Immigration1.doc (Don't marry him!! He's full of parasites!!)

February 2, 2007

 

Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

Dearest Sophy:

 

I miss you every day, and want you here with me so we can start a new life together.

 

I have attached a questionnaire from my lawyer for you to fill-in.  After you fill it in, make two copies for you, and mail the original back to me by FedX.  FedX will cost at least $50.  I will send you some more money soon.  Put it in a large envelope, so as not to fold it.  Also include the photographs of you and me together, and the “passport” photographs of you (see my previous e-mail to you).

My address is:   Rodney D Barber, 4601 Montano Road, NW, Apartment 179, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87120  USA.

 

Here are my comments on the questionnaire:

 

1.  My name:  Rodney D Barber

2.  Enter your name:  Last name, First name, Middle name (if you have one)

3.  Enter:  Same as number 2, above.

4.  Enter your parents address:  February 1, 1997 - October 1, 2004.  Enter the address of our apartment in Phnom Penh:  No. 31, Street 294, Sangkat Tolebasak, Khan Chamkamorn, Phnom Penh City, Cambodia (October 1, 2004 - April 1, 2005).  Enter the address of your cousin: No. 208E, Street 1958, Sangkat Phnom Penh, Themy Khan, Rouesey Keo, Phnom Penh City, Cambodia (April 1, 2005 - present)

 

Mailing Address is same, so leave this blank

 

1.  City or Town:  enter proper name, or leave blank, Province:  Kampong Speu, Country: Cambodia,  From: March - 2002  To: October - 2004.   City or Town:  Phnom Penh, Province: enter name, or leave blank, Country: Cambodia, From:  October - 2004  To: February - 2007  

2.  City:  Enter proper name, or leave blank,  State:  leave blank, Country:  Cambodia, Date of Birth: March 26, 1986

3.  I entered an “X” in “No”.  You have never been in USA

4.  I entered an “X” in “No”.  You have never been in military service

5.  I entered an “X” in “No”.  You do not have international passport

6.  Enter:  No previous marriages

7.  Enter:  No children

8.  Enter names for your parents: Last name, first name, middle name (if any), and their current address.  Show mother's name before her marriage (if different from name after marriage).

9.  Enter:  No employment

10.  Enter: Home Phone (your cell phone number), leave “Work Phone” blank, leave “Fax” blank, Email (your e-mail address)

11.  Enter:  (your full name in Cambodian/Kymer), and (cousin's address in Cambodian/Kymer)

12.  Enter: sign your name in Cambodian/Kymer, or English, and enter Date of signing.

 

 

 

 

           

Mailing Address is same, so leave this blank.

 

 

 

 

 

SERITA[2].doc (And he also writes SHITTY NOVELS!!)

                                                          TILL JUDGMENT DAY

 

 

 

         Prologue

 

    “Hearken!” - from the watchtower to the captain of the guard - “A lone rider approaches.”  In the far distance can be seen a long black cape as it furls above a crimson cuirass, ripples and is whipped by the wind.  A heavy gold-hilted sword is drawn from its leathern scabbard and held aloft.  Ablaze in the bright morning sun, it slices the air in a series of three violent, concentric slashes along the forelocks; wielded by the strong right arm of a warrior, astride, and guiding the lunging movement of a stampeding silver-gray stallion.  The signal is given.  He clears the trees and gallops fluidly, weaving his way through the tall, fog-shrouded grass. Onward he comes as the sentries watch in wonder from the towers.   A full minute passes, and without a perceptible break in stride, the stallion ascends the steep rise to clear the second terrace - all in the flash of an eye.   He reins the beast as it rears to a whirling half-pirouette, then stops, nervous and snorting, in the center of the manicured lawn upon the first terrace.  Near the oily-black, stagnant waters of the moat, it prances at the foot of the huge drawbridge, and waits impatiently.   “Drop the bridge - it is Paraclesus - bid here by order of the king!”   A stentorian voice holds forth.  “I bring news from the land of the Scythian - upon the banks of a darkened sea - an empire that stretches immeasurably”.  “Our king lays wounded; mortally.  Fallen in hand-to-hand combat - the valiant man dies heroically.”   “Hail the princes from the castellated chancellery, those that council, and the peoples' ministry.  Bid the priests descend the presbytery of their towering abbey”. “I bring word of the battles which continue to rage most grievously in the far land of the barbarian.  We loose ground daily, and now our king lies dying …

 

The footmen remaining are weary and depleted; threatened is their will to win.

The archers quivers empty; their arms grow weak and thin.

Our god passes slowly; they say, his life grows dim.

All is not well in the battle din.

 

The soothsayer sees unfavorable auspices; foretells an ominous and bloody end

The passing of our god portends a sea change - he says; is an evil omen.

The future is bleak say he, to the ragged and gathering men.  

Your blackened tongue lay in blasphemy I say; the wheel is yet in spin.

 

The deities, true, play most terribly while they punish us for our sin.

Our king is great among men; more so than you or I may say, or even begin

But a man he is nonetheless; not a progeny - not Olympian

Faith shall lead our people to surmount all obstacles and hazards of terrain

 

Allegiance to faith in ourselves alone is what we must attain.

The gods shall turn; we will regain utopia, and avoid oblivion.  

 

Leaderless is our army as the harsh winter approaches.  Cold will be the soldiers in tattered garments; a misery in shambles.  Gone are their sandals and guards upon the shins.  Blunted are their swords and adzes; scarred and dented are their shields and lances.  Our women are frozen in spirit; their bitter tears soak the earth.  Haggard are their faces, and spare are their breasts.  Like ghosts they drift among the wagons groaning; absent so long from the hearth and the rosy cheek of faces smiling.  They wail, as their men fall numerous in battle, and are left to the carrion that scavenge, soirée and sail.  

 

 

Fat and docile in my absence have grown the kindred of my soul.  Our institutions decay in self-serving secularity. Where are the bronze smiths and the sword makers' master?    Whither do the armaments stockpile, and where is to be found winter's provision of clothing and food?   A battle outside rages!  Our strongholds and outposts have fallen to the Scythian hordes.  His strength gathers by day, and his nightly encampment stretches into the glimmering black horizon.  Ten thousand campfire clusters blaze among the stars.  

 

Where are the patriotic, clear-eyes of our stalwart young men as inductees, and women engaged in useful industries?”    They study Epicures, you see, and Thucydides - consider; gain wisdom daily, in lives lived most beautifully.  Awaken!  Endangered are your sons and daughters - foolish are their ways.  Wisdom harbingers an unholy malignancy - faithful they are not to our lineage - they dwell in thoughtless truancy.

 

Turn not a deaf ear; heed what I say.  Bloody is the way of our enemy.  Fearful is his number as his war trumpet stridently blows.  Wicked blades will rise from scabbards and sharp arrows be strung along bows. Spare is his word and quick is his temper.  He will not be engaged by the cunning, nor scurrilous usurper.   The heads of your emissaries will adorn upon his lance.  Death will surely make a cruel entrance.

                                                              

Listen to my story.  Listen to it well as I narrate from my journal the words I penned to tell.   It relates truly of my travels; the battles at which I have stood witness; what I have seen of the agonies as men fall; women's screams as ravaged most brutally, and the cries of young children carried from them into slavery.  This I have seen, and know to be true.   It is all that I am, and all that I have to convince you”.

 

 

                      Part I

 

I am a white man, thirteenth generation in America of a western European/Scandinavian lineage; endowed with only mediocre intelligence, and at best, am a second-rate writer; but then, that appellative is mistaken.  I'm really not a writer at all, and care little of it.  I am an author, and at this, I am solid and true.

 

Three thousand years have flown, and all of my energy is now directed to the attainment of a single goal in life:  To shed my harsh, hot cloak; the one bestowed on me by this Scandinavian-Teutonic, Judeo-Christian heritage.  Retaining my sense of love and compassion only, I would lose my sense of order, charity, cleanliness, responsibility, righteousness and fear; my incessant money grubbing and fear of penury.

In moral corruption alone is the soul to be reclaimed.   I yearn for a strong, thick erection, prominent twenty hours in every day.  I would touch and fondle it at my leisure, and caress my rectum with the index finger of my left hand.  I would ransack all women within my radius; and in vengeance of betrayal, return my outrage to the citizenry in intoxicated defilement of their shrines; and sleep the sleep of the wee babe until the afternoon mail brings news of my adoring public.   I will throw the crux of my very life to the four corners of the earth, and wrest this cupidity from its bowels; distill it from the slime of a thousand forgotten sewers, and even though all of humanity and the very earth itself were destroyed in the process.

 

The huge and heavily callused hands that rest upon the bar to my left belong to a working blacksmith. His name is Toab Houston.  He's originally from Wyoming, where his father was one of the last of the backcountry outfitters and elk hunters in and around the Wind River Range.   He moved to the Santa Inez Valley in the early 50's, set-up shop as a blacksmith and married a local girl.  They've been here ever since.  He's now well past seventy, but still wears western-vintage, denim work clothes, and either heavy

construction or western boots - regardless of the occasion. On the infrequent occasions when the work-a-day Stetson is taken off, an imposing leonine shank of wavy white hair falls free to augment his thick muttonchops and handlebar mustache.  His face is heavily featured; wide and thick, weathered and deeply creased, with bushy eyebrows and a large, but unpitted nose.  His skin is very white.  Toab lives life on his terms.  He speaks plainly and nods as he listens, looks you square in eye, opens his arms and pushes his big hands forward to emphasize his points. He's a Scandinavian-American - descendent of the Viking.

 

The hard years have bent his heavy frame and stooped his broad shoulders.  The huge chest, though still powerful, has relaxed somewhat into a noticeable paunch that he wears well, and of which he is unconcerned. He must have stood six-six, or six-seven in his prime; he still stands six-four.  I guess his weight at two-sixty. The easy and youthful strides of his thickly muscled legs carried him upright and proudly throughout his life. His strides are now slowed, but remain steady and resolute.   The pride is undiminished.   He is the forthright and bold.

He regards with amusement his heavy-set, but not fat, wife of over forty years who sits at his side, drunk; soused to the gills.  He drinks only beer for the last several years, but she continues to drink whiskey.  I've liked these two, particularly him with his loud laugh, western phrasings, and old-school, workingman's irreverence, for many years.  They love each other, but to listen to them talk, you'd think they didn't even like

each other.  They're constantly catch' in each other up short.   This is, however, their dance; they've been doing this for over thirty years, and is how they keep each other honest.   On this particular Wednesday

evening, I'm out on the sidewalk having a cigarette, strolling around look' in at the passing women, when out

the front door comes Toab and begins sauntering toward the other end of the parking lot where he's parked

his one-ton welding truck, say' in something about how's she got herself so goddamn drunk she can't walk:  “Hell, I'm go' in to have to bring the truck 'round.”  “I guess that's right Toab, she had trouble make' in it to the john about ten minutes ago.”  He's chuckling a little as he disappears down the sidewalk toward his truck. The two-sided parking lot is full.  About five minutes later Toab pulls up in that big diesel rig of his, leaves it idling right in the middle of the access lane, and walks back into the bar.  In less than minute, three cars are backed up directly behind it, and half a dozen more are backed up down State Street.  Toab could give a shit.

If I know Betty, she's putt' in up a bit of a fuss about leaving.  Ten minutes goes by, and people are honking, gett'in out 'a their cars, and beginning to fulminate at the mouth.  One young guy steps up onto the rig's running board, looks in, and makes ready to get in and move it out of the way.  “Hang on there guy”- I say;

“I wouldn't do that if I were you.”   “He's in the bar gett'in his old lady; he'll be out in just a minute.”  “He can't leave his truck here like this; who in the hell does he think he is - look, there's cars all the way down the street.”  “Well -- he can and he has; just wait a minute.”   Just then out the door comes Toab with Betty in

tow.  He's got a firm grip on her upper left arm.  She's stumbl'in to the left, stumbl'in to the right, and Toab's

talking to her:  “Come on dear; come on dear - goddamn-it.”    He's finally got her over to the passenger door. She manages to get her left leg in, and up on the floorboard.  As Toab reaches down and gets hold of the back of her right leg, moves her around a bit, and gets ready to lift her in, up comes the young man giving Toab a mouth-full about how he's been wait' in for ten minutes; how he (Toab) can't do this, and waving his arms around about all the cars down the street.  Toab ignores him like he's not even there, finishes up with Betty, straightens up, slams the door and turns on the kid.  “What the hell's your problem, son?”   “Well, I've been wait' in …” He's taken a good look at Toab, and now begins mov'in backwards towards his car; mouth go' in all the time.  Toab turns without further comment, walks around the truck, gets in, and off he drives as Betty's head bounces against the passenger window.  I'm laugh' in like hell while the few others on the sidewalk are expressionless.  Can you believe that?   What's with these frigid people?  That's one of the funniest things I've seen in a month.  Well, every now and then, if you're lucky, you can still see something real in Santa Barbara.

 

          “I got an old tom cat, and when he begins to roam, all the other cats in the neighborhood; they begin to drone -- here comes that rag-tail Tom, strutt'in 'round the town…” Since you can go to the sorcerer only so

often, I get high on the weekends -- drink a double espresso or two, a glass of Black Label, and prowl the

streets of this little town - snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails; that's what little boys are made of.  

Beginning on Fridays in the afternoon; my thirst for the profane and corrupt is limitless.  I hit a few bars - look' in.  Talk to a few bartenders.  Then a bookstore; browsing the aisles and shelves.   Look' in - for those

young, lynx-eyed crank, speed or heroin addicts.  On this particular Friday afternoon the weather is fine; the

sky is bright -- and as the man calls out the numbers; he sometimes mentions mine.  A blind hog finds an acorn - bingo:  I settle readily for a booze-high, twenty-eight year old blond do' in shots at the counter of an open-air bar downtown.  She is sturdy, open, full of coquetry, moist brown eyes, rubicund, with a naughty nose and smallish, pouting lips; something of the slut about her, and none of that immediately apparent, querulous, capricious, debilitation of mind and meagerness of expression, seen so often amongst the educated.

 

She has a full and sultry voice.  She is woman distilled.  I like her.  She dotes and fawns; praises me; strokes my face and thigh; I touch the soft flesh of her cheek with the knuckles of my right fore and index fingers.

She fastens the collar buttons on my shirt, that in my rush, I'd forgotten.  I am gorgeous she says; the years have imbued me with stoicism, and possessed me of a ready and broad smile, generosity of spirit and firmness of manner.  She is right.  I've been around a long time, I say - am emotional and loving; predatory and deliberate, but strive to be thoughtful and calm.  She tells of admonishing women her own age to seek older men and save themselves fifteen or more years of loss.  I tell her it is easy to praise Sparta, it's another to be forced to live there.  She looks at me quizzically and smiles.  She is Athenian; I am a holy athlete. We are admitted in attendance of a lascivious, Bachian nuptial in Corinth.  She thanks me.

On some certain nights, I would unburden my soul.  I prowl the gutters of a forgotten inner city, scraping; and end up with prostitution's remnant - a torn heart, uncovenanted; excoriated by a barren and

blackened sky - long ago fallen.  Fifty dollars and we sit in a corner booth in the lounge of a dilapidated hotel downtown that fronts a deserted, windblown and dirty street where no flower has ever grown and the sun never strikes squarely.  The padding is worn to a thin discomfort; the red leather is old and cracked.  It is late. The air is of stale beer, cigarettes, and a rancid mop.  I buy a full bottle of expensive scotch.  We drink.  She is greedy to the offer of my unfiltered cigarettes.  Vulgar rouge and white base masks an unctuous, slightly swollen, bilious vacancy.  She thoughtlessly fidgets the tiny chain of a meretricious pendent amidst the bluish veins of her breasts that languish wantonly within the tawdry habiliments of the street.  The woman is pugnacious, inane and corrupt.  From wide-set eyes, she stares directly at me in sedate and non-comprehending drunkenness.  To her, all men are the same.  She does not know me.  I am undiscovered; beyond her now reptilian memory.  She is uncouth in the extreme; smiles grotesquely, and slurs a heinous, deviled accusation; gutturally in a harsh and murderous voice.  She is cloven-footed.  She is loathsome and evil; condemned to hell from birth.  Her liaisons are now weeks and months, increasing gradually in dissolution from hours, as her thirty-eight years have given and taken everything but the remnant that now revoltingly fondles my thigh and fingers my crotch in the mildewed semi-darkness.  Her thighs are surprisingly full and strong under my grip.  The gaudy rings she wears glint in the recessed light, sparkle and shine hypnotically; blinding me and sending my thoughts into a distant disorientation.  I shake my head, grab her wrist, and tell her its time!  She languishes while I want to get it over with and leave, but cannot; we drink steadily.  She is now become maudlin, and I must listen of separation, or not, for the third or forth time from an alcoholic man - another one a criminal; a third is a homosexual - this one - I don't know - one of many over twenty long winters - together they drink and fight - she has a blackened right eye and bruised arms.  She is passive and taunts me.  I am haunted by the cold-blooded whoredom of my ex-wife.  I take her as the inquisitor salvages the soul; very roughly; brutally in my righteousness.    I curse her; and beseech God; she screams and smiles in her pain.

Late Sunday night, I catch the last lift of a wave, or if forsaken of the seductive pull of the moon, swim to the shallows early on Monday morning to rest out the barren week

 

Early morning hangovers are a bitch.  I've had a couple 'a thousand by now and know what I'm talking about; but you know, in clubs and bars about town, I run into young women and men all the time telling me they never get the sons-a-bitches.   I don't know if I'm expected to believe this or not.  It could be that it's something in the nature of lies.  I see to the right of me, having a couple of drinks, a young, half-grown pale puppy that's never been south of Carpinteria.  He sits with one of these local, dazzling, young blond, hard-breasted nymphets.  His fine blond hair is shorn close - Marine style; he's grown a wispy moustache and goatee, and he wears a single gold loop in his left earlobe.  He has a purple, Celtic inscription tattooed to the left side of his thin, white neck.  He is young, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three years, and speaks in a well-rehearsed, affected, and weak-chested voice.  His small hands fidget nervously.  He displays a shallow and cold emptiness; an insulting caricature in contemptuous parody of truly tough young men - white men two and more generations removed. Young men in a world of cold iron and hot rivets who were nurtured on one bowl of spare, watery stew a day, twice or three-times reheated, and a single piece of stale sourdough bread from a dutiful, but cold and aloof mother.  They get the back of their fathers' large and callused hand and the hard toe of a boot every time they show an ungracious expression, or are slow from the chair to fetch him another beer.   They're kicked out of the house at seventeen and do a four-year, butch cut,

 

hitch in the Navy, sweating and cussing in the boiler room of an itinerant oiler.  They stumble into a dingy and dirty tattoo parlor on the San Diego waterfront.  By the nibble-fingered hands of a drunken black hype, their ear lobe is pierced with a tiny ruby stickpin, and right shoulders are tattooed with a red devil holding a trident, captioned 'Born To Raise Hell'.   And this after being ripped-off by a whore, and thrown out of a hard ass mariner's bar.  They live in small rooms in cold, dark boarding houses where a single stinking toilet for six men is down the hall, and a single light bulb sways from the ceiling.  They work a ten-hour shift, six-days a week, in a Pittsburgh steel mill and labor hard, again sweating among the flying and blistering white-hot steel spewing from a blast furnace.  This boy blasphemes; he is pantomime; he is a usurper; he is a lie.   I overhear his talk.  Though not even a man, he comes on like Agamemnon, the great Mycenaean king - direct descendant of Zeus - Agamemnon, Leader of Men, who destroyed the sixth city of Troy and rescued Helen; a man not to be trifled with, nor known to suffer fools gently.  I become his judgment; I am the sentry.  I am not to be trifled with; nor do I suffer the fool; not after all these attentive years, ever alert at the gate.

I know something about lying too.   Liars are the first heroes and victims of lies told often enough.  The hero at my immediate right sits just around the turn in the bar.  From the way things have gotten underway, he may just be neglectful; impudent enough to pierce the thin veil that protects the world from my anger.  No way have the rigors of his young life in Santa Barbara imbued him with the booze-tinctured, black-hearted rage and mean streak experience he'll need take me out, and besides --- from where I'm sitt'in, he don't look much over five-ten, and at what? - one-fifty-five or sixty?

I love this place.  I love the dark, many times-shellacked, oaken flooring, worn from the heavy footfalls of a rough-hewn million men who walked, struggled, fought, scuffled and loved their way through

brutish lives a generation before the coming of the union, and the organization man pacified, and rendered

such men obsolete. I love the forty-foot solid teak bar, freshly lacquered and gleaming, and hogsheads of wine, ale and warm beer jutting from the heavy mahogany walls.  It is now a museum piece; of another era; eclipsed in foolishness.  Memories of earlier generations hang about the walls and upon properly carpentered shelving.  In forgotten and shadowy corners reside the phantoms of these million men among a miscellany of dented cuspidors, discarded brass gaslight fixtures, and bits and pieces salvaged from a dismantled pipe organ - all grimy and besmirched in verdigris.  Rows of polished thick glasses, each suited to a particular libation, and of slightly dusty, nostalgically labeled bottles of gins, rums, scotches, and fine Irish whiskies, underscore a heavy, baroque mirror framed in an intricately carved oriental hardwood.  Half a dozen small crystalline chandeliers depend from a twenty-foot ceiling presenting to the hazy habitué a subdued liquescent and narcotic relief.  There is a dominate painting of a large barquentine; a merchant of some seventy meters or more in length and magnificent girth, in full sails as it braves the wicked turbulence of the north Atlantic bound for Liverpool, where the manufactured goods of America will be off-loaded to an insatiable English gentry.  The giant ship will then be laden with preserved foods, fine furniture and armament.  She will venture to Mumbai to supply the ever-expanding English empire in India; there to take on a load of black pepper, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and hemp.  There are several deep and heavy prints of Victorian nudes reclining on mahogany bedsteads set amongst heavy tapestries, draped in rich, finely woven silken webbing.  The women are taciturn and seductively exposed in exquisitely flowing and gently layered white gossamer linens; ample of buttocks, belly, breast and thighs of a rich, white cream hue - which affix the eye and complete a transition from the outward pandemonium to the ease and comfort of an inner sanctum, now emptied of the last one hundred years of catastrophe.

I've just sat down and nod to the bartender as he sets my usual before me.  The kid is out of place and offensive.   He has, as I say, brought to my refuge a stunning young blond.  I am dazzled and aroused by

this bit radiance in my gloomy evening, and only because of this, am I prepared to forgive him.  I begin a

conversation:  “How you two do' in this evening?”    I'm not saying that everyone I come in contact with is

obliged to entertain me at court, but this technician of modern-day America, this thin-armed historical

misanthrope, and with a supercilious raising of his left eyebrow, blows me off without so much as a kiss on the cheek, and returns to his amorous conversation with the young harlot.  I'm angry.  I am outraged, and am not going to tolerate this insult.  I will not abide rudeness in a man; any man; and particularly not here; not in

this place.   It is the one assault that frightens me; abandonment within the huge indifference of the world; the barb of a slow poison to sicken and destroy me - lay siege to my holy confidence -- that stirs the demons lurking, lurking to another skirmish, another exhaustive combat, bleeding wound to suture, and perhaps this

 

time, just beyond my strength.  The Magyar, Gothic barbarians, how many poised, ruthless, cunning, will and have tried before, and many times, to castrate me upon particulars of the very battlements of my citadel; and now an unseasoned scout to my chamber door, cloaked, disguised to reconnoiter.  “Slip-in, undetected, be concerned but little; he is infirm of mind and enfeebled.  Gauge his strength; report.”   Five hundred, a thousand against how many?   No and no; again no; perhaps another, someone much more powerful at another time, but not he and not now.

The God I know and love, that gracious beast that provides alcohol-tinctured nights among succulent and willing women; he that invented ample thighs, cunniligus and fellacio; he that willfully shatters dreams and hands out broken hearts with abandon, is confused, and has just given another mistaken seating assignment.  This should be me; I have earned it.  The debt remains unpaid.  The young woman seeks emancipation, but is inexperienced and impetuous.  I look directly at her for a long moment; she catches my eyes in a furtive glance, then turns away.   She is a delight; in six or seven years she will become beautiful.  I cut his throat quickly and wait.  

 “I bet you never get hangovers.”  “Uh - are you talking to me?”  “Damn right I'm talking to you.” “Hangovers, man - I bet you never get hangovers, do ya?”  He carries himself poorly and has a quizzical, stupid look on his face.  “Well if you ever grow the balls to begin drinking, you just might.  Say, have you learned to eat pussy yet?  Won't keep her long if you don't.  Got to get that tongue right up in there though, all around - some cats lick the thing like an ice-cream cone, but that's wrong; it's long pulls of the clitoris they like; don't forget the clit, and don't forget to work your fingers; one, two; then in and out with varied and full turns; that's called the two finger drill, and then one up her ass, nice and slow with plenty of spit; saliva; they love it - and once you start 'em down that road, they're yours forever.”  I wink at her and feel better.

               Just imagine what the purr on this little blond minx must look like; open - resplendent within its nesting - a pink seedling within a reddened, pulpous husk; only recently germinated with tiny fibrous roots

that will one day support a beautiful olive or jacaranda tree; a field of lilacs, daffodils, or perhaps a whole orchard of solid oaks.  She will come to love and value this object above all else as though a rare and valuable heirloom - a richly inlaid music box; a ruby odalisque after which all men seek.  She is nude and reclines on your favorite stuffed chair, legs open and thrown back astride the cushioned arms rests.  You rest on the carpet before her, looking up.  It's perfect - all covered and mostly hidden behind a fine mantle of silken blond hair.  The dome of a vermilion pestle peeks through a tuft just below the top.   There's a good reason God added this downy coating.  Did you ever take a really good, close look at one of these things - shaven clean; reminds me of a hungry clam that's somehow managed to bury four-fifths of itself into the sand.  The mystery's removed; danger lurks; could be a whole lot bigger than you think.  It's enough to scare the hell out'a you.  She diddles herself with two fingers; murmuring and sighing as the jewel opens and closes, then opens again in a slick, sticky sound.  You forget to breath and suddenly gasp for air.  How is it I get myself so worked-up; obsessed; drunken over this?  The thing, for a few moments, looks as though something poisonous; fatal, but exudes such a deeply over-powering and intoxicating aroma that, try as you might, the source is left undiscovered by your tongue, lips, fingers, and then everything.  Her anus amazes you; it appears as a button fallen from your most expensive white shirt; a porcelain blemish - it looks unused - so tiny. Her rectum seems as though a carnivorous plant; a Venus Flytrap that I looked into as a young child of perhaps seven, watching as asphyxiated and helpless flies slowly slide down the silken inner sheathing, and finally disappear into the thick liquid abyss, as a dozen more, doomed, circle about just above the dilated opening.   

              To the boy, I mean what I say, and actually do consider this sound and necessary advice, but amongst ninety-nine out of a hundred Americans, it would have this moment's desired affect:   “Hey man; what the fuck do you think you're do' in?”  See, just like I say, Santa Barbara born and raised; earring and

tattoos aside - he's white through and through.  “Just a bit of love talk mate; look like you can use the instruction”.   The young liar's managed the guts to slide his stool back, reluctantly, and begin to stand.  A

quick glance at his eyes:  He's unsure of himself; he's scared.  I was up with the first movement of his stool, my balls contract in a hit of adrenaline; whoa - tell them now of my enfeeblement. “You feel' in froggy boy; you go' in to draw-down on me?  Come on; come on, you can do it - gime your best shot. I ain't lost one in over twenty years, but who knows, tonight may be your night.”  “Well?”  “Stop it!” from the nymphet.   

 

 

“No?”  “That's what I thought”.  “You …”  “You what?”  “Get-the-fuck-outa-my bar.”  “Right - now!”  “And don't you come back.”  He just stands there with a red face; poor kid hasn't been this flushed and flustered since his mother gave him a spanking for masturbating at age twelve.  The girl's up and wants badly to leave; and in a semi-shrill, pleading voice:  “Come on Johnny, let's go!”  He, and for the sake of the girl, bluffs a hesitation, but is relieved as they leave without a word.  Left their drinks without paying.  I take my seat knowing he's not go' in to get laid tonight - either.  I motion to the bartender, whom I've known for over ten years, and pay the tab for both my recently departed friends and myself; finish my drink and leave.

With good luck, she may break-it off - I would, if I were this good-look' in girl, and serves him right; he's gett'in off easy coming in here mak'in like cool, and as unprepared as that.

I'd never pull this kind of thing in, say, Pacoima or Inglewood; cats down there are prepared; good chance I'd get shot, but Santa Barbara - these kids aren't tough, and as a rule, don't carry guns.   Moral of the story:  Treat your friendly neighbor courteously; never lie to cats you meet in bars; central rule, be respectful to those deserving respect, and defer to experience, and as you move about, and think you're old enough to go out at night, take your balls with you - you may need 'em.  Be prepared; pay attention.  You'll notice that bad folks get together at night, and it's usually in a pool hall or bar.  This is their home-away-from home.  Buy the house a round should the occasion be propitious, but tread with caution; check your shit - these cats probably know each other and you're liable to have the whole bunch to contend with - and remember, you never know who you'll run into.

 

Next to my ex-wife, who holds The Lifetime Achievement Award, my father is one of the world's most proficient and inveterate of liars.  Told lies with absolute abandon; that man simply could not tell the truth, constitutionally unable.  He also made a good stab at living his lies; marriage and family notwithstanding; did pretty much what he wanted.  Problem?  Well, only if you're living in the twentieth century - people frown on that sort behavior now' a days.  I'm fairly well convinced his last incarnation was played out in classical Greece where such behavior defined the truly superior man amongst men.  He's 79 years old now, getting over a stroke, and along with his greatly diminished desire and capacity for alcohol, his lies seem to have lost their strength as well. During a recent visit my shit detector didn't go off a single time, and I keep that devise well calibrated.  You know what the critics say, though:  Lying, along with alcohol, is congenital, but then one of the fundamental requirements for an author; a writer of fiction, is a proclivity for making-up convincing shit, and that kind of thing is hard to master right out of the chute.  Good story telling takes a couple of generations, or maybe a couple a thousand years.  You really got to get that stuff along with your baby food.

You ever been near a group of liars once they get a little loosened up; man, they just can't interrupt each other fast enough.  These are some truly sorry, mendacious bastards; and most usually apprentices. It's rare to see a journeyman liar amongst this group.  The secret is plausibility; that, and congruence.  The

hallmarks of a well-seasoned journeyman's lies are plausibility and congruence.  The story just slips right in

there; a nice snug fit without need for a last shove.  Apprentices, on the other hand, and if you can't easily get away from them, will wear a man's patience clear through by force of sheer scale, and the outrage you're expected to countenance.  You know which bastards I'm talking about - the penguin looking screwballs at

work getting so much pussy they suspect a hernia, or the scratch golfer who has his hands full negotiating the corridors, or how about the guy in the office next to you, or the secretary whose daughter-in-law absolutely

always wins in Las Vegas.  If I didn't know better, I'd say these fuckers are trying to bust my balls; but I do know better, and I know better than to come right out and tell them they're full of shit - at least not at work. Self-righteous denials are the worst of all.  I either beat a hasty retreat or order them out of my office.   That's my cardinal rule of the work place.   You may not come into my office and lie.  Being here, doing this job, takes all my strength -- but these are some obtuse, silly sons-of-bitches; haven't even got the sense to soften their shit once challenged. Hell no, nine times out of ten, they'll throw the next layer at you; you know, tell you about their blackjack system, and the really precise way to beat the crap table.   

 

Fear not; truth will out; behold the hideous dropping-away of the veil:  The mind rejects its own nakedness of body; fat and flagellum are not that of which heroes are constructed. Fraud; defrauded by whom,

victimized by what hoax; obtuse, gullible, a confusion-rendered conflict; conflict supports weaken, then fail;

 

always the slide; slippage first, then the fall upon resignation to defeat - these good boys and girls.  Silver stars and smiling faces don't know the first thing about the core of real life; assemblage of detail; the making of the whole. Hit that nail squarely and pound it down - they're told. Read the ingredients; know your values, forty-percent less saturated fat than the leading brand; recommended by nine-out-of-ten doctors - frozen yogurt - low fat.  One, two - buckle my shoe; three, four - shut the door.  Sober and moderate - that's the credo.

There is a crooked man who walks a crooked mile.   The boisterous, vacuum-brained imbecile two doors down is the perfect example; a piece of work to behold - a middle-age man deformed in fear; he is devoid even of the primal instinct; the one that would preserve his life.  I know him - he yearns to become old and die easily - avoiding all conflict as he, a lunatic, awaits the chiliasm.   I pity him, but wish him God's speed.  Although it's common knowledge that this soft-bodied coward is absolutely incapable of making even the most insignificant of decisions, he never tires of telling you of exploits of earlier years' while a smoke jumper, part-time crop duster and huntsman; a crosser of raging rivers; a night-rider; a real man's man; you'd think he'd completed the twelve tasks of Hercules.   From there, it's right on with how he and his family, among some of the only true Christians on the planet, interpret the Bible literally and live without deviation from its commandments and dictates:  No drinking; not even wine; no television or radio; too worldly, and his wife has never cut her hair because Rachael never did; nor does she wear anything other than full dresses for the same reason.  Can you believe it's approaching the year 2000?   Never as much as a single beer.   Next breath, without missing a beat, and in an off-handed manner intended to convey the inherit truth of activities which are among the common-place events in any real man's life, he mentions his sexual prowess, and how he fucks the shit; the holy shit out of his wife, and he ain't a talk' in 'bout no once a week neither; we're talking about ev-er-y single night - hard-ass sex for a good half hour.  Good grief!  When does Christ demand atonement?   And I doubt seriously his ability to even achieve an erection - of any sort.

            I order him away; out of my office; my patience has worn thin - very thin.   I hang my head - Jesus Christ … and he actually expects me believe this shit.   He is forsaken of God.  He is so empty of life that less than fifteen seconds later, and while standing out in the hall, he boasts about his tea-totaling and how his wife is the single piece of ass he has ever had - ever!  Then goes right on telling of the wondrous time had on their most recent Princess Cruise, or the five thousand dollar week in a Jamaican resort.   You know, the all-in-one-price places where he snorkels his ass off and swims with killer whales during the day, and after slurping-up the last bit of his second bowl of ice cream, says thank you to the house niggers at night, and all without tips of course.   

So, in case this individual smiles lasciviously from a passing car, while unbeknownst to you, the hand secretly fondles, do not be alarmed.   It is he, and he and him, and her and she; phalanx upon phalanx, they fill the freeways and byways, and form the aggregate that binds the seams.  They clip coupons and watch the sales.  They delay a year before daring to buy that which they crave.  They are the renowned among us

without whom morning newspapers would be impossible, and the stock market would be nil.  They fill the

high-rise and well-appointed mental institutions where they're free to smoke marijuana, watch German pornography and masturbate openly all day; and without guilt, select any one of a number of used, but sanitized, dildoes proffered by the thinly-smiling, fat African nurse from the highly polished, antiseptic, stainless steel, incubator tray she wheels up and down the corridors: “Pahdon sah - would yawl care for a sex toy today?”  She pulls the surgical tongs from their alcohol bath, reaches in and retrieves the big black one with the prominent veins. “Thank you, sah”.  She bites the coin to make sure it's genuine, and then pockets a stingy tip.  These are your friends and mine.  The tight-lipped people of the forlorn and weary countenance seen without exception among those who work for the honest buck:  The clean and dignified that visit the toilet frequently, regard themselves carefully in the mirror, and wash their hands after each urination.  America's great silent majority    “… And all the monkeys aren't in zoo; everyday you'll see quite a few …”

  I do admit to a perverse sense of satisfaction, of pleasure even; a side-benefit induced by mere proximity.  I'm talking about that same sense of having moved one step closer to victory that one man gets when reading that another man has died - more often than not, this is a total stranger whose death has set one

more aside.  God made losers so winners can win.  Lot of truth in that, and besides its helps in assuring myself that even though my own disadvantageous circumstances and inabilities have landed me among these losers, that I, at least I, know I'm incarcerated.  A winner at the wrong place, at the wrong time; a bad part of

 

town; caught-up in the dragnet; an improper arrest; no last phone call; no trial; a summary twenty-five-to-life with no clemency - and never for a day do I give up digging through cakes in search of hacksaw blades.  

What disease is like alcohol?   Unlike the professionals; those men who drink to obliterate their imagined, latent and real homosexuality, and amongst whom are those prone to frequent, infant-like outbursts

of uncontrolled anger; or men among the lost, desperately drinking a quart or more a day to induce another

artistic flower from their denuded and worn biology; I am a social and recreational drinker; keep booze at home to share in company only; rarely drink alone; and drink to get drunk - drunker than a skunk.  I like to.

I accept the opiated hangovers as being the other side of the coin; tails - if I could just get that coin to stand on edge - besides, and for the last ten years, both have cushioned many an evening, and an untold number of

mornings; helped in dealing with the day's reverses, and blotted-out the bitterness and recriminations seeping

in from the past.  The life of a castrato singing a high soprano under the salacious eye of the cardinal is an

outrage and weakens my soul.  I go to Las Vegas to gamble, get drunk and help whores buy intoxicating perfume and whatever expensive, seductive unction and clothing the supplicant requires in the temple.   Whores are a mercenary lot; a hearty breed and have a difficult, but ancient life, and holy history in preserving the harvest, and in the feeding and rise of earth's civilization.   Whores with large and well-tuned hearts should be nurtured, and even praised; not condemned.  The less fortunate ones - those with souls and conscience would be banned from the trade - but then - this is America; the year: 2000; civilization to no purpose; slimy handed sentimentality runs-amok.  One time in ten do I leave with any money; nine times out of ten, I swear I'll never return.  Three months down the road and I'm back. Onward, onward road the six hundred.

 The reader, now beginning to understand me and my dilemma, shouldn't be all that surprised that

I struck-up an early morning conversation with a beautiful young woman at a local restaurant.  I just can't seem to get these young girls off my mind.  I'm not as yet one of those pedophilic cradle robbers whose actions are so, so deplorable, and stimulate us to envy and harsh punishment; no, no - don't get me wrong - I'll turn my head and wink at damn near all women this side of old.   Problem:  That eliminates a sizable number of women.  Women become old women when they lose their ability, or desire to intoxicate.  Let's face it, healthy women who like to be women, like men, and are otherwise appeased of the head, need to be loved; and laid hard, often and right.  Take away that and what's left?  A punch-drunk and babbling ex-fighter living in a silly and imaginary world; someone that no one any longer cares to have around.  A used-up car that won't run, and we all know what happens to an old car that no longer runs:  It lays around in the junk yard until squeezed down to the size of a dog house, then mechanically dumped into the primeval bowels of the blast furnace - love falls dead into the maw; heaven awaits, and reincarnation becomes the last irrational hope.

 If you're a woman over say fifty; and sadly, your health isn't what it used to -- I can see letting go to fat and taking yourself out of the game.  It's the premature disinclination that leaves me cold.    I may have a

clue as to what happens to cause this early wilting, this turning aside, this urge toward ostentatious puffery -

a gilded crest, a plume, as though a startled and endangered animal in disguise against what is hoped to be a poorly sighted predator.  Such a pity.  Normally, and if this was a question peculiar unto itself, I would defer to those most familiar with the subject matter; women themselves, but you know, this involves men.  

Fecund women exude an intoxicant.  Any red-blooded man within their attack zone is a goner, a

casualty of chemical warfare; and if a woman realizes she's not bringing down a couple of bucks a day, she begins to distrust her armaments; assumes there's something wrong with the ammunition, or the dynamite's wet.  She retreats from the field.  Poor armament, however, is rarely the problem.  Want to know one of the most revealing and poignant facts of American life; if not one of best camouflaged?  Eighty-percent of American males over thirty, and most pronounced among white males, are walking around with a debilitating lack of red corpuscles. What malignancy is this?  Can it be excised?  The longevity of the country I love, and fulfillment of nature's very purpose, not to mention the happiness of women, depend on it.  What's to be done!?

You'd think there would be a massive federal research program underway to find a cure; you know, like the war on cancer, drugs and AIDS.   Perhaps a coinage is called for; a rubric; how about:  War on

Historical Prerogative, or War on the Purveyors of Empty Plenty, or War on the Dispossessed of Soul.

Well, no such effort is underway.   I know it's unbelievable, but such is the sad fact.  All may not be lost,

 

however.  The day may yet be saved. The odds are long, but with sufficient resolve, I just may be able to shed

some light… and there you have it.   Since I'm recently unemployed, am at loose ends, and intending to stay that way; I'll see if I can't make some headway; and it's been years since I read Don Quixote.  First things

first:  Before such a thing can be excised, I should think a rather precise identification is required; yes, that is - the etiology of this thing must be revealed - a-priori.    Meanwhile; the rabble dabble and babble.

               I hate like hell to screw-around with protocol and become enmeshed in carefully pre-scripted and strictly bounded dialog.  I've no time for fear and false talk; am on a holy mission, and no longer can afford the luxury; the hour - it grows late.  I speak my mind plainly, knowing full and well that there's a host of narrow-minded, neutered white men; disenfranchised women, prancing homosexuals, scurrilous Jews, babbling Latinos and angry blacks that are most easily offended by my openhearted frankness.  Why?  These are the groups of the perennially dissatisfied, indoctrinated and fearful.

 

               Out of my mouth flows, and off my tongue rolls, a great deal of what is intentionally forceful, and far-a-field from the common vogue of social thought and mores.  I intend to have an incendiary, jolting; stunning and inoculatory affect.  I rail against the widely disseminated and accepted palaver that fills the daily newspapers and screams - or whispers - at you from inside of your television set, and reflects from the big white screen.  I call this government-inspired, Jew-sponsored, journalistic tyranny.  Whose white male arrogance and supremacy?   The powerful doth persuade most cleverly.  The purpose is to confuse and weaken, but the aforementioned are roused to angry, or lachrymose offence; apprehend what I say as personal effrontery, a condemnation of their entire systems of belief, now threatened within a faulty construct of sniped spokes, flattened tires, and monkey-wrenched gears.

A simple-minded person in a normal state of affairs, such as have existed from pre-history, would have no difficulty in properly classifying ethnicities and races; the Jews are so obviously at the top, that the denial of this is a decent into lunacy.   And do not the Indian and Chinese emigrant, of superior intellect and ability, guiltless, fill the technical university?   Are not women endowed with a natural maternal proclivity?  Yet these thoughtful people become quickly vehement as their initial consternation gives way to indignation and denial.  They chastise me for the extreme levity of my monstrous opinions.  “Heretic”.   Hold your tongue, they say; none of that impiety portends toward ineffectual female activity, or segregate intellectual superiority! I'm aghast; as Rip Van Winkle awakening to a foreign sovereignty.   A middle-aged black woman, of practiced erudition, and dressed in the raiment of the wealthy, becomes progressively more enraged; murderous even, as I speak.  Her eyes are now fiery; nostrils flare, and her speech returns to the ghetto of the Southern Black, and the harsh savannah from which she matriculates.   “All races, genders and ethnicities are equal of ability, says she, and deserve equal treatment and result, most unhesitatingly!   This is proverb, I say graciously, pursued by the well-intentioned mindless into irrationality.  Equal treatment in ability.  What - says she?  Yes, I say, but in accordance to their proclivity.  Is it not true, I say, that banished for abridgements of selective drug prohibitions, the genesis of which swirls in a foreign Judeo-Christian miasma of self-denial, are young black men not imprisoned in outrageously disproportionate, and large numbers?  And are these black men not causalities of a white Protestant crusade to uproot moral miscreants.   But whose morality?   The neutered morality of the helplessly domesticated?  Should black people also be reduced to the skim milk and Melba toast of the emotionally subdued white majority?   And the Latin - should he be deprived of free association, and the benefits of manual dexterity?   Is this the equality you seek - I say to she?  Is not the desire of your heart, most true, toward a greater degree of social profligacy; an acceptance of racial personality, an end to the stagnancy of bigotry?   There is nothing amiss with gender and racial proclivity.  This is a dispute over a morbidly inclusive and dying morality; not functional and intellectual equality.  

There is no poverty as such, I say, but you say no!  Poverty in what, I say?   An inequitable distribution of prosperity?  This is a pecuniary imbalance, and can be remedied most readily in a loosening of geographic and fiscal policy; to assurance, you see, of the domestic tranquility.  The current concentration of wealth, I agree, is an absurd travesty.  The wealthy, properly taxed, will never live penuriously.  People are subject to circumstance only, which is derivative from cultural pursuit of happiness, and divinely inspired sanctity.  Poverty in spirit may be; not a residue product issued of four hundred thousand years of genetic history.  People are what they are, a product of their heritage; legacy, and should not be obliged to

 

homogenize.   Such is great folly; manifest to end in a hell-of-a-mess, and a continued worsening of division and hopelessness.   Races and ethnicities naturally stratify to group destiny.  Such is written across the heavens; in the stars; it's preordained destiny, and doesn't change by the stroke of a pen wielded by one bowed in prostration to the god of modesty, and forced mediocrity.   This truth can't be neutered in convenient social policy, or the lies and poison of politics.  How many young Jews work in car washes and body shops?   And why don't they?  And for the third generation?   How many Latins write meaningful screenplays and administer entertainment conglomerates?   How many live in Beverly Hills, Brentwood and West LA?   None, I say.  This is not their inheritance, nor destiny.   Still, you may disagree.  This is the business and abode of the Jew, I say.  What process of history is holding sway?  None of which I'm acquainted; none that I know, I plainly say.  Could it be the planet, as though blinded in eclipse, has drifted most unfortunately into an accursed section of the galaxy?    I behold the government-mandated mass educational system in more than idle curiosity.   Even the truly blinded cannot object to this example of encroaching barbarity.

