taking the day off from writing

i like to live in hell

Fall has arrived. The temperatures are finally beginning to cool. I dress smartly and head out into a night full of shadows and a clear, navy sky abundant with stars. Luckily my apartment is walking distance from The Plaza, so I jet straight toward it over shattered sidewalks to get a drink and check out the scene.

Along Coahuila, the Amazonian sized transvestite hookers are out in force. I mumble a buenas noche as I briskly pass these titans and they squawk something back I do not catch. Past the neon arabesques of the whore district, I shoot by immobile con men sizing up the scene, stumbling sexpats, and barking doormen. Turn a corner south on Constitution, an old hag in rags squats taking a shit amid a mountain of festering garbage as the sewer vents emit a hundred years’ worth of backed up decay. I visibly gag at the assault on my nostrils. A leaning taxi driver chuckles at my dismay. Fuck you.

The Plaza is lit up and pregnant with early evening revilers: weary families drag their screaming toddlers past silent Indians vending tourist trinkets only a sucker would purchase, brassy bands from Sinaloa wail in front of open cafés to drunken friends applauding their off-key efforts, rentboys lurk in shadowy overhangs and arches patiently waiting for the wayward gringo to shuffle over from the Border and buy them that last drink, others stand with hips hooked smoking cheap cigarettes and fiending for the next fix. Glassy eyes brimming with hate and lust scrutinize me as I make my way toward the Boys Café to sit with a cup of coffee and dissect this carnival.

I position myself next to a table occupied with aging old queens. Mostly bloated Americans with a sprinkling of petulant pretty boys. They hoot and coo, smashing one another with gay double entedre as the boys who patiently wait to rob these festering vampires for every peso they have. It is apparently one of the old dinosaurs birthday and they dish out crumbling slices of dried cake to all sitting in the café. Your Reporter’s slice goes in the garbage untouched a bit later…so.

I sit through three more cups of coffee as, comparable to aroused tom cats, the hustlers prowl flashing smiles and rubbing engorged crotch. One stands next to a flier plastered light pole and glares with intense eyes. Tall and lean like a shriveled tree, his clothes are well worn and a bit grimy. He attains dark, hawk-like features on a masculine face. He curtly nods while at the same time unconsciously pulling up the sleeve of his sweater to scratch an arm riddled with track marks. I light a smoke and look away.

Far from being entertained, I pay my bill and amble over to the Patio Bar, bypassing hordes of people out window shopping, looking for restaurants and clubs, arm in arm, dressed up, sauntering along. I wanted to push and shove them out of their hand holding dreams. I bump into several people, using my shoulder to butt them as I walk in a straight line herding people out of my way. I envy and despise the unquestioning little cacoon of their lives. They’ve chosen to be drugged into needing and acquiring status and money and beauty, and at the same time pretend to fight against the demands imposed by status and money and beauty. I prefer to live in hell.

Luckily it is not too crowded in the bar and I sit at the long wooden counter under a row of red Christmas lights and order a Sol. Rapidly, I down three icy beers and regarded the knots of men in their finery and watched their mouths move, listening to the blare of cha-cha music and the surging despair in my head.

I bought two joints from a shabby young man who slinked out of the decayed mensroom. He disclosed they were indeed hash. I assumed he was lying. He wanted one hundred pesos. I hesitated, he said sixty, I agreed. He seemed like he needed the money. I felt like I needed the joints.

I notice a short, thin man, about twenty-one, jet black hair and small symmetrical features, wearing a black button-down shirt and blue jeans, standing alone. He was cute. He stood out because he was alone and because of his face and compact body, I saw several queens looking him up and down. He didn’t look at anyone, but stared out over the mingling groups of people. One of those. I smiled and decided to go over and interfere with his fake composure and see what would come of it. I stood right in front of him so he had to step back and look up at me, his back against a brick column.

I gave him a big, friendly smile, “Hi. How are you tonight?”

He returned a small smile and I carried on with the usual questions and comments, watching him relax a little and answer more thoroughly each time.

I knew age difference always came up in the minds of nearly all homosexual men. Most of them desire men their age or younger and were not open to someone older. Old was not attractive and even though I looked five years younger than my actual age and although I attain a body which was what the market demanded, I was old. I refuse to be intimidated by sexist typecasting and knew, with persistence, I could usually get any man I wanted. Sometimes it was more difficult to get men my age to come around because they preferred youth more than many young men did.

I could see the little person with black hair change from thinking he was being cornered by a troll, to noticing I was attractive.

“I’ve seen you before.” He stated.

“Have you?”

“I am a waiter at the restaurant across from the Arch. I’ve seen you pass by. You visit TJ a lot?”

“No. Actually, I live here.”

He smiled. Dimples forming on his dark, smooth cheeks. I liked him. He seemed low maintenance. No gel in his mop of shiny black hair, no manicured eyebrows. There was dirt under the nails. He had a certain charm about him, a youthful naiveté. I believe that’s what turned me on.

He introduced himself as Rudy and was one of those types who preferred speaking in broken English rather than Spanish so as several times I needed to ask him to repeat what he said. Mostly, I simply nodded and agreed even if I did not care.

I invited him to sit at the bar and during a round of drinks, we fell into the ‘How do you like Mexico’ routine and on me being a writer. Amid one of my spiels, he received a text and promptly began tapping onto his scratched, dinged-up blackberry. I inquired who it was and he stated with a smile it was his girlfriend.

“Girlfriend?” I asked.

Rudy smiled timidly, “Yes. She’s over there.” He casually points toward the border.

“San Diego? Then why are you here?” I jokingly asked.

He shrugged and gave me a ‘you know why’ glance.

