CH. 5

5.

Last thing I ever heard about Kovu was on the local news. He’d totaled his car against another pair or so, fled the scene, and probably the city for all I know. Freddy, on his part, had the kind of attitude that said: -“I’m going to disappear, soon enough, anyway.”-

I walked away from her touch too. I somehow blamed her, and those of her kind, for the pain I was feeling.

When I found myself in open space at school again, I went for the culturally accepted alcoholics grouping on the other side. It’s amusingly unbelievable how easy humanity forgets, very scary too, like a dumber coaster.

I found me a new group of mates, The ETS, we called our firm. The five of us had paint matching love meaning Chinese characters stuck to a window of our cars. I know, but we thought it was pretty cool, and it was, we were constantly standing on the edge of the social order.

Whenever we popped out of Stewie’s titanium grand Cherokee at a party, girls would’ve taken one hand to their mouths, and to other one to their pussies, thinking: -“Oh my god. There’s going to be trouble. I want to blow that one on the pale green shirt.”- We had the bad boy appeal going on pretty smoothly. We were indeed decently good at brawling itself, but more than anything, we were never scared, and we were connected; drug dealing industry’s children attending my cities classrooms is an exponential phenomenon, to the point that today is almost impossible to tell them apart. While back then they were kind of ostracized by the rest, I was more like: -“Hell yeah, let’s go to your house, you’ll let me hold your dad’s AK47, and I’ll finally see if cocaine looks just like the movies!”- It does, white powder all right.

Let’s just say we knew all the right people growing up, if doing whatever the fuck we wanted, was our mission. Actually, one of the original members of The ETS was one of those progenies. He’s now dead by gunfire. –“You live by the sword, you die by the sword.”- Stewie and I used to tell him to try and keep him from family business. He didn’t listen, he never listened. We are who we are, people don’t change. RIP Punchy.

Buzzard is a soldier, just like me. He’s the real dictionary type of soldier though with a rank a gun a pair of tours to the oil bearded lands and everything. Before that, we loved high school football. He was a very decent tail back, kick return specialist, I was a quarterback. Good days, good girls, good games. He’s family was from Tijuana so, as pretty much everyone with enough dough living on a border town, they crossed to squirt him out on the other side; he was a gringo then. Kept saying he was going to join the army, one day he just did. –“Fuck what people tell you, mind what you tell you.”- He’s most memorable lesson.

Last time I spoke to him was about a year after that, I was probably about to turn eighteen, my home’s phone rang and it was the Buzzard direct from Afghanistan. Communication was somehow tampered with, as if it was monitored; the delay was annoying, but we talked.

-“Mate how’s everything?”-

-“It’s all good man, all good.”- Said a man of few words and constant cheer.

-“Buzzard, I didn’t have a chance to tell you… Can you hear me alright?”-

-“Yeah, go ahead.”-

-“Buzzard, I did not fuck your girlfriend man, it’s all bullshit.”-

-“I know bru, don’t worry about it, even if you did, I don’t care, we’re bros.”-

-“But I didn’t.”- I didn’t. –“Anyway, how is it over there?”-

-“I’m training to jump the fuck out of things with a chute.”-

-“Epic”-

-“I know, pretty cool, huh?”-

-“So, have you killed anyone yet?”-

-“Shit man, people have touch you know?”-

-“Yeah well, I don’t, have you?”-

-“All I have to say is that I don’t wish that feeling to anyone.”-

-“Fuck’s that supposed to mean? Have you, or have you not?”-

-“Fuck off.”-

It was never, and probably never will be, clear to me if Buzzard ever killed somebody, I don’t even know if I care, though I realize only now, while writing this madness, that it is probably the reason I don’t keep in touch with him anymore, because I don’t want to know, because he became the kind of soldier that I refused to be and promised to be forever against, but I miss the guy, we were comrades in arms in the football field. He’s back in Tijuana now. I’ll probably go check him out soon, that’s if I don’t kill myself in the process of dropping this beat.

