He Sounds Weird

He smashed his cigarette out onto the cracked pavement with the toe of his shoe. Thin, aquiline features seemed pale and ghastly under the throbbing blue and white light of an overhead marquee. He peered at me as I entered the bar. His eyes ascertained a lazy gaze of crimson in them. Was he tired or inebriated? Undoubtedly both. American hustlers have to work long hours to make ends meet.

   I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The pleasant old hag tending the counter stated that they did not serve Sol, “Only Coors. On tap.”

   For two dollars in a sixteen ounce glass, why not? The shit still tasted like a homeless man’s piss. I glanced around the bar – lost derelicts, antiquated hookers, furtive junkies. As I stared at my reflection in the mirror across from me, the kid at the front door slid onto a stool next to me. In the reflection, his image was sliced in half by the parting of the mirror plates. One pane was slightly higher than the other. The reflection was somewhat off putting. One good, the other bad.

   The aging bartender placed a styrofoam bowl of popcorn between us. With thin, tattooed covered hands he scooped up a fistful and shoved them into a broad mouth. As I watched, I got a better look at him. He was tall, thin, and wore the expression of annoyed petulance common to all Americans. It was a look designed to project aloof coolness to whomever cared to meet that gaze, but instead it simply reflected on how sad, beat, and completely bitchy a person could be. His torso was draped over by a green t-shirt with a large red star on the chest, loose fitted jeans, and black leather work shoes. His light brown hair was buzz cut and stood out dark against pale skin. His eyes....his eyes, though blood shot, were a light blue when they were blue. He held a face of a young boy, smooth and clean, who seemed to be perpetually pouting.

   I turned to him as he shoveled another handful of popcorn into his mouth. “You hungry?” I asked jokingly.

   He smiled through discolored teeth that he was or to that effect. I offered him a beer.

   “Sure, man. Thanks.” He said sniffing. “You spare a smoke?”

   I fished a cigarette from my pocket and he went to stand outside again and smoked. I sat sipping my beer. When he returned, he drank a gulp and then asked, “You live around here?”

   “I rent a room up on Oracle.” I explained. “I’m waiting for my housing vouchers to clear so I can get an apartment.”

   “Up on Oracle?” He repeated. “You rent a hotel room? Isn’t that fucking expensive?”

   I said nothing and took a gulp of beer.

   “What do you do?” He asked.

   “I’m a writer.”

   “A writer? Really? What do you write?”

   “Garbage apparently.”

   He laughed, I chuckled and ordered another round. It was that time of early evening when the bar was kept very dark and cool from the insidiously dry, one hundred degree weather outside. Even with the sun gone for the day and it being a full moon, the climate was uncomfortably hot. I snatched a paper napkin from a stack on the counter and wiped across my forehead.

   “It’s too fucking hot here.” I expressed to no one in particular.

   “Shit! It ain’t even June yet.” Stated an old man with a huge, cascading beard at the end of the bar. “Wait till yer ass gets stuck outside during August. Fuckin’ shit’s hot then!” It was Buddy, the bar regular. Word has it he has been frequenting the joint since 1967. I simply smiled at him and turned back to the kid.

   As I was about to speak, he slid off of his stool and walked to the mensroom. His jeans were pulled down and hung off a pair of bulbous cheeks hidden under gray boxers. As I watched him disappear into the pissoir, I thought, That’s an ass begging to get fucked.

   Yeah, I was feeling it. I wanted to conquer someone. I was stateside now and did not require to placate some Mexican macho fuck who kept his sphincter clenched the entire time while we had sex. I decided when the hustler returned from the restroom, I was going to casually pop the question to come back to my place. So, I waited...and waited...and waited.

   What the fuck? He fall in? I thought.

   I paid for two more beers and then casually walked into the mensroom. Nice set up. Red light, dim. The crumbling walls were a mass of scrawled graffiti. There was a long, metal piss trough and one toilet stall in which the boy stood. Fine, I’ll take a piss while I’m in here. As I stood at the urinal, for a moment it was silent, then I heard a light rhythmic clanging of a belt buckle and the muted raspy sound of skin sliding against skin. He was jacking off.

   I was already slightly inebriated, so what the fuck I thought and said, “You need help over there?”

   Momentarily he was silent. He then walked out from the stall and stood in the middle of the restroom with jeans unbuttoned. One hand hung limply at his side as the other held his pants up. Pointing out and up from the hole in his boxers was a long, circumcised erection.

   His face was tense and determined as he spoke in the crassest tone, “Yeah, man, I want my cock sucked.”

  I casually walked over to him and placed his erect penis in my hand. I read the callous warts lining the shaft like braille. I jerked my hand away. I looked up at his despairing face and said, “Not today, man. Don’t feel the need.”

   “You don’t want it?” He asked. I saw in his eyes that his affliction disgusted me. Obviously, I wasn’t the first to recoil from his advances today.

   “No.” I left him standing frustrated in that empty bathroom.