 Private schools are proclaimed to hold the remedy; but only for the rich and powerful, say I; it's only so very obvious, surely you so agree.  A reasonable and rational criteria for the achievement of even mediocrity, has been greatly diminished into a homogenous and low-lying stagnant sea, from which will emerge no future man or woman of even diminished significance, and far from prosperous suitability.   The lowliest amongst us must not only, not be abandoned; they must now be made equal.   Equal to what, I say?  Are we all to languish equally, not one head higher than the next in twenty years time, under a police state; to scurry about for the crumbs that may only happen to fall from the tables of the corrupted and god-like elite - the nomenclatura of a denuded cornucopia - near empty?  This is madness; and on a grand scale.  It would be penned as black comedy - if Shakespeare-ised, and condensed into a play.

Should one desire the professional services of a psychiatrist, one goes to the Jewish professional; this is their science; their legacy -- and should one have the need for a frontal lobotomy, you don't go to Jethro Bodine.   You seek out the very finest Jewish brain surgeon you can find; but search not on the desert of the Kalahari.  Should one desire the services of a guide through the Navajo reservation, you seek the services of a local Indian; who positioned otherwise in the equality of the culture; universally, may very well find himself washing dishes - a loss, and so absurdly.   Should you desire to venture into the Amazon; now, wouldn't you seek the services of a local Indian priest or Shaman?   Observant you say?  Even the most thoroughly indoctrinated must agree that a native South American, an Indian shaman, does not belong in this utopian panoply.  Is he to become the head of General Motors, even eventually or even to be sustained as a man standing in the line of assembly?   He would languish most terribly.   Automobiles, asphalt, electronic gizmos, and Sunday matinees are an alien invasion to his world, and reality.   Think about it.   Retrace your steps; for surely now, even you must begin to suspect; it was by whom, and by what subtle mechanism, upon me foisted these frauds and obloquy?   Is this an epochal epiphany?!   Even such a simple thing as a televised basketball game - for Christ sakes, who would you rather watch - a team of blacks, or a team of whites?  There's nothing amiss in this god-given strategy.   What a strange and dangerous time we live in.   

  So many have become blinded, are incensed and angry; and take what I say - the wrong way.   It amazes me.   Calumny you say?   I'm here to help, but the wound is very deep, and the patient narcoleptic; lost in a slumber, most fearfully.  My aim is to burst through the veil of convention; shake it up; keep the pot stirred; in flux; un-baptized; no sanctuary is to remain inviolable; no topic is to remain aloof and always sacrosanct, and is neither to be concluded, nor fully relied upon.  Think my friends.  Think.  What is it you desire most; and why can't you achieve it?  When is the last time you attempted to write a play, or sing out loud while striding along the sidewalk, so gay?  Do you have wayward thoughts, or is organized sports food for thought enough, I ask in all sincerity?   Public axiom number one:  Hear something too often; it's a lie -- but try speaking out against the clique of powerful Jews, their greedy Christian cronies, and their grip on western economy, life-styles and thought, gained through control of governments, the judiciary, finance, media and entertainment.   No conspiracy; not malicious, I say; this is the Jew, being the Jew.  These are the very best of people - the finest artists, writers, architects and composers among us.  These are the very worst of people, who arrive begging for Christian charity, and fearful - lacking in physical proclivity, deny the hunt, but stay to demand the very finest cut of meat - most characteristically.  Am I horribly inaccurate?   No - sadly I am right.  

 

My brethren group whose attention I seek, have never considered money to be intended for any pursuit other than that of sustenance, houses, automobiles, and ever increasing entertainment and leisure - and that these things are the totality of the cosmology within which they live - in uncreative poverty.  Some have more than others; and over this and other petty grievances; they never desist to protest, claiming fatuously their own judicial apostasy.  Consider, on the other hand, I say, the view taken by the truly wealthy, rich and well-connected - influentially.   What is at root, and really that which after the most clever and aggressive people seek so stridently?  The entire history of humanity is constructed of this; all of history's heroes and villains are imbued with a lust after this.   Power!   The ultimate panacea for insecurity.  The ultimate aphrodisiac, and stimulant; so sexually.  You are omnipotent, potentate, and alone potent.  You do the talk' in and the tell' in; others do the listening.  Do you believe that power corrupts?   No. Power is destined to dominate and is beyond corruption.   You master power or it masters you.   Have it, and you have it; lose it; it's gone - you lie bleeding, dead or wounded, or live on in a song.

Power is for sale - if you haven't the ability or desire to stage an armed insurrection; or risk imprisonment, you can buy it; outright or in bribery.  A little power here, a little more power there - and this continues for, say - one thousand years.  A very conservative estimate would gauge power accumulation in the range of fifty-percent, in aggregacy.   But it takes money; the root of evil, Christians say.  Gunnysacks, and valises full; enough to quench the thirst of the ever parched quislings to whom they pay.   More than any one man can dispense adroitly.   Now - what ethnicity, well organized, controls the money?   Goldman-Sachs and Solomon Brothers you say, innocently?   So now that we can all so happily agree; this is all quite elementary. Jews have the power - the money you see.   I do not begrudge them this; this is not anomaly.  They are the most intelligent, creative and capable of people; obviously - the money they deserve - but they do exert their control, you see - much as the whale does by merely swimming in the sea.   It is the correct move; unfortunately; their right and alchemy.  Any predominate and capably powerful group have in the past, and shall in the future, do likewise, you see.  These are the great homogenizers - this is what they do; the rationale is simple, but so true - it protects them within a dome of unsurpassing plenty - a life of opulent ease lived indolently from above - Sybaritically.   The proof is quite obvious; it's in the people you see.  Behold the Jew in anything other than sympathy, and they look about nervously, regard you with incredulity, recoil, and walk away most assiduously.  What successful conditioning, I say; in less unease and fear; the dissident Chinese in far Beijing protest collectivism in a less gilded totality.   The great danger is that this could become the same, you see; in history's multi-act play, this unfolding drama has a great tendency to end that way.

Mention something askew-of-the-line having to do with so-called underprivileged minorities, or government's tendency to foist stultifying belief systems, and to propagandize and to misdirect the public's attention; grievously.  People have been conditioned to yawn, and take another vacation, you see.  Try

speaking of religion, or the prerogatives of history, cigarettes, guns, global warming, HIV-AIDS, the criminalization of drugs - any of the ubiquity of commonly believed lies - anything; and see what happens. Well-intentioned people shy away, and at best want to talk about politics, political parties; this asshole versus that one; who cares which dog eats which dog?  Are these, my brethren in kind, so far gone they actually believe it's going to make a difference?   It doesn't matter much who the warden is; policy is policy.  

I'm taken for an uneducated, invidious, bigoted idiot; a misogynist.  My heart is strained to the breaking point.  Don't people know that governments, religious orders, and powerful ethnicities have always

been the enemy of the common people?  Have we all forgotten?  And what guile these Jews have; you've really got to hand it them.   The guilt mongering, complaining and hand wringing don't let up for a minute.  

Pick a day; any day will do, and show me a copy of any major newspaper in America - not Israel mind you -

America stout.  I'll find an article, or some reference to 'the holocaust'; this is absolutely without doubt.  This is the capstone to their wonderful strategy.  They cast themselves, plaintively, as the sole victims of a uniquely unfair history in order to gain sympathy from the subordinate population that dwell beneath their regal majesty.  But, if you remain unconvinced:  Their press provides the cover, while the clever clique manipulates, the Vatican trembles, and the squeeze is now on the Swiss and German industry; a far cry from request for beneficent Catholic charity.  The take is going to be huge; the Swiss acquiesce, and the Germans can't apologize often, or fast enough. God bless 'em, I say.  You've got to admire that!   It is one of many camouflaged and interesting accomplishments achieved while blandishing alms upon the hungry and greedy -

 

in feigned sycophancy.  The Jew alone remains unconquered by Rome, unbent and unbowed throughout history.

  People confuse the government with the country; you hear it all the time.  Earlier generations of Americans knew better; were skeptical of big government; supported local, populist politics. What the hell's happened?   I'm really not sure, but have a couple of good guesses - could be a combination of things - deep-

seated feelings of post-war guilt, baseless sorrows, hopelessness and inferiority, greed that leads to suspicion

of reaction; and eventually to paranoia.  How could such a disgraceful state of affairs come to pass?   This is

not the product of an unblemished germination; this is policy - think about it.  Or perhaps it's as simple as a

Pavlovian dislike of outspoken white men, that would be convenient - but untrue, I say - or maybe, and probably nearer the truth - a universal naiveté borne of excessive prosperity, and its handmaidens - conceit, malaise, fearfulness, innate conservatism, and overindulgence.   I'm not speaking of political conservatism;

I speak of an aggregate unwillingness to take what is a traditionally liberal, dynamic remedy:  Remember the fragility, recognize the enemy; adapt to reality - change what needs to be changed; now, not the month-after-next, now -- fix what needs to be fixed - the fate of your lineage hangs in a balance.  Awaken my brothers and sisters; get your head out of your ass, before it is too late.

Watch out for the undercurrents, people - this is how empires fall - listen - when governments become institutionalized, misdirected, confused, petty and unable to recognize or consider that which is of substance, and focus only on the trivial.  When the intelligent, capable and strong become sorrowful, fearful, corrupted, infertile; and weakened; placated in their prosperity, sybaritic excesses and ridiculous pre-occupations; while the weak and stupid breed; and the hungry and deceitful become emboldened and ever more aggressive until, finally, the strong - grown fat, weakened and tired - retreat; capitulate, and are eventually conquered.  I absolutely kid you not, nor do I exaggerate!

I have no time, nor use for marionette-like white men, touchy blacks, affected queers, or dumb and stupid Latins.  I strive for indifference.  I prefer to focus on women and their innate instincts toward survival.  Hope rests with women.   Women are enchanting and portend the beautiful and free, are clever and though seductive, are unburdened of the need to project muscular prowess, and besides, are fun and exciting to be with - a mystery.   I like the way they think; I like listening to them talk, and would like nothing better than to

form an intellectual and poetic, as well as a physical bond.  I would rejoice; but sadly, seven of ten women

I run into have had their instincts subdued and stymied in favor of mental and physical processes for which they're emotionally unsuited - led unabashedly astray, I say.  This, coupled with marriage to either a sexually diminished technocrat, or one empty romance after another, and one hard fuck after another, delivered at the hands of a legion of supercilious, empty-hearted, cunt-drunk ghouls, is not, I venture, that of which women

dream, and after which they would otherwise knowingly seek.    In such a state of internal conflict, women are

dissatisfied, upset, and are easily swayed by the Jewish intelligencia, and become willing subjects, and quickly well-conditioned to the predominate media that has just unearthed another villain.  Nearly all are innately intelligent.  Common are those who border on the untutored genius; are the essence of sagacity; but are now so twisted in fact, that they have become bereft of original opinion, anything but free-ranging, and never extraordinary.  Lesbianism is on the rise.  Who is responsible for this criminality?  What is next, I say, a severing of the right breast in infancy so as to gain javelin throwing supremacy - will all hope end in universal white infertility and clitoridectomy?    I live a recluse in seclusion; fear for the future - and reflect plaintively...

 

'…Is it true that women worry little about love, or opportunity lost?  Is by nature woman more comfortable, more at home, more practical, less concerned by uncertainty; less distracted by dream's call  than man?  A burden more easily born for a woman's feet are buried deep in the earth  the great mother, the fertile ground, wellspring of life.

 And is it true that love began with God, and such was the Word flowing throughout all His dominions to effuse our planet.  And that a man loves his wife and children so such sublimation will ever continue.  And thus spawns a paradise wherein a harmony prevails upon woman to respect the love of her husband whose love shall in turn be perpetual.

 And is it true that this fragile effulgence is now fractured manifold so many of the races are born to wander a netherworld of misplaced and disjointed objects.  Of treacherous terrain on steep slopes they search

 

to connect anew.  On unguarded paths they slowly with knowing looks pass through convoluted lives.  The hopeless in search continue…'

 

             There may be those who suspect me of an ulterior, personal motive; some form of insincerity or rascality.  Accuse me not falsely.   At the end of the day, I will stand exonerated - stand innocently.  My cause, as heretofore revealed in its majesty, is without deficit; faceless and noble.  I've got no time to meander about in foolishness.  I must be deliberate with my resources.   I'm fifty years old and down to a little less than a third of a tank; my final roll of the dice - come on bones, daddy, does indeed need a new pair of shoes.  I've finally found my way back to the main highway.   I've a long way to go.    She pours coffee and I turn on the old charm, but you know  - that really must be some old charm - seems to have gone a bit stale - at least in the case of this twenty-two year old.  It is I who end up being charmed, and she; well, she only a bit curious.  How to dislodge her from herself?  How to awaken the sleeping princess?  How to gain access to the nether regions?  How to unclasp the hasp that guards so covetously the doorway to the womb?   I need a starting point; a point of reference.   “May I interest you in my life's story?   I know everybody's got one, but mine is worth listening to; is most illustrative of the last thirty years - includes a lot of good stuff not found in history books”.  Not that I've had a particularly notable time of it so far, but it's quite relevant; illustrative, and a little much to compress into a handful of halfspoken sentences in between cups of coffee on a Friday morning, or drinks on a Friday evening  while she works  with a passing curiosity only.    I'll write it, then say:    "Here, you may want to read this  it's - well ah  my life story  remember?     Kind of a quickly turned narrative  the highlights you know  something to look at  background information - here; I need your help, please read it.”

            By the by - that's how this whole thing had its beginning; and now that I've shot my mouth off - led with my chin so to speak - I'm not sure I have the wherewithall and talent to do such a thing.  Is it possible to wade through the flotsam and jetsam which float about my shoulders; to look back dispassionately upon the wreckage of my life; sort through the rubble, and make peace?   It may very well turn out like one of those offhanded comments that resulted in several days of free car repair service for another girl years ago; damn well built girl, who neglected to mention her husband; or how about the free painting of half a house for a middle-aged woman who thinks I'm captive to charms long-since gone south, and was either the stingiest bitch left on the planet, or the wagging of her index finger in front of her nose, really did signify that she didn't have any money.

 

The path it is hard and the gate it is narrow, and those to find true life will be but few.  And any one of us can look deeply into ourselves, past the pretense and surface confusion  out of the house up onto the

mountain; further out still to where no one can help us.  Are we not bewildered and afraid?

During periods of interglacial warmth, the population expands to a point just in excess of the means of support and therein a struggle ensues; a very bloody struggle indeed  commonly known as history.  

History characterizes, catalogs, and to the best of its ability, links and writes in blood the constituent events, and is in fact nothing more or less than a long listing of warfare; a continuing series of decisions as to how the

perceived shortage is to be divided.  Mythologies are the analogs, the accompanying music to this warfare and form the spiritual and psychic underpinning of humanity.   Manifold of a thousand separate memories, this grand undercurrent flows forward in time.  Much of it is unwritten, but made familiar in word and song -

interstitial to the culture and physical cohesion of the tribe. Attendance to prescribed and fundamental tenets

of any number of belief systems can be easily recognized as a matter of central, unquestioned and even

unconscious agreement.  Is it not such the case with a sacrifice, a planting, tending, harvest and hunt, or the nomadic clan following the staff and then the priest?  The faithful respond as automatons to the crier's call.

            There is an ominous mountain range surrounded by many adjacent peaks, high plateaus and river valleys.  A quick and thorough death has always lurked here as well as a gathering of women, a stranded

mother, a small and helpless child, a tender of animals, a hunter, a warrior and the shaman who ate the raw bark of trees, swallowed hot coals, and in a transcendent frenzy, communed with the gods and spoke to the

people: “And I say unto you  I am your father; hear me so that you may not be afraid, for I am now your fear,

and do not forget, and see me so that you may learn”.  This has always been so.  A great cauldron is forged so the people may eat, be nourished and carry forward.

 

And so it is with Christianity.   The very vastness, organization, subjugation and dominance that was Rome, then as made manifest by Augustine, agreed to between the Pope and Justinian, and then Charlemagne; transmogrified into the Church of Peter.  A thousand years before this, no less than the eminent Greek

historian Herodotus, as well as the scholar Plutarch, believed that the Orphic doctrine of judgment after death had originated from the Egyptian cults of Isis and Osiris, and the ritual of the resurrection from Demeter and

Persephone at Eleusis.   Taking note of the superabundance of Egyptian deities and the essence of life itself so thoroughly interlarded with genuflecting, and in other respects paying homage to one or another of these gods at each step in the day, Herodotus called the Egyptians the most religious people in all of creation.  Did not the Achaeans, who predated Classical Greeks by at least half a millennium, and of whom Homer writes so well in the Iliad, give parentage to Heracles (Hercules), among a veritable host of others so well controlled from Olympus, whose attainments are in such close proximity to those apportioned to Christ, that the similarity cannot be seen as coincidence. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world is the Temple to Artimis at Eleusis.  Artimis, the Greek goddess of female virtuosity, the virgin of the forest, purveyor of fertility, perfect daughter of Zeus of whom fifth century Christians wisely incorporated the remnants into that of Mary, and usurped and transmogrified the mid-August harvest festival in her honor, into the feast of the Assumption.   These Greeks, too, had wizards, oracles, Sibyls, and, as we know, a full pantheon of gods.  Apollo and Dionysus in any one and all of a number of ornate temples, are praised by the populace and attendees in the sonorous dithyramb  a vocal singsong rhythm with a reassuring and narcotic effect.  They are bemused, assuaged, and for a short while at least, aligned to their torments and satisfied.  Christianity is nothing more than the disemboweled resurrection of the theocracy of the Egyptians and Greeks; immortality; sacrifice, suffering, death and rebirth - a thousand years its predecessor, turned inside out.  Christianity, although cruel fiction, used these weapons most expertly to blind, and then conquer the whole of the Western world.   

The modern, speaking of all annoDomini, liturgy is not so very different.  Having had the advantage of years does precious little to camouflage, veil or differentiate the current Christ dogma from that of its

predecessors and most assuredly cannot stop, and only serves to hasten its eschatocological journey.  In the mean time, aplomb in phantasm and interlaced in piquancy, the beast ambles forward.

The Christ dogma is perfectly sensible to its adherents, and was particularly well-marrowed into the fifty million memories of those who happened to be alive between the fourth and tenth centuries.  Then the

fruit began to over ripen.  Its relevance, or should I say, spell, or more prosaically  its fragrance, after which,

and in keeping with the greater notion of the immutability of change itself, became further and still further removed from those particulars necessary to secure and satisfy rudimentary human requirement.   The beast is powerful though, and not being able to nurture you, now denatures you as it stretches its skeletal fingers around the very throat of your life.

The thing had taken on a life of its own, mutating in fashion and in kind, tampering with a solid thought here, and tincturing with madness the mind of another there.    And among those very many,

others perhaps not so prominent  John Calvin.   One of the many Calvinist teachings I recall well, and

undoubtedly the cornerstone of the faith, is the notion of preselection.  In his infinite beneficence God, through the aegis of his dear Son, has anointed in true, straight and hard spirit, a select number of humans. Upon their deaths, they will rise, and only as souls of course, to sit somberly among the heavenly host for eternity.

John Calvin is stonecold dead, turned to dust now a half of a millennium.  His legacy, however, is the legacy of much of Europe and EuropeanAmerica:  Fear of a fierce and vengeful God, harsh treatment and

relentless hard work, followed closely by emotional, aesthetic and physical denial. The embodiment and espousal of these attributes identify a person as among the preselected.   An ascendancy to the Elysian

Fields or an eternity in Hell for the faltering and those found wanting, was a very real concern to many and all the inhabitants of the rural, small and remote villages, and emergent city as well.   Throughout much of

Europe, but particularly in Puritan strongholds of the Prussian Empire, the English Isles and Scandinavia, and

severely for their transgressions, children were whipped on a daily basis so as to expunge unholy and

otherwise untoward thoughts from their minds.  It was not uncommon for young women to have no knowledge of sexual function to the time of their marriages and to be fully ignorant of their own physiology.  As for boys and young men - whoa is it to he who would fall victim to physical arousal or even a noticed sensation.

  

Crippled in such cruel wickedness and shackled in all manner of iron strictures, much of northwestern and eastern Europe trudged wearily through brutish lives and brought all of this, and their Bibles too, to the shores of North America  washing up to spread throughout the land. Though much of this is still strongly with us, much has softened over the course of the last century; a great deal in the last thirty years  though too late, to spare these people its wicked effects:

 

I saw a large man who killed a white kitten in a fit of dark secrets.  I met a young woman whose face was all frozen in a glacial entombment.  I felt painful tears fall from the eyes of three small swollen faces.  

I walked all alone in a solitary void vastness where the way is not known and paths are worn out in empty directions.

There is a long, white cement street, with hairline and wider cracks accumulated over long years

now repaired with strokes of black tar, and worn sidewalks on either side bordering rectangles of

greengrassgonebrown parkways lined with turnofthecentury carob trees following and now overhanging

the power and telephone wires and creosoteblack wooden poles.   Belthigh heavy cement slab retaining walls  leaning now somewhat here and then again further down the sidewalk, and behind which weedstrewn

St. Augustine lawns front older clapboard and masonry homes; small family houses and imposing Corinthian, and Ionian-columned mansions of an earlier era, and Dorian columned boarding houses. The street is deadended, made so at the same time or just before the United States declared war on Japan, as the first freeway connecting the San Fernando Valley and Santa Ana made its way across the northern section of Los Angeles just below Hollywood.

I can still see framefrozen glimpses of an early childhood. A 1907-handbuilt wooden house on this street  with a brother and parents  the first daughter and a twenty-nine-yearold husband back from the war,

and back now with her parents in a Los Angeles not yet refocused toward restoration of wartime privations

and the more immediately required housing.  Large-scale development of the Valley and the six hundred and

more square miles of eastward lying orchard and row crop farms were only now beginning.  A gentlevoiced grandmother giving me a bath, large and small soap bubbles, a blue plastic duck, a yellow parakeet, a pair of overalls with a zipper up the side, stubby fingers and thumb working to tie a shoelace, backyard incinerator

smoke and a cooing of morning doves.   I was two and maybe three years old.  I'm reminded of the words to an old melody...

 

'Don't step on mother's roses; let'm grow - the way they did since many years ago -

And every time I see a rose, I see her smiling face - she made even dark days look bright around the old home place…'

 

At age four the family moved to a new house in Whittier, some twenty miles east  one of several

thousand lath and plaster central floor plans  each one to take up one-quarter acre of walnut or orange orchard, and each sold to a veteran and young wife  a thousand dollars down and a ten-thousand dollar

mortgage over twenty-four years.  I remember waiting out in front of the house, down by the curb for my brother to come home from kindergarten at twelve o'clock noon on the school bus; it stopped directly across

the street.   I was four years old and now had to spend the whole morning with nobody to play with.    The next year I went to kindergarten, but at a brandnew school.   That first day on the bus - well, it may as well have been taking me to the gas chamber.   I cried nonstop; really worked up; remember it clearly  and when

getting off the bus, was blubbering so badly, the teachers had to read the note pinned to the front of my shirt

to figure out who I was, and to which room I was assigned.  I recall naps on a little piece of rug, graham

crackers and milk, sandbox and swings, and finger-painting.  I made friends with Paul, Ron Eide, and Dave Moll; all in my class  we hung together for the next fifteen years; I remained close to Paul for next forty.

The family would drive from Whittier down and along boulevards and roads; streets lined in bright lights, past remarkable architecture and buildings, industrial signs and fountains of clear and then again manycolored waters in the evenings.  From my half of the backseat, I gauge our progress and am comforted

in the familiarity of my surrounding.   Around the final corner and up the street in a 1949 Chevrolet coupe to

the barricade.  Dad makes a Uturn and returns to park in front of this old house my grandfather's father built

 

before 1910.  This is repeated each and every Saturday evening and most memorably on Christmas eves.

Christmas from my eyes  young eyes during those years - was a wonderful time; especially the

children.   To have a single event be so preoccupying  such an expectancy of happiness and great goodness; an extended blossoming, a wonderful innocence wherein all things are possible; all the devices of

entertainment and pleasure yours for the asking, and the cold crisp weather and shortened days  a childhood blessing.

I don't remember if it rained nine inches during the December of my tenth Christmas, or ten inches during the December of my ninth Christmas, but it was Christmas and it was the eve of Christmas, and the sky

was now darkening outside and it was grandfather's birthday. We all went to the house on Lake Street.   The

house some fifty years old even then  of gray banisters and green steps upwards to the porch; three small bedrooms, living room and kitchen with pantry, but seeming large to me  with a pullchain toilet on the back porch.  Everyone was there.  Laughter among the children and excitement and smiles and happiness and freshly Kiwi'd shoes and best clothes.  Present were aunts and uncles and Carver and Mr. Salt in old-fashioned suits and pocket watches. Grandfather is dressed in a blue suit, vest and tie and loud laughter.  Grandmother is in her apron with the many plates of cookies, and the Christmas tree in the living room was now surrounded and eclipsed by the swarm of brightly wrapped gifts.  Mistletoe hung upon the threshold to the kitchen to surprise an unsuspecting woman with a strange kiss.

The boys and girls gathered with their kind - the boys talking of their most recent boldness and latest accomplishment, of school and tough guys and of other more daring things known to be private to the family;

anything to gain attention and a moment's prominence.  There is an infraction of precautioned behavior, a

tattling, an overly harsh response and tears quickly suppressed.  There are coloring books and games, and drinking and conversation among adults.

Then, amid a growing excitement, all gathered for the opening of gifts.  Aunt Bonnie is in charge of this momentous undertaking and dispersed them in a reversal of seniority to accommodate those least able to contain their spirit.

             Mothers provide a close shepherding of growing stacks of games, puzzles, record albums, fingernail trimming sets, and how many other delightful things I don't remember, least they be lost within the mounds of freshly ripped paper. There is a cacophony of highpitched voices, hushed shrieks and new toys to everyone's delight.   There is coffee and gifts among the adults  each couple to another by lottery.  There is a combined

gift for the grandparents, something expensive and needed: A new chair for grandfather, a coat for grandmother.  There is an intimacy bounded by polite exchange, though sprinkled with libatious comment.

Several from our family walked to the Jenkins's house at the end of the street. Evelyn and Ed

Jenkins, and Evelyn's father and Laurie were there. Paul gets a new pushbutton radio for his car.  My sevenyearsyounger sister wore a pretty red velvet skirt emblazoned with a black poodle dog and white blouse, and carried a justunwrapped black patent leather purse at she walks from one adult to the next,

around the living room, as they dropped in their coins, and continued so to mounting laughter and praise two or three circuits.   I smiled and was proud to have such a pretty and animated sister.  The years have flown and so too has this easy kindness and gentle blessing.

 

I am now as I have always been; in mind, emotion, appreciation of the world; an exaggerated sense of compassion, empathy and responsibility; a compound of strength and strong weakness.  These have always been and always will be.

 

             I am for many years the second of three children in a middle class family, in a middleclass suburb of Los Angeles, attending middleclass schools  public schools new within a few years of VJ day  mostly white where well-dressed, waveset groomed children are judged on their ability to stand in a straight line, pay attention, take direction and remember.  We trace the routes of Magellan and Vasco De Gamma, diagram sentences, and solve quadratic equations.

I survived public education, although badly wounded.  It seems to me as though the object of such education is to relieve parents of the burden of considering an incessant flow of questions and constant

attention required by children.  It really doesn't require a great leap of intuition to see that the incumbent duty

 

 

of adults to their children shouldn't be so much different from that of a mated pair of eagles to their fledglings.    Priority number one - see to it that these little chicks turn out to be successful eagles.  What the hell's complicated about that?  Children should at least be given the means of survival.  I'm afraid it's a lesson too late for the learning.  I can't see how the lesson is not now lost altogether; the thread is broken.

Childhood within the family structure, the Wonder Bread years  from five to fifteen  now this was a horse of another color altogether; a bit more of a challenge, and in all honesty, and running the risk of

appearing maudlin or morose, I cannot say that I fared all that well.  Neither did my brother or sister.  Who in the hell could've; Oliver Twist had a better chance getting a second bowl of porridge, and also had a better

chance of getting a kiss from the workhouse warder, than we did of getting a hug from mom, or encouragement from dad.  My mother to this day compliments herself for having all of her children potty- trained before the age of one year - can you imagine?!   We should all be dead.   I bite my lip and leave the room.  I was seventeen before the first breast was held in my hands, or the first nipple suckled between my lips -- but, don't get me wrong, there's good reason for all of this; just took me twenty-five years to figure it

out.   Prosper - hell; how to survive?  That's the question.  What would Darwin suggest?  Let's see, the first-born is really in charge, the second born has to try harder, and I did  temper tantrums and all.  The third born  well she's a girl and came along quite a few years later - and has her problems.

The Barber's you see are different.  They're not social, have no friends; no one can know them, they have secrets, aren't joiners, handle things themselves, no religion, and don't follow sports.  A perfect setup for a disappointed, disaffected, perennially constipated, dutiful, but distant Mother Superior type woman, and her semitalented, uncomprehending, misbehaving, sexually disguised, bullying, disoriented, misanthropic, mother fixated, alcoholaddicted, delusional, policemen husband.   He's the bad boy; always the bad boy, and she's doing the very best she can; always doing the very best she can  and down the road they go, oblivious

to the horrid affect this nonrelational dynamic is having upon their children.   I must not have been quite as astute as my brother, who dad accused of plotting against him from the highchair: "That little boy is mocking me; look at him Helen  staring at me like that; who the hell does he think he is?"  

            Curtis was two or three; George twenty-eight or twenty-nine; Helen twenty-six:  "George he's just a baby."  "Don't tell he's just a baby; I know arrogance when I see it  well, we'll just see who runs this house;

I told him to eat his food, and goddamit he's go' in to..." "George, stop it."  "You've been drinking; just go sit down.  Leave the children alone."   Astute, yes, but a year older, and he was the center attraction during the

scene that followed the second grade parentteacher conference during which the teacher suggested that the

family get counseling.  There is quite obviously a problem between Curtis and his father.  "Counseling,

psychiatrists  who the hell do you think you are  on and on...!"  left the poor woman in tears  he knew just how to do it.   

Curtis had been stuttering and stammering for about six months or year, when I started  I remember the day clearly  up in front of the class; fifth grade  trying to give a current events report - read a clipping from the newspaper  just couldn't do it - became forlorn and disoriented; stricken with fear, disemboweled; the words made no sense; my personality and sense-of-self became separated from my mind.   Now this was

some kind 'a traumatic  devastating shit.  If such a thing happened to a Jew, it would be right up there with

the holocaust.   Talk about your polio, asthma, innate stupidity, whathaveyou; I don't care  I would rather be the dumbest, stupidest, most uncoordinated motherfucker on the planet, than, as an older child and adolescent male, to not be able to talk outside of your intimate friends and family members, without stuttering

and stammering - the abandonment; the fear.  People smile condescendingly; others wait patiently, clinically, while you struggle; some cannot control their laughter; girls regard you with amusement - pity.  Think about it!   This shit went on full blast until I was nineteen and out of the house.  Then and only then, did it begin to taperoff accompanied by the greatest of effort.  Now my gentle reader, just imagine a married couple in their thirties with three children; middleclass lifestyle; they're not retarded, but as though lost in a reverie, they go

on as though everything's just fine.  These are your caregivers.  They slowly sacrifice their children.  Beat me to death out-right; but don't torture me.   I'd rather remain unborn than repeat my young life - absolutely!

I have been thinking that perhaps, and as half a new formula, children should be subject to a two-

month hunting season with all the regulation and restrictions normally afforded to deer, wart hogs, squirrels,

and ducks.  This would only remain in place for a relatively short period of time and serve as an appeasement

to those currently in charge, and if nothing else, assure a manageable population and sharpened survival

 

instincts.  To complete this consideration, a new government agency would also be formed, a department if

you will, fashioned after the Fish and Wildlife service, but with the slightly different purpose of establishing

preserves for children.  Places of natural surroundings  environmentally balanced, replete with all the necessities  all the most recent techniques and scientific breakthroughs could be brought to bear.  In this manner, children would be afforded the same care, consideration and opportunity to prosper as are currently extended to sea otters, spotted owls or darter snails.

We never hear a child say to his companion:  "My father is a man; he smiles, he laughs, he sings, he hunts, he tells me of the world, and from the beginning how it was; who he is, who I am; my mother, sister and brother, the children and families up the street.  How this all came to be, what is important and what is

not.  It is indeed a great misfortune, but men have been reduced to mechanics  one and all to tend the

machine; emasculated, controlled, and obviously no longer quite necessary.  Up and down the same freeways day in and day out.  "Something's wrong, something's wrong  what the hell can it be?   Do I need less

whiskey and more beer, or a thorough switch, to say, Cobb salads and mineral water; how about a new car,

a cruise?"   It never occurs that he misses terribly the community of warriors, hunters, herdsmen; the Shaman  the memories of his soul  long before Francis Drake sailed away or the apple fell on Newton's head.

Public schools are run by a baker's dozen of female teachers of mediocre ability, and zero sense of

young boys' development processes.   "... Put that stick down; stop throwing rocks, sit still, don't hit girls, go

stand in the corner, keep your hands to yourself, put that gum on the end of nose, and write one hundred times on the blackboard  'silence is golden'...” Winners of the nonstop competitions get gold stars, smiling faces,

awards at school assemblies, small scholarships, and the intimacy of the teachers.   It would seem that these are rewards for superior survivorship skills, but actually that's not the truth.  These are rewards for causing the least amount of difficulty for the teachers, the system, parents, and the status quo.

I was able to survive because of the weakness of the argument  it's not clever and lacks subtlety  thank God.  I could have been persuaded by a better con, as were many of my friends by Sputnik.   Beginning

in 1957, the brightest kids were inveigled to the technical; siphoned into the sciences with promises of going

into space.  Now that's a clever coupling  the promise of a Sinbadlike adventure predicated upon endless

hours of concentration over obtuse mathematical formula, chemistry, physics.  There is, however, a bright,

well, if not bright, then at least an opaque side: The children who simply couldn't get with the new catechism were pretty much ignored; left to their own devices; at least given a chance.

Wouldn't even a rather stupid person agree that the large size of the human brain is a product of evolution and certainly not designed to the specification of some mundane set of recently assembled tasks?

How can it be that children are without innate proclivities when just the opposite is readily evident to even the ignorant?  Yet as a child, I, amongst so many others, was told what I thought was worthless, without merit,

not worthy of comment:    “Keep your hands in your pockets, don't contradict adults.”  What could I possibly

know?    And that's when it starts - you start to live inside your head; become bemused and reactionary.

It could be said that I'm borderline.  I managed to shoehornin just enough, but never could seem to weave these little bits of facts  biology, chemistry, history, draftsmanship, Latin grammar, Ivanhoe  into a meaningful whole.  All of this was an abstraction; and actually an irrelevancy; lacked cohesion, lacked guile, a test only of my ability to hold my nose against the wall without moving.

There is, thankfully, only a weak and fairly spotty congruence between my consciousness and that of a financial analyst, or the future biochemist of the year.  Mine, you see, was, and remains to this day, busy with fairytalelike imaginings at every opportunity, and when not so engaged, is busy plotting escape, or piecing  together a wildly discordant range of surrealistic impressions.  I fear I am an imposture, and am only surprised that the ruse hasn't been discovered.

            Television was perfect for our family. It provided the perfect camouflage for lack of dialog.  The old man pontificates, shouts, rants and raves; the rest of us live inside our heads.  There were a few fairly interesting shows, but basically television portrayed the moderate, modest and harmonious lives of middle

class whites - the crotch-less Cleaver family and Robert Young always knowing best.  Ricky Nelson talked

back to his parents  was a surly teenager; Ozzie and Harriet was not watched in our house, nor was 77 Sunset

Strip  Eddie (Kooky) Burns was a bad influence.  My father's alcoholic policeman views from his reclining

chair held absolute sway; emotional  intimidating, revealing the powerlessness and frustration of the

 

 

middleaged square man, frustrated, impotent, in the round hole  frightening, and farreaching in consequence  but not convincing.  “Stand up here worthless; hold still while I pick the blackheads and pimples from your face - hold still”.  “Wipe that look off your face; suck-in that lower lip - you look like a gaddamn fruit.”    My mother says nothing; sits quiescent, ennobled beyond question to suffer in false dignity and silence on the couch.  To this day he is unable to comprehend his crime; views himself as a victim.

Older childhood and teenage years spent doing homework, cleaning basins, toilets, washing dishes, pulling a backyard full of weeds, cleaning out the garage, and delivering years' of newspapers.  I loved and

teased and still do, a little sister, was and remain closeto and fought with a yearolder brother  hiking in the hills; together catching snakes, tarantulas, marsh toads, and a muddy Mallard duck goes into the hall locker of

a bitchy girl on a Sunday afternoon, with a whole pack of our compatriots on hand Monday morning for the

unsuspecting one to open her locker.  A nail goes through my foot as we wade across a shallow swamp now

madeover into a State park, a spike goes through my brother's ten-year-old arm as he tinkers with a parked

gravel truck's trailer locking mechanism.  Many years later, we're all running in pitch darkness toward the

entrance to the end of the huge concrete storm channel which underlies our high school, as the concussion from a justlit pipe bomb knocks us flat.  A late Saturday afternoon in spring, after walking all day up to and

into the hills above Whittier, my brother and I stop by the Whittier Public Library on the way home, greeting Mr. Bernardo, our affable Latin teacher who has a second job as a reference librarian on the weekends.  "Hello boys"  from he, and across the library floor we go, dusty and smelling of thistle and sage, and we, along with the five-foot gopher snake lying motionless at the bottom of a large shopping bag, are now back among the rows of shelves.  I place the bag on a random chesthigh shelf, open the top, fold it down a little, and with my heart beating in throat, walk quickly out onto the sidewalk laughing now half hysterically.  Mr. Bernardo never made the connection  nor did the Whittier Police Department.

 

I spent many an afternoon and evening skateboarding on two-by-fours made over with steel shoeskate wheels with a lifelong friend down the newly paved, flat and hard asphalt streets of a housing

development in the hills above downtown, and along sidewalks and smooth cement school corridors.  

Paul was a straight "A" student, an athlete of strongly suppressed emotion, a physicist shot to death only recently by a San Diego County deputy sheriff, as he stepped outside of his contradiction, in vain search of real life - a final time.

"... What'ya think, I don't come to Whittier for the good time  I just dropped in to see the old lady; what; jees man  nothing  What'ya think, she's so goddamn stupid  I don't say anything; she just talks on and on about pure shit; you know, the whole thing is nothing  going to the store, ridiculous errands and a

hundred cigarettes a day; that's it  I don't say anything anymore  no shit; noth'in.  It's like talking to a dog, or better - a parrot  see  it's like the parrot can talk, and it's my fault; I'm the one, not her  she's who she is  normal right  it's me who falls under the illusion  you know, I simply fucking forget  that there ain't no way in hell I'm going to be able to do anything.  A couple of months ago I wasted hours man, like a whole

afternoon trying to explain how there is no difference between mental and physical health  you know  the

analog man  everything is the same I said; you know, I'm walking around the room  I'm excited; trying to make her excited  my face is beaming  I've heard it, I tell her  it was like all at once, I just knew that everything is the same  and it was like Om; you know  a Zen thing  no sound waves  no noise  and it's so

goddamn simple  and then I'm so happy, shit man, like really glad.  I finally just kept saying how there aren't

any separations; there is no this, separate from a that; as above and so below  I tried to bring God into it -

show her the relationship.  Yeah, that's right  finally she stops babbling and is staring at me  I think maybe she's listening  no way  she thinks I've been "taking" marijuana.   So my mother is just like your mother   no  really man, I mean it  there'll never be a reason to ask how they are  it's just plain stupid."

"I'm going to the building to see the old man; you wanna walk up there"  "Sure"  I say, thinking it's about five miles, but what the hell  and Mr. Reynolds is really a bit much, a real piece of work  living ten or fifteen houses away for all those years, I'd known him about as long as Paul, and then we'd both worked for

him in '69, doing odd jobs around his building that summer when I should have been at Woodstock, and I've

never forgotten that either.  I'd just gotten out of the Army, and Paul had just gotten out of the psychiatric

hospital  old man Reynolds was concerned that Paul would commit suicide and thought I'd be a stabilizing

 

 

influence  and I was  all we did was go for long walks during which he'd be silent or ask me if I was

fucking Susan, which I denied; and the craziest thing we did that summer was to walk thirty miles to the beach one Saturday  all the way  and with Paul, at the recommendation of some monk he'd met, going

barefoot  broke his arches down  all the way.   "...This ain't noth' in man, I can make it  no problem...”

We hitchhiked back and just as well; thirty miles is long walk  period.

"Why don't ya come on down to Cardiff for a couple a days, you know  go surf' in, then take the train back to Fullerton." "Fullerton huh; how in the fuck am I go' in to get home from Fullerton."   “You figure it out man  shit  do you wanna go or not  call up my mother, she'll drive you home  don't make such a big deal out it."  It's about one o'clock in the morning; I'm in the back of the 1951 GMC milk truck sitt'in up on the spare tire think' in that the thing is like a motorized ox cart.  "You really need to take a couple of the leaves out man; there's like zero reason for this shit, and how about a pad or something."  Noth'in out of Paul as he turns onto the 57-freeway head' in down to Newport.  "Ah shit; yeah  fuck, it's the Highway Patrol - shit; they're pulling us over."  Paul jumps out the second we're stopped; I'm in back and can't see a thing.  "Turn around and put your hands in air!" Silence  nothing for a few seconds, then louder:  "Turn around and put your hands in the air”!!  "Hey, what's this all about; taillight or some shit  you know, like what?" "Freeze, don't move  put your hands in the air”!!!  The officer is really shouting now, and his partner is in on act  I can tell they're scared  but Paul  true to form  is oblivious  senses no danger.  "I'm not turning around, and not putt 'in my hands in air  got that  if your go' in to blow me into my next incarnation, I want to see it coming.”  I'm start' in to get the shakes  a bit freaked; wait' in for the blast it's like slow motion.   "Don't fucking move you asshole"  then silence for a long time  could have been three or four minutes; maybe more  I haven't said a word; nobody's said anything.   "We just ran your license number; seems clean - had a call about a rape; vehicle described as a yellow van; let me see your driver's license and registration."  "This ain't no van man; more like a panel truck..."  "Sir (voice getting louder again), get the registration  no; wait  let's see your license."  "Hey man, be calm  which one do you want first  they're both in truck  O.K. - my friend is in the back." "There's another passenger?"  "No man, that's not what I said  there's not another passenger  only one  like I just told you  my friend  one friend; name's Rod Barber  in the back."  All I'm think' in now is  why do you have to fuck with these guys Paul  what the fuck?  I hear the outside handle to the back door; it swings open  "say, Rod  these guys are try 'in to tell me that rape is illegal in Santa Ana."

 

I walk and run along side a beautiful German shepherd in open fields at night, and wish I too could be so happy chasing the nesting doves.  College prep courses and wrestling  I graduate from high school and registered for the draft in June 1966.  Hot blooded but no girl friend, I wanted a sports car and spent all my steakhouse busboy savings on a usedup 1958 Austin Healey  the girl friend came only later with a forty-five dollar, 1950, flathead six, Ford Business Coupe, on which I mounted, oversized, used Cadillac tires and stenciled "Captain America" along the middle of each door.  The Rolling Stones put out 'Satisfaction' and Mick Jagger was a liverlipped fruit, drug addict to my dad, and no, the times they weren't Achang'in. The Beetles were preSergeant Pepper. Bob Dylan was the great-unwashed phenomenon and Jimi Hendrix not yet psychedelic.   I can only guess that many houses still had bomb shelters in their backyards, when I learned that three schoolyears' friends had been killed within one month of each other on search and destroy missions with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.  "Maxwell Eddison, majoring in medicine, calls her on the phone  can I take you out to pictures Jo oooan...but as she's getting ready to go, a knock come at the door - bang, bang…”

Doug Richie and Richard Burdick were the best of friends.  They had grown-up next door to each other in a subdivision about a mile and half from where Paul and I had been raised.  We were the same age, all of us, and friends since being in the same kindergarten class.   My earliest clear memory of Doug was that of a skinny, country-looking kid in my fourth grade class.  He wore high-top black Keds, blue jeans that appeared to be held in place by a too-long brown leather belt, and a too-small, horizontally-stripped, white, blue and red tee-shirt.  Doug had closely-cropped, dirty blond hair; and a general inattentiveness to class work common among the sons and daughters of men who made their livings working with their hands.  In 1956 Doug wanted to be a lumberjack.

 

 

Doug was a mixture of Huckleberry Finn and Bob Mathias - the all-around American kid, that had he come to attention of Walt Disney, would have been a Mousecateer; member of the Mickey Mouse Club. Doug was a great athlete for a skinny kid; very coordinated and fast, but never used these to seek a dominate position among us other boys; and particularly never engaged in that brutal form of character assassination played-out so ruthlessly in early male adolescence.    The years go by slowly when you're a kid, and the good

friends you have in one year at one school, sometimes meld into and dissipate in significance among the larger and more homogenous groupings encountered a few years later at another school.     You too may have, if you were like I was; tended to adopt the style and mannerisms of those your inexperienced eyes deemed to be superior.  Sometimes, and I've seen it regarding the truly screwy kid, this process works out well; for most, however, the results are pure vaudeville; preposterous harlequins - tattoos on skinny wimps; body piercings and nihilistic spikes of purple hair on twelve-year old virgin girls - Christ!

