bitter noches

The night was brisk for November and the boulevard packed. I stood on the corner of Revu and First Street people watching. I had just finished a delicious plate of enchiladas rojo and afterward smoked a joint in the bathroom with the waiter friend of mine, so I was feeling content and smoothed out. I looked up into the sky past the garish neon of Hotel Nelson to a clear star sprinkled sky. Even above the thumping banda from a hundred cantinas, I could still make out the mechanical singing of the Millennial Arche’s support wires.

People ambled by a hundred fold; laughing, chatting, locals and adventurous tourists alike. It was a pleasant night. I reached into my pocket and removed a Lucky, lit up. Down the way on First Street leading towards the Border, there was a loud electronic pop followed by the sounds of arching electricity as a converter box spat out its death throes. People close enough to the light display shrieked and scampered in horror as others laughed and a group of Harley Bikers slowly roared past. I stood immobile as a disembodied phantom enveloped in my own cariogenic effluvia.

“Hey, man, you speak English?” Asked someone behind me.

I turned to the voice and stated, “Fluently.”

He was American. Early twenties. Black hair with steel grey eyes now slightly crimson from alcohol. He definitely was not from California. He had that Midwestern cleanliness to him, that skin texture one doesn’t attain from Southern California sun worship. Tall and athletic in sensible clothing. He stood and tottered a bit, glaring directly at me like an alert dog.

“Do you know this place?” He asked.

“I do. In fact, I live here.”

“That’s fuckin’ awesome, man. You think you can help me out. What’s there to do around here?”

I love that question from tourists. So general yet laced in twisted and sick perversions. I receive this generally when whatever they are looking for, they can’t find on the strip.

“Well,” I began. “That depends on what you are interested in.”

“Where’s the pussy, man?” He blurted, huge smile across his face.

I smiled back, took a drag, exhaled. “Ah, so you’re horny, are ya?”

“Fuck yeah. I just got off base and I need some pussy!” He said jokingly.

Just got off base? Navy.

“Well, you’re in luck. I so happen to know a locale where you’ll be drowning in pussy.” I stated with chin lifted and the air of a carpet salesman.

“Dude, I’ll pay you!”

“No need.” I protested with flat palm up. “Just buy the beer.”

I told him to follow me and we cut down First toward Coahuila Avenue. I was going to throw him into Adelita’s Bar, drink a few, and then ditch him. Let those she-bitches eat him up. As we made our way over shattered concrete past barking doormen, knotted gangs of drunk locals, and an array of endless prostitutes lined up shoulder to shoulder hissing for our attention, I asked over my shoulder to the kid stumbling behind me, “Say, what’s your name, anyway?”

“Jeffrey.” He answered. (A couple of hookers grabbed his ass and/or crotch as he passed, cooing out Ven, Jeffrey)

I told him mine as we siphoned into a small cantina I thought would wet his appetite. A dilapidated place with long wooden tables and dented metal chairs. The bar was actually a rectangular hole knocked through the cinder block wall so as the back area – an area I am certain entertained a variety of sordid vices – lay in shadowed darkness. The section we occupied was well lit: Mexican paper banners strewn across the ratty roof, dusty bullfight posters, soiled beer boxes stacked in a corner, a wailing jukebox blasting ranchero tunes. No one actually paid any bother as we sat against the wall.

From outside, a man in black soiled clothes and scraggly beard shuffled over to our table and asked in Spanish for a few pesos. He smelled of feces and alcohol. As I was reaching in my pocket for some coins, the waiter, an older man; tall and thin, in white shirt and black bow tie, roared at the tramp to get out. The tramp turned to the waiter and retorted with a raspy, “Fuck you!” or the Spanish equivalent. In one swoop, the waiter dashed from behind the bar – face contorted in rage - with an aluminum baseball bat and began beating the tramp right in front of our table. Two other men appeared and tossed the tramp headlong onto the sidewalk where he lay akimbo and battered, leg out in the street with a missing shoe. His dirty toes poked out from a discolored sock. The waiter turned to us, sliding a long hand across his scalp to straighten his greased hair, and asked, “Now, what can I get you, caballeros?”

Jeffery, visually dismayed, ordered us both a beer. I simply slumped casually into my seat with the glazed eyes of the dead and lit a cigarette. As we sat and drank, the boy really went overboard. As he became comfortable in the bar and loosened up a bit, he began ordering shots of tequila with our beer. Bad combination, my friend.

Eventually, he explained how desperately horny he was and wanted to purchase a hooker. So, we walked around the corner to Adelita’s. The place was a nightmare for me but was pussy heaven for my young friend. He ogled and gawked at the parade of long-legged hoochies who strode back and for enticing each man with their jiggling wares. I stood off to the side as a tall, willowy yet shapely lady approached Jeffrey and with a long slender hand firmly on his crotch, asked him to buy her a drink. He did. Then another and then another…and another. I sighed, inquiring what the tab was. The b-girl ran up a seventy-eight dollar tab. Nonetheless, Jeffrey was determined to snag this big boobed she-bitch and was escorted upstairs for the, most likely, worst sexual experience of his young life.

As I stood nursing my beer, not five minutes passed and Jeffery strode down the stairs leading up to the rented rooms and passed me toward the exit.

This can’t be good, I thought.

Outside, Jeffery bemoaned he had spent all his funds on alcohol and did not have the twenty or so dollars to pay for the hooker and the room. He pulled out a wad of crumpled bills and had me count them. Thirteen dollars.

“Can I get some pussy for thirteen dollars?” He asked.

“Nothing you would live to tell anyone about.” I stated.

Cursing himself, we made our way back to the corner of First and Revolution. Jeffrey drunkenly swayed, hands in pockets, looking up the boulevard at the thumping discos. Somewhat intoxicated also, I actually felt sorry for the kid.

“Look, Jeffery,” I began, “You’re not a bad looking guy. Why don’t you simply make the rounds at the night clubs and try to score for a chick who isn’t going to cost you?”

