Crossing
The BorderCrossing
The Border
by JOHN YATES
Wailing...wailing...wailing
Sounds of saxophone
Crashing sounds
Frantic
Desperate
Or seeming so
Cast into the
whirling streets of Nuevo Laredo
No one listens
No one hears
Yet there's small
change in my tin cup
Dinero Americano
Gringo soul
Just another hustle
in bordertown Mexico
That's me
Wailing...wailing...wailing
Don't stop for me,
Gringo
Don't look
Don't hear
It's not music I'm
playing
It's me
It's you, too, and
that's your problem
No?
Just keep on walking,
maybe a little faster
But fuck you
I hear your passing
footsteps
and wail louder
My tin cup's ready
for your blood money
For your guilt
For your disgust
For you to pretend I
don't exist,
an old man leaning
against a wall
wailing on a
saxophone
Can't deal with me,
can you?
So what
I deal with you every day
Every goddamned day
Since forever
Until forever
Now you will deal
with me,
even if for only the
moment
it takes you to
forget me
Put in your dollar
bills, please,
or your quarters, or
your dimes
Piss on your nickels and pennies
Small change won't
let you sleep tonight,
eh Gringo
Don't you see I am
old, I am blind
I am your worst
fucking nightmare come to life
I am you, but for the grace of God
Gracias a Dios.
No?
Por favor, can you
help me
For a dollar, I won't
haunt your sleep
Gracias, Senor
Gracias
We are here, now, in Nuevo Laredo. Mexico. Across the border from Texas. USA. I have paused for a moment to listen to a gray-haired blind man playing a saxophone, tin cup by his side, seeking alms. He sits on a stool, back to the wall, and blows. Blows. Screeching notes, strings of notes, deluges of notes, a disconnected mad cacophony. Handfuls of stones cast into the streets. Coltrane notes, if only this old Mexican felt something for them. But he doesn't. He just blows, hurling notes. Hour after hour, year after year, his sounds pummel out into the street and disappear with the wind.
I remember Saturday mornings in my childhood, shopping with my mother in downtown Pittsburgh. We passed old men sitting on stools on almost every street corner, tapping canes on the cement and jangling their cups. Their eyes, shaded by dark glasses, stared blankly at the sounds of passing footsteps. Some sold soft pretzels. Some played the accordion. Most merely sat and begged.
As a child, I supposed that they could live on the pennies and nickels rattling in their cups. No one set me straight.
Those days are gone in Pittsburgh. The tin cup has been replaced by the welfare check. Disability pensions. A life with more dignity, we are told.
But whose dignity?
Maybe it's our dignity at stake. Rather than look at the blind, the infirm, the crippled, we pay them off to keep out of our sight. Out of sight, out of mind. Please, dear God, don't let ugly details distract us from the business of buying and selling. Hustle the beggars out of sight, and smile, smile, smile.
In Mexico, there are a lot of ugly details. Nasty, ugly details. In-your-face ugly details, and none of them are hidden from sight. I have seen it many times before. In Mexico. In Central America. In Southeast Asia. On American Indian reservations, in Chicago ghettos, or in the hills of Appalachia. The places in America most people drive around, not through. I suppose you could accuse me of being a goddamned bleeding heart. In the year 2004, that accusation carries the same smear as calling someone a fag or a pansy.
My, my, am I not a precious thing.
I plead guilty. My heart bleeds. But I have no answers. Not even any sermons. I wouldn't want the job of trying to save the world. And yet, as the old blind man leans against the wall wailing on his sax, I stop and watch, and listen. Then I walk on, bleeding.
My companions try their best not to stop, watch or listen. They stride briskly along the sidewalk, pretending to ignore the street vendors and hustlers and beggars.
They have a goal. They want to go to a certain bar in La Zona where, they have been told, a woman fucks a donkey onstage. Pay your money, see the show.
As usual, I am just along for the ride. It's my epitaph.
It started yesterday back in Texas.
The four of us are visiting a Texas ranch, just north and east of Big Wells. We had come there from Pennsylvania for the quail hunting. I am a bird dog trainer. Bwana, in other words. The great white hunter. Like Gary Cooper in an old western, the strong, silent type. Greg, Bill and Joe are my customers. I train and handle their dogs, and stroke their egos. They drink beer and whiskey from dawn to midnight, and shoot at the birds. I try to keep them from shooting the dogs or themselves.
It's what I do for a living.