             Doug never did change; just kept on being the last one you could always count on.  I remember two trips to the Mohave' with Doug, Rich and Doug's father, who as Doug, was quiet and steady, Paul and

myself.  One was a two-day, one-night hiking and 22-shooting adventure in an area of very large boulders

and beautiful desert scenery; but the night was cold in the cheap sleeping bag my dad borrowed from the next-door neighbor.   The second, was again, but to a different area in the Mohave' desert near the Nevada border. The same group of us spent a two-day trip seeking for and exploring abandoned mines. I couldn't have dragged my kids at age fourteen to that type of activity, but to me, it was all high adventure and fun.   Doug was an Eagle Scout.  

The biggest problem facing American soldiers during that horribly misconceived war was the differentiation of the non-aligned peasant from the Viet Cong.   The North Vietnamese regulars were a very

motivated, capable and tenacious foe, but the Viet Cong and their system of co-option and political control through the use of older and experienced North Vietnamese cadre in and amongst the guerrillas in the

countryside, made this war particularly insidious.    Had Doug stopped for a minute on a hot path in the bush

to befriend and help a young boy with his over laden bicycle?  I thought about it a lot and don't know, but I can very easily imagine this scene, or one very similar.   I can't see it any other way.

 Doug and Rich, of course, and in keeping with the closeness of their lives, joined the Marines together while still in high school, and went in immediately after graduation in June 1966.   Doug loved it;

loved the whole thing; a huge camp-out.   Doug was killed in burst of AK-47 fire near Hue in May 1967 and died in twisted rivulets of hot mud, sweat and blood in the middle of a foreign country so very, very far from America.  Doug was hit three times in a single burst from close range.  The first shot entered just below his rib cage on the right side of his torso, destroyed his colon, turned and tore its path through the soft tissues of the lower intestine, to exit his upper thigh; the second entered low on his left forearm and exited through the torn remnant of his left shoulder; the third shattered his lower jaw and severed the spinal column.  Blown to pieces, this fine flower of America, in an official and governmentally-sanctioned mission to ensure the future Asian customers of Microsoft a life of  tyranny and forced servitude, otherwise forfeit to a life of forced servitude and tyranny.  I remember the day I heard about.  Paul was away at school and phoned me.  I walked up into the hills and I cried.  I cried for Doug and I cried for America, and all our fine young people, myself included, so full of spirit and hope for a new order to life, in May 1967.

Our high school group had moved apart and the world went about its business.  Ten years passed during which time the vicissitudes and demands of my own life had overgrown my memories, but not

completely.  They all came roaring back on the day I heard that Richard Burdick, having suffered the brutality of a fall into oblivion, had died from alcoholism during the spring of 1977 - at age twenty-eight.  

 

I really don't know why I went to a Jr.  College right out of high school; I had reasonable grades, three years of Latin, everything in order  it must have been the money.  Parents of preoccupied disinterest,

unwilling and illprepared to support college students, never gave it a second thought; nor did I.  Nor did I have any idea as to what direction I should take  to be a what?  How does one know?  Every direction seemed a force fit.  The old man says anything'll do, just apply yourself to it.  Mother says concentrate on business; some vague notion of where the money lay.  Did others have some insight or knowledge I hadn't?  The notions of Fate and Destiny had yet to, and for a good many years wouldn't, take shape in my mind.  And

 

 

moreover, the times they were A'Chang'in. Dropping a class in Police Science my second semester lost my 2S deferment.    Nine months in a 1967 L.A.  hot, smoglined, slaughterhousestench Vernon swing shift industrial neighborhood, paper bag factory:  One hundred degrees and one hundred-and-thirty decibels of hot glue and burning rubber, and beehive hair, gumchewing, cigarette smoking, nasty women, and

Southernignorant and cirrhotic men with fading tattoos - twelve, fifteen - twenty years and more at a machine, and this a dramatic improvement over Dearborn, Michigan, 1918.

Drafted at nineteen, I enlisted for an additional year, of which I continue to be ashamed, to study electronics and avoid combat, and more pointedly  my death.  Less than two years later, an interim during which I learned spit shine and harsh treatment, of Armybase Mexican border towns, barracks of young men

of every ilk, accent and background, but not so different, and of good friends and acquaintances, and of petty

thieves, gamblers, liars, and of a shower full of young black men all a glistened with white soap, and I

unnerved and intimidated at eight and ten inch common and longer penises  flaccid to their thighs and

wellmuscled physiques, all acquired at no effort.   Hard liquor, whores and homesickness, and in resentment, and distrust of the government, I was unexpectedly discharged into the spring of 1969.

A beautiful girl in Berkeley holds a flower and puts the stem into the barrel of a soldier's rifle and I think of Billy Bud  an angel among the profane; a wee babe in a pit of vipers the evil of which he knows not.

And a sociopathic Charlie Manson in his rapacious, acidnurtured villainy has gained ascendancy over the

minds of a sadly naive and hallucinated group of young girls.  They commit a grotesque murder, which is

playedout in the living rooms all across America across this hot summer.  The U.S. has put a man on the moon, and me of a mind to say the money should have been spent on more urgent social needs.

Woodstock, licorice papers and Columbian/Panamanian weed and the blond hair and blue eyes of a sometimes-high school girlfriend.  I am strong, can press two-twenty-five, and pull myself easily up and

through the small window of a highceiling bathroom and quietly to her room all in soft blues.  I'm electric

excitement and keen as a mountain leopard, down from his perch high in the tree without making a sound to the tall grass, moving slowly without thought over a smooth terrain now his to command.  This is what he's

built for, his entire existence focused to the scent locked deeply into his body, and his way is now not his own.  A single candle illumines an ornately golden-framed face mirror above its teacupsized brass fixture.  All is incensed to an Indian fragrance, and then I  and then sharply spiced as she gains my very life, and I  and the prey, now all alive and running for its life is caught and killed by the animal.  The forest is all animation and shrieking of primal life splitting my senses asunder it's renewed ascendance.   The leopard is now returned acalm to itself back through the tall grass to his lair; the warm blood taste in his mouth and nostrils is all, and I too up from those rose petalsmooth surfaces and timerounded ranges bewitched to deep creases all covered in spongelike soft mosses.  All passion is silence save the distant birds in the depth of a sylvan mystery - as yet not fully explored.

I'm wondering what to do, sitt'in on the couch try' in to read something, and those bastards made me get a final haircut.  Sure as hell don't want to spend the next whoknowshowlong here in my parent's house.

I'm twenty-one years old in the late spring of 1969.   I call Susan's mother; it's been a couple of years, but I

felt she always liked me  the mother I mean; Susan and I had been in love.   I couldn't think of anything else.  Susan might have something go' in on.   I had just gotten the pieceofshit Healy to run  Jesus what a fucked up deal; and the old man's pissed at me  man, if that ain't typical  this was his idea; not mine -

I'd wanted that white TR3, but he'd seen the Austin Healy advertised on the police bulletin board  and driving over to the hospital to pickup Susan, it must be around seven-thirty because it's getting dark, and now

I'm think' in about the model airplanes  same damn thing.  Curt and I had wanted Flying Tigers; had gone to the hobby shop; had shown them to him  we're twelve and thirteen years old  and no, not one plane for the both of us  Curt will take it for himself  that's just the way things will end up.  On Christmas morning  well guess what  the two big boxes  he'd gotten something that looked like a cargo plane; a big, molded plastic monstrosity and the engines were too little  you could see that right away  man; anybody could've.  

We tried, he tried  never could get them to fly; never off the ground  and again  he's pissed  and warns us in his youfuckedup kids, in your face style:  "... Don't say a goddamn word, got it  not a fuckin word...” Once again, he'd taken the advise of a policeman friend of his, and driving home that day from York Field,

I tell myself I'll never forget this  and I haven't.

 

 

Susan's in the biopsy laboratory  I walk in like I'd just seen her that morning and it'd been almost two years.    I had that nervous feeling in my gut, that ratchety feeling, as I hugged her, pulled away a little -

she is stiff  what'd I think would happen anyway  and, shit; this place smells of permanganate - formaldehyde  like a clammy morgue  like you'd imagine they'd smell like  slowly decomposing body parts in alcohol.  I wanted to get the hell out 'a there; take her out of there  right now.

I almost kissed her, just for a split second, and then backed away a step or so.  She is twenty years old now too, but still had that long blond hair, nice legs and full mouth I'd watched walking down the corridors four years before, and those late afternoons before her mother got home from work  sitt'in on her bed, or in the backseat of Paul's mother's Rambler.  I don't give one good god damn about the show; I want to get my hand up between her legs  more than anything in the world  and I'm work' in it  but it ain't happen' in.  Nobody was fucking in 1965  I just don't believe it  didn't then; don't now.  “Susan, if you were any more beautiful, they'd throw you in Jail.  I'm serious baby.   It'd be a crime to make all those men forget to go work; and the women; well, jealousy would bring the whole nation to a standstill”.  

"You smoked marijuana before."  "No, well not really; we tried it once I think  in the Army, but nothing happened; I don't think it was real."   "You smoke marijuana?"  says I; rather sarcastically  "well,

sure" (being cute)  "Tom turned me on to it."  "Tom  who's Tom; your boyfriend?"   "I thought I'd told

you  yeah, Tom Hudson  you'd like him."  Women always say this sort of thing  when all I can think about is him fucking her  and I don't like that a bit, and I haven't seen her in two years; and all that I'm think' in

about is the work I'd put into her  and now this asshole's fucking her  shit.   We're driving in my new VW  head' in toward Coco's  the safe thing  get something to eat  even though neither is hungry.  "You wanna

smoke a number?"  "Now?"  "Where?"  "You got some?"   "Yeah, I got some from Tom  told him you'd be coming by the hospital...” This guy gives his girlfriend some grass to smoke with another guy  somebody he doesn't even know  I'm think' in that this thing doesn't seem quite right.   I drive to the parking lot of the

high school  turnoff the headlights  you can see anybody coming from quarter of a mile.   The tape is

going  I don't remember what  she lights one up, and that unforgotten smell  that strong aroma and connection that accompanied me for the next several years  filled the car in a twinkling.  

I was a LuckyStrike man in the Army; but had quit  no  one never quits  I wasn't smoking at the

time  but, managed to draw down deeply and hold it in; and then again  three, four, five times.  Nothing -

I'm thinking  I don't feel anything.  Susan just smiling at me as if she knows something  and I am not aware

of the change  she's gotten absolutely beautiful; an angel  Jesus, and now the music has come to life  and

my body feels it  I'm all electric; like a low voltage is going through me, and it seems to be coming from my crotch; my balls, dick, or maybe my spine, my ass  I don't know  the whole area is involved.  I'm lost for

several minutes; where am I, and then the feeling of the what for, or the how, it must no longer be necessary - but in a flash those questions are gone, I must have forgotten, because I'm looking at Susan again  still

smiling. "What the hell's go' in on?"  "You're stoned, isn't it neat?"  "God damn  do you hear that music -

I mean  Jesus; listen to that - God!"  

            Maybe fifteen minutes goes by  "Let's get out' a here  let's walk around the field."  We've crossed the little bridge by the gym and are walk' in across the wet grass, head' in toward the football field.  I'm

laugh' in now; well a little  and smiling at Susan and think 'in maybe I should be in love with her again; then I remember Tom  seems weird  I look up to see a twelve foot chain link fence all around the football stadium and am surprised; not startled, even though there'd been no fence there two years ago; and we were going to sit in the bleachers and smoke the other number.  "Check that fence out; they've built a fence  well..."   and I'm look' in at Susan, we're kinda slow' in down as I look back, now only a few feet away from the fence  but no fence  nothing but the empty field  and it was there!  I stand still  a few seconds  man, now this is too much  that fence was there  absolutely no doubt about it  by some magic she made it vanish - wait a minute; that's crazy.  I'm amazed and now we're both laughing  this is so bitch'in  and I can smell her amongst the mist and wet grass, and I feel as though she's some wondrous creature  like I've never really understood women before this very second  this is so damn right  I reach out slowly and take hold of her face and kiss her  like the first time I've ever kissed; put my tongue deep in her mouth and licked all around; sucked on her tongue and bit her lips  and then along her back and up under her blouse. I am in love; big time.

 

 

I would give up my life for this; and that's no lie  whoops; I'm a bit too excited; forgot what the fuck

I'm do' in; fuck, I hate when that happens she's breath' in heavy, but very cool, and puts her arm out, pushing me back.  "I love you, Susan." "I know what you're feeling, but you really don't."   "Heh  I'm  really; this is it  I."   "I love Tom; he's so good; I told him about you, and he wanted me to have a good time.”  She starts to cry. All of sudden I'm aware of myself  I'm watching her cry, but it seems like a dispassionate study in anthropology; this is so fucking weird.

It took Susan a good, solid month to once again, fall in love with me, and now she was in love with two guys, but at least we were go' in to bed together.  She not a natural born lover; a certain amount of

frigidity induced by a proclivity to the mental; by an excess of self-analysis.  She had, though, learned the drill and went through the motions good enough; and besides, after being away for two years, I didn't have half-a dozen women scratching at my bedroom screen.  Now, I'm really into the shit.  Tom is a nice guy  and I do like him  kinda; not a mean bone in his body  but a total noth'in  wouldn't be anything without dope  and nobody can be aggressive  so uncool  and that's part of the problem with this  he uses his weakness; and as long as she, and he, and me smoke enough dope, the scene is cool, until one afternoon, he walks into her bedroom  and though I've got her on top of me and we're sort of pretzeled around each other, I happen to catch his eyes first; but just that quick, he's gone, and no anger  he's hurt like a little boy who has just walked in on his parents  and what really pissed me off  it worked; everything stops; she feels nothing but guilt  and if it hadn't been for evening summer school, ArtAppreciation 101, Natalie, and my lost car keys  twice in one week  that crazy shit may have gone on for who knows how long.

Natalie with the dark brown hair, green eyes and smooth white skin, was an average young girl of twenty-one, who worked at a mortgage company someplace in Whittier, laughed easily and with some excitement at my commentary and jokes, and was look' in to get married.    She had what I call a sturdy, but

unspectacular body - about five-seven, maybe one-thirty-five.  We went out together quite a few times over

that summer, down to beach, dinner, dancing, and up the coast for a couple of weekends in Solvang and Cambria, but she talked of houses and furniture, and how she just knew that I was going to be a successful

businessman.   She was easy to be with; no drugs or weird neuroses, but I wasn't ready for that.  I thought about getting out of it; although I wasn't experienced enough to let her go right away.  I'd only recently gotten out of the army and was just beginning to come into my own - you know - hadn't given up yet, and besides, as can be easily guessed; and though she wouldn't, and we never did get high for sex, and I tried to be satisfied. She too, was not a good lover; unable to disengage; too inhibited - and I wasn't near enough of a ringmaster in those days to even try making sure girls learned the steps, and completed all the events.   I'm sure today she's got four kids and a house in hills, a fat husband who neglects to kiss her, and never missed the difference.

I rent a cheap apartment festooned with doorway beads, black lights and posters I would pay five hundred dollars for today.  I grow long hair and a FuManchu mustache; wear paisley shirts and brightly

patched bellbottoms while watching and wondering in a group from the green graveyardcovered hills behind

the small college as the setting sun enlarges during its descent and nears the earth to our reddened and wondering eyes.  I take fifteen units, buy a new VW bug and have a weekend bartending job to supplement

the G.I. Bill.   This is a small, but clean bar; co-owned by my dad and his ex-stripper girlfriend, with a single

twenty-five cent pool table in heavily Mexican and whitetrash Los Angeles.  Next door and up and set back

off the street is a large house of doomed homosexual men and their alcohol and methyl and butyl nitrite  leering and enticements and grotesque characterizations, makeup, and futile sexual and over sexualized painpinioned, bloodied escape attempts.  I can just imagine what goes on in that house; stuff most people during 1970 didn't know existed.   I make friends easily with the regulars, routine drinkers and hopeless alcoholics, but respected and drew respect and knowledge from all.  

The skinny middleaged Indian man from Norman, Oklahoma and his two hundred and fifty pound Indian wife are ingratiating.  He wavers somewhat, but is supported by his cue stick, and she sits on the bar stool sipping beer and smoking Pall Malls  red hot tip ready to shove into the eye and be held firm with her thumb, should anyone make trouble for her man.  And the heavyset tool and die maker with an evil, squinted eye and sourdoughfat face; a crotchwatcher nicknamed Dirty Bob by the retired, but still wellbuilt co-owner; the downtown stripper who worked the day shift, and enjoyed teasing and confusing me with the potency of her seductive movement and strong sexual power given off in her closeness. My old man is fuck'in

 

this woman.  Jesus Christ - no wonder he never wanted to come home.  And this butter-tongued, friendly-

dangerous and perverse con man always ready to buy me a beer and distract me to his most recently collected pornography.

             A giant of a man, a Hyster mechanic in bib overalls and wrists as big as my thigh and hands like vises, wins a bet as he deflects from flat the face of a quarter between his thumb and forefinger to the disbelieving eyes of the regular attendees, myself included.    Some kind of gimmick or fakery?  No one, not even the pack of Mexicans now paying up, challenges this man.    Two bulldykes who may or may not have known each other, polite to me, but of a cruelty and harshness I had not the experience to appreciate, and the truly beautiful young women from timetotime would stop by to ask me had I seen so and so, you know she has short blond hair and single gold earring?   

One late Saturday afternoon as I stood behind the bar talking with a few of the regulars, my dad, in the company of two of the strangest looking men I had ever seen, walks in with a booze-tinctured smile on his face.  He begins showing these two around the place, as I, and the others, now startled to a bemused silence, watch in fascination.  The three of them have ambled across the floor and now stand over by the tank of Oscars, which my dad will surely misrepresent as Piranhas - directly under the mounted rack of a fifteen-point set of elk antlers.  They look up with necks craned as my dad gesticulates and renders richly for the umpteenth time, and in an ever-improving version, the apocryphal hunt that took place during the horrid winter of aught-five in the snow-thickened and frozen valley of the Yellowstone River.  During such hunt, and due solely to the heroic efforts of my great uncle George Pixley (a man in a thousand they say) as he stood alone against the elements of a vicious nature, and prevailing Odysseus-like over a cascading series of catastrophic, near insurmountable obstacles, saved an entire hamlet of snowbound emigrants from the horrors of a slow starvation.  In so doing, he produced as a salient legacy and unintended testament to his legendary accomplishments - and in addition to forgotten storerooms full of similar momentos in testimony to countless feats of equal bravery - now quite mysteriously lost to posterity - the renditions of which I'd been fed since childhood - such a splendid set of antlers to the never-ending awe of succeeding generations.

The story being told, and the remonstration of disbelief being assuaged handily by the master of guile and plausibility, the three of them return across the room amidst a chorus of   '…Well if that ain't the goddamnedest story I've heard in a month of Sundays; I sure don't what the hell it would be - shit; look at the size of that rack Luke - you ever see one bigger and with more of them points than that; I sure as hell haven't - and them's the horns - huh; them's the very one's after what yawl named this here bar?   Just as ya say, huh? - Well, I'll be damned.  What's ya think a them Luke?”  Luke, fixed in a perpetual countenance of child-like wonderment, looks all around the bar, and in the mode of the perpetually distracted, nods his impassive agreement.   “Did ya see them's fishes over thar, Luke  - them's pie-ran-yee - did ya see the way they went after that thar goldfish - sweet Jesus !  Yawl fall in with a bunch of them; they'll eat your pecker off first thing, and quick as ya please; then they'll all begin to a-feasting on ya, and they don't-a quit till there's noth'in but your skeleton thar - ain't that right George?”  “Well that's just about exactly right Mort - listen; I'd like to introduce you to my boy” - as the three of them now stand directly in front of me.   “Mort Sawyer - this is my son Rod”.  “Pleased to meet you Mort” - as I extend my hand.  He takes hold of my hand and turns his head sideways toward my dad.   “Hell-fire George; this here's ya boy, huh?” - through a sardonic smile as he looks me up and down - “Gots'em work' in for ya - do ya; well all right.   He a good-look 'in kid; course they's all got's that long hair nows-a-days - don't he look just like Alice's middle one Luke - dead ringer I'd say.”   Luke gazes at me with all the expression of a corpse, and never says a word.

My first impression of Mort was that of an overdone Hollywood characterization; a harlequin image of a motley Snuffy Smith - who just now had been extracted from a Max Sennet western film production, and made real before my eyes as if by some magic.     Mort stands about five-four, is bow-legged and pot-bellied and dressed in a pair of Wranger jeans - made prominent in a big silver buckle, bejeweled with a diamond-inlaid golden horseshoe - over which is loosely strapped, and hanging aslant in the imagined style of the true western gunslinger, a wide leather belt, complete with the dully shining obtuce tops of full bullet loops, and a holster cinched-off with a leather thong just above the right knee, in which resides a long-barreled, pearl-handled Colt 45.  On the other side, hangs a pair of vintage-looking, stainless steel handcuffs that clank together and jingle as he walks.   He wears a pair of vermilion ostrich-hide western boots, a white and red-checkered western-style shirt with a bright red vest and black kerchief - all topped-off with a ten gallon white

 

Stetson that appeared to be a size-too-large.   He has a sanguine complexion all about his red-whiskered, roundish face.  His red nose is bulbous and laced with whitish streaks among a profusion of little red veins, and beneath which a great red handlebar mustache covers much of his thinly-lipped pink mouth, and depends down past his chin. “Give us three beers here, Rod” - my dad says as we exchange knowing smiles.   I draw three beers and set them before Mort, Luke and my dad, who've just sat down at the bar.   “Mort is the under-sheriff out of Yazoo City, Mississippi, says my dad, and this here is Luke, his deputy.   Luke looks up, nodding his gargantuan head in the most simple-minded of acknowledgements, and as I watch, gives up trying to fit two of his fingers into the handle of the beer mug, and ends up wrapping his hand around it as though a tea-cup from my little sister's doll house.   Luke is Neanderthal-like; expressionless; with a garneted grayish pallor; the living incarnation of Lurch; a true pastiche of Guber from the Andy Griffith Show - only twice the size.  A manifestation of hideous gigantism; he has a mess of unruly brown hair, and a long, sloping forehead beneath which a pair of darkly blank shark-like orbs are set deeply into the recesses of heavily-boned, sunken sockets. The nose is very pronounced.   It has something of the Arab about it - Macaw-like - but lacks symmetry.  Beginning above the eye sockets, the bridge descends crookedly; out of kilter in a wide lumpy arch.  A considerable way above the promontory-like domed terminus, the beginnings of two nostrils emerge from the primary conical as indefinite bumps, then tiny cones, then in a long slide, they mushroom into two fully-developed bassoon-like flares, into which subtend two cavernous, black circles; vacuously black, black as night as you stare, arrested in a moment of transfixion - the size of large coins, but uneven - and from which issues a heavy inrushing and exhaling sound, unwittingly, as though your ear as somehow become cocked to the jungle, and by the aegis of some darkly mysterious phenomena, the etiology of which remains undiscovered, you become particularly attuned to the sleep sounds of a large and wild animal, now very near; near enough to touch - a water buffalo perhaps - as he slumbers undisturbed in a peaceful sleep.  The lower part of his mouth projects ludicrously from that of the upper and hangs open forming a perpetual ovaloid - bovine-like in its misalignment - as though the jawbone of some prairie ruminate had been gratuitously grafted in place; an experiment in grotesque humor perhaps, performed mischievously in the boredom of some modern day Dr. Frankenstein.  All and all, the face is somewhat trapezoidal, repulsive, and yet perversely fascinating, attractive even, in its advanced degree of hideous revulsion; a projection of menace; the menace of a gigantic Magyar barbarian - the very quintessence of a demented, incarnate stupidity.  He's of a very heavy though not fat build; stands about six-ten, well over three-hundred pounds, and is dressed in a hand-me-down, thread bare gray suit at least two sizes too small, from which the lower part of his arms and wrists protrude gorilla-like, and at the ends of which fidget inattentively a pair cycloptic hands unlike any seen since Samson heaved house-sized boulders at Roman charioteers two thousands years previous.   He wears a gunwale-sized pair of badly worn brown derby shoes above which extend the exposed lower part of his hairy legs as the tops of a worn-out pair of white socks have relaxed down about his ankles in a series of crumpled folds.  On the outside of the suit coat he's strapped-on a wide leather belt into which, and directly in front of his belly, is stuck one of the largest revolvers I've ever seen.  If Mort is the brains behind this outfit, Luke is definitely the muscle.

“What brings you two to Los Angeles?”  I ask casually, knowing it must be fugitive pick-up - my dad's been working Fugitive for about two years now.   “We got'sta pick us up a bad nigger - says Mort - and haul his black ass back home”.  “This is a bad'un too” - as he looks up at me with that knowing look which initially demarks a limited education, but is in fact borne from years of the self assurance that derives from geographic isolation and a paucity of experience.  “He butchered hisself a couple of elderly white women - raped 'em, then sliced 'em up good and proper with a straight razor he did.” “Yes-siree!” - he says through a repeating nodding of the head - “this'uns a real bad nigger”.   “Your dad here, tracked 'em to his sister's house here in LA; we had a good feel 'in that'd be where he'd be a head 'in - ah ha - yup”. “He'll be ourn by tomorr'ah.”   “You all got capital punishment back in Mississippi?”- I ask with an interested, and somewhat excited voice  “Yeah, we got it - but not for this here buck - no; he'll serve out his life at hard labor - he's good for 'bout forty yars on the gang - wouldn't ya say so Luke - 'bout forty yars - huh?”  For the first time Luke looks up thoughtfully and speaks with a well-considered deliberation, slowly as a silence being broken by the rumbling of a distant avalanche; as though the reverberating echoes of Paul Robeson practicing a base scale were being projected through a megaphone:  “Ah - well; yeah - a Mort - I've been a think'in on it - forty yars sounds 'bout right by me.”  

 

They finished their beers, and with my dad having some other form of entertainment in mind; said their good-byes amidst much guffawing and hearty shaking of the hand.  Out the three of them go into the late afternoon sun, in a continuing of good-hearted banter between my dad and Mort, while Luke walks along behind as though a well-domesticated oxen needing only an occasional 'come-on now Luke' from Mort.   I had to wait a few days for the rest of the story.    It seems that the prisoner exchange went smoothly enough, with Mort, during the compulsory strip-search, having only to admonish the prisoner one time to 'cover yo cock-o-balls when you stand before a white man' as a large black hand descends to cover a ten inch flaccid penis which hangs monstrously in front of a heavy black velveteen sack in which depend two avocado-like

testicles.  To a silent, but staring response:  “You ever see a heavier-hung buck than this'un?” - says Mort to no one in particular.  My dad is far from a bastion of liberality, but he felt compelled to draw the line, perhaps from a personal sense of right versus wrong, or maybe because of the insipient violation of the California Penal Code, when Mort ordered the prisoner into the trunk of the big Lincoln with Mississippi license plates parked in the secured lot in front of Parker Center.   “Hell, George - yawl can't be expect'n us to ride with

that stink' in nigger right up in car with us?   It ain't fitt'in - shit, he'll be a thrown-up all over us - look here, we made a real nice place for him.”  Mort points proudly to the trunk now made over with all the

appointments of comfort any murder' in nigger should be very pleased with.  “Yawl ain't got no complaints about this a' here - do ya boy?”  Mort addresses the shackled prisoner obliquely in a kindly tone of feigned Southern obeisance.  “No sah” in the much subdued, bug-eyed dejection common to the historically hopeless, as in the extremity of their powerless terror, they regard the inevitability of their demise in a vacuity of soulless resignation.  “Ya see thar George?”  Amid a continuing series of remonstration, my dad insisted resolutely, until in a palpable reluctance, and with a wordless movement of his head, Mort, accepting for the time-being at least, this wholly unexpected and foreign intrusion into his jurisdiction and time-honored code-of-Southern conduct, directed Luke to put the prisoner into the back seat.  They left without another word; without a handshake; and in a deep and powerful murmur, the big Lincoln moved slowly off.  Once outside the county-line, I can only guess as to the degree of comfort enjoyed by that 'bad nigger' on his journey back to Mississippi.

  On a cold winter's evening, two men come in from the street; a Mexican man in his early thirties accompanied by an Indian friend; a partner in petty crime I'm thinking.    These are a couple of predatory-

looking sons-a-bitches, but I get all sorts of blue-collar types in here, and haven't after a year or so, had to pull the 357 kept beneath the counter.  The Indian orders two pitchers of beer and pays in advance.   Again, I'm just twenty-one, hadn't as yet the experience; and poured the beer and took his money.   Within short order these two, who a few moments before, had appeared mostly sober, and now at the pool table, became drunken, raucous, loud, and gambled openly, which I knew could not be quietly ignored by me; no matter

whether actual patrons or Administrative Vice attempting a pinch.  This scene is unfolding, as my dad in plain

clothes, happened in with a meal for me of Philippine food - my favorite from a small, authentic joint around

the corner on Temple Street.   My dad's been on the department for what, twenty-five years by this time,

recognizes and doesn't want these two now, or their friends, next week, to set this place up as their own -

and the gambling continues:  “Hey, hey - no gambling; no gambling in here.”  They both stop on either side of the table and look.  “Who the fuck are you?” from the Indian as the fat Mexican walks over to the bar where he's left his beer and takes a stool, back to the pool table.  “I own this place; that's who the fuck I am - now get your ass out 'a here.”  “Hey man -- I just paid for this beer” and the Indian motions to the nearly empty first, and full second pitcher sitt'in on the small wooden table in the corner next to the pool table.  “I don't give a damn what you paid for; I told you to get your asses out 'a here, and I mean right now!”  The Mexican turns slightly to gaze at my dad, and me standing behind the bar, and slightly to the right of him.  He ignores his partner who stands directly behind him at the pool table, and, as he begins to return to his beer, without even a hint of concern or emotion, the Indian picks up the full pitcher.  The beer sloshes out all over the floor and pool table, as his arm makes ready to throw that two-quart, heavy glass beaker directly at us.   My dad's gun is out before the Indian's quite ready to release; he drops the pitcher on the floor and makes for the door, as my dad charges him, slips on the beer-soaked floor, regains his footing and disappears out the door in hot pursuit: “Come here you motherfucker!” and the sound of running leather shoes down the

sidewalk.  I've pulled my gun and have it at my side, as I alternately stare at the Mexican, who hasn't as much as twitched a muscle during the melee, and stare at the door, not knowing exactly what to expect.  The last

 

thirty to forty seconds have been like an automobile accident.  A minute or so goes by without anything, but one quick look by the Mexican in my direction.  My dad just then comes in through the door, out of breath, adrenalin pumping, over to the Mexican, grabs a handful of greasy black hair from behind, jerks his head back, and sticks the barrel of his 38 Special right into the soft flesh between the jaw bones; and loud; excited: “Get your fat, fuck'in ass out 'a my bar!”   As I write this, it's been thirty years, but this is a scene I'll carry with me till judgment day:  “Wait, man.”  says the Mexican, slow, and very cool. “I haven't finished my beer.”

 

I feel and express anger at the President, the war, the interlocking corporate directorates, the imperialism, the deceit and arrogance of office, the pillage, and the pollution.  Exultant in being fully weaned

and free, if unsatisfactory and incomplete in love, but trying to settle something not completely understood  to make love and be loved, and to sing, to speak my thoughts of admittedly unreinforced foundation, my resolutions and uncertainties.   

Eastern mysticism and yoga, running down a hillside  a mountainside  too fast  dodging boulders and cactus plants.  A musical renaissance:  The hallucinogenic geniusinspired music of a longhaired John

Lennon and the Savoy Brown, the Cream and Johnny Winter dueling with Rich Derringer at Fillmore West  eclectic, electric bodytwisting and moaning  heroin sound waves in blues of a brilliant hue spill forward in

splendorous bouquets, overflooded with greens and reds of unimagined force.   I stagger backward,

offbalance and speechless in an exultance nearly painful/suprasexual.    The Band and the Music from Big Pink, and Ten Years After, and the Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding

Company at Winterland, and Jimmy Hendrix at the Forum on a night during which I would have been

unsurprised had the entire auditorium gone off into orbit.   And another, a sleepless night with flowers

bursting forth with colors, palpable in their majesty and truth, impinging on the side of your face  cool

caresses and joy  such joy  and halos of brilliant light and spectral colors of heaven's own promise mirrored toward your eyes from your own face and head; your face beaming and resonant  a rainbow's radiance; your hair shimmering, and all in God's own glory.

One year delivering bottled water from a brightly yellow truck - one thousand Los Angeles County homes of putrid neglect and others of plasticcovered white couches and carpets; normal people, good people,

working people, worthless people, older women unafraid to touch and admire my curly hair  a family man's real work, good money, good job  but not for me.  Fall 1971  to two years at Humboldt State University in

search of, but never finding, a nicely bodied, smiling, freehaired girl of only very passing acquaintance, and earlymorning trees three hundred feet to a raincleaned sky with lower fogshrouded branches, which even in

a sunfilled midafternoon seemed to remain dusted with mist, and all above a shadedarkened and uneven dark green succulent and fernfilled, damp landscape  up to and over the side of the hill to where beams of sunlight would penetrate as through stainglass windows of an ancient cathedral.

I studied economics and history, smoked marijuana and lived in Gorilla Gulch, McKinleyville, California.   Fullbearded  a treehouse suspended among five smallsized firs and redwoods  fourteen feet in the air and two triangles of large beams and smaller seconds from local mills, butted at the bases  of used and salvaged sixteenpaned windows, and heavily wood shingled roof.  Altogether very small with a woodburning stove and indoor/outdoor toilet, and wellinsulated loft.  The nightly storm's wind causing the whole construction to flex and moan as a squarerigger at sea.

Big Jim was in his early thirties and lived right across the single lane county road on a twenty-acre, heavily overgrown parcel with his brother Pete, and an ever-revolving assortment of young girls dressed in

tight jeans and quick looks.  The parents were both dead, and the house, built by their great-grandfather during the initial cutting of these forests, was now in a state of advanced disrepair; decomposing and covered in swirls of mosses and vines.  The house was ramshackle; of three small bedrooms, thin walls; simple, with a single toilet; and the many-times patched tin roof sagged.  It was nearing a hundred years old.  It now noticeably lilted to one side, and the porch sloped nearly to the ground over a rotten and termite-ridden timber support.   The windows hadn't been opened in years.   A single pair of twisted black lines, falling in a long arch to the house from the lone power pole some thirty yards to the road, constitutes its sole and tenuous link with the rest of world.   The property is strewn with old logging machinery, rusted-out automobiles, and huge

 

 

original growth, redwood tree stumps.  Two tractors, one of a very early vintage, and the second and a crane, which both must be fifty years old, all abandoned many; many years ago; slowly subside in the thick mud as the property recedes from the rear of the house to its boundary.

Jim worked as a bartender at a honky tonk bar up by Trinidad.  The place is as any other honky tonk in the northwest.  It looks as though incomplete; only partially built; something always broken.   There is a twenty-man bar with four-legged red vinyl-covered stools with chrome legs.  There's sawdust on the floor,

two coin-operated pool tables, a single jukebox, and music stand.   The restrooms stink of urine coated with disinfectant, and the faucet at the sink is coldwater only, and leaks continuously in a thin reddish-brown stream that discolors and oxidizes the basin where it strikes.  The place is very popular with the local loggers and bikers.  Jim's hard to describe.  I wouldn't call him exactly a big guy.  He stood no more than six feet; maybe six-one, but he was thick with a bull neck; a magnificent physique and strong as hell.  Always wore Levi's and heavy black logger's boots.  Jim had spent his youth and early adulthood as a logger, a tree-topper. His hair was jet black, longish and combed straight back.   His eyes were black and piercing.  He had chiseled facial features and heavy dark skin; but smooth.  Jim was handsome as the devil - and an equal to his cunning.

On rainy days, and whenever the need arose, he drives a 1959 Ford pickup truck that barely runs.

Jim also had a pan-head chopper; his pride and joy, that was nice; chrome and black with baby-apes; real nice.  Jim and Pete both were intelligent guys, not smart; not educated, but alert and intelligent in their compact and efficient lives.  Jim's job was pretence, a condition of his probation; Pete didn't have any pretence at all.  Jim and Pete dealt drugs.  Even though I had been introduced to them six months previously, during an accidental circumstance by my landlord who had sold Jim a unit of 2x4's a couple of weeks beforehand, and for which Jim had not yet paid; I had only very recently been taken into the outer shell of Jim's confidence.   That's the way people are up here; clannish, careful and standoffish with strangers; resentful.   They deal amongst themselves in their own way; it's masculine.  The wood for example: Jim had his code; he makes a deal; that's the deal.   He'd pay for the wood, but you had to come to him to get your money.  

I bought a key of good Mexican weed from Jim for three hundred dollars, broke it into lids and sold them for fifteen dollars a piece to friends down south.  He'd sold weed and speed to the colony of hippies

who'd lived in the Gulch before Ken kicked everyone out - the potters, glassblowers, weavers, want-a-be tinsmiths, hangers-on; everyone.  I understood that it had been quite a menagerie.  Now I had the tree house, Ken had the front house, and the five acres was empty of broken down VW vans, old school buses, and tents.

I began to go up to the bar in Trinidad, smoked some weed on the way up, drank beer, played pool and talked to Jim.    Well, you don't exactly talk to Jim.  Jim talks to you, sometimes to practice being friendly, a human trait in which he was sorely lacking, or more often than not, and only after he figured out enough about you to trust you, to ask you questions, and maybe talk a little business.   I'd never met anybody like him, not in the

army, not anyplace.    I admired and envied him.   It was important to me that he accept me.  I needed the validation.   No body fucked around with big Jim.  He was the alpha male within his realm, and had no foreign interests.

              I was actually thrilled one day when he asked me to help him take the transmission out of his truck. Maybe he'd turn me on to one the chicks; pussy is a real bitch up here; a lot more men than women. It was a short job.  No chicks.  He broke out some dope and six-pack of Fisher beer, and we got stoned out in front of

his place.  I never did see the inside.   He told me in an unexpectedly melodramatic manner, about his six years in Soledad for attempted murder.  “It was just of things, man; I couldn't do noth'in else.  The dude had it coming, man.   I'm surprised that he lived.”    “That place is like the moon man; it's another planet; filled with some really bad dudes.  I don't mean criminals, man; lots of them guys down there are crazy.   I don't think I could do another stretch.”    Big Jim made his living selling dope - he didn't consider dope a crime.

I'm up in the tree house one afternoon in Spring, read' in or something; I was trying to get through school; get my degree.    The weather was fine, bright and clear with only a hint of a chill.  Jim comes roaring up on his bike, with a big blond on the rear.  He's got on his Levi jacket with the arms cut-away at the

shoulders, a blue bandana, and wrap-around dark glasses.   His arms are tattooed, muscular and impressive.  The girl's got on much the same.  She is strikingly pretty, beautiful even, at five-eight and say one-forty.   She

has a single tattoo of a rose on her upper right arm.     Jim brings the bike to a stop about five feet from the

 

bottom of the outside stairs, and kicks out the rest.   She gets off, and then he does.  She leads the way up the two flights of steps; stops for a moment on the threshold, then turns back and looks at Jim.  “Go ahead” from Jim, motioning her to go on in.  “Rose wanted to come take a look at the tree house, man; hope you don't mind.”   “No man; she's welcome, come on in.”   “Oh - a; Rod - this is Rose.”  We exchange greetings; I can see she's in her early twenties.   Jim and I step back out onto the porch as Rose looks around inside; ooing and ohing.   Jim stands with his arms folded in front of him; his legs spread; moving slightly to and fro.   “I wants' ya to help me fix the porch today.”  “Fuck'in A, Jimmy, I can't do that today; I got' a finish a book, and I got two tests tomorrow.”   Jim lowers his head, smiles a little and walks around me to the other side.  “Fuck that shit man; I swear, sometimes I don't know what the hell's wrong with you?”  “It'll only take a couple of hours, man.”  “Alright, OK.”  “What'ya think of Rose?”  As he turns his head to the side, looks directly at me, and issues this as though an important and challenging question, the answer to which he's wait' in to hear.  “She's look' in primo from here, Jimmy.”  “Yeah - she is.”  “I just got her - look at her man; ain't she something - and she's good too; real good.”  “Just down from Seattle”  “I'm go' in to get her a job up at Mickey's where I can keep an eye on her.   Every motherfucker in the county go' in to be after this one.”

A sevenweek summer vacation in 1972  feeling so clear, good and free.  Hiking to the top of Mt. Whitney and looking upward at night to a sky now so visibly near and so completely salted with stars and

every manner of celestial wonder that my perception was immediately distorted  I could not discern the

totally bright from what must be a ubiquity of darkness  bewildered at the glorious scene furnished so fully by God, I turned several times and fell to my side.   Driving the coast to Canada, swimming in the rushing American river; rinsing my shoulderlength hair in cold moving water  to be quickdried and curled in the hot

sun  and I've never parted my hair since.   Looking for a moderate mountainside each day and climbing two,

three, or four thousand feet in control of my body  now on two feet moving rhythmically and then using my hands as well to maneuver up and over large tree trunks and boulders, but always up toward the top  like a wonderful machine I thought.

           Stopped and searched at the border  my car nearly disassembled  "Where's your marijuana?"   from an unexpectedly unfriendly Canadian guard.    Had it in his hand  stripped to the consistency of cigarette

tobacco inside a pharmaceuticalbrown pill bottle with wraparound label and the small sheet metal and plastic rolling machine  returning both to the side pocket of my backpack without recognition  Deliverance!  A wilderness of impenetrable majesty  a huge Canadian Rockies viewscape of greens, browns, whites and a panoply of translucent but bright flower fields  of campsitedismantling bears and mosquitoes beyond count.

Down from Calgary through the Yellowstone of my grandfather's and great uncle's boyhoods  a region rinsed in the natural beauty of mountain ranges and stands of fir and whitetrunked spruce and poplars  and of the

summer storms and a single summer storm vivid in my memory  oncoming as I stood on a small hill near Butte, Montana  a hugely exciting/thrilling sight  the entire panorama now gone dark as I stand witness

awestruck  the prairie grasses are startled to attention and I too, and I hear and smell  blinding flashes  a

piercing  and I am a discontinuity of consciousness, a reduction of thought  and now I react only  a tremble and horripilation of flesh. Down from Olympus rides Zeus in the company of Titans, and with a wave and then another, their hands have unleashed a shrapneling of whitehot lightening bolts now there and gone, but again and again, and on they continue  a battlefield manifest of unseen gods  hidden amongst and within the black cloud masses.  The wind is stripped of its air and in its place there is a magnetic charge, and a tightening contraction of my skin - my hair has become electrified and now strains straight away  for minutes and more this war continues - discordant explosions and brightlight javelins.  Time is frozen still and I too, and still oncoming the mountainsized stormblack and gray billows of nature's own frantic necessity  rolling and swirling; spiraling into and over themselves and oncoming still toward the small hill where I stand with hoops and hollers and outstretched arms, and now all around  spilling forth overfull measures, great libations of rain and ice, and the whole sky a thunderous plangency  a shrieking ululation from on high!

I ask myself of beauty, of expression, of movement, of mind; incarnate beauty and aesthetic love and now I know it to be that which houses the true heritage of humankind: A clue discovered; a formula to the

torch bearers among us, to the heart full of brave and steady soul  by the agency of their love, courage and

steadiness are attracted to that which will produce the greatest advantage toward survivorship and stewardship of the planet and races.

 

 

Another year of school, and now an attic room in the house of a friend of wealthy family in Kneeland, east of Eureka some eight miles and a thousand feet of elevation, twenty acres, but a guest only.  I remember a somewhat overweight dumpling of a girl of attractive attentiveness, a name that I've forgotten and a face now only vaguely remembered; a classroom friend, an "A" student, a smile in my loneliness, a shorttime study partner.   And in her kitchen, an invitation to her bed caught me flatfooted  surprised, I demurred to face Hydelike viciousness, a torrent of insults and an order, thrice repeated, to leave without delay.

A diploma and then on to Redwood City and another collegemade friend, but this time of more wealth still  and a summer spent at minimum wage plus room and board, building for him and his wife a beautiful house  digging postholes, clearing brush.  And an offer to enter the business of investment research, counseling and the handling of other people's money.   He was, as his fate would have it, the embodiment of a

forced personality, a megalomaniac young Jew who I may have imagined over an evening of shared and strong weed, suspected me of insincerity, and I did not know if I was or not  a crime I assumed he would punish with death.  In the morning I am gone from this house, this wife and young son, and this soontobe very wealthy young man.  I am twenty-five as the summer of 1973 turns to fall.

 

I am broke, discouraged and vaguely surprised at my lack of what to me would be acceptable

alternatives.  I head south to stay in the recently parentvacated house in Whittier.  I will get a job, do something  join the Police Department  be a policeman, or a fireman  I would start at a higher rate than

those without a degree, and took this fancy so far as to believe I would rise through the ranks quickly, but even in this extremity, I looked upon the thing with a foreboding.