The night continued, the beer flowed and Rudy and I became well intoxicated. Eventually the lights in the bar clicked on and the festive mob was ushered out. Nothing more gloomy than closing time.

Rudy and I stood out front of the cantina, wobbling and passing a cigarette back and forth to one another amid inebriated drunks, squawking drag queens, and garrulous fags.

“Want me to walk you to your taxi?” I slurred.

He paused, slowly leaning to his right. Rudy actually seemed as if he was going to fall down. He flashed blurred and crimson eyes toward me and mumbled, “You live near?”

“Yes.”

“I want to go home with you”

Emitting a long sigh, I said okay.

In the long shadows of my dark room, I ran my hands over his soft back and copper-colored ass. I felt my cock bunch up beneath his. He roamed completely over me and in about two minutes he came in my mouth and then watched me pump myself to orgasm. Afterwards, Rudy lay on me, half beside me, and confided how he’d had a crush on me as I held his bony body close, rocking us gently in the dark, under the covers.

The following morning, after a good cup of French pressed coffee and sweet cakes, Rudy and I showered, sliding our soapy bodies over one another. All rinsed and shiny, I carried him soaking wet to the bed and we sucked and fucked until we were raw and exhausted. We giggled our kisses and he came on my chest and lay on me and fell asleep. I kept my arms around his slender, relaxed manboy body and stared at the ceiling, slowly smoking a joint.

Sexual matters are filled with fantasy and contradiction. I wanted his desire for me to remain as constant and delirious as it was right then. I wanted to be right there surrounded by the covers of safety and see us laughing and cuming and sleeping with no awareness of tomorrow.

Eventually, he left. To his job. To his girlfriend. To his life and I returned to the cold, impassionate keys of my laptop.

candy colored memories 4.0

I was fifteen when I first had sex with another boy. He was a school friend and often we'd hike together along the creek on the weekends. I’d seen him in the shower at school and I knew I liked his body. I had a crush on. He was also one of the few boys I was friends with, one of the few who didn’t shun me on account I wasn’t athletic.

One weekend we were sitting under a cottonwood, watching the muddy creek go by and smoking and we got to horsing around and wrestling, as usual, and soon enough I had him pinned down by sitting on his chest. My crotch was just above his face and he made some goofy remark about what’s that lump in there? I bet mine is bigger than yours. I flipped out my cock and he grabbed at it pretending to yank it off, or something to that effect, and it became instantly erect. More seriously, he squeezed and pumped it and suddenly it was in his mouth. My hips thrust as that hot, wet sensation filled my reeling brain. Within seconds my cum filled his mouth.

Laughing he spit it out and pushed me off him. I noticed afterwards, at home, my penis had dried mud on it from when I’d rolled off him and dragged it in the dirt. He stated it was his turn and pulled his jeans down to his knees and pushed his cock into my mouth.

For weeks afterwards we’d return to the creek hidden among some secret place in the dense foliage and immediately begin sucking cock. No pretense of wrestling anymore. We went skinny dipping in the creek even though we’d been told all our lives to stay out of it in lieu of snakes. We’d be soaked and begin wrestling, rolling in the silt, laughing and attempting to hold each other down, then back into the water to get clean. Then back to our blanket in the hot sun where we’d do everything to our bodies we could think of until we were exhausted and sweaty. Afterwards, we’d clean off in the creek and sit naked in the shade, smoking and talking about other boys at school we’d like to suck off.

It only lasted that one short summer.

a spot of color

Either you are or you aren’t. You have or have not. You can or cannot. You’re either high or low, light or dark, you’re either sleeping or awake. This is the way we assume that life goes - and either you accept and survive; or decline and wither. The idea that the world is black and white is the platter that society and the culture we’ve created for ourselves serves our futures on. Yet we still suffer depression, anxiety, and hear cries of resounding unhappiness from all around us all but drowning out the persuasively strong declarations of the colorblind. We created a society in the image of how simple we wanted to be, and in doing so created one that will never understand human nature, therefore giving us no room to grow - only plaster molds to shape ourselves to.

fear

It was a warm night with a thin crescent slice of moon and thick cloud cover - so very dark.

Away from the streetlights and illuminated signs, the prowling taxi headlights their reflections in the shiny surfaces (ubiquitous in any urban setting permeated with the reek of stale feces and festering garbage) the darkness seemed so much more intense. Off in the distance a dog barked.

Oppressive, even, as Carlos walked along the barely discernible broken sidewalk pavement.

The little boy, struggling to keep pace, momentarily lost his footing and stumbled into Carlos. Quickly, he voiced an informal mild apology and fixed his eyes at Carlos's blank face.

Carlos grunted an acknowledgement but never made eye contact and the little boy shuddered as he felt feelings that were new to him.

Fear...? Unmistakable. But no threats or shouting, no dark looks or even tones of voice had occurred. He couldn't understand his own emotions and he forced himself to dismiss them. Seconds later the same feeling sprang back into the pit of his stomach - stronger than ever. It even caused him to experience a type of acid reflux.

He didn't realize it but his feelings were the creation of his intuition. The remaining bits of our pre-civilized defense mechanisms were triggered. They were as unmissable as klaxons, sirens and flashing red lights but the little boy knew of no reason for them, so he used the refinements that we humans developed during a hundred thousand years of detaching ourselves from nature or, as it's more commonly known, from civilization.

They walked around a bend in the meandering path of the barrio hillside. One could see distant lights of Tijuana twinkling in the windows of flat-board shacks and adobe homesteads for every direction. He realized they were miles away from every possible destination.

"Senor...Senor..." Said the little boy. "I'm frightened".

Carlos finally fixed eye contact with the child.