“They’re all going to cost me.” He said bitterly.

“Not going to argue with that.” I quipped, lighting a smoke. “Okay. Be patient. It’s still early. You are bound to squirt your cum somewhere tonight.” I reached in my pocket and removed a half-smoked joint.

He smiled leeringly, glancing at a group of teenage American girls strutting under the Hotel Nelson marquee. “My balls hurt, they’re so fucking full.” I handed him the joint. “What’s this? Weed? Won’t they say anything about smoking it here?”

“Not if you don’t get all goofy about it. Relax.” I said, flicking my zippo up at him.

He took a couple of long drags, coughed, “What about you? You know any Mexican girls that are down to fuck?”

“Me? Ha. No. Not me.” I said and decided to drop the g-bomb. Maybe it would scare him back to the border and I could go home. “I don’t know any girls. In fact, I don’t even like them that much.”

“Wait. You a fag?”

“Fag? I wouldn’t say fag.”

“Gay?”

“I haven’t been gay a day in my life.” I sneered.

He laughed, “What are you then? What do you do?”

“Me? Well, I’m pretty good at sucking dick. Kinda became a pro at it over the years.”

He took the joint and inhaled a couple of more tokes, blew heady plumes into the noisy night air. The weird silence between us began to become downright unbearable. He began to speak and I hoped it was the I’ll see ya ‘round speech.

“You know where we can go so you can suck my cock?”

Well. That was from left field.

I mumbled come on or something like it and lead him across the street to the Hotel Alaska. We brazingly made our way into the hallway past the reception. The fat and greasy bastard behind the desk didn’t even bother looking up.

As we walked down a dark and dank hall, Jeffrey asked, “You got a room here? Is this where you live?” The sound of his voice revealed he wasn’t comfortable, the smell of mildew and dead bugs permeated the dismal hall.

I turned a corner and the hallway ended in an alcove bordered by two doors. I turned and began unbuttoning his jeans.

“Here?” He protested, moving my hands away.

“No other place like it.” I hissed as I undid his jeans and zipped down his fly. A semi-erection flopped out from trimmed black pubic hairs. His penis was circumcised and smelled like alcohol. I plopped the now rigid cock into my mouth and began to suck and stroke the shaft. In the dimness of the hall under low lights amid the reek of stale hooker vagina and stopped up lavatories, I pumped and slobbered as he held the back of my head, guiding the strokes. Behind us, down the hall, someone moved in the gloom. I caught the fat bastard from the front desk lurking in the shadows at the corner of the hall, face blank, fat lips parted with mouth juicy and glistening, watching. In due course, Jeffrey’s cock sprung up, the head of his penis swole, and he let loose gobs of hot semen into my mouth with a shuddering sigh.

I leaned over and spat the matter of semen and saliva onto the dirty tiled floor with a resounding splat.

“Hey! You no stay here you need leave!” It was the fat bastard receptionist, evidently bitter he wasn’t invited to the gathering.

Jeffery embarrassingly fumbled; fastening his jeans and darted out without a word. I followed giving the receptionist a discerning smirk.
Outside, as I was about to console Jeffrey, he quickly said Later or something equivalent over his shoulder and marched promptly back to the border. Not even a thank you? A goodbye? Fuck it. I lit another smoke and coolly made my way down Revolution Boulevard, lost among a thousand revelers and taxi drivers and venders and junkies under a brisk, yellow moon…

on the same frequency

The park Teniente Guerrero spread out a full block around me. I sat on a bench munching on a mango raspa and checking the scene. Hasn’t changed much. More trees and more families occupy the park during the daylight hours, which I suppose is a positive aspect. In the center rests a large gazebo where local artists from painters to musicians exhibit their talents.

The gazebo is enclosed by iron-rod benches offering shade to the locals and a chance to talk with friends and people watch. To one side is the chess club were you will find the intellects and the not so intellects convening and pondering their next move. Ringing the outside of the park proper under towering palm trees is a sidewalk offering shoe shine booths and various snack carts. On the east side, workers loll on their day off, children play as their parents prepare lunch, vendors hawk various sundries; while in contrast on the west side…well, on the west side lies the hustlers and the predators who stalk them. All day and into the night. That was the side in which I camped. However, being the sole gringo in the park and on the undesirable side at that, I was surprisingly accosted by a fat and bitter faced cop on the mooch.

“What are you doing here?” He hissed in despondent tones. One hand on his piece, the other on his ample hip.

“Doing here?” I stated flatly. “I am resting. I found this park just walking around touring your lovely city and thought I’d have a sit and rest.”

“Resting?” He gazed at me with bloodshot eyes filled with manipulating hate. “We have had a problem with Americans coming to this park and taking pictures of children. Pedófilos. You are not one of them, senor?”

“I should say not!” I said defiantly. “There is no need for insults, senor.”

“Well, rest up and move along.” He sneered as he wobbled away to harass a sickly old queen who sat as immobile as statuary behind a pair of cheap sunglasses.

Fuck you, I thought toward the cop. The Tijuana of old is a dead museum. Impregnated with the viral infection of the United States and its pogrom of hate filled intrusive interference into a citizens every waking thought and action.

My mind began to drift onto nostalgic memories concerning this park. Especially the chain of friends and acquaintances who had met their end in it. Juan Carlos, hustler found face down in feces behind a row of bushes from an overdose, Saul who hung himself rather than dwindle away in pain from acute symptoms of HIV, Ignacio who was beaten to death in lieu of a dope deal gone sour, Enrique found stabbed to death behind the public bathrooms, lying face down in the mud, pockets turned inside out and shoes stolen…no one remembers them anymore. They had become forgotten phantoms in a long line of dead funneling towards the fiery mouth of Moloch.

I walked around the outer perimeter of the park. Passing a covered police paddy wagon, a voice barked out from the small, square slit in the side of the steel canopy of the back.