There’s a rather pathetic end to football. One of those things that I owe to myself and come daily, rings the doorbell. One more example, in this ridiculous exercise, that many, many, times, I’ve been sitting on my lazy ass when I should’ve been goddam dancing

It started as the most satisfying feeling of completion in my life. We were, one knee to the ground, grouping after practice. Head coach talked: -“I have an announcement to make. We’ve come to a decision regarding comings season starting QB, and I’m honored to pass this football to him.”- I catch it, felt pride, the good kind of one. Teammates applauded, they were with me. We had been through a hell of a lot past season, and still remained state champions.

Competition for the spot had been fierce too since there where three of us passers, one was stronger and more experienced, and the other one was quicker, but I had guts and brains for the game, and it seemed to matter utterly. Once, I organized a friendly, with the national champions, on their turf, just to get a little edge on the tough side. We were down shitloads to little, my weak side guard slipped, their Mike blitzed; I disappeared between a tackle and a linebacker, felt a rib crack, and passed out for a second. I woke up buried in the mud, coaches attending to me.

–“Fuck am I doing laying here on this filth? Pick me right up, let’s play some ball.”-

Coach smiled, offered his arm. -“You’re the last man with balls still attached to him today on this field. You’re on for the rest of the game.”- 

I did play the remaining two quarters without complaint, and then had to stand on the bus for eighteen hours because I couldn’t stand the pain of sitting down. We lost that day, but weeks later, we were the ones burying cunts in the mud.

So yes, I was tough, so tough that as soon as I was a starter and got what I wanted, I walked out the field and got piss face drunk. While I was at it, obsessed with a girl, in the same way I obsessed with pretty much everything, and with those two excuses, missed practice the next day, and the one after that, and before I knew it, I’d left, in the same way I’d left pretty much everything else. A lose-lose situation again; if they had won the championship game, against our archrivals, after five years of holding the title, they would’ve had won, but because they lost, we lost that game.  

I couldn’t give a fuck at the time though, since I had, promptly, a shift of attention. A screenplay that I’d written and took to a film company in the capital who’s mate I read it to told me that he’d liked it; to go ahead and make it with any means I could muster, then bring it back to them, so that, and that is, if they like it, they could, probably, help me get some distribution. That was more than enough for me to come up with a better story back home, so soon, and funnily enough, my picture was in the local papers as this new, incredibly young, talented writer and director of a major film to be shot locally.

Investors interested in a logo on the background and a proper credit gave me money. I bought a manual crane, a steady cam, a proper tripod, and, obviously, a film snapper. Then got a lawyer to make some contracts with witch I recruited some homo’s film company which had the cameras, a cinematographer, and an editor. Launched a casting and crowded the place, unimaginables turned up, from the neighborhood’s billionaire to the wandering emos. We filmed it all and filled a couple of boxes with photo applications. The venues had been selected, bands had been scouted for the soundtrack, and a tentative filming schedule had been printed. I had the checkbook though.

I used to wake up at around fifteen hundred since I had, indeed, left my private high school for a public one where I bought my diploma. I stretched a bit out of bed and reached the females box, pulled a bunch of applications out, and started going on about them. –“Decent, on to the bunch of probable, no way, no, fuck no, m… nah, now we’re talking, probable, no, bingo.”-

I rang them up: -“Hello, this is the writer and producer of…”-

-“Oh my God”-

Club, alcohol, motel, and dinner, on the movie, thank you. By the time we were supposed to start filming I’d shit money and had done all the decent looking scouted, that were ass actresses anyway, and just couldn’t give a flying fuck. The homo was pretty disappointed; he really wanted to make a movie. He did, in the end, get his very own drama, when one of his lovers stabbed him like thirty times or so, he didn’t die. As soon as he recovered, he got the knife again, probably a twenty, didn’t die either, fun stuff.