"How do you think I feel?" he said. "I have to walk back alone".

no regrets

We never returned to the small cantina where we met, where you drank tequila shots and I drank highballs. It was spring and the rain came down in torrents. You ordered small plates to foster our thirst, and you ate the ones which were too foreign for me while I kept to the raw tomatoes. The bar was full and the other queer patrons shoved against me and I made a brash joke about jumping onto your lap. Sitting there, handsome and lanky in worn clothes one size to big. You made a sort of come hither motion and the bartender laughed. She was sweet, that bartender, and talked a lot and wore dark purple lipstick. I do not recall her name.

We never returned to the sea west of the city. Where I confided I’d lost my mind. I forgot about it right away because being with you was enough. It was summer and it wasn’t quite warm enough to swim yet. We took photos of just our feet in the water instead. Yours and mine were the same size. Our hands were also the same size. We figured that out that day, too. Perhaps that’s why they fit together so well. I glanced through those old pictures yesterday. I got to one of you and me reclining on the sand and said, “Oh, what could have been.” I remember what you said the night before that picture was taken. And I hate myself for fucking us up. A week after we got back from that beach you stopped holding my hand.

I want to go back there and drown.  

life of a writer

Spending pleasant, sunny days indoors. Collating notes, cross checking references, typing out draft ideas. Utterly ignoring the world outside (and online). Not really in the mood to associate with anyone or imbue the abundance of life which lies just outside my door. Isolation and infatuous concentration. I haven't shaved in days. I barely recall bathing. I ate something yesterday late-afternoon. My overused coffee mug streaked in brown film and tepid liquid. Ash tray over-flowing with smoldering butts. Hours slowly pass with my mind reeling in thought as I sit staring at a blank Word Doc screen. This is the 'glamorous' life of a writer.

cafe

You are tucked inside yourself, barely visible by your own design, and still I can carve you out of a crowded room, a swarming mass, a dark café. Tattered paperback cupped gently in your hands, flipping to a passage you’d read when you were 17, nursed by words your father never offered you. And you are softly sharing your seeded vacancy and here I am drenched in you, drunk off your familiar tongue, the warm rush of your thoughts mirroring my own tangled understanding, and I am licking at every word that’s ever touched your lips and you are scribbling them into hull I ache to embody. Raw longing etched into my membrane; intimate speech you’d kept tucked behind your teeth so long it felt foreign on your tongue. Chewing at pieces of my own conversation, and echoing back to you. The craving never leaves, only dulls transiently, until the next time I feel your haunting presence linger, until the next time your silhouette dissects itself its setting and hollows out my hungry eyes again.

moe and lou

I wondered where all of my friends went. They simply vanished out of nowhere. What could had happened? I wondered if they were ever my real friends.

One night I randomly called several friends and they pretended I wasn’t there. They didn’t know who I was. I felt a dagger stab me in the stomach. It was brutal. Being alone was tragic. “You sell a good lie” is what I always used to tell myself.

Lou and Moe jumped onto a portal bus and sailed to New Vegas.

“Hey, Lou, wanna help me move this crate.”

"Sure thing, Moe."

The duo pushed the crate over into the corner and then opened the hatch that was underneath the crate.

You need not worry, kind sir. The heart of home is always there. It honors you with wisdom and gives you courage. Only time will tell, but the light will shine as long as you do not dwell in the belly of hell; for the beast lurks there and that beast is evil, that beast don’t care.

You see, I play a writer who is coming off a string of bad novels and I know that I’m losing respect with my peers, so, I change up my style one more time. I find a way to beat the goal and drive home the rebound hatchet. The match is scored at a double card and the point goes to one team. The man was inside of the machine. I was on the outside looking inside looking out. I was reversed; inside and out. Understand? I forgot, you do not understand.

Moe bake a force and waddle the seventh basic vs. and convert the fourth sum with the adjective pronoun. This means nothing to the eyes of those unfamiliar but those who are pale of life both near and far understand the adjective pronoun cannot be equalized if the adjective adverb isn’t reduced to the fourth decimal sum average. Swig of tequila before the ceremony and felt a little faint. Supposed the heart meant something to you, so we decide to create a robotic heart for you. Lou smacks Moe’s hand. He goes like why did you do that? Lou goes like he doesn’t deserve it. Right, then tell me what does deserve because from what I’m looking for is something better; something explained. Clean and narrow just like the arrow from my bow. Moe ties the in around the out and throws back with rage. The arrow erupts in flames and scatters the ragged old owl citizen.

In this game of ours they call me bullseye. I hit every moving target with accuracy. With that the subject places the bow on the storm drain and ponders a day dream via stormy window. The fog will help me see through. And if not? How will I undo what is owed if peace isn’t an option, you ignorant fuck?

The dice rolled across the table. Moe jumped to collect the roll before the lookers would see. Lou lit a a cigarette and rolled his eyes. Unfortunately, Moe wasn’t fast enough. The lookers saw he rolled a twelve-forty on a clock that didn’t tell his time. Bond shock 47 and tell me the result. Looks to be a 96 vs. 48 + durable atom sequence and the end result is 1367.

That was my math as well. The water swim wear the naked moon bares fable. The crumbling city is comprised of sex warrens and borrowed flesh. Smell of polite belches and powdered old woman vagina. Every move had to be known. To configure every possible move is to configure senses where the senses fail. Would certainly let one see what isn’t there. Five campesinos wonder why the virtue of solitude has been banned from the kingdom of ours? The hour-glass delivers the sands of time. The waves kept roaring against the rocks, splashing water across a vast, littered beach and collecting shells both to and from the beach…I got close enough to understand what it was like to experience gravity in all forms. I wanted to understand the divinity.

Mellow Emerald was like a song for the wounded fortune.

Lou said it was a decimal sum of a quarter noun negative preferred and minus the negative + plus noun.

