“Bueno, gringo … La plata.”
Before my father started using morphine again he sent me to a Japanese person to learn something called Karate. I learn these things fast because I am blank inside, and I have no special way of moving or doing things so one way is the same to me as another. The Japanese man said I was the best student he ever had. He had a shower in his studio and in the shower he rubbed soap between my legs to look at what happens between my legs when a white juice spurts out. If I promised not to tell anyone he would teach me all the secrets he never showed other students. What happens between my legs is like a cold drink to me, it is just a feeling cold round stones against my back sunshine and shadow of Mexico. I know that other people think of it as something special to do with how they feel about someone else and there is a word love that means nothing to me at all. It is just a feeling between the legs, a sort of tingle.
The boy is there in front of me making a scene he saw in some movie. He is talking out of the corner of his mouth. He spits. I flip the back of my fist to his nose and blood spurts out. He covers his face and I punch him in the stomach. He falls down and lies there trying to get the air back. It is a long time coming and he is blue in the face before he can breathe again. When I come back next day a boy seventeen years old and nice to look at with white teeth and very red gums says that I am his pal and nobody will bother his pal. I am glad of that because what I am here for has nothing to do with that kind of fighting that dogs do and there is not much difference between people and dogs. I am not a person and I am not an animal. There is something I am here for something that I have to do before I can go. That day I caddy for an American colonel who tells me about keeping my eyes on the ball in life and on the golf course and life is a game and you have to keep your eyes on the ball and keeps telling me the ball is over here and when I find it over there he doesn’t like it as if the ball should be where he thinks it is when the ball is someplace else. I am careful to say sir to him and pretend to listen, but I made a wrong move finding the balls too quick and he gives me a very small tip. After that I learn not to find the ball too quick and let the player think he has found it himself. And I get bigger tips and save the money. I don’t like to go home. My father is taking morphine and always tying up his arm and talking to this old junky who has a government scrip and mother drinks tequila all day and there are kerosene heaters that smoke and the smell of kerosene in the cold blue morning. I rent a room near the club and stop going home at all. Now that I have more time to myself I can see what holds me back. It is not a thread like I thought a thin thread that holds a toy balloon a thread that might break and let me blow away across the sky. It is a net that is sometimes close around me and sometimes in the sky stretched between trees and telephone poles and buildings but always around me and I am always under it.
(Way is blocked beyond that golf course. Hands tingle. Morning legs in Mexico cool under my shirt. Standing there under a dusty tree hot white juice spurts out on the golf course. It is a feeling by which I am here at all.)
One afternoon I am in the shed where we change and take showers. The boy who said I was his pal is there. The others have gone because it is a fiesta. The boy has his shirt off and his skin is smooth like polished brown wood. He peels an orange and the smell of orange fills the shed. He breaks the orange in two and gives me half and pulls me down to sit beside him on the bench. He finishes the orange and licks his fingers. Then he puts his arms around my shoulders and I can see his pants are sticking up between his legs.
“Yo muy caliente, Johnny. Very hot.” He rubs his face against mine. “Quiero follarte.”
His body is warm like an animal and I feel a soft tingle in my stomach and I say “Muy bueno.” We take off our clothes. The boy has two blue roses tattooed on each side of his rump. There is a musk smell from his tight brown nuts. He brings out a little tin of Vaseline he carries in his hip pocket because sometimes he would fuck a tourist for money he has always carried it. I take the tin and rub Vaseline on his cock feeling it jump in my hand like a frog he is standing there teeth bared gasping … “Vuelvete y aganchete Johnny … I turn around and bend over hands braced on knees and let myself go limp inside as he slides it in I could see out through a little dusty window the golf course and the sun on the lake like bits of silver paper, and when I spurt the golf course seems to stretch out and then snap back pulling my eggs together and I am spurting out the trees and the grass and the lake. Silver spots boil in front of my eyes and the window blacks out.
I am sitting on the bench my head against the wall and he is rubbing a towel on my face. “You black out Johnny.” He touched my cheek and looked at me showing the red gums and belched a smell of oranges. “You very good for fuck.”