“Hey! Hey you, gringo!”

I stopped and squinted into the inky black hole.

“Help me get out of here!”

“Help you get out?” I smiled. “How? I can’t do that.”

“Fuck you, then!”

I fished my cigarette pack from my pocket, removed one, lit up.

“Fuck me?” I stated. “No, it is quite obvious which one of us is the fucked one.”

“Fuck you. Gimme a cigarette.” Two grimy, emaciated brown fingers with black soot under the nails probed out from the inky dark.

I expelled smoke at the hole. “No.” Walked away with the muffled sounds of obscenities in two languages being launched at me.

I stopped at a stall and ate some beef tacos with a manzanita fresca. Around me, kids laughed and played, balloon sellers and ice cream vendors egged them on under a obscenely bright blue Mexican sky. As the sun began to sink behind the horizon, the shoe stands snapped close and the sweets vendors closed their candy-colored parasols. I slinked to another bench to have a cigarette and wait, to wait and see if the park had changed significantly during the twilight hours.

So much change. So much tedious uninteresting consequences nowadays…

The overhead lamps of the streetlights snapped on (buzzing like an angry wasp on this clear night) and the Cruisers began their stylized ballet around the park. Within two hours of sundown, shadowy figures moved like somnambulist through the nocturnal fête of anonymous sex and abject degradation. Two bushes over behind me, I overheard whispers followed by slurping and heavy breathing, resulting in a single, drawn out grunt as the two parted ways never to touch nor speak again.

Illuminated under the amber spotlight of an overhead lamp, a lanky hustler in dirty pants and wrinkled summer shirt lounges across a bench like an awaiting puma. His slitted eyes slowly survey from a face frozen in macho lust. A brown hand languidly strokes a long and full erection bulging down the side of his immobile leg. A fat and ancient queen halts and offers him a cigarette. The hustler takes it, not looking at the beaming queen or even acknowledging his presence. The queen reaches down and casually brushes the hard cock with a perfumed and manicured hand. The long and engorged cock jumps up in approval. The two slink quietly into the darkness.

“Are you alone?” Husks a voice in Spanish from the shadows.

I glance over and out of the darkness ambles a short guy, but handsome. As he silently waits my reply, a warm wind rustles through the trees.

“Not as such, no.” I say.

“Can I sit with you?” He asks, face plain and without emotion or warmth.

“Of course.”

Like a video jump-cut, he is next to me scrutinizing out into the shadowed darkness of the park. We sit quietly for a moment, listening to the faded music coming in on the same frequency.

“Do you have a cigarette?”

“Of course.” I hand him a Lucky. “What’s your name?”

“They call me vampiro. (Vampire) My friends here in the park…they call me vampiro.” He said, lighting up.

“Really? Vampiro? Is it because you suck?”

He didn’t respond to the stupid joke and quite frankly I kinda felt like shit saying it.

He sniffed and then looked at me with eyes all pupil. The lights glittered in those unblinking orbs. He was tweeking his ass off. He began moving in small, galvanized jerks gesticulating in that common meth junky movements. “I run this park, you know? Whatever I dictate, my people do.”

“Your people?” I ask, getting bored already.

 “Si, my people. All the hustlers, jotos, y los viejo verdes. They obey my wishes.”

To answer his absolute sovereignty, a shriveled old thing shuffled past, stopped, and glanced at Vampiro. The old coot licked thin dry lips with a tiny white tongue. Their eyes met and the old man gestured with a nod for Vampiro to follow. The boy rose on command and walked with the ancient pervert into the dark, chattering endlessly of things both sexual and insane.

Surrounded by arcane rituals of perverse acts that would make a Baptist preacher squeal in glee, I rose and made my way back to my guestroom. I simply wasn’t feeling it. And with what has begun to become the norm, I really didn’t feel anything. Anything at all.

happy halloween

cities of the red night

"If anybody asks...I'm at the hospital." He muttered walking out the door.

Twenty-four hours later on the following evening he stumbled back red eyed and exhausted. His bitter face, his entire persona, seemed at first glance completely anonymous. Normally pressed and clean, his clothes were smeared in black grime and the entire left of his side was discolored from water or most likely piss from his chest running the length of his leg of his pants. He smelled of rotten cantaloupe.

I stood silent as he simply barged into the room and clumsily and wordlessly began removing his clothes. His legs and arms wielded crimson scratch wounds and already had begun to scab over. As I slowly closed the door to my guestroom, he let his stinking, filthy clothes remain where they dropped and commenced catatonically rummaging through my open suitcase that lay on a corner chair. He removed a clean shirt and a pair of undershorts. Sliding them on, he plopped onto the bed and covered himself with the cotton blanket. The rancid reek of stale alcohol filled the room as almost instantly he began to lightly snore.

I ambled over to the wooden shelf under the flat-screen television set and retrieved a crumpled packet of cigarettes. Removing one, I lit up and observed his prone akimbo form.

Nothing more pathetic than a sloppy drunk, I thought. I need to nip this in the bud. The honeymoon, as it were with this character, was long past and his attitude had become downright petulant and condescending. I had become used to him and his persona. At times sweet and affectionate, but sometimes the man gave me a shock with some indescribable twist of malevolent ugliness. He incessantly ciphered money from me for the sole purpose to drink. Not just beer, but hard liquor. As of late, he would sit on the floor or sometimes I’d find him squatting on the curb outside in crying jags, loudly confessing the most vicarious details of sexual atrocities that had been committed to his person during different chapters in a fantastic saga of misfortune.

I let him sleep as I remained awake due to coffee and insomnia. Tomorrow it is time to cut this boy off.

inner city shenanigans

brows held high

On a starry and humid night, I found myself sitting across the street from Hotel Cesar on Revu sipping coffee at Praga café. A slight breeze rustled through the towering palm trees. Even at this hour, half past eleven, the boulevard was teeming with pedestrians and cars. Lights flash across my face and the thumpthumpthump of half empty discos echo out into a debaucherous sky.