   Later, I stumbled out of the bar into the dank alley which smelled like rotted garbage and festering urine. The night was halfway over. While I was in the tavern, it must had rained. The uneven bricks of the back alley were glistening in a translucent reflection. I retrieved a cigarette out of my pocket with intoxicated, numb fingers, lit up. I leaned my head back and blew great plumes of smoke up into a dark and cloudy sky. The volumous clouds parted here and there so the stars could look down and judge me.

   “Fuck you.” I mutter and almost fall. I held onto a lamp post covered in flyers to support myself. The beers and tequila shots were taking their toll. I was truly screwed. Truly damned.

   “Hey.” A voice out of the darkness hissed. “You spare a smoke?”

   Goddammit, I don’t want to be bothered. I want to get home. First, I gotta piss.

   I didn’t answer the phantom and wobbled over to the filthy dumpster, whipped out my junk, and relieved myself. Cigarette precariously dangling from numb lips, I zipped up and half-assed a scan for police patrols. On one end of the alley, a group of loud frat boys stumbled by gregariously as they often are.

   “Can I bum a smoke off of you?” The voice asked again.

   I gazed over to a dark corner filled with shadows and dread. He slithered out of the inky blackness in grungy clothes and frayed sneakers. His blond hair was disheveled and he was sniffling. The boy was on something. It was his eyes. His eyes gleamed in the half-light, burning with sadness and despair and evil as hell addiction.

   “What?” I croaked.

   I felt like Fagin all hunched over and bitter and shitty.

   “Do...you...have...an...extra...cigarette?” He asked slow and drawn out as if speaking to a retard. Funny thing, he was.

   I mumbled ‘Oh yeah’ or something like that and handed him one. He took it in slender fingers, dirt under the nails. He was slight of build and I wondered the last time he ate.

   “So, what are you looking for?” He asked coyly.

   Ah yes, the general question of every male prostitute in every alley of the world.

   “Death.” I grunted.

   “Oh don’t say that. Life is good. It is wonderful and full of great times.” He smiled broadly.

   I blearily gazed at him and saw him in a new light. Here standing in front of me was a beautiful, homeless youth and in lieu of all his hardships he currently endured, he remained positive. I was like that once. Before being beaten down by lovers and friends and trust and mishap decisions and misguided circumstance. Before my mind went and became toxic and corrosive in embittered self-loathing.

   “Are you hungry?” I asked, pointing towards the 24 hour cafe open on the opposite end of the alley. “I need to get some food in me to suck up this alcohol.”

   “As a matter of fact, I am hungry.” He stated, smiling. “Been drinking, huh? You drink a lot?”

   “It’s all I have left and even that proclivity is becoming a bore.” I said as I began stomping down the alley; nonchalantly dodging pools of iridescent, oily water.

   We cut into the shop. Ordered food and strong coffee. Took a booth at the wall. The place was empty excluding a lonely hobo with a panting dog and a deranged homosexual on a laptop. My guest and I both sat for some time not speaking.

   “I’m James.” He finally stated.

   I introduced myself the best I could, with the exception I was so drunk and depressed instead of coming across cordial, my words and tone came out loathsome and obscene. I drank my coffee in silence until our sandwiches arrived. The boy ate in gusto.

   “Haven’t eaten in a while?” I asked as I watched him devour his meal.

   “Not good anyway.” He managed between chomps of pre-processed flesh.

   Outside the rain began and late night revelers dashed under awnings and into doorways. I observed James. Rentboy to be sure. Then again, I think it was forced in way of certain living arrangements. Or perhaps he was simply a sex addict. A lot of them are. They won’t admit it. But, they are.

   “I was thrown out of this place today.” I divulged, glancing around the coffee shop.

   “The cafe? Why?”

   “There were a couple of heroin addicts I was chatting with in research of a new book. Because I was in association and, basically because the barista is an imperialistic bitch, I was asked to never come back.”

   “And, yet here you are.” He laughed. “Wait. New novel? You’re a published writer?”

   “Yes.” I croaked. “A curse.”

   “Wow!” James gushed. “I never met a real writer! What do you write?”

   “Garbage.” I grunted.

   “Oh...come on. It can’t be that bad.”

   I sighed. Took a sip of coffee, poked at my sandwich. “You have a place to stay, James? It’s raining outside and it’s late. I need to get some sleep.”

   “Actually, I was couch surfing with some friends over on 4th. A bunch of fucked up tweekers. The bitch who runs the house and I got into an argument. So, as of right now...the rain is my blanket.” He extended an open palm towards the street.

   I looked off into the darkness beyond the grime streaked pane window. The intermittent flash of summer lightning. The glow of yellow lamps igniting sheets of cascading rain. I took a cigarette from my pocket, offered it to James. Removed one for myself, lit both.

   “You can stay at my place if you wish.” I stated. “No monkey business. Unless you are up to monkey business.” I raised a fay eyebrow, took a drag.

   James leaned over the small table and asked in hushed tones, “Are you gay?”

   I continued to look out the window, slouched against the wall in the booth, “Aren’t we all?”

   We finished our meal and then found ourselves briskly walking over incandescent pools and dribbling rain to my apartment a few blocks away. I opened the door and invited him in. He took in the place, like a good hustler, making certain there were no sinister weapons or weird sex gadgets. I noticed in his face he was relieved the place was somewhat bare - bed, bookshelf, table, a couple of chairs, clothes neatly hung in an open closet. Nothing to hide.

