I was rummaging with mortality several nights out of the week downtown near 6th and nothing in order to get away from The Woman back home. We’d have fights over the kids and the kid that wasn’t mine and I’d hit her across the face with poor Astella’s eyes watching, never crying just watching. The tendency to arrive back at the palace in the mornings on such holy Sundays had been increasing as my soul grew further and further from my wife’s and the house rocked back and forth that way. I ran downtown after work almost every night. Dreading the house. I wasn’t scared of that low brow cockeyed Pa of hers anymore. Before I got The Woman knocked up he had made me a promise that if I ever did what was to come, I would get it from him and the whole family. In reality I’d get it from the cousins, even good Vicky too. They would come after me if I did anything to their little girl.
I thought I might go insane soon and on one night that I came home from a bar I walked in on the Woman crying and running her nails along her arms and her standing over Astella who was crouched in the corner of what was left in our bedroom next to a broken lamp. Astella had blood dripping out of her ear and swollen scratch marks on her cheeks and her fingers were busted up too, and she was only 5. I grabbed Astella and didn’t even look at the Woman and managed to kick her in the gut onto the kitchen floor when she tried to grab at me. She pounced at me like a wild cat hungry and angry. It wasn't until that moment that I realized the condition the house was in and how stained the carpet was, evidence of the Woman's habits, ash smudged in making spots a terrible grey, everything from the walls to the floor wreaked of the dregs of The Woman's sorry past and she would often pound with her fists the anger of the weight it held upon her down onto the floor until her hands were sufficiently punished and leaving new designs of a clearer yellow blood. I took Astella to her Grandmothers and made my Ma swear to call the cops if that Woman got anywhere near the house and when I was out of the door I ran. I ran a whole 16 blocks from Hyde down to Stockton, livid still, passing red headed whores and bums that screamed shit like Where you goin, boy? Where you Hiding? What are you running from?
Whores everywhere and crooked faced bums reaching their hands out at me like god damned vultures when i slowed down at Market to walk the streets and ease my pace. They’d say god bless your soul anyhow without even giving’em anything but god didn’t have anything to do with them here. They did it to themselves. And the whores with rouge lips, all they’ve got are these slightly pretty eyes but you can’t tell unless they’re directly underneath the downward moping of the lamp posts anyway on account of all the costume drug store makeup. Looks like they all stepped out of some bizarre erotic horror movie, post rocky horror without the music and all they had was their ripped fishnets and sorry cunts. My woman used to always say that a married girl unfucked is like a corpse whore under the judgment of the Virgin Mary and I figure that these women understood it as well. They called out to me and I told everyone of’em that they made me sick, spat behind me towards their heels, but they went on laughing and shaking the classy off their hips, walking along with the tango of the fog and the shadows of the buildings around them. I went on with my bad breath full of my own taboos and I switched from my right hand a bottle of gin to my left hand to rub my nose to keep it from bleeding, when finally I stumbled into a bar downtown somewhere and I met Caro.
When I walked in I could just tell by the people in the air of their business that this was a common place for people who liked to hide in their wallets and at the bottom of beer bottles and shot glasses, people who confined themselves to these holes in the wall to escape from their own leisure. I came with a heavy head all ready and excuses running through my mind for why things ached the way they whistled. I was obviously fucked and got belligerent with the bartender demanding that he bring me 8 scotch vodkas and him screaming shit like Who are you trying to fuck with, man? Who’s job are you fucking with? And I knew he was about to punch some wiser words into my skull when she sat down. She played with her cleavage sitting towards the mirrors behind the wooden bar looking over her bare shoulders, looking for a son of a bitch precisely like me who had plenty all ready to believe in those red lips. Red lips smacked on that pale face of hers like bubblegum stuck on the pavement. She commanded intoxication from the bartender who let my collar go before she could even say “Bruno, you know what I want, two tails on the house woncha?” and Bruno worked his hands on her drinks faster than he would have punched my nose in. She sat two seats away from me. her curly blonde hair illuminated in the blue red lights behind the bar and Costello was playing, and I hate Costello and perhaps she knew and decided to walk in on this very song for me. She wore a torn up flower in her jew curly hair and soothed off the enlightenment of a fourteen year old. I could smell cigarets battled with strawberry sweet perfume from where I was sitting and her skirt was lowered to an area of her back where I later learned was embedded the image of an anchor ornamented by lotus flowers. She looked around and caught me looking at her.
