everything is different but nothing has changed

If truth be told, I write – albeit unpublishable atrocities not suitable for your garden variety traveler or overt homosexual - nonetheless it is what it is. And this wayward literary existence has seized a horrendous foothold on the old mental state. I attain few contacts with the world nowadays. The expats here – drunken, misplaced, long-winded – voice opinions on what I should do. How I should live my life. I smile, I agree while watching the taco vendor strain past with his wobbly, splintered cart of decomposed food that will kill a stray dog two hours later. It being apparent I don’t give a flying fuck what my constituent’s tiresome opinions be.

Who are these people? Who are they? Why do they consider themselves the fountainheads of virtue and righteousness? They dwell in shanty adobes hidden in tenuous barrios; row upon row of decrepit concrete dwellings – in a vain attempt to one up one another with the I Lived Longer In Mexico So I Know More Than You About Mexico routines - and yet, they feel it necessary to judge me?

Sigh.

So I find myself hunkered down at this café on a bright, warm February afternoon writing infuriating, dismal prose regarding my current state in painful detail. It genuinely put me in a funk. In truth, I should be out with friends drinking and enjoying this fine day. William S. Burroughs once revealed to his son in a letter that the life of a writer was a solitary one. Old junkie sure wasn’t talkin’ outta his ass, you dig?

I will never live up to the image I have nourished of myself - an unkempt man exhausting his days in a dimly lit room, surrounded by dusty books spotted in roach droppings and empty bottles of tequila, putting fantastic narratives to paper and drinking black coffee with a burnt-out cigarette sagging listlessly on his scowling lip. That dream, I should believe, is dead. All dead. There is nothing left to do but go through that dream’s pockets and look for loose change.

Still, that’s no reason to stop.

A distinct wave of melancholy wracked my form. I was drowning in depression and under that fucking shattering blue sky of Mexico. From my café table in the Plaza, I watched as the boys and locals passed - this was it...nothing beyond. A Dead End Void. And that menacing void in every casual face.

“Go for a walk.” I mumbled.

I retrieved a twenty peso note out of my pants pocket and pay the jovencito for my breakfast; strolled out of the Plaza lighting a cigarette - the way was strewn with used condoms and empty prescription bottles in the glaring sun. High adobe walls honeycombed by unheated apartment cubicles and cafés, some a few feet deep, others extending out of sight in a maze of dirty restaurants and dank corridors splashed with the faded candy color of dusty trinkets and curios.

An entire block of malignant female prostitutes lined 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?”

Occasionally hassled by intimidating, tattooed covered cholos asking if I needed to score any heroin or crystal or guided to that special farmacia that sells whatever I am looking for.

“Doubt it.” I muttered and moved on.

Did a loop-de-loo and found myself syphoned into Bar Ranchero. Bottom floor empty save for several tired looking old fags and an overweight transvestite who tottered drunkenly on glittering cha-cha heels. Sat at the bar, boy-whore in white jeans stood on the other end of the bar, kept eyeing me and rubbing his semi-engorged moneymaker. I ignored him and drank my Sol. Struck up a conversation with two guys sitting next to me. One real ugly and short and the other okay in a plain looking way.

“You visiting, gringo?”

“No.” I husked. “I reside here at the moment.”

“You running from the law?” Asked the ugly one with a smile of large, discolored teeth.

I smirked, “No…nothing like that.”

“You running from something.” He gave me a knowing look. “Why else would un Americano live in TJ?”

“I guess I am simply attempting to find my time/space location.”

“Time/space location? What are you? An astronaut?”

They had enough of my esoteric shit and made their way upstairs leaving me alone under the glassy, meth induced stare of the boy-whore. Crazy mambo jazz be-bop blared from the rockola. A bottle half-empty with my third beer is alone at the bar littered with wadded napkins and beer nut husks.

Sigh.

I paid my tab and ambled in a depressed funk back to my rented, windowless room. I really wish I hadn’t missed that flight. This town has become a vapid drag for me…