Cesar. Hugo. Juanito.”

Stale patter of commerce: “A ver Malburro?” “Nice girl, Meester…” “Big titty big pussy?” “Sombrero?” (The best sombreros are not made in Tijuana)

A hideous diseased mouth blows smoke rings into the night…”Wanna plo chop, behbeh?”

Stop in small bar and order a beer. I squat next to short, but attractive man in his late twenties. He sits passive and immobile like I’m la migra and shit. I look him casually over. Indigenous from Chiapas, maybe? Either way, the man remains immobile as statuary.

“Would you like a beer?” I ask in Spanish?

It took an entire minute before I received a barely imperceptible nod. I lit a cigarette and poured him a glass. Filled my own. The bartender returned to the other end of the counter and leaned, reading a newspaper.

I sat through a cigarette and slowly drank my beer. He definitely wasn’t the gabby type. Then again, this wasn’t exactly a queer bar.

When his glass was empty, I poured him another from the caguama bottle. Plopped in a cube of ice. “Why so sad?” I asked.

“I’m not sad.” He finally stated.

“You seem sad.”

“No.”

He casually slid a cigarette from my pack on the counter, lit up and blew a huge grey plume toward the rotting ceiling. An hour went by. No music from the rockola. No loud chatter from the three other sullen drunks hunched over the bar. The silent bartender continued to lean against the bar, reading futbol scores.

“Why is there so much hatred in this world?” He began. “Can you feel it?”

“A foreboding, elusive blackness encompassing everything?”

“Yes.” He said staring ahead.

“Didn’t you get the memo? God has abandoned us. It’s the end of the world.”

He took his glass and clinked it to mine, “To the end of the world.”

“To the end of the world.”