I don’t remember. Maybe it didn’t happen like that. One time we are swimming naked in the pond and afterward sitting on the dam. Behind the dam is a hollow place shaded by trees where the balls get lost and I lean back and see one down there through the leaves. I show him and we climb down. He gets there first and picks up the ball. “Veya otra pelota.” He had found another. Squatting there he turned to me smiling holding a golf ball in each hand. Finding the balls has excited him and his eyes shine like an animal. We are completely hidden in a bowl of leaves. There is a smell of mud and moss and stagnant water. We squat there in the soft mud our knees touching. He looks down between his legs watching himself get stiff. He looks up smiling. “Buen lugar para follar, Johnny.” I feel the tingle between my legs and I am getting stiff too. “Esperate un momento.” He climbs up through the leaves and comes back with our clothes. He reaches in his pants pocket and brings out a little tin of Vaseline. He opens it and rubs it on himself kneeling. He motions with his hands pulling them in toward his crotch. “Así Johnny” I get down on my hands and knees feeling his finger inside me and my ass opens up and he is all the way in his hot quick breath on my back we shiver together and both finish in a few seconds. We sit there naked with our knees together and pass a cigarette back and forth. Then he opens his knees and shows me he is stiff again and says “Otra vez Johnny” This time he pulls me back between his legs and lies on his back with me on top of him kicking like a frog kicking the spurts out.
The sky stretched between my legs go limp as he slid it in afternoon I was in the shed boy had his shirt off legs together sitting on the bench he was rubbing he touched my cheek and looked and belched a smell of oranges sticking up between his legs rubbed his face against mine in the pond swimming naked treading water he puts his arm around me and pulled me against him “Bailar Johnny?” and I can feel him getting stiff against me. Then he floated on his back and it was sticking up in the sunlight we floated there side by side his arm around my shoulders. We swim over to the shallow water and he reaches up and gets his pants and takes the tin of Vaseline out of his pocket. The water is about three feet deep here and we are covered by the branches of a willow tree he kneels in the green light the water reaches to his tight nuts. He dries his prong with a handkerchief and rubs Vaseline on it. “Stick your ass up Johnny.” I raise myself out of the water and he dries me with the handkerchief and rubs the Vaseline inside. Then he hitches his hands under my hips and pulls me up and my belly goes loose under the water and it is inside me I am spurting off into the cool water feeling his hot gobs inside. Afterward we stayed like that stuck together and inched into a foot of water and I let myself sink down until my belly was on the sand hollow place with bushes and weeds where we took off our clothes squatting there I could feel my nuts aching a little dusty window bits of silver paper trees and grass the lake smell of oranges pushed me down on my face he finished the orange and licked his red shoulder muy caliente very hot Johnny a boy animal knees touching stiff between his legs sitting on the bench Johnny he touched in his pants pocket and rubbed it his face against mine feeling his finger feeling him get stiff he opened it sticking up in the sunlight finished in a few seconds kicking para follar my legs open vuelvete y aganchete Johnny I turned stretched sky b
etween my legs limp inside as he slid it in legs go limp sun on the lake the golf course I spurted off hot white juice silver spots in my eyes I remember a room there naked musty smell of his tight nuts. I don’t know. Japanese person sometime. This me as another rubbed soap between my legs he would show me what happens.
My room is on a roof. I can see blue mountains across the valley. Every day after work Kiki comes to my room and brings a packet of griefa. “Muy bueno para follar Johnny.” We are sitting on the edge of the roof our legs dangling in the air. I point to the sky above the blue mountains and tell him “Some day I will go away in that direction.”
He looks at me and wrinkles his forehead like a dog and says I shouldn’t think such things is muy malo. I can see he is sad feeling the sky between us.
Not long after that he was caddy for a rich Englishman and stopped coming to the club. I only saw him once after that. He drove to the club in a Jaguar car with new clothes and a big wrist watch. The clothes didn’t look right on him. He was smiling but there was sadness and fear behind the eyes. He told me the man was taking him back to England. We shook hands and he drove away. At the end of the drive he turned and waved.
Stick your ass up Johnny few seconds kicking like a frog hands under my hips and pulled me up all the way in his face water and it was inside me stretched sky between my legs limp in the cool water we stayed like that stuck together I remember a little dusty room sometimes bits of silver paper child steps out of a shower feeling his tight nuts boy animal smiling he dried me hitched my legs open his hot gobs inside came there knees touching wrinkled his forehead like a dog sadness in his eyes waved good-by from his Jaguar.