Time came for college. I said film, philosophy, or literature, dad said fuck off; negotiations shat communications, just like my mother. I drove four or five hours south through the dessert in a null straight line on a red Fiesta, black windows, no AC, The Little Devil. I parked at a very fat lady’s bed and breakfast. She was a good cook; very fat Mexican ladies usually are. Next room to me lived an American protestant Christian, or something like that, good fun we had. I took him to the beer gulping at the lucha libre, afterwards to the titty bar, every Thursday. I came out of a private room, on our first visit to the place, and sat back on the table, he was in shock; white. –“What just happened man?”-

-“A lap dance, man”-

-“Please explain”-

-“You’re a funny fellow you know? She gets her whore outfit off and rubs herself off on you for a song, topless naturally, usually they keep the undies.”-

-“Can you touch?”-

-“Oh yes you can, especially here in the poor lands, you can fuck them too, for a price, if you want. I went to a joint down in Texas with a cousin once, the Puerto Rican cunt wouldn’t even let me touch her leg, and she even stopped dancing before the song ended because of my efforts. Who the hell goes to those places anyway?”- 

-“I don’t know. Back up just a little bit please; did you just say you can have sex, with any of these girls, right now?”-

-“Yes I did, in fact, you can too, chose one, it’s on me.”-

He almost passed out.

-“No way”-

-“Yes güey”-

-“Have you ever done it?”-

-“Plenty of times, I just had a bit of a blow job back there, actually.”-

-“Get out of here. How much did that cost you?”-

-“Nothing”-

-“What do you mean? How does that work?”-

-“I don’t know, I guess she liked me.”-

-“Can prostitutes like you?”-

-“Yes mate, they can.”-

Eventually he got his visit to a private room.

University was all right, they had me at truth will set us free. It was easy though, way too easy. It gave me time to do what I craved; read compulsively and listen to newer music to me. Foreseeable it wasn’t long before I thought of her again, and consequentially conspired to have her come my way. It was in good old Acapulco. We’d gone downtown, my mate and I, the one I know since we were in our mother’s bellies, but with whom I have many differences, since he’s a man of money, and I try to be one for science, jumped into a beetle cab, and rode up a hill were a police car guarded the place where we’d bought a couple of ounces of her, pretty blonde hairs she had. I’d crafted a blunt that we were smoking on the terrace, listening to poor Leno with a whole view of a yellow ringed, white roofed, light poked bay and the silver ocean. All of it made the instruments board of the star cruiser we were riding, in witch, she and I, weed and I, made peace with each other while playing with the photons, we were kids no more, quit fucking around.

We kept the spliffs puffin for a few days and then I was back in college town. I got myself an apartment, a bull terrier, half a kilo of her, just to be on the safe side, and started to train.

I first set foot on a boxing gym when I was nine and got a bloody nose as a welcome gesture to my primary school in the north. I was born in the big city, almost no one knows that, but then dad got a job back home, both him, my mother, and most our family had been born there anyway, so we moved. I used to speak with the most annoying accent; people from Mexico City do, so I had it coming really. The big realizations were what kept me interested in the sport, things like the strongest guy, with weak lungs, can easily be defeated or that a one-two and a weave, well executed, may very well finish any brawl fairly quickly. Things that could be learned fast enough, but applied continuously, and could always be improved.

I’d never taken it so seriously though. I was training twice a day, both outside and in the gym, and even, kind of, ate properly. I ran a lot, I had to, if I were to last on any ring, and always took Kierkegaard with me. We were, my white and black spotted dog, in the best shapes of our lives, and for a minute there, we were happy.

One time I sat on the arm rest of a couch, reading a hundred years of solitude with a cup of coffee, took a breath, smelled of its warmth, looked straight ahead, and felt good. Almost like watching a whale it was, that time, happiness. Coming out of something much bigger than what we’ll ever know, showing some of its reflective skin, probably shooting some air, emitting a sound; making its presence felt, and then disappearing, probably to be seen never again, since it goes to the other side of the surface, a place so hard to reach. Maybe if I would’ve thrown myself into the water, maybe if I would’ve, probably I did.

I didn’t live where I wanted to live nor did I study what I wanted to study, but it was the right age. Old enough to buy a drink in Mexico and a gun in America, but still with the same curiosity and energy of the freckles brat standing on the dusty river, and on top of that, doing as much of her as I wanted to, finally.