Moe walked into the broom closet and retrieved a solo jacket. He hadn’t any idea why he wore the solo jacket but it didn’t matter none now that it was on his back.

Find the source and bleed them dry. The only way to draw a smile from the sky. Moe snails his way toward the front door but not before stopping in front of a mirror and fixing his hair. He licked his finger tips and pinched his bangs together. He smiled and winked at himself. Tonight was gonna be a good night.

'L' is for libido

This interesting and well-made short by Timo Tjahjanto is a prime example of pushing sexual tolerance to the limits. Enjoy.

lost in a million stories of this ominous city

I entered my apartment after a long morning shopping to find Manny reclining on my bed wearing only his boxers. He was watching a Mexican novella. I paused and smiled at him before placing my bundles onto the white tiled floor.

“What did you do today?”

“I’m doing it.” He stated, not turning his glare from the television.

“Are you hungry?”

“A little.”

I plopped onto the bed, lying next to him perpendicular with my legs hanging off the side. I semi-consciously planned it because my face was at the level of his crotch.

“Well, what do you feel like eating?” I breathed as my hand slinked along his dark legs, bristling the black, shiny hairs. My eyes focused on the thick lump at his crotch.

“I don’t know.” Manny said. “Chicken?”

“Chicken?” I repeated as my hand slid over his boxers. “You want chicken? Well, I know what I want…” I continued as my wayward hand found its mark. The thick and flaccid organ lay dormant on a bed of course, black hairs. I also noticed that the area was quite moist. My hand paused. Did he recently masturbate?

“No.” Manny mumbled, taking my hand gently away.

“Why not? I promise I’ll make you feel good…” I cooed as my hand returned to that fleshy pulp and began lasciviously massaging it.

“No!” He barked.

I continued playfully.

“I said no!” He snapped pushing my hand away.

I lay there a moment propped up on one elbow letting the sting of his refusal ebb away. Finally, “So, you want to get dressed and go eat? We can hang around downtown until your bus leaves.”

Manny petulantly dressed and we headed out into the late-afternoon sun. We walked toward Zona Norte and into the whore district because for some reason prostitutes really like chicken. Or so I am guessing, because there are a shit load of fried chicken joints to choose from.

Coahuila was bustling with pedestrians, foreign sexpats, and an assortment of scantily clad hookers tottering on high heels situated on every grimy, trash littered corner. Quacking at us “Ven…ven” as we passed. Various musical styles blasted from a hundred whorehouses bathed in a kaleidoscope of flickering neon as the congested streets were clogged with orange and white taxis delivering horny clients ready for a Friday night’s fucking.

Manny and I located a small restaurant near the corner of Constitution and Coahuila. We sat at the grease filmed wooden tables and ordered. I casually flicked a scurrying cockroach off the table’s edge and hurdled it out the door into the blackened gutter. Bull’s eye.

I sat and watched the passing throng of pedestrians. Mostly conning locals, a few street dogs, very little bewildered tourists. An old hag dressed in urine soaked rags dug through a mound of garbage for scraps to eat. I turned my stare towards Manny.

“Excited about going home?” There was not the least hint of concern in my voice.

“Yeah. Thank you for the ticket, man.”

“Well, you are welcome. It’s not every day that I do this for people. Most of the times I am cold and dispassionate toward anyone’s problems.”

“Then why did you help me?”

Good question. I decided to keep the conversation light. I smiled, “I can never refuse a pretty face.”

Manny laughed, “I’m not pretty!”

“No…you are definitely handsome. And you know how to use that dick.”

He nervously chuckled, scanning around the eatery to see if anyone was listening to my faggoty shit. The weary mesera served us our order and we tore into that fried chicken like famished jackals.

Afterwards we ambled over to the bus station on the east side of Revolucion, close to the Arch. The place was crowded. Single men with backpacks, families with suitcases and bundles tied with rope, and Manny with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. Mexican or Stateside, bus stations always brought me down. The waiting place of the world pregnant with folk who are not happy in their time/space location pining to get anywhere else but where they are at that moment. Just like me, I suppose.

I purchased the ticket and handed it to Manny. He mumbled thanks or something equivalent. We stood mostly silent watching the carnival around us. Great buses belching black smoke arrived and departed, vendors weaved through the throng crying out their wares: blankets, pillows, pizza, tamales…

It was finally time for Manny to return to Sinaloa. We bumped fists and gave one another a man hug, mumbled adios. I stood there like a fool watching his raggedy bus pull out of the station and with a great fart of black smoke, rumbled away eastward...

I walked out of the station and lit a cigarette. With a deep sigh filled with anxiety and loneliness, I lost myself in a million stories of this ominous city…

you’re driving me crazy…

I awake in a bright Mexican morning and French press myself a good cup of coffee. I sit out on the patio and feel spending the day taking in some local flavor and by local flavor I mean I want to suck cock.

I dress and walk over shattered concrete to the corner and jump a taxi downtown. I am thrilled to find that Cinema Latino is still there – Tijuana’s premier porno theater. I hike up the ramp and slap my pesos down in front of the pinch-faced hag in the box office and enter the foul smelling den. Groping my way up the stairs toward the balcony seats, when my eyes become adjusted to the gloom, I notice the theater hadn’t changed much – a little more rank, a little worse for wear. But what does one expect in these tough economic times?

On screen, a brunette bimbo hopped up on meth bounced on the rigid erection of a bored looking stud as in the theater proper, several silhouettes roamed along the aisles hunting for prey. Ahead of me, more than a few men sat immobile as shadowy movements rhythmically bobbed at their crotch.