Being the sole gringo amid perhaps four or five other individuals on the outside patio, I am bombarded by various panhandlers making their final rounds before returning to sleep or dope up in their warrens. Kids beg for pesos, teenagers and the elderly beg to shine my shoes, roving mariachi bands beg to play La Bamba (I hate that song), old women beg to sale flowers. I sit behind my dark shades with the look of a poker dealer. They all move on. I sip my coffee. Order a third or fourth from the far too attractive mesero. Light a cigarette and unleash a vast grey plume up into that unrelenting Tijuana sky.

Popping electricity and the lights go dim for a second. I shiver as if someone vile and distasteful was staring at me. The lights return to normal.

“You’re the new writer, aren’t you? You just arrived?”

I turn to my left and notice a tall, thin young man of about twenty-three or five sitting adjacent me. He wore a pressed blue summer shirt with tan skinny jeans ending in black and white sneakers. His head was square and the jet black hair trimmed short on the back and sides, slicked back on the top. Thick, straight eyebrows and small nose with flared nostrils. He sported a full goatee around pert, thick lips, yet his eyes were hidden behind a pair of cheap four peso sun glasses. A long, veiny brown hand clutched a coagulating latte.

I removed my glasses. I felt slightly dizzy, like an instance of sudden vertigo. Sitting up from my casual slouch, I attempted to play it cool and answered, “A few days ago. I currently just write reports, though. Not exactly writing, is it?”

"Reports?" He smiled a row of small, white teeth. “Who do you report to?”

“Oh…uhm, it’s not always clear…” I mumbled.

“That comes across like writing to me. Did you move to Tijuana for the boys?”

I was somewhat irritated by this blatant inquisition. Took a sip of coffee, a drag on my cigarette, “No, I didn’t.”

“Really? Well, that was quite a hot threesome I saw you with in the Plaza the other night. They’re very cheap and really a lot of fun.”

My head began to ache. He seemed to fade in and out of focus while the cafe itself remained as clear as glycerin. Casually pushing my hat back, with head tilted down, I slowly massaged the dull throbbing in my forehead. I chuckled, “Oh, you saw that? Are you supposed to pay them?”

“You’ll pay them, don’t worry. A missing lighter here, a few borrowed dollars there. It’s all very equitable.” He drew out the end of his sentence with sinister sexual ambiguity.

I felt as if I was falling through bottomless darkness. I became short of breath and began to perspire. Was it another anxiety attack? I had been enduring them so much of late. They were becoming harder to control. When one escalates in public, to save face, my first thought is to return to my room and ride it out.

“I need to go.” I stated abruptly and rose.

“Where are you going?” He asked.

Gravity felt off. My legs were sluggish as around me the streets buckled and contorted in tiny soundless vibrations. The clients and pedestrians around me, who earlier seemed passive and relaxed, now became brutal and vicious.

“Home.” I mumbled. “To write my reports…”

Without another word, I quickly darted around the corner and down the broken concrete steps to the corner of 5^th and Madero and the safety of my darkened room.

Later, I sat in the cool darkness of my guesthouse room writing a short piece for a friend's magazine. Across the illuminated laptop screen words moved around on the page of their own accord. They writhed and swelled like glistening leeches. I removed my hands off the laptop keys and it continued to work without me. As the Hewlett-Packard pounded away, not non-stop automatic, but with a human rhythm, complete with thoughtful pauses, I leaned back against the wall and nodded off to the dreamy, comforting sound of the keyboard’s clicking.

…click-clickity-click...I closed my eyes. Pictures streamed by. The pictures in my mind are out of control, black and white, without emotion, the deadness lying in the body like a viscous, thick medium. I am back in El Paso, Texas. In the backyard of Juan Holguin. It is spring and the desert air is clean and warm. We stood in the dusty, oxidized sand of a fenced in yard, scraggly yellow grass clung to the fence post. Huge, puffy clouds languidly drift in that too-bright China blue Texan sky. Juan was repairing the car engine of that old beat up Ford. His pride and joy. I watch him. My heart swells. It had been what? Ten, fifteen years? The last person I had loved. Truly loved in every sense of the word. An emotion that, now, seems utterly alien to me.

His handsome face looks up out at me from under the hood. Smiling, he says something I couldn’t hear. A wave of overwhelming sadness crashes over me…click-clickety-click…

I hear the toilet flush. I freeze. Someone steps out of the WC and into the guestroom half shrouded in shadows. It is the young man from the café.

I stand up, “What are you doing here?”

“I had to use the toilet.” He stated nonchalantly, as if he’d been in the room all along.

“I locked the door.”

He stepped out of the shadows. Phantom tendrils reach out toward me, feeling for a point on which to fasten. “I have many friends in Tijuana. A friend is a key that will open any locked door.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I could be your friend.”

I stood immobile. My mind whirled and crashed into a pit of despair. The faint hissing of voices sounding like mumblings down a windy street. I asked in a dead tone, “Did Control send you?”

His chest touched mine. I seemed to be paralyzed. He began to slowly caress the back of my neck. I turned to face him to protest. As if some arcane ritual, he shook some pink crystalline powder onto his fingertips from a hollow, iguana-shaped pendant which I notice for the first time. He casually licks me on the side of the throat, then works the powder onto the wet spot.

His breathing mounted as he whispered, “It was you, you who called me. I knew you needed me.”

“That’s not true.”

The powder dissolved instantly, seemingly to soak into my neck, creating a messy purple and yellow bruise as it passed into the bloodstream. He then kisses me full on the mouth. I fight it for a second, then kiss him back. We get into it hot and heavy. The sound of our passion mixes with the sound of arching electricity as the dim lamp on the end table flickers and goes out.

