missed the shot

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 work long hours to make ends meet.

I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The pleasant old hag tending the counter stated 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 hustler 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 amateurishly 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 toward him as he shoveled another handful of popcorn into his mouth.

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

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 chuckled and I ordered another round. It was that time of early evening when the bar was kept exceptionally 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 it 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 had it he had been frequenting the joint since 1967. I simply smiled at him and turned back to the hustler.

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 grey 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 walked into the mensroom. Nice set up. Red light, dim. The crumbling walls were a mural 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 clanking 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 stunted, 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, 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.

saturday ramblings

Even though it being the eighth of March with the hope of oncoming spring, the skies were a mottled grey which only prolonged the unrelenting freezing winter. I decided to alleviate my current malady of obsessing over my early demise with a simple cure: a cup of coffee.

However, not simply any cup of coffee would do, of course, but a fine cup at a decent café. As I shuffled over the shattered sidewalks of this decaying city, the cold winds chilled me to the marrow and I had to admit, I was feeling somewhat hungry. Around me lay the visage of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The City always held the appearance of what the world would look like after an atomic war – vast panoramas of rotting, crumbling buildings, heaps of mortar and trash congested bricks. Dead dogs, cats, and human feces scattered about great rubbly lots rimmed with bent telephone poles. Antique school buses leftover from the 1950’s chugged by coated in a fine layer of white dust – sad, brown faces stare out at me through cracked and broken windows. In a vast concrete park, several boys play futbol yelping and hollering. Two lovers sit on a chipped marble bench and stare silently into each other’s eyes. I glance up at the skeletal trees and grin as I notice the tale-tell signs of buds forming on the long, spindly branches. It will be warm soon.

I entered downtown and slithered through the congested promenade on 16^th de Septiembre, the locals were out in mass. Along with a legion of vendors, shoe shine boys, and sellers of glistening, soot covered concessions. Several live bands positioned at intervals along the lengthy way wailed various styles of music ranging from standard ranchero to 60’s oldies to big band bebop – all competing with the obligatory asshole with a bullhorn screaming about Jeeeeeeesssussss on the cathedral steps…so it goes.

I dart into the dusty glass fronts of Café Central. It too was congested with Saturday afternoon revelers. The long hall was a cacophony of polite chatter, clinking utensils, and the roller-rink type music emitted from an enormous jukebox next to the cashier. I sat at the long, curving counter and ordered caldo de res.

As I waited for my order, I utilized the massive mirrors which lined the walls just below the ceiling to observe the deluge of life around me. Laughing, chatting locals communicated their ideas and passions to one another with such vitality. Why can I not be like them? Why have I alienated myself so far from the simple pleasures of humanity? On an emotional level, I had successfully pulled all the wires and become such a passionless robot. I leered at the animated people around me - how I envied them.

I suppose what really upset me and brought on this chain of dubious thought was I have begun work on my next novel. The quirky love affair between William Burroughs and his wife Joan which resulted in him putting a slug in her forehead. The only problem being, I’m penning it as a love story. How am I to write that? In all sincerity, it has been so long since I have loved anything, I have forgotten what it feels like. Honestly. And the back memories on past relations pulls up black blanks in my mind. How am I to write on something I do not attain any memory of?

I quickly ate my food and stepped out into the bustling streets. I still wanted a coffee, so I made my way over to Café 656. I pushed open the door and was met with silence. There was no one there. I had thought perhaps owner Coco was in the restroom or in the back washing dishes, so I sat at a table and waited. And waited. An entire hour passed. I was becoming concerned by the fact that she would simply leave the café unattended. Her laptop sat on the counter, the lights were on. During my wait, several other customers entered. Two elderly women on canes wobbled in and attempted to make pleasant conversation. One of the plump women stated she was returning a book she had borrowed from the shelves. I explained I had no idea where Coco was and on how I found the café empty.

Mario, a mustachioed street singer – his shtick was to peruse the cantinas and strum ballads on a guitar for pesos – entered and inquired the whereabouts of Coco. He too became alarmed. With luck, he had her number on his cell and gave her a buzz. He eventually stated, she stepped out to make copies and was in her car returning to the café.

“They must’ve been some damn important copies to leave the store open like this.” I quipped.

At that moment, for some reason, one of the fat old women slipped off her seat and tumbled onto the floor. She lay there a moment like an overturned crab with flailing arms and legs as her friend and Mario dashed to her aid. I stood there impassively and didn’t care. I simply wanted some fucking coffee. After a brief moment of awkward mumblings, the women excused themselves and left. Mario stated something about being hungry and he too left. A couple of young girls entered and sat. They looked at me and ordered cappuccinos each with cheese cake. I simply ambled behind the counter and began preparing cappuccinos.

At that moment, Coco bursts in demanding how I got into her café. I simply stated that I pushed the door open and entered. She insisted on that the door was locked and I asserted that it wasn’t. I had enough of this drama and explained the two customers order and sat with my cup of coffee. An hour and a half late. I still believe she was under the assumption that I broke in somehow. I sat and watched the people outside. Happy and set in their ways. And then my mind began to drift into the realization that I need to escape from this city…not to escape this life on account that my life is abundant with strange and wonderful things. I seriously desire to return to Tijuana. The only place in all my myriad travels I ever thought as home. There are too many painful memories here. I want to return and live, not merely exist, and write about it. Convey my passions to other like minded cohorts.

You see, I’ve come to realize there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. As writers, that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... oh, fuck it.

don't

Depression is insidious. Anxiety attacks - public attacks - on the other hand, are downright pure horror. If you, Dear Reader, have experienced such woe and understand, then you understand; if not, you never will.