   He turned to me, “You mind if I take a shower? It’s been a few days.”

   I said sure and gathered him a clean towel and an unused bar of soap. I lay on the edge of the bed, smoking a damp cigarette, watching the shadows move across the ceiling from passing cars outside and listening to Miles Davis on the radio. Through my experiences in Mexico, as long as he was in my house, I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight. I could use a shower, too. On the contrary, I believed as soon as I walked out of the bathroom, anything of value I had would had been long gone.

   James walked out of the bathroom with a green towel wrapped around his scrawny torso.

   “Let me see if I can find some pajama bottoms for you.” I offered.

   “Don’t bother.” He quipped. “I like to sleep in the nude.”

   Convenient. I offered him a beer from the small fridge and we chatted a bit as he lay under the thin blanket. He said something of getting enough money for a bus ticket to return to Las Vegas. He had family there. I didn’t bother questioning why he didn’t hit his family up for the fare. After I finished my beer, I peeled off my damp clothes and slid under the blanket. He was shivering and so was I. Wordlessly, he snuggled next to me, briefly muttering that my body was warm. His torso was so boney. In the half-light of the room, he turned towards me and slid his arm across my chest, his erection thumping against my hip.

   “I want to feel you inside of me.” He breathed into my ear.

   We began kissing. The taste of saliva mixed with coffee, beer, and ham swirled in our mouths. James kissed my chest, playing with my erect nipples, making his way down to my own erection. Like a champ, he sucked my dick like something I needed in a long time. It felt as if I was in heaven. He definitely was a professional. I got to the point I couldn’t take it anymore and rolled the blond onto his stomach. I parted his cheeks and rimmed him for a good twenty minutes. He squirmed and gasped as I loosened him up. I flipped James over onto his back, placing his feet up onto my shoulders. Spitting into my palm, I lubed the head of my penis up and slowly pushed it in. He clung to me like a baby monkey as I rapidly rutted and lunged into him. His ass muscles tightened and grasped as I thrust - literally sucking my cock into him. I couldn’t hold back any longer. I yanked out and sprayed him with my semen. A second after, as he masturbated wildly, unloading his pent up frustrations onto his self. It was a work of art. I snatched my cell phone and snapped a pic before he could hide his face.

   “Hey!” James laughed. “You should ask before doing that!”

   “It’s for the archives. Dr. Windom needs it for my reports.”

   “Dr. Windom?”

   “Ford Windom. PhD. Never actually passed the bar exam. Faked various psychoanalyst credentials with Photoshop. He once committed a friend to an asylum because he laughed at his eyebrows. Another nearly overdosed on a prescription from the good doctor when he swapped the patients lithium with Viagra. He called my parents and told them I was a sexual deviant with a bad case of crabs. Crazy fuck needs to be arrested.”

   “He sounds weird.” James chuckled.

   “You have no idea.” I plopped next to him, placing my phone onto the end table. “How about first thing tomorrow morning, we head over to Greyhound and get you that ticket to Vegas?”

   “For reals?!” He beamed, lying next to me, propped up on his elbow. “You’ll do that?”

   “And more.” I said esoterically. “Now, let’s get some sleep.”

   The last thing I noticed before I dozed off was the clock reading 4:34am. Covered in semen and sweat, we both fell into a contented deep sleep...

Fingers in the Dark

I sit at the table. He across from me smiles shyly and sips from his drink. The sound of an empty glass is a trumpet of despair in my ears. The dishes cluttering the table are all empty, each one scraped clean. Yet still we sit, staring.

It’s obvious. There was no longer any pretense. No rolls to coat with butter. No last noodle to chase with a fork. No last drop of chocolate to wipe from a plate. Nothing remains but the melting ice in the last of our drinks, and that for only so much longer. And yet we sit, staring.

“I don’t want to go.” I say. Pathetic. You can’t just say that.

“We could go somewhere else.” He now appears just as disappointed.

“I don’t think I could eat any more anyway.” An awkward chuckle. I shouldn’t have said that… “Uh… I think there’s a park nearby.” I have no idea really but how far could one be?

“Yes!” A smile. “I mean…” A shy glance to the side “Sure.” Looking again at my eyes. No, into my eyes, into my soul. Another smile.

The flutters in my chest lift me to my feet. Do I help him from her chair? What do I do? I stand, arms by my side as he grabs his cellphone and joins me. The flutters which had not ever actually paused the entire dinner, redouble their intensity. The bill had long since been paid. And paid again upon ordering a second desert.

Willing my hand not to sweat, I place a palm on his shoulder as I walk with him out of the restaurant. We wander aimlessly on the streets for only a few minutes before stopping to simply stare into each other’s eyes. We never found a park.

Problems in Paradise

I stood under the shade of a tree in front of my slum dwelling. The dusty, sagging tree did it's best to provide shade however it failed miserably. I glanced down the street - crumbling flats of multicolors tenements lined a simmering concrete which lost the war of time.

