zona norte melancholy

I sit here – tepid black coffee swirling in a chipped china cup; cream coagulating - analyzing the hand scribbled notes of my 'reports' placed ever so delicately with an almost religious fervor on the slutty table pockmarked with cigarette burns and coffee stains. I realize I have been neglecting this blog - my attention and writing syphoned into other directions odd and inexplicable.

Time crawls past 2am - out in the dark musty halls crazed drug-addicted female screams hatred and malice into the uncaring night. Annoying cunt. I eventually lay down and toss in fits of anxiety and nostalgia at the latest of predicaments entirely of my own design. I nod off into a distressing, dreamless sleep.

Awoke with a gasping jolt from nightmares of suffocating in a black metal box - taste of contaminated metal clung to my tongue. I lay in my sagging bed, staring at the discolored ceiling in my dusky room. The screams inside like crashing surf against rocks and Control really taking control.

I get up out of bed shivering in the predawn light of night and splash water on my unfocused face, brush the pearlies, shake the roaches from my clothes and take the rickety croaking beat hotel elevator five flights down into those sleeping mad streets. Finances run slow like an old man's bowels. Unable to pay at this overpriced American roach motel - a melancholy hobo hacks into a filthy wadded napkin in rickety elevator, carpets smell and smell rotten - I swallow my pride, pack my shit and split.

A gray mist drapes forebodingly through concrete canyons as I dart into a 7-11 and buy a paper cup of hideous overpriced java from a snarling Hindi. Keeping an eye out for trolley cops, I jump a train down ol' Mexico way. Clakclakclak. I am affected with paranoid fits of nostalgia or perhaps just feeling my age. Fuck it, I mumble and forty minutes later, I tromp across the Mexican border, lugging my gear toward a sea of parked taxis.

The fat taxi driver sat wordless - hating me (the foreigner) or his life in general as we hurtled toward the Strip. The cold wind blew in my face as I sat deep in the back chair when the cab abruptly screeched to a jarring halt at the corner of 5^th and Madero. I pay the scowling bastard and rent another room at the guesthouse, this one was windowless and smelled like cunt. I showered and, afterward, as I lay to rest, I pass out and awaken eight hours later. Fuck it. I dress and go for a beer.

I weave my way through roaming groups of mariachi and the relentless legion of hawkers who could and do work your last goddamn nerve. Pass Hotel Nelson wafting in the smell of cerveza and seared meat when I am approached at the base of the millennium arch by a handsome ghost. My mind whirls in the direction of where do I know this character - so many, so many - thousands of faces pass my mind’s eye; nevertheless I can't catalog the fucker.

He seems all smiles and quite familiar with Your Reporter - I immediately judge him as another sticky fingered rentboy lost in the puzzle.

“Hey!” he says, “Soy, Hugo!”

Ah, yes…Hugo. Big cock but dumb as a rock. He at one time attempted to swindle me out of two hundred dollars to pay for a passport or so he claimed. He’s great to look at, but one of the dullest fucks this side of Trump’s Wall.

“Oh, hi, Hugo. Howzit goin’?” I croak going out of my way to reveal my disinterest.

He mumbled he was on his way to see his brother of friend or some such bullshit but spoke crystal clear when the topic of borrowing pesos came up. One hundred, to be exact.

“I’m broke, but if I had it, you understand…” I lied. Even if I had it, in which I did, I wouldn’t.

Like a nameless trick in the night, he waved bye and disappeared toward the clubs located closer to the border. I turned toward Plaza Santa Cecilia. Myates stood on corner chewing on toothpicks and flicking fidget spinners. Baggy clothes flutter in the gloomy wind - ghastly clothes colors of almond, peach, florescent blue. "You lookin'?" One jerks his head up at me - I walk on under black cold stares.

The chill of the night shivered my already frozen form. At the mouth of the Plaza, in front of a stage next to the statue of the saint who the Plaza suffers her name, an assortment of Tijuana fags cooed and guffawed and made shrill comments to one another. More to the rentboys who prowled the shadows of the Plaza than to one another. Transvestites clopped back and forth, languidly groping whatever drunken macho receiving the unfortunate luck to pass within range. I continued down Calle Primera.

Trash lined street lurking with prostitutes of both sexes - women especially nasty under blue neon on a dark crumbling adobe night - purveyors of insidious filth - beckon me to enter their traps. I clutch my wallet and move on. Squeeze past nasty whores brandishing silver capped teeth and undulating udders; made my way to Bar Noa Noa.

Entered the hazy, smoky den. The place was crowded with Zona Norte’s finest - perverts and dikes, pedophiles and junkies. Male prostitutes performed their stylized ballet around gray haired American vampires who preyed on them – sucking their youth and vitality. A fat cop stood at the entrance waiting to do something. The queens swirled and cackled and jerked in galvanized movements as faggots often have a tendency to do. Cooing and pawing at the waiters who wearily served beverages in sullen apathy.

I stood propped against the old wooden bar pulling a James Dean routine watching the smoky debauchery churn around me - flicked a cockroach off the counter like playing finger football - it flew into the ice bin. Took a long drag off my Lucky. Some fat tranny like Fred Flintstone in drag stood with her sweaty, mole covered back to me - with chubby, clip-on nailed fingers, pulled the panties outta her obese ass.

The rockola - jukebox, ya goddamn gringo! - banged out ranchero mixed with Mexican Top 40. The waft of beer, piss, and puke issued outta the water closet from the use of a million faggots. I grabbed my warming beer took a swig followed by a puff on my smoke.

"Hey." I heard him hiss in a thick accent. "Hey, guero - you like beeg one?"

