Saturday, September 28, 2019

camptown ladies never sang all the doo-dah day


The sky was illuminated by incandescent blue bursts of electrical fire. Rain fell hard from tumultuous, darkened clouds, drenching me and the scrawny hooker tittering on the corner in see-through plastic platform pumps. She resembled a melting wax figure, like she had acquired some hideous cancer. She squawks at me and through a rainy haze and the sound of her voice revealed she was a he. I press on home - streets now had become rivers and sewage outlets vomit forth a dry winters worth of back up.
I cut the corner to my trap, soaked to the bones, turn the key and slop my wet shoes into my house. Lights are turned on and I peel my clothes off like a used condom. Stove burns blue flame, water boils and steams, and a cuppa hot coffee is made. I hunker down and watch David Lynch’s Eraserhead just to make sure my life isn't that bad. The credits roll and I slip into bed. Rain always made me drowsy.
Had a headache, me, and took a handful of aspirin before knocking off for the night.
Poom! Poom! Poom! Somebody was knocking at my door. The clock read 2:36am. Poom! Poom! Poom! I fling the covers off and reach for my pajama bottoms (I always slept naked. Can't have it any other way. Wouldn't you?) I pull the front door open to find Jose, a teenage kid from the neighborhood standing on my landing with kind of a glow. Eyes all pupil and sniffing constantly. He went into some tirade about how he was in need of money and his grandmother was sick and that...Basta! Can't you tell how late it is!? I was sleeping! Some of us hafta work for a living instead of staying up all night taking dope! Don't bother me again! Slam!!
Had a hard time sleeping after that. Put some Juliee Cruise on the stereo - she always makes me drift away.
The alarm goes off, reggeaton blares forth; it is 5:20am. I stagger to the shower and bathe in tepid water, dress and hit the dark streets - still wet after last night’s storm. I purchase two burritos pulpa from the plump smiling woman on the side of the road - traffic whizzes past us going toward the United States - there is black dust in the cracks of her face. I gobble down one burrito before vaulting the turnstile to the International Bridge. Wait grudgingly in the long line to be waved through by a red-eyed and bored looking customs officer. Once on the Other Side, a phone call is made and a coworker picks me up, stopping first at Starbuck's for a Frappuccino mocha.
Work dragged like a wounded snail and I was nearly comatose by the time I clocked out. I hitched another ride back to the border and jet across that long divide. Shriveled, shit covered junkies in rags and grime coated ponchos, hands outstretched, looking like beat Christ's begging for change down under the bridge. You can hear their pleaful cries...they go unnoticed, as all I saw in front of me was an impenetrable wall of bouncing, fat asses en masse as we trudged across that hump.
Stopped by Burrito Row - I ordered a burrito mole with manzana fresca and shoot the breeze with Beto, the hottie who works at one of the stalls. I chomp my mess all the while wondering what it will take to nail that fine ass. I digress...I was still extremely sleepy and decided to make my way home. Mumbling adios, I walk through the muggy air - the occasional tsk tsk from the prowling chunky chilango hooker - dodging the kamikaze bus, the suicide taxi.
I reach my humble flat and snatch the $150 I stashed under a beat copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars. Down stairs, I pay rent to the slightly crazed landlady as her oily son looms silentky in the corner, arms crossed, watching me - the old haggish bitch counts the money and miscounts twice before agreeing it is the correct amount.
Back at my place, I languidly sat with a Sol cerveza and switched channels on my 32inch flat screen telly recently purchased with my tax return. Nothing but crap. There was a rap at my front door and was surprised to find Oscar standing in the street.
Inviting Oscar in he began bleating the same old same old and needed cash and, well, one thing led to another and I found myself sucking that cock - not ten slurps up and down his stiff brown shaft and he was squirting gobs of semen into my mouth; clenching the bed covers with one hand and grabbing the back of my head with the other.
Both of us showered, I gave him one hundred pesos and he split. Vibrating in meloncholy, I dressed and marched out - the late afternoon streets teeming with life. Fat fag in pinstriped jeans checks me out as I pass the shoe store; smells waft of mouthwatering rotisserie chicken displayed in neon blasted windows with blackened filthy bum pissing on the outside wall. Small Indian children, snot caked on their copper cherub-like faces, grab my pant leg as I walk by - moanay! moanay! - a clown, a fucking guy dressed as a circus clown, DJ's in front of a record shop. Three tattooed toughs slouch under a street lamp - flicking of cigarettes and toothpicks click between teeth - side eye me as I saunter along. My way is clogged by a group of young boys in soccer outfits - they stand laughing and talking in front of the dusty pane windows of an ice cream parlor, I stare at them with shattered limitless lust. Shoeshine boys call out to shine me leathers as I stroll past blue, yellow, pink adobe houses and crumbling buildings erected a hundred years ago. Shop vendors hawk their wares - vying for my attention. The music from various cantinas is deafening - I cut into a cafe, order a coffee americano, and scribble these words out...

excerpt from handwritten journal, 
cuidad juárez, march 1998

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