            Thus my educated self spoke unto me, and bid me go forth to my destruction.  In all candor, the most honest, but most often ignored participant within my mental apparatus, couldn't feature me being a policeman,

or much of anything else for that matter, and I am sure had I done so, it would have ended regrettably; most

probably in an emotional meltdown, which would have carried over into some form of horrendous

misallocation of my human potential:  How about a lifelong job as a service station attendant, dishwasher, or

some equally low stress job.   The rub in all this?  This most honest observer I've come to recognize is also quite incapable of offering reasonable alternatives  seems he insists on the life of a bard, or perhaps a traveling minstrel, a vagabond, a Gypsy, a joker, a smoker, a midnight toker.  I have been deprived of my sight; but in its place have been given the gift of sweet song.

I have a general thought on social conditioning, and what the observant among us have all been witness to during the last half century, and of which I hear so little:  The notion that some or many or most

types of occupations, or social environments, may be so totally unsuitable to certain types of humans, and that all thought of alliance with such should be discarded at once, was at best, foreign to my mental development.

One simply forces oneself to adapt and that's that.   Now why would I, or anyone so presume?  I was reliant

upon myself you see  having had no education and little experience to the contrary.  Moreover, and it is

indeed unfortunate, as an individual that is, that youthful inexperience and strength seem to couple to imbue one with a cavalier attitude, a peculiar sense of invulnerability.  I say this with full recognition that this biology is necessary for early marriages, mountaineering, skydiving, the Marines, ingesting hallucinogenic drugs and the continuation of modern economy.  I can only believe, should the evidence of my own senses not deceive me, that such is true for most all of those forced from the prescribed lives predating the fractionation of class and craftbased familial lineages  a set of circumstances quite recent actually  with slow beginning in the later decades of the nineteenth century, taking ever more firm hold, and growing interlarded during the

intervening years with and among educational structures, which in themselves, developing ever more precise

divisions in knowledge and technical specialties, small business and corporate structures forming as though a

natural or organic consequence of the juxtaposition of the ingredients  a chemical synthesis if you will - and

is brought forth:  A mass serialization, or should I say distraction or mesmerism of the populous  quite like

the unfolding of a poorly written short story of strange and oddly developed characters of easily appeased

appetites, and then it repeats in minor variation, endlessly.

             The past is no longer revered, or even known; ancestors are certainly unknown. The future is

limitless; all eyes to the front, and minds are emptied of subtlety and beauty.  And should a head be raised to a

sense of unfulfilled expectancy  the casting of an uneasy shadow, fear not!  a standardized remedy is at hand

 

 all that is required is to run to Las Vegas for the really good time you deserve, or tunein the television, from

which, when watched long enough, firm direction will be given on all manner of personal and social

interdynamics, or read any one of a large number of popularized magazines, making sure to pay particularly close attention to the advertisements, or one may always talk to a friend, or pickup the travel section, visit a psychologist, fly a kite, or better yet, for a really longterm solution  find a cause.  Almost any one will do -

love Jesus, raise the flag, praise the prostitute, fly the banner, adopt the platform, wear it all as medallions on the outside of the right hand pocket of your very best blue blazer.  A 'True Believer', you stride forth boldly like a MayDay Russian General.  Epaulettes glimmer on your collar; in full regalia; chevrons a' shimmering, pretending to, but never having actually fought so many battles, nor bothered with the difficult work of historical relevance and logical philosophy.   "Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream, for the soul is dead that slumbers and things are not what they seem  life is real, life is earnest..."

All to avoid that alltofamiliar beckoning; yes here it is once again  hello, remember me?  Have you solved the riddle yet?  Rid yourself of the curse?  You know the really old one  a legacy left by your

lineage, or perhaps by your thirdgrade teacher, who very well may have been a witch ... strange brew  ...  Shit!  Listen man, I'm doing the best I can now; the right thing - well I know, but I have my responsibilities,

and, and I really can't take the danger  you know  lost my fortitude, became frightened.   What?  I don't know where  ran into hidden rock; it's a slow leak; a bad valve  hell, I don't know.  Hey, listen  I fully intend ... but I have serious and legitimate concerns:  I may not be able to muster the resolve, the discipline  and this may all be a result of a heretofore unrecognized medical condition  yes  a psychiatric condition, perhaps not too serious, but adequate to cause a misdirected attention; yes, that's it  a head full of silly notions; a tendency toward the quixotic.    An errant obsession with freedom has befuddled my mind!

            At work, I had begun speaking to my colleagues with a certain insouciance, as though I am disconnected and reality lay elsewhere, but in fact, at times I do get desperate  a little pale  a little nervous,

I check the mail box more often than necessary, and wash my face in cool water with a frequency, and again -

unnecessary, and the eyes in the mirror  less than well focused  a slight reddening of the cornea and the pupil is a bit dilated, and all in all, somewhat distant.  I look out the window to see the flag is at half-mast.  Great! Oh, good - it's finally come.  We all get the afternoon off to attend our own funerals, but wait; how long will the service last?   The mourning - shall I dress in black?  How long will it continue?   Will I continue to be required to perform even though I am dead?   So tell me; I beseech you:   '… Is there; is there balm in Gilead. Oh, sweet nepenthe...'

I was once told of a well-recognized economist, also well versed in physics, recognizing the system similarities and parallels between the dynamics of modernday social macroeconomics and the interrelationships and manifestation within the electrochemical/physical realm.  Now, this came as quite a revelation to him, but to me  not at all.   So the development of a highly differentiated social environment is

not some malignancy; on the contrary, it's quite natural.  The problem is the same as with radiant light

spectroscopy, gravity and the kinetic energy imparted by my fourteen-year-old to the baseball, a hardball on a recent sunny afternoon, during which my glove must have been somewhat misaligned, for said ball struck me

on the left side of my head.  The system, if you will, takes precious little account of the foibles, inattention and irreverent impulses of us humans.  Perhaps I'm making progress, but before I depart this train, I have

confidence that another; a person of reason and balance, of heightened sensitivity and insight, of wellseasoned thought and perspicacity  shall reduce all this to the commonplace  that which only appears to be a contrivance of great dissonance, contradiction and confusion.

 I am not a helicopter pilot; I am not a policeman, because I cannot see well enough to beat my twelve-year-old daughter at badminton.  I have no binocular vision and as a derivative thereof, have poor

depth perception.  Which of the checkered triangles is closer to you?  The one on the  pause  left?  How about now?  longer pause  I'm really straining now  goddamnit.  The one on the bottom  firmly. Well, my

intonation was unconvincing, and I had recently bought a light blue doublestretch net woven from

ZacharyAll at the corner of Wilshire and LaCieniga.  Having seen the fabric and store advertised on 'Star

Trek', I hooked my little sister by the arm and drove the fifty miles to meet with Mr. All.  He suited me up,

pulled around at my crotch, adjusted the shoulders, turned me around, and pronounced me one of the finest fits in his recent memory, and for only ninety-five dollars.  And now I had this suit.  I registered with an

 

 

employment agency, and in some few weeks got a job as a management trainee at a Federal Mogul Oring

fabrication plant in Downey  I would work the graveyard shift in and among the same nasty women and men I had left at the paper bag company, but now on a five hundred and seventy-five dollar per month salary,

which one of my quicklymade friends, recent employee, excellent chess player  confided to me was a real scandal.  I'm not sure what I want to do with my life, but I'll tell you one thing - this isn't it.  I was depressed, thoroughly, clinically  so it had come to this?!  All my carefully considered social philosophies and prognostications were naught, were dust, nothing.  Everything of nobility and promise, I think, and most prophetically of the future, eventually become hollow of substance, and fail ignominiously.

I was so low down  and to my rescue comes a friend with an offering, an unsoughtafter, but eagerly accepted gift of six hits of window pane  straight Sandoz25.   It is said that the best gifts come in

small packages  a section of scotch tape adequate to cover all six wouldn't have been wide enough to cover

the American flag designed within the most common thirty-three cent postage stamp.  I am still not altogether clear as to the chemistry that allowed such a minutia of matter to so thoroughly tincture my thinking.  The ensuing interlude both changed and defined the future course of the rest of my life, quite simply, and reinforced a notion I have long held  that is  that life cannot be planned or unplanned  the idea should be

banished - what rubbish.  Life is in fact determined by the merest of chimeras'  a fancied agenda derivative of a chance meeting here, or a stroke of luck there, or an illchosen word now, or an unfortunate and unexpected outcome to a wellplanned venture.

It rained for eleven days straight in January 1974; the same month I accepted my second real job with Transamerica Corporation; one of several hundred properly dressed young people on the twentieth floor

looking out over a gray, wet Los Angeles.  In three months I would finish the apprenticeship and take my

place as a fullfledged Cobol programmer; just imagine.   The fly in the ointment, however, was my

welltrimmed, one-week beard, the prohibition of which, I was told, must have been absent from my personnel department briefing.  Against company policy you see  the beard must be gone by tomorrow:  "You will have to shave the beard".   First off, says I, as though the world could not wait to hear my analysis; there is no such thing as company policy respecting this sort of thing; somebody here doesn't like beards, and has decided to add this bit of insult to the general injury wrought by this entire scene, and secondly, I do not, and just recently, have to do anything - which most certainly includes shaving.    I left that afternoon and spent the next three years like Moses, but without the guidance and reassurance of God.

Leaving Whittier, which had become unacceptably depressing, I imposed on a friend in Newport

Beach and once again, a few months later, in Costa Mesa  desperation has no shame  and after several weeks of learning that smalltime menial jobs are not enthusiastic of aspiring geniuses, or any college graduate for that matter, a proper lie on an application form secured a position in the crate making corner of a factory in Irvine - three dollars and ten cents per hour, a high school dropout for an immediate supervisor, and gungoh Mormons to the right and left of me explained that, yes, the wages are somewhat low, but the real money is made on overtime.  I realized I was making progress because statements like that no longer stunned me. This is a fiftyhour per week job; pay - forty hours. Four months later, the day I would hear the result of my performance review, I fully expected that I would now, at least, be elevated to the four dollars and sixty-cents per hour my predecessor had been making, “...  you've done a good job and beginning on Monday your new rate will be three dollars and twenty-five cents per hour".  I arranged to have my existing hernia happen at work.  Airco Cryogenics paid for the operation; I quit without explanation, resigned myself thenceforward to despair, and accepted the life of the vagabond it seemed was my destiny.

 

             I lost fifteen pounds on a diet of TopRamen before gaining the favor of Johnny Zinn.  Johnny was one of those men around five-seven, thickly built with a moist, smooth, angular face, thinning straight blond

hair and piercing, squinted, but moist blue eyes; a man amongst men who never lost a night's sleep to remorse or uncertainty.  Johnny was fortunate in the anatomical way that God seems to bestow without good reason: You get one, but you and you and you ... and you don't, and you get one, and so it goes  totally random.  Johnny truly had a huge cock; from the outline it left in his pants, it looked as big around as a banana and hung halfway down to his knee.  He put it to good use, and it served him well.   “A man should always do what he does best.”  Johnny was never at a loss for something brief and poignant to say.

 

 

A Beat, an image of Neal Cassidy, and after a boyhood of infrequent meals in the backwoods of Arkansas, and a stint in the army where he ate steady for the first time in his life, and must have been one hell of a hit with the German whores, he made his way to Los Angeles in 1955, got a job with the Times, and a variety of middleage women - no shit; the stories Johnny would tell of laying siege to, and assaulting these cloistered women with that canon of his - leaving them flushed and whispery at the end of the hall, and all in a matter-of-fact manner reminiscent of a retired military man recalling details of favorite campaigns from the Spring of his life, would give ya' a blue veiner; and Johnny was not a liar.  “I hate two things - liars and flies.”  “I could be sitt'in here eating a plate of shit, and if a fly landed on it; I'd throw up.”   By 1974, he had actually made a success of himself; or should I say, from my twenty-six year old point of view; a hell of a success: Two homes, stocks, cars, and a good-looking Brazilian wife.  Johnny had a pragmatic philosophy, which could be gathered together in a simple axiom:  "If you can't fuckem by midnight, you can't fuckem."   I threw seven hundred of Johnny's five thousand newspapers each and every morning from two-thirty to four-thirty in the morning, or five on Sundays, onto the dark driveways and porches of seven hundred very nice Corona Del Mar houses for three hundred and sixty-five dollars per month in the form of a personal check from Johnny, which one month I left in a shirt pocket while at the laundry.  Johnny made good on it, but with the admonition "... that's what you get for having two shirts."

         There were, other than myself, and not including Johnny, five others throwing Johnny's papers.    I remember three of them:  Dave was about my age and from a monied family in Newport Beach; but his parents, finally having had their fill of loafing, begging for money, and late night drunkenness, booted him out of the at age twenty-three.   Dave was one those very likable guys whom, and because of either parental over-indulgence, or neglect during childhood, never makes the transition to a full adult life, or even to that of a satisfactory perennial teenager.   Since this was only a three-hour per day job, and Dave never had the money to get out 'a sight; he mostly showed-up every day and threw his route.  Dave had been doing this for three years and was Johnny's longest-term employee.   Johnny always had Dave on probation.  The only other guy I remember, a dark-haired, slim young man that young girls everywhere call cute, and again about my age, but married for a couple of years to really petty dark-haired girl with a two or three year old daughter, was named Steve.   Not a mean bone in his body, and always with the smile of the guiltless upon his face, he was a young example of  the terrible attraction, and the destructive power of alcohol and drugs, that to a certain type of personality, is final.   I've seen the same thing among the low, the average and the well educated.  There's only one type.  Steve's wife loved him in that same way certain women, and men too, of limited or twisted, mental or emotion depth, love each other.    I remember having a short talk with her one afternoon in the living room of their small, rented house in Costa Mesa, while Steve was away, undoubtedly getting another six-pack or scoring some coke.    She immediately wanted to talk about Steve as though he was her misbehaving son.   This was exactly the point I kept trying to drive home to her; that her relationship was badly flawed and could never be put right.   Steve not only wouldn't, but also couldn't then, and most probably never would, be different from what he was now.  People don't change; they only get worse.

I do very well remember a short, stout, black girl named Jetty - an octoroon.  How could I forget Jetty?  She also threw papers for Johnny at night.  She was twenty, not what most men would call pretty, with a plump, oval face, very short hair and small breasts, but then she had that truly magnificent ass common on

young, well-turned-out black girls.  She had a different and interesting honesty, and a method of both appreciating and easily extracting what one desires of life.  She liked me and the way I sang and played harmonica.  She spoke of taking motorcycle lessons and learning to the sing the blues.  Never having had much to do with black girls, and vividly remembering the size of the cocks on the black guys I'd known in the

service, and their discussions of sex concerning their 'whores and bitches', I was somewhat standoffish, contenting myself to flirt, which we did every day, and joked around quite a bit.   Watching her night after night, jumping around in her tight jeans, folding papers, and putting them into her car, made my stomach hurt. I don't remember if this had been going on for a couple of weeks or a month, but one night as we both happened to finish-up at about the same time, she asked me to come home with her - to see her pad and piano; maybe we could do some music together.   She was living in Huntington Beach in a rented house along with her sister and her sister's boyfriend.   I was nervous walk' in there at four o'clock in the morning.  Even though she held my hand, smiling like hell, and assured me, once again, that she didn't have a boyfriend or an

 

 

ex-husband I'd should know something about, I couldn't for some several minutes, lose the notion that some big spade was in there wait' in to fuck me up.  

The house was empty.   I made sure of this during a trip to the bathroom as she fixed-up some

breakfast.    She put on some music; we ate some of the omelets, and smoked a number.    I was still kind 'a nervous, but calming down.  She was nothing but cool, and began to dance by herself in the middle of the

living room as I sat on the couch and watched.   She started with slow movements of her torso, swaying in

in time to the backbeat of the music, singing along, then a quick turn and a spin, coming back around front to

kick her leg out and then continue right along - man, no white girl as yet, had ever done anything like in front

of me.  I was talk' in to her now, and singing along with her as the marijuana began to come on.  She danced for about five minutes, but it seemed much longer, and now stood directly in front of me, murmuring, and legs together, swaying between my legs as I continued my relaxed position on the couch.    I was getting that

electric feeling all over and not knowing if I had a hard-on or not, I got to my feet and pulled her to me.

Now we were both swaying and kissing with our hands all over each other, and soon she was holding tight to

my mid-section, biting my ear and the side of my neck.  I only had hold of her ass, a full bun in each hand - squeezing and mov'in em around.   I sat back down on the couch and slowly took her clothes off - her body

was firm and hot, and her hard breasts and belly were glistening with a light sweat-sheen, and her pubic hair was damp and smelled deeply rich of a light musk.    Another minute or two goes by, bending down and then

straightening back up with my shirt off, kissing, biting and fondling each other.  Then I pick her up and move

into her bedroom where we spend the next two hours on her bed, on the floor, standing up half way in between each, making unrestrained, mind bending, transporting love until the sun was well up in the morning

sky.   Without being madly in love, which tends to confuse, Jetty was my pet; we were friends, and great sex

partners.  She is the pure - non-possessive, uninhibited; intuited that I had fallen into a hopeless love with another, but didn't seem to care.  She is free and easy.  She is young, and loved me as she loved others.  Our

work banter, breakfast talk, and weekly trysts in her bedroom were the sole reason I didn't go completely

insane over Ann.  I didn't love Jenny as I loved Ann, but hadn't as yet the experience to know that this was the perfect love; the small and fruitful one.   I'd give damn near anything to be there again, and have such a good woman here now.

Seventyfive dollars of the three sixty-five was paid to a really quite ugly Swedish women in exchange for an unheated, converted pantry in her Laguna Beach house; a small toilet inside and a cold -water-only shower outside on the patio and it was winter and her onesided discussion of the Rose Parade,

while I nodded in pretended agreement, was the last straw, the short one.  I took my guitar, my books, said

goodbye to the young drifter returned recently from Jamaica where local rum, he said, could be had for fifty

cents a quart and the ganja, well, whole cigars could be fashioned for the cost of a Popsicle  and moved to a second story room at the BalBoa Hotel; second room from the street for eighty-five dollars per month  much nicer accommodations.

The proprietress kept her family downstairs.  The upstairs of eight small rooms, the common shower and toilet down the hall, and the kitchen downstairs, was home to six others  four in transition, one permanently stranded singer in a Barbershop quartet, and one internally rotting, stinking, papyrusskinned

alcoholic of indeterminate age.  Continuing to throw papers, and haunted by grotesque visions of a decent to

the realm of carnival sideshow freak - the geek in the pit, I directed my afternoons to playing guitar,

harmonica and singing for whatever audience of preferably young and female admirers might happen to stroll

by my amphitheaterlike alcove, which formed the main entrance to the shutin amusement park, located just

to the left of the terminus of the islandpeninsula auto ferry.  And a swarthy young urchin, who loved to hear

me sing, would make love for food, beer, whiskey, a joint, cigarettes, or because it was one in the afternoon and she knew I wasn't quite up and around yet.  I had stopped marijuana (mostly) and the taking of all hallucinogens now for about a year; had not as yet done speed, and didn't get the point of cocaine after unthinkingly trying a line through a head cold had resulted in zero affect.   "I don't think Hank done it thisa-way ... tell me one more time - just so I'll understand, did 'ol Hank really do it this way?"

The very early morning, before the first faint tint of blue emerges from the night, finds me walking along the sand and onto the Newport Beach pier, sharing with the seagulls and early morning fishermen all the blues, songs and ballads I could remember  harmonica cupped to mouth.   “... Look 'in for a hardheaded

 

 

woman, headed woman; someone to make me do-oo my be-e-est; and when I find my hardheaded woman,

I know the rest of my life will be blessed - oh, yes...”  Her name was Ann.  It's been a good, long time since last I've seen her, and it's only now; reconciled and unburden of the fear of my own vulnerability and

inadequacy, do I know, that she was not then, and never will be the possession of any one man.   I'd only thought I'd been in love before or since.   It ebbs and flows; scalds and sears me for six months.  I am mad with frustration.  I didn't know any better.

I fell in love with her the first night.   “Say, I went to see the South Coast Repertory Company last week.  I hadn't heard much about them, but apparently they've recently gotten together a little theatre up on Harbor - they put on 'Tartuffe'; it was wonderful”.   “You got Tuesday nights off, don't you?”  “Yes”  “Listen, I'd consider it a pleasure if we could go together - next Tuesday night.  They're putting on 'As You Like It'; I'm sure it'll be great.”  “I didn't know you liked plays?”  “Sure - I'm not what you'd call a

connoisseur exactly, but I appreciate the intimacy of the acting; the immediacy; it's a whole lot better than go' in to the movies.  Besides, I've read Moliere and some of Shakespeare.”   “Well - yeah, I'd love to go see a play; I'll meet you there; you know I live in Santa Ana - I'll drive myself - what time does it start?”  “Eight o'clock”   “OK” as she lays that beautiful smile on me - “Now, I'm all excited.”    “Great - a - ya know, I'd

been try' in the screw-up the courage to ask you out, and …”  “Oh” and a less enthusiastic  “Really?”  “That's

a fact, Ann”  “I'll see you next Tuesday at eight - out in front of the theatre.”  “Good.”   I walk away going over what I'd said, and felt immature and foolish.

It's after the play and we walk over to a park a couple of blocks away.  It's dark, but the park is illuminated by walkway lights along its corridors.  I'm nervous as I put my arm around her shoulder.  We stroll across the grass a few steps as she pulls away a little, turns quickly to face me, puts her hands on my upper arms and gives my biceps a gentle squeeze while staring intently into my eyes - as if to ask 'who are you?'   Her hands trail down my arms as she draws nearer; we kiss quickly; she pulls back away ten or so feet

further onto the grass, and begins to sway and move in a devilish jazz-dance choreography.    She doesn't do

this to enchant or seduce me - she does this because it expresses her mood as manifest in her body at that

moment.  It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen; so vampish and physically extemporaneous -- on a shimmering and gleaming lawn in the late winter of my twenty-sixth year.   

 

“ … She goes to see her preacher; she goes there for prayer - she leave the preacher's house;

O Lord, when she leaves there - you gots' ta watch that mess, boy - you could be on the -- kill' in floor…”

 

A master's degree in American Literature, a partially completed novel, several short stories, a reader, an angular, but somehow fragile face now lost in the mist, a beautifully featured twenty-six year old blond haired, blueeyed jazzballet dancer, a waitress at a twenty-four hour breakfast/chili place who smoked Sherman's and introduced me to Thomas Pynchon and Gravity's Rainbow.  Ann is an unfinished masterpiece. I drive her 1953 Desoto, and she drives me crazy.  A sorceress who attacks me in my sleep, and who fills my

every thought when awake.  She both admires and defiles me; robs of my dignity, and deprives me of my rest.

Nothing like her had been seen since Alaric the Hun sacked Rome in 410 A.D.  I love her as I've never loved

anyone  anything  in all of my existence.  This is, however, a tragedy; a hopeless love.  She loves me like

she loves the front page of Rolling Stone.  A novelty; a passing curiosity only; a pondered subject for her new

book.   I would jump off the Golden Gate Bridge  anything to possess her.  Let me sing to you; hear my

song while I can remember the words; while my lungs remain able to carry the melody to my voice - before I am dissolved in exhaustion; hurry -- while you are still able to hear; before it is too late.

She is a passing comet; a celestial wonder; the beautiful; never in my lifetime to return, but the timing is all wrong. I wasn't enough, didn't have enough, couldn't hold red velvet liv'in that far from town.  God sucker-punched me; knocked me cold, then picked me clean!    She goes for a jazz pianist; a greasyfaced, hose-nosed, slightly pudgy, selfimportant, unflappable, repugnant Jew with slightly swollen, liver lips that he never seems to close - but he could play the piano!   She left me not knowing what to do.   I stagger, I lie-down, I standup; I run lest I lose my fingernail grip.  In the late afternoons - I die without her.

I concoct, in my extremity, a plan to kidnap her; shelter her in a cabin, away some place in the fastness of a mountain stronghold; and in the desperation borne of solitude, she would be made love me, or I would die trying.

 

I write her a brief note, by way of explanation  afraid to speak for fear my voice would crack.  “…I'm on my way to Alaska; head' in North…”  God, if I just hadn't fallen in love so badly, this whole thing wouldn't have happened  and I really thought I had built up an immunity  at least I'd never told her directly - never felt sure enough to jeopardize my pride; well, maybe she didn't know  I had acted pretty cool, never got sloppy; nor lost my composure; stayed away  she knew; and used it against me.  Women always know and exploit this weakness.   It's a lesson I've never forgotten.

'… I saw love yesterday, once again I held her in my arms; and the fleeting smile on her lips as she moved off easily; her confidence giving unimportance to the moment.  I am charmed, and walking home in her spell, notice how once familiar surroundings look new, askew and out of place.

There -- on the distant knoll, did you see her there?   No.   She is gone, long gone by the time I look. She stays only for a moment  speaking so softly the lingering words can be heard only barely as you strain.  

Her writing is wisp; with nonchalance she pens the words absently; an incomplete, a meaningless sentence, an image only of long ago spaces wherein dwelt the seven Seraphim, the many Gods and the radiance of Venus.

Her harsh handmaiden stays; filling-in the forms - all; all the blanks so neatly filled; the writing is clear and

complete.   Love never stays to explain; never argues, she never ponders; never stays to judge the facts.   Did you hear her  there?  No.  She was gone, long gone by the time my head is turned.  Much as a freshly

deserted camp in the blackness of night from which no direction is known, and the remnants of a campfire warm still to the touch is all.

And so, now, we walk hand in hand, the callused handmaiden and me, that somber side I know so well.  On our way to the place where we hope to find love.  Is she there?  No.  What is waiting there instead?  

There, as the veil lifts, I see in a carnival mirror the distorted image of corrupt vanity - myself; alone - standing there; solemn, judged to live with the pain of unresolved years, abandoned hopes and unfinished dreams…'

 

              If I were ever granted a worldwide audience and the opportunity to say one thing, I would admonish all men to pursue women, and even into the Garden, but once partaken of the apple; heed the narcotic!  Did not Medea deceive Jason, and did not Cleopatra sharpen her claws on even the great Caesar, leaving him

wounded in love?  Then her sorcery subdues, blinds and finally slays Antony, who was far, far from being a

virgin boy and well acquainted with the treachery wrought by those in psychotic pursuit of power and dominance.   Never suffer yourselves the character flaw of blind, romantic love; and banish the thought of marriage while under the influence of this love - the most absurd of all vainglorious illusions ever perpetrated upon the unwitting sinner from the callused hand of a spiteful God - to the everlasting hilarity of the devil - for when the ether wears thin, and your sight clears, therein awaits your waste and destruction.  She is now as any other woman; and you, stung and throbbing from the dozen lacerations where she's tested the sharpness of her teeth, are condemned.   A life of confinement; to be frittered away on trivialities, silliness, and dull and pointless melodrama, is a life of hopelessness.

 

She smiled her smile, that same dirtmouth smile I've known down through all the stages of my life, same as always, and you know she understands everything all at once; she knows about love, she knows about

men, she knows about going north.  She's read Proust, Scott, Stein, Hemingway, Conrad and London, this is

her life, and she's too intelligent not to know she needs that 'StuckinMobilewiththeMemphis Blues'

excitement that I couldn't conjure.  I looked into her eyes and shamefully mumbled underneath my breath.

I sure as hell didn't, but she knew I'd be all right.  She went for the Jew and I went to Mexico.

 

          '... And so I write you now to let you know that I've had a rather sticky time of it lately and this is really all I can do; it's all I can do to stay away.  Folding a hand you know to be a winner isn't so easy.  It's

difficult writing about this stuff, and due to my recent light-headedness, I'm afraid I may not be clear.  I work

much better when in love.   It's a sad fortune for love to end so terribly, but I do prefer its company to the

strictly straight and narrow, and suppose that with time, I will eventually recover, and what I write will become clear.   You may think I'm superstitious, treading with caution well in excess of the need, but -

And did I tell you that my heart is a target of opportunity and must be looked out for as though a child?  And now a small piece of Love's arrow is lodged in this heart; a result of being pulled rather clumsily by nervous

 

fingers moving quickly in tender flesh.  Though not apparent for several days, recently this bit of arrow has

burst forth a flame, an unexpected passion, spread throughout, to tincture my thinking with a fever's folly.  And I stagger for a time in the flames.  And if I fall and burn to a cinder, you may want to avert your eyes, but - Give it no more credence than you would a dead sparrow you may have only chanced to see; on the ground from the harsh treatment of a great turbulence encountered during flight...'

 

Although Johnny didn't have much sympathy to my plight, and thought I should stick around, early Spring 1975 found me and my five hundred dollars life savings in the company of my brother, sister, the

pottery hippies from Sonoma, Judy and Roy, sitting in the back seat of Roy's station wagon, crossing into Mexico at Tijuana, and without much of an idea of where I'd been or where I was going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                  

                                                                             Part II

 

 

Down the peninsula to a humid, hot Mulege' and by the second day I knew I'd made a mistake; not

Mexico, but with these people.  Some people are better off at home; not at all well suited to travel; no

tolerance, no real spirit.  Cabo San Lucas, diving one hundred yards offshore in and around what I took for

an old Spanish Galleon; now just a rottedout wooden hulk, and that night, sleeping on the sand to be awakened by an advancing army of land crabs, big as your fist and up on their hind legs ready for battle.  We were no match for this battalion and beat a hasty retreat to the station wagon, where I had to endure general recriminations and listen to complaints until daybreak.

I began thinking about another letter  now, my gentle reader  you see how bad it can get:  "Darling, Alaska's colder than an icicle this time of year  I'd forgotten, but Mexico's warm, and I figure it'll do just as much good..."   but that's all ahead.  Just now getting ready to cross over; Baja to the mainland...and I never did care all that much for the open ocean...

The station wagon now securely stowed on the lower decks of this old auto ferry, we wearily climb the rusted ladder to the lower of the three topside decksthirdclass passage to Puerto Vallarta.  We start off

at day break  hardly time enough for cup of coffee, and my five hundred dollars  well not even to the

mainland yet and less than one week, and now one hundred dollars of it gone.  Well, here we are in the cheap seats; back row, but they were fine - a good view of the whole horizon from which to enjoy the crossing and watch for the first sighting of the foreign shore.

The weather isn't bad, but even as I hold this thought, and not even out of sight of the lighthouse, it begins to get a little wet.  The boat, this ship of sorts, began to seesaw, now this was real seafaring  my sister

took refuge where the lifejackets were stored, and she was the first to vomit   a puddle is on the deck and begins to seep down into the steerage  and for several minutes, had the whole area to herself.  She begins to apologize  yelling at Curtis to be careful of the mess, which, because of his now firmly entrenched hatred for the Mexican's and general hatred for everything south of San Diego, is a surefire way to infuriate him.

Some of the others on deck now also began to strain their guts at the railings; over the side  and soon in this rolling and pitching, people are throwing up any old place, all over the place, having dismissed

any pretense or regard to formality.  I remember only one toilet  on one corner of the deck, which corner

I don't remember; and now it is fully occupied; crammed by four or five remembered faces from my childhood. I delivered newspapers to one of the men; he never paid. Another, a thin and pinched woman, rang-up groceries at the corner market. There is the man who cut my hair, and look - it's the drunken ice-cream man, Pop.  They're in a state of collapse; wedgedin tight  and the sea is getting steadily rougher.  This is a circus where no one laughs; a badly formed collage of slipping people trying to get someplace else, get to where their footing would be sure, but this is now impossible, and the upchucking and gagging are pure agony.  The ship rises and gives a few moments repose, but then it falls into a trough and the torments again take hold, and the gale winds blew my sisters vomit-soaked scarf awayacross the deck onto the face of a lady at the other end, it's my kindergarten teacher, retired and on holiday.  She too, now retches desperately.  By now all resistance had been abandoned, and to my glassy red eyes the blue horizon I'd been admiring just moments before is now strewn with what had only recently been fresh toast and jam, ham, eggs, coffee, hash browns and ketchup  the entire slobgullion  it all came up.

Ericka is down on her knees on the deck  she tries to smile; laugh this whole thing off while drooling at the mouth.   She reminds me of the sea bass we'd had for dinner the night before and how it was most assuredly fully digested by this time; it's nutritive value, you see, would not be lost.  I hardly knew what

to make of this; trying to make me see the sunny side in all this; a notallislost point of view, of which I had

only a brief time to consider before a vigorous bouah and then another.  Jesus what a strain, but she is

wrong, for this could be none other than the pancakes; the sea bass would require perhaps only a little more

effort.  I push like hell as a fierce wave flies over the railing and beats down on the deck; then rises, sloshes, rolls back and sweeps down into the steerage.  Foam races along the deck collecting all this puckedup garbage, and spins it all around and between us.  I must have swallowed some of it   and spit it up again.  

 

 

At every trough, the ship plunges and your soul flies away, at each rise it's recaptured in a wave of mucus and stinking snot coming from your nose, all salty.

I have a feeling of being overwhelmed, of sinking; and others are screaming; begging for mercy.  People are crying out to God; they're empty, totally  but God is busy. Otherwise preoccupied - probably on his own business - he doesn't hear.

             A middleaged nondescript Frenchman is hanging onto a support structure, flailing around without resistance; hanging on and retching are his whole life as I watch from my position across the deck, braced near the railing, when low and behold, and after several minutes of nothing, a bit of something comes up; a morsel of undigested liver; a small screw or ball bearing perhaps, swallowed whole while still in his highchair.  It languishes on the deck for a moment only and is swept away.  He really has nothing left now, but the torment continues.  My sister staggers across the deck toward me, but slides to the right in the putrescence and collapses against the rail to my left.  She vomits for all she's worth; a final effort, all she got  a carrot comes up, a piece of meat and then something unrecognizable  could this be part of the tail of the sea bass  I'm delirious.

Up on top, the Mexican crew seems unaffected, but the first and second-class passengers are leaning over the side to puke.  It is all tumbling down on us. At every swell, we caught a whole wave, a virtual Niagara of semidigested meals  corn flakes and milk, marmalade muffins, more coffee, pork chops,

sausages; last night's peas, potatoes and gravy, swirling in a soup of sea foam, lashing us, clinging to everything, and the sea is roaring.  One of the mates surveys our misery; he's in the pink, no problem, stands

steady, a real sea dog, and a born sailor.  He speaks broken English, very badly, but I'm listening like hell.

He gives excellent advice; tells us to crouch even flatter, remain close to the deck, do not attempt to stand; crawl; remember to crawl.   I have vomit all over me.  

A woman comes staggering by; worse than any drunk, it's Mrs. Shorb, from up the street, she's gone insane, and wedges herself in between my sister and me, so as to be better able to vomit.  I remember a little dog, somebody's mongrel; he's sick too, so sick he wretches and shits on two young women's clothes  on

their pants and blouses; he rolls over to offer me his belly; perhaps begging for a quick death; trying to commit suicide. Piercing screams continue to come from the shithouse:  I think there are now five people from my childhood, all jammed in there; they can no longer puke, piss or shit; they lean over the toilet while the ship rolls and rocks, and zigzags without pause  they are in the depths of agony  they bellow all in discordance.

Another Frenchman is pulling himself along the railing, dragging his semiconscious girlfriend behind him.  This guy, I think, really does have pluck.  She's delirious; he reassures her; I'm hanging on, trying to harmonize with this torment  if I could just find the right position  I'm holding on, I lose sight of my sister, but I don't care. I'm thinking its everyone for themselves.  Just then the Frenchman's wife turns her head, avoids him, but catches me square in the face; her entire belly had been full of goulash  my teeth are full of it, beans, tomatoes, corn, wine; I can taste it   I thought I had nothing left to vomit, but I'm wrong, I have - Jesus, I imagine this must be my very insides  the stomach itself, my liver, my pancreas.  I think I'm nearing death as my sister comes crawling up, crawling after her own vomit.  The Frenchman starts kicking at me; I can do nothing; I try to crawl away.  I stand and make a desperate run, knowing I will fall, and I do  right into the shithouse  like a battering ram  I smash into it  I bash the door open and fall right on top of the poor bastards  I turn over and try to stand, but I'm wedged in and among this mass  slimy, vomit, shit and piss streaked arms and a tangle of legs  they all seem to be naked; they've lost their clothes in the chaos. Again, I try to stand, but pull the chain by mistake unleashing a deluge, the renewal of a living and livid cesspool hell-bent for murder  an eternity goes by during which I'm no longer convinced as to whether I'm dead or alive.

 

I don't have much recollection of Puerto Vallarta  an old hotel with adjoining rooms  a white tile stall shower; a cockroach on the glass  a couple day's in bed  a couple more lounging around the grounds; a slow return to sensibility.  I'm thinking I'd rather go back to the boat; resume battle with Neptune than

continue with this incessant complaining; it's really too much.  My sister and brother should never have been

born  a mistake after thirteen generations in America  what whining!   God normally reserves this type of shit for Jews after a bad meal.

 

We leave on the morning of the third day, Roy drives, and none too soon; this place is not what I had in mind - all tourists and bullshit  bullshit markets, bullshit merchandise and bullshit food.   Roy and Judy don't have much to say.   They're true hippies.  They are the innocent  like little kids with full stomachs caughtup in the building of a sandcastle at one in the afternoon without the slightest concern as to changing tides  and it's been low tide for awhile now.  "This isn't real Mexico; the Baja's not Mexico and neither is

Acapulco, Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta.  These are just for tourists."  This is a lot for Judy to say  all four-eleven, ninety pounds of her  even Roy looks at her for few seconds  and then she continues about the real

Mexico being down South you know, among the Indian peoples.   The Yucatan and Oaxaca; Chiapis  that's Mexico.  The ruins at Palenque, and you can trade with the people there for jade statuettes, and all manner of carvings...” The conversation began to take on a bit of the fanciful  somehow I didn't see Judy, Roy, Erika and Curtis cornering the market in Indian heirlooms and artifacts  even with my help  which I was not going to give, and of course there was always prison: "What'ya mean  why not?"  "Listen", say I, "You can't just waltz down to Mexico, buy up a bunch of artifacts from the peasants and waltz back over the border withem. The Federales will snatch you baldheaded.   That's what I mean".

            There I was again, screwing up their planning, and anyway, Curtis' plan was still to start a charter service out of Tulum  a small coastal village about two or three hundred miles up out of Honduras on the

Yucatan you know, take all the tourists around; show them the points of local geographic interest; say, like the mangrove swamps; malarial breeding grounds  and he's serious.  This is the stuff my days are filled with

 listening to either complaints or delusional prostrations of grandeur  and Roy's driving along these narrow roads shaded in date palm leaves, figuring we can't be too far from the ocean, and every now and then a local

farmer or fieldhand, or whatever the hell they do, is standing at the side of road, staring at us with the greatest of incredulity.   'Playa Del Oro' reads the sign, and then eight to ten lines of something else, which we spend the next fifteen minutes deciphering.  It seems as though this cutoff will take you to the golden ocean, where you may or may not be allowed, but most assuredly will be murdered, or killed, or become dead after some indecipherable period of heinous discomfort  should you take any of the gold.   No kidding  that's what this place is like  no fence; no nothing; just this sign  and down the road we go  couldn't have been more than half a mile and we're all alone on this spicket of sand which disappears in both direction, north and south, after two hundred or three hundred yards, and behind which are neglected stands of date palms interspersed among bramble bushes that must have been left behind by the evil numbered agents of Satan after their last coven, and now I know where the idea for fishhooks and straight razors came from.   One more plan dashed  no free coconuts; and besides about a billion ants, and I don't mean little kitchen ants either, were dug in; one thousand battlehardened divisions ready for anything.

The ocean is calm  like a lake; not even a memorable ripple, but nobody feels much like going in.   Curtis wanders down the beach  looking for the gold.  Erika and I walk a few hundred yards, sit on a big hunk of driftwood and talk about the future.  It was a short talk; neither one of us has the slightest idea.

Curtis returns after a few hours, but has come to the conclusion that the ore specimens he's carrying are iron

pyrite  and that the Mexicans, and after a couple of hundred years of think' in about it, probably still think

it's all gold.   Judy and Roy are off somewhere fucking; lack of privacy is the one thing that pisses Roy off most of all; he likes to screw Judy at least once a day  and she seems perfectly contented with or without, and neither of them seem to mind about the potential impact of Judy's yeast infection.  Three days without and Roy's all upset  what a wimp  try three months!

A luke-warm breeze is coming off the ocean  about seven o'clock in the evening, or so, and is steady, but not hard  I'm think' in how it's sort of reassuring as Erika and I are sitt'in on the sand digesting

whatever gourmet delight Judy cookedup - I've forgotten, and Curtis is erecting several sheets of mosquito netting an enclosure for the night, and talking to himself the whole time: "... not one fucking mosquito is

going to get in here; not one...” Roy is off somewhere  I haven't seen him and don't care.    Picture this backdrop and a half hour or so goes by, just as the sun is beginning to set  tranquil, relaxed  when, and this is no shit, within ten seconds and with no forewarning whatsoever, one million; who can say with any notion

of accuracy; perhaps several millions - an unparalleled plague - of ferocious mosquitoes are on the attack  they've come from everywhere all at once.

 

 

 

All but Curtis are caught off guard; we're totally unprepared.  Roy and Judy run for the car; Erika and I, in a state of suspended thinking, are swatting mosquitoes for all we're worth, but to no avail  may as well try to erase all of the graffiti in East L. A.  Nothing this onesided has been seen since the Children's Crusade took

on all of Islam in the tenth century  a complete wipeout; total catastrophe.   How many mosquitoes can a person carry  maybe a thousand  I don't know, but at least that many.  I've been walk' in circles for the

last minute or two and I know I've got at least a thousand on me  and they're busy too  we're being sucked

dry.   Erika sinks to her knees and begins to cry.  "Come on, come on!"   I've got her by the hand as we

make for the water  clothes and all; a move born of desperation.  Dive down, hold your breath; swim away  they'll lose track  be gone when you come up.  That's bullshit; these bastards are too much  employ the latest in tracking techniques: sonar, radar, listening devices; everything  might as well stick your head in a beehive as to come to the surface for a breath.  Alright  you win, ceasefire, kingsex, I'm a monkey's uncle; thirty yards to the spot where we've laidout our camping stuff, and on a dead run  in these wet clothes  Erika to her sleeping bag, and me to my nylon pup tent that I hadn't bothered to setup, but no matter  and all in one frantic motion, I unzip the hatch, scoot in and rezip.

I've spent some screwedup nights before, but noth'in like this  and I lay it out here with reluctance for fear the Red Chinese will catch wind of it and begin to use it in place of the water torture, or death of a

thousand cuts.    I'm reminded of a war movie where, after an intense firefight, the survivors call out to each

other  you know  to see if anyone else is still alive  and I've managed to sit up; the top of my head is now

the highest point, nylon draperies  I think I hear whimpering  a soft crying, but can see nothing: "Erika  how you do' in?"  Nothing.  "Erika, you ok?"  "No” and plaintively  "Can you help me?"   She's about fifteen

feet away and yeah she's crying; this is some sad shit, but what can I do; and I hear Curtis further off: "How you get in here  goddamit  there's no way, there's no way…” Flashlight in hand, he spends the next several

hours checking for leaks  he's actually in pretty good shape; a mosquito here and there is nothing in the face of this onslaught; but he's developed a persecution complex; sort of an exaggerated sense of malevolent

conspiracy; he hates Mexico; has no tolerance; too nervous; highstrung. I'm think' in that the boat trip across

the Sea of Cortez was some pretty bad shit  but, and it took me another week or so to figure out what it actually was.

Erika's managed to crawl into the bag:  "I can't get this goddamn thing straightened out and these

fucking mosquitoes…”  Apparently it's all twistedup and some mosquitoes got in too.   There's not much she

can do  stuck in a semifetal position, and she has to use both hands to hold the netting away from her face.  Death by suffocation or death by mosquito  that's the choice; her choice; my choice.  I've got to keep the entire hatch off me, and they're out there too  this wideban drone; Thirty Seconds over Tokyo; sounds like

millions  all waiting for a letdown; anyplace the netting touches your skin is attacked. There has never been a more unfortunate fate amongst the foolhardy than to so unwittingly stumble upon these most bloodthirsty of all motherfuckers. The future of the world depends on keeping the netting away from your face  don't give up, you can't give up.  Think of John Wayne.  I say some stuff like this to Erika; nothing in return.  "We've just got to sweat it out."   something I'd read in a book by Hemingway; I was twenty-six years old  when there's nothing to be done; you just sweat it out.  The wet clothes, the heat, and the drone  a steady, pulsating drone that comes, then subsides for a few seconds in the wind which blows a little harder now, but not hard enough  and they're all back again.  Saltwaterbuttitch sets in, and it's only nine or nine-thirty  the whole night in front of us.  Squirming around trying to scratch my ass, dozingoff  the net falls against my forehead, and so too a hundred mosquitoes  wakingup  six new bites.  This happens about fifty times throughout the blackness - 'A Night on Bald Mountain'  waiting for the sun, waiting for the sun, and I hear Erika moaning a little  and finally; finally the first hint of morning.  I'm pretty sure it's appearing to be getting lighter.  I bounce around; try' in to readjust things, and strain through the netting  I guess this is east  and then, just like that, the vampires are gone; the entire host  back to their coffins.  It must be around five-thirty or so.

 

Five thousand feet should serve to clear one's head; that and another day or two away from the ocean  and it did by Mexico City I'm feeling pretty good; allinall, and in memory of Playa Del Oro can count

only thirty-seven red bumps; everybody counts their welts.  The complaining has even toned down  and here

we are in the early afternoon driving around and around looking for a motel; a campground  anything.