Case in point: This afternoon I sat in a café I usually haunt. I sat observing the passerby out the large and grime streaked pane-glass window, listening and not listening to the polite chatter of the other diners mixed with the clinking of utensils. It began as a swelling in the chest – not a pain, but a sensation. A mounting sadness which consumes your entire being. Why? What brought it on? Was it the chat with an age old friend yesterday? The finality of accepting the dread soaked alteration from a person whose only passion was to live free and delight in all the wonderments life offered only to disintegrate over a period of a few short years into a non- compassionate corpse whose only wish was to lay down onto the dusty sidewalk and stop breathing? Why is death, a final termination of mounting emotional grief the only true reprieve from such despair? I do not write about this, yet for the past few months – on nearly a daily basis – I have been contemplating ending this sorrow, this horrid loneliness I have trapped myself in.

I sat silently, attempting to cover this emerging lament from the passing waiters, the chatty eaters. It grew and grew, I was overwhelmed with such a feeling of utterly bleak despair. My eyes became shrink wrapped in moisture as I vainly attempted to control the crimson flush of my face. With quickness of breath, trembling of hands, the tears begin to trickle down my cheeks and the added bewildered embarrassment associated with the despondency as others began to notice my uncontrolled public display with questioning looks and inquiries of “What’s wrong?” I could not answer, for the reason that my mind was a kaleidoscope of shattered emotions. Sobbing uncontrollably, my only escape was to get up and flee from the questing eyes and out into the solidarity of the street.

I quickly rushed the few blocks to the dim coolness of my apartment. Sitting in the darkness chain smoking as my mind was bombarded with millions of nostalgic images. I have failed at so much. There is nothing left that inspires me. I seriously believe I am near the end. An end that I so painfully covet.

in the future of darkness past

A man in a dark trench coat and fedora stood in a poorly lit alcove. He relentlessly scratched his dry wrist in a smoky haze. Skin flaked down to his dress shoes like drifting snow. He stepped back into the shadows; only the cherry-red tip of his cigarette could be seen…“cough”…I drunkenly wobbled out of the cantina and down into the heart of Zona Norte, cabron.

The Red Zone, for my Dear Readers who are ill informed, is a diminutive patch of streets and alleys on the north side of downtown. Walking along that district, I received a feast for the eyes: the buzzing flash of iridescent neon, putrid drunks lay on the grungy, broken sidewalk in their own waste as hawkers screamed at you to enter their bars and strip clubs. Ugly, mangy dogs ate out of rubbish piled in dark doorways as catatonic and filthy Mexicans dressed in rags glared at me as I walked by. The smell of cheap, greasy fried food mingled with the stench of sour beer, piss, and shit.

An entire block of malignant female prostitutes lined up 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?”

What was next: Me so horny?

I was occasionally harassed by intimidating, tattooed covered cholos asking if I needed to score any heroin or crystal. I muttered no, smiled like the stupid gringo tourist, and moved on.

In Tijuana, female prostitution is mostly restricted to licensed brothels - like Adelita’s Bar or the Hong Kong Club. On the other hand, male prostitutes are everywhere. They assume all visitors are homosexual and solicit openly in the streets. I had been approached by boys who could not had been over ten. That aspect appalled me - I loathe pedophiles.

As I strolled past, tired and petulant prostitutes breathed smoke out of chapped lips, teeth plated in silver, “Wanna fuck me, meester?”

Preteen hookers cooed and grabbed at me as I ambled by lost in the sauce - no...no cunt for me. I am out on the prowl for some rough tattooed sex. Cause that’s the way I liked them - always been a sucker for the bad boy.

A bent over, gnarled gentleman in drab clothes approached me from the passenger side of a parked taxi cab. “Senor...one moment, senor.”

I stopped. “Yeah? What is it?” I asked, looking down on that shriveled sage.

He placed his withered hand on my arm and confided through putrefied teeth, “I got the biggest pussy in Tijuana.”

“You!?” I asked incredulously, lighting a Lucky Strike.

“Yes!” He cackled.

“Man, you’re in the wrong line of work as a taxi driver.”

“No! No!” He chuckled, realizing his mistake of words. “No, I take you to the big pussy!”

His brother sat next to him nibbling a dripping taco. A scrawny, antiquated little man in a black police uniform. With that fucking white police motorcycle helmet on his enlarged head he reminded me of Gazoo. Which I stated. Thought it was funny. He didn’t.

I proceeded over to one of my favorite dives called, Kin-kle. Thieves, deported criminals, junkies, pedophiles, cholo gangsters, fags and lezbos - a good watering spot. I entered the dark, smoked-filled den as a Spanish version of Achy-Breaky Heart warbled out of a multicolored jukebox. I took a seat in the back at a dented and rusted iron table with plastic lawn chairs. A cadaverous looking waiter in a wrinkled white shirt and black bow tie approached and I ordered a Sol beer.

The place was more or less empty for this time of the day - the bored looking bartender wiped the counter under dusty, torn soccer posters. The sole individuals at the bar were a fat cowboy groping and finger banging an old whore in a stained, yellow dress. She wiggled and giggled brown teeth at his advances. He smiled red eyed with a stunted hard on.

Nothing interesting here, so I decided to hit other bars. El Dorado? The Happy Naco? Bar Vaquero?

I entered a smelly, dark den with pink coral tiled walls. A short, chunky female in a black thong whirled and jiggled her wares in all the wrong places on a tiny stage of glittered stucco. Bar had only two others, junky cholo in white tank top and baggy khaki pants who sat on the nod like a fool on a stool against the pink wall and a flabby, sweaty American who eyed me fingering his camera so nasty.