“What the fuck are you looking at?”
Her lips were crazy.
“I’m sorry.”
I was immediately impaired.
“That isn’t what I asked you, ass hole. You’re stare is making my skin itch and my back hurt, tell me what the fuck you’ve been looking at.”
I thought that she must be from Brooklyn from the way she sang.
“What are you doing here?”
Why I would ask such a thing is beyond
“Are you fucking with me?” She asked.
“Everyone seems to say that.”
And then lug ass started walking towards us.
“Caro, you want me to finish this ass hole?” and she looked at me and gave me a half smile and I sat up a little ready to run and she said “No I want him to tell me what the fuck he’s looking at.” And then Bruno mumbles something like Jesus, this guy? Under his breath.
“So what about it?”
I choked a little and just began to say without realizing it “You hair…” what about her hair? “Your hair in this light reminds me of this movie made back in the 70’s that this real cheap bastard made about an American girl ballerina who moves to Germany to live in this mansion that’s haunted, you see, and there’s a scene where the lights switch from red to orange to blue and her hair is all over the scene, just all over the place’ I waved my hand around my head’ changing along with the lights and the director killed her off so that she all ready looked dead before she ever died.” She just stared at me. One brow up like she was confused or disgusted and she finished her last shot, accidentally spitting a little bit from her lips and said “Are you Italian?”
“What? Me?”
“You’re one real fucking Sajak aren’t you. I’m looking right into YOUR eyes, honey, I’m a Russian Mexican. I don’t kid. Are you or aren’t you?”
“Sorry-“
“Quit apologizing! I hate it.”
“Sor… My Father’s Italian and my mom’s a spic. My wife though she’s full blood Italian so my kids, my daughter’s got more Italy in her than I do.”
She started laughing and she snorted a bit and I started giggling and soon we were both laughing, howling, so madly that the whole bar was telling us to shut up but to this day I can’t imagine what was so funny. And Costello, that fucking song played on repeat the whole time.
She took me to her pad which was a residential SRO off of Howard and something called the Philips Hotel. Rats and roaches and white rooms with red carpets and fuck stains all over but I didn’t mind, Caro said she’d be here for the next couple weeks waiting for her pimp. “He’s real lousy,” she confessed after a couple nights. “Dan’s from some shit town called Felton. It’s a whiles a way south of Half Moon Bay and there are all these cute ranches there with horses and tire swings and hikes to hidden swimming holes. He stayed there for some time recently in his idiot friend Gary’s back house that they turned into a lab but it blew up in the middle of the night when his friend and Gary’s girlfriend were fucking on it and Dan was on the couch passed out. His girlfriend smoked cigarettes while she fucked and Dan swears that the girl was in the middle of her climax when she dropped her smoke into some vat of solution and the whole place went ablaze and Dan got up off the couch and jumped out of the window when the whole place blew up. Ha! The bitch deserved it. Dan’s colorblind now and always mistake’s me for one of our black girls. But he likes me most. I know it.”
Caro, Caro. Her name meant expensive in Spanish. Caro was my girl. I could count on her when I got lonely at night and The Woman was at home eating maggots out of her handbags and shoes and designer watches and all that other couture bullshit that women are obsessed with. Spending my bread every which way. But not Caro. It didn’t take me more than two nights to become addicted to Caro. Her lips could cause earthquakes and divorce. She had the softest skin I have ever put my body on out of any woman, which always baffled me because her body was heavily used and always medicated. And she didn’t complain much especially when I brought her food and booze and a whole mess of drugs. Besides she was a true broad, she truly loved sucking dick. Women like that are priceless, at least on this side of the city. We had an agreement that was more special than any kind of relationship that my ma taught me to have as a kid. I would come and tell her all the pretty things I could because she deserved it, that face of hers.
“Benny boy, you’ve got a way with your words you know?”
“Yes, darling”, kissing of thigh.