…the sound of crickets in a silent, cold morning. I awaken in my bed among rumpled sheets. I am alone. I shower, dress, and head out for coffee.

the lemon drop kid

plastic tumbler of tequila

...darkness. Intermittent, strobing light from a naked and dusty bulb below on street level. The sound of arching electricity. Down the hall, muffled moans of a hooker earning her rent. Caught a glimpse of her suitor when I was coming out of the loo, big macho vaquero and he was intent on breaking the bed from the sound of it…

…a grey cloud slices across a huge, milky half-moon as I stood at the window of my room slowly taking a drag from my umpteenth cigarette. Below me the streets are empty save for the trash whipping in little eddies and the bearded vagabond in grimy and black rags washing himself next to a car park wall utilizing water from a used plastic soda bottle…

…three twenty-three a.m. on the crimson flickering alarm clock face, a cheap plastic model I purchased for five pesos at a second hand mercado. The store was small displaying discarded junk coated with a layer of grayish dust lay in chaotic piles or leaned against the faded white paint of the walls. The shop smelled like cat piss. Never saw a cat, though…

…I reached for the yellow plastic tumbler of tequila which sat on a wooden shelf below the flat screen television, took a sip. It went down fiery and calming. Cheap, ten peso rotgut. Took another drag from my unfinished cigarette. The red cherry of the Lucky must caught the attention of the bathing vagabond. With ratty pants to his knees as he scrubbed his exposed and dangling crotch with a wet and elongated palm shiny over the dirt, he glanced up toward my window and with a toothless smile, saluted. I waved back. He nonchalantly continued washing oblivious to the world around him…

…my mind, sluggish from insidious insomnia reeled with a million images. Nostalgic mental pages flipped from the Great Tome of my life. The same thought bugged me: I knew, once again, I was getting cold feet. I already purchased a plane ticket to Cambodia for the second of January. The conundrum was: do I really want to go? Now I am back in Tijuana with the brilliant prospect of attaining an affordable apartment in a city I know all too well, do I choose to fling myself onto the other side of the planet and attempt to build the same comfort zone in a locale I know very little about? The main drive to relocate to Southeast Asia is to teach English and, saving what I can, open a small guesthouse in a decade or so and wile away my retirement from the foreboding and suffocating influence of the United States. Certainly the adventure aspect was appealing as so is the new fodder for writing about it. However, I seriously do not know if on a mental aspect I am capable of doing this anymore. This living without any stability. How did I become so paranoid in my old age? Ha…old….I am not old. However, I do feel it. Tired. Worn out. Like a dab of butter spread across too much toast. Bored is an apt word, also. Nothing excites me anymore. Not even writing. A problem which actually terrifies me to the marrow because that and that alone is all I have left in this self-inflicted, turbulent life. All left as in the only thing keeping me from opting out from this mortal coil. (Which I think about far too frequently) I need to make up my mind.
You may ask yourself, Why? Why Cambodia? Well, it is quite simple to the clinically insane: For the experience. To escape the impending police state of America (I believe soon, in a span of perhaps five years tops, the powers that be will begin killing off large sections of the population. Or herding the poor and who they deem useless into FEMA camps for liquidation. I mean, seriously, open your eyes, it’s as plain as day) If I do go – that is it. No turning back…

…as an answer, I hear a slight drowsy cough to my right. I glance over toward the bed and the lithe form of Antonio – the lanky vato from the cock fight I attended a few days prior – who now lay sprawled akimbo on his stomach half covered by the white sheets. His copper-colored, hairless ass and one lanky leg naked across the bed as he slept. I hear his slow, content breathing. Illuminated by the headlights of a passing car, I notice the small bag of marijuana on the end stable, the half smoked roach buried amid ashes and empty shot glass next to a near depleted bottle of aforementioned tequila. His clothes, as are mine, tossed across the floor. The room held the faint scent of weed, dried semen and penetrated rectum…

…I turned back to the panorama sweep of a slumbering city. I sigh. Writers live the sad truth as anybody else. We, as you, endure the hardships and let downs and the intermittent joys of life. The only difference is, writers are cursed to repeat these incidents over and over again. That is when it dawned on me. I had done this – lived this scenario a billion lifetimes – perhaps it is time for me to set tracks for other parts of the world and endure and experience grand new things…or die trying.

You know what, Dear reader, I will. I need to. I mean, really, what else is there? Nothing. That’s what. Nothing at all…

fear the monkey

I feel as though I’m slowly losing my mind. I’ve become good at faking a smile in such as I even believe the “I’m fine” speech. I’m not fine, I’m messed up, broken inside. I’m attempting so hard to stop myself from relapsing again, so damn hard, but I don’t think I’ll have strength to do it much longer. I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, and I just want all this pain to stop and yet, I’m too fucking cowardly to end it all. Death scares me, but sometimes I’m completely ready for it.

I’m confused. I feel as if this has been going on for so long now. But I constantly think I’m being pathetic and these feelings I have are normal. The strange has become mundane. However, when I look back at my bad flair ups I always think “I was really unwell” but when I’m going through them I always explain things away by saying to myself I’m merely being a drama queen. Then when I look back at my bad times I realize how unwell I can get, I dunno. I don’t want to die but I wish I wasn’t ever born.

I almost swallowed pills last night during a depressive episode. I had no motivation or reason to do it, I simply wanted to see what would happen.

I hate when people ask to explain. How do you explain to someone you maintain a pain so strong and so deep it makes you want to die? That you harm yourself to take away the pain. That it will all truly feel better if you had a bullet through your brain.

I’ve just come to a point where I no longer look before I cross the road, wishing for a car to hit me or even thinking of being hospitalized. I live for near death experiences, hoping to find my old self again.

This is, of course, an unattainable delusion…

dogtooth

I follow him down a worn and wooden staircase spiraling into unmentionable gloom. At the bottom landing, my eyes adjust to the dimness along with the smell of dead bugs, old rag mats and marijuana. A radio crackles a love ballad slow and dreamy in a distant cubical hidden behind dingy red curtains. In shadows, men and half clad women mingle, talk, fuck. I glance up to the one light bulb hanging from a wire at the low ceiling.