 

I don't believe there are any straight streets in Mexico City  everything in life tends toward some core  but we never came to it  probably the Pyramid of the Sun, but it could be anything: Axiom number one for Mexico  never be surprised by lack of apparent purpose.

We end up in a trailer park, but with a camping area, showers, and public laundry facilities  "Agua

Caliente?" "Si  no problema."  Hot compared to arctic perhaps  but unlike some others I could name, I'm

not complaining  and the showers really were a pretty good deal; so you see, I'm feel' in better  and we didn't have any other problems for maybe two hours.

Here we are, waiting for our turn at the driers  sitt'in around the inner courtyard drinking beer  resting in the thick and slow warmth of the early afternoon, and the light green fragrance coming off of all

these ferns and what-have-you; red hibiscus blooms, mosses, clumps of agaves and yucca - and check' in out the bougainvillea.   I'm think'in that this is the first time since we've been in Mexico that I'm really beginning

to relax  when  and right outa my reverie  what the hell's that  sounds like a horde of locusts; like a B29 on a bombing run.  I jump up just in time to see what could easily be mistaken for a small pterodactyl,

except black and hairy, fly into the side of my sister' s head  into her hair  the bulk of which she'd just stacked on top of her head   and only later did we figure this thing to be a bat.

             My powers of description really aren't adequate to convey the pandemonium  you see my gentle reader, the scene didn't restrict itself to our small group alone  no  but spread among all these Mexican men and women, and their children and their dogs  and I don't imagine she'd have been any more terrorstricken had Count Dracula, appearing from no place, sunk his fangs into her neck.

She, and while grabbing frantically at her head, starts to run at full tilt, but in no particular direction; zig zagging; falling down, spinning, screeching, yelling for help  at the top of her lungs  and I'm after her, but she's not listening; she's flipped out - gone crazy as a loon and doesn't care that her bathrobe has flown open  on display  this five-eight Nordic goddess running amok among all these once docile and quiescent,

but now transfixed, Catholicised Indians, and you know they don't have a fucking clue  and right into a

nondescript middle-aged, ferret-look-alike excuse for a man, a bracero I think; the Cisco Kid's partner  one of these women's husbands no doubt, who, and only twenty seconds ago aroused from his siesta, is making a

desperate grab for this incoherent, and really stunningly beautiful blond woman.  Her crossyourheart

maidenform now at chin level, he's taken a good hold of her with a dirty darkbrown, blackhaired, and stubby fingered grip, right below the ribcage.  I run up all excited, and whatever it was flies off and is gone before I

get a good look.   I put my arm around her, and quickly check her head with my left hand things seem cool:

"Detener senor - por favor” pull' in a bit nowand you know this guy's not letting go; probably thinks he's

still dreaming  and now I've got my hand on his wrist: "...let go you motherfucker..." and I'm beginning to run out 'a breath as the three of us stumble and dance around for what seems like a couple of minutes before I'm able to pry the sonofabitch loose.

Here we are in the middle of Mexico City, in the middle of Mexico  I mean really outnumbered.  

One, two, five minutes  back and forth  its Olvera Street on CincodeMayo; Friday night at the El Monte

Legion Stadium  Mariachi's ablast' in; chaos.  I'm carryingon like a Southern politician; smooth' in this

shit over  "Senores, es no problema  no problema es blanca senorita apologetica."  What's the word for bird "grande' bug in the cabeza  comprende?"  But by now, this squat little shithead's headup and yelling all sorts of stuff at me  like I had no right to touch him  really.  Too fucking much I'm think' in  this place is too fucking much and it took another halfaneternity for things to settle down.

The issue  guess what the real issue is  and to these Eskimofaced, scrubwoman simpletons  the bra and panties  and then the owner chimesin, Spanish mind you, imperious and grim.  He's in full agreement, scolds us; and they're still talking all over one another; very upset.   This shit ain't go' in no place. I stop with the Mexicans, and am now trying to walk my sister away; calm her down at bit: "Erika, listen; listen (louder)  the best thing to do is to get the fuck outa here ...  listen  let's get our shit  you're all right; you're all right; comeon  you're not hurt  he didn't hurt you...” but it seems as though she's contracted a case of Tourette's syndrome; want's to have it out with these  "greasy, beaner motherfuckers".   What can I

expect; this whole thing, the whole trip has been quite a strain, and now this, and then my brother gets into the act and calls on God, the Russians, Nixon, to drop an atom bomb on this place, all of it; the whole of Mexico  retarget the entire arsenal  and he's making them understand too  starts calling all the women puntas

 

 

"Shut the fuck up you idiot  somebody's going to shoot our asses off."  "Why's everybody gone crazy?"

I say to nobody in particular.  “Let's get the hell outa here - now  before the Federales get here or the TonTon Macoute   Mexican style ...  could be some bad motherfuckers...”

Later, in the station wagon  and amid all this irrational shit  I suggest that Erika and Curtis might want to give serious consideration to going back  "Mexico is just not your thing  no, really  dig -

nobody's fault just not your trip, that's all"  and besides I'm go' in on my own  down to Oaxaca  by

myself.  Well, that doesn't quite finish it, but everyone's gotten more reflective; a little subdued  besides, my mind is made up.

The problem with Mexico is simple  too many Mexicans.  It's really just that simple  that and their filthy habits.   A motel of which I only remember Curtis arguing with the owner  he just couldn't accept the twoprice system, and then we're off to the Mexico City Airport  Curtis and Erika are outa here, will catch a flight back to Tijuana, and then on to San Diego; Judy and Roy will go on to the Caribbean coast, I will take the bus south  to Oaxaca.  There's McDonalds.   Let's get something to eat; at least we'll know what the hell it is.  Everyone agrees that McDonalds has worldwide standards.

            It looks like a McDonalds; pretty close resemblance, but the dimensions are wrong; yes, that's it, the countertop is too high, the ceiling is too low, the tables are too close together, and these young Mexicans

make me think of what the inhabitants of a hitherto unknown African village would look like if they'd just only recently been clothed by Christian missionaries.    "Malto" yes, si, si; and hamburger and fries; let's not

confuse them  Cinco hamburger, fries and malto; chocolate, si  yes.  Fifteen people have stopped eating to stare at Curtis as he interrogates the manager; threatens him about the price:   "... the price is the price, O.K., don't try to fuck me around, you know what I'm talk' in about; don't pull that shit on me; because I don't give

a shit; I'm out' this shit hole - understand? ..." Curtis had, and unbeknownst to me, brought six or seven hits

of windowpane with him, you know to make things more intense; to have a really bitch'in time, and had cut them into quarters, and upon thinking about it, had been behaving with great moderation considering he'd

taken one of these quarter hits every day for the last couple of weeks.  And after that scene, we've decided it

best to eat in the car; make sure everything's in the bag  I've got to go to bathroom before we go on; and as a matter of fact, everybody decides to make the john before hitt'in the road  who knows what the airport will be like.

I think Roy reached in and got one of the hamburgers out before I threw the sack across the parking lot; at least he was munching on something, and only said stuff like yeah, yeah man  too much, as the four other of us discussed what had been seen in the bathrooms.  I consider myself fairly well versed on the world; you know, no pantywaist.  I've been in some shit ass, foul, repugnant, motherfucking shithouses in my time,

but noth'in like this:  There's shit everywhere  on the floor and smeared on the walls  by someone, or maybe everyone, and this was later a point of the conversation  they've used their bare hands to smear shit all over the walls; like finger-painting  and have waded around stepping without discrimination so that the shit has in certain areas, been mixed with the piss to a molasses consistency  this may have helped with the finger-painting  playing with their own and the shit of others  this is really beyond all things.   There are turds too; fifteen to twenty turds, solid turds, good sized, recently laid  two or three here, and then one, two or three in another pile a little ways away and the toilets were stuffed with newspaper; overflowing, stuck along the sides, mixedin with piss on the floor; pools of piss; the entire floor was a piss lake.  I gag as I take this scene in; it takes no more than few seconds to make an indelible memory; my sinuses slam shut  and of course there's no public toilet paper anywhere between San Diego and Tierra del Fuego.  If this is the flip-side to freedom of mind; give me my chains.

Well, like I say, I've seen some foul, stenching, cockroachridden, repugnant shithouses in my day, but here we are, standing in the doorway to the bathroom in McDonalds, in the middle of Mexico City, the

capitol of Mexico, where American companies are then rushing to invest hundreds of million of dollars, and

just a few feet away are fifteen to twenty Mexicans, all dressedup in Western clothes, happily eating away.  

American cars clog the avenue outside the front door; zoom, zoom, loud, loud; a quagmire, a chaotic cacophony, when taken together with the experiences of the last week or so, formed an impression, a mental construct if you will, of Mexico and Mexicans for which neither I, nor anyone else, was quite prepared.  At first bewildering, then a reluctant recognition of just how fuckedup most of the world must be.  Concerning

 

 

my brother and sister, and Roy and Judy, and as to all the others I've met and talk to dayin and dayout over all these years, I can't say, but certainly I have never forgotten.

Having spent the night in a hotel; the last night together as a group and saying the standard good-byes in the morning, Roy drives me to the main bus station.   He next takes Curt and Erika to the airport; they, and without admitting any personal shortcomings, agreed in a round-about manner as to their unsuitability

respecting the rigors of Mexico, and would fly to San Diego.  It was only afterwards that I learned of Curt's

fixing of one of the airplane's passenger doors, which wasn't shutting tightly.  The Mexican crew had it secured with some type of bailing wire - I tell you no lies.

 

              Finally on my own - what a relief!  If I've learned one thing about traveling, it's that solo traveling is compulsory, period.  Friends from the hood are best left back in the hood.   Brother and sister are shining examples of that not all-too-uncommon genre of folks that are non-adventurous by nature, and will, by their very presence, gum-up the works - fuck up your every wet dream.

I figured out how to purchase my ticket, and having done so, had a couple of hours to blow and spent them getting something to eat and checking out the bus station.   I am accosted by one of the ubiquitous

shoeshine boys.   I sit on his rickety three-legged wooden stool.  He is on his knees and I see only the unkept mop of straight, dirty black hair that disappears over his forehead, his short arms and the front of his torn and

filthy trousers.  He never looks up.  He spits on my shoes and smears the saliva mixed with bootblack over the leather with the fingers and palm of his left hand.

I recall a young whore squatting between my legs as I sit on a cheap wooden chair within the inner sanctum of a Mexican border town whorehouse several years earlier.  She is all business as she takes an experienced and firm hold of my erection, inspects it quickly, spits on it, spits into the palms of both her hands and slickens the shaft in several vigorous strokes before placing the head between the full lips of her small mouth.  She looks up and runs her hands over my chest and pinches my nipples, as her small golden crucifix dangles along the length of my cock.  “Muy bien” - I say.  “Tu se me hace apetitosa la baca.”   “Si” in a very small and sad voice - “muy rico”.   She lowers her head, then looks up at me again with the most sorrowful and sad-puppy eyes I'd ever seen.  No - I'm not putt'in up with any of this feigned self pity - this is her fate; her lot in life; her business.  She is the unfortunate.  She wants five dollars for nothing - charity.  No.  If not me, then a thousand others; an army will march between her legs before she's through.  I will cradle, and cry with her in the bittersweet agony of death, but not now.  I reach out and gently push her head down, where she keeps it, and doesn't utter another word.  With her hands on my thighs; this little whore spends the next five minutes earning five dollars.  She keeps two. Another goes to the mamasan, and two to the heavy-set, lugubrious, pock-faced man - perhaps pellagra - with a forty-five stuck in his belt, lounging against the front doorway - he is the ugly.

The boy's kit is a hodgepodge of miscellany; a collection of old, dinted cans and worn brushes, pieces of torn and blackened rags, bits of sticks and small, broken chisels.  He, too, is all business as he rubs the leather with his left, and now with both of his little hands.  He pushes other items aside quickly, searching, then extracts the desired brush from his wooden box, and works vigorously for a minute or two.  He tosses the brush back into the box, and pulls out a rag-of-a-final-polishing cloth, and as though he'd been instructed by a black scat man, makes that thing sing.  Into his black palm, I place twenty-five cents, which, should it luckily not be stolen by the group of older kids who watch; loitering just down the street, is given to his mother who waits with six or seven others in a cardboard and corrugated iron hovel.

How people work here for more than a few weeks without being asphyxiated with diesel fumes mixed with dust, I don't know, and the swarms of short, moon-faced, squat brown people all toting both small kids and plastic net shopping bags stuffed with all manner of merchandise, scurrying all about.  What a scene.

I remember wishing I was stoned.   It's time to leave this place.    I checked my backpack with whom I believe to be the bus's porter, picked-up my satchel, and boarded the bus to Oaxaca, classe' premiera - the only way to fly.  

              Not too bad I'm think' in, and in spite of that semi-acrid, chemical toilet after-glow aroma, the bus seems clean with high-backed seats - comfortably upholstered in a high quality grayish-white cloth, fully carpeted, large windows at each seat and fully air-conditioned.   Sort of like a Greyhound, but somewhat larger.  I'm think' in this rig must have been manufactured somewhere in Europe - four drive wheels on each

 

side in the rear with two sets of wheels in-line up front, and the whole thing is pretty damn big:  Must be thirty rows of four seats - two on each side of a decently wide aisle.  My legs are a little tight, but all in all, and not having as yet visited the restroom, I'm cool with the scene.

              The drivers of these big rigs view themselves as being in the same league as airline pilots - no shit - even have a co-pilot; a young kid whose principal purpose, besides loading the luggage, I gather, is to clean

the inside, wipe the widows, pump the fuel, rap to the driver, feed him and keep the son-of-a-bitch awake.  

Unlike the smaller buses elsewhere in Mexico that are seen everywhere there's as much as a dirt road, and are still yellow and must be what's become of all the cast-offs from American elementary schools, these premier

class buses cater to a higher class of long-distance travelers and form the backbone of Mexico's interior

transportation.   I was relieved to not be sharing the interior with chickens, pigs, geese, and what have you - no shit; you see a lot of that on the smaller buses.     The trip started off all right.  I was gazing out the window, enjoying the scenery and trying to figure out the nature of the conversations going on around me.

As can be imagined, most of the topics are pretty much on the simple side - I'd been in Mexico long enough to know that few discussions took place having to do with interstellar navigation.

  On the other side of the aisle, a young couple, maybe some kind of beginning professionals, good looking people; particularly the girl with her long black hair and dark brown eyes, were whispering to each other and talking quietly which belied their matching tee shirts, each of which were canary yellow emblazoned with the red Coca-Cola insignia.  “Coca-Cola”, however, was rendered as “Coma-Caca”, meaning, “eat shit”.  I noted this as being a fairly cool thing in uptight Mexico, chuckled a little and pictured the two of them fucking away in a well-lit hotel room; I imagine she is shaved clean - man did I ever need to get laid.    As I was having these thoughts, and turned my grin to look out the window, I got the sensation that this buggy was moving right along; as a matter of fact, and in keeping with the rhythmic swaying and high pitched straining of the engine, I figured we must' a been doing 80+, cruising speed, and you know something - this clip wouldn't be reduced, no matter what.    It's another one of the peculiar idiosyncratic facts of life among the Mexicans: Put a group of Mexican men behind the wheels of high power motor vehicles and watch what happens to these normally docile agriculturists.    All the centuries of Conquistador-imposed civility is now thrown-off in displays of machismo which amount to twentieth century medieval jousting matches.    The rage of five hundred years, they now take out on each other; the loser apparently being the one who steps aside or flinches in the eye of the quite real possibility of imminent destruction.    As we begin to round a long, gentle turn and as the highway climbs into the higher altitude south of Mexico City, I look ahead to see a double gasoline tanker passing a car on a full-on blind curve.    I held my breath, and remember having the impression of watching one of those great car-chase scenes at the movies; but this shit is real.    I can only guess that our driver saw this as well, but thinking back, I know this kind of thing raised in him no cause for alarm, quite the contrary.   He sees it a chance for some sport, and is glad this sort of thing makes up a goodly portion of his life; the exciting part.  Instead of backing off what will undoubtedly end in a conflagration, he seems to be speeding up as the bus continues to yaw and sway with a menacing vibration and in less than a minute we've passed the same car at about the same place on the highway. We're really fly' in now - no way the motherfucker can see where the fuck he's go' in.   I mutter something like “shit” or “Jesus Christ”, and am now fully concentrated on trying to see as far ahead as possible; not that any amount of concentration can save my ass, but when the big shit hits the fan, and as a matter of personal policy, I prefer to see it coming.  

I can't see the tanker yet, but I know the driver is gunning for it as the bus careens wildly along the highway.  I begin to vocalize my feelings about this kinda unnecessary horseplay.  “This shit is gett'in dangerous” - I say to nobody in particular: “…Say' a man, like, a ' what the fuck is go' in on here?   Don't you people see what the driver is doing?   Why don't we just let that motherfucker in the tanker go about his business?   I mean, like, there's  zero reason for everybody to die; if that son-of-bitch wants to, well then -

like, that's his trip, not ours.”    A couple of more minutes, and I'm now trying to actually gain the attention of some of the others, particularly the young couple with whom I'm earnestly trying to communicate, thinking they, of all these fucking morons, might have some sense; but no dice.     Tee-shirts aside, they're like the others; it's all they can do is look at me with what I took for some sort of suspicion. They haven't got the slightest notion of what a solid cat I am, and how I wouldn't be making a fuss if this weren't some serious shit.    “…What is he say, you know what he say?  I don't know, do you know.  I don't like it, you know.”

 

 

The passengers sitting around me have no concern with the bus whatever, view me skeptically, and are

apparently oblivious to the fact that we're racing down this mountain highway in pursuit of the gasoline tanker.   I'm making like I'm cool, but am obviously red-faced, and there must appear to be the uncontrolled agitation of the unstable about me.

             The co-pilot finally gets wind of the increased chatter, walks down the aisle, talks some quick shit with a few the nearby passengers and looks in my direction, as I'm beginning to get up.   “No senor”.  I wasn't to attempt standing just now, and then, to me, this pinched-faced fucker directs some more quick rap shit of which I could make very little.   “Es no problema, senor”, then a bunch of other shit as a guy sitting ahead of me, and the now the couple across the way, join in - much like a highway patrolmen who, as he politely writes you a ticket, and if you're willing to be properly sheepish, professionally points out the error of your ways.  Turns out that, and because I'm a dumb-shit gringo, and don't know the facts in the case, our driver is “mucho-hombre” and the living incarnation of some other god-like qualities.  He has never been killed.  This quite literally could have been what was being said; but more probably, that nobody he has killed, or has been killed on this bus - yet.   I am very foolish to be concerned, he has been driving buses for several years and will have no problem overtaking any and all other vehicles in our path - I am to put all negative thoughts out of my silly cabeza.   I thanked the co-pilot and my fellow travelers, with several muchas-gracias's, and gently waved them off as though the entire thing was a misunderstanding; that I had no such concern.   I resume staring out the window and began considering the position of fate and destiny as such are concerned in the lives of humans - particularly myself.   Thus solaced, I become reassured that I, and no matter what absurd shit the driver may attempt, would not be killed during this trip.  This is not my time to go.  I wasn't killed during war, and I wasn't going to die today.   I know I'm going to die, but not at this particular time.  Death appears nowhere on my roster.   I took this line of fanciful reasoning another step in consideration of the cosmic safety net my karma had cast over the entire bus.   I notice a small white cross and flowers by the side of the highway as we speed past.  A snapshot registers in my brain - a shrine to the dead.   I remember a cramped and sleepless night, but don't recall whether the tanker is passed or not.  Next day around noon we pulled into the main bus terminal in Oaxaca.  

 

           The city of Oaxaca is the provincial capitol of the Mexican state bearing the same name.   Lying in a large and fertile valley, of again the same name, and at an altitude of nearly one mile which assisted in reducing that diesel and dust smell so prevalent elsewhere in Mexico, I found this Spanish-colonial city of perhaps a hundred thousand people to be fairly agreeable.   Squares of older single and two-story stucco and adobe buildings of faded pastels, black wrought-iron gates, beyond which are interior patios and gardens and other semi-hidden houses and enclosures, line the streets.  The sidewalks are very worn and broken-down, and particularly as they merge with the gutters. The roadways are now of sections of concrete where once, and many, many years ago, such had been whole.  Much-like adjacent ice drifts I think, held together by twisted rivulets of weeds, and aggravated by a never-ending flow of potholes.

I spent a couple of weeks for a dollar a day, staying in one of these dormitory-style extended-family enclosures surrounded by eight foot stone and concrete walls,  the tops of which are embedded with jagged chards of broken bottles, and once again of wrought-iron gates fronting the sidewalk and weed-choked parkway.  The interior court is of sunken flagging stones, overhanging terraces and sparse garden plots.  The buildings lean somewhat here and again a few yards further down -- somewhat dilapidated - jury-rigged with outdoor washing machines and shower stalls, clothes lines, too many children, and young and old fat women sitting idly about talking; always talking, where once a single, and prominent family had lived in dignity.  This seems to be the standard throughout much of Central and South America.   The zocalo or town-center, comprised of a full city-block, park-like pedestrian center, bandstand and central, open-air market, radiates life from early morning until several hours after nightfall.   I sit on a park bench, sipping a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice had for twenty-five cents; a dime extra when beaten together with a fresh chicken egg, and watch the citizenry go about their daily activities.  I'm saddened to see so many down-cast faces and servile mannerisms.  Mexicans are a conquered, defeated people; the Spanish remain very much in charge.  Civilization does not arise short of conquest, and is not sustained without servitude, enforcement, religion and law.  Jews alone, and perhaps too, those without religion, remain a people of purpose unto themselves - never conquered.  The simple pay tribute to the clever.

 

History has it that this area was home turf of the Olmecs, a hoard of Neolithic wanderers said to have arrived in 800 BC.  They hung on fairly well until conquered by the Aztecs some time around the year 1500.

Oaxaca is known for two things, at least in 1975; first, its reputation for some very fine weed; second, the ruins at Mount Alban.  These have honestly got to be some of more amazing of the ruins in all of Mexico.  Looks to me as though an entire mountain top was removed and flattened - and I'm not talking about no little mountain-top either; this place has got to be a couple of thousand acres.  I can't really feature this type of effort taking place with little hand-held, stone-faced chipping tools, and by 800 BC I should think not; bronze

had by that time been employed by the Egyptians and Minoans for over a thousand years, and iron for several

hundred.  Must have taken whole legions of sorry bastards fifty years.   It doesn't take too much looking

around to see the remains of sports fields, various small buildings and all manner of tombs.  Then, of course,

they built the compulsory temples and pyramids.   Looking this stuff over, I can only surmise that the Olmec (and later the Zapotec) fixation on figuring the cycles of sun spots, pacification of their gods and assuring a

well-greased ride to heaven, would, were it taking place today, be interpreted as symptomatic of an entire society suffering from a collective compulsive/obsessive personality disorder.   

            I spent a memorable evening at the rented house of a couple of young American women; somewhere in their late twenties, who together had one of the worst cases of paranoia I've ever come across.  Both were

convinced the house was under continuing surveillance by a special squad of Federales.   Seems they had

partaken freely of a certain hallucinogenic mushroom found growing in the moist jungle areas near Pt. Angel,

a coastal town which lay about forty miles west of Oaxaca.   They were convincing, too.   Some other cat and I got a pretty good case of the jitters as a number or two went around the room.  The two women whispered and talked nervously, getting up every minute or so to peak through the blinds.    The first thing that popped into my head upon arriving at the house was sex; two women, some grass- OK! - but now, the only thought was to get the fuck out 'a there.  Spending time in a Mexican jail is absent from my list of adventurous ambitions, and listening to this guy tell of having his scrotum ruptured during a misunderstanding with three of Mexico's finest at a service station up to Matamoros; I want nothing more than to return to the hacienda.

Most people you meet on the road, and principally while scooting around foreign countries, are

Europeans, or, while in Asia or Africa, Australians and New Zealanders.   The French and Germans seem to have a penchant for Mexico, but my misfortune took the form of a young cockney from England - London's east end if I remember correctly - Stephen something or another who happened to be staying at the same dormitory - red haired, freckled, thin, unmuscled, empty-headed, blank-faced.  A self-styled free spirit without the sense to recognize a tiger if he saw one in the jungle.  This foolish young man, having spent the last of his meager bankroll on an ounce of weed, was nearly broke and psychically exhausted.   Travel enough and you see this species all over the world.  I'll live to regret this, but alright, we'll travel together to Guatemala City.   Early one morning, having finished with the delights of Oaxaca, and deciding to heed the advice of some Frenchman or another, my English attendant and I, pushed on to Mitla, about thirty miles south.

“I worry about me mum.  My dad's been killed in the bloody mine, a year ago now, and now she's gotten nothing.  She sits and stares all day.  Me brothers and sisters do nothing for her.  The government does less.  It's the bloody Tories, ya see.  They don't give a fuck.   The workingman could starve for all they care.

Something's a need' in to be done.”   “Well, she must have insurance money?   A survivor's pension - something”   I say.  “Yeah, she's got that, but it's not enough - and they've been a-struggl'in their whole life - and for what - and now they've killed him.  It's not right I'm tell' in ya - It's not right”.   “A man needs to be paid for the work he does, so he can live proud - and if ya cannot a-work no more - the government needs to step in and take care of ya - proper and good.”   “Well, I know exactly what you're say' in Stephen, and I'm sorry to hear about your dad, but there aren't any guarantees in life.   Tragedies happen; it's the way of the world.  You need to pick yourself up and move forward best you can.  You can't depend on the government or charity for handouts.  It's like England today - there's a whole class of people walk' in around with their hands out - still act' in like a bunch of serfs, or vassals about a manor.”   “What'ya talk' in about, man?”    “Well, it's only my observation - man.   What you guys lack is a technical class; entrepreneurs - a real middle class of practical people.  I'm right about this.  You got the rich whom you call Lords; and you got the peasants called Commons.   That shit's a thousand years out of date.  It's like you're sitt'in around wait' in for permission.   Then when something like this happens, you're first thought is to petition the lord

 

of the manor for his beneficence.  And you talk about pride.”   “I don't know what you're talk' in about Rodney - you yanks don't understand.”  “I don't understand - huh?  OK - it's like this - your mother is alone, right?”  “Yeah - all alone with noth'in.” “I heard that.”  “What are do' in right now?”  “Dig it man - you're tripping around Mexico - damn near broke; pretending to be hippie or something, and at the same time bitch'in that the government isn't doing enough for your mother.  When's the last time you had a job?”  “Huh?”  “A job man, you know - a way to make money - some kind 'a direction to your life - you're go' in on thirty!”  “If things are so bad for your mother, why aren't you there with her right now?”  A slight pause as he considers, then  “I'm on me holiday.”   Stricken dumb for a moment by this poignant, but so simple, and universally applicable revelation, then   “Jesus Christ Stephen! - too much!”  I shake my head.  “Come-on let's go.”  He is the weak.

    I said good-bye, and I mean good-bye, to a really beautiful young American girl who, having escaped my prior notice, must have just checked in the night before.  This poor little bitch was, in my estimation, and I told her so, doomed.   She was suffering from a common ailment making the circuit among young Americans during those times.  She was pixilated.   The symptoms of pixilation manifest themselves in a mental aberration wherein the afflicted view the world as a truly delightful paradise; devoid of all danger.  All people are seen and dealt with as though direct descendants of the good Witch of the West.  She put me into a state of disbelief as I listened to her; reminded me of some medieval ecclesiastical story about the pilgrimage of a now revered saint, as she told me of her miraculous journey to Oaxaca.  She had spent a week or two riding public transport and hitchhiking on her own since leaving Texas.   She was just twenty and on her way, by herself, to Peru; there to benefit from the kindness's bestowed upon deserving young women by the disembodied ancestors of the Incas.  I can only attribute the fact that she had escaped being gang-raped and kidnapped for later sale to the Moroccans, to a similar disbelief among the Mexicans, who, and because of their superstition and belief in spirits, must have assumed she was some goddess.   There is no other plausible explanation; the definition of luck doesn't extend that far.   I never saw nor heard of her again.

Southern Mexico is heavily populated with Indians; direct descendants of the Toltecs.  They are at the bottom of the heap.  History has turned the page on these unfortunate sons-of-bitches.  Central and northern Mexico, and on the other hand, is the land of the Meztecs, or what most white people recognize as Mexicans.  This is the breed you see all over the streets of nearly all of America's cities; you know, the young

guy with the straight black hair, dark brown eyes, and countenance of a coyote who just finished washing your car. Somewhere in the last five hundred years, an Indian woman was taken by a Spaniard, and the whole thing has since gotten out of hand - but that's another story.   Mexicans hold the Indians in total contempt.  Given the opportunity, and in this respect Mexicans are just like everyone else - once one group gets the upper hand, the second group gets the shaft.  Every tribe searches for some other tribe to conquer and occupy; this has been going on forever, and if you can't come right out and kill them, you feed them as much shit as you can.  Distasteful, abhorrent perhaps; but perfectly natural.

Mitla is a small Indian town of a few adobe buildings, some newer masonry structures, and Indian thatched huts on the outskirts, a local outdoor market, dusty and appearing somewhat desolate with a single ten-room hotel.   English Bob and I each got a room, stowed our stuff and made it down to the six stool, four

table bar.    I was on my second Trisece, when I noticed an ashen-faced American.  Beer-gutted; unkept in a pair of dirty jeans, and a thin moth-eaten tee shirt with worn and scuffed construction boots, he's sitt'in over

in the corner, slowly drinking cervesa and shots.  A cigarette between the thumb and forefinger of his right

hand, he stares absent-mindedly at the beer bottle held in his left.  He looks about forty.    I figured him for

somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, and too wasted to mount much of a threat.   I usually distance

myself from this type; give them a wide berth by either ignoring, or, if need be, insulting them.  If drunk enough, I insult them first.    In this case, and because I'm a bit off the well-beaten path and curious as to the local scene, I tell Stephen to stay where he is, slowly walk over and launch a small, cool probe:  “… How you do' in guy?”  Nothing but a slow rising of the head. “Say, listen, man, I saw ya sitt'in over here.  Looks like you've been around these parts for a while.” Nothing.  “Why don't I buy you a beer?”  A pause, then:  “Go ahead.”  These guys will rarely turn down a free drink; quickest way I know of to make new friends.  “We just

checked-in about an hour ago - yeah, the red-headed kid sitt'in at the bar”.  “That's right, the hotel -- right here -- been in Mexico less than a month, just came down from Oaxaca”.  “U-uh --Yea, well I've been liv'in down in Chiapis for about a year - off-an-on, ya know, San Cristobal”.   “Cool -- so what's happening in

 

Chiapis?”   “Had to get the hell out 'a there man, some partners got busted; lucky I'm not in jail right now.”

He did, indeed, look a little worn-out.   I know from experience how that kind a thing takes a couple of week's worth of starch out' a you.  A drug dealer - well, that's par for the course and I'm not a bit surprised; I didn't suspect he was the local sales rep for Caterpillar.    Small time as the business goes; marijuana only - he and a couple a guys from the states, along with a local Indian farmer, had, until a week ago, a nice little business go' in selling keys to another American.  Noth'in big time; these cats weren't capable of anything too complex; just enough to keep their shit together - a pad, cervesa, coke, food and chicks.  

As far as my new friend 'Tom' knew - hadn't considered the matter further - and this is where junkies' tend to fuck-up.  The connection drives down from Texas every couple of months with a grand, buys ten kilos from him and his friends, puts the shit into the back of his Carryall, and drives it back up and over the border.   Well, that seems a bit of a stretch to me; we're talk 'in about twenty-five hundred miles round-trip, expenses, time - and all for ten kilos?   The guy might clear a thousand after all's said and done.  It's much more likely that he has a few more sources and a boat over to Pt. Angles.  People in the transport and sales end of things, and as opposed to growers who tend to be a lot less malignant, are a subdued lot and crooked as a barrel of snakes; and for good reason:   The fewer people who know your trip, the more likely your ass will remain free until you get to where it is you want to be.  Loose lips sink ships.  All these cats, with the exception of higher caliber professional thieves who wouldn't have things any other way, and this includes nine-out-a-ten chicks do' in prostitution, have a master plan leading to financial independence.   They rarely get there, but they've got the plan.   I don't have a problem with any of this - not everybody has that IBM, corporate, do' in time type' a mentality.

This short talk seems to brighten Tom's day.  He's pretty well bummed and glad to lay his shit out to a sympathetic ear.   I bought another round and I was hope 'in he wouldn't get busted.  It'd be five long, hard

years in a pestilent-stricken Mexican jail, where, if you haven't got some outside connections and plenty of bread, the you - you knew when you go in, ain't go' in to be the you that gets out -- but it is only a matter of time.  

 

Mitla is just what it appears to be, a very localized hub for the subsistence farmers living within a radius of fifteen miles.  Big business -- go to Oaxaca.   I score half-dozen numbers from Tom which he apparently carries with him at all times in a regulation silver-plated cigarette case stuffed in a side pocket, much as a steady drinker never leaves home without his flask.   I take my seat back at the bar to the right of Stephen, order a couple more beers and guide his slowly-comprehending eyes to one of the joints held in palm of my left hand.  “Dude.”   “Let's finish off these beers and go find someplace to smoke this thing”.  The owner of this place, a taciturn, non-descript Mexican woman, has, and amongst how many others I don't know, an eleven or twelve year-old, fat, small-featured, balloon-faced son; a young sadist-in-the-making.   Somehow or another, and I don't remember just how, we make it up on to roof of the hotel where the boy keeps, within what appears to be a chain-link monkey cage, say fifteen feet by fifteen feet and eight feet high, three mongrel dogs.    I notice the dogs as I checked out the roof.  A hundred feet square I'd say, and within the borders made by a three foot concrete parapet is an old air-conditioning unit that may, but probably does not work, various water pipes, an abandoned television antennae, drains plugged with dirt, and scattered debris.   Stephen and I perch ourselves on southernmost parapet from where the market can be seen, light one up and begin to talk about the weather - hell, I don't remember, and for good reason.  About five minutes goes by when the kid shows up with a three or four-foot long stick of pretty fair caliber.  He opens the cage, walks in, closes the gate to the now frantic, scurrying and bitterly whining dogs, and begins to thrash about trying his damnedest to kick and beat the shit out of them with the stick.     Stephen and I are both transfixed to this as the marijuana begins to come on.  Stephen, the simpleton that he is, is unphased - like he's watching an uninteresting TV program.   I'm getting all flipped out and start shouting at the kid as I begin to stand.  “What the fuck are you doing!?”   This may have been why he's up here now; for the audience.  The kid looks at me without saying a thing as he continues after the dogs, and he's kicking and whap' in them some hell' a bruisers.    The dogs are all fucked up; running aimlessly, being dropped to the cement and spinning around on their flanks as he knocks the hind-quarters out from underneath with a kick, yapping and cry' in; squealing - shit - as a matter of fact, this is one of the most fucked-up things I've seen in years; maybe since the eighth

 

 

grade when a couple of mean twins going to the same Intermediate school as I, used to torment the mentally retarded kids from Room 29 during recesses.  Room 29 was known as the spaz class; short in eighth grade parlance, for spastic.  None of us knew what spastic meant exactly, but those kids, amongst whom I actually thought some to be dangerous, were very weirded-out; these dogs were innocent.   All I could do was flex my torso while waving my arms about, and walk around a bit yelling at that goddamn kid, and he was definitely gett'in off on this shit.   I don't remember what Stephen did; he may have spent the rest of afternoon as witness to this Scythian torture.  I got the fuck off that roof and away from that hotel; a few more minutes of that and I'd have started to cry - that's how marijuana is - and besides, I'd already developed a low-grade case of the shakes.  I had to get this shit out of my head; fuck'in bummer - and you know his whole family knew what he did up there.  Can it be that life here is of such a dull harshness that such things draw no attention; melt into the blood of Mexico?   I don't know.  I walked across the amber-brown, well-trodden dirt square to the market place.

Beginning to refocus onto these twenty to thirty young and middle-aged Indian women, all in their

traditional native costume of long, coarse, but bright skirt and blouse of what I took to be poplin, and long

raven-black braided hair, I'm starting to feel a little better as I stand for a moment and watch them hawking their wares and talking amongst themselves.   I stop by a few stalls, look' in over the hand-sown shirts, trousers, sandals, shawls, blankets, trinkets of all sorts, un-fired pottery, woven baskets and any number of other items of which I've forgotten.  I bargain a little with a pretty young Indian girl, probably not hard enough.  I'm always tempted to pay what they initially ask.   Just doesn't seem right to Jew-down people who've got so little.  I buy a red and white striped pullover cotton shirt.  It's brightly embroidered, with an open-collar of a heavier fabric.  I carry it in my right hand and walking on through the market, mingle with and push through clutches of clannish French and obstinate Germans who've just come from a tour bus.  I note the lack of refrigeration, especially respecting the meats; gross, large roast-like, bloody cuts kept inside of a medium-sized fish tank-looking enclosure - and the flies and smell of slowly putrefying flesh - whew.   

I walk along the single, one lane dirt road leading southeast out of town, looking here, there and all around at the surrealistic landscape.   I'm really stoned, nicely, and except for the mushroom eaters, for the

first time in what must be over a year. Everywhere I gaze seems to have a shimmer or vibration, and the colors are pronounced.  No arable land seems wasted.   Between the interspersing landscape of untillable steep places of scrub, cactus, thistle pear and manzanita, are small single family plots of beans, peppers, tubers of all variety, and principally corn, which seems to waft in a light breeze that may or may not have been.  I've forgotten about the poor, hapless dogs, as I smile and saunter along in well-coordinated, loping strides, nodding a buena tardes and a slow, cool, natural wave to a few of the farmers who stop what their doing,  and stare from among the corn stalks and pepper plants.  May have been quite some time since any of these men have seen a white man I think, an American, and I'm a good foot taller than any of the half-dozen or so I've seen over the last thirty minutes.

I come upon a single farmer as I round a bend.  He stops what he's doing some ten feet or so from the side of the road, leans a little against his heavy handled, but crude steel-bladed hoe, and regards me silently. I stop and greet him.  “Buena Tiardis” he replies.  “Comestas?”  says I.  “Bien, gracias.”  “Mucho trabajo, no.”  “Si, si, pero, mas yo soy trabajador.”   “Buena, buena” I say.   This goes on for a while, talking about his small farm which I think was ten hectares, or about twenty-five acres, his family of four children, all of whom were presently in school, which is synonymous with parochial school, being taught the rudiments of Christianity and arithmetic by one of the ubiquitous Catholic laymen and priests, who tend their flock in every city and village throughout Mexico - and much more assiduously that in the US, and his wife whom I may have seen in the market.  Having proceeded thus far on such friendly terms, he asks if I'm here for the marijuana.  I demurred, not having figured a way to pull-off a risk-free transportation and sales scheme, and

claimed to be a writer: “Escitor e novelesco cuento; cuenista”.   He spoke of the Federales for whom he had high regard in consideration of his just-returned run-away horse, the president of Mexico - a “muchas hombre”, the president of the United States - Gerald Ford at the time - who in my estimation was not a muchas hombre, but in keeping with the tempo of the conversation we'd established, I evinced a high regard for both.  I promised I would return in a day or two with a dictionary, Spanish to English, and other gifts to include Spanish language books, recent newspapers and periodicals, writing paper, pencils, pens and other such items that are unavailable in Mitla, and of which he and his children and wife would, in my estimation,

 

put to good use.  I made good on this promise, but not for a few days as another adventure lay in wait for me

about ten miles up the road at the small village of San Cristobal.  In case you hadn't heard, tomorrow is fiesta.

Stephen was not at the hotel when I returned to my room about two o'clock, and just as well - I had the fleeting vision of him being imprisoned on the roof; the demon now working him over with that brutal

cudgel and boot.   I lie down and fall promptly away from wakefulness.  I'm in a partial dream-like state; not

fully asleep, but neither am I awake.  I dream of Ann.  It's night, and we're together in a restaurant we'd been

to many times before in Corona del Mar.  The restaurant is a French-themed, semi-dark place with seating for fifteen to twenty couples.  The interior is illumined from candles on each of the tables and along the walls; it shimmers as though red-roses are filtering moonlight through a pellucid glass ceiling.   The walls are covered with reddish-patterned, heavily textured wallpaper with golden lacings that also shimmers and dances in the candlelight.  The interior is fixtured with three or four tables covered with starched white tablecloths; the booths are tufted in deep red leather.  Violin music sounds in the background.  Ann is radiant in a black cocktail dress, crystal earrings, longish blond hair with lipstick only and a thin gold necklace. The over-glow of her perfume is the intoxication of blooming poppies in the high spring desert at sunrise.  We are alone in a booth; she is animated and flirtatious as we each order a medium rare filet, and sip glasses of Merlot as we finish off the last of the appetizer, and begin to eat a green dinner salad with a light vinaigrette dressing, garnished with sliced radishes, cucumbers and avocados, croutons, and sliced olives.   We smile at each other, talk of creative artistry, sip wine, and eat.  I love to watch Ann eat.  She eats everything with relish, gestures nonchalantly with her fork as she speaks, and all with just enough poise to not appear crude and outwardly gluttonous.  I luxuriate in the lovely tones of her voice as they pass from the lustrous movements of her throat in gently modulating waves of inspired sagacity, which seem to emanate from an inches' distance only as the whisperings of a lover break through an immense silence and impinge upon my ear.  I love her and miss her so much I cry in my sleep.  I have a lump in my throat, and my heart aches and hurts so badly I moan, and return to wakefulness all soaking with sweat.  My head hurts and I have an erection.  I grab it with my right hand, and it too hurts.  I try not to masturbate, but it's been so long, I cannot help myself.  Afterwards - I feel like hell; am badly depressed as my raging and uncontrollable emotions threaten my sanity.  Afraid to lie down, I pace the room for two or three hours in a debilitation of empty anxiety, terrible feelings of acute abandonment, and weariness, talking to myself - reassuring myself, as the late afternoon sun declines and begins to set, before being able to gain sufficient composure to once again lie down.  I gradually fall into a deep sleep.   I awake to soundless nightfall.

Following another of what is this hotel's rendition of the traditionally skimpy Mexican dinner-hour meal of bland steamed white rice, black beans, fetid white cheese, scrawny broiled chicken, fiery green peppers that I push aside, and corn tortillas to sop-up the watery residue, I take the last swallow from the bear bottle and walk the hundred or so yards across the hard-pack dirt to a small, mostly barren shop selling household-type sundries; canned goods, soaps, hard candies, basic pharmaceuticals and a few other similar items.    I hadn't seen the Mexican brand of cigarettes I'd been smoking; looked something like Luckies; oval and of an inferior quality; but cheap.    A single customer is standing at the wooden counter and speaking the local dialect in hushed tones to two Indian women who sit behind the counter - an old, grizzled and stooped man of sanguine complexion; a remnant of a once powerful past, in heavy beige canvas trousers, darker brown canvas coat with corduroy collar, both old, with a slightly soiled shimmer, and broken-down, oddly worn-at-the-heals and scuffed, brown work boots.  Listening to the guttural nuances and inflection of voicing, I cannot help but be reminded of Lord Torenaga in Clavell's Shogun.    These people are definitely of an Oriental lineage.  Waiting for the cigarettes, the second woman stands and pulls a large, heavy clear glass jug from beneath the counter and pours this man a shot of Mescal - home made.   Grimacing as he swallows, the liquid warms its way into his belly.  He motions to the silent woman for a second and turns to me.   “You are American; I know America.”   His black eyes are opaque, squinted, rheumy and blank.  “Yes; you've been to America?”   “Si, haltingly, si - I go to Idaho, California, Washington, Arizona and Nueve Mexico.  For many years to work - eh, eh - Bracero - I know America.”   He has the certitude and pride of a man who's successfully faced and borne all of life's hardships without that residual and debilitating bitterness one so often sees among the old.  He again motions to the Mescal jug that remains on the counter.  I would have drunk a shot of horse piss had such been the custom and offered by this man.   The Mescal is short-fused and

 

 

perfectly clear like grain alcohol, but a consistency of highly refined paraffinic lubricating oil; a slight hydrocarbon aroma and bitter taste.  My stomach burns and then my lungs are hot; I exhale vigorously.   I pay for the cigarettes, open the pack, tap it quickly against the forefinger of my left hand, and offer one to the old man; he refuses.   I extract one, light it, inhale deeply, hold it and exhale slowly. Whew - this is good.  I gulp a second as the old man finishes his second slowly.    He says nothing, turns and walks slowly, with a decided limp, across the creaking wooden floor out into darkness.  

The Mescal takes affect as I too step into the moonlit night.  There is a light breeze and the weather is now decidedly cooler than the warm days during this July, one mile high in southern Mexico.   The few

shops and nameless adobe buildings are vacant, and the town, too, appears deserted save for a single bulb

swaying on a thin chain in the distance, and then another, within the radiance of which sub-orbs a dozen circling moths and other unknown insects of the night - pathetically dumbstruck by the cold glow - as I walk toward the market, which now is empty of life.   I am very relaxed and sit on a small wooden bench adjacent to one of the closed stalls and lean my head against the side of a storage bin.  The silence is broken only by the chirping of a lone cricket as he calls to his mate.  I become transfixed by the gentle, and then not so gentle, swaying of a large tree some forty or so feet from me; which until this moment, has gone unnoticed.   The tree is very old.   Its trunk is twisted and bent slightly to my left, heavily veined, large, knotted and sturdy in its wearying support of stout and heavy branches spreading manifold into delicacy as their full panoply of leaves flitter and glisten as the moonlight sparkles and peaks, and beams scatter through here, there, twinkling, beckoning to me, focusing my attention, awakening me to his old life; sharing with me his silent knowledge so slowly and well-learned during all these hard years.  It is he.  