At first, I thought it was an old man shuffling with his daughter. He wore a straw fedora, blue checked shirt, jeans over a scrawny form. As he and the girl neared, the man called out, "Hola, coma esta?'

I had to do a mental double take. It was Oscar strolling home with his daughter. A wave of both exhilaration and anger enveloped me. On Oscar's last visit we had an argument:

"I'm not like that anymore. You making a joto out of me." He bleated on that ill night. Too much alcohol had long converted his brown eyes crimson.

I wasn't going to take any of his Macho Mexican bullshit and snapped, "Did you not confess that you haven't had 'sexual relations' with your wife in over six months? That you couldn't stand being in the same room as her. The nagging, the condescension? You know why, Oscar? Because you are gay yet you fall into this latino mythos that every man south of the border needs to attain some type of normal relation with a woman so as not to incur the suspicions and wrath of friends and family. You realize that is utter bullshit! You are gay, man! Accept it!"

He stood up and strode to the restroom, he hollered back as he took a piss, "You are wrong! I am not like that!"

"When we first met years ago," I continued, lighting a smoke and blowing huge plumes toward the stained ceiling. "It was you who approached me. It was you who pressed me into bringing you home. It was you and only you who made an effort to visit my house everyday to get your rocks off! I never forced you into doing anything you did not want to and now with me back and you married, you are confused. You are split right down the middle on the way your life is and the way it should be."

He quickly walked out of the bathroom and in anger chucked his empty beer bottle at me. It missed my head and smashed against the wall behind. "No!" He roared. "I am no pinche puto!" His red eyes were shrink wrapped in tears. Before I could retaliate from his physical onslaught, he stormed out the front door and down the dark street.

I gulped another swig of my beer and simply shook my head. I wasn't angry, more sad than anything. What an emotional torment he must be going through. And with my surprise appearance back into his heterosexual relation with his wife, I really must of thrown a wrench into his machinery.

So, where was I? Ah yes...Oscar approached me in the heat and asked if everything was okay.

"Everything with me is fine. It's you who I am worried about." I stated.

He shot me a glance of anger and then glanced at his daughter. He mumbled that he had more shopping to do and perhaps will be over later in the evening for drinks. I looked him dead in his eyes and stated with utmost sincerity, "My door is always open for you, old friend. You take care of your family first, I will be here waiting."

As I watched him and his daughter shuffle down the cracked street, I hope he understood my meaning...

The Battle.

This morning, I took a stand against the full-scale incursion of the dust bunny horde. For too long, I stood idly by as they amassed their forces along the outskirts of my room. For too long, I shrugged and ignored their ever-encroaching encampments.

But no longer.

I grabbed my ancient weapon of suction and rose up against my grimy foe. I laid waste to their fortifications and battlements. Their cries of anguish were lost to my weapon’s whine until, at long last, I looked out over a dust-free expanse and breathed in the clean air.

The surfaces of my room show no evidence of this morning’s carnage and though there were some allied casualties, the day was ours. We will remember the fallen and drink toasts in their honor. It was a hard-fought battle and the war will wage on long after the sweet taste of today’s victory fades.

I will be ready.

Novel Writing

Came into acquaintance with several young hipster train jumpers loitering down at a local coffee house near the tracks. I wanted to size up some local citizens, get real, and write. Along a tattered, wooden counter were a sprinkle of prostitutes displaying itchy scabs and violet scars of purposeful addictions, convicts sat hunched spitting nervous furtive glances, and drab hobos sat dunking pound cake emitting a bouquet of sour feet and unwashed genitals which permeated the dusty, high ceiling room. Faded Sante Fe art hung on paint peeled walls. Good taste in music. Johnny Cash.

   I meet this one cat, Billy he says – sandy blond hair, skin crimson and toughened and wrinkled from years of exposure from the elements, not an old guy...but handsome in his early thirties. Whiff of locker rooms and flop houses. I found him in the mensroom shooting up with an old, flabby Indian and asked “Wanna bang?”

   He stands next to the grimy sink and casually offers the syringe to me in long, dirty fingers.

   “Naw. Cut that crap eons ago.”

   Pinpoints sparkle in his eyes and he slumps against the wall, shoulder slowly descending against white grimy tile, t-shirt clinging to a skinny torso. Dragged down by the pull of junk. The Indian, toothless old woman smile, takes the spike and jabs it into brown, rigid flesh. The Indian, he is down for the count. I stood there with the cooler system clacking in a foul smelling bathroom, slowly toking my joint as I watched Billy and the Indian go on the nod pervaded with dreamful nostalgia.

   Ted, tall and could be a model with raven hair and jagged looks, enters in swishing of long black trench coat and searches through Billy’s pockets for the stash.

   He looks up towards me with steel blue eyes, “That greedy fucker shot it all?”

   I shrug, watching a large cockroach skitter across a drain pipe. Beer got warm and strictly from boredom I return to the bar. Savage Charlie, a man of the grossest dimensions, sidles up to me and puts down the faggot patter. Compliments. Free booze.

   “I gots lots of cash.” He grins with a cherub smile.

   Lose 150lbs. and we’ll talk. Silence between us after that. Song changes. Sunday Morning, by Pat Boone. What asshole played that? Oh, yeah...me.