I swerved my stare in the direction of the accusation and noticed a scrawny rentboy stooped over in baggy, dirty clothes. His squinting eyes fading in and out of focus, sided up next to me, sliding his hand across my back. "One beer for me?" He asked, holding up his finger as if I didn't understand.

I sighed and made a swooping gesture with my hand, "There are about thirty other desperate motherfuckers here who would absolutely love to buy you one, man - why bother me with your alcoholic woes?"

"Aw c'mon, guero...just one." He slurred, putting on the little hurt boy act.

"Beat it." I growled, turning towards the bar, noticing his angry glare momentarily reflected in the warped mirror behind the counter, then shuffle off to locate more sympathizing prey.

Someone grabbed my ass, I turn to see it is Cesar (Juan’s older brother) and some friend. He says Hola, I says Howdy and several beers are eagerly downed. Cesar introduces his friend as Fernando and he is quite the looker.

Us three cut from the bar and march through Coahuila down past doe-eyed preteen looking hookers lined up elbow to elbow - sliver capped teeth flashing neon of blues and red. Old haggish one yanks at my sleeve, I keep walking.

The street is packed with prostitutes of both sexes (well, in these enlightened times, twenty-six sexes. Ain’t that some shit?) leaning against ruined red brick and adobe, roving addicts - shifty eyed and vigilant - hasten down the way, stopping to grab bags of dope from hidden nooks and crannies of crumbling walls, weaving through catatonic American tourists - bloated and shirts spotted with beer and puke - under the wary eye of police patrols. A cacophony of car horns and screeches mixed with the smells of seared meat, steaming hotdogs, and festering garbage steaming into the crisp chilly night.

Why all this bother? All this ruckus to flounder about waving handful of cash in front of thieves and shysters, Dear Tourist, don't you realize you'll be eaten alive - and the bones won't even remain.

We hit Bar Kin-kle, a tacky queer joint in the Red Zone with a big over stuffed bullhead above red metal double swinging doors where guys would show you their erections for a beer - enter through dingy red curtains from the street and sized up by two towering trannies who goose you coming in - just preliminaries. Happens to everyone, don't take it so personal. Flop onto a dented metal table and down three caguamas. Old cholo who seems to take a liking for 'mericans - invites me into the mensroom for a few snoots of the old meth-a-roonie on the filthiest toilet paper dispenser in the world. Snooort-hack-snort! I lean back and look over to the next stall and wish I hadn't – a festering toilet overflowed in thick muddy feces. Lines of brown over the rim like a boiling pot of beans.

Return to my colleagues who are now drunker than a skunk – we go into mucho ha-ha and heart-to-heart about Tijuana. (The Happiest Place on Earth).

Fernando begins to feel it and becomes all clingy and shit, but I don't mind cause he's so sweet. In the dark alcove of Kin-kle, drunk and horny, Fernando and I make out under the bloodshot stare of my other buddy and the watchful eye of a waiter with a hard on.

You understand I can resist anything but temptation and when Fernando asked to 'Go Somewhere' I didn't hesitate. I decided to gamble with it, "I know of a cheap hotel nearby. Just a few blocks that away." He bit his bottom lip and mumbled something positive. Say adios to a grinning and understanding Cesar, money slapped on the bar, door flung open and we slipped out into the brisk night air.

I follow my Dark Knight - jumping over incandescent pools and dodging kamikaze taxis to Hotel Coliseo. Wow. Been years. Pay the fat mamacita behind the black bars and we stagger up the old wooden stairs to the third floor - hallway smelt of mildew and feces.

Room was just a mattress on the floor and antique brown dresser. The walls multicolored hues of scrabbled graffiti of both marker and spray paint and included a tired, slutty mattress sprawled on the floor. Fernando smiles and whispers some dirty shit and playfully flops onto the mattress - bedbugs and all.

I take a piss in the dingy porcelain tiled bathroom and return to find Fernando shivering naked under thin pink blanket. Undress and lay next to him - hands glide over bodies, tongues probe, organs stiffen. Fernando - this short shit - flings my legs up over his shoulders, spits on his palm, lubes his erection and whammo - begins rutting like his sad poor beat life depended on it.

He held my feet as I played with his nipples. Legs stroked, toes sucked. The sweat began running down his chest as he rapidly drew in breath after breath. I started moaning through clenched teeth. The boy was surprisingly pneumatic in the hips. Thrusting harder; his forehead touched mine and our wet hair stuck together. Gasped Oh God Oh God as I could feel the semen rush up through his penis into me - he yanks out and splatters his semen onto my heaving chest. After he squirts, I giggle 'Again!' and he does. Flopped around with me on my stomach with Fernando on top thrusting - boy did I get the better end of the deal - slapslapslap - his brown hips against my white ass with lean arms wrapped around my torso and neck. My back is bitten passionately. My face pressed against the pillow - I feel Fernando’s hot breath against my left ear as he gets closer to his climax. Closed my eyes and with clenched teeth felt hot semen squirt up into me. Afterwards, Fernando confides that his fantasy was to screw a gringo and I was his first. Awwww, I smile inward.

We shared a joint, our shoulders touching under the thin covers. Fernando mumbled he had to go and I watched as he covered his smooth brown frame with well-worn clothes. I dressed, listening to the whore earning her rent down the hall. Outside we stand in the mist. Fernando hits me up for cien pesos before I make my way back home. He slides a small paper - folded into a square - into my palm as we shake hands goodnight.

When I reach my room, I open the folded paper and written in the uneven scribbling of the illiterate reads: no estas solo