 

'Old Apache squaw -- how many long, lean years ya saw -- how many bloody war years - drift into the sea; drift into the sea.   Old Apache squaw, how many hungry kids ya saw - how many bitter winter nights - shivr'in in a cold tepee.  Well' a - they tell me that ya saw Cochise, when he made his last stand; he said:

'The next white man that sees my face - is go 'in ta -- be a dead white man' …Old Apache squaw - you've had misty eyes for years - could that mist be tears; could that mist be tears'   

 

I nod in silent agreement to these surrealistic hallucinations; the impressions that flood my mind and lift my soul free.  I doubt them not; not I to argue or refute as the secretive chemistry of the Agaves' suppress my body and accentuate my senses.

 

Eight o'clock the next morning, and after testing the floor with my outstretched and unsteady legs,

I wash-up, pick-up my knapsack, sleeping bag and canteen, and take my hangover downstairs to a watery

breakfast of Huevos Rancheros, tortillas and café con leche', which is one of the only decent and generally

safe confections to be found in restaurants throughout Mexico.  The place smells of last night's cigarettes and

spilled beer.    Stephen?  I don't think much about him; and am sure he's still in bed, sleep' in one off without a care in his head.   I ask the owner to fill the canteen with agua purificata', bottled water, understand; be sure

the water is 'purificacion'    I've been feel' in pretty good this whole trip and intend to stay that way.    I walk

across the dirt toward the market intending to catch the small bus which heads up the same road I'd walked the day before.   Having forgotten at first, I look hard at the tree so resplendent the night before, but now in

the morning's light - just an old tree.    The bus leaves Mitla maybe half full of locals along with several chickens and a single pig, head' in east to I don't know where, but I'm gett'in pretty close to that ideal travelers' attitude; you know what I'm tak'in about.   I'm game for whichever way the wind decides to blow.   The bus moves slowly; first to second, a little while in third, then back to second and a full stop to pick-up another farmer, let a passenger with a few chickens off, and then a bit later, a single woman and a child climb aboard.  Slow going, but progress, no, that's not the right word; no progress down here; just couldn't be without destroying these people for whom the difficulties and burdens of their lives are borne stoically; silently in an inner knowledge of long cycles of creation and death.   Christianized only to a moderate degree -- and besides, they have their pleasures.  Look' in out the window, relieved I'm not walking and enjoying these thoughts, the bus stops at a cross roads where I see a wooden stake with cross pieces bearing the name and direction of a place, a small hamlet (I'm sure this couldn't be Chiapis) named San Cristobal.

 

 

I step off the bus and watch for a few second as it rounds a curve and disappears.  I figure we've climbed maybe five hundred feet since leaving Mitla; seems a shade cooler, a little more crisp and distinct; but then the hangover's dissipated somewhat.  Walking up the rather narrow dirt road toward San Cristobal, I see nothing but the steepness of the surrounding landscape, when around a bend appears a man of meager stature bearing a wooden yoke from which, affixed on small chains, depend two steel pails, swaying somewhat as he moves along the road - eyes focused ten feet or so ahead.    He lifts his head with a start, stops dead in his tracks and stares: “Buenos Dias, comastas?”  “Bien, gracias, et tu? “  “Bien, gracias”.  It's apparent, and much the same as the farmers I'd seen the day before, that he doesn't see a lot of tall white people.  He asks, perhaps out of nervousness, or perhaps from sincerity, if I come for the fiesta.  I agree with some reservation, that yes, yes - I'd come for the fiesta; wouldn't miss it for anything.     “Adios.”  “Adios.”   He continues on down the road to where I didn't know.  I'd come a mile or so and hadn't seen any form of human habitation, but this is Mexico.  I continued walking the next two miles to San Cristobal.  My first sight is that of a small wooden chapel-like sanctuary; so common throughout rural Mexico, complete with a short steeple and bell that just now had begun to sound.  A brown-robed Dominican friar stands outside talking with a group of three of four men as I pass.  They all stop and stare; I wave; they all wave back.  These are a rural, agricultural people; a gentle people much as any group of isolated people to be found at any similar place on the planet.  I have as yet not had a sense of being unwelcome since crossing into Mexico a month earlier.   There is no immediate resort to indifference or hostility so common among the more sophisticated, prosperous and alienated throngs, who crowd, hate and kill the unknown among themselves, within the world's teaming, perverse cities.  

I continue into this hamlet of similar single-story, decrepit adobe buildings, people's houses and outbuildings, I assume.  There's a fairly new stucco structure set a hundred feet or so back off the road to my

right - a schoolhouse new within the last year I'd say - I must now be in San Cristobal.   There's not much to this place I think as I rest my knapsack against a rough-hewn, six-by-six fence post and sit down on a railroad tie, itself supported by two cross beams, which I take for a bench.   I take a long pull on the canteen and stretch my legs.    Seems as though no more than few minutes pass, when a group of six or seven kids gather a ways off.   It takes no more than minute or two for the boldest among them, a moderately well built boy of about twelve, to lead the others to within talking range.   He asks, and I tell them.  I've come from Oaxaca by way of Mitla for the fiesta.  I find it's today - just beginning - a pig will be slaughtered and barbequed, and after nightfall there will be fireworks. I am witness to murder for the first time as twenty or thirty yards to my right and across the dirt road from an adjacent picnic or gathering area, three men inside a small wooden coral are in the process of catching and killing a pig.   The boys run over to watch and I, not wanting to appear as excited, which in my case would expose inexperience, walk over more slowly.   This is a gruesome and

sobering scene as the pig, in sheer panic and desperation for his life, and not ten feet from my eyes, squeals

and screams as horribly as a man being impaled.  He runs and falls, is grabbed two and three times, wrenches

free and slithers to regain his feet, only to be caught again and finally held tightly by two of the men.  The men shout and laugh uproariously and the boys cheer, as one man on each side gain a firm grip of a fore and

hind leg.  The pig screams, urinates and defecates as the third man, slipping in the excrement, cuts his throat with an old, tarnished, wooden-handled, wickedly curved blade.  I am unnerved and a bit shaken as its blood spurts, then oozes from its neck and is soak-up by the dark brown earth.

 A metal hook now inserted where the knife had so recently taken his life, the dead pig is hoisted-up onto a corner post, sliced lengthwise and gutted.   The hairless, pink skin is flayed from the carcass much as

a large orange, held in the left hand of a skillful old man; is sliced skin-deep in just the desired contour by the

knife held in his right, then the knife set aside, the skin is lifted from the fruit by the strength of his wrist and fingers, pulled free and discarded.   I return to my knapsack and sleeping bag and sit back down on the

railroad tie, followed soon afterward by the boys.   The boys wanted to talk about what young boys always

want to talk about to a man they've taken into their confidence:  Whom among them is the toughest and best

athlete, has already fucked a girl, gone by himself into the city.    The United States and Mexico, by the way, were at war and Mexico was kick' in ass - I hadn't been aware of this, but agreed that Mexicans were tough and such a thing was certainly possible.   This conversation goes on for quite a awhile as all now become

animated; interrupting and contradicting each other, and kicking at and play-fighting among themselves.

 

 

  I don't remember if things began to get sticky during the half-hour or so the boys picked by brain,

or started somewhat later, but I began to feel a bit light-headed, and had a kind of a queasy feeling in my guts, and then that definite feeling which accompanies diarrhea.  I knew at once that I had been made sick by the

water; the agua purificata.   Purificata my ass; strained through a colander maybe; fucking Mexicans. The diarrhea degenerated into dysentery that accompanied me for the next three months during which time I lost twenty pounds and every ounce of fat on my body.   I found a place to spread my sleeping bag up by the new schoolhouse, that being summer, was closed, and made frequent use of the nearby outhouse during the night.

            As the now fully dressed-out and prepared pig was skewered and slowly roasted over an open pit, more women and men began to assemble around the little village square that I had mistaken for a picnic area. Each tended to congregate in accordance to their gender, excepting that the children tended to stay around and be supervised by the women.  The festivities amounted to little more than boisterous talk, laughing and the drinking of tequila among the twenty or so men; and much subdued talk, light laughter and chiding of children among the women.  Excepting whores, I have never seen a Mexican woman drink - cultural thing you see, the Catholicised Mexican ethos regards women as the pillar of the family unit; the solid piece fashioned from the restraint, piety and chastity that is Mary.   This same theme is institutionalized throughout Central and South America, and in the Philippines as well.

The pig is eaten in the late afternoon; the drinking and laughter subside into low and deliberate discussion.   Some lay about, others return to their houses.    The sun is low in the sky.  I am worn and tired from the diarrhea, and fall asleep.   I awake in darkness and lethargy to a renewal of loud voices; the voices of

the young, then those of the adults.   I walk slowly down the embankment from the school to the zocalo and sit by myself.  My heart races in a fusillade of gunfire - a group of several boys have lit-off a full packet of

firecrackers and then another.  Pinwheels erupt on the side of a fence post; then another, nailed to tree, spouts forth in furry of silvery flames, spins wildly for several moments, and is then caught-up on the bark, to spend itself futilely.   I am fascinated as the first of several skyrockets pierces the night sky a hundred or more feet in a gentle arch, and then explodes in a bright, fiery spangle of hail - red, gold and silver tracers skater into the night. Then another, and another - each more glorious than the last.   The air is full of the smell of gunpowder and punk.  Great clouds of it waft on the breeze.  The children holler, and the men and women agree in a chorus of chant-like Oh'as! and Ah-ies!   I am amazed to learn that all of these fireworks are designed and assembled here in San Cristobal by the young boys.   This has been for as long as the village has been here.  How many years?  Several hundred; maybe more.   How in the world - by what mechanism of history, by what alchemy, could such ability have been learned, and then passed from generation to generation?   I don't know, but have never forgotten this display, in this remote and forgotten village in the low mountains of Southern Mexico.

My night is memorable only in its discomfort and spottiness of sleep.  In the morning I awake with a jerk of my head and see a startled lizard scampering in a series of quickening scurries along the bottom of the schoolhouse, and after a moments hesitation and a quick jetting of its forked tongue, disappear into a small void between two cement blocks.   I sit up to see two or three couples walking along the main street.   In each case, a squat wife walking aslant, slowly, and with difficulty, holds her drunken husband up as best she can.  He stumbles along in the morning sun, and falls repeatedly into the dust as she struggles in silence.  I retrace my steps to the road juncture, sit down on the dirt embankment in exhaustion and await the bus to return to Mitla.

             Stephen is sitting at the bar.  He was worried; thought I had left him, and greets me enthusiastically.   I tell him of my dysentery, the news of which he receives with an exaggerated sense of outrage and sorrow.  Gads, I wonder, what would happen if told him how terribly horny I am, and asked him for a blowjob?   This further inflames my anger at the hotel's proprietress; the woman who filled the canteen with the 'pure water'.  I look for her, but can't find her.  I am fatigued and decide to forget about it; no good could possibly come of it - this is Mexico.  When traveling you learn to take the bad with the good.  I ask Stephen to buy me a bottle of Kaopectate at the little store across the road.  I give him a ten and tell him he can get whatever else the change will buy - he agrees readily.    I climb the stairs, go to bed and sleep less than soundly on a hollow stomach.

One learns to be careful with dysentery.  The least urge is the real thing and cannot be ignored without regret.    You are drained and feel worn out, but carry-on.    The next morning, and although hungry,

 

I satisfy myself with a slug of Kaopectate and a five-cent roll for breakfast.   I tell Stephen that I want to go

back to Oaxaca to buy the farmer I'd met the promised study materials; and I also wanted to go to Mt. Alban

again.  I'd walked through an outdoor bazaar when first I visited the ruins, and thought that I could trade some of the heavier items I was carrying - the Coleman stove and lantern, and the axe - for a jade statuette, or maybe some other similar items.  I may have been just a little short with Judy.  Stephen is game - he doesn't want to be separated from me, and besides he is cheerful, if inane company and hasn't caused me any trouble - yet.  

Packed up, and after I tell the matron that we'll be back later that evening so she won't give the rooms away, we catch the late morning bus to Oaxaca.   The day is clear and warm; a harbinger of a hot afternoon.  We sit amongst chickens and peasant farmers; I'm used to it and even enjoy it.  I sit next to diminutive farmer of an indeterminate age.  He is not old; but neither is he young - I cannot tell.  No bigger than a ten-year old boy, he is weatherworn; his hands are small, hard and callused, his black hair is uncombed and roughly trimmed; it falls where it may.  His face is dark stubble; thin lipped, and of blackened, uneven teeth.  He is nervous and regards me with a mixture of uneasiness; maybe fear, and curiosity that soon gains the upper hand.  He asks if I am an American and why I am here - a tourista?  Yes; and no - I am a writer I tell him.  He is perplexed.  Although I am truly interested, and see myself as a cut above the rest; my travels are essentially a lark. This is so very true among so many who travel to third and fourth world countries.  A few come for business, some are serious as to cultures, some come to look, some come to fish, some to climb, many are ugly; and most of the single men seek only young prostitutes.  Irrespective of your motivation, it must be remembered that to this farmer, sidewalk drummer, prostitute, marketplace women, and to all others you may meet; their lives, and the difficult conditions within which they live, are very real.

Having gotten the books and school supplies at a stationery store downtown and packed 'em away in the backpack; I pick-up the duffle bag and we make for the taxi stand right across the square.  About halfway

across the square; look' in ahead to see where we're going, and down the approaching sidewalk comes a most un-Mexican, Mexican; an Indian perhaps, a zephyr of Carlos Castaneda; a portrait of Don Juan as a young

man.   All in black, save silver medallions adorning a broad belt, tall and olive-skinned, long black hair falls

to the middle of his back, held in place by an embroidered headband festooned in turquoise stone and multi-colored beads.  It too falls to his back.  He walks very erect; unmindful of all things seen; eyes focus to the

outside infinite.  He strides in magnificent physique; his way clears. Queztlecoalt to his summer lodging.

I was ruminating on this scene as the taxi pulls to a stop just outside Mt. Alban's main tourist area.  The place is less than lively, which I hope will bode well during the ensuing haggling.  Walking up the to the

plots and stalls in full backpack and hefting the duffle bag, we fend off the advanced scouting party of hustling kids, and continuing amongst a dizzying phalanx of entreaties coming from all angles; ignore all, and begin looking from this collection of paraphernalia, to that of 'genuine' Mayan stone carving; and all in a calculated disdain.   This is how it's done when dealing with groups of aggressive young men, who do not hesitate to misrepresent the moon to be the sun.   I am looking for the statues of gods carved in jade, or more likely soapstone, which the artist having only recently carved, then buries for a year, digs up and hints to you alone, in oblique confidence and affectation of nervousness, lest he be under surveillance by agents of The Department for Preservation of Antiquities, of the rarity and value of these items.  He then unfurls his swaddling shirt and from their secreted location, produces them - quickly, for your eyes-only.    I procure three quite beautiful pieces, while Stephen-of-the-eagle-eyes scans for the first hint of a bust.     Not forgetting the forfeiture of the duffle bag, I rid myself of the Coleman stove, lantern, and wood axe, and regrettably, of my thirty-dollar chromatic mouth harp and Buck hunting knife.    “Si”- the stove, for sure guy, runs on petroleo blanco - solo, comprende?   “Si, si”; well, whether he understands or not, I'll never know.  God hasn't as yet created the Mexican who'll admit he doesn't understand something.  I sequester the treasure in my backpack and we make a clean get-a-way.

The taxi has waited; not by my request, but from jealousy that another may get 'his' fare.   Before I continue with this saga; however, I must digress - for the waiting taxi has tickled my memory.  Once, during my stay at Ft. Bliss, and on a hot and dusty, summer's afternoon while returning from the mother-daughter lesbian show somewhere in the outskirts of Juarez, and upon my Jew buddy's insistence, and against my

advice to the contrary, we take a taxi other than the one that brings us.  In so doing we share the cost with two other soldiers who, too, had just recently witnessed, within the confines of a small bedroom furnished

 

with a queen - sized bed and a cheap, two-cushioned couch and a couple of rickety chairs, and subsequent to

some outrageous foreplay including a punishing spanking administered for imagined misbehavior, the 'daughter' being sodomized with a large strap-on borne by the 'mother' who holds her in a chokehold with her right forearm while trying desperately to wedge her entire left hand up the girl's vagina - and all amidst a non-stop torrent of feigned pleading; harsh admonishments, and the fetid female odors common to the soiled cribs of two-dollar whorehouses.  And if that shit doesn't give you a hard-on and shake your fillings loose; you ain't got a dick.   So shaky was I on my pins, I could barely stand-up myself, and limped out the door in a flushed daze.  Larry Cohen, that sexually miscalibrated young Jew boy whom I usually managed to avoid on such outings, came in pants, and had to be helped from the room by the sunken-eyed, syphilitic usher.  Larry Cohen, remembered for this and a wide variety of other sexual misadventures in Juarez, is a living example of the relative truth underlying racial and ethnic generalizations:  In this case, Jews truly are gifted intellectually and artistically, but sexually - they're emasculate and in need of a major psychiatric overhaul.  I view this as an agreed-upon cosmic trade-off.   Would the sane man accept genius of Horowitz, or the body of Arnold Scharzennegger, at the cost of forfeiture of his penis?  I roundly doubt it.  We're not a mile or so away, when the aggrieved driver of the empty cab, hails the one with four fares, approaches now on foot from the side, and commences to pummel Larry's face through the open window.   His face is all bloody and he begins to cry.   The twisted of spirit and stinginess of dollar, should you be otherwise adverse to bloody faces and broken noses, are herein heralded and forewarned.  

It is night by the time the bus to all points south leaves the Oaxaca terminal.   In the interim, a wait of some three hours, I guard my backpack, place the satchel on my lap, and read as best I can through my hazy headache wrought by two shots of tequila and cervesa had in the course of a chile' relleno lunch, of which my loose-spicketed bowels will soon make quick work.  Stephen has managed to smoke-up a joint while in the restroom.  See, as I say, he lacks even a notion of common sense.  Standing out much as a disheveled white stork among ravens, he ambles around the terminal as though he's invisible to the omnipresent policia.   His reddened eyes gawking here and there; he twirls about and affects a couple of pirouettes as if at a Grateful Dead concert.    Finally, and in concern to the maintenance of my own innocence, I pick-up the pack with one hand, and nonchalantly stroll over and grab him by sleeve:  “Ah, man - you are fucking up, a' big time - check it out - you're a walking bust.”  He is child-like, worse; he's oblivious.  “What'ya mean?”  Blinking at me like a nervous Chinaman.  “Man - look around, everybody is staring at you - it a miracle you haven't been arrested yet, and me too - the policia know I'm with you - ya know.”  “Now go over there to where I'm sitting - yeah, right over there - and please - sit your ass down!”  Fuck - what the hell am I dealing with this nitwit for?  I swear - if Stephen isn't the most pathetic and ludicrous person I've ever run across, I'm glad I don't remember who is.  Maybe that's it; he's so goofy and innocent, that he's become as endearing to me as is a small kitten; the runt of the litter.   This must be my compassion at work; and not a single opinion on anything, whew.

We're back in Mitla in an hour or so.  I brood on the bus and get on Stephen's case, telling him how fucked-up he is, and how, and for his own good, he should go back to England - and soon.   He agrees with everything I say:  “Yes, yes, I know, but ya' see mate - my bloody money's blown - she's all spent”   “I know that man, who do you think been pick' in up the bills, but - like - yeah well, you've got to do something, man - because I'm all done being your nursemaid”.    It's agreed that he will reform. We will continue to Guatemala City, after which he will ride on the top of freight cars back to Texas; then on the New York, where he will work his way on a freighter to London.  There; it's done, and you know - as far as I know, that's exactly what happened.  A couple of weeks later, following a four-day stop over in San Cristobal, Chiapis, and after my one and a half week convalescence in the home of a Guatemala City benefactor, and during which time he began to wobble, he did leave Guatemala City on a freight train - the hard way.  Ah, but I get ahead of myself.

I awoke the following morning tired; stiff and headachy - feel 'in like someone had been working me over with a blackjack all night.   I'm fatigued now all the time with this damn dysentery.  Nonetheless, and after what has become the normal Mitla breakfast of Huevos Ranchero, tortillas and café con leche, I tote the school supplies back up the road to the farmer.   He is nowhere to be seen. This seems a little strange, but I supposed the local farmers, and besides the small plots that they own individually, sharecrop the fields of their more well-off neighbors or absentee landlords.  His place could be a mile or two from here.  I override my misgivings and set everything down around the fenced area where we'd been talking. I hoped he would

 

find them.   I take a final look a little further a field - I would hate for somebody other the farmer to walk-off

with this stuff - around, up and over a knoll for a better view; but still can't see where in the hell he lives.

There is a single old man on a nearby barren hillside; a hundred or so feet from where I've stopped.

I approach him and watch as he limps, and with the support of a homemade crutch fashioned from a single

tree branch, hobbles about on a wooden peg attached just below his right knee, where once his own leg had

carried him until accidentally shorn from his body by a fellow workman while felling timber.   His back has been broken in some mystery, and has mended grotesquely, leaving him with a Quasimodo-like hunch.  The hips are oblique to the torso.  He is now a useless impediment and cast aside.  The man is, however, surprisingly stout, frighteningly even; resolute, rough and resigned to his fate.  He complains not.   His garments are shambles.  He is, I think, the vision of an unnamed and ruthless crewmember; a scarred and bedeviled scalawag belonging to a buccaneer's band of pirates from an earlier century, now made incarnate before my eyes from my childhood's imagination.  He has a low, broad forehead, a large flat nose, a pedant lower lip, and greeting me in a gnarled smile through a display of yellowish, crooked teeth, invites me to join him in his meal.   Boiling inside a large used coffee can over a small fire set directly into the dirt are a dozen or so thick green peppers.   I look inside to see the peppers boil.  Peppers only.  How far must he hobble to water?   I see nothing for a least a kilometer in every direction.  The man has scrapped sufficient dirt, rocks and weeds from the side of this gently sloping hill, to form a depression in the earth; a shallow pit that he has covered with a miscellany of the most easily retrieved dead branches and bleached corn stocks.   The hovels seen in outskirts of Mexico City - in and amongst storm sewers, rail yards and trash heaps - are an eon in advancement from this.  He crawls into this space to sleep and seek respite from the uncaring barbarism of the night.  Can he be this truly alone and desolate; does he have a daughter or son - someone?  I don't know.  Cro-Magnon man lived no worse than this.  I have stumbled upon the bedrock of humanity.  I am awestruck.  

 

Having paid-up and checked out of the hotel, and bidd'in adieu to Mitla, Stephen and I caught the late morning bus to Chiapis.  San Cristobal sits fifty kilometers south of the provincial capitol of Tuxtla-Gutierrez of this southern most state in Mexico, the poorest, and is the gateway to Palenque.  We arrive tired and stiff after seven or eight hours, and four hundred or so kilometers on another of these hell-bound for no-

place, bullet buses.  We travel at breakneck speed for an hour or two through a harsh countryside of high chaparral and cultivated yucca; plantations of yucca, then sage, pinion, mesquite and emptiness, to a stagnant

wait of an hour wasted in a forlorn, spavined depot in Tehuantepec, and next Arriaga where indolent Indians of a vagrant's vacancy idle silently in the heat and flies.  My final memory is of a shattered moonscape just

outside of San Cristobal where the blistered earth has fallen away; retreating in a series of cleaved, and serrated canyons, precipitous escarpments, dalles, and cycloptic sinkholes where Satan and his minions may discard their deviled debris with impunity.

The bus terminal in San Cristobal is the worst I've seen.  Diesel and dust only, that and a failed septic system, seeping ever so steadily, and a sagging adobe faded to consistent rusty-brown throughout, ossifies. Flakes cover the streets and sidewalks.  The whole city appears this way - without sustenance and brown; dirty, dusty brown and dry - dry as the leaves strewn and directionless - drifting around the steps leading to the main cathedral, itself very old and dilapidated; blighted, perhaps abandoned.  There is roughed-out surface discoloration here and there, evidence of having been newly and crudely patched, but how recently is new - could be several years.  I stand alone on the second tier of steps and gaze upward another tier toward the gargantuan oaken doors and monstrous iron hinges that seem as though rusted shut; long abandon, frozen hard to an impenetrable earth.

            A cheaply garish bar, a cantina of fifteen to twenty regular drinkers; shabby, scuffed, somber and without music, a murmur of paired fragments only, cheap tequila, local mescal and beer, stinking, without pretence of life; none of the friendly banter seen even in wartime amongst lonely and unloved soldiers.

A threadbare people, deserted by desperation and indifference, are reduced to emaciated and dangerous jackals.   These are the descendants of the distant Maya; removed in time a thousand or more years. Once without peer; these people have an extraordinary, if bloody, history of a society sophisticated in its structure along lines of craftsmanship and specialty, priestly hierarchy, theology; and a cosmologically advanced and prescient astronomy.  All of this is lost; nothing now, but morbid, archeological debate among dried-out, sanctimonious old men and fools; and the people; they're now reduced to scattered ruble and ashes.

 

The zocalo is mostly deserted as well, unkept and with a wisp of what seems to be a central market, but never fully matured from, or returned fully to, a dispersal of effort.  It's as though time itself has been disrupted and stilled.  Half a dozen squatting, worn women here, and maybe ten across the road on the next block; frozen chameleons with no smiles; no banter and no joy in the children.  The children do not play games, run and laugh, and where was the market?  Is this the extent of the market?  These people, as though having accepted the existence of the hopelessly marooned, feed themselves with soft white rice of a mildewed aroma, tortillas and pinto beans reduced through repeated cooking to a paste, and all without a trace of the traditional hot-spice, lusty kitchen smells normal to neighborhoods elsewhere in Mexico. No meat; without meat of any kind. The last of the meat had been eaten how long ago?

 We find another run-down hotel; a dormitory built on the rear half of a lot; the forward half on which resides the main house that fronts the street.   The property is again surrounded by an eight-foot masonry wall.

Multi-colored glass chards project ominously from the top.  Entry to the inner court is through a heavy

wooden gate that is locked each night at ten o'clock.  A single toilet, basin and cold-water-only shower are

enclosed within a flimsy tin shed with broken concrete flooring; open to the sky.  Shower water drains along

the concrete, under the tin, along the muddied side of the adjacent wall, and sinks into the weeds - all covered in soapy sediment.  A dozen other young men, mostly Europeans, are barracked in a twelve-rack dormitory.  

They talk amongst themselves in French and Italian, and sleep and lounge through this sultry, breathless late afternoon and evening on cheap military-type cots and thin, worn-out mattresses without bedding.   One dollar per day.  

There is a young American here as well; about my same age, and I 'm glad of it.  I haven't seen or talked to an American in over three weeks; since Mexico City, and was missing the conversational ease and

familiarity borne of common circumstances and experience.   Fred was from Michigan, someplace in rural upstate.  He is a graduate of The University of Michigan at Madison in 1974; a psychology major.   Fred doesn't act like the psychology majors I've known.  Most are desperately trying to rid themselves of a curse;

and are either falsely extraverted, or more fittingly, morose, neurotic and withdrawn.   Fred, though not a big guy, seems self-assured; pretty cool.  He's reserved and listens; moves about with ease; speaks some Spanish,

and is apparently relaxed; balanced - even in this hopelessly dusty and poverty-stricken place.  The three of us, Stephen was still tagging along, hung out together for the better part of a week; got loaded - walked around, checked-out the sights and talked in that classless, immediately familiar style that I find most appealing, and even necessary.

Fred was a breath of fresh air; a year younger than me, he'd been through that same osterizer, and best of all, had a completely open mind. This was something relatively common amongst college-age

Americans in the late sixties and early-to-mid seventies, but so unrelentingly blunted, hammered and splintered by the organization while still in its nescience, that such a promising spring never blossomed into summer.  “What's to become of the country, man - dig the shape it's in - coming apart at the seems with all the war protest and race riots; the separating off of our whole generation; but into what?”  “I'm here in Mexico at twenty-seven years old, and you too; a couple of hundred dollars - and that's it”.  So very contrary to all those expectations I hadn't as yet ride myself of fully.  “Aren't we supposed to be working for a major corporation by now; married with a first house and a couple of little kids?”  Uhm?  

             Fred had been in Mexico for about two months, but had crossed in southern Texas - at McAllen and went down the Caribbean coast, before cutting over to Mexico City.  He had recently spent three weeks in Oaxaca.   I guess it really shouldn't be that surprising when one hears that another carries that very same deep emotional load as you do, but after a couple of days of getting to know him, I was surprised to hear of Fred's recent breakup from a beautiful girl that he was still crazy in love with.  They'd been together for almost three years, beginning while in school, right up until a month or so ago.  Fred turns out to be an awful lot like me - same background, and suffering from a broken heart, but his was much worse; in spite of outward appearances, he was dying of it.

I could tell something wasn't quite right.  Lack of ready smiles and a general low-energy attitude about things - more academic and detached than it should be; masking a damaged heart.  Fred is a smart guy; poised, and not prone to silly eruptions of suppressed emotion, or loss of control; but he has become

obsessed; thinks about her all the time, and this is not his first girlfriend.  The two of us spend the afternoon of the fourth day looking for a cobbler's shop where one of the Frenchman had just bought a pair of custom

 

made cowhide shoes.  They are unusual - even beautiful.  Fred's got to have a pair.  He doesn't have any more money than I do, but all right - people on the lamb often do impetuous things; anything to distract, free and reconstitute themselves.  The Frenchman's directions are abominable; we walk all over town before we chance upon a tiny shop.  Could this be it?  It's no wider than a walk-in closet, and fifteen or twenty feet deep at best.  Two men, a father and son, sit on old, unsure wooden stools in the semi-darkness amidst a clutter of leather pieces, and partially and fully finished shoes and boots.  Hand tools and fifty years of craftsmen paraphernalia hang from the walls.  An old wooded workbench, covered in tattered and torn leather, leans slightly to one side and moves a bit as the old man works the outers to a semi-finished shoe with an awl and small ball peen hammer.  The inside is illumined by candles and a single gas-oil lantern; there is no electricity.   They both wear soiled and worn leathern cobbler's aprons.  Their eyes are rheumy, and the left eye of older man droops as he chews on a cigar and spits into an empty wax can.  The air is stagnant and reeks of turpentine, glue, solvents and tanned leather; it's dense, fetid and gaseous.  A few minutes and my eyes burn.  I step back outside.  Fred doesn't seem to notice.  He explains what he wants, negotiates a price and while sitting on his rickety stool, is measured by the son.  It will be at least three days - this means at least a week - and fifteen dollars.  Fred is happy and so am I; happy to be away from that shop.  How in the world can any human being work in such a carcinogenic environment; but then, living to a ripe old age is not the concern of the moment in Chiapis, Southern Mexico, on this hot and humid July afternoon in 1975.

We walk back toward the hotel, but in celebration of the shoes, decide to smoke a couple of numbers and go to a regular café for dinner.  We'd been eating in the kitchen of a family house across from the hotel -

fifty cents for rice and black beans, tortillas and a local, overly sweet, soft drink that tasted of nails.   Afterwards, we find our way to the shuttered cathedral.   It takes on the ethos of the basilica at Alhambra, but devoid of grace, as we sit alone on a large bench outside the main doors that reside solemnly, stoically in their endurance.   What of the pews and the church's vestments; the canonicals?   Is there a parsonage - a crypt?   We pass the joints between ourselves, talk quietly and gaze down at the forlorn town, in the full youth of our lives, as dusty shadows fall along the walls of the closing shops.   A single light appears as an intermittent twinkling of dull amber in the far distance as we descend the steps.  All is quiet save our footsteps as we walk the broken sidewalks.   The evening is suddenly pierced by the hyena-like laughter and drunken, exultant, screeching fragments of torn converse coming from the corrupted throats of five men drinking in an alley off the sidewalk - as we pause, startled, and stare.    Their eyes flash in our direction.   They stumble and lean stupidly against the bricks.  One advances a few steps and invites us in to drink with them.  I refuse:  “No Senores.”  Their laughter redoubles into a near hysteria, quickly, and then softens as the man attempts to beguile me in a cunning voice, saturated in evil.   He motions; “Venir a qui, amigos - eh.”  We move along to the receding taunts of the doomed, as though issued conjointly from the voices of the damned, as they suffer, and then subside into the scalding cauldrons of hell.   A lone woman and two small children, huddled, scurry like freighted rodents along the opposing sidewalk.

  So imagine the two of us, higher than hell on this Oaxacan weed, sitting in the café we've begun to come to in the mornings; but it's evening now, and we're drinking beer and think' in about nothing in particular - linking fancy unto fancy, as the poet says.  This is where weed tends toward the pernicious, and is particularly well-suited to breaking down the walls of that which confuses, restricts, hobbles and sometimes cripples a person:  Two, three or four people are comfortable with one another; they're all high together in a room; no distractions save for light music, or melodic sounds of the weather coming from outside. One begins talking and drifting in the emotion of the moment; tends to, or is led to, an emotive topic.  Before normal-state awareness signals that anything's changing, all that creative and emotional energy comes roaring out, and smashes that stuff into smithereens; boom; right up and into your conscious mind.   Plenty of people don't like this at all - it's too staggering; their minds and personalities have been misassembled, and are now incapable of seeing their true nature - revealed.  The sanctity of their sanatorium-bound lives is abridged, the institution is threatened, and though heavily strictured and limited, is too familiar and comfortable to surrender.  This is home, and now all the shit they'd spent their whole lives improperly arranging, misclassifying, pushing out of the way onto a back shelf and ignoring, is now demanding immediate attention.  No! - No!  -  but guess what, that stuff doesn't go way; and as a matter fact; it's right there all the time, building, accumulating in the darkness - ready to emerge, overwhelm, and put you in a psychiatric hospital,

 

 

or - should you be blessed with a stout and fearless heart - to help you get your life together.  The choice as to which, defines, and is the none other than essential you; out in the open for all to see.

To be or not to be; that's the question - always has been; always will be.  The decision is yours. Fred chooses to be.   “This thing is killing me Rod.”   “Yeah man, I know exactly where you're coming from, but

you've got to put this shit behind you”.  Fred pulls his wallet and shows me a photograph of Crystal; she nude at twilight and entering a tent somewhere on a mountain camping trip - she is stunning; goddess-like as the moonlight outlines a verdurous, ethereal body.  “Look at that ass man; just look at her - I love her so much.”  

“Yeah, yeah, I can see that, man; she's a beauty - but Fred - she's gone”.   “Right?  -- and that's that”.   

“Women do what women do”.  Fred stares at the photograph with tears in his eyes; all broken up.   “Why did she leave me?  Why?  Why?”   He looks pointedly at me with a pinched and forlorn face; overwhelmed in sorrow, as though I had the answer, and was expected to explain.  He holds his face in his hands, pushes his straight black air aside, and drops his head.  I'd never seen a man come so unbuttoned.  “Fred - man; pull it together man; don't let this thing get away from you”.  Fred's voice is brittle and quivers amidst the sobs.   “We were so much in love, Rod - she was my life, and my life was beautiful.   I had purpose and enthusiasm; now - nothing; nothing; I'm a corpse”.   “Look at me - what's happened; this isn't me; I don't know where I am.”  The tears are unashamed and come rolling down.   “Fred - listen man; you were in love; deeply, as only a man can be - listen; I know what I'm talking about.  It's like a projection man; when deeply in love, people see only their reflection; what they want to see.”  “What?”  Through reddened and beseeching eyes:  “What are you try' in to say - that Crystal didn't love me?”   “No, man, that's not what I'm say' in - listen.”  “She loved me, man; I know it as sure as I'm alive - we were so tight.”  In another burst of tears, he hangs his head and convulses into a series of sobs - Jesus, another minute or so of this, and I'll be cry' in too.  This is turning into a real trip.  I've forgotten where we are, and look up.  It takes a second or two to recalibrate my mind and remember; that's right - as the restaurant comes into focus.  Thank god it's practically empty.   “I don't doubt that for a minute, man; I bet she loved you like crazy.”   “That's right; she did - she was my whole life - there's nothing I wouldn't do for her.”   “Crystal loved you the very best she could; to the full extent of her capacity, man - I know that, but listen - women don't love men as men love women.”   “They're just not that free; they're instinctual; their love is remorseless; has purpose - a biology to it - it has to.”  “I don't know you that well Fred, and I don't know Crystal at all, but I do know that.”  “It could very well be that she wants to get married, man; it a huge deal to women - it's everything to some of 'em; and maybe she knows you'll never be the husband she needs.”  “What!? - no, she doesn't want to get married; we've talked about it”   “Well, I don't know man, but that's where I'd put my money; it's a good guess.  Either you'll be able to figure it out, or you won't - but that's not important right now.”   “What's important is to save yourself; you're a fine man; there's nothing wrong with you.”  “You've got to put this behind you - and that takes one thing; time.”   “It'll wear away, man - I promise; and you're doing just the right thing - gett'in away from the whole scene - traveling; moving.”  I never mentioned anything of my own predicament to Fred - he had no room left.

 

The next morning around ten o'clock, I'm laying on my cot try' in to focus through a wildly undisciplined mind; a medley of competing fragments from the past, and finish off a chapter of Gravity's Rainbow, but kept slipping off the page.   I'd been working away at that book for three months, off and on, and was about two-thirds through.  Ann couldn't say enough good things about it.  Now I'm beginning to

wonder if she'd read it at all.  I think Pynchon's craftsmanship and facility with words are probably without

parallel in the later half of the twentieth century, but the subject matter leaves me cool.  Way too much about way too little, and it's too difficult to read:  An orchestra with a thousand instruments, playing two Chopin Polonaise, and a Gregorian chant; simultaneously.

The previous night had drained my energy and strained my emotional balance.  I was edgy and tired - I'd had enough of Mexico, and in the midst of my shameful recollections, surfaced a host of my favorite

injuries suffered at the hands of parents, in-laws, good-time and would-be friends, teachers, women I had wanted, but never had; women I'd had, but never wanted, Ann, the organizational structure - it all came streaming in, inveigling for my attention.   I'd no sooner set the book down and covered my eyes with my hands, when an Italian I hadn't as yet noticed, is at the side of my cot, along with Stephen, cajoling and trying

 

 

to entice me to go for a horseback ride with a couple of others.  One's a local Mexican, that now, as I raise my elbows, I see across the room standing in the outside doorway.   He waves solemnly.  I look at him with the suspicion that had now become my custom - where's the hole in all of this?  These Chiapian Mexicans, I've learned, always have an angle and lie like a bunch of Arabs.    A horseback ride, huh; well that might be just the ticket; get out of Chiapis; see some of the country; and besides we'd been here five days, and I'd had it with San Cristobal.  I slide off the bed, check to be sure my footing is solid and balance sound, and saunter on over to the door while Stephen and Giorgio scamper about, and talk excitedly - reminding me of Chip and Dale.  Roberto is medium height, virile and stout with a serious broad face, flashing white teeth, and deep-set,

black, furtive eyes.  He speaks in a resonant and cunning voice; a bit of the sinister about him.  I sense deceit, but no threat.  He's grown an impressive moustache and wears it well.  It reaches to the cheeks, evenly on both sides, and covers halfway to the mandibles in a walrus-like bristling of thick black hairs.  Replete in his Mexican-style cowboy hat and western boots, I take him for a cross between an Argentine gaucho and the Marlboro Man.   I'm reminded of Conrad's Nostromo - Capataz de Cargadores.  I would be proved only partially correct on that score; perhaps Nostromo, out of character, on a twisted day.

Here's the deal:  Roberto knows a small-time rancher just outside of town with horses for rent, and wants to go horseback riding.  He doesn't have any money, but that's no problem; he'd talked the matter over

with Stephen earlier that morning at the cafe' where they'd just met.  He and Giorgio, who was also broke, had committed the day to finding a mark, and who better than an American?  Stephen was the hook.  They had filled his head with a virtual Cinerama:  A beautiful early summer's day; and rolling, lush country, sweeps under him as he gallops along on his stalwart steed - seeking after noble adventure.  A bountiful noontime meal would be prepared under the over-arching branches of an ancient oak.  We would return as musketeers in a mixture of exhilaration and contentment.   This would be the best and finest day since in Mexico.  All that's needed is the meager sum of twelve dollars; a mere nothing.   Twelve bucks uh, and that's for everybody for the day?  “Si, Si.”   Feigning the serious, as he figures that's the best way to play me, Roberto gesticulates with his hands, addresses me respectfully as senior, and guarantees I will enjoy myself.  The landscape is beautiful and open he says; the forest is magnificent and the air - it smells of the mountains - it's clean and refreshing; we will stop and picnic; and on and on.    The clean air part and green anything were the clincher.  I agree to pay for Roberto and myself on account of him handling the logistics and serving as the leader of the excursion.    I tell Stephen I'll lend him six dollars.  I knew I'd never get it back, but it made the deal bearable.  Stephen readily agrees to gives three to Giorgio.   I put on my boots, grab my knapsack, check to make sure I've got my toilet paper, pick-up my canteen, put the rest of my stuff next to Fred's bunk as he was too downhearted and mortified to leave the dormitory   “…guard this stuff with your life, guy…” and we're off to the market to stock-up with food for the journey.   Roberto graciously volunteers to buy the food and takes the lead.  

He is so insulting to the poor Indian women selling their very best vegetables laid out on newspapers beneath the early morning shade, and over which they hover over like old hens, that I wonder off a little distance in embarrassment.   He handles the cabbages as though they're turds, and finally buys two large ones, a dozen small potatoes, a handful of green peppers, a small bunch of cilantro, and a large loaf of bread.   All for seventy-fifty cents in the midst of a continuing derogatory banter.  This collection sure doesn't look to be the makings of much of lunch to me, but Roberto assures me that he is, and in addition to his other talents, an excellent cook.  It will be delicious, he says; and not too filling.  One must eat light while riding; if not, one becomes sick with the indigestion and stomach cramps.  He goes through quite a pantomime to demonstrate the effects to me.  I tell him it's all the same to me; I've got dysentery anyway.  “You have the amebas amigo; don't worry, I will fix that when we get back.”  I should have known; a veritable Odysseus.  Stephen and Giorgio agree as though his adjutants.   “What the fuck do you two know about it; let's go?”   Amebas?   I am elected to carry the food, and begin to have misgivings as I pack the parcel into my knapsack.   “Roberto, how you going to cook this stuff without a pot and water?”  I should have known that he has plainly in mind a campsite used by drovers - he's been there many times; everything is there - firewood, kettles, water; everything.  It is very nice.  

The day is humid and hazy; somewhat overcast, and a light breeze comes from the west.   Not a single truck of any stature in Mexico has a muffler, and to reach our destination, it takes about a half hour of

 

 

walking along inside a garbage and trash-strewn ditch by the side of the main road, while all the time look' in out to avoid being hit by one these roaring caravans that leave a maelstrom of swirling jetsam in their wakes.  We finally reach a ramshackle, but fairly large house, that's obviously been built in stages.  The front door is

open and so too are the two front windows, one on each side, which I notice as the curtains move about, and flap a little in the breeze.  They're torn and fashioned from old sheeting.  There are no screens.  Roberto had,

of course, misrepresented this as a hacienda.   It sits about fifty yards off the main road in a slight draw at the end of a rocky roadway, made distinguishable from the adjoining scrub only in a rutted, two-wheeled track.  The three of us walk around back, while Roberto engages a disheveled dotard and his young, but tired-looking Indian wife, up under the dangerously sagging veranda.  Yes, there are half a dozen swayback nags out back, but more ready for the glue factory than a gallop through the countryside.  They're penned inside a decrepit coral fashioned from odd tree branches loosely strung with bailing wire.  Any one of those horses could inadvertently knock it down with a light brush.   I watch as they meander about with tails swishing, and then come along side each other, hide-a-twitching and shaking spasmodically - all in a futile effort to rid themselves of an infestation of deer flies.  

Roberto comes into view around the side of the house, along side the old man, talk' in a mile-a-minute.  His teeth flash, and by the way his hands and arms are forming forceful images in the air, I've got the feel' in he's narrating some James Bond-like episode from his heroic life.  The old man, whom I'm sure hasn't correctly comprehended a full sentence in years, appears fully pre-occupied with staying upright as he shuffles along the uneven ground.    As they gain the corral, the three other of us gather around.  The old man regards the horses as though this is the first time he's seen them.  He stares at them for a full minute, then motions weakly in their general direction with his right hand, and mumbles something unintelligible.  Roberto turns and trots back over to the rear of the house, and shouts something quickly through the open backdoor.   A young boy of about twelve soon appears at the threshold with the Indian women, whom I take to be his mother, standing at his shoulder.   The boy is thin and taciturn as he slowly walks over to a sagging shed, disappears inside for a moment and comes out hefting high up under his chest, a heavy wooden and leather saddle, draped with a dirty horse blanket and halter-type bridle.   He walks over to the corral, nudges the leather restraining strap over the top of the post with his left shoulder, and kicks the gate open.  Though lethargic and uninspired, it takes him only a few minutes to saddle one of the horses, while the five of us watch stupidly as though he was completing the final touches to a masterpiece.  This procedure is repeated another three times.  Roberto walks over to me and solemnly asks for the money.  The dinero must be paid in advance; up front.   Instinctually, I suggest we pay afterwards, but it had been a long time since I'd been horseback riding, and didn't remember why paying at the end of the ride is much preferable; besides, Roberto was insistent.  “OK man, relax; here's the bread.”  I hand over the twelve bucks.   