My jeans had torn, my hair had grown, and my music had gone grungier, when I met Xisani. I walked out of class and spotted the perfect ass; followed instinctively. As I saw her eyes I said: -“That woman is going to be mine.”- My mate, who had been walking next me, laughed. “You know how there’s always some guy, that everybody hates, but most suck on, whose family has loads of dough, that nobody knows where it come from, and loves to rub it on your face while driving the car you always wanted and having the girl you only dream of?”-

-“Yeah, I know the kind.”-

-“Yeah well, there’s one here too, and that’s his girl.”-

 -“Mate, you really shouldn’t have told me that. Now you just made it all more interesting.”-

-“Have it your way then. She goes to class with my cousin, it’s his birthday today. She’ll be there.”-

-“We’ll be there.”-

I have to say it is the best that I’ve ever played my cards. I can see today, that it’s not so much because I wanted too, but also because she did so. Therefore it could be said that I didn’t just play well; I also had a great hand, when I sat across from the table and did notice her, but didn’t give her special attention, as I thought, a girl looking like that, would want. That did get her going to the point of starting the conversation. We exchanged a few words about nothing, and when the time came for me to go to class, I stood up and excused myself.

-“Are you leaving so soon?”- Xisani asked while shooting a pair of sparks from her blue membranes to my black pupils. 

-“Yes I am.”-

-“Will you come back?”-

-“Would you talk to me all afternoon if I do?”-

-“Yes I would.”-

-“Then I will.”-

I went to whatever dub class, thought only of her, and drove back to the tacos and mariachi place while sweetening the voices of the demons in my head with a little inhaling smoke. She’d been waiting for me alright, only thought of me too. Exchanged words went fluently all the way into the night when we were at some club, and people started talking, like hyenas they did, because something more interesting than what they usually did, and most probably do, happened; a hunt too marvelous to them scavenger hunters. The clock ticked to say good night and I did, just like that, and went my way, just like that, no daring commentaries, no alarming approaches, no digits, no kiss, no decontrol, no weakness; my best bluff ever.

The following day she managed to call my mobile:

-“Hey”-

-“Hey”-

-“Alright?”-  

-“Fantastic, yourself?”-

-“Pretty good, I guess. I’m with my sister; you want to talk to her?”-

-“Sure”-

-“Hi”- Said a child. –“I’m doing some eggs.”-

-“Are you? Then you must be very clever.”-

-“Not really, it’s not that hard. I’ll let you talk to Xisani.”-

-“You do that; it was nice meeting you…”-

-“Hey, isn’t she a darling?”-

-“Yes she is.”-

-“Well, I guess that’s it then.”-

-“I guess.”-

-“Okay… bye, bye then.”-

-“Bye, bye”-

I wrote her a page about us, being snowflakes, gravity what we felt for each other, and the result an avalanche, or some corny shit like that, and handed it rolled, with a pigeon feather and a leather knot, to her, one morning that we coincided on the parking lot.

-“I don’t want to go class, do you?”- Said, after reading, vibrating.

-“I never want to go class.”-

-“You want to go somewhere?”-

-“Sure, where?”-

-“Anywhere”-

-“Anywhere is perfect.”-

We cruised, we talked, we listened, I drove some more, we played some music. My hand made it to her leg, further as we reached my place, and then I raised my bet even further as she tried to kiss and I resisted, but she went all in and clawed her nails to my face, so we kissed, and we fucked, and it feels as if we’d never stopped doing so. We did it all over my place, and my car, and the sides of roads, and in the coolness of her pool, and hiding in the TV room, and in her room, and a hotel’s once, and on top of a tall water reservoir in the middle of the dessert that she climbed with her Blahniks, I did so with my flip flops, and we fucked staring at each other, not minding the burning rest of the world; painful orgasms in one of hell’s islands.

We really fucked everywhere; we were, indeed, very much in love, the hipster and the untouchable beauty, the diamond that left the ring to go back to earth, she was the diamond, I was the rocks.

I stood on the edge of Tulum’s ruins, overseeing the Caribbean at midday, and recorded it so very carefully because I thought that is the only other place in the world were that kind of blue can be found, other than her eyes. Her skin was white, but always tanned; her hair was brown, but always shone. Tight inviting curves of a figure, petite, even if I used to stare at her like an ant looking up at Venus.

