Veracruz, Mexico. 1974.
As the days wore on, I felt that even the giant roaches that patrolled the dark corridors of the hotel like kindred spirits, hiding furtive and sinister in dark corners, had abandoned me.
One time I woke up sweaty and hungover to bring a bag of dirty clothes that had sat festering in a corner of my room down to wash. Suddenly dozens of them came rushing out, seemingly indignant at my intrusion into their dark clandestine world where they lay nesting in my moldy old dirty socks and underwear.
Yeh, those were the bad times, but if I didn’t quite know it yet, I’d soon find out… Not suddenly and dramatically as with the big bust and tribulation with Paco’s arrest and deportation…
But slowly and subtly in a way that was just as dull and damning and insidious and unavoidable.
And it’s appropriate too. Because it’s always the accumulation of little things that seems to finally get you, never the big, tragic disasters… Just a shitty little series of aimless, desperate, depressing moments that grow together to form one big bad omen that one day stands before you like a pipe wielding gang on a dark street and then you really know you’re finally fucked at last…
And just when I could feel that things had really turned bad, that they couldn’t get much worse, then one dark lonely night I came face to face with the Devil- though of course I didn’t know it at the time. I suppose one never does.
I guess that’s what made it so easy to go with. Ya never see it coming, even though all the signs are there. Hiding darkly like the big black roaches in my laundry bag… Breeding and waiting, furtive and sinister and unseen…
It wasn’t really the Devil though, more like a sudden manifestation of dark old demons that lived in my guts. Did I really think I could ever outrun them?
Her name was Lupe, short for Guadalupe, the virgin patron saint of Mexico. An ironic name perhaps, for a whore. Or not…
Her name was Lupe, short for Guadalupe, the virgin patron saint of Mexico. An ironic name perhaps, for a whore. Or not…
I spotted her across the street as I sat drinking alone in some sordid filthy dive near the port. She was standing in an ancient crumbling doorway at the entrance to a dim alley with a lineup of decrepit looking old whores.
In that strange, spectral, evocative light of the place, the way it enveloped her and her cronies, I could just make out an achingly enticing fire in her crazed obsidian eyes, shining out like a diamond at the bottom of a dark tunnel to hell. She was Indian, dark-skinned with straight long black hair that shined like crow’s wings in a midnight sun. Slight of frame, no more than a child really, all gangly, long limbs and sinew and bone and muscle and firm skin pulled tight over the ancient and beautiful bone structure of her people, her Mayan ancestors. A young colt, strong and full of life, she stood with a tough delinquent slouch that strove poorly to disguise her obvious youth, smoking a furious cigarette and gesturing wildly in animated conversation with a couple of worn out hags by her side.
All her movements were fully charged with a raw animal power, an easy and unstoppable energy. She was all electricity and fire and movement! I gulped down my beer in a futile effort to put out the flames of passion rising up in my gut. And the more I watched from my predatory barstool vulture’s-perch, the more obsessed I quickly became with her.
Her laughter was pure and raw and there was a spontaneous joy of free-spirited madness that called to me in primal relentless unheard shouts. I knew right then that I had to have her alone tonight, to bathe in the nourishing light of her fiery young life force…
No turning back, I knew as I watched her like a hungry jungle cat, all tension and total focus before its prey. But was I the predator or the prey? It didn’t matter, I was already gone as I ordered a hasty shot of strong rum to chase with the last of my beer.
Taking courage now for the inevitable approach, I felt the nasty shit burn my throat then warm my queasy stomach. Adrenalin pumped as I paid the bored looking barman and went back for a piss.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009.
more vivid imagery; thanks for painting the picture so well.
loved lupe’s description! and how excited he is by her, turning into a predator…age-old dance but you do it in a fascinating way.
Get her!