Roberto assigns the horses, straps my knapsack to the rear of his saddle, and we all mount.  The boy comes around and adjusts the stirrups.   I adjust myself in the saddle, sit straight up, and attempt to impose my

dominance over this horse by putting him through a few quick turns.  He's having none of it, and tries to bite my leg.  Roberto's horse takes the lead, and the three other of us follow along behind at an unenthusiastic walk.   Twenty minutes or so away from the house, and I'd all but given up the idea of inspiring my horse to do anything other than follow the tail of Stephen's horse, which was just ahead of me, and intermittently farting, she drenches the forelocks of my horse, and splatters my Levis with a heavy stream of yellowish piss that projects directly rearward from under her raised tail.   This slowly bobbing clip goes on for another hour as we gain several hundred feet, leave the chaparral, and enter the scrub pine forest.   I smell the sweat of the

horses and the urine.  By now the wooden planks upon which I sit, though contoured to the general shape of a crotch and adjoining ass, have become decidedly uncomfortable.  I'm beginning to relieve some of the pressure by pushing my legs into the stirrups, scooting around a little, and try' in to find a better position.   Since the so-called forest was uninspiring, and quickly became monotonous, reducing this continual chafing and incipient pain in the general area of my crotch and upper thighs, became my sole interest and preoccupation.  I now swat at the nats without malice.   “Hey, Stephen - how's your ass man?”  “Mine's

killing me - I can't feel my balls any more - shit.”  “Yeah, it a bit rough, but not too bad Rodney; you got' a push way back in the saddle, and not bounce up and down.”   See how smart Stephen is; a goddamn genius.  

“Bullshit man, these are some cheap-ass saddles, and these horses are all disjointed or something - fuck - Ugh.”  This reminds me of a broken down old roller coaster down at the Pike in Long Beach, once smooth

 

when my father was kid, but now thirty years later, jars the shit out 'a Paul and myself one afternoon during Easter break of our sophomore year in high school.  We continue to gain altitude as we move along through

the thinning stands of pinion pines, clusters of thorn bushes, and thickets of mesquite.  The terrain grows

steadily more rocky, barren and unsure, as elapses another hour.   The horses break into an unannounced trot,

which begins my ass to bouncing so badly, I abandoned the thoughts I had been having about the roller coaster, and Paul's explanation having to do with a reduced radius in the steel wheels, metal fatigue, and an induced flexing in the wooden support structure.

“Whoa!  Whoa!”  My horse slows to a walk, and none too soon, as I come up along side Roberto.  Stephen, and that dull-witted Giorgio, who's been pulling up the rear, and hasn't uttered a word since leaving the house, and who actually seems to be enjoying himself, pulls up a little ways off.   Giorgio is unremarkable; non-descript; nothing about him seems definite.   He is perhaps five-nine, lightly built, but not thin, with fine sandy hair and a light complexion - clean-shaven.  His eyes are light blue; transparent in the sun; his teeth are small; baby-like, and stained - blackened.  He seems always to be in background smoking; chain smoking cigarettes, flicking an ash careless through a studied exhalation - one cigarette to the next - with an inaction about him; a blankness - watching.    I don't remember him being in the dormitory at all.  No. He arrives with Roberto, but not as a friend, exactly; Roberto pays him very little attention.  Should this be in another time and place, I would say Giorgio is Roberto's valet, his footman.      

               Each of their horses, now with differing attitudes and headings, meander and try their best to nibble at the paltry brown thistle-like tidings offered by the few weeds and nameless bushes that comprise the ground cover over the now slowly approaching hundred square miles.  These, and the sparse thickets of mesquite, and randomly clumped stands of pinion, represent the sole vegetation unfortunate enough to call this barren, rocky and sand-strewn scrubland - home.  Stephen and Giorgio remain on their horses, and strain on the reins in a wasted effort to prevent the horses from eating.  I've now dismounted my horse, and am holding tight to the reins.  The last thing on this earth I want to do today, is to walk back to the house; the hacienda.  Roberto gazes into the distance.  My immediate concern is the massaging of my ass and inner thighs, and despite Roberto's admonitions to the contrary, don't much care what the fuck this horse eats.   Had my ass and lower back not hurt so badly, and I had I been less stiff, I might have had the alacrity of mind to appreciate the humor in all of this.   It's like some screwy episode of 'F-Troop' that got away from the director.  Our director, however, is as ebullient as ever.  Roberto, smiling broadly, is fit as a fiddle; in the pink.  An honest-to-goodness range hand in his element could be no more satisfied.   “You see Rodney, it is just as I said - beautiful; look, nothing but wide-open space; no towns, no bad smells, nothing - and he waves his hand through the air in an all-embracing salute, much as big John in 'High Chaparral' does when trying to convey a difficult-to-understand benefit to his recalcitrant, but trustworthy, range boss, Buck - after the cattle have stampeded.   That both actually believe what they say, would be stupefying, if not for the fact that it's so damn weird, interesting; admirable even.   My incredulity aside, I cannot help but follow his hand.  No, I'm not wrong; Roberto is exactly correct when he said there's nothing here:  This place, and notwithstanding Giorgio's echo of Roberto's salutations, is zilch, really; a gussied-up moonscape.    “Ah - Roberto, man - this place ain't shit - really.   I know you see whatever it is you see, and you're digg'in on it and all, but, this is the farthest thing from a green forest I can imagine.  How much further to the camp site?”  “We're almost there now; no more than one or two kilometers; right down there by those trees”.  I can't see any trees.  “Come on amigos let's go, I am hungry”.  I don't say anything in response; and get back on my horse - agh!  “OK, man let's go, but slow; no more trotting”.

Roberto leads the way; as we follow like a procession of goslings up a slight draw for about ten minutes, then down a gentle, but rocky and loose shelf of shale a few meters from a jagged escarpment that falls as into a deep ravine.  The horses slip and slide a little, but thankfully do not become nervous, and remain sure-footed.  As we round the shoulder of a small hill, the sandstone face of the abutment to our left falls away as our midway destination emerges in the distance.  Roberto is truly prescient.  Closing in on the final five hundred meters in front of us, and as this final sprint is being traversed, comes into clear sight, a large clump of trees that I take for junipers or willows. They look unnatural; out of place, as if placed there by some caprice of nature.  The unbalanced terrain flattens, and in spite of my effort to rein him back to a walk, my horse follows the others, as all four break into trot on the scent of water. The grove of trees has obviously

 

 

been here a long time, and covers the better part of a hectare. The trees are an oasis of the lichen-trunked, mature, tall and widely overarching; the adolescents, and the recent sprouts, and young seedlings striving

skyward for their place in the sun.   They are all fully green and unblighted, belying a unique and fruitful location above a shallow aquiver.    In a flurry of wings, a startled bevy of white and gray birds lift from the trees, take to the sky, circle into a single flying wedge formation, and disappear toward the east.

 

We are now in the interior of a darkened, but adequately illumined glade as Roberto walks his horse through checkered patches of sunlight that perfuse the interior gloom, and pulls up to a campsite that, too, has

been here for a number of years.  The air is cool on my face and smells of camphor. We all dismount and tie the horses to the trees.  There are ten to twelve heavy wooden camping tables interspersed among the trees.  The legs have sunken into the hard earth.  Their surfaces are uneven, discolored and blackened, but well preserved from an accumulation of oily sap residue that falls from the overreaching branches.   The tables surround a large food preparation and cooking facility, some five meters or so in length and four feet in height, also of heavy timbers, and cemented stones.  The counter top extends some six feet on each side of a

rectangular cooking pit fashioned from a heavy steel oil drum that has been cut lengthwise and set into the cemented stone support.  A heavy grill is flush with the surface of the counter.  Below the counter top, and set into the face, are several square recesses in the stone secured by what appear to be deck hatches from an old sailing vessel.   These have been fashioned into heavy oaken doors and affixed with lag bolts drilled into the concrete that molds together the stones.  They are made secure with thick steel hinges and fastened by heavy iron hasps and steel pins.  These serve as cupboards and contain an assortment of water pails, heavy gauge cast iron and steel cooking pots and skillets, ladles, large serving spoons, heavy forks, and several dozen small steel pie-tin-like trays, but no utensils and no cups; nothing to drink from.

There is a two-acre clearing where several large trees have been cut down close the ground. Their stumps are perhaps four feet in diameter and decayed in a decomposition of mosses and algae.   The ground

has been beaten from the hooves of a thousand horses over many years into a powder-like coating.  There are scattered and rain-pitted horse hoof trackings, and boot prints everywhere.  This area doesn't require the services of a Navajo tracker to decipher what's been go' in on here.   Small billows of dust rise with each footstep and cover the tops of your boots.   In the center is a large fire pit, ten feet in diameter and several feet

deep, defined by a semi-circle of large blackened stones that have receded somewhat, and blended into the

ground.  The partial circle abuts a formidable hearth constructed of cemented stones and small boulders.  It seems as though transplanted from a medieval castle.  The gray surface is discolored in streaks of green and

white stain.  On the far end of the clearing, some ten meters or so from the tables, are two heavy cast iron bathtubs, old, but still partially porcelain-surfaced, set into the ground, which serve as livestock watering, or horse troughs.  They overflow from a steady, but meager stream of water that falls steadily into both tubs from the open ends of a small rusty, teed-off pipe.  It disappears into the earth in few feet away.   The source of the water remained uncertain, but most assuredly emanates from a natural spring and is being carried by the force gravity to this site.  I see a heavy green pocket of bushes up a jagged ravine some twenty or so meters away. I've not seen an animal all day; not even a jackrabbit, and certainly not a single steer, or a single pie or chip.   Just the insects.   Roberto insists that this is a drover's camp.

The better part of a day with Roberto, and nearly a month in Mexico, has driven home to me a fundamental tenet of the mind:  Truth carries a relative definition.   Cultures of a heritage other than that

which still predominates as American mainstream; that is, European Christian, view lying as perfectly permissible; even necessary.   Lying, in consideration of the harsh circumstances and daily struggles common to two-thirds of the world's population, quite simply is not of original sin, nor did such a hallmark of civilization - such a stricture, matriculate from any intervening genesis. The notion that this facility may have been at some time in the past, and could now feasibly continue to be used by cattle drovers, was more than sufficient grounds for Roberto to exclaim that this pure and groundless conjecture, was indeed the case.

Roberto knew very well who built and used this place long before I deduced what was intuitively obvious to even the casual observer-- on this sultry July mid-afternoon, deep in the highland desert scrubland, just outside of Chiapis, Southern Mexico.  

I was put on wood gathering detail, while Stephen and Giorgio were assigned to water the horses, fill a couple of pails from the slowly pouring pipe, and wash one of the medium-sized kettles and four of the

 

pie-tins. The tins, Roberto announced, as though he'd just solved a difficult problem in logic, would serve as plates.  Roberto takes on the airs of a regimental cavalry general in the Prussian army, as he struts around and

surveys the facilities while giving non-stop directions to the three of us.  This is typical Mexican behavior.  Put one of this homogenous group in charge of his peers, and see what happens - a miraculous transformation into the 'Patron' the 'Big Man'.   I do not judge this proclivity; it is their nature, and although not to be trusted as a friend, I like Roberto in an odd way, remaining circumspect; that I just can't exactly put my finger on.  His life is unrehearsed and unscripted; he carries himself upright, and although his horizons are limited, he is real; too real, or perhaps surreal.  Something's not quite right, I don't know; maybe it me.   I bring an armful of wood, hand the smaller, kindling pieces to Roberto, and laying the larger branches up a against a large rock, snap them with the heal of my right boot.   Roberto forms a fairly large-sized tepee with the kindling and starts a pretty good fire going in the cooking pit.  While waiting for the wood to burn down and charcoal into fiery red hot embers, he sliced the bread, chopped the cilantro and peppers, cut-up the cabbages and potatoes, and while he does so, picks the vegetable clumps up as they form with his hands, and drops them into the kettle.

As I'm taking a look around, walking, skirting the grove and waiting for the food to be finished, I retrieve a single flower from the ground.  It has arrived, oddly, on a late afternoon gust, which comes, of a sudden, from the west.  The trees suddenly come alive, quiver in a shared chorus of rustling leaves and creaking branches that grows loud, diminishes for a time, and then reasserts itself.  It's a lonely and melancholy sound.   I hold the stem between my middle and index fingers, and twirl the blossom.  I feel exhausted all at once, my head hurts, and I slip into a sad mood and stare absently into the distance.  The blossom spins in one direction, then the opposite as I stare absentmindedly.  My attention to the present glazes over and wonders back to Ann's small apartment in Santa Ana - it seems as though I'd seen her just yesterday, as she stands before me, talking inconsequentially about a silly episode while at work - as her neck and throat move so beautifully.   No - I'm not going to go there.   I move my head quickly from side-to-side and try to shake it - the malarial evocation of love that haunts me as a curse.   I look hard at the flower and throw it disgustingly to the ground, and move back toward the campsite as a nervous chill goes through my body.  The kettle is boiling away as I come up on Roberto.  He is stirring the mixture with a soup ladle, and humming to himself contentedly.   I'm temped to ask him if he's ever been in love, but collect myself in the nick of time.   Stephen and Giorgio are sitting at one of the tables, talking and giggling.    Stephen knows one dirty joke - I imagine he's just told Giorgio.  It's about four-thirty, and I guess the altitude here at around twenty-five hundred feet. The sun has fallen well down in the horizon, and the air begins to turn cool.  I know it won't be dark until at least eight, but am suddenly eager to eat and be on our way.  

The stew is surprisingly good; the cilantro adds the right touch.   It's hot and the vegetables are fresh. We pick out the larger pieces with our fingers and sop up the broth with the bread.   Roberto is congratulating himself.  He smiles broadly, refills my plate, and slaps me on the back - too hard, while those magnificent white teeth gleam in the semi-darkness, as though to say - see amigo, I told you.    Well, I guess things could be worse.    They soon became just that way, as in a matter of less than a minute, the sky turns dark gray and it begins to rain.    Not hard, but a steadily sprinkling drizzle.  The trees shiver with it, and the wind picks up.  We huddle together. There's no shelter other than the overhanging boughs, which very soon become sodden.  The water spills off in a thousand tiny, intermittent rivulets.  There's no escape.   Nobody, not even Roberto who stares at the sky incredulously, knows what to do.   We finish-up the stew in silence - each person doing what he thinks best.  I sit back down at the table and huddle over my tin plate.  

I'm beginning to feel miserable as a platoon of a dozen regular Mexican Army troops ride up on rain-muffled hoofs as though phantoms dropped from the sky; arisen from the surrounding earth in a moment; ghost-riders materialized from nothing.   We all stand and stare as though frozen in an aposiopesis of time.  My heart beats rapidly and my mind concentrates to a thin tunnel view as though under the influence of a drug.  All in the space of a moment.  There is no sound other than the heavy and expulsive breathing, grunting, and unease coming from the horses.  The soldiers are draped in uniform forest green ponchos; they gleam and drip as though from a heavy sweat. The soldiers are silent.  I see only the gleam of wet, nondescript brown faces peering at us - as the afternoon seems to darken perceptibly.  One man rides up to within a few feet, and begins to speak rapidly in an indignant and commanding voice.  I take him for the lieutenant.   Roberto picks up the challenge impressively.  They talk for several minutes.  The soldier is

 

angry; perhaps it's a feign, I don't know.  Roberto talks to him condescendingly.   It is a gamble; a clever gambit; a quick-witted ploy to establish our naiveté and innocence.   I gather that we are trespassing on Federal land.   Roberto speaks emphatically:   “No contrabando - no!”   “No armamento.”   The lieutenant suspects us of drug running, turns in his saddle and barks a quick order.    The troops dismount and begin talking confusedly amongst themselves.  Several draw their pistols and approach; it's slow motion, like a dream where you can't move.  Several others move to the side and level their M-16's.  My legs turn leaden and my breathing is now become short shallow gasps. I stare hopelessly down several inches into the face of the soldier as he grabs me, and tells me to turn around; hold my arms akimbo and bend over the table.  He is strong, and has a very dark and heavy face; a ruthless countenance.   I flash on the gorilla soldiers in  'Beneath the Planet of the Apes'.   The resemblance is uncanny.   He shoves my face against the rasp of the wood, kicks my legs apart and searches me very roughly. I smell the camphor as a stream of spittle escapes from between my clenched teeth and distorted, quivering lips.  There are voices and shouts coming from every direction, but I'm removed; my consciousness is isolated in a suspension of time.  My shallow, gasping breath is all as the butt of his rifle presses hard against my spine. A full ten minutes goes by, as the four of us remain bent over two of the tables.   The soldiers talk and yell at one another.  There is disagreement.  I expect to be shot; tremble, and emptied of reason and thought, curse the world under my breath in a series of incoherent, mumbled imprecations that I hear as though the hollow voice of echoed admonishments of doom issued vilely from the lips of a heinous inquisitor.  It's like no sensation I've ever had - before or since.    Then and anon -- it's all over.    I return to my familiar consciousness in short, disjointed bursts of action and horripilation of nervous flesh.  The cold rain continues to fall.   The food residue, the partial loaf of bread; the empty kettle - everything is left in mid-sentence as we ride away in silence - each man involved with his own thoughts.   I take a quick look over my shoulder.  The soldiers are now in the distance, unsaddling their horses, and beginning to set-up camp.

It's now well past six, dusk in these mountains, the rain is now light, but steady, and the sky becomes ever more darkened.    I see distinctly the cold orb of the full moon as it floats, squinting, through intermittent breaks in the cloud cover.   To the west, there's a black thunderhead in the near distance, where I can see the rain falls in heavy sheets.   A lone lightening bolt spears through the clouds and strikes the earth, as I look; no more than a mile or so in the distance. Several seconds elapse, then the plangent resound.   The air, now ionized, smells freshly of ozone and wet sage.   We're soaked to the skin, but in my weariness, I'm unexpectedly feeling keen; jubilant, and cannot help but tease and taunt Roberto, whom I'm now directly behind.  “Those drovers were dressed just like soldiers Roberto; did they think we were cattle rustlers?   “No, No” from Roberto as though he takes me seriously.  “Those were soldiers.  I don't know what they were doing there - they are from the North.  I've been there many times.  The camp is used by cattle drovers.  The soldiers, they come because of the rain.”  With that he dismisses the incident with a cavalier  “Es no problema”.   I laugh out loud, and feel very much relieved.  He turns in his saddle, regards me silently, and then slowly smiles. “Whatever you say man - let's get back to the house, and get rid of these goddamn horses - pronto.”   “It'll be pitch dark in less than an hour.”   But I see the moon is full.  

 

It is ten o'clock when we trudge into the dormitory; just ahead of the lockout.  I'm somnambulistic; my weariness amazes me.  The room is dark.  I hear the sounds of people sleeping.   I quietly remove my now damp clothing, and feel blindly through my pack for my sweats.  The matron's light in the front house is on.

I knock at the back door.  After some minutes, her disheveled husband appears and stares at me through blanketed eyes; we talk; he sells me a beer for fifty-cents.    I sit down in one of the small chairs outside the dormitory, light a cigarette, and slowly sip the beer.   It tastes so good.  The first good thing all day.  I sleep the sleep of the dead; dead to the world; dreamless, and awake confused, startled; only minutes have gone by

- but it's bright outside.  The dormitory is nearly empty.   I quickly check to see if Fred is still here.   He's lying on his cot, propped-up, writing; entering words into his chronicle.  What are his thoughts?

Continuing to write, and in the nonchalance of a cliché, issues a greeting:  “How was the horseback ride?”   I move to sit up - ugh; ah - Jesus!  I can barely move.  I stand slowly on rubbery legs and stagger a step before gaining my balance.   I attempt to stretch, but give it up, and sit back down on the edge of the cot and lean forward.  “You don't want' a know, man.”  “Too fuck'in much.  It was too fuck'in much; we damn near got shot by the military.”  “What!?” as Fred drops his pen in a start, turns and refocuses attentively.  

 

“Fuck that Roberto.” “What' ya mean?” “Took us onto a military reservation, man - security area, something; someplace we shouldn't have been.”     “Glad I didn't go.”  “Goddamn right - I'd be glad too if I hadn't gone.”  “You didn't miss noth'in but a fucked-up day.”  “You seen anything of Stephen; what time is it?”

“I want' a get out'a here today.”   “You leaving today?” Somewhat plaintively.  “Yeah man, I'm out'a here.”  “Oh.” “You eaten yet, Fred?”   “No.”   “Let me grab a shower; we'll go to the café; I'll spring.”   “Stephen's probably down there now.”   “Yeah - probably.   I don't know on what, though; he hasn't got a damn cent.  Oh well.”    

We return from breakfast and begin to pack up our stuff.  I shake the wrinkles, and any bedbugs, ticks or other creeping, hidden vermin out of the plastic sheeting it's become my habit to lay out on all these

mattresses, spread it out on top of my sleeping bag and roll them up together.   I undo the top of my pack and

notice that somebody's been go' in through it.  “Somebody been go' in through my shit!”   Fred walks over. He doesn't know a damn thing about it, and I believe him, but the statuettes are gone.  “Fuck me!”  “The

statues are gone.   Stephen - the fucking statues are gone!”  Stephen stands and begins to walk over.  “Ah, Rodney, that's fucked-up.”  “Goddamn right it's fucked up - who took that stuff - that fucking Roberto; no, wait a minute - not Roberto; fucking Giorgio.”   “I'll kill that motherfucker.”   “It didn't happen yesterday

man, that stuff was right by my bed all day.”   “No, man; it just happened - while we were at breakfast.”

This is Roberto - the one beguiled to evil tendencies - and Giorgio; one of the minions.  Once confused; I'm now so clear.  I would have killed both of them for pull' in this kind' a shit, but I had no idea where the fuck they were.   “Stephen, you told Giorgio about the statuettes, didn't you?”  Silence, then as if in innocent witness to some treasonous treachery: “I don't believe it!”  “Well, believe it now motherfucker - I ain't got em up my ass; they're gone!”  “Did you, or didn't you?” “I don't remember; I don't think I did.”  “What kind 'a answer is that - either you did, or you didn't.”   “We talked - but, I didn't.”  Stephen is very nervous, shaken, and speaks unconvincingly.   “Bullshit, Stephen you told that motherfucker sure as hell.”     “If you had a nickel, I'd beat it out'a you - ah, fuck it.”   “Shit!”   “Roberto put his dumb ass up to this.”   That's how it is; things are yours in this life only as long as you can hang on to them, guard them; period.  That goes for everything - money, women, statues; every goddamn thing there is in this world.  Somebody's always look' in, wait' in, figuring; lay' in wait for your carelessness, or trust.  “Come on, man, don't stand there look' in stupid, pack your shit up; the bus leaves in less than half an hour.”  

Fred walks with us to the bus depot, as I continue to berate Stephen and curse Roberto, reconciling myself to the loss.   I buy two tickets to Guatemala City, and we walk over to the glass door that leads to the loading platform.  The bus is already there. People are beginning to board.  Stephen volunteers to take our stuff outside to the porter. “Go ahead, man - but watch to be sure everything's loaded.”  I turn to Fred, look at him for a moment, and tell him I'm sorry that our acquaintance had to end on such a sour note. “I'm sorry Fred for gett'in all upset like that, but I really wanted those things.   I don't think I hate anything more than

being ripped-off.”   “Yeah, man, I'm the same way; it's a goddamn shame about those statues; they were

beautiful.”  “They were; no doubt about that; may have even been real.”  I say through a strained laugh.  I take Fred by the shoulders and we hug - and I'm not the man-hugging type.  “Fred, I'm really glad I ran into you. You're a good guy.”   “Take it easy on your way back north, and don't worry about things, man; just be who you are”.  “Yeah, Rod, meeting you was - well, it was good for me.”  “Everything's go' in to workout just fine - but you've got to toughen up to match the world.”  “Yeah - well I hope so, Rod.”  Stephen and I get on the bus, as Fred turns and disappears from my life.  He is the good.

 

The bus is two-thirds full as it pulls out of the San Cristobal station at twelve-thirty.  We proceed in a southwesterly direction through the same high chaparral we'd been through on the horses.  The highway bends gently, and rises and falls without consequence as it follows the natural contours of the passing

geography.  The driver, and much to my relief, is less aggressive than the others we'd had, and to the best of my memory didn't even make one gut-wrenching effort to pass around a blind hairpin.  Perhaps he was not feeling well?    Two hours, and a final ascent of several hundred feet finds us in a mountainous landscape of foggy and lushly jungled vegetation on the Mexico - Guatemala border.  We pull to a stop at the frontera

checkpoint, de-bus, walk over to the Guatemalan port of entry station, and have our visas stamped.   The Guatemalan authorities, looking paramilitary, go through our luggage quickly.  The bus stays here for half-an-hour to secure all necessary clearances, and then proceeds for another hour or so twisting its way through a

 

wet and densely green mountainous terrain.  Mud is thrown up onto the windows as the bus plows through low points on the highway where natural streams, flowing unseen in the dense foliage encroach on the asphalt. Small piles of rubbish burn along the side of the road.  We travel past several vast orchards; plantacions of plantanos, that stretch across the leeward side of the valley and carry the eye to the bases of numerous unnamed volcanoes, which release ominous clouds of black sulfurous smoke in the distance.  As we descend and round a precipitous bend, comes abruptly into view the gleam of a Catholic cupola.  It seems to

concentrate an islet of many-darkly shaded roofs, the tops of jagged walls, and a maze of narrow cement streets that recede into a shantytown of thatch and muddied paths; then further into a sea of green.   Then,

just as abruptly, it disappears as the bus continues it's winding descent to our first scheduled stop at Huehuetenango.  I look at my watch; it's quarter of five.  Stephen and I disembark the bus and step into a tepid heat.  We put on our packs, I pick-up my satchel, and begin walking away from the station in search of a café.  This town appears much the same as did San Cristobal, except that it's placed at a higher altitude, is built amongst more sharply sloping contours, and sits near the base of a truly impressive volcano shrouded in white clouds.  It towers into a smoky relief in the distance north of the city.

Guatemala is a misadvised oligarchy; an enduring third-world archetype of a schismatic and grossly inequitable division of a populous - both along class and economic lines.  The overwhelming majority is

decidedly Indian in appearance, and uniformly short in stature; however, and for unknown reasons, they smile more openly than those of the same ilk I've seen just recently in Southern Mexico.  These are the common people; the peons who work tediously to eke out a meager subsistence on the estancias.  They live in tin and cardboard shanties, and balance with the steadying support of a hand, large bundles on the top of their heads, as leading small children with the other; they walk along the roadsides, or in the groves, leading an overburdened donkey amongst the jungled and muddy pathways.  The women dress in their native costume of brightly colored woven skirts that reach the ground - reds, yellows, and deep blues - poplin blouses, black, braided hair - pelinegro.   No make-up anywhere, and no discernable underclothing - no brassieres at least.  The men, however, look much the same; although they, too, seem more contented.   Perhaps it's only my imagination, as I as well, and in spite of the annoyance of the nagging dysentery that leaves me fatigued and irritable; also feel better since crossing into Guatemala.

We find a small café, but I'm initially uncertain as to whether or not it's somebody's house:  “Permiso Senores, es restaurante; comida?”   An unenthusiastic  “Si” comes in response.  We walk in and are motioned to a table; one of five in a room of no more than five hundred square feet.   The table is unsteady, and the chairs rock slightly on legs that seem to be of different lengths.  “Gracias.” I say.  The place smells richly of cooking food and mesquite smoke, and seems to be a combination house and small restaurant, unpresumptuous in its simplicity, and apparently owned by a large and unsmiling Caribbean Negro and his Indian wife.   They serve a surprisingly varied menu: Unknown and surprising odd concoctions of unknown derivation, and in addition a few traditional fares, Chinese food.  We each order Chow Mien with shrimp, and a local beer.   I recall feeling out of place as the other patrons speak quickly amongst themselves in a local Spanish dialect, and to the owner who stands idly behind the counter barking orders into the unseen kitchen.   There is music coming from a single-speaker, old white radio with two large dials on its face, which sits at the end of the counter.  The station must be coming from Guatemala City, not more than another two hundred kilometers, but the music modulates in volume, fades in static, then returns.   Nobody seems to notice, but me.  The walls are of a roughly finished plaster, and washed to a dull white, which appears pinkish in the afternoon sunlight.  A single overhead fan, whirls slowly, rhythmically, as the old motor strains against an accumulated build-up of kitchen grease, dust and paraffinic varnish:  “…Yess - sir.   Yess - sir.  Yess - sir…” The Indian woman arrives, humming softly to herself, and sets two plates before us that overflow with steaming hot noodles, covered in shrimp.  It smells so good my mouth begins to water.   I cover the pile of food with soy sauce, let it sink in, and begin to eat.  The noodles are hot and slippery; the shrimp delicious. This is first really decent meal I've had in several weeks. The cervesa and food cost one dollar.   Stephen and I don't talk much; haven't talked much all day.  He likes to talk.   I'm punishing him for the loss of the statuettes.  I eat leisurely; enjoying the food in silent thought, while Stephen keeps his head down.

I pay two dollars to the Indian woman, and ask directions to the nearest hotel.    She turns to her husband as though unwilling to venture an answer.  The black man comes over to the table.  He is huge; better than six feet and well over three hundred pounds, dressed in baggy kaki trousers, and well-worn leather

 

sandals.  His large belly protrudes from beneath a well-worn white tee shirt.  His bellybutton, now four or five inches from my eye-level, is deep, bottomless; as I sit.   He exudes a heavy; pungent aroma of sweat, mixed with the accumulated residue of greasy char.  Laying at the bottom of the fire pit, seared by oily droplets falling haphazardly from above, it rises sharply as acrid smoke to coat the big man, as he turns and works fish upon the grill.  I stare up into his nostrils, and watch his thick lips as he begins to speak rapidly in short staccato bursts; fragmented sentences in a guttural Spanish with a Caribbean Negro inflection.  He motions nonchalantly, indicating nothing more than the general direction of the street.  I glance questioningly at Stephen.   I've understood nothing, but thank the man.   “Gracias senior.”  We leave, and walk down the sidewalk a few steps until out of view of the restaurant.  “What'd you make of the directions?”  I ask Stephen. “I didn't understand a damn thing he said.”  “Nothing.”  from Stephen in a defensive voice.   “Let's forget about the statues Stephen; it's done and there ain't a goddamn thing either one of us can do about.”   Stephen perks up.  “That's right Rodney; I been feel' in really bad about it all day; I just wasn't thinking - that's all.”   “I know - don't worry about it anymore.”  “Let's go find ourselves a place to stay.”   “Yeah - yeah; that's a bloody good idea; let's go.”    We both feel a sense of relief as we walk down the sidewalk looking for a hotel sign.   I notice that the street and sidewalk are dusted in a light coating of volcanic ash.  It rises in small fluffs from the edges of my boots leaving smeared paw-like prints in our wake that last only a minute before drifting traceless into a current of delicately rippling eddies.

We walk for fifteen or twenty minutes and breath the diesel exhaust of an old bus at it passes; blank faces staring absently, before arriving at the main boulevard.   A single traffic signal dangles in the center of

the intersection, and sways in the evening breeze.   Which way to go?   I think about going left, toward the volcano; then turn and beginning walking west.   “Do you see a hotel sign Rodney; I can't see anything?”   “No, but we're bound to find something pretty soon; the main part of the town, I think, is this way.  It can't that big”. We walk through shadows cast by the main cathedral - the gleaming copula of which I'd seen shimmering from on high only two hours before.   It now silhouettes dully against the bright orb of the setting sun.  It's a nineteenth century architectural masterpiece; impressive, an ostentatious obelisk; castellated among the stoically quiescent subservience, and tedium of its neighbors.  It dominates the town.  Smoke rises from small tin pots left by the faithful as they kneel mumbling, and cross themselves on the steps.  There are religious images of the Virgin Mary; mother of God, set about small alcoves and within abbreviated chambers. A woman on her knees prays and lights a candle.

The straps from the pack are cutting into my shoulders, and the back of my neck is starting to hurt, as we pass an open court.   A group of laughing children are kicking a half deflated and scuffed soccer ball amongst themselves, and several men, in loose-fitting, shabby dungarees and thin tee-shirts, sit on small chairs and stand along the walls.   The children continue to play as the men, in seeming unison, turn and look as Stephen and I enter a few steps into the court, which is needlessly wide - as wide as a basketball court.   There are four or five narrow whitish doors on either side of the court; some ajar, some closed.   The court is perhaps half covered in shadow, and wash hangs from a makeshift line.  I hear a woman's voice and a wafting of music coming from inside one of units.   I can see now, that this is a complex of apartments - and for the well-to-do.   We continue down the sidewalk.  I can feel the telltale loosening of the bowels, and need to get to a toilet, as a small boy, dressed in rags, barefoot, appears from a shadow; holds his hand out and begs.  His face rises from Dickens as I gaze into the lurid effects of unbridled, rapacious history.  I place a quarter into the supinated palm of his dirty hand.

             Two more blocks, and there's a hotel on the other side of street.   'The Hotel Florida' is an imposing three-story structure, granite and bricks, and of fifty rooms from my count of six-foot windows on the two upper floors.  I can see part of its lobby and foyer.   It's old, turn-of-the-century, but nice inside; too nice I think - heavily framed paintings hang upon veneered walls, and several silken sofas, appear comfortably amongst the soft folds of damask draperies.  The interior is empty of people.   I see no signs of life as we cross the street and, and from another vantage, take a better look.  There are three large stuffed chairs, and several bronze and chrome floor lamps; one for each chair and sofa, and two illumine the gleaming oaken balustrade as it descends in a finely widening, then conically tightening french curve by the foot of the main stairway.  Large-leafed green plants, in glazed and heavy vases, set on the tiled floor, two close together, a third by a large chair, and the forth, down a bit, and across the wall.  Three large pedestaled ashtrays rest among intricately patterned carpets; colorfully subdued in flowering arabesques.   “Looks expensive.”  I say.  

 

“Yeah, Rodney - this is real nice.”   “I'll bet' ya it's at least five dollars; maybe ten.”    Stephen is silent.   I stand for a moment - temporizing; waiting for another thought that doesn't come; and then we enter awkwardly.   I'm embarrassed to be carrying the pack, and appearing somewhat shabby; destitute, perhaps offensive.     A middle-aged, heavyset women in a dark dress stands austerely behind a polished wooden

counter to the right.  She wears light make-up and her hair has been done-up in a permanent - the first I've seen since entering Mexico more than a month earlier.    She is sullen, somewhat indignant; and is brusque with me, as I try to understand the Spanish and reply to her questions, courteously.   I thank her for the key; she is silent.  We get one large room with two regular-size beds for seven dollars.  

The room has parquet flooring, curtains, bed stands with individual lamps; and a heavy bureau with carved legs and crowsfeet pedestals.  There is an AM radio, but no television, or telephone. There's nothing in the drawers; no Gideon Bibles down here; at least not yet.  There is a single pad of writing paper.  The letterhead reads from the top over three centered and equally spaced lines: Hotel Florida, 2369 Avenda de Revolucion, Huehuetenango, Guatemala, SA.  There is no pen or pencil; if ever there, it's assuredly been

stolen.   I've made no contact north of the Mexican border since crossing over, and don't intent to.   The bathroom adjoins, is tiled, floor-to-ceiling in white dolphins, swimming in a sea of blue, with a built-in porcelain tub and large glass shower stall; likewise done in blue.   There is toilet paper on a roll near the toilet. I turn on the water at the sink and look into the mirror.  My eyes are tired and my face; drawn, without color. The water turns hot.  Agua caliente, bien.   I thought about a shower, but felt too tired, and ended-up taking off only my shirt.  I used my hands to splash water on my chest, under my arms, and rinse my face.  The towel is stiff and smells as though it's been burned.  I return to the room, and lie down on the bed, sink in a bit, and feel my muscles relax.  I want to go to sleep.   Stephen is fooling around with the radio.  “You've got impressive back muscles Rodney.  You're in such a good shape; how do you do it?  Are you a gymnast?”  I reply tiredly from beneath closed eyes:  “Do I really look like a fucking gymnast to you Stephen - for Christ sakes”.  “You ever heard about yoga?”  “Stephen, please.”  “No, no - I've got a mate back home; he's like you - strong you know.  He's into Kundalini yoga - you ever heard of that?”  “Stephen” - tiredly - “I know all about it.”  “Ya do?” He begins to talk excitedly, as I open my right eye and stare at him quizzically. “Yeah, Rodney - it's the charkas ya see - they're hav'in the energy; it's the source of God and a release from all a' our cares and worries.” “What!?”  “Yeah - yeah - and you can get to it …” “Holy shit, Stephen - enough

man; I'm tired - knock that shit off will ya - I've heard it all before!”  Next thing you know, and he'll want to know my sign - Jesus.   “Well, I just…” I'm suspicious of that kind of talk, don't like it, and distrust the motives of its practitioners, but had long since dismissed Stephen as passing oddity.  “And will you please turn that fucking thing off.  Even it would come in, it's all in Spanish, man - and I can't stand that brass, and that ridiculous singing with the simple and ever-repeating melody.    It gives me a headache.  It all sounds like German polka music, but without the polka and without the Germans.  I don't know how they've fucked it up so badly.”    Stephen turns the radio off and walks around the room fidgeting.  “Here man, take this.”  I bridge up on the bed and pull from my right front pocket the three crumpled ones I'd just gotten in change.  “Why don't you go down to the bar -- and don't drink it all up; I'll be down in an hour or so.   I'm go' in to take a nap - and Stephen, don't get loaded, OK man? - No dope”.  “Sure, Rodney; I don't even want to be fuck' in about with that tonight - here, I'll put my stuff right on top of the bureau.”  He leaves a waded-up baggy; about half a lid, and a twisted pack of licorice rolling papers.

 

 I slept soundly for about two hours, and awoke confusedly; very slowly and dull.   I threw the covers back, took a deep breath, fumbled around with the lamp switch, and moved my watch around in front of my face for few seconds - trying to focus.   It's eight-twenty.    I made a mental note to go to the laundry

tomorrow; the wet pants from the day before had imbued everything in the pack with a mildewed and sour smell.    I put on the pair of Levis I'd been wearing, and, sniffing a little at each, put on the shirt I thought to be the least offensive.   I moved to the bureau, and picking-up my wallet, looked at the bag of grass.  I rolled a joint, lit it; strolled over to the window, and looked down on the few amber lights glowing, hallow-like on the main street.   A set of white headlights approaches up the street, passes into two beams and the side of a pick-up, and as I turn my head, it recedes as two dull red spots, until shut out by the column of large brick ends that encase the window.  I twisted a bit of tobacco free from the end of a “Lucky-Strike”, blew it across the room, then stuffed in the roach, and lit it.  I begin to feel high, adventurous again, muttering contentedly to

 

myself as the marijuana comes on.  I put the bag of weed and papers into the top drawer of the bureau, cross the room, open the door, and step out into the hall.  I am all alone.  I take one long last look around the room.  I feel my pockets for the key, and shut the door.

The lounge is downstairs in a large room off the foyer, behind a heavy, double oaken and beveled glass door. I stood in the foyer a few seconds and a peered through the heavy glass.  I was checking for Stephen, and look' in the place over before going in.   The fugitive strains of a muffled western melody sounded as though from a distance.   I am thus preoccupied as a Guatemalan couple, well-dressed, stand behind me silently:  “Permiso senior.”  “Oh - excuso.”   I step out of the way, tuck my shirt in, check my zipper, and follow them in.    There are six or seven dark-skinned people, all well-dressed, sitting at the bar, and another fifteen or so at tables spread around the floor.   Stephen and I are apparently the only Anglos.   There are three young whores sitting by themselves at one of the corner tables up against a wall.  They all three look up as I walk in.  I saunter over to the bar, and ease myself onto a stool.    I've sat down in the middle of the bar.  There's no one to my right; Stephen sits to my left with a local beer in front of him.  A thin column of smoke wafts from a cigarette as it sits alone in an ashtray.  The smoke rises, as though a miniature tornado, to the grease and dust besmirched portal of a suction fan, and disappears.   “How you do' in mate?”  I say happily with a pat on the back.   Stephen turns sharply.  His unfocused eyes are glassy, and upon his face, he has that same somewhat distant, preoccupied, and stupid expression that has been my company for three weeks.  “Oh, Rodney, good - you're here; I'd a been worry a bit after you.  I was just-a coming up to take a look.”  “Really - and how were you going to get in?”  “I've got the only key - remember?”   “Uh - yeah; ah, that's r-right.”  He giggles like a little a girl, and lapses into a high-pitched laugh as I wonder what was so funny.   He looks to his left as the guy sitt'in next to him also starts to laugh.  “This is - is a - he, he - ah - Emilio.”  Stephen finally manages to get it out through continued laughter.  They both now subside into renewed giggles, and look at one another, as he introduces me to a heavy-set, but not fat Mexican man, of about thirty sitting beside him.  I lean over to shake hands and catch a heavy whiff of the Mexican's cologne; it smells like a cheap perfume.   His face is carefully clean-shaven, moist and smooth, but his hair is long and wavy, hiding his ears, as it glistens with a black sheen in the bright light coming off the mirror that hangs on the wall behind the bar.  He wears a silken black shirt, open to the middle of his chest, where a large gold crucifix hangs at the end of heavy golden chain.    He regards me with a salacious, leering white smile, and uncomfortably holds on to my hand as we lock eyes. He gazes at me carefully, and slowly repeats my name several times.  I pull my hand away, and motion the bartender over, as I wipe the palm and fingers against my leg:   “Un cervesa las casas; porfavor.”   Jesus!   “Stephen, how much money ya got left?”   “Oh, yeah”, as he reaches into his pocket.  I'm surprised to see two dollars and change.  I look at my reflection in the mirror, shake a cigarette from my pack, light it, and letting the match fall passively into the ashtray, take a quick glance at the back of Stephen head, and wonder how in the world I could have let that slip past me, and for over three weeks now.   Kundalini yoga indeed.

An American rock-and-roll song now sounds loudly in the background.  I turn around on my stool and see a jukebox across the worn carpeting, setting on the floor next to a table strewn with trays of leftovers from a small buffet that the lone barmaid was just then beginning to clear away.    I walked over to the

jukebox, staring hard at the three whores who sit fifteen feet to my left, and smile.   They smile back, and motion me over. “Momento - momento.”  I say, and hold the back of my left hand up next to my ear, and as though seeking something more important, continue across the room.    The listing beneath the glass dome of

the jukebox, incased in a crinkling of shiny plastic, and though in Spanish, shows a mixed selection of American country-westerns, and rock.   I imagine that the whores are watching, as I look the jukebox over, and feel with my fingers for a coin slot along the chrome and bright red plastic that beams and shines through the marijuana.  I drop in two quarters and spend what seems like an inordinately long time, punching in six three-digit codes with the slightly trembling index finger of my right hand.   I turn and head back to the bar, glance to my right in the direction of the whores, but now one of them in gone, and the remaining two are talking heatedly between themselves - practitioners of the oldest profession in the world.  I notice, in an alcove just off the entrance, which till now had been hidden from view, and depending at the end of long black chain affixed to the ceiling, a large parrot cage - five feet in length I think, and constructed of heavy-gauge black wire.  I pivot a bit without remembered consideration, and walk in its direction.   I pass closely by the two whores, who now have stopped talking, and are looking up.  “Buenas noches senoritas -

 

comesta?”  “Bien, in unison, gracias, et tu?”   “Yo soy bien, gracias.”    I can now see they are young, very young perhaps, and local Indian girls, dressed cheaply in garish and tight-fitting shinny dresses, festooned with sequins.  The long black braids are now shorn, the remainder, teased, sprayed and combed, is done up into a modern Western hairdo.  Their legs are crossed revealing the whole of their short, plump thighs, pressed together; and most alluring to my leering eye.  Their faces are besmirched grotesquely in cheap make-up; applied thickly in a futile effort to appear older and sophisticated.    They expect me to join them, and look bewildered, as I pass by and come to a stop in front of the parrot cage.  

A large green, South American parrot appears as a brilliant emerald perched on one of a number of wooden roosts as it turns its head in a quick variety of cockeyed positions, as if mounted on a universal joint, and regards me quizzically.   I involuntarily flinch rearward in quick jerking of my head as though a spider, just that instant, had dropped before my face on a single thread of webbing.  Embarrassed, I laugh immoderately, as the parrot's crackly and guttural singsong murmurs of wholly unintelligible gibberish, is suddenly punctuated with a furiously demanding, piercing scream, as it sways back and forth, and renders sharply:  “Comestas Comendante!”  “Muy bien, gracias - muy bien!”   It leverages itself to the floor in a series of quick movements among the roosts, using its beak as a third appendage, and retrieves a Brazil nut; holds it with one claw, and cracks it open between its powerful mandibles.   One of the whores appears at my side.  She doesn't even come up to my shoulder; she's less than five feet tall, and up close, appears to be no more than fifteen or sixteen.   She begins to speak in her young rendition of a sultry temptress, a rather ludicrous and pathetic, although effective pastiche of May West.   I indicate that my Spanish is hugely faulty: “Habla despacia, senorita - porfavor; no rapidia.”  “De habla Inglisa?”  “No no; poco, solo”.  We manage to introduce ourselves to each other, and after a few multi-syllabic attempts at 'Rodney', she settles on 'Rod', which sounds cutely like 'road'.   She goes on to explain in a mixture of pantomime and broken bits of Spanish and English, how the papaguyo drinks tequila; how he becomes very funny - 'muy comico' - and urges me to buy a shot.   I'm laughing now and mov'in around the cage, looking at her and then at the parrot. I'm the happiest I've been in a month and agree readily to the shot.   We walk over to the bar.  She says a few quick words to the bartender.  He pulls a bottle of cheap tequila from beneath the counter, and pours a shot.  I buy her what I believe to be a tequila sunrise, and buy myself a shot; but of the good stuff - Cuervo Oro - best of the house.   “Momento.”  I walk down the bar and get my beer.   Stephen turns and looks directly at me; without comment.  He doesn't recognize me.  His eyes are very glassy and unfocused.  An empty shot glass and lime rind set before him on the bar.   I stand for a minute.   No.  I am not his nursemaid, and besides who the hell am I to interfere with the deal go' in down between these two - the morally corrupted and the weak.  