She remarkably coped to stay in constant contact, physical contact that is. Wherever we were dining she would’ve been sitting on my lap, cutting the pieces and feeding them to my mouth, if I was driving, she would’ve been wearing me like a seatbelt, drinking beer with her dad, tequila with her mother, she would’ve been groping me underneath the table. We were as much as we could with each other, and if we were, we were touching, kissing, and in the event of more than a second to ourselves, we torn our clothes off; it was mad. I used to wake up early, only hours after being together, grabbed a spliff and speeded to her. We would’ve gone get whatever it was she craved that day, always craved something, she had so much passion, and then we would’ve hid in my quarters, or driven out to every little town there was around; walked Kierk on all parks, bought ice cream out of every little gentle old man pushing a similar car, and sat under every tree there was to sit, to obsess with each other.  

Time does seem to destroy everything. She did say te amo once, didn’t finish the phrase, but I know she did.

It wasn’t instantaneous, like a single break up or some sudden separation, we took our time; we couldn’t be without each other, even if we heard the pile of lies yelling that we didn’t belong together.  

I went home for the summer; she followed the next day, we sexed extremely sweaty that time, and then she told me to go back with her, or that it had been the last time, I can’t tell.

My trainer told me one day, that kind of woman can only turn you into either a dog or an assassin.

I flew to Florida with a bunch of Swiss chicks that I knew and spent a week in what sounded like a French hen house, and topped it up, the last day, with an act of unexplainable shame, as the prettiest one of the lot, and I, were left alone, and I still don’t know what for, but I rested my head on her legs, and spent what I thought were only seconds but where minutes, thinking of Xisani, until the cutie despaired, said bonne nuit, and went to bed, alone, just left me there, filling the pipe’s bowl and pouring myself another vodka, feeling like the one that just missed the penalty shot that would’ve won the cup.

When I was back I said hi to Xisani extremely casually on the same hallway that I saw her for the first time. Five minutes later she was ringing my doorbell. We fucked for about a week that time and then she finally walked out of that apartment of many shadows to never come back. –“There she goes now, back to her golden rusty cage. I’ll be here, like a rock, waiting.”- I thought, as I saw her walk away.

The roars of euphoria to the stream of the shower turned into pathetic moans. I’d tried the ultimate dare and broke my rookie wings in many pieces; I was so very sick with love. I’d done it without having the slightest clue about pretty much anything and I’d done it so very hard, with all the force within me, loving, and I’d failed. Many hours were spent in front of the mirror expelling me from myself; I was a stranger wondering what was missing in that sad image of eyes with burn marks that tell of having seen it all and then nothing, a banquet of love before, starvation after.

I started to spend most of my time with the cholos that sold me drugs in a dark alley of a no-go neighborhood that, conveniently enough, had a pawn shop where I took the speakers that we listened to Filio on, the TV on which we saw scary movies and I poked her ribs in the right moment, and she hated it, and the sound system of my car that she had sagaciously taken control of. Anything that I had, and they would take, I gave, as long as I could pay for the company of my hurting buddies. On my birthday I bought myself a keg of beer, a fist of coke, and called some homies up to teach me how to smoke base. As soon as we were done with it, they left; no one could bear my sadness, but not before leaving behind a big, thick and round, yellow pill, a reyna they called it, a queen; a Rophynol that is. I took it with enough draft to pass out an elephant and did just that.

The most annoying series of industrial thunder sounds woke me up; a million times worse than first sergeant, a stick, and a metal bin to my head. Someone was at the door; it hurt like a nail gun to my forehead.

-“Who the fuck is it?”-

-“Corona! Good morning sir! I’m here for the keg.”-

-“Good morning? Are you fucking kidding me? Go away.”-

-“Sir I just need to take the keg.”-

-“Go away. I’ll kill you.”-

Long pause.

-“Sir, I’m only doing my job here.”-

-“Fuck, off.”-

-“Please, sir, I have a family. My boss will fine me if it’s not back by midday. If it isn’t empty yet, I’ve got some more plastic cups. Please, sir.”-

-“Jesus fucking Christ, come in then, and be quick about it.”-

I opened the door, my dog ran away forever.