   An Indian from the Rez enters the fray. Tall and lean and a face so smooth and pure. Jet black hair and warm brown eyes. Torn black jeans and black t-shirt with a white wolf emblazoned on it. Goes by the moniker Lester. Guess you can’t win them all. Still striking and lovely at the same time for a guy of twenty one.

   “You new here?” He asks, ordering his Bud Lite.

   I drank Corona. I go into my spiel and we jibber-jabber of Mexico, the Rez (Indian reservation, for you uneducated.), and the glories of marijuana.

   “You like good weed? I got some back at the Rez. We can take my car.”

    I see where this is leading.

   Flop into his brown Hyundai, rattling fender and coughing muffler, we shoot south to Injun territory. He lives with his uncle and little brother in a disintegrating trailer surrounded by dirt and dusty cactus and old rusted cars. Out back of the blue and white mobile home, we sit next to a shed on crates and scrap and smoke the sweetest herb I had ever enjoyed.

   Discussing literature and the decline of Western Civilization, the sun set crimson behind jagged mountains in a glorious blast of fury. As the stars twinkle in a dark navy Tucson sky, Lester steals a kiss and it doesn’t go farther than that. We talk more and giggle and joke and toke. Chatter concerning science fiction and homosexuality. He discloses he likes white boys and if I would like to “do it”.

   In the shed, fumble, kiss, casually masturbate. Blowing Lester, penis was short and circumcised, he quickly ejaculates in great hot spurts and timidly apologizes. Don’t worry, handsome, I smile. Long ride back to town, we share a hamburger and fries I buy from a roadside stall. Just Breathe croons Melissa Etheridge from the car stereo, and I do.

- excerpt from novel in process Borrowed Flesh, chapter three Pigs in the weeds

Writer's Block

Mr. Regular

He sat alone in an unfamiliar bar listening to the static of the night. A grim smile hidden behind his shallow features. He held a glass of vodka to his lips and hesitated. His small penetrating eyes watching the room. He liked the bar. He liked the vodka. He liked the sound. He hated the people. He hated the smell. He hated the loneliness.
He finished his vodka and wavered to the bar tender for another.

Heterosexual Diversions

Oscar arrived late at my apartment. His breath ranked of stale liquor and a look of abject sadness on his copper-colored face. He confided that he and his wife had it out three days previously and had not spoken to each other since. We lay watching a porno and drinking beer naked. I asked if I could snuggle up next to him. I loathed being with someone so...heterosexual. But he was an old friend and it was my duty to offer what ever help was possible.

"Okay." Oscar reluctantly rested his back and head against the end of the bed and I joined him against the wall. I got on my right elbow, facing him, and gently ran my fingers around his nipples. He closed his eyes, licked his lips and began stroking his penis. I leaned lower to lick his hardened nipple; he let out a whimpering ‘aahh’ and increased his speed. I swirled my tongue dizzily, then with my free hand, reached the other stiff nipple and pinched it. Suddenly, my ear was flooded with warm liquid.

"What the fuck?" I exclaimed.

I lifted my head higher, getting the continuous gunshot spray of Oscar’s cum shower. He was shooting literally everywhere. He could not stop. He was hitting his chest, his face. My quivering, shocked body was trying to clean his jizz from the side of my face and my inner ear, all the while he was now down to a depleting drizzle from his cock head. What is really surprising was throughout all of this, he made no sound. None! His eyes again were clasped shut and his mouth was perched to one fine point in the middle of his face: an ugly ‘O’ face. I rested on my elbow again, studying his contorted countenance, wondering what internally could cause this, traveling over the now loosening lips and the drifting, flicking eyes, witnessing the deep breaths through his nostrils. Then I realized this fucker was falling asleep.

I hurtled over his spent body, “Want a towel?” I grabbed one and quickly cleaned myself off.

A “Yeah,” was muffled towards me. I threw it at his chest.

Oscar quickly wiped himself down, his face first, then his chest; I requested him to clean the backboard and he responded with awe at his performance. While he diligently wiped his sperm from my bed, I put on some khakis and a black shirt, slipped on my shoes, and informed him that I needed to use the restroom. I walked into the hallway and turned into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I turned on the sink, washed my face briefly, dried myself, and stood in the mirror for a good minute, giving Oscar time to collect his belongings, get dressed and leave. After a minute, I extricated the bathroom, entered my room only to find Oscar still on the bed naked, attention fixed on the television.

I have lived in this country and dealt with his type for so long, I knew the score. Bust your nut then jet out the door. Girls first, fags secondary.

“Aren’t we done?” I asked. “It’s late and don’t you think your wife is going to worry?”

“I don’t care.” He said, eyes fixed on the flickering screen. “I don’t want to go back right now, anyway. I rather stay here with you.”

Well, don’t that take the rag offen the bush?

The Right to Write

Lean brown side turns - lights a cigarette. The Chinese takeout festering on the hotel end table. Half empty bottle of Fundador next to it. Cheap $15 a night joint. Earlier that morning, I went to the San Diego psychiatric clinic in lieu of my ongoing depression – couldn’t take the badgering of those damn psychiatrists anymore. Enough to drive you mad.

