and so it goes

He lives in my neighborhood. You know the type, languidly hangs out in front of the liquor store, bumming smokes, spitting on the sidewalk with another sulky vato or two, doing nothing but dreaming through time. He drops by my place now and again. Mostly when his mother is giving him flack to get his lazy eighteen year old ass out and get a job. A listless loser. But, a sweet kid, too. And so it goes.

He has a girlfriend - a plump little number with the gift of gab who lives with her alcoholic aunt in a shitty, red-brick building over by the dusty warehouses with the occasional cholo shootout. She seems to love him. I'm certain he loves her, too. And so it goes.

I met him a while back coming out of said liquor store - asked for a dollar, said he was hungry. Brought him home, fed him. He likes to lounge on the couch, immobile as a lizard - playing video games or watching movies. He really likes the Bruce Willis and Jackie Chan flicks. Mindless entertainment for one so mindless. Once in a while, we'll sit and talk for hours about stupid shit. He'll sometimes ask to pop in a porn and watch with that frozen, slack, poker face every straight guy displays when watching porn. I blow him when he want to. He asks and seems quite happy to leave it at that. And so it goes.

I gave him the nickname Squirt on account of one afternoon we were on the couch jerking each other off to straight porn and when he came, his semen squirted over his head and splattered the wall. He still laughs about it. I was upset for I had to clean it up later, cursing the virility of a twenty-one year old, cursing my faded years. And so it goes.

Today, I was crossing the street and Squirt and his girlfriend were walking in the opposite direction towards me. He caught my eye and guiltily escorted her quickly in another direction into a shop. The meaning is quite clear, my friend, our worlds can never cross.

And so it goes.

i am the fury of my own momentum

melancholy memories

Maybe when our story's over

We'll go where it's always spring

The band is playing our song again

All the world is green

- Tom Waits

It was bitterly cold and we stood in a circle under silver clouds passing beneath a dark navy sky full of stars. Two trains roared on either sides - great monsters of steam and metal - one going to Tucson, the other towards San Antone. Our stomachs were warm from the thin potato soup that was just served for chow. Near our shivering forms, huddled in knots, men stood in dirty coats - collars turned up in a vain attempt to thwart the vile wind - smoking, spitting, coughing, talking. All black shadows in the dim lamps of the shelter.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Sitting in the bright ass Texan sun with a hangover struggling to patch together the kaleidoscope of images from last night. I squat on a low brick wall in an alley downtown - Camel Wide in one hand, tall boy in the other - the small menudo for breakfast gurgling in my stomach. Lying nearby, Robert snores in the shade of a saguaro bush. I lean over - bleeech! I stare down at my steaming vomit. Oh yeah, now I remember...

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Went to Juarez yesterday. Old boy had changed. It was kind of like once, long ago, when you scored a sexy lover - had a lot of good kicks, you separate and after a few years you meet up again and seeing that the person had degenerated into a disgusting, obese slob hard on the eyes. Well, crossed the bridge spanning the Rio and first thing noticed was the bomberos missing (The old fire station - use to stand and watch the hot firemen play soccer) walked down Juarez Ave. Military soldiers stood four deep; AK-47 strapped to the hip on every corner - looked like Nazi occupied France. Not one taxi asked me for a lift, not one vendor beckoned me to enter their shop - it was...weird. The streets were teeming with pedestrians - life was continuing, however the tension was there - fear was there.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Woke up at 3am amid farting and snoring of one hundred sleeping hobos. I slipped my feet into my plastic shower shoes and put on my coat and shuffled outside to smoke a non-filtered Camel. The sky - the sky was fulla stars! Beautiful! Finished, shivered and came back inside.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Gasping up from troubling, insidious nightmare. Suffocating in a black steel box. Charred walls of my iron tomb pitted with pock marks and scratches. Woke with the putrid taste of metal on my tongue. Put me straight into a funk. I roll out of my bug infested bunk and shuffle bleary eyed into the mensroom. Already occupied with seven or eight terminally addicted hobos washing, shitting, pissing. The room smelled of farts and soiled socks as I stood in a pool of piss at the urinal taking a piss. Showered, dressed and ate a nameless slop served for breakfast under the glare of the snarling kitchen staff. Even the Victory Coffee tasted especially rancid this morning.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

How many cigarettes does it take to wait? How many cups of coffee? I sit in the dead end diner with napkin firmly under coffee cup - I was told in that style, you can tell when someone is waiting - watching nothing out of the big dust streaked pane window. Long shadows stretched across the gray tiled floor like the bars of a prison. It was the exact moment between melancholy tunes on the cafes radio - that hushed quiet. Outside, it was cold and colorless. Gritty wind whips eddies of trash down a lonely street. A long cry from the sunny, warm surf crashing against the beach only two weeks ago. Here the sky was a harsh cold blue - though dazzling bright, gave no warmth - only a bitter cold; you can feel it in your marrow. I sip more coffee, took another drag.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

Diego and I cut out of the bar into a humid Tijuana street and swing next door to a $5 a night hotel. Pay the fat mamacita behind the black bars and dash up warped wooden stairs to a room with an overpowering effluvia of mildew. The yellowed, tobacco stained walls were a multicolored kaleidoscope of scrabbled graffiti of both marker and spray paint and, plopped in a corner, was a tired, slutty mattress sprawled onto the floor. Diego smiles and whispers some dirty shit as we peel off our duds and flop onto the mattress - bedbugs and all. Diego - 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. After a bit, he squirts and I giggle 'Again!' and he does with me flopped around lying on my stomach. Afterwards, forementioned Diego confides his fantasy was to screw a gringo and I was his first. Awwww, I smile inward.

Switch frequencies fzzt!

The fat taxi driver sat wordless - hating me (the foreigner) or his life in general as we hurtled over the hills toward the ocean. The cold wind blew in my face and whiped my hair as I sat deep in the back chair and I thought, Fuck - I'm not going anywhere...I live in the coolest place in the world!

power cut. end transmission...

room to dream