I was about to take my business elsewhere when a tall, handsome Mexican with distinctive Aztec features and pencil moustache donning a blue mechanic’s tunic walked in and made a bee line for the men’s room. Quickly downed my beer, it was on like Donkey Kong: I am in the pissoir languidly jacking off with the guy in the mechanics uniform as the obligatory old fart with the camera looked on. The hottie had the most exquisite penis I had seen in many a moon. One hand on my soldier; the other traced black hair on toned pecs. Me and the hottie cum in spurts onto lemons and ice and left the quivering codger standing there wondering where his youth had gone.

The mechanic - Miguel he says - and I drank a couple more bottles and I asked if he cared to go back to my room for an afternoon of filthy, rotten sin. No, it’s back with the wifie and kids, he claimed. Shake hands and part. Old queen leered at me from furtive shadows. Frustrated fruit. Short cholo with shaved head and wife beater is hip to the fact and smiled with silver capped tooth, hard on a-pulsing in dirty khakis. I exit - leaving the cholo to the whims of that withered vampire.

El Puta

Hunched over the bar, El Puta sat naked on a frayed, red leather stool. He gave off a faint, greenish steam of decay. An emaciated hand grasped a high-ball glass of black, oily liquid. A proboscis-like mouth slurped the fluid in a lurid, unspeakable manner with a pink-black tongue.

Insipid, withered buttocks were openly exposed to passive intercourse. His pungent rectum resembled a gaping wound of brown, glistening gristle from decades of taking it up the ass from drunken and desperate machos. Every so often, black clunks of putrefied feces would drop onto the floor which in turn, was quickly swept up by a terrified assistant.

Parched, mocha-colored skin stretched over protruded bones and swollen ligaments…purple blue in places… interspersed with sickly liver spots and boils of unnamed diseases. His skin flaked off in drifts like sclerosis. Greasy, lanky black hair was combed over a burnished, misshapen head. Sitting immobile as a lizard, two large, disk-like eyes scrutinized the cantina via the enormous mirror situated behind the counter. Four lurid youths stood at his call, hips cocked to one side. One emaciated waif placed dirty fingers of a delicate hand to El Puta’s shriveled penis, languidly fondling his putrid foreskin.

“His face is science fiction, nothing like mama used to make…”

Rumor had it El Puta dwelled in an abandoned water closet at the end of a dead-end, shit strewn alley tended by a blind, armless boy.

The youth, despite his handicap, was extraordinarily beautiful – the classic beauty eighteenth century fags would compose epic sonnets about. Always dressed in a pristine white loin cloth and silver high-top sneakers that sported little wings at the ankles, the petite and armless lad would warmly smile with tiny white teeth towards anyone he sensed was near. In contrast, El Puta would fly into a screaming rage in the chance encounter any other queer in Tijuana even glanced in his boy’s direction.

Bitter and resentful, El Puta made it his business to discern every detail of the private lives of each expat who entered the Plaza. If you fell in disfavor (which was inevitable and usually for no reason at all) the evil old fuck, exercising telepathic waves like a bat’s sonar, would smear the most outlandish and disreputable rumors of ones person throughout the Plaza causing the bewildered citizen who fell into his disfavor to be marked as untouchable by the legion of hustlers. If a rentboy disregarded his telepathic commands of sexual cordon (downright cockblocking), he would corner them in the bar toilet stall and forcibly rape them – sucking semen, blood, and entrails from their screaming torso leaving behind an emaciated carcass. It was whispered El Puta slept on the piled desiccated corpses of past offenders.

An unattractive old queen, who sat at the table next to me, noticed my dismayed look. He continued to leer at my person with liver sick eyes - eyes dead and preditory. I fidgeted uncomfortably amid his vain advances, did my best to arrogantly ignore the old fruit. He smiled through long, yellow teeth, “Be kind, guero, or I just might have to inform El Puta how you are behaving towards me. You don’t want to be labeled as an ugly American, do you?”

The words ‘ugly American’ drifted through the cantina. Several expats and hustlers lifted their heads like animals sensing danger. El Puta’s semen engorged pot-belly gurgled in apprehension.

“No.” I said. “No, that would be insidious. I’m actually a nice person.”

The old fag began bouncing up and down in his seat, baying like a famished sheep, “Then fuck me! Fuck me now!”

Several rentboys heard his call to arms and slithered up, surrounding the old fag.

“Hola, papi. You horny for beeg dick?”

“Buy me beer, papi, I need your company.”

“One cigarette for me?”

“One beer for me?”

“Presteme dias pesos?”

The old fag continued his halitosis infused chant fuck me, fuck me now! as the boys swarmed in and ripped him to shreds - leaving a bitter, penniless old American in their wake. His ashy-pink face draped with a cascading lank of silver hair, he sat slumped in his seat. Shoes stolen. Pockets emptied and turned inside out. A trickle of piss ran down his khaki pant leg, past soiled socks and onto the dirty, tiled floor...

alto

I was cold and my shadowy room silent and for the first time in a while I actually desired to go out. I had been mired in a depressional frump for some time and been purposefully avoiding contact with people. Standard manic-depressive crap.

I showered, dressed and made my way out into the street-light frosted chilled air. The dark navy sky was crisp, splashed with a myriad of twinkling stars ringed by obsidian shadows of surrounding barrios and the branches of dead trees grasping up toward a half-moon. Across shattered concrete of the sidewalk, I step over a dead cat on the corner whose week old corpse was now in its final state of decay.