After
a morning of shooting quail, the boys (that's what I'll call them) decided to do
a little pig hunting, just for variety. Texas is chock full of feral hogs,
escapees from homesteads in the last century that simply have gone wild, and
thrived. Pig hunting takes very little finesse and lends itself to Texas-style
approaches: a case of beer, a fast truck and enough rifles to fling a lot of
lead at whatever pops out of the bushes. It's just the thing for the boys, who
are hell-bent not to think too hard about the rules of small town conduct that
bind them quite comfortably back in Pennsylvania.
The pig hunters were being guided by the ranch foreman, 300 pounds of rancid sweat and fat by the name of Bubba. I kid you not. You must think I'm jerking your chain a little. After all, hunting pigs in Texas with a small mountain of festering flesh named Bubba does sound like something a bit too surreal to be true. Surreal though it may be, it's true. I swear it. You, of course, are sniggering. You think I am just another asshole making cheap Texas jokes. I wish. Perhaps you want to forget that the most noticeable thing about Texas is that it is somehow a perfect distillation - reality jacked up to a surreal level - of everything that you know, down deep, is true about the America that spawned it. Just ask the boys. Better yet, watch them in action.
Deer Head With Pedernal Original Painting by Georgia O'Keefe
The pig hunt did not go well. The pigs, herds and herds of them, fled squealing and kicking up clouds of dust in the distance as the hunters emptied their rifles into thin air. A wild pig moves at about the same speed as a galloping horse, but runs hunkered down low to the ground, and accurate snap shooting usually does not mix well with the consumption of large quantities of beer. Bubba, of course, had the solution. It’s his job to have a solution, and he knows his customers well. He knows their minds, and he knows their hearts and souls.
"We'll bait them with a few bags of corn," he said. "In a couple of days, it'll be like shooting ducks in a barrel. Meantime, why don't you boys head down to Mexico tomorrow and have a little fun."
Fun, of course, translates as women.
"Shit," Bubba said, "you can still buy a woman down there for a ten-dollar bill."
At first, the boys weren't quite sure what to make of this idea. It tickled their fancy, no doubt, but presented somewhat untested waters of etiquette. For everyone but Bubba, that is.
"I go down there most every Saturday night and fuck a woman flat," he said. "Some of 'em ain't too bad, neither."
It didn't take me a whole lot of imagination to conjure up one hell of an ugly picture of Bubba grunting and groaning in the throes of a massive porcine lust. It's the kind of thing that, at least briefly, makes me think about single-handedly trying to rescue all of the whores on Earth. As I told you, I'm just a bleeding heart. One step removed from fag and pansy.
Bill looked at Greg. Greg looked at Joe. Joe looked at Bill. I looked down at my feet.
"Some real sweet pussy down there," Bubba said. "If you don't mind dark meat."
Greg chuckled. Bill smiled.
"Maybe that's something to think about," Joe said.
"Yeah," said Bill.
"Why not," said Greg.
It didn't take long for the idea to catch on.
"Only ten bucks?" Joe said.
"Yup," replied Bubba. "A goddamned smorgasbord. All you can sink your dick into for ten bucks."
Joe nodded at Greg. Greg nodded at Bill. All three nodded toward me.
I shrugged.
"Aw come on, boy, have a little fun," Bubba said, slapping me on the back.
In case you haven't figured it out yet, I found myself in a rather socially awkward position. I fell back on my epitaph: "I'm along for the ride."
Cowardly? Perhaps. Yet sermons didn't seem to be such a good idea, or at least an idea that would do much good. Moral indignation? Better in theory than in practice. Saving souls isn't exactly my strong point. Not even my own.
Bubba got down to providing the necessary details, and then I could see an idea sort of slither across his brain as his smile widened. If you can imagine a 30-pound raw pork roast smiling, you can imagine the face of a happy Bubba.
"I've got a better idea," he said. "You boys look like you might need warmed up a bit afore you get your dicks wet. There's a bar down there, a cantina called Los Caballeros, where they got a woman that fucks a donkey up on stage. Donkey's got a dick as big as a baseball bat, and the woman takes every inch of it. Damnedest thing you'd ever want to see."
"Fucks a donkey?" Greg asked. "I'd sure like to see something like that.."
Bill and Joe giggled. I, of course, struggled rather awkwardly with the question of defending the moral high ground. If there was a moral high ground, which is doubtful.
I can almost see you snort in indignation. Of course there is a moral high ground, you say. You are tempted to lecture for hours about a hundred sacred principals about which I would fully agree.
So what?