-“I’m sorry about that sir.”-

-“Yeah, I’m sure you are.”-

The bloke started carpeting the table with cups when he noticed the pieces of foil, straws, baggies, and the rest paraphernalia. Took a deep breath of courage, or so he thought, a quick look around, and without even picking his mother fucking face up, started to say: -“You know, there are special places where you can go and get…”-

-“Mate, look at me. If you say one more word I’m going kick you in the mouth so dam hard that I’m gonna have to drag your fat ass body the fuck out of my place, you understand? Now, don’t look at me, finish what you were doing, and fuck off, silently, alrite?”-

He poured until the last burp of foam, picked the keg up on his little trolley, and was on his way. In a sudden burst of loneliness I pulled some change out of my pocket. –“Mate, just wait, here, take it, thank you.”-

-“Nah, that’s all right, keep it, you have a nice day now, you hear me?”-

-“Fuck you.”-

He left and closed the door behind him, I passed back out.

A day or so later I woke up, or something like that, finally in purgatory; I’d turned a love nest into the rectum of a drug munching demon. Only horrible thoughts haunted me and cut my skin with sharp pieces of metal refractive of jealousy and vengeance; a killer in the making. I gulped one after another one of what felt like warm old piss and alcohol. All windows had been covered with newspapers, how did that happen, who the fuck did that? Little pieces of paper rolled and stuck between the glass and the frame to stop the buses from making it all exasperatingly vibrate. The AC, water heater, and doorbell, were out. Who was in there with me? What happened to my ability to feel? Panic all around. I fled the scene, drove to the pharmacy, bought me a bottle of cough syrup and made myself a shake with it, what was left of the pot bag, and something else. Downed it but wasn’t enough; I needed instantaneous memory loss. Drove out again, looking for a vet shop, found it and busted in there totally unaware of my ethylic state.

-“You have Ketavet?”-

-“No”-

-“Why not?”-

-“Because junkies use it, like you.”-

Silence; everybody stared at the junkie, I ran out of there.

While driving back, a sudden explosion of toxic vomit went through my throat, sticks and puke covered all of me and the inside of my car. I’d bumper crashed a taxi without even noticing. The bloke opened my door and took a good look inside, a pause of terror: he closed it, walked off, and drove away slowly. He will forever wonder about those menacingly weird things that can happen to a man behind a pitch black tint car window. I drove back home and went to bed with my shame for a week until I got the call to go home to some wedding. I drove north with booze, cigarettes, and agony on every thought. I drank all the cognac I could in a house that used to belong to Pancho Villa, then to a relative of mine, and still had some torture dungeons were I played as a kid, a lion’s cage, and an old dead cold swimming pool. I woke up on a couch in my room, freezing like never before, sweating like never before; I couldn’t move. –“I’ve done it.”- I thought. –“I’ve finally pulled the plug on myself.”- More panic; trepidation. Years went by before I managed to pull myself into the shower and open the hot one. My parents drove me to the hospital, not for the first time, that’s for sure. I was lucky enough to get a psychiatrist on guard in the ER.

-“He needs an IV right now; give him Valium.”-

-“Yes, give me whatever he said, now, please.”-

It was nice; I slept acceptably peacefully, and by the time I woke up, a nurse came up with another cool dose down my arm. My little cousin took his PS2 with some GTA in it, so before I knew it, I was under intravenous drugs and murdering randomly, pretty much what I felt like doing really. Then Doc came with all the answers.

-“Renault Syndrome”- He said prominently.

-“Dam French girls”- I thought.

-“I may conclude by your symptoms that it is what I suspect. Trembling, sweating, anxiety, insomnia, temporary paralysis, and specially, the discoloration of the hands, make it all very clear to me. Do you see how long it takes for the bloodstream to reflow after I squeeze your palm? That, I’m afraid, is the strongest sign. I recommend full spectrum studies, but I must say that in the case that I’m right, and I’m pretty certain that I’m, this is a very serious diagnosis.”-

-“Okay, wait just one second. What if I abused drugs?”-

-“What do you mean?”-

-“I’ve done drugs, a lot.”-

-“Oh no, then that’s it.”-

-“What do you mean that’s it?”-

-“That’s what you have, drugs”-

-“Really doc? C’mon, you’ll have to be more specific.”-

-“All your symptoms are signs of drug withdrawal.”-

-“What the fuck happened to the Renault shit then?”-

-“Chill down son, you’re a drug addict; you need to go to rehab.”-