   We both got dressed and I walked him to the corner, pulled a couple of crumpled bills outta my pocket, handed it to him - we shook hands, parted and I headed to a cafe for a coffee.

   Shot the shit with Tomas and he was trying to convince me to stay in Tijuana. I don’t know...just don’t know. Been checking out Mexicali. Sounds real tasty. Kinda the rough edges of Juarez City but not as fucked up as Tijuana - if that makes any sense. Of course it doesn’t. How the fuck, you The Reader, can possibly ever understand?

   So, I light a Lucky and sip some coffee and eat a taco and yap in my atrocious Spanish as some naco puto eyes me from the Plaza, but I am definitely not feeling it. I have grown so cold inside. So inherently distant from the human race I don’t think I am ever coming back, you feel me? You dig what I am saying? No? Fuck you.

   I spot Saul on the corner and after a backslap and a hip handshake I cop some weed from him and we walk around the corner to his no window, single room trap and smoke that shit. Now I am already dosed up on psychotropic medication - add some chronic to the mix and I am one happy cowboy - yeehaw!

   I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle…

   We bust out onto the teeming street and that fucking Mexican sun is big and bright under a dazzling blue sky and we trump down El Revu and pour into El Caliente and hit the slots but don’t win shit. However, I got Saul by my side and to be quite honest, I sincerely believe I am falling for the boy.

- excerpt from novel in progress borrowed flesh from the first chapter, Tijuana Bebop

Cigarettes and Cum

But there’s a void now. A hole of sorts that won’t heal or close up. Because if someone stabs you in the brain with a butcher knife, and you panic and yank it out at a janky angle, then you might wind up damaging yourself forever, and you won’t be able to able to chew your food properly or ever remember your social security number again. You won’t be you anymore because something will be missing. That’s what the void feels like because you’re not all of you anymore, and whenever there’s a void you feel like you have to fill it and it doesn’t matter what the fuck you fill it with. Just fill that bitch up. Fill it with macaroni and cheese and cigarettes and cum. Because it burns when it’s empty and vulnerable like that. Just fill it the fuck up even though your body will reject it every time, because it knows that it’s not you and it won’t settle for substitutes. That void wasn’t there before, and before, I enjoyed my solitude. I relished in it. The void makes being alone completely different, because you no longer have all of you, so you’re more alone than you’ve ever been. Wherever you are and all day long you’ll feel like you’re searching instead of living. You’ll carry yourself differently. You’ll wander throughout your life a little more weary, and nervous about who you let in, and how you approach people. You’ll feel like you’re being judged more often, and you’ll begin to struggle with the idea of what people think of you, which will break your heart the most, because you never cared before, not even for the slightest split of a second, what any other mother fucker thought of you. You’ll have to start closing your closet door at night, and you won’t be able sleep unless both your feet are under the covers.

So when someone takes that from you, and we’re not just talking about me anymore, we’re talking about you, me, and everyone we know, because we all have pieces missing. Craters and holes from the all the blows that we’ve taken over the years. The empty parts that we try to fill with dicks and drugs and booze and boys and the internet, and how we distract ourselves from it by talking about one another behind each other’s backs. Because we’re all a bit broken, lonely, and incomplete. So when someone takes that from you, you give up or you keep going and it’s as simple as that. Try not to think about what was taken, even though it may feel impossible, because you don’t know if they even kept that piece of you safe, or if they just left it on a bus somewhere, and you’ll have to spend the rest of your life trying to find it.

There’s a void now and it burns, but I still l do things alone. I go see movies and go out to eat and I go for long walks when the sun is out and I dream of better days like I always have. I just don’t have all of me anymore, and I’m still getting used to the holes as your ghost follows me throughout my journey, and I’m scared that your ghost will never leave me because ghosts can’t die. But just because it still haunts me doesn’t mean that I’m afraid of you. And maybe one day you’ll haunt someone else.

Maybe one day I’ll find what I’m looking for.

Oscar

He is shorter

than me by a head-

He looks up at me

sometimes and blushes.

I don’t know why

but it’s cute.

He never has kissed

me in public-

I thought maybe

he was shy,

Then I figure out why he blushes

as he turns around,

stands on his tip-toes

and kisses me.

Rant No. 7523.4

I hate electronic cigarettes. That’s not what fucking James Dean or Brando smoked. They probably smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes as they wrenched out repairs on their muscle cars in white cotton t-shirts smeared with oil and grease. Bette Davis wouldn’t have been caught dead standing on a balcony in Paris at four in the morning as Vanity Fair’s Oscar party came to a close smoking an electronic cigarette. She’d be finishing off her pack of Virginia Slims, already fighting off her hangover and blowing smoke into the sky in her ball gown.

I despise my cell phone. Marlyn wouldn’t even know what to do with it. She probably had phone sex with John F. Kennedy in one of the suites at the Hilton, talking on a rotary phone, naked and wrapped up in the phone cord and holding the phone in the crook of her neck as she breathed out her orgasms into his ear while he jacked off in the oval office.