Fact is, every single day a variety of women fuck a variety of donkeys on a variety of stages in damn near every Mexican bordertown. Tell me, what's their alternative? Tell me, just how else are they going to find something for their children to eat, or keep a roof over their heads? Fact is, hundreds of men watch a woman fucking a donkey on a stage every day. Men like your boss, or your neighbor. Maybe even men just like you.
So, tell me, how would you make it a better world?
That's what I want to know. That's what a hundred million whores want to know. That's what the blind man wailing on his sax, hour after hour, day after day, year after long, long year, wants to know.
So tell me, what the fuck would you do about it?
As for me, I'm along for the ride.
Before you condemn me too loudly, remember this: I was there and you weren't. There's a reason why you wouldn't even think of being there, and it has precious little to do with anyone's moral high ground. Your lips puff out into a pout at the mere mention of getting your hands dirty. You rush to the sink for soap and hot water.
I don't.
Like all mythical journeys, this one started with the proper ceremony.
The boys stripped down and showered, and the sounds of loud country and western music filled the old ranch house. A Shania Twain song came on the air.
Joe cranked up the volume.
"I feel like a woman," he sang, along with Shania.
"Da, da, da da. I feel like a woman. Da, da, da da."
He danced sideways, kicking out his legs like a Las Vegas showgirl.
"I think I'm going crazy. Da, da, da da. Just like a woman."
"Da, da, da da," Bill chimed in.
"I feeeeeel like a woman," Greg harmonized.
The boys linked arms to hips for a beer soaked line dance around the kitchen and living room, legs kicking out to the side. Their bellies jiggled. Their thighs rolled. Their dicks flapped.
"I feel like a woooooooman."
But, methinks, not quite like a woman with a two-foot-long donkey cock rammed into her cunt.
And off we go to Mexico to conquer the heathen with our dollar bills and Yankee charm. It's difficult to be humble when your God - an old guy just like your granddaddy - has blessed you with a fat wallet and a brand spanking new four-wheel-drive pick-up truck, painted white, of course. White: the color of lilies, of purity, of fish gone belly-up.
But first it's time for another poetic interlude from your friendly local bleeding heart fag poet.
I am the loyal guardian
of your sacred borders.
Gladly I do your bidding,
good soldier that I am.
My uniform is starched
and new, my pistol and club
sheathed in well-oiled leather,
just for you, just for you
No more dirty greasers for
America, land of the free,
we've more than our fair share.
So we seal off the borders
with shotguns and billyclubs,
with steel jails and vicious dogs,
and the spics will all just
fade away, fade away.
Into the darkness and across
the fence we send them packing
far beyond your sight,
far from the light of your day.
They're sick, they're tired,
they're weak, they're poor
They're nobody somebody like you
would ever want to know, to know
Our shiny new white truck pulls onto Interstate 35, the expressway that runs from San Antonio to Laredo, on the Border. If you look at our faces, you'd think we were on just another trip to Walmart to buy a pair of hunting boots or khaki trousers. Consumers out to consume, normal as Apple pie. We read the billboards. We comment on passing vehicles. We do not, absolutely do not, talk about a whore getting fucked by a donkey.
"I need to look for a new wallet," Joe said. "I hear they have them pretty cheap in Mexico."
"I want to get a tooled leather belt," Greg says. "With a fancy buckle."
"My wife collects dolls," Joe said. "I ought to be able to find her a real nice one down there."
Normal. That's us..
Down there is Mexico, ninety miles south. I-35 is a solid line of semi trucks, heading to Mexico to pick up cheap goods made by five-dollars-a-day labor to stock the discount store shelves in America. At times, the line of big trucks waiting to cross the border can be several miles long. As we draw closer, a knot of indistinct smog can be seen over Mexico. Gray smoke. Industrial grime. Pollution. The smell of money. The smell of the border - of profits and losses, of wants and needs, of the incessant drive to reduce life to pesos and dollar bills. A fight against starvation for the Mexicans. A temple of raw, undiluted greed for the Americans.
If there is a moral to the picture, it is only that people buy and sell themselves rather cheaply. Bodies for ten dollars. Souls a little cheaper.
The most curious thing about the whole show is that nearly everyone, as if by some sort of silent agreement, pretends that it's all normal. Ordinary. Another day at the shop.
Buy. Sell. Sell. Buy.
Wallets, sex, belts, new radios, stuffed dolls, cheap cigarettes, the labor of children, women and donkeys. Just another Walmart. Everything's for sale. It's all merchandise.
Everybody gets his rocks off.