“A three watt job, obviously.” I mumble.

“What?” He says.

“Nothing. You sure it’s here?” I ask, lighting a Lucky.

“Yeah. It’s here.”

Before we hit the room, I can hear the noisy chatter of The Others. We enter a large space of an underground parking garage, lit intermittently by dim overhead lamps. The grey concrete floor is cracked and wet from piss and spit and possibly water. I didn’t ask. A few parked F-150 trucks lined a wall. Around the knot of nine, perhaps ten guys, the air is a London fog of carcinogens, the floor a carpet of crushed cigarette butts. Dried blood as black as midnight splattered here and there.

“You’re late.” Smiles a tall thin lad in oversized and well-worn street clothes. He approaches us and offers two red plastic cups of tepid beer. I take one. My friend takes the other.

“The taxi driver got lost finding the place.” My friend lied giving the lanky guy an arcane street-wise handshake. Same kind I remember in my Glory Days in TJ: Fist bump, slide of fingers, followed by a soft snap of fingers…back then became such an unconscious way of habit that once I returned to reside in the States, bewildered many of The Wypipo upon first greeting.

I digress…

My friend points to me casually with beer in hand, “Guero wants to check out the fights.”

“He got money?”

“Some.” I says. “Might leave with more, if all goes right.”

I stand immobile and cold as ice as the lanky guy takes my cigarette, puffs, and places it back between my lips, “Ever seen these fights before?”

“Nope. Always wanted to, but never got around to it. Guess today I’m getting around to it.”

“Alright. But, just remember, what happens here stays here. Don’t go calling your Tia and telling her all kinds of shit. Got it?”

“Got it.”

First they brought out the roosters. A short, fat goober in dingy clothes with a milky cataract in one eye went around collecting bets in his frayed straw cowboy hat. I slid him a one hundred peso note and bet on El Tiburon. I liked the song. Felt lucky. Amid blaring music and deathly hollering, the two fowl tore each other to bloody pieces. I had to admit, the spectacle was exhilarating. I noticed they both were outfitted with razor hooks attached to their left feet. Interesting. The group of encircling men goaded and sweated as El Tiburon was slashed to ribbons, falling and flipping onto the concrete a crimson splattered mess.

Win some lose some, I thought.

One eye, amid some pomp, fetched two more roosters. Another bet was placed on Chiki-chiki, seeing as the winner of the last bout was going to fail from strict exhaustion. I was wrong. In a few minutes time, Chiki-chiki was regulated to be thrown in someone’s deep fryer vat. Several men who also lost bets accused the game rigged. Probably was. I did not care.

“Te gusta?” My friend asked, handing me another drink.

“Si. Mi gusta. This is how I like my sport. Bloody.”

After another cock fight, in which I did not bet, they brought out the dogs. Two hundred peso minimum. I looked the two beasts over. One was a stocky, grey pit-bull of muscle and scars. I didn’t catch its name, but mentally called it Woola. The other dog was a boney mongrel of mixed blood, a bristling, snarling, yellow-fanged beast as black as night. I slid two hundred pesos into One Eyes hand and pointed toward Woola. After he snatched all the remaining bets from the bloodthirsty spectators of cigarette smoking and sweaty men, the main event (for me, at least) began. My chest heaved in excitement as I stood and watched the two snarling beasts snap at one another. Woola seemed he had his glistening ebony opponent clamped down in a death embrace, but the feral mutt slipped free and amid a series of chomps at vital arteries, brought Woola down. As my dog whimpered and was dragged out dripping blood and gore, I told my friend it was time to cut.

Though macho and sour faced, several of the men bid adios, as did the lanky guy as we made our way back to the spiral staircase.

Up on street level, the night air was crisp and the low housing neighborhood surrounding us was strangely serene. We stood under a starry navy sky waiting for a taxi.

“How much did you lose?” He asked.

I adjusted my cap, “Enough to remember this unusual experience till the end of my days. Wanna go downtown? Get a coffee?”

“Sure,” he said. “You didn’t like it?”

“I didn’t not like it. Perhaps I am too civilized.”

“Or American.” He smiled.

I smirked, “Or American. You going home or you wanna crash at my place tonight?”

“I can stay tonight. Tomorrow is my day off.”

As a lone taxi bumped up the dusty road and squeaked to a halt, I opened the back door and as he slid in, I said, “Now that’s money I don’t mind spending…”

constant sorrow

Zona Norte: Easy to get in and hard way out…meth sickness stands at the corner with bilious and yellow eyes pupils a pinpoint, the yammering boy need intercepts an American fag’s rush for the Frontier, the federale warrant in Oaxaca…

In the gathering grey twilight…borrowed flesh hangs on the bones of the untenanted body, and then I am back inside moving and I walked through Avenida Coahuila…rich yellows and blue marijuana smoke in the streets like deep stone canyons, red doors yellow lights…little cantinas where sad old vaquero drunks sniff pensively…tapas and futbol scores on the wall…taxis crawl ferreting for prey, ambiguous pimps drift under dull street lamps eating mouthwatering tacos from dingy stalls, lean against outcroppings of crumbling red brick, talk in silent, introspective gestures, frescoes of delicate depravity, flat two-dimensional, Aztec hieroglyphics…plaintive boy-cries drift through the night…”Cesar. Hugo. Juanito.”

Stale patter of commerce: “A ver Malburro?” “Nice girl, Meester…” “Big titty big pussy?” “Sombrero?” (The best sombreros are not made in Tijuana)

A hideous diseased mouth blows smoke rings into the night…”Wanna plo chop, behbeh?”

Stop in small bar and order a beer. I squat next to short, but attractive man in his late twenties. He sits passive and immobile like I’m la migra and shit. I look him casually over. Indigenous from Chiapas, maybe? Either way, the man remains immobile as statuary.