It wasn’t long before a slender Aztec youth plopped next to me, grabbing at my crotch. Erection was exposed and he gave me what for. After I ejaculated, the kid slithered into the darkness replaced by a quivering old fuck smacking his toothless, moist hole at me. I rose and made my way toward the bathroom. A row of masturbating penis peepers stood aloof along the urinal trough as someone was getting butt fucked in the single toilet stall. I stood leaning casually against the grimy wall, lit a cigarette and watched the watchers.

Bored of their shit, I sat back in the theater and actually paid attention to the movie.

“Got a smoke?” Was asked out of the darkness in perfect English.

“Yeah.” I mumbled and fished a cigarette from my pack of Luckies.

A thick, brown hand reached over and in the dim blue flame of my butane lighter, I noticed he had a square, masculine face and drooping, black mustache. I glanced at him, squinting in the murk: muscular tattooed arms in a white wife-beater, black baseball cap on a square head. He was in his mid-twenties carrying the prison sculpted physic of a strong upper torso and thin legs in khaki pants.

We chatted. Why not? He revealed he was recently released from federal prison – for deportation or drug trafficking, I really wasn’t listening – and he was attempting to return to his hometown in the state of Senora. When he confessed he hadn’t eaten in over a day, I invited him to lunch.

We exited the theater in the blinding light of afternoon and made our way to a local taco stand. I introduced myself and he said his name was Manny. In the searing light, he was even more attractive. Tear drop tattoo and all.

Again, he pressed he had nowhere to go and knew no one in Tijuana.

“If you’d like, you can crash at my house.” I offered.

“You live here?” He asked with a hint of disbelief.

“I do. Want to go?”

“Sure.”

We hop a taxi and on the walk from the corner to my building, he tells the tale of how he lived in the state of Washington and was shacking up with his ‘girl’ before everything fell to pot. Once in my place, we lounged on my bed and I dropped the fag bomb.

“You’re gay?” He asked.

“Well, I’ve never been gay a day in my life, but I do like men.”

He went quiet. Then, “You think you can help me get a bus ticket to Senora? I can stay with my mom once I get there.”

“Maybe. How much does it cost?”

“Not much. You think you can help me?”

“Sure.”

At that moment, Manny leaned over and began kissing me. Roughly pressing me down to the bed and began unbuttoning my pants. Removing my erection, he leered up at me and hissed, “Just because I’m going to suck your dick, don’t think I’m queer, okay?”

Yeah. Sure. Not at all.

With timid masculinity, he blows me. Clothes are peeled off. I am thrilled at his chiseled torso covered in amateur prison tattoos. Sliding on top, he breathes into my ear, “Damn, you’re driving me crazy…”

I bet you said that to all your cellies.

He places my feet onto his hard shoulders, spits into his palm, and lubricates his thick, uncut erection. Sliding it in, he lunges and ruts, eventually grunting to some sort of climax. In the humid heat, the closed blinds create yellow bars across our naked, perspiring torsos, we lay side by side sharing a cigarette, blowing great plumes toward the stained ceiling.

I prop myself up on one elbow, “How bout we shower and go get you that ticket?”

“For reals?”

“For reals.”

and so it begins

During the previous month’s stay at my first location in Tijuana, it was a long thirty days mired in loathing and disgust. The ordeal was definitely not what I planned upon my triumphant return to this festering city south of the border. Then again, life seldom is.
I had made acquaintance with a fellow tenant and ex-marine named Frank. A ruggedly handsome Filipino raised in New York City. Unquestionably a surreal encounter listening to that harsh Brooklyn accent being emitted from his dark Asiatic features. Good-looking to who enjoy those Asian types, but he is hopelessly heterosexual. I do not understand what ordeal he went through during his time in the Gulf War, but it had noticeably affected him. He came across as slightly touched. Pleasant and a great conversationalist, yet somewhat bonkers.

Frank, too, was dismayed at the living situations and we spent the following weeks attempting to locate an apartment on la playa. (That’s beach to you knuckleheads who haven’t mastered Spanish) Together, we located several flats at reasonable rates which suited our rather uppity tastes.

I obtained a rather spacious and relatively cheap apartment near the beach for only $275 a month whereas Frank took a room in a large house in lieu that I enjoy my privacy and he being the more sociable type.

Oh the horrors those first two days entailed. After moving in, I cleaned the place up (even though I was asked to hand over a one hundred dollar deposit, I still had to clean the place myself because, you know, Mexico). My first afternoon was spent meeting the ‘characters’ who rented the other fifteen apartments. By characters, I mean stark raving loons. All American expats – filthy, insane motherfuckers who washed up over the border because no one else would take their shit stateside. The complex is managed by a bald-headed geriatric named Daniel who’s only way to get his point across is by angrily barking and yelling his point and the only point being that he literally hates all his tenants. The compound is well maintained by an elderly matron named Maria who somehow tolerates his abusive shit.

That evening after the screaming carnival settled down into quiet, I was utterly burned out and retired around eleven thirty. Tok Tok Tok! Someone was knocking at my front door. I crept to the window and peered through the blinds to see who it was. No one was on the landing. It was a long time falling back asleep. I had no idea what wingnut was out there. But fall asleep I did. Tok! Tok! Tok! At three in the morning there was knocking again. I threw on some pajama bottoms – I always sleep nude, wouldn’t have it any other way – and flung the door open. A man in his mid-twenties – filthy, bearded and smelling of unwashed clothes – stood on my landing peering at me with eyes full of unbridled insanity.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Hey, man. You got any stuff?”

“Stuff?” I repeated half asleep.

“Yeah, you know…stuff.” He places forefinger and thumb to his chapped lips, quick inhale. “Ganja.”

“No, man…no, I don’t.”

He shrugs, “Okay.” And leaves.

