plastic tumbler of tequila

...darkness. Intermittent, strobing light from a naked and dusty bulb below on street level. The sound of arching electricity. Down the hall, muffled moans of a hooker earning her rent. Caught a glimpse of her suitor when I was coming out of the loo, big macho vaquero and he was intent on breaking the bed from the sound of it…

…a grey cloud slices across a huge, milky half-moon as I stood at the window of my room slowly taking a drag from my umpteenth cigarette. Below me the streets are empty save for the trash whipping in little eddies and the bearded vagabond in grimy and black rags washing himself next to a car park wall utilizing water from a used plastic soda bottle…

…three twenty-three a.m. on the crimson flickering alarm clock face, a cheap plastic model I purchased for five pesos at a second hand mercado. The store was small displaying discarded junk coated with a layer of grayish dust lay in chaotic piles or leaned against the faded white paint of the walls. The shop smelled like cat piss. Never saw a cat, though…

…I reached for the yellow plastic tumbler of tequila which sat on a wooden shelf below the flat screen television, took a sip. It went down fiery and calming. Cheap, ten peso rotgut. Took another drag from my unfinished cigarette. The red cherry of the Lucky must caught the attention of the bathing vagabond. With ratty pants to his knees as he scrubbed his exposed and dangling crotch with a wet and elongated palm shiny over the dirt, he glanced up toward my window and with a toothless smile, saluted. I waved back. He nonchalantly continued washing oblivious to the world around him…

…my mind, sluggish from insidious insomnia reeled with a million images. Nostalgic mental pages flipped from the Great Tome of my life. The same thought bugged me: I knew, once again, I was getting cold feet. I already purchased a plane ticket to Cambodia for the second of January. The conundrum was: do I really want to go? Now I am back in Tijuana with the brilliant prospect of attaining an affordable apartment in a city I know all too well, do I choose to fling myself onto the other side of the planet and attempt to build the same comfort zone in a locale I know very little about? The main drive to relocate to Southeast Asia is to teach English and, saving what I can, open a small guesthouse in a decade or so and wile away my retirement from the foreboding and suffocating influence of the United States. Certainly the adventure aspect was appealing as so is the new fodder for writing about it. However, I seriously do not know if on a mental aspect I am capable of doing this anymore. This living without any stability. How did I become so paranoid in my old age? Ha…old….I am not old. However, I do feel it. Tired. Worn out. Like a dab of butter spread across too much toast. Bored is an apt word, also. Nothing excites me anymore. Not even writing. A problem which actually terrifies me to the marrow because that and that alone is all I have left in this self-inflicted, turbulent life. All left as in the only thing keeping me from opting out from this mortal coil. (Which I think about far too frequently) I need to make up my mind.
You may ask yourself, Why? Why Cambodia? Well, it is quite simple to the clinically insane: For the experience. To escape the impending police state of America (I believe soon, in a span of perhaps five years tops, the powers that be will begin killing off large sections of the population. Or herding the poor and who they deem useless into FEMA camps for liquidation. I mean, seriously, open your eyes, it’s as plain as day) If I do go – that is it. No turning back…

…as an answer, I hear a slight drowsy cough to my right. I glance over toward the bed and the lithe form of Antonio – the lanky vato from the cock fight I attended a few days prior – who now lay sprawled akimbo on his stomach half covered by the white sheets. His copper-colored, hairless ass and one lanky leg naked across the bed as he slept. I hear his slow, content breathing. Illuminated by the headlights of a passing car, I notice the small bag of marijuana on the end stable, the half smoked roach buried amid ashes and empty shot glass next to a near depleted bottle of aforementioned tequila. His clothes, as are mine, tossed across the floor. The room held the faint scent of weed, dried semen and penetrated rectum…

…I turned back to the panorama sweep of a slumbering city. I sigh. Writers live the sad truth as anybody else. We, as you, endure the hardships and let downs and the intermittent joys of life. The only difference is, writers are cursed to repeat these incidents over and over again. That is when it dawned on me. I had done this – lived this scenario a billion lifetimes – perhaps it is time for me to set tracks for other parts of the world and endure and experience grand new things…or die trying.

You know what, Dear reader, I will. I need to. I mean, really, what else is there? Nothing. That’s what. Nothing at all…