“Would you like a beer?” I ask in Spanish?

It took an entire minute before I received a barely imperceptible nod. I lit a cigarette and poured him a glass. Filled my own. The bartender returned to the other end of the counter and leaned, reading a newspaper.

I sat through a cigarette and slowly drank my beer. He definitely wasn’t the gabby type. Then again, this wasn’t exactly a queer bar.

When his glass was empty, I poured him another from the caguama bottle. Plopped in a cube of ice. “Why so sad?” I asked.

“I’m not sad.” He finally stated.

“You seem sad.”

“No.”

He casually slid a cigarette from my pack on the counter, lit up and blew a huge grey plume toward the rotting ceiling. An hour went by. No music from the rockola. No loud chatter from the three other sullen drunks hunched over the bar. The silent bartender continued to lean against the bar, reading futbol scores.

“Why is there so much hatred in this world?” He began. “Can you feel it?”

“A foreboding, elusive blackness encompassing everything?”

“Yes.” He said staring ahead.

“Didn’t you get the memo? God has abandoned us. It’s the end of the world.”

He took his glass and clinked it to mine, “To the end of the world.”

“To the end of the world.”

the bathroom boys

I bolt out of the guesthouse dressed to the ninths (maybe even the tenths) and stroll down Revu towards Plaza Santa Cecilia. The sun had begun to set on this warm and moist Friday evening and I had decided after all that had transpired, I needed a shot of life. The avenue was teeming with petulant tourists and teenaged locals. Candy-colored neon lights spattered across my face and the beat of a million bandas wailed from jukebox of every beer joint or disco. Cars slowly cruised showing off their mods and vendors still called to pinch that last naïve rube.

I turned down Second Street, dodging mothers in rags sitting among their questing broods, a stout drunk lay in his own urine as I stepped over him. No one paid him no mind. A regular Tijuana night. I cut into the Plaza and it has not changed: families strolled under a thousand fluttering paper banners strung across the way, greens, reds, whites, dingy from the soot, fags of all shapes and sizes cackled and cooed at muscular workers returning home from a construction site, lurid hustlers lurked in shadows smoking cheap cigarettes patiently awaiting the aged and unattractive to purchase either cock and ass or to be robbed all together, typical hustler routine, and sitting at both The Boy’s Café and outside El Ranchero (now a goddamn restaurant? What the bloody fuck? Who would eat food prepared at that den of ill-repuke? Most like some ignorant queer from Idaho vainly attempting to impress the gaggle of thieves – I mean hotties – he’s accumulated) anyways, sitting in these cafes like lizards following the course of their prey, the dried up expat vampires who had lived in Tijuana since “the good old days” quivering and drooling tearing one another to shreds with over used and out of date snide gay double entadre and overtly judgmental gossip.

I stop in the dank doorway of Villa Garcia, hit by waves of nostalgia. Hasn’t changed much, except it now offers an upstairs with the obligatory strip/drag show – apparently for two dollars some oiled hunk will wave his thick, uncut ding-a-ling in your face – how things have changed. Found a stool at the bar near the corner and ordered a cold cerveza Sol. Thanks to fucking California and the bitches who think their way of life should dictate everyone on the planet, a large No Smoking sign glared menacingly at me from the opposite wall. Fuck you, America. Fuck you to hell. I noticed the bartender lit up and as soon as I pulled out my package – my cigarettes, silly – he placed an ash tray next to my bottle. Thank Jeebus, American Culture, your black tentacles haven’t ensnared everything down here…

So, I’m sitting there sipping my beer and staring at my ravaged countenance in the mirror opposite me in the bar when a finger sensually slid down my spine. I turned to see a somewhat unattractive guy smiling back. Chunky, you know, in tight shirt and jeans, thighs and knees pressed together. A large, simian face.

“Hello.” He said timidly in English.

“Hello.” I croaked back.

“One beer for me?”

“Can’t do, amigo. Waiting on someone. Should be here any minute.”

His fake-ass friendly smirk turned to a frown and then simply stormed out the bar. You frog-faced bitch, if I’m feeding your alcohol habit for the evening, you gotta be up to my standards. I mean, my bar is set pretty low as it is, can’t go any lower. Know what I mean? Know what I’m saying?

A couple hours pass and a few beers and I am definitely feeling it. Then he walked in. Jackpot. Short, masculine and tight body. He possessed a strong jaw line with a distinct Aztec nose. Smooth copper face and dark eyes. Black hair cropped short and slicked back. Our eyes met with that looking but looking past something else glance and he strut with a macho gait that heats me pants every time. He sat on the stool next to me and order a Tecate. Silence passed. A song changed on the jukebox. He took a tattered paper napkin out of his jeans pocket and blew and wiped his nose. In a pause in the song, I asked in Spanish, “Gotta cold?”

“A little one. Not too bad.”

He told me that his name was Raul or Cesar or something. I really didn’t catch that and mumbled mine which I think he didn’t get either. Other than that, we hit it off. The beer flowed and we laughed at stories of his family life, the small town he was raised in, his work. He sat in respectful silence as I went over my travels, my writing and so on.

The bar became obscenely crowded and we walked across the Plaza to the Patio Bar. Not really a fag joint, but ambiente as the locals would say. Took a booth and order caguamas of Sol and Tecate respectfully. The place was packed with youth and a smidgeon of adventurous American teens. Raul or Cesar or something was so plastered that during a Mexican love ballad he asked me to dance. At first I said no, which seemed to offend the little fucker, so yeah, okay, why not. Luckily the other two couple swaying to this sappy shit was an elderly straight couple and two pot-bellied men in sombreros sporting huge, black moustaches. So, no one really gave us a second look. We returned to our seats when I excused myself to the men’s room.