It was just past nine and the promenade on Juárez and 16^th of Septiembre still hosted a crowd of people. Mostly heterosexual lovers and bored families. I lit a cigarette and sat on the cold bench to people watch and think. Me being inert of course flagged several beggars to approach with grasping hands, black fingers shiny over the dirt. I deny all their advances. I care little these days for the struggle of the human species. We should had bombed ourselves into extinction back in the ‘80’s at the height of the Cold War.

A gust of wind blew down the boulevard creating small eddies of trash which swirled in locked doorways. Damn, it was cold! I extinguished my cigarette with the toe of my shoe and quickly strode with hands in coat pocket towards the swinging doorway of Bar Buen Tiempo. I stop at the wooden door and exhale a sigh, listening to the muted thumping of the rockola from inside, readying myself for whatever ignorant faggotry likely to be hurled at me.

I was relieved when I pushed the door aside to find that the bar wasn’t crowded at all. A total of nine or ten men sat around the square counter commanding the middle of the large bar. The plump female bartenders, dressed in their best day-glow spandex and hookerish attire largely stood slumped against the bar chatting with clientele.

I took a stool in the back, facing the door. Several prehistoric pedos and doe-eyed twinks eyed me like animals sensing danger, not for the fact of fresh meat but why a goddamn gringo was in the joint in the first place. One of the bartenders approached me all smiles brandishing silver capped teeth and I ordered a caguama. After handing over a crumpled bill, I squeezed a lime in my glass, poured my beer, took a sip. The refreshing drink cascaded down my gullet, I emitted a satisfactory sigh. I lit a cigarette – reveling in the freedom that people can still actually smoke in bars down here – and clandestinely scanned my constituents. Mostly made up of pot-bellied old men in faded white Stetsons, the others were two young queens with their fag-hag, animatedly cackling and squawking loudly as fags do, across on either side of one another sat two masculine, college-types attempting their best to look aloof and uninterested in their surroundings, and the ever present hustler perched on the corner with the look of terminal sadness, a high-ball glass in front with a sip of beer left which had not been touched for hours.

I took another swig as the song on the rockola switched to El Ruletero by Prado. That was when he burst in. I say burst, because it seemed he literally slammed open the door to the bar. Or perhaps it was the wind. This caused all eyes, bloodshot or lust filled, to swing in his direction. If it was a movie, the rockola would had scratched to a stop.

He was tall and lean. Late twenties. His clothes, pedestrian as they were, pressed and void of dust or smudges. Despite the wind outside, his wavy, ebon hair was meticulously slicked back, a handsome face: thick eyebrows, full lips, commanding jaw. Hazel eyes were enveloped in dark lashes. Yet, what appealed to me was his copperish skin color which suggested Mayan heritage. He confidently struts toward the back of the bar, possessing that slight, macho bow-legged gait I secretly find so appealing. Of all the empty stools lining the counter, he plops one over next to me. Of course, he does.

I take another drag and nonchalantly swing my gaze toward him. Elbows on the counter, he petulantly sniffs, stroking an index finger against flared nostril and orders a small bottle of Indio. Adding a lime, he downs a healthy chug and lightly exhales his approval.

“That wind is getting bad.” He says to me in Spanish with gaze still fixed forward.

“It usually is this time of year.” I answer.

The following conversation was in Spanish:

“Do you live in El Paso?”

“No. I live here.”

“In Juárez? Why is a gringo living in Juárez?”

I grin, “I’ve been asking myself that for a year now.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a writer.”

“A writer? What do you write?”

“I really despise having to repeat myself.”

He smiles a smile that could launch a thousand ships, “It’s the first time I’m hearing of it.”

“I write reports for the citizens of the United States.” I state in a monotone.

“Are you the FBI?” He chuckles, uncomfortably.

“No.” I take another drink.

“What are you then?”

“Obviously insane.”

He purses his full lips, clicks his teeth with his tongue, nods. “I like people who are different. They make life exciting.”

I laugh, “Oh, man, are you in for a fucking Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride!”

“What?” He smiles again, utterly confused from my blatant American reference.

At that moment, one of the two fags on the other side of the counter saunters around the bar and approaches us. Standing between my new friend and me, the fag places a folded napkin in front of my colleague. My drinking partner arrogantly sighs through his nostrils, unfolds it, revealing a scratched phone number. He balls it up and lets the offending tissue fall to the floor. With annoyed anger on his handsome face, he imperiously looks the fag up and down and then hisses, “No. Don’t ever bother me again.”

I shift awkwardly in my seat as the fag returns to his place, mumbling obscenities under his breath.

He leans over toward me and asks casually in Spanish, “Do you want to be with me?”

“Be with you?”

“Not in a relationship. I was at home and simply need physical contact. No strings attached.”

“You know that type of thinking is looked down upon in the homosexual lifestyle of today.”

“What can I say, I’ve always been a rebel to conformity.”

“Can I at least get your name first?” I grin.

“Alto.”

“Alto what?”

Alto means Stop in Spanish.

“My name is Alto.”

“Really? Your real name is Alto?”

As if doing the action a million times over, he fishes out his I.D., and sure enough, it was Alto.

“How did your parents come across with…” I began.

“I don’t know. Perhaps that’s all my mother screamed out during child birth or perhaps during conception...”

I laughed, “Oh, and he has a sense of humor! I've oft said humor is a powerful aphrodisiac.”

“Let’s go.” He stated, slamming back the rest of his drink.