I fucking hate Instagram. The fuck would Audrey Hepburn have done with Instagram? If she had had an instagram she probably would have felt the need to filter her face, which would have been a fucking crime against humanity. Instead she was photographed in black and white and developed gracefully in dark rooms by Italian photographers who always told her that she was beautiful even though she never even believed them. She wore her flaws with pride, even though she didn’t actually have any.

I loathe Okcupid, Tynder and Grindr. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton never would never have wasted their fucking time. They were too busy smashing liquor bottles against the walls in the midst of one of their passionate hurricane like arguments and making up by fucking on the kitchen counter, slicing their feet open on the broken glass and not thinking twice about it. Even though it all eventually fell apart, they both can still say that they had a great love in their lifetime. The kind of love Hemingway would have wanted to write about. Good luck trying to find that shit on the fucking internet.

I’m ashamed of my mood stabilizer. Where the hell would we be if Joan Crawford had gone on a mood stabilizer? We wouldn’t have those movies. All those movies where she accented her broad shoulders and stood up to the leading men and fought back. We wouldn’t have gotten to watch her rise from the ashes over and over again and admire how she always kept her eyebrows in check no matter how precarious a situation she found herself in. And most importantly, Christina Crawford never would have had anything to write about, and Faye Dunaway never would have had the chance to win that Razzie.

I despise airbrushed celebrity culture. It would make Katharine Hepburn sick to her stomach. Four Oscars under her belt and she never accepted any of them in person, because she didn’t believe in it and because she would have rather worn pants. She was the kind of woman who made it very clear that she could do it on her own in every way shape and form, outside of a man. And we don’t have that now. That used to be the norm. Now strong women are a minority.

I wish I was somewhere else most of the time. A time period where we were more present as human beings, and spent more time looking at the sky than screens. It keeps me looking back instead of looking forward most of the time, but I like sitting there in the back row by myself with my fantasies. I can be whatever I want back there. Because when I’m back there with ghosts that I feel like I can actually relate to, I feel more like me, and I feel free.

Mexican Purchases

I had purchased a small refrigerator from the market which sells used and shady items. It was a nice refrigerator - not too big, not too small - about five feet tall. Black and silver. The fat bastard in the filthy t-shirt said "One thousand pesos". About eighty-five dollars?, I thought. Fine.

Inquiring about delivery, he quoted fifty pesos yet when the older than fuck fucker wobbled up with the truck he flatly demanded one hundred pesos. Ah, the gringo rate.

Hurtling through chaotic traffic, the old man squinted and swerved nearly hitting every vehicle and pedestrian who crossed his path.

"I don't have a clutch in this thing" He stated. The fumes of burnt gas emitting from the yellow hood of the truck burned my eyes. Every time he staggeringly halted at a red light, he had to shut the engine off and then restart it again.

"How old are you?" I jokingly asked.

"Eighty-two!" He stated proudly. "I can't see worth a damn, though."

I'm going to die, I thought as we almost careened into a bus crossing our path. Hell, the seat belts were even worthless.

Of course, ultimately, we made it back to my house in one piece. I stated if he would mind simply sliding the refrigerator to the lip of the back cab, I could carry it to my door alone. He then went into a tirade about his bad heart and his hip ulcer. Sigh. Fine. I jump into the cab and retrieve the appliance myself.

The small left-front foot popped off. Great. My neighbor, who was out on the sidewalk selling used garments and brick-brak inquired how much I paid for the thing. I told her. She chuckled and said I got ripped off.

"You think?" I laughed as I dragged it into my front door.

At least it goes with my brand new stove - which I yet to buy a connector tube for the gas main for. Muy sympatico...

I don't know if the publishers will allow me to release my book under the title Borrowed Flesh. I have already been given an ISBN number for an earlier, disastrous release and the damned thing is still lurking on my amazon page even though I took great pains in attempting to bury it. I was thinking a different title and so far I like Cursed from Birth. Even though the book is an extremely experimental take on this blog, I hope I can use the title Borrowed Flesh, it fits more. A ver...

Ronnie Rocket

cannabis notes

"I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him who fits."

"This skin, willowy and alabaster in its pigment’s allure, drapes over my shoulders to the sleeves of flesh born to fit." His eyes darted towards the shambling door ajar in the blue entryway, ritualistically slapping the heels of his tattered leather boots in four consecutive movements, then a measured pause in the rhythmic cipher of his feet, then proceeded to drift each foot in a deliberate, dispassionate and timed twirl in four steps apart, as his soles halt in a parallel distance. The man glared down at his abiding movement with absentminded determination, each seemingly aimless placement of his feet resembling the small hubris of a child immersed in freewheeling harmony with the solitude of dismal, stripped formations of trees cascading across barren acres. He was eating a dried stalk of celery, his thin lips moistened by morsels of lukewarm blue cheese that he lightly applied on the celery from a small, plastic vat perched on the center of his groin’s static posture.
I feel malcontent. Inside the intestinal annuls of my digestive system, there was a constant and violent surge, like the ruptured and coarse catacombs of a macabre tyrant’s mausoleum inflicted by seismic tremors perishing its structural fortitude into colorless wisps of ash and dissipating debris, as my fingers would clench desperately between each intermediate bout of trembling emanating from the incomprehensible activity that thrived within my bulbous abdomen.