In the corner of that reeking shit hole were three college aged kids smoking weed. I pissed and as I washed my hands they offered me to join. It was some good sticky shit. Little harsh, but what did you expect in these trying times. Amid farting and shitting and pissing and flushing and billowing marijuana smoke, the group and I chatted. They were some type of Zapatista revolutionaries and kept badgering me on that Toupee’d Yam we have for a president and I stated harshly that I thought he was an incompetent asshat. They warmed up to me after that. One was a writer – Juan, I believe – and desired to become a published writer.

“It’s awesome,” I smiled. “But, it’s terrifying, too.”

I lost track of time with these intellectuals, perhaps it was the discussions or simply the weed, but when I returned back to the booth, Raul or Cesar or something was gone. Oh, well. Son cosa de la vida I always say. It was late anyhow and I was bleary from the pot and the beer and decided to call it a night.

I stumbled out of the bar into the Plaza still pregnant with chattering squawking queens. I checked my watch: 3:16am. I began the wavering controlled amble back to the guesthouse. A group of ragged boys aged five to ten surrounded me. Filthy street urchins holding brown paper sacks and sniffing paint thinner. One asked for change and I dropped some pesos into his tiny hands – shiny over the dirt. Another, the wily scamp – tried to lift my wallet from my back pocket. I grabbed his hand and said, “Hey, nothing for you here, nino.” As he attempted to squirm away, I reached into my shirt pocket and retrieved a joint given to me from the Bathroom Boys. “Here, if you’re going to do dope, do dope that won’t kill ya.” He snatched it and the group scampered laughing off into the night like a pack of baying hyenas.

As I was leaving the Plaza, Raul or Cesar or something wobbled up out of the shadows towards me. A wet splotch of urine from his crotch that spread down both inner legs stood out.

“What happened, man, you have an accident?” I asked.

“No. Es no importa.” He swiveled his intoxicated head. Even shit faced, he was extremely attractive. “Can I come home with you?”

“Well,” I began. “I don’t have a problem with it, but you most likely will.”

“Por que? (Why?)”

“I like men.” I stated dryly.

Several looks of confusion piled up on his smooth face all at once. He slurred, “Men…women…it’s not important. It’s just sex.”

With that, twenty minutes later, Raul or Cesar or something stepped out of my shower butt naked as the day he was born and plopped face down on my bed and fell straight to sleep. Great. I adjusted my snoring Adonis properly on the mattress, threw a blanket over him and lay down naked myself. I smoked a cigarette before I found myself passing out.

The following morning, I awoke moments before Raul or Cesar or something. He mumbled, “I’m sorry.”, concerned about passing out and not fulfilling his hustler duties.I said that it was okay. We held each other in silence in a vain attempt to wake up.

He rolled over and placed my hand on his firm erection. “To make up for last night.” So, we kissed while I stroked him off to a squirty climax. Getting dressed, I offered to buy some coffee, but he declined, stating some nonsense about getting back home and going to work. Outside on the corner, we shook hands and parted. I sat in the Praga café decided on how I was going to pull off this Cambodia debacle…

time/space alignment

Owing to nothing less than goddamn divine intervention, I retrieve my luggage from storage and high tail it via trolley to the Frontier. Amid bustling early morning commuters, I enter the Mexican immigration office and acquire my visa and rush out to be swamped by a million taxi drivers. Being the highbrow and somewhat finicky fag I am, I choose the most handsome out of the bunch and we jet over to Fifth and Madero Ave. el centro.

An entire year has passed since I ignorantly fled this town – a city I both adore and detest. And yet, this fetid metropolis will be my home for the next three months. I had purchased an online flight to Cambodia for January 2^nd…however, that will be another story.

So, as I was saying before I got interrupted by my sinister and condescending voices (troublesome little beasts), I drag my luggage across the dusty frontier, past the kaleidoscope of vibrant banners and trinkets and plump babies wallowing in dirt (their big brown eyes gaze at me as snot cakes on their upper lip), past the searing aromas of taco stands and churros sizzling in their grease pits, “A ver Moolburros!” from cigarette vendors competing with the beats of blasting salsa music, Nilton and I – Nilton being my cabbie and I tell you is he a sight for sore eyes, long and lanky, thin moustache, and bulging crotch that will raise any eyebrow – we casually chat about Tijuana, the whore houses, the beer, the food, the government – all those banal things one expects when first stepping on foreign soil and conversing with a local. Didn’t mind, he was a sweet fellah.

We pull up in front of the same guesthouse I had rented a room in a year prior and I noisily make my way up the broad, wooden stairs to the second floor reception. Lucia, the motherly matron of the joint, greets me with a huge smile and tight embrace. “Ay, guero, adonde vas?” I tell ya, it was a relief to get out of the States overtly inundated with bitter, conning, hateful people. America you may bitch and you may complain all you want concerning the state of affairs in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, but you worthless shits are getting exactly what your greedy, self-righteous, pompous asses deserve. America is evil. It has always been evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians…the evil has always been there lurking…

I slap down the two hundred a month for my room, shower and settle in. I sit on my queen size bed, staring out into the panorama of multicolored, graffitied buildings. A maudlin Mexican love ballad pumps from a passing car. I begin to weep uncontrollably, over run by a wave of such loss and sadness. What am I doing with my life? Why am I doing this? Where am I going? All avenues I see in my mind’s eye are veiled in shadows and confusion. Perhaps I am entirely insane. Perhaps I do need to seek psychiatric help…fuck it. I sat up and strode to the corner to one of my favorite coffee shops called Praga on Revu. Ordered a café americano and as I sat watching the happy, content people dart back and forth, (quite the opposite of the grimacing, brutal faces of American pedestrians) my eye caught the side glance of a handsome young Mexican man in his early twenties strolling with a girl. He didn’t stop, but he did turn and smile with that knowing look one gives another interested in same-sex innuendos and it was at that moment I knew. After a year of ill fortune and misdirection and deceit and defamations, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. My heart swelled and the gray fog in my head dissipated and everything exposed itself clear as glycerin. Tijuana…my home. After a long and horrible year, I was back home.

and i head south...