Outside the bar, the gusts became a full on dirt storm. Particles of grit and flotsam stung my cheek. Squinting, I glanced up and down the street, the near horizon lost in a shimmering tan haze.

“I don’t live far…but let’s get a taxi?” I stated, spitting grit off my tongue.

Alto and I wordlessly sat on either side of the back seat of a cab as the street lights displayed strange phantasmic shadows across the dusty windows. The fat driver hurled over every bump and pot-hole at fantastic speeds as ranchero blasted from the radio.

On the corner of Bolivia and Insurgentes, I pay the taxi and we silently stride to my house huddled in our coats in a vain attempt to thwart the dirt storm.

Inside, I light the gas heater as Alto cases the joint. Luckily, earlier that morning, I took time to clean the place a bit. After relieving his bladder in the restroom, Alto makes his way into my bedroom. I call from the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, “Want something?”

“Come here.” He says.

In the bedroom, we embrace, kiss, fumblingly remove our clothes. He guides me onto the bed, kissing my mouth with passion, up and down my neck. Our exposed erections pressed against one another. He breathes into my ear.

“Do you have any condoms?”

“No. I’m sorry. I’m out.”

“Then I’m not going to fuck you.”

I smile jokingly, “What are you? Catholic?”

He slides off me, leans on one elbow, one hand on my chest, “We can sixty-nine. I’ll tell you when I’m going to cum.”

Without any other verbal commands, he places me in position and we blow each other. Long, pleasurable minutes pass as he grabs my head and jerks it away. Hissing through clenched teeth, he squirts semen onto the gray comforter I had laundered just yesterday. His tongue probes my mouth as he jerks me off to a climax. Afterwards, we lay side by side sharing a cigarette. For some time, we lay there casually conversing in the muted night. He is a student of agriculture and economy at the local university. He has a two year old son from a girl he despises. His mother lives in Chihuahua City, hasn’t seen his father in decades. He wishes one day to relocate to Canada, maybe Europe. A mundane life.

We shower and I walk him to the corner to hail a cab. The winds have died down and the street is silent and lonely.

I shift from one leg to the other, hands in my coat, "Alto…you want to meet up again? Maybe for some coffee or something.”

“No. Not really.” He glances down the street, raises his lanky arm to hail an oncoming cab. “I thought I made it clear I just wanted physical contact tonight.”

I grin, “I understand. Logical.”

He hops into the taxi, “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” I turn and return to my home. Sitting at my desk, the cold inside getting colder, I flick on my laptop and write this out…

nonexistence

“So yeah this one time,” I laughed as telling the same story I told a thousand times. Perhaps more. I thought for a second, was there a story I had never told anyone? The entirety of my life events have been conveyed in stories; they were all things I had disclosed to other people. Had any of these things actually happened? Or where they simply stories I remembered from telling other people? I wasn’t certain, I couldn’t think of anything. So when I returned home today I knew I needed to do something which I would never tell anyone about.

I sat down on the dusty, tiled floor near my desk in the living room. The air was cool. Long shadows were cut from yellow rays of sunlight slicing through the closed blinds. Dust danced in the dark.  “This will be my little secret. This is my proof of my existence.” I leaned back against the desk chair and took a sip of a rapidly prepared martini from a dirty glass. “I will never reveal to anyone I drank a warm martini on the floor of my apartment in midafternoon. This will be my little secret. If no one knows, if I haven’t told anyone, then I know I exist.”

When I was done, I got up off the floor and brushed myself off. I placed the glass in the sink over-flowing with dirty plates and utensils. I glanced back on where I was sitting and for some reason it almost felt shameful. Still, if I didn’t tell anyone, then maybe, just maybe, I actually existed.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

stop

I stopped looking out the window. I realize now that when I was young I would look out the window and notice all the details that pass by. I wouldn’t simply look at things, I would actually see things, and absorb them into my mind. Life seemed more vivid. Time seemed to move slower. Life went by and I could find the separation between what I did each day. Now I feel I am forever in a tumbling barrel of time. The world goes by so fast and I don’t have time to look at it hard enough. Time is forever pushing forward and I just want to push back. I can’t win this fight. No one can win this fight. I still don’t look out the window. My eyes glaze over. I see nothing. I feel nothing. Why does everyone seem to be more alive than I am? I can’t look out the window.

plans within plans

I am allowing myself two weeks to make my final decision. My time here in Juarez is done. It is a dead museum and I certainly do not desire to remain and become one of its corpses. So, after a year of deliberation, I have narrowed it down to three locales:

• Tijuana: To return to the mad, passion infused life which will certainly be an adventure. However, will it be new and exciting or a copy of a copy?
• Cambodia: To utilize the TEFL certificate I earned two years prior and perhaps to attain new fodder for writing with fresh and sparkling insights from a South East Asian slant. (no pun intended.)
• Santa Fe, NM: To retire. Buy a house and live out a sedate and solitary life as a gentleman of leisure spewing out a novel a year lifted from decades of accumulated memories.

So, there you have it. It will be certainly be one of those three. Only time will tell in which I will choose, all being tempting and appealing to me.

dead fingers talk

I have to admit, I harbored trepidations concerning the success of the novel borrowed flesh. The work attained extremely personal subject matters pertaining to my experiences with drugs, mental health, and homelessness all wrapped in the horrors of living abroad in sordid locales. It was written in an extremely experimental style and I honestly thought it would be an utter failure like hobosexual. However, I am glad to announce that since its publication a month prior, sales are steady and picking up through word of mouth alone. Tweeker continues to be my best seller, but borrowed flesh is a more surreal work in the vein of naked lunch and even though I receive complementing emails from readers it was only this morning I noticed its first review. A positive one at that. The review is quoted below. Made my day, I tell ya.