Infuriated at being woken in the middle of the night, I fling myself back onto my bed and after a long time, fall back to sleep. Tok! Tok! Tok! I glimpse at my cellphone. 6:35. However, before I can get to the door, I hear beardo outside nearby in the patio asking another tenant if they have a lighter he can use. Motherfucker.

Later that morning after a cold shower (my hot water was to be turned on sometimes in the afternoon) and walking to the corner Oxxo for a much needed coffee, I meet Daniel at the front of the apartment building screaming abuse at an elderly tenant who rented a room with fifty or so cats (Daniel actually grabbed a cat and began forcibly throttling it when it came too close all the while calling the old woman a smelly piece of shit. Appalling behavior.) After I casually mentioned the previous night concerning beardo, Daniel immediately hurled over toward his apartment door nearby, screaming obscenities and banging on the door with his meaty fist. The bearded guy flung the door open and all hell broke loose. Daniel commenced screaming beardo had two hours to pack his shit and vacate the room. Beardo didn’t go quietly.

I had to get away from this madness. I text Frank to meet me at a coffee shop downtown. At Praga Café on Revolucion, I sat bitter watching flabby tourists amble past as Frank went on about a senorita he met online. I kept mumbling ‘Good for you’ or ‘That’s sounds nice’ and other placating comments when in reality I couldn’t care less.

Frank and I strolled around Revolucion digging the great sounds emitted from the massive discos and checking out the local citizens. No matter how dire the situation, the casual glance from a handsome Mexican guy could brighten any malady. It affected me so much, I casually escorted Frank over to Plaza Santa Cecilia. The Plaza has been gentrified, by God. Instead of a legion of wild boys, it is now littered with weary families towing screaming babies. Ghastly. We sat at a table at The Boys café and Frank was amusingly dismayed by the flagrant advances of a corpulent queen. I don’t blame the fat fag, Frank is a looker. He became too uncomfortable and it was getting late, so we called it a night. Bumping fists on the corners of 5^th and Madero, we took our separate taxis home.

I spent the remainder of the evening watching that film Moon. It was a decent science fiction movie. I enjoyed it. Afterwards, I finally ended that long anxiety ridden day.

Tok! Tok! Tok! At three thirty in the morning, I fling the door open to see beardo standing in the half light.

“What the fuck?!” I snarled. “Didn’t I ask you not to come to my door again?!”

“Nah, man…don’t remember that. Got any weed?”

“Get the fuck outta here before I bust your knee caps!”

“Go ahead and try it, motherfucker!”

I slam the door, get dressed and grab a bat. I step outside and like a dissipating phantom, he is nowhere to be seen. I stomp down the steps to his supposedly vacant apartment and wild with rage, bang on the door with the bat.

He opens it a crack, “Yes?”

“Motherfucker! Why you banging on my door waking me up in the middle of the night?!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Like a black demon bursting from the pits of Hades, Daniel appears screaming. His bald head crimson like a red rubber ball. Beardo and Daniel take at slinging blows. Daniel may be old, but he held his own. After an hour of yelling, banging of doors, and eventual appearance of Mexican cops, beardo is taken away, cuffed and beaten.

I return to my room and lay in the dim coolness, thinking. In a strange way, I think I’m going to like it hear…

the darkest hour

A man sits alone in a park. The steel bench he's on is covered with a relatively broad canopy of trees. The wind blowing through their branches produces a subtle sweeping noise along the length of the interconnected foliage. The sun slices through in small rays, taking advantage of the few bare spots in order to ignite the pathway in front of him in small pieces. He procures a newspaper and sets it on the bench next to him, sure to be quiet. He extends both arms on the bench and takes a deep breath, allowing his head to loll on his neck, falling back, gentle as the breeze. He can hear the faint bustle of the wind through the leaves before he lets his breath out. There is no one else around. With his eyes still closed the man reaches into the pocket of his overcoat and removes a small revolver which he places to his temple. Calm and smiling, he pulls the trigger. The click of the firing pin against the empty chamber makes a small noise, an absent-minded pen tap on the table as you struggle with a form at the doctor’s office, a nervous finger when they inform you that you are manic-depressive bipolar with schizoid tendencies and that clinic is your best chance at departing in comfort. Medicated. Separated from the world, its guilt, its eradication of happiness and love. The man places the revolver back into his coat, gathers the newspaper, and walks away.

every weekend

Every weekend I go out I have the same hope. Anticipating coming across a guy who’s secretly considering the same thing and he’s eager the weekend holds what would be a miracle.

Before or when I’m out I usually down a few shots of tequila, enough to get tipsy. I make an effort to be ready for an occasion that has never happens. Most of the time I enjoy myself when I go to parties although I am always looking for a guy. My nerves are low and I browse for eye contact….I don’t know any other way to do it. I’m relatively a good conversationalist and that makes parties all the better, and I suppose it eases in accomplishing mission: find a guy. When talking to random men, I’m hoping for the smallest indicator. Throughout the party it always becomes apparent there aren’t any other gay men…or I simply didn’t discover them.

Needless to say, it’s Friday night and foolishly, my hopes are high again. I aspire nothing more than to have a successful mission.

agony

ruined

There nothing like teen ass, I thought as I pushed into the young man with daddy issues; they were always so tight, so fresh, so naive, so easy to manipulate, to control. Like little Francisco here, wriggling and grinding and whimpering and groaning on the end of my cock like a speared fish, the raven-haired twink I had met two hours prior while strolling through a local park. So needy, so desperate for attention it had been almost too easy.