What is it that makes a man a man and a cat a cat? It was broken there. It stretched and stretched and finally broke. Look at these broken fragments: centipede man, Jaguar man, limestone plant bursting out between his legs even the pain is no longer pain of man. This had started before I came there. I found the temple in ruins the stellae broken and no one knew any more how to use the calendar. Still the dead priests and their dead gods held us in a magic net and every day the overseer came from the ruined temple and told us what to do and for a while longer we did it in our minds and hands still heard still felt we could not do anything else. I was different from the others. I watched and waited. One day when the overseer came with his magic staff I raised my eyes and looked at him. I saw that his eyes were dead and there was no more power left in them. I knocked the staff out of his hands with my stone adze. He couldn’t believe what had happened and stood there spitting pain pictures torture of the poison fish that turns the blood to screaming fire. I swung the adze up between his legs. He screamed and fell down thrashing around in the weeds and vines of the clearing. My friend Xolotl watched him and smiled. He stepped over and put a foot on the overseer’s throat. Xolotl was holding a sharp planting stick. He folded one hand around it and with the other hand pumped it up and down between his legs like rubbing himself off making fire we call it and put out the overseer’s eyes. Then he raised the stick and brought it down leaning his weight on it. The stick went right through the overseer’s belly and pinned him to the ground. The others had gathered and stood in a circle watching. Xolotl got a burning stick from the fire and built a fire between the overseer’s legs. After that we went to the temple. In a back room we found the old priestess like a paralyzed slug. We couldn’t touch her because of the smell and a green slime over her body so we hooked vines around her and dragged her out into the clearing. She died before we could torture her. We burned the body. There were about thirty of us left five women and some babies that would not live long. Most of them had the terrible sickness from the old priestess that rots the bones inside. The legs go first they can’t walk and crawl around like slugs then the spine and arms. Last of all the skull. Xolotl and I gathered our gourds and stone axes and knives and went into the jungle. We knew that if we stayed there we would catch the sickness. And I didn’t want to stay where the women were. Xolotl and I went into the jungle where we lived by killing animals and catching fish. I can see the fish traps and the snares for delicate little jungle deer and animals that had a shell we could catch them with our hands and kill by bashing their heads against a tree. One time I smashed one of these gourd rats and the blood spurted out all over me. I threw him on the ground and he twisted around the sharp little black point between his legs was stiff. Xolotl laughed pointing to it then we were pointing to each other and laughing and I lay down pretending I was the gourd rat throwing myself around and Xolotl shoved my legs up and we made fire I was kicking like a frog. We lay there a long time until night came and it was cold on our bodies. Then we cooked the gourd rat in its shell scooping out the soft white meat. Next morning I looked around and decided this was a good place. There was a clear blue stream with deep pools and plenty of fish and a sand bank by the stream. So we made a clearing by burning the trees and built a hut there lashed to four great posts high above the ground. The biting flies do not come into a clear space. Fish were easy to catch with our traps and lines. And we snared deer and pigs and big rats and killed monkeys and animals that go upside down in trees with our bows and throwing sticks. But we did not kill the gourd rats after that. I knew it would be unlucky to do this. We ate and swam in the river and lay on the sand bank in the sun and made fire when we wanted. A lot of our time we spent making better bows and spears and knives. I found some very hard wood and made myself a long knife for cutting brush. It took me a long time to smooth the wood down with sand and when it was finished I could cut brush out of my way with it and once I killed a big snake with one blow. So I always carried this knife with me. We took animal skins and smoked them and rubbed the brains into the skins to make covers because it was cold at night and we used the brains to make fire together. One night I had a dream. A blue spirit came to me and showed me the vine where it lived and showed me how to cook the vine with other plants and make a medicine. The next day I found the vine and made the medicine like the spirit showed me. When it was dark I drank a little gourd of the medicine and gave a gourd to Xolotl. I felt the spirit come into me like soft blue fire and everything was blue. We got down on the ground growling and whining like animals. I climbed a tree and hung upside down from a branch. Xolotl was a jaguar, he pulled me down onto the sand I could hear myself whimpering my head bursting and flying away like stars that fall in the sky stretched the soft magic net when I spurted my insides out on the sand the blue spirit filled