In “Borrowed Flesh”, Luis Blasini takes us with him on a very personal and dark journey. He unveils more life experiences in this one novel than most people will see in a lifetime. I appreciate and applaud Blasini for his candor. It makes for really amazing reading. “Borrowed flesh” is both humorous and dangerous. Blasini is irreverent and unapologetic. His behavior throughout is both exercises in self-loathing and self-discovery. At times his inner dialogue can be poetic and almost psychedelic. Blasini brazenly introduces us to a world of grit and grime that I bet most of will never experience, but maybe secretly would like to. The people we meet along the way are broken, fascinating and more importantly real. Without pretense Blasini and his band of misfits are entertaining and at times very insightful. In a world full of boring pop culture and bad fiction “Borrowed Flesh”, totally nonfiction, is a breath of literary fresh air. Through his eyes you can taste and smell the energy and despair. Having read most all of his works, this is his crown jewel so far.

late night siren

1:35am. Archaic buses lumber past kicking up plumes of choking dust that stung my eyes. I was hungry and wanted quesadillas. Not having the ingredients at home, I decided to hike the six blocks late at night to the 24hr supermarket. The navy sky was awash with a blanket of stars which bathed the crumbling monolithic adobe dwellings in a sad gray light. Black trees which seemed dead from a harsh winter sporadically lined the smashed sidewalk littered with broken beer bottles and discarded trash. I cautiously made my way recalling how I sprained my ankle traversing that rubble three nights prior and was bed ridden for a day nursing a throbbing ankle. So it goes.

I hated to walk this route at night on account it was necessary to make my way under an overpassing train trellis/highway void of street lamps. The sewage drain was backed up and the way was mired in some black gooey mud which stank like a hobo’s halitosis. To add to that, the sidewalk ended and I was forced to hug the stone wall as rattling vehicles roared past. The one or two souls who did pass me going the opposite direction wore defensive grimaces on fear laden faces.

As usual, the grocery store was crowded with meandering families with howling children in tow. I snatched up a plastic carrying basket and made my way around the aisles, picking through assortments of prepackaged tortillas and the various types of offered cheeses. I made my way down the aisle which held a million assortment of salsas. Making note of the early twenty something boy in a tight white shirt and jeans. His muscular torso wrapped in an apron with a badge that read Javi pinned to his teat.

In my atrocious Spanish, I said, “I am going to make quesadillas at my house. What salsa do you suggest?”

He glanced at me as if he was being accosted by a madman. Then it dawned on me. Quesadillas: flour tortillas, salt, butter, cheese. What dingaling would add salsa? Me, I reckon. The Mad American. The Insane Writer. The Filthy Gringo.

“Salsa, senor?” He inquired with a raise of a thick yet perfectly manicured black eyebrow.

“Indeed. I add salsa for a kick in the taste. Thicker the better.” I grinned. A confident smirk meant to display old world charm and warmth but only came across as lecherously leering and discomforting.

He silently pointed toward a glass bottle of a product I usually purchase. I snatched the bottle off the shelf with nimble fingers and said, “Good taste. I like this one. Thank you.”

He curtly nodded with the slightest of smiles and quickly made his way down the aisle, disappearing around the far corner in an obvious attempt to distance himself from this deranged foreigner. I watched his sinuous backside in the same manner a predatory lizard scrutinized the movement of an insect.

Purchasing said objects, I made my way back out into the chilled night. As usual this time of year, a gusting storm had kicked up creating a fog of fine dust and debris to filter the already deadening light from the parking lots lamps into a sickly yellow haze. At the corner, before the sidewalk ended and the street sloped down under the overpass, I had to wait long moments as a train of antiquated buses rumbled by. I nearly choked on the amount of dislodged dust caused by their passing. My mouth was now dry and caked with grit.

Cursing at why I had returned to this miserable city, I began walking under the overpass. I noticed in the direct middle standing against the wall a silhouette of a seemingly feminine figure. The moment my dry eyes fell on the phantom, my nostrils were punched by the overwhelming reek of a million years of rotting sewage.

What the fuck is this madness, I thought. More concerned I needed to step to one side into oncoming traffic to bypass whatever or whoever that shadow belonged to. It wasn’t moving towards either side of the overpass, but simply standing there ankle deep in refuse. As I neared, I noticed it was a transvestite transfixed in the unlighted shadows. Immobile. Inert. Dazed? As each car passed, more details of this person was revealed with each passing headlight like a flashbulb of a camera. Ratty wig. Black halter top. Black miniskirt. Long, shiny legs smeared with grime and dust. When I reached an arm’s length, her Incan face – the face of someone in their early twenties, heavily made in almost kabuki fashion – turned to me with a countenance of such radiant dignity.

“Hey, meester, you got a smoke?” She quacked in near perfect English.

I stopped and automatically began fishing my pack of cigarettes from my pocket. “Yeah. I do.”

She took the cig, lit it with nails frayed and chewed to the skin. “You look so sad.” She stated nonchalantly in an almost monotone, blowing a plume of smoke which quickly disapated in the whirlwind of grit.

“I’m not sad.” I grinned. “Not terminally so.”

“You need to leave this place.” She continued as if I said nothing. “You need to find what gives you peace in your heart and in your mind. We should not exist for the sole virtue of comfort alone, but to deal with life. To face all its hardships and wonderful experiences it has to offer. You need to find love. Without love, we are no better than the dead rotting in a cemetery. You need to leave this place. What you want – want you need – is not here.”