So you live around here? Yes. That’s good. What do you do for a living? Me? I’m a writer. What about yourself? I attend the Uni. I am taking economy classes. I want to open my own business one day. Your own business, that’s a tough nut to crack. I never met a writer before. Are you a journalist? No, nothing mundane as a journalist. I write novels. What do you write about? Ha…garbage apparently. Oh, they can’t be that bad. No, not that bad. You want a horchata or something. Yes, it’s hot this afternoon.

I yanked hard on his hair and twisted my grasp around his thin neck, his back arching, his asshole twitching around my jabbing erection, his copper-colored flesh so smooth, so beautiful, his ass tight and wet I had to hold myself back as I began lunging into him. I began to fuck him brutally, overwhelming the bucking teen, feeling him tremble beneath me.

Where are your parents? My mother passed a few years ago of cancer. I’m sorry. Me, too. I miss her. My father is still alive. You talk to him? No. Not anymore. He’s a monster. I hate him. He was a fiend when we were kids. Very bad father. Me, too. My mother is still around. My father, too. But he is drunk most of the time and beats my mother a lot. Yeah, that’s tough. Why is it family’s the worst? Aren’t those the ones who are meant to understand and console you in this mad world? I chose to separate myself from them. The lies, guilt, false accusations. You are very young. I like older men, though. Do you? Yes. How old are you? Nineteen. Well, that’s just dandy.

When, after almost fifteen minutes of pounding into him, his slippery asshole drooling its need all over my cock and down his hairless thighs, I jerked my cock from him and flipped him over, pushing his slender teen legs wide apart so I could drill him as deeply as possible, the expression on his wasted face was priceless, his hair sticking to his sweat-covered forehead, his lips open, his jaw slack, his eyes dull, empty.

I hate my life. Why? Life is good. No, it is not and the thing I really hate is when people attempt to convince me it will get better. It will not get better. Ever. If anything, it gets worse. It’s what you make of it, I suppose. Then I’m fucked. Do you ever think of killing yourself? Constantly. The dire matter is I never can bring myself to do it. However the thought hangs over me like a thick, suffocating fog. That’s not healthy. I am not healthy. Are you crazy? You have no idea.

I look down and he retains the face of a fucked-out doll, gaining momentary animation as I slammed my hips forward, burying my erection deep into his spasming hole, his back arching, a moan escaping his gasping lips as I continued to fuck the teen, thinking how much fun it was going to be to completely and utterly ruin him for every man who came after him.

new town, new therapist

I keep my eyes plastered on the increasing numbers next to the elevator door. It makes me silently sigh and shift my weight from right to left. I can feel my face flush when I remember the man standing behind me. His presence makes my shoulders hunch, slightly. Ever so slightly. Why am I holding my breath? Why is the floor to the new therapist’s office so far away? An new therapist. My old one of thirteen years back in El Paso decided to quite on me. Damn him.

When I hear a ding and the doors open, I give a polite smile as I step off. The man only has a view of my back. Why did I smile? The sound of my heels on the marble floor makes me shudder, slightly. Ever so slightly. The hallway is endless and the lights are so bright. My eyes tear with feeling so exposed. Passing doors to the right and left, their numbers blur together. My destination being the door at the end of the hall. A red door. A numberless door.

I ignore the buzzer on my right side, just for a moment. The palm of my hand, fingers spread open, glides up the length of the door, slightly. Ever so slightly. The side of my face presses against it, breathing paused as I try to pick up anything audible on the other side. Silence. Comforting silence. Exhale. Eyes close, mouth parting, neck twisting as my whole body gently pushes up against the door. Inhaling and holding it, my chest feels tight. As consciousness begins to slip, I stumble backward and into reality again. In embarrassment I quickly press the buzzer with my head hanging, slightly. Ever so slightly. With a click the knob turns. With a minor groan the door gently opens.

The lighting is dim inside, for which I am eternally grateful. The carpet plush on my hobbled feet. A single pane of glass encompasses the entire wall on the far side. It is night. Did I know it was already nightfall? A sea of city lights gaze up below me. The expansive room is empty save for two low-backed armchairs in a dueling position, a standing lamp between them. Why have I come here? Should I turn and run? Should I throw myself from this colossal window to the illuminated maze below?

My body has tripled in weight as I make my way toward the chair on the right. Does it matter which chair I take as mine? As the backs of my legs make an awful sticking sound to the leather chair I can feel my palms begin to sweat, slightly. Ever so slightly. Am I having a heart attack? Will I urinate on myself? Or worse, on this chair? I don’t see a clock, but I can hear the relentless ticking.

The slightly shivering shadow, sitting across from me utters a sound, "Where shall we begin?"

I mumble, slightly. Ever so slightly. "You tell me."

that’s what tomorrow is for

“Here we go”, Cesar stated, “Another round before we all succumb to cancer or swine flu or whatever bullshit causes us to become more relatable as characters” - his delighted morbidity was a trait I, to this point, found quite endearing.

He poured two modest glasses of well-aged tequila, tossed a couple limes in each, and slithered across the hot, cigarette-butt littered bar floor with them - each of his hundred-million eyes were locked onto both of mine. His cheap summer shirt – a too short, wrinkly, white thing smudged with god knows what - clung to the bones of his lanky torso, except the parts where bits of caramel-colored flesh popped out like a broken can of biscuits. I probably loudly swallowed.

"So, what we waitin’ for?” He beckoned. “I don’t got a lot of time left”. I sighed a heavy sigh and felt the cartilage in my neck crack and then separate, releasing what I imagined to be some sort of fossilized, gaseous, tar. Liberated from the innermost workings of all of the accumilated aches of all of the creatures on the planet, ongoing since the dawn of time. Seventeen billion years’ worth of stress had dissipated from the train wreck of a body I’d been lugging around the previous five months. It was a nice moment.

“To heck with it", I croak.