me Xolotl and I were part of the spirit and the vine where it lived growling and whining in my throat. We lay there on the sand bar and I saw places like the clearing where the temples were with many temples and huts and people green fields and lakes and little white balls flying through the air. When the medicine wore off we were very thirsty and went to the river and drank. Then we heard a jaguar in the jungle close by and went to the hut and covered ourselves with skins, we were shivering. The jaguar was always around after that we stayed in the hut at nights. We set snares and dug pits with spikes but we could never catch him, he was always out there grunting and snarling we could see his eyes shining in the dark. Xolotl had great fear of the jaguar. He would crawl whimpering into my arms like a child when he heard it outside sniffing around our hut. We took the vines but not often because it leaves a headache. I see the pot full of medicine on a slab of stone in the middle of the hut. Xolotl and I kneel naked in front of the pot. We dip out little gourds of the medicine and both drink it down. The medicine acts very fast. We are both stiff between the legs waiting for the spirit to come. Xolotl rubs animal brains on his fish. I lay down with my legs up and just as the spirit comes he slides the fish inside me, a blue fish swimming in my body swimming away into the sky where my head bursts spilling stars. I do it to him sometimes he is braced in the door of the hut head back whining in his throat as I swim into him I can feel my face in his and finally I feel my fish touch the tip of his and glow there with soft blue fire he is spurting into the night and the river the trees and birdcalls.
r /> There was a full moon that night. I went to set out the fish traps and left Xolotl in the hut and told him not to go out. I have my wood knife with me if the jaguar jumps on me I will shove it right into his mouth. I find a deep silver pool and drop the trap into it. Then I hear the jaguar and screams from Xolotl. I run back to the clearing and there in front of the hut I see Xolotl on all fours. He tried to say something and a growl came instead his head twisted back by something is inside pulled his mouth open and teeth tore out dripping looking at me begging for help as the yellow light came from inside and put out his eyes and they shone green in the moonlight and the jaguar was there twisting and throwing himself about growling whining spitting something out his mouth a terrible black smell. My knife had fallen and I was spitting up against a tree. For a long time I was there against the tree the sharp smell of what I had spit up in my mouth. Finally I pushed myself away and got my knife. The jaguar had gone. Next day I left the hut. I couldn’t stay there. I walked in the jungle and caught a few fish. Soon I was sick with fever. The clay that holds a body together was broken. Sometimes I was a tree or a rock and I would sit in one place for light and dark hungry and thirsty. Sometimes I took the vine and saw Xolotl solid I could touch almost and spoke to him but when he wasn’t there I didn’t speak. After a while I couldn’t eat and stopped trying to catch anything. I left the river and walked a few steps at a time came to a clearing and caught my foot in some vines and fell down. I couldn’t get up the leg was broken there and I saw it was the clearing where the temple was. I crawled to the edge of the clearing under a tree. I crawled past the bones of the overseer vines growing between his legs. The others must all be dead. Soon I will be dead too. I lay there under the tree and waited pictures in my head that move and shift and go out and come back mixed with smells and feeling and the taste of white meat and the bitter vine and what I spit up from my stomach and I was Xolotl. I saw that his eyes were dead jungle deer and animals. I knock the staff out of the overseer’s hand with our hands. I throw the adze up between his legs. He screams the sharp little black point stiff in weeds and vines of the clearing laughed pointing pumped it up fire we call it and put out our bodies. For a while longer we did it in our jungle. I didn’t want to stay where the women watched and waited. I raised my eyes and looked at fish traps and snares. There was no more power left in them a shell my stone adze he couldn’t there head against a tree spitting pain pictures to screaming fire. Xolotl throwing myself around and I was kicking rubbing off until night came and it was cold on our eyes. Making bets in the hut at night hard he was smooth I could see his eyes shining finished. A slab of brain to make fire together I kneel naked in front of the legs waiting for Xolotl rubs animal brains in my body on our hands and knees eggs bursting spilling stars animals growling and whining in the door of the hut between the legs I was stiff and I swim into him like a jaguar the head bursting glows in the sky soft spurts inside out on the sand he was spurting frogs and birdcalls there with my head against a tree it was night now and rain fell on my face and I held out my hands and caught enough to drink fish were easy to catch sand bar and I saw deer and little pigs kicking and squealing in the snares many temples and huts and people that go upside down in trees. I see the pot full of nights in the hut.