Maria and I return to the parrot cage, and I quickly upturn the shot glass into a small glass funnel that projects from the side of the cage, and watch as the liquid flows into a water beaker clipped onto the inside wire.     The parrot ambles over on his roost, eyes the beaker with several enviable contortions of his head, and again, climbs down along the interior wire a level to the roost adjacent to the beaker, sidesteps over, and sucks-up the tequila in a series of three head motions; backwards, as though gargling.   The parrot begins to walk about the bottom of the cage.  In series of starts-and-stops, stumbles, back-steps and hesitations, he lurches; and altogether at the same time, issues a steady stream of what I take for crude and lurid remarks.  This, and its continuing crackling, in an incomprehensible Spanish staccato, brings forth into my mind, the vision of a little old drunken man; a knarelled Spanish sailor; Popeye bitching and talking to himself as he stumbles along a darkened sidewalk.   He's on the way back to his room, having drunk-up his payday at his favorite place, a waterfront bar.  The scene, as it unwinds in my mind, is so comical within my marijuana-induced dramatic theater, that I break into a hearty laugh - louder and more unrestrained than any laughter I'd had in months; perhaps years.   Maria looks down with a sort of comic inquisitiveness, and in spite of her remorseless young professionalism that would normally steel her heart and leave her humorless, also breaks into giggles in witness to my unfathomed hilarity.    Even the bartender smiles, as suddenly becoming somewhat self-conscious, I turn to face the room.  Most people, to my surprised eyes, and as though my life is the only one proceeding on the planet, are engaged busily in their own conversations.  Stephen and Emilio are gone.

 Maria leads me back to her table.  We are alone.  Her two accomplices, having apparently hooked-up, are gone.   Maria sits there smiling at me through hard eyes; while sitting next to her, I try not to look dumb, or appear overanxious.   It's a bitch when you can't speak the language; makes things a lot more

 

difficult at first    I begin to lightly run my hand up and down her leg - to set things in motion; make sure we

we're both listening to same orchestra.  I was with a young whore once, and when I get her into the bedroom, all she would do was take off her clothes.   No touching; nothing.  I paid full price for that.  Now, I always check it out up front.  Nine times out of ten, there's no problem.  Most all the girls do the basics; fellacio and straight sex.  No rough stuff and nothing weird.  Anything more; you've got to ask up front.  I've known a few whores, and they all have their rules of engagement.  Bordellos usually have a menu - expensive, with posted prices, but you're assured of no misunderstandings.   As I say, whores are mercenary lot, and their business is all about money.  Maria is most probably one of a group of six, or so. Under contract, they work this hotel only - a far cry from the premises and thinly gilded eloquence normal to a disorderly house - and live a little ways off a nearby dirt path - deplorably, in small, run-down, used wood and tin shanties along with who knows how many other family members.  I expect, and will be very satisfied with the basics; and especially with a tiny sixteen year old.   I continue to stroke her leg, a little harder now, and putting my arm around her, ask her how much she wants?  “Cuantos, nina?”  She wants thirty. I throw my head back in feigned disbelief.  “Ah-i-ee! - Chica?”   I tell her I will pay ten; it's more than enough.   She says she always gets at least twenty. She will only be able to keep five, she says, and is taking care of an entire extended family group - all by herself.    When it comes to sad sob stories, some of these whores could reduce Attila the Hun to tears.   I kid you not.  Sad fact is, some of them stories are true, but you can't let that stand in your way; this is a sordid business, and not amongst those populated by the beneficent, or those who deal in charity.  She looks so young and innocent as she begs for fifteen.   This is twice what it should be, but I agree.   One condition, she has to stay at least a full hour, and let me do want I want - within reason; and if I'm here tomorrow, it's ten.  Rule of thumb:  The basics should cost about ten times the price of a good haircut - all over the world.  

Wanting her to be relaxed, I keep up a steady line of chatter and laughter as we walked up to my room, entered and shut, and locked the door.  She walked across the room and stood by the end of the second

bed, reached behind, unzipped, and let her dress fall to the floor.   I sat down on the first bed and watched as she picked it up and laid it over the back of a chair.   I motion her to continue - 'cada in todo'.  She is not what I would call a beautiful whore, but because of her youth and being so small, I was gett'in pretty steamed-up.  I had a passing thought of what Jetty must have looked like at sixteen.     I drew her to me and ran my hands over her body while she looked only slightly downward at me.  My right hand covers her entire midsection.  I stood up, turned her around, and gave her light shove as she lay back on the bed.  She scooted up, arranged a pillow under her head, and lit one of my cigarettes as I removed my clothes, while looking at her nude body lying on the bed.  I was glad I hadn't had too much to drink, as I lay down next to her, pulled her to me, took the cigarette out of hand, took a long drag, and gave it back to her.  I tried to kiss her, but she was having none of that.  Seems somehow ironic, but most whores won't kiss; it's too personal and they don't want their lips bruised.    I brought her along slowly, go' in over her softly with my hands.  She reached for me, but I gently slapped her hand away.  She was so young, and doll-like, I wanted this to last.   Over the next hour we made love twice.  A little awkwardly at first - she was so delightfully small - but once we'd gotten underway she came around nicely and seemed to thoroughly enjoy herself.   It was a good job of acting on her part, and was the best time I had in months.  I thought about a third time, but it was just a thought.  I was spent and exhausted; dripping wet.   She earned her fifteen dollars, and I felt one whole hell of lot better; it had been a long time.   Sometimes you forget how bad you're feel' in until the pain goes away.   And you know - she'll do that three or four times a day - if she can - but I hope, not quite like that.   

I passed into a deep sleep, soundly for several hours, then awoke of a sudden to silence.  I do not remember dreaming, but my chest and neck are wet.  I am headachy and chilled.  The sheets too, are wet and

smell acridly of ammonia and salty sweat, and the lingering fragrance of Maria.   I get a towel from the bathroom and lay it over the cold sheet and put on a dry tee-shit.  It's two-thirty.  Stephen is not here.  I tumble back into bed and pull the sheet and blanket up to my neck, and lay rigidly as my mind drifts to the Negro as he talks, the boy as he begs, Maria's soft moaning, the bartender's smile, Fred, Ann, Roberto's white, flashing smile; the soldier's face - I jerk in quick paroxysm of fear and open my eyes.  I turn on my side, pull my legs up, bunch the pillow under my head and pass into an unpleasant sleep.  I dreamt episodically of my childhood; disjointed scenes from the house in Whittier; fearful, sad and hopeless scenes of my early imprisonment; my fear and solitude.   I am trying to distract and persuade my tyrannical and irrational father as he talks in drunken, lurid emotions; menacingly to me of lurking homosexuals -

 

unreasoning - to the promised love of Jesus Christ; the Golden Mien.  I am fighting desperately with an unknown fiendish man.  It is the pitch of night on a desolate and spectral city street.   He wields a murderous and gleaming sword.   I have a lance and spear him; nothing happens - though impaled, he continues toward me.  My fear is supreme; I try to extract and wake myself in a fit a difficult mental acrobatics.  I cannot make it work.  I try to run, but cannot; my legs will now barely move.  I am mired in a terrifying paralysis.  The heinous and evil man slices me along my flank with the long gleaming knife.  The pain sears me to breathlessness; so real.  I fall to the street and lay there bleeding; dying in the mire as the man disappears.  I awake in a panic and grab my side.  It feels as though burned with an iron, and is very hot to my touch.   I walk to the bathroom, turn on the light and look at my side.  I'm surprised to see my skin is unmarked; it tingles, but looks fine.   “Jesus Q. Christ!”  I mutter.  “What the fuck was that all about?”  It's only four o'clock.  I light a cigarette and walk to window, pull the blinds and stare for a long time into a hazy and empty street.   I secure the blinds, lie down on my back and stare through the darkness at the ceiling.

 

The room is opaque as I hear what I take the sounds of a tree rat on the roof; a quick scurrying and scratchy sound, then a snap and a thump as my consciousness returns quickly from my tree house in McKinleyville to the hotel room.  I rise to my elbows as my head clears, and look quickly around the room.  Nothing.  I hear a scampering sound behind my head as a mouse moves within the framing behind the plaster. Then a light rapping; a tapping at the door.   “Rodney - Rodney, are you in there?”  Subdued; carefully.  “It's- it's me - Stephen.”   I unlock the door, turn into the bathroom, and standing in front of the toilet look back over my shoulder:   “It's open.” Stephen walks unsteadily into the room sheepishly, looks around like he's never the seen the place, and sits on the edge of his unslept-in bed facing the window.   I stand naked, motionless under the threshold to the bathroom and stare in silence at the back of his head.  Made nervous by the silence; feeling my eyes, he turns to look at me, but quickly returns to the window:   “I …” in a very hoarse voice.  “Save it pal!   No explanation necessary.”   His face is puffy, marked with reddening hickies, as is his neck, and his lips are swollen and purple - liver like.     “I'm going to be on the two o'clock bus to Guatemala City, if you want' a come along with me, be there.”  I shut the door, turned on the shower, and stepped in.

When I got out of the shower, and finished shaving, Stephen was laying fully clothed on his side in a semi-fetal position, with his hands between his knees, still facing the window, and snoring rhythmically.  He was sound asleep.  “Poor son-of-a-bitch”.  I put on my clothes, packed my backpack and satchel, and leaned them against the wall by the door.  A slash of sunlight strikes the door, illumines the brace doorknob and

cascades in a widening dispersal to the floor as I leave, and walk downstairs for breakfast.   It's eight o'clock in the morning.   Two Guatemalan men in baggy cheap slacks and unpressed white shits sit at a table drinking coffee, and look up briefly through an uninterrupted conversation as I enter the hotel restaurant and take a seat at the counter.  I order coffee, scrambled eggs and a thick slice of ham from a young Indian boy who makes marks on a small pad he cups in his left hand.   The meal comes with a plastic basket of hot flour tortillas wrapped in a cloth napkin - and again, all for one dollar.   I eat greedily; finish off a second cup of coffee and step into the street.  I've got three hours to kill.

I walked aimlessly around the town, now all shrouded in an eerie white iridescence, like an incandescent fog as sunlight strikes an infinitude of ashen particles, gently falling and drifting as dust shaken from a dirty rug.    It's already hot and soupy, steam bath-like in the morning sun, as I wander down a busy city street, now gently draped in billows of soft pastels.  Old pick-up and flat bed trucks rumble by overburdened with crates of vegetables, bananas, lumber and firewood.   The curbs are littered with strings of dusty, used-up cars from a nineteen-fifties America.   I see their mud-caked bald tires sag as I pass.  A military four-by-four passes with ten armed and helmeted soldiers seated in the rear.  I see the tips of bayonets gleam in the morning light as I walk - eyes held straight ahead.  A guilty shudder runs down my spine, as I slow to a cluster of women who amble along, as though lost and without purpose, in front of me.  An older woman in the rear carries high on her shoulder, a listless young child.  Upon hearing my footsteps; she turns quickly with a jerk of her head, and nervously clears her throat in a hoarse screech.  I see what a thousand years of time's tyranny can do to a face, as the startled and fearful countenance of a beaten dog quickly gathers and chaperones the others out of my way in a hushed tone and hurried expectancy.  “Le pido perdon, Senoras.”  I step inside a panateria to the smell of fresh pastries and baking rolls, and watch a little girl with

 

an upturned pleading face, pull at her father's pant leg, as the softly fluttering back of his hand reduces her

entreaties to an unheard series highly pitched twittering squeaks.  The cookies remain behind the glass.   I cross another sweaty street, and stroll diagonally across the city square, the zocalo, where stands a majestic equine statue of a mounted soldier bedecked in the full regalia of a general, as he gazes resolutely into the distance.   Forward, with the echoes of his grandiloquent phrases resounding with military resplendence in their ears, he leads a ferocious and conquering Spanish army of centuries ago. Immortalized in stone, he beholds his dominions regally - claimed in the name of the king of Spain - but for now, his own - to be crushed by the harsh heal of the boot, pillaged and raped until finally denuded of substance and spirit, the province is abandoned to re-emerge transmogrified into a suzerainty - a new country - governed by a mercenary lot of officially corrupted European carpetbaggers.  A heavy plume of silver cigar smoke rises from behind a fully opened Spanish newspaper as I pass a man dressed in ragged khaki dungarees and worn leathern sandals, sitting on bench, bemused in the morning sun.  A light mucus drips from the nose of a superannuated old man, the father I take it, who sits nearby as I stand for a moment and watch as he, and coupled with foolish sounding admonishments, solicits courteous behavior of certain individuals from amongst a quarrelling raft of gathering pigeons now feasting on the last of his breakfast roll.  I look for the central market and cross another street, lead by a 'Coca-Cola' emblem on a sign as it peers across and over the roofs of its neighboring buildings.   I pass into a narrow dirt street and wait upon the broken concrete sidewalk as three young men load huge blocks of ice into the rear of an overloaded, insulated delivery truck.   A hear a whirling, fan-like noise, and turn to see a dust devil dance about a stream of locals, who bothered but little by the sea of swirling flotsam splashing about their legs, proceed with the day's parochial tasks.  The truck strains as its flattened tires roll off in a cloud of black diesel exhaust.  I continue along my way.

I knew it was trouble as soon I saw a pack of seven or eight swaggering teenage boys, who covering the sidewalk, approach raucously from fifty yards in front.   Dressed in denim pants and white tee shirts; their hair is uniformly long and black.   A hush falls over them as they first catch sight of me - now no more than

twenty yards ahead   The disjointed cadence of a cantering pair of well-shod horses on hard-packed earth reverberates in my ears, as a muffled, multiple clippedy-cloppedy sound issues from random footfalls as a dozen military-hard heals and soles strike the concrete. School children these are not; thieves most assuredly; murderers - perhaps.  Dark and menacing is the face of the leading boy as he sneers at me through a wispy black moustache.  They begin to pass as a boy to my left spins and stumbles into two of the others from the impact of my upper arm as I crash against his upper chest and shoulder.   It takes a much larger man than he to encourage a misstep of me - especially from the sidewalk into the street.  I pivot and watch the gang,

startled and looking amazed, turn and stop.  In turns, they feign and thrust - threaten, knot, sidestep, turn,

move around in and amongst each other, and hurl every variety of Guatemalan insult and taunt in a threatening manner as ageless as time itself.  I'm wishing like hell I hadn't sold my big Buck knife, the Arkansas toothpick, my cold-blooded alliance, as I now stand alone, unarmed and hopelessly outnumbered. The rest of the world recedes into a dull throbbing background, as a concentrated ball of nervous, fiery energy lifts from my scrotum, galvanizing me, clearing my mind, and channeling my fearful anxiety.  Be patient, I think, and remain calmly thinking - make it work for me in steeling myself for the coming battle.   They hesitate - I think in deference to my size - one boy is no more than thirteen and the size of a child.   The others, ranging to perhaps seventeen, are uniformly short, and range from the thin to the stout.  The leader steps forward as others begin to circle.  He appears to be the oldest, and at no more than a hundred and thirty pounds, stands five foot-four. He is the largest.  He spits in my direction, getting some of his putrescence on my shoe, and taunts and jeers at me in a display of bravado intended to affirm his place within the group, and perhaps it does, but it incites me to a fury.   My initial anxiety and fear at once dissolve away to expose my hidden anger; the hatred and rage; the dreaded viciousness that grows in me worse, and more vile with time.  Aware of the danger posed, I keep it sheathed and out of sight under the heavy cloak and sobriety wrought by a thousand years of civilization - as my hand fondles the golden hilt and lightly smoothes the leathern scabbard.   “Despabilate amigo!”  I breathe silently; deeply as I move stealthily around, loosening, and urge the larger boy forward.   I have now become the cunning hunter; they the hunted; and again I urge the boy forward, reaching out.  I plan to get a hold of him, lift him off the ground in a chokehold, then backing against the wall, wrap my left arm around his head, snap his neck quickly, and drop him dead and listless on the sidewalk.  Leaderless - the others will disperse.   

 

He is now perhaps only fifteen feet from me, stands still for a moment and hesitates.  He seems unsure; afraid,

the bravado is gone.  They could take me a bloody rush, kick the shit out'a me, stomp me to death with their boots, but are inexperienced; unorganized and haven't the courage - no one wants to be first to sacrifice himself.   In one quick step, I cut the distance to ten feet, and once again reach out; aggressively motioning for him to come forward with my hand, while yelling and whooping like a warrior, and feigning at two of the others who circle, but now, as he, fading back.  “Venir aqui muchacho chico tu papa - despabilate!”   Come here you little motherfucker; come to papa - I promise to make your death a quick one!    I've fallen into a blind rage and lunge at two others, now off to my left, as three more seem to have fallen back by several yards.  I wish to my hands from heaven a golden-hilted, great and fiery sword so that I may slaughter these vile vermin in my righteousness; this scurrilous brood of carrion - slice these mistaken maggots of human miscreation to bloodied pieces, and mount their severed heads like gargoyles upon the fence posts of the fearful poor; those of the helpless among them upon whom they prey.   Their cursing has stopped.  Their balls aren't up to a fight, and I, now confidently surprised; exultant, again loudly lurch at them in an ecstasy of vengeful animal lust.   The pack bolts rearward; as a darting school of fish, and continues in a fragmented series of back steps, taunts and turns, as steadily they move from me in a murmur of growls - and their voices fade away.   This was a dangerous, dicey and exhilarating situation; like none other I'd ever faced.   I am quite likely to have fallen in a bloody, gruesome death, but am sure to have enjoyed the company of the two, three; perhaps four, I'd have carried along with me on our journey to hell.   Was I really that lucky to have walked away unscathed - untested?   Perhaps.  But did by Grace I avoid my Fate - glorious; or the Fury of an ignominious death at the hands of my Nemesis - an unruly mob of miscreants?     I don't know.

I stood as though in a trance for several moments as I watched the receding movement of legs - the quick turning of heads; and only later became aware of the pounding in my temples, and the quick and sharp

jets of breath entering and leaving between clenched teeth and a bleeding lower lip.   I noticed as I moved off that my legs seem unsure, and that my arms and hands were shaking.  My body trembled uncontrollably.   I felt nauseous, weak and dizzy and the back of my neck began to hurt as though caught in the cycloptic vise-like hand of a giant.  So unaccustomed was I to being this truly alive; that I was forced to stop and lean with one hand against rough bricks, and massage the back of my neck as the pain ascended nauseatingly into my

head.  I wanted badly to find a place to sit down.  I felt as though I'd just completed running my fasted mile, as my teeth themselves ached and my head throbbed.

              I continued for many minutes in a disoriented manner across and through unknown and strange streets, and then turned to my right, as though guided by instinct. I found myself across the dusty brown street, and approaching the loading dock of the Coca-Cola bottling plant. I heard the familiar grinding of an old forklift and listened to the shuddering of the glass bottles as they jumped and danced inside the stack of shallow wooded crates now being moved to the inclined bays of a waiting delivery truck.   The forklift continued to work as I walked past, stumbled drunkenly, and drifted out of sight.  The industrial buildings and bunker-like warehouses continued to diminish in size, and now, as I'm finally walking past the last small one, off to my left comes into view a huge and ashen-misted, rain forested jungle panoply.   It stretches aslant ever onward in a quilt work - a majestic sponge-like deep green lake shimmers - an idyllic landscape spreads before my eyes - until distantly gaining the base of the ominously smoking volcano.  Shrouded in Olympian mystery - wraithful - it rises to a peak of fifteen hundred meters, and lays its heavy arms, threateningly upon the soul of this city.   Now relieved of my disorientation, I begin to bear right, skip over a block, then continue east while intermittently looking up in the direction of the volcano for reassurance.  I figure myself to be within a few blocks of last night's café.  People begin to appear as though termites from a soaking quay; ants from a crack in the sidewalk - emerging from the distance and from the tiny shops, they meander prosaically; aimlessly about the streets.  A disheveled middle-aged man - an Indian-looking man - thin, with a crooked face, and a toothless grimace, pushes a handcart.  'Helados' he laments in a breathlessly hollow and unenthusiastic bellow. The large spoked wheels wobble and groan slowly down the sidewalk as I pass.  

I lift my right foot onto a iron pipe that supports one end of a large chain strung across a small alleyway - a pedestrian walkthrough - and begin to tighten the laces on my boot, when the sounds of what I mistake for a Caribbean steel drum band, drift rhythmically amidst the murmuring city sounds of a nearby

squeaking door, which someone pulls sharply shut against trucks, and shuffling shoes; music from an open

 

 

window, and the high-pitched laughter and complaints of children's voices.   I walk through the thin

passageway and emerge onto another narrow sidewalk.   The sounds grow now louder and distinct.    I'm thinking a Marimba band as the barbarous music pulsates from the open door of a cantina diagonally across

the street.  Of a sudden, I want nothing so much as to sit with a shot of tequila and a beer, and be soothed by the overpowering persuasion of these repeating rhythmic pulsations.   I lean my face through the threshold of a dingy, meagerly furnished rectangular room, the extent of which I cannot make out.   At first glance, the interior appears as a hovelled, low-ceilinged storage cellar illumined solely by a bright shaft of sunlight that cuts a broad, but oblique, path through a swirling cloud of dust and bluish smoke.  I see the moving silhouettes of several people amidst a miscellany of stacked crates, storage boxes and the shadows of other unknown objects that have been pushed into darkened recesses and against dirty walls of an unknown color.  Several discarded hammocks, or perhaps some other type of heavy netting, lays in a heap off to one side, appearing in outline only, as the swath of sunlight dissipates into the interior obscurity.  A hodgepodge of eight or so bar stools front a makeshift countertop behind which I can see nothing but a bare wall.  Seeking a better view, I enter a few steps, uncertainly into the shadows, and am immediately distracted to a mechanical whirling.  I turn my head to the right and see that a single refrigerator with an obscured, rusty-colored white, ovalled face, sits behind the counter off to one side, as its worn compressor purrs incessantly.    I can now see, and again - but now the startling vision of the Caribbean Negro.  Six are resplendent in full and knarelled dreadlocks - and glistening with perspiration, dance loosely and sway, in the full freedom of their tribally-mandated and unrestrained sexuality.   A very dark couple dances provocatively; turn, twist and sway to the rhythm as they handle each other in a titillating and near pornographic suggestibility - and all the while two lone men, move about - limbs a-trembling - and clap and laugh uproariously.    A fourth man and a second woman, mulattoes I think, sway and clap while sitting along the bar immersed in their own primal human pageantry.    “Calm on in mon” - he says through a rhythmic nodding of the head.  “We be open, can't ya see.” I enter somewhat nervously, hesitate in the drifting marijuana ambiance, and then pass belly-along-the-bar within inches of the woman's shiny black eyes and bright white teeth.  As I regard the taboo of her full blackened thighs, pressed glistening against the stool, a lone finger pencils along my chest, extruding a lascivious greeting; as the essence of female carnality dances along my skin.   I slide onto the last stool, fidget with my hands, and then determined to appear calm and cool, turn and watch the final slick and malefic movements of the dancing couple as the vinyl record atop the turntable of a portable record player, comes to a stop.    

The barman, whom only a moment before sat at the bar, now surprisingly stands before me as I watch the couple languidly leave the floor, and return my face to the front.  “What is it ya hav'in mon?”   “Ah - it's nice to hear someone speak English - I say - ah, how about a beer, whatever ya have handy will be fine with me - and a shot of your best tequila.”   “Sure thing mon” - he says, with a light slap on the bar.  “Com'in right up.”    I push my right index finger down into my last pack of Lucky-Strikes, and feeling that there's probably no more than three or four left, rip the top open.   I coax one of four cigarettes from the pack, light

it, inhale deeply, and standing up on the cross support of the stool, reach for an ashtray.  I pull it to me and sit back down, as a bottle of Superior and a shot of an unknown tequila is set before me.     “That'll be one American - ya are a yanque aren't ya?”  I figure him for around thirty, maybe thirty-five.  He's dressed, much

as the other men here, in baggy kaki dungarees, and an open flowery shirt that exposes the upper torso of a magnificent physique.  “You got that right friend, I say - where in the hell you from - this your joint?”  A wide smile leaps to his mouth in display of a prefect set of brilliant white teeth:  “I like you mon”  “I'm born in London; the military ya know, but raised in Jamaica - and yeah, this is ma place.”  “Why in the world would anyone leave Jamaica, and end up here, in Huehuetenango, Guatemala - I don't know.”  “That's right mon, ya don't know - but why not; everything any man needs is right here mon, and if ya know a few of the right people; there's no problems.”   

Just then, and thankfully before I could stupidly recite some of the deterrents, like hopeless poverty, pollution, corruption, and puppet governments, the woman with the finger strolls over amidst a jingling of silver bracelets and the sparkling of her rings.  She puts her left arm around him, and while I catch her eyes staring enticingly, lightly strokes the right side of his chest. Then, with a playful bump of her very ample hip, and in a pretended attempt to knock him out of way, too, flashes a huge white smile at me.  “Don't ya be a

 

 

hog' in this pretty white boy all to yourself” - as she leans her lightly muscled midriff across the bar revealing

her really quite extraordinary and well-formed brown breasts now barely restrained behind a knotted silken red blouse.  Then, with a puckering of her very full, translucently vermilion and sensuous lips, blows lightly across my face.   He smiles and laughs, wraps his arms around her belly, and pulls her smiling to him; then, releasing her to a high-pitched laugh, says: “You ever see a more beautiful woman than this?”  I smile and take a drink of beer, and as though I'm studying her carefully, and feeling myself becoming aroused, say through a smiled exhale of smoke:  “No man, I can't say that I ever have.”  They both break into a chorus of laughs as the music resumes.   It's calypso-like, but guttural and very rhythmic.  Both of the women, and two of the men take to the floor in a swoop, and blend enticingly into the sounds in a series of well-coordinated flourishes, and again the abandoned sexuality burns as the women's skirts lift to expose their thighs in a series of spins and turns.  I blink as tears come to my stinging eyes.   I too move my head; slap my hands against my thighs, and rock on the stool. The rhythmic grinding progresses into bends, squats, leaping turns - I've never seen anything quite this - so close - and the odor of hot black bodies mix into the marijuana haze.  And the clapping and shouting are a raucous cacophony - a surfeit of wonder and excitement to my senses.

I order another round comfortably, and feel the strains and stiffness lift from my body.   “What's it ya mov'in away from mon - where you from?”  “Mov'in away?   Hell, man I'm not moving away from anything - just traveling around, fill 'in in the in betweens - the cheap way, ya know - waiting for the recession to end.” “In case you're not up on the state of the economy.”  I say with a laugh. “Man - there's one under way - at least in California.”  “Then it's away from the economy you're runn'in.”  He says through another wide grin.  I down the second tequila in a gulp, and nod my head as it burns its way slowly into my belly.  “That's one way to look at it friend.”  “One way, mon?  That's the only way.”   “There's Americanos all over down here.”  “Really - I've only seen a couple in the last month.”  “Listen to what I'm tell 'in ya mon - there's troupes of 'em liv'in over to Belize' and Honduras - what'ya call hippies; then the drunks, all bleary on the ganja, mon - lay 'in about all over.  Refugees I call 'em; runn'in away, washed down from up above.  In a month their money's gone along with the whores - then, they beg and end up dead - and mon, down here, there's a lot worse things than a quick death.”  His coal-black eyes stare straight at me in an unmistakable look of menacing hatred, as the color drains from my face in a spike of fear - then it quickly recedes, and is gone as the white smile reappears.   Listening, as I finish off my bear, I envision Stephen fitt'in right in - and he too, I'm think'in, will soon be dead.   I learn these people are Rastafarians, the only ones I've ever seen.  At first glance they look like a horde of illiterate devils, but are possessed of a simple intelligence, and are some of the happiest, if not strangest, people I've ever come across.  They strive to be free; free of all unnatural entanglements - governments and economies - to spring from the earth as pure black human beings, and loving all of humanity, be blessed in accordance with their prophecies. The music was that of Bob Marley.  

It's nearly one as I rejoin the heat of the street; moving along as though in a pleasant folly; in a repudiation of my civility; happily.  Among the motley throngs that meandering warmly along the simmering concrete; I mingle cordially, and sweat with them through the smog-like corrosive sulfurous haze.    I walk into the lobby of the Hotel Florida as it pulsates through the alcohol, nod to the still stern countenance of the taciturn matron, and taking the steps two-at-a-time, wonder if she's particularly angry with me.  She would like me, I think, if she knew me - but then there's last night's whore - and the sordid crimes of all the greedy, money-grubbing, rapacious white men, who in all their pleasant disguises, false patronage and hypocrisy, held these people in the iron grip of subservience over the course of the last five centuries - as I walk into the room.  Stephen is gone.  I put on the backpack, check the bureau drawers, look the bathroom over, pick-up the satchel, walk out, shut the door and return to the lobby. The woman stands with a down-turned face shuffling though a stack of receipts, as I lay the key on the counter, turn without say 'in a word, and head for the door. I've got a half-hour to make the bus depot, but unlike this morning, know exactly where I'm going, and stride purposeful - sweating along the sidewalk.   I enter the station at quarter of two.  Heading for the counter, I notice Stephen sitt'in on the dirty floor a ways off with his legs drawn up and his back against wall. “Stephen!”  He leaves his reverie, and returning from far away, looks at me as though a startled monkey and begins to stand up and walk over.   “Ya got your ticket?”  “Yeah Rodney, it's right here - as he takes a step nearer.”  His pale face is swollen and has an oily sheen; the lamentable aspect of the inebriate.  His upper lip

 

 

is dappled in perspiration, and through his now raised, but drooping eyelids, the dilated pupils and beady green irises float in a pink pool of the latent bloodshot, and shift rapidly from side-to-side. Unable to focus, he attempts to search mine with the quick, but obsequious apprehension of a bedeviled drug addict, while he rocks slightly, takes a sidestep, and zigzags in a loss of equilibrium as he reaches several times for his wallet.

I look quickly away with a slight shiver, and as though in the avoidance of a pestilence, involuntarily recoil rearward and shove him away with my hand.  “Back-off guy!”  He staggers a few steps, and then a stunned voice complains: “What?”  “What'd you do that for?”   Fuck this guy, I think.  What does he expect - a fucking hug - fuck this guy!  Mastering my emotions:  “I don't need to see it man.  The bus'll be here any time, and I don't want to be standing around while you're fumbling through your pockets.”  “No; no Rodney - I; I got it right here.”  He again begins to reach for his wallet and takes a step toward me.  I hold up my hand - “Back-off man!   He stops as though quick-frozen, rocks unsteadily, and stares blankly.  “I don't need to see your goddamn ticket!”   Calming now and pointing to the wall where he'd been sitting “Why don't you go and get your stuff, and bring it over here before somebody steals it”.  “When the bus gets here we'll knock it down smooth as snot; see - hand the tickets to the porter; he'll load our shit, we'll get on, and be the hell away from this hot-ass hole - get it?    And Stephen, you and I aren't friends anymore - OK?  Understand?  We never were.  And I don't want ya sitt'in next to me on the bus”.  I pick up my stuff, and as he gives me the forlorn look of an abandoned hitchhiker, and following me with a rapid and unfocused blinking of his eyes, I pass through the door and step out onto the loading platform.

 

I gaze tiredly out the window and watch thoughtlessly, and without consideration of the hardships faced by the peasants who walk along the hot, muddied roadside, as the lush countryside passes to the rhythmic lolling of the engine.   I open my eyes as the bus pulls to a stop in Chechecastenango.  Knowing it'll

be at least another hour before Guatemala City, and feeling the dysentery begin to stir in my bowels, I remain

on the bus and sit sweating for several minutes on the tiny toilet while breathing the warmly sour, and foully

disinfected air in shallow breaths through barely parted lips.  I wonder if my dysentery is worsening as I

gingerly retake my seat feeling the hollow of an empty stomach, and the continuing pulsation of queasy

bowels. The Guatemala City terminal is all alive in swirls of dust and billows of black exhaust, as a dozen arriving buses disgorge scores of shabby people who meld into a swelling crowd that ebbs and eddies in dank alcoves, and flows slowly along broken walkways.  They look around nervously in quick and concerned glances, as though lost in a tumultuous and dangerously dark jungle, and then amidst pointed shouts that

pierce the drone of a hundred voices mixed with the surging reports of the departing buses, they hurry along.  Our bus slows to a stop, and idles as it creeps inside a swarthy, hot tunnel behind several others, awaiting its place at the loading platform. Stephen follows as a lost and foot-sore dog that I'd regrettably stopped to pet, as I step from the platform into the interior of a cavernous, stadium-like building that teems with an overflow of Indian brown, shiny faces.  A dozen overhead fans slice the amalgam of their fetid odors, blend it with the an overly loud crackling, static of too few speakers that hang precariously from naked I-beams, then mix it as soupy broth with the steaming smells that rise from an unending cavalcade of pushcarts, baskets of homemade tamales and taquitos carried by the small hands of pestering children, and the sharp waxy smell that drifts from the passing wooden boxes of a hundred pleading shoeshine boys that tangle themselves amongst your legs.  

The metal-against-metal high-pitch howling and mechanical grinding of a worn streetcar that rolls by in swirls of blowing bits of rubble, newspapers and dust, and sways under a electrically sparking webbing of bare black wires, draws the eye.  It breaks into and accentuates the tempestuous South-American big-city sounds of rusted out and loose-fitting truck mufflers, shouting street venders, pitiful beggars, brassy music drifting from open windows, shuffling shoes and fading exclamations.  The conversations of a legion of squat brown people pass and fad into the untuned and cross-firing engines of a hundred delivery trucks.  This amalgams with the screeching brakes and scurrilous shouts that come from a thousand honking taxicabs and impinges wantonly upon your ears.  My forearm wipes an accumulation of dirty sweat from along my forehead and eyes as we walk for a half an hour through an afternoon heat that reflects sharply from glaring storefront windows, issues upward from a maze of scorching sidewalks, and radiates as hot coals from the granite sides of a hundred buildings as they settle in stoic decay.  I happily leave the downtown area of busy streets as we turn without aforethought, and walk a short ways up a random one-way residential lane

 

following a long, slow uphill bend before it unexpectedly blossoms into a lesser boulevard and in a few minutes we come upon a large café.   That haphazard decision, as luck sometimes mysteriously prevails over hope, was most fortuitous.   

 

Two large plate glass windows, separated by a narrow entryway, front the sidewalk. They meld with narrow ninety-degree glass rectangles, which curving inward and away from the street, join with two additional large windows, one on each side of a domed alcove, and upon the left of which is posted the menu

in two parts; both full-page foldouts.  We stepped from the sidewalk and in the shade of the alcove, stopped to read it.  This is mostly a pretext of nonchalance to gain a few moments repose as I survey the café's inside through the unscreened portal so aptly afforded by the random openings and closings of an overly-wide wooden door as it slowly pivots on heavy hinges in keeping with the quick inrush and controlled sneezing-like whishing exhale of a pneumatic dampener.    The interior is perhaps twenty, or twenty-five feet in width, but quite deep - eighty to ninety feet - with off-white plaster walls and five meter ceilings from which depend a half dozen slowly turning overhead fans, and upon which glowed, and blinked spasmodically, a long string of double florescent lights.  Along the right side, as viewed from the street, was a long counter of perhaps twenty blue vinyl-covered pedestal stools - each bolted to the floor, and behind which several men in the ubiquitous starched white uniform of the chef and cook, scurried about in front of two built-in cook stations that are separated by a mesquite-fired barbeque pit over which a large rotisserie of a dozen skewered chickens sputtered in slow turns amidst rising plumes of smoke and the periodic sprouts of flames.  Each station is equipped fully with a large four-burner range top, spacious griddle, and a wide assortment of hanging pans, large forks, serving spoons, ladles, knives, cleavers and every other manner of kitchen appliance common to such similarly prosperous restaurants as may be found in any part of the world.   The floor space is checkered with an assortment of mismatched four-legged wooden tables, each covered in a shabby plastic-coated checkered tablecloth, and a hodgepodge of small chairs - some wooden and of a fixed construction, and others of the steel folding kind commonly seen in any of America's high school auditoriums.

We entered, and stood waiting for a moment in the small foyer next to the register booth.  It was nearly four-thirty, and the place, less than half full, had a warm and friendly ambience as the murmurs of a dozen conversations and subdued laughter drifted over the clatter of plates and exclamations coming from the cook's station.   A middle-aged dark-skinned man with a slightly yellowish pallor about his soft, round face, of a medium stature appearing more Spanish than Indian, and otherwise unprepossessing, approached languidly as he wiped his hands on his white apron.   I tell him we want a table near the windows as he picks up two menus from the top of the register counter, and directs us to a table a few feet to the right from where we stand - from where I can watch the street.  We both removed our packs and sat down across from one another.   I sat silently for a few minutes, looking the menu over, and for the first time since boarding the bus in Huehuetenango, wondered how best to extract myself from the company of this fucking leach, and his now ever-growing tedious and disagreeable presence.  I loathed to look at him, but knew I had to bring this awkward situation to closure, as he gingerly began to make small talk about the restaurant while glancing up furtively from his menu.  “Stephen, listen man” - as I rested my forearms on the table, interlaced my fingers, and leaning slightly forward, looked directly at him - “no hard feelings; but it's time we parted company -- dig? Just as we planned back in Oaxaca, remember?  I don't want you hanging around me anymore, man; you're not my concern, and this whole thing has been going on way too long.   I'll buy you this last meal and give you ten bucks; consider it a severance; then you're on your own - understand?”   “Well, yeah Rodney - in a weak-chested voice - but you know, I….” “Stop talking man, please - just listen for a minute, I mean it - listen!   I don't want to hear anything you've got to say!”  “But I didn't do anything to hurt you Rodney; I don't understand why you're so pissed at me - I don't like you talking to me like this.”  I'd hoped he wouldn't be as pathetic as this. “Bullshit, man, you understand perfectly; so don't act like I'm coming up against your nuts, man - and I'm not pissed at you - I just don't give a shit about you. Get it?  How much more plain do you need it put?”  Again, he gives me that non-comprehending, pitiable look.   “I really don't know why Rodney - I...”  “Goddamnit man! - I blurt out in an exasperated voice - what the hell don't you understand?!  OK, it's real simple - I'll spell it out for you.”  Then slowly, with the controlled anger of calm deliberation:  “When we leave here, you pick up your shit, and you go your way; I'll pick-up my shit, and I'll go my way - that's it; nothing more; finis; caput; goodbye!”  “If I ever see you again it'll be too soon!”

 

The waiter who had seated us just then returned with two glasses of ice water at which I was surprised, and a pad on which he waited to write our orders.  I ordered a half a barbequed chicken that apparently comes with black beans, rice and tortillas, and whatever beer he may recommend.  The waiter and I look at Stephen as this penniless outcast gazes at me with a look of crestfallen bewilderment, and seems to hesitate.  “Order something man, I say - get whatever you want.” A moments further hesitation, then:  “I - I'll have the same.”  The waiter doesn't seem to understand, and leaning toward Stephen while reaching for his menu, asks to be shown.  From me:  “Dos, senior, uno por mi, y uno por mi amigo”  “Dos?” “Si - dos pollo barbacoa, con frijoles refritos negras, y arroz, y cervesa - comprende?”   “Si -si, gracias senores - as he completes his writing and turns to leave in the flourish of an exaggerated bow.”   I'm think'in how there's not a thing in this goddamn world that's easy, as I take a long drink of water, exhale, turn my head and look out the sunlit window at the passing silhouettes that move through the late afternoon shadows now beginning to encroach upon the street.   

“Excuse me gentlemen.”  I turn quickly from the window to the voice of who expected to be the waiter, but standing next to our table instead was a Mexican man of average height, about fifty years old,

somewhat portly, and of a sallow complexion, but clean-shaven, with thinning black hair that is just now

exposed as he removes his wide-brimmed felt hat and holds it in front of his chest with his right hand in a position of obeisance.  He has a somewhat large and longish nose and a pendant lower lip.  He is dressed in the manner of two generations past.  An old, overly large, threadbare, but well pressed navy-blue suit sags about his body in a series of tired and glossy folds.  He wears a pair of well-worn, but highly shined black leather shoes, and an old fashioned, but again well-pressed white shirt, dark striped tie and cuff links.   Overall, and in spite of these flaws in appearance, he is possessed of a dignified carriage; nearly a regal bearing.  He has an air of the self-important about him. He speaks broken English with a studied intensity and addresses us properly, courteously in the solicitous manner of the well-bred.  “I beg of your pardon, but I could not but help in the hearing of your English.   I was completing the payment for my meal.”  He turns and motions to the register stand.  “It is not too often that I have the opportunity to engage in the speaking of my English - please allow me to introduce myself - my name is Don Carlos Cervantes - at your service.”  He extends his hand in a slight bow and quick nodding of the head, first to me, as I begin to stand; then to Stephen.  “Do you mind if I join you for a few moments?”  Now standing properly erect, I take his hand in mine, and say “Not at all - please be seated” motioning invitingly to the vacant chair at my left.   “My name is Rod - Rodney Barber, and this is Stephen, ah - I don't know your last name Stephen - why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?”  I say through a somewhat embarrassed smile.  “My name is Stephen Boynton.”  As I begin to sit, Don Carlos takes the offered seat smiling at each of us in turn, and seems quite satisfied.  'Boynton' I think - well I'll be damned; three weeks and we hadn't the occasion to learn each other's last names. Formalities among the young of the world, I'm think'in, have become somewhat relaxed; things have become a little casual - perhaps too casual.  

“You are American.”  Don Carlos looks at me as he speaks matter-of-factly, and then turns to Stephen. “You are maybe from Australia - I cannot distinguish the accents of those from the British heritage.”  Don Carlos seems very pleased with himself at that.  “No - I am British - from England.”  Stephen is perking up as I notice his countenance changing from that of the forlorn misfit to that of the frisky puppy that's innocence ingratiates upon the tender hearts of the unsuspecting.  “You are traveling companions, yes.”  “Well - I say - we have been in each others company for a couple of weeks, but only by happenstance; we met quite by accident in Oaxaca - I would not go so far as to say that we are companions; no - we're definitely not companions.”  Don Carlos listens attentively.  “So you come from Mexico, um; I am from Mexico also, but that is a very long time ago.”  Stephen sits silently as I look attentively into Dan Carlos' eyes.  “I've been traveling for about six weeks - I say - from California.  I crossed the border at Tijuana in the company of four others - my brother and sister, and two others, but we split up in Mexico City; they went home, and I traveled on by bus”. Stephen sits eagerly, and no longer able to restrain himself, volunteers in a voice of excitement:   “I was visiting the US, and came down from Texas on the train from Brownsville - I visited some time in Mexico City, and, and then, and - and, then” - interrupted by a pregnant silence, then slowly - “on to Oaxaca?”  As he looks quickly from Don Carlos to me, and back, and as though he had become confused; had already forgotten his very recent past; his itinerary of the last four weeks.  He phrased this statement in the form of a question to which he apparently was seeking verification.  It came-off very

 

oddly - stupidly.  Don Carlos looks at Stephen pensively, as though he can't quite make out the intended thrust of this statement, and perhaps was wondering if he had misunderstood.  “Goddamn Stephen!”  I say with a smile that confirms my opinion of Stephen's idiocy - that sounded just like a question - man.  Don't you remember where the hell you've been?”   “Please senior!” - Don Carlos looks at me sternly - “the Lord is very jealous of his good name!”  “Oh” - I say somewhat taken aback in the slightly uncontrollable laugh of a mild shock to the nerves - “I beg - I beg your pardon senior, I did not mean to offend you.”  Just then our waiter walks up with two steaming plates and two bottles of beer, and in a timely manner too, as the arrival of the food defuses an awkward silence.   “Splendid” - smiles Don Carlos as he collects himself from what to my mind is a very small infraction of proper etiquette, and offense to one's sensibilities.   “You are hungry to eat, no?”  “Yes - I say as Stephen starts right in - I had a small amount for breakfast, but that's been many hours ago, and this has been one of the strangest days of my life - long and tiring - very tiring.”   Not wanting to get into the details of all the shit that's gone on over the last several days, I offer simply  “I picked-up a case of dysentery in Oaxaca a couple of weeks ago, and ever since then my digestion has been poor, and …well, this isn't the time to get into that - maybe we can get into that later.”   I thought it wise to stop with this explanation also, and particularly during the meal.  Normally I wouldn't, but in consideration of the apparent