Borrowed Flesh excerpt

   'As evening fell, Saul and I both were bored and I came up with the brainstorm of visiting every bar we could and at each cantina down one shot of tequila and move on to the next. We became adequately faded - Saul and I stumbled down Calle Coahuila, home to many squalid dives and whorehouses.

   Ambivalent transvestite hookers drift under yellow street lamps, eyes luminescent with methamphetamine, they lean against outcroppings of crumbling red brick walls, talk in silent, catatonic gestures, frescoes of elusive depravity, flat two dimensional howls drift into the night: “Orale! Joselito! Carlos!”

   Stagnant patter of commerce: “See the show! Naked lady!”

   “Nice girl, meester?”

   A hideous soiled mouth blows smoke rings into the night, “Wanna fuck me, baby?”

   Saul and I jet into the bar Kin-kle, a tacky queer joint with a mangy, over stuffed bullhead above red metal double swinging doors where guys would show you their erections for a beer. In the dark alcove booths, drunk and horny, Saul and I made out under the vigilant eye of a waiter with a hard on. Patrons passed us with indifference as I masturbated Saul to an unscrupulous climax under the red covered table, his lanky body entwined with mine.

   “The fundamentals of it all, it ain’t right.” Sniffs the envious old expat sitting alone and indignant at the bar. He ejects his resentment like a thick fog.

   “Why dontcha mind your own business for once?” I slur, wiping the glistening residue of Saul’s discharge off my thumb with the red table cloth.'

- excerpt from new novel in progress Borrowed Flesh

Monday's Darling

Oscar’s love is so powerful that it becomes selfish, and people suffer. They suffer in the best way possible. The kind of suffering that will make you wise. This boy I know ultimately believed that life was a game that children played best. The rest of us were just losers competing with one another. He could either win or possess what could ultimately, in his mind, defeat him. He had quite the collection, and he loved them all the same.

A Dream of My Mother

I awoke in the middle of the night with a start. Wrapped in a fit of depressed sadness. I turned on my lamp, grabbed my notepad and scratched this out:

It had been four days without eating, without bathing, without sleeping, and I had found nothing… I was restless. The feelings in me were growing again, same ones that had caused my mother to disappear one day. Except she stayed in her room, where I found her that morning. I wasn’t there when she decided to leave, without a word without anything, no “I love you” not a thing, but a warning to the people who lived around me… “She must never know.” Which meant, that if I was to never know something, she knew the one thing I needed to. And if she knew the key was with her, not in these books I’ve been wasting my time on.

“Her room." I said to myself.

I grabbed my car keys, and walked those spiral stair cases to the infinite left end of the house that my mother and father had made years before I had been born. I opened that far end and entered into the darkness.

Cough.

Fuck. All the dust, and dampness. I grabbed one of the old candles from the marble stand near the entrance and lit it. I maneuvered through all the cobwebs until I had gotten through to her bed. I remembered her secret book case underneath the frame. I knocked a few times. Every corner. Until. I hit. The loose. Wood. Bang.

Opening the loose drawer, I pulled out old pictures and books. There were pictures of my mother and father. I never knew him. Dark brown hair and eyes, pale features, a lot like the devil. I shared his pale face and dark hair. He disappeared, after my adulthood in a blaze of searing hate, my mother told me. She told me something happened to him. There was another girl in a few of these pictures. Blonde, blue eyed. She is with my mother and father when they were much younger. Then, gone. Last name is the different. Her face is exactly the same as mine when I was a child. It suddenly hits me.

My older sister. She was the Chosen before the boy. She was the one who died. It was my turn to choose, because she had been taken already. My father disappeared because he couldn’t bear the thought of possibly losing another child. My eyes began to well up in tears. Parents are left without children, children are left as orphans, and The Chosen, is left to become a hideous…

“The Ones Who Walk Away From Columbus" by Elgin. The book that every family in Columbus is given. Here it was, all the history of Columbus, and the truth that has been hidden from me all these years.

Sometimes life is dark. And it is lonely. And it is cold. Filled with hate, paranoia, and fear. Just dance to your own beat and everything will be fine.

Bothered

All that spilled over into high school, when I stopped telling my parents when my swim meets were. They took it as a sign of independence: their son was strong enough that he didn’t need hand-holding. But it was something else. I legitimately didn’t believe I was worth getting up or getting dressed for. I started making the excuses in my head: my parents would have to get up early, drive to Atlanta, and what if I didn’t win? Then it would all be for nothing. All their effort would be for nothing.

Spilled over still to adulthood, to boyfriends: I was plagued with men willing to date me as a backup, but I didn’t demand any particular importance. I certainly didn’t demand something as crazy as a Saturday night. They didn’t even have to make excuses for themselves—I already had them lined up. I had grown used to minimizing my impact. That was a good thing, right? Who wants to be bothered? If I could only curl into a space no bigger than a butterfly, then I would be the best son, the best non-boyfriend boyfriend ever.

Scribbles in The Margins of My Days

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