“I don’t think you are in any position to…”

She silently marched away in the direction of the supermarket. I stood with face flushed in confusion and bewilderment as I watched her clomp up the ramping street. The wind began to howl and the fine dust ultimately obscured her in the iridescent, dull light of the street lamps.

I turned and made my way home. The wind moaned a sad aria and somewhere in the near distance the familiar rat-a-tat-tat of gunshots followed by the screech of car tires. Then silence. I sat in my lonely room munching on quesadillas with a glass of red wine listening to nothing and I thought, why not? What do I have to lose? Nothing. That’s what.

salty coffee

Something felt amiss. My mind was still half asleep, however I knew something was off. Groaning, I roll over in the large, unfamiliar bed which reeked a lot like boy - not in a depraved way, but in the cologne/hair gel/body wash kind of way. It felt comfortable, though, and I had enjoyed one of the best sleeps of my life. I also enjoyed one of the best nights of my life. I felt my cheeks heat up at the thought of the evening before, desperate hands and desperate lips and desperate moans. Roman and I had been friends for a while and finally decided to have sex, and it was one of our best decisions.

My eyes snapped open, though, when I realize what was wrong: Roman. I turned to the other side of the bed, revealing an empty pillow and empty sheets. My heart picked up speed as I worried where Roman could have gone. He wasn’t an early riser, and I expected to wake up plenty of time before him. Just then, the bedroom door opened, Roman’s form appearing in the doorway.

“Hey babe,” he whispered with a crooked smile, crawling back into bed.

I smiled back, relaxing against your pillow.

“Hey,” I said, placing a hand on his cheek as he leaned down to kiss me. “Where were you?” I asked, snuggling into his side as he got comfortable next to me.

“Shower,” he said through a yawn, kissing me on the forehead. “So, about last night…” he ventured, raising coy eyebrows at me. I chuckled, nonchalantly slapping his chest. “You have great boobs,” he continued. This made me laugh harder, burying my face in his soft shirt.

“Shut up, Roman,” I laughed, blushing more.

He chuckled, both of us lying in silence for a few minutes. “Actually,” he continued, his voice softer, “last night was great. I...I’ve never felt that good before.”

I glanced up at him who now was the one blushing.

“I really liked it, too,” I whispered gazing into his grinning face. A great morning to shadow a great night.

the marque de sad

Flickering red neon crosses radiated down toward us from the two towers of the cathedral as we quickly strode through Plaza las Armas. The dark navy sky attained a splatter of stars like diamonds on a windshield. The Plaza was empty. A light breeze blew eddies of trash against the long, vacant concrete benches.

It was necessary to make the bed when we got back to my apartment. It was three in the morning. I’d washed the sheets earlier and left them drying on the sagging line behind my building. The locale I rented offered a communal patio for all six residents.
“I wasn’t expecting to have anyone over tonight,” I said, a sentence which left a weird note of sad-clown loneliness in the air. He smiled and took charge of the process, being less drunk than I, informing me which corners to hold, when to shake it out. We dressed the flat sheet, spread the blanket smoothing it out with our palms, put the pillow covers on and took off our clothes. We left stains on the freshly washed sheet. Oh well. Worth it. In the morning he disappeared in a puff of smoke, back to his boyfriend, after a coffee and a hug.

no more. no mas...

Marlon. He had his chance. As with all faded memories. He had his chance and blew it. Five years ago was actually the last time I fully opened my heart to someone and true to form they spat on it and threw it aside all in the name of not being connected to that 'faggoty life'. Ignorant macho fucks. Time passed. I got over it. How? From the only way I knew, I wrote about it. Parts of Puta were a conglomerate of both this cat named Javier and Marlon.

When I left Juarez that time; I was under the impression I would never return. As we all realize, through misadventures and bad timing, I came back on several occasions. Marlon, in my absence, had relocated to Chihuahua City, gotten married, had a baby son. His life as a homosexual apparently did not coincide with the macho culture. His decision alone and quit frankly, I couldn't care less.

Spring ahead half a decade to my current stay south of the border. He seeks me out - simply to say howdy. We sit in a coffee shop and exchange pleasantries, bland, stilted patter of what-ever-happened-to-so-and-so's. Once more, I couldn't care less. He was safely 800 kilometers south and not too much of a bother. That was until he and his family relocated to Juarez two weeks ago. Now the schlup won't leave me the fuck alone. I had on more than one occasion expressed my feeling in how I did not wish to associate with him, on how the emotions which I held for him are now long dead and buried. He won't have it, though. You see, Marlon's ego is his hindrance. In lieu of his well-sought after enormous penis and handsome looks, he is a predator of the well off gay expatiates residing in this town, he harbors the opinion that every faggot in this city will come at his beckon call.

I do not include myself among those ranks.

Unfortunately, he had found out were I lived through an acquaintance and now the motherfucker visits everyday. Why? He is one of those Mexicans who not only hates Mexicans, but enjoys rubbing in the faces of the local population that he is somehow on a higher tier on account he has Americans for friends. I know his type. Not my first time running into his kind. And for me it is detestable. I cannot stand being around him, yet he will not take no for an answer - and believe me in the last few days I had went out of my way to be difficult with him.