I took the beverage and threw it all down into my insides. Herds of rhino and buzzing insects. In the back of my mind, a voice, That was really a mistake. Sorry, honey, that’s what tomorrow is for. Tomorrow is for dealing with now’s mistakes.

Cesar, now apparently super pleased to see I’d decided to join him on whatever lascivious adventure he’d been cooking up, was already holding the swinging bar door open for me.

Leaving the cantina, we scurried toward a taxi waiting for us in the rain. Its headlamps shone toward the bins. Broken caguama bottles, used condoms, needles.

He smelled a bit like mold, nonetheless his smile was a bug catcher and my entire heart crumpled like a stink bug who lost its limbs to some miserable child with a magnifying glass and a free afternoon. He could scoop me up and trap me in whichever jar he chose and with no hole in the lid, I’d suffocate happily.

The cab pulled up to the curb and I don’t know where I am. He pays the driver with a colorful wad of peso notes and flashes a glance at me like “why didn’t you pay the driver?”. I simply sigh and mumble gracias toward the driver and look around at the dreary industrial surroundings.

It’s raining still and I’m beginning to smell like mold.

We walk for a while, shooting the shit. Catching up. Remembering drips and drabs of how the evening had progressed. Unconsciously as we walked, we were both avoiding stepping on the cracks between the shattered pavement. Not for fear of causing further anguish to our poor old mothers with their leaky spinal fluid (bless ‘em) but because both of us were warned that night that crack can kill.

“Crack kills”, Cesar murmured as he merrily skipped across the stones. He paused and took my hand. “This is me”. It also happened that we were stopped directly adjacent to his ‘living arrangements’. A dilapidated adobe building with peeling, graffiti covered paint, barbed wire, rusted metal balcony. The corpse of a rotting dog lay near the entrance in a pile of soggy garbage.

We enter his apartment – the over-powering reek of mold mixed with dead bugs and dried semen and we watch television all night until dawn climbed its lazy ass over the horizon. As he sat slumped snoring on the ratty couch, I slipped out and made my way home under a gloomy sky.

grinding the gears

It has been over a week since my return to this broken city in which I desired so much to come back to. It has been bitter sweet, to say the least. All my old friends are dead. I feel as if I am a lost phantom returning to a mausoleum. Sad, really. The Tijuana I used to so passionately write about has passed, it no longer exists. So, I will stay a few months more and see what I can muster up. A move out to playas is high on the list.

I am at the moment residing in a room rented in a large house catering to a gaggle of dreary and very homophobic Americans. My patience is at an end with these characters. The rent is too high and the amenities are far too low. The only breath of fresh air is that this marine had recently moved in and we have been hanging around. He is a good conversationalist and not too bad to look at. Indeed he is hopelessly heterosexual, but nobody's perfect, right?

Well, anyway, here: Enjoy some pictures I had taken around town:

Me playing monopoly with my friends.

the night is our prison

¡tijuana!

I wake before the crack of dawn and drag my suitcase across the sleeping Calexico streets to hop a bus west. I sit in that cramped and crowded carriage riding high in anxiety and mounting fear as I neared my final destination: Tijuana. What will it be like? What insufferable hell am I to be exposed to? When I debark the bus in San Diego amid a mass of howling homeless (they have relocated the station from Broadway to smack dab in the center of skid row) I wade through the throng of screaming derelicts and jump a trolley south toward the International Border. I realized I was in Califas on account of the uncounted multitude of signs posted. All forbidding, denying, warning, stating no. Fuck. How can people live under such suffocating restrictions?

Through the website craigslist, I contact a man named Jack who was renting a room in a three story hacienda. Flashy pictures revealing a snazzy set up of outright bohemia. Only when the time to meet arrives it is milled in misfortune and bad connections. I cross the border (which has changed in my 10 year hiatus, the entrance to walk into Mexico is behind the San Ysidro McDonalds and not over the pedestrian bridge spanning the Interstate as before), pass the line of impatient people a million bodies deep, and hail a yellow taxi to the hotel Economico on Madero where I am checked in by an over the hill hooker. She flashes a gold tooth and refers to me as guapo. I sit in my stuffy room and wait, finally receiving the call from the previously mentioned Jack.

He picks me up on the corner under the Millennial Arch on el Revu in his ratty SUV and whisks me off toward his hacienda with a pink-haired snaggle toothed broad and sulky white boy. Jack was a garrulous, potbellied bearded gnome in a Hawaiian shirt, deftly attempting to impress me with his lascivious tales of titties and hetero porn infatuations. Girl, if you only knew.

The house is huge and basically a hive for Ugly Americans untrained in the life south of the border. A multi-raced mix of burnt out misfits. In desperation and out of options, I rent basically a stuffy closet-sized room, bare walls and sagging, single bed with a pole nailed across one end for clothes. The first annoying shock was on the first of three floors, there were a gaggle of screaming children from the age of one to six years of age bouncing on a trampoline which took up the entire front yard. Their screeching caterwauling annoyed the fuck out of me. Oh, how I loathe kids! Secondly, the walls of my room stopped an inch from the ceiling and I was subjected to the rasping sounds of my neighbors fucking – he being a snarling hillbilly in a wife beater named Rocky and she a meth-mouthed hag – I forgot her name. Horrid. On the contrary, since I am one to make lemonade from these fucking lemons, the upswing is I can now locate a decent apartment firsthand instead of relying on misleading internet photographs.
My first evening in this town of ill-repute was spent up on the roof patio with a toothless old geezer named CJ and his once handsome heehaw friend called Hank. We smoked weed and chatted of casual things. So…here I am. Once again in the city I so dearly love, only how much has it changed? Is it still the lurid town of lore? Has it changed as drastically as I have? Time as they say will only tell…