Today, as I was turning the corner returning to my house from walking around downtown, I find the creep outside my place waiting for me. I harshly explained to Marlon I wished to spend the evening alone. I suggested for him to return to his house and enjoy the Saturday evening with his wife and baby son. Marlon did not take it too well and stomped away in sulky petulance. I sincerely hope my message was received loud and clear this go around...

chicken bones

I almost moved to Sante Fe. As a fact, I was hell bent on relocating to Sante Fe. I lay in my bed enveloped by the desert cold in this crummy Juárez apartment wracked in insomnia until 5am debating if I should simply toss my belongings into my suitcase and make a dash to the border. Instead, I dressed and wandered the predawn until I found a coffee shop open that early.

As I briskly walked down calle Insurgentes towards centro, the squat row of crumbling houses cast long and foreboding shadows across a shattered sidewalk. Dull yellow lamplights buzzed overhead as the crunching of my shoes on loose gravel was the only sound in this still slumbering town. My breath puffed out into frozen air as I made my way across Park Independencia – under dead and leafless trees, several concrete benches occupied with snoring immigrants waiting for their chance to cross the border. This city was depressing the hell out of me – I cannot connect with anyone. And for that matter, what was left to connect with? I am dead inside. As dead as the rotting houses which surrounded me. I bitterly glanced around. Why does this city attain the appearance of the aftermath of a bombed-out war zone? Ah, I forget…it is the aftermath of a bombed-out war zone. Who am I to judge?

Ding! I sling open the door to Café Central and take a seat at the long counter. I order coffee from the tired looking waitress in the grease splotched uniform and as I stir the sugar into my mug, once again the question slaps me across the face: What the fuck am I doing here in Juárez?

I recall I had stated that question the evening prior toward two intoxicated cohorts as we sat and drank caguamas at Bar Olympico. The statement fell on deaf ears, unfortunately. They did not care for my personal woes, they were more interested in the rentboy who slinked up at us and was slurping on his free beer.

“For a hundred pesos, he’ll let you suck his dick.” My friend confided. He pronounces it deek.

I eyed the hustler with obvious contempt. Oh. Of course. The solitary gringo in the joint and this doe-eyed waif decided I was an easy mark. Little did he realize I am one jaded homosexual and at that exact moment and time really wasn’t in the mood for any of his shit.

“Wait a minute.” I began, pointing into the well-formed pecs hidden under the rentboy’s tight, flannel shirt. “You want me,” I point back at myself, “…me…to give you one hundred pesos so you can have an orgasm?”

“Yes.” He curtly nodded, with hip hooked in that universal stance of Hustlers of the World.

“What about me? You gunna get me off? Suck me off? Anything?” I asked.

“No, man, I’m not no faggot. I don’t do that shit.”

“Don’t do that shit? What shit? What fucking shit don’t you do?” I barked. He glared at me in consternation, slowly realizing I was not the typical weak spirited tourist he usually employs. I leaned on my stool toward him, “Again, you expect me to pay you to come?”

“That’s the way it works, yeah.” He said morosely.

“Get the fuck out my face.” I retorted and slumped into my beer. The hustler casually shrugged and decided to lurk in the cantina's doorway and await more promising prey.

One of my two friends refilled my glass from my bottle, “Why were you so mean to him? He’s a nice boy.”

I paused. Lit a cigarette and watched the plume of carcinogens swirl up into the water damaged rafters, I said, “I think my time in Mexico has come to a close. My adventure here has grown stale. Nothing interests me. I have done it all. There is nothing else. It’s time I lay tracks toward a more civilized locale.”

My words, again, fell on deaf ears as yet another macho fuck sauntered across the dirty tile floor and distracted the two queens with a smile and a coy nod.

In the coffee shop, I sat bitterly. A lonesome Mexican ballad crooned over the speakers as I looked at my ravaged, tired face in the mirror attached to the wall across from the counter. Except for myself and the three servers, the only other occupant was a wrinkled old fuck slumped in a booth wearing shades. Probably asleep. The half-eaten fried eggs coagulating on his plate in front of him. Gnawed chicken bones scattered about the formica. The thought of returning to my house, collecting my things and leaving screamed in my skull. For some time, online, I had been checking out cities which appealed to me – Boulder, Daytona Beach, Tacoma – I had settled on Sante Fe in lieu it was easily accessible to acquire the simple things in life I have been so longing.
Anyway, I didn’t go. The time is not right. I think I will wait out February and make the jump at the beginning of March, the first of April at the most. I really need to get my shit together before I completely and utter loose it all.

california bebop

San Diego gets cold at night. But, it’s a wet cold, a west coast cold, a kind of chilly, you-wish-you-brought-a-jacket cold, not that hard, bitter West Texas cold that bites at your ears as you walk windy avenues, it’s more of an enveloping cold that seeps deep inside you, as you struggle up the endless hills in this so-called city. It’s the kind of cold you can forget about, for a moment, if you pass out in the street, numb both to the weather inside and outside your head, numb from enough vodka sipped from the dregs of those tiny liquor bottles you found, the kind they sell only on airplanes to alkies and in deli windows to winos, too broke to buy any booze in a larger size.

And in the inevitable morning, when the sanitation truck sprays its chemical-smelling cleaning solution all over the street that was a moment ago your bed, you can pick up and move on, perhaps to one of those extra-long bus rides which meander to the ocean, the number 26 bus, was it? And, even though it’s bumpy, sleep a little. Get off the bus at the water, walk to the beach, and sleep some more, under the soft Western sunlight, in the middle of winter, so warm, considering, compared to West Texas, oh Texas, you’ll wonder what your prodigal son is doing now, and dream of a field, and a phone in the field that rings but you can’t answer, there’s simply the sound of ringing, until the white light of a cop’s flashlight wakes you up again and it’s back on the bus to Imperial Avenue, and then what?

- San Diego, 2003