“You make me feel like I did when I was back in junior high and my figure was better.” Sniffing of nose, “You know, you make me think that I can be something with you Benny boy, like we gotta get out of here.”
“Caro,”
“Yeah, Benny boy? Don’t stop what your doin’ keep kissin’.”
“We should get out of here.”
She raised up a little.
“How about we go to L.A.? I’ve got a friend down there who’d be mad about you. “
“Really, Benny, you really mean that!”
“Yeah sure! He’s got a golden hook from Nicaragua and a pad right near Venice. We can make some moves. We can dance and go to the movies and go downtown and drink around all over. they’ve got this smog there like no other, I swear!”
“Benny, I don’t know, Dan would go nuts trying to find me. Aw, hell Benny boy let’s go!”
“Caro, you’ve got a way that makes me feel old and new at the same time, baby.”
I hadn’t called my wife baby in several months.
“Well that’s good, good for a little girl who only like older men.”
“What do you mean Baby?” and I kept eating her when she finally says, “Well you know it’s hard to get older men to like you when you’re 16 and- OW FUCK Benny why’d you bite me?” She lifted the covers and looked down at me. I was stunned.
“What’s the matter with you!” and she put the covers back down. I stared right into her criminal curse.
“I wanna get a white dress in LA and be in a room covered in white, Ben. I wanna get a make up pen and put a beauty mark on me and I’ll be a real Monroe.”
I began to get up out of the bed slowly as Caro kept dreaming. “And I wanna go to the Boulevards and buy one pair of shoes, just one with my own money. I’m sure I could hassle the money out of someone and.. where you goin?”
“I’m gunna walk out and get a pack of smokes darling, get us more booze you stay here okay?”
“Well I’ll just go with ya, I want a fruit drink anyway!”
“No, Marla. No. You stay here. Stay put. Put some make up on for when I get back or something, okay, I’ll get you your drink.”
Marla was the first woman I had an affair with.
“Well all right.”
The Girl hadn’t even caught it.
I stepped out of the hall and into the white red and I could hear porn blaring from the up stares and rats scratching at the walls and a broken muffled radio station and a man hurling painfully the bathroom share and at the end of the hall there was an open door and I looked in and I saw a wolf dog sitting straight up on a bed with floral bedding watching the T.V. and the owner was an older Hispanic woman who looked over at me just standing there with no immediate direction and as I began to walk away towards the steps that led out to 9th street I heard her whisper “Que Dios te bendigue.” from her rocking chair at the foot of the bed. I walked out the door and right onto Howard and I thought that I may vomit right there with the lights around me flickering and on me glared the neon sign from the tranny club below the Hotel and the blue Chevron lights facross the street and the traffic lights above me, they glowed a nauseating mist from the wet streets and I could see Caro’s room light from below. I started my car and drove towards the 101 highway.
*********
I have a reckless time ahead of me. The late hours have reached my solitude. In my car, although I am fucked, I view 101 with a clear eye. This whole area surrounds such a sacred body of water, sacred and polluted, with windsurfing love birds constantly on its ground, animals in cars hugging the roadsides, becoming statistics, risking the danger. Tourists gawk at this land with cheap intentions from travel books and media coverage. Not many people truly understand what it is to grow up in a California land. And that is what my home truly is. California Land. Like a theme park. Compared to the rest of this world California is top notch, grade A civilians with hungry hearts for their own dreams, and enough hard ons to populate a disadvantage being that everything comes so easy to us. Everything at hand. If you want to live a night of luxury, lust, or loathing you merely need to drive a mile or so into San Francisco and you can find anything you want at any given time within a quarter mile radius. Oh the selfishness, even the bums. At least they feed from grade A.
Caro had curves just like California. Rolling and gleaming like fresh fruit. So bodacious and intimidating, you could almost smell the hills on her skin. She had roads in her blood that needed tracing, I thought of her shoulders with I headed south on 101 from San Luis Obispo where I stocked up on supplies. I was going in through every turn and wind about with such speed so I could feel the force of nature pulling at my insides. Grazing California's hills I almost feel like I am violating the land, along with her mind. What kind of scum was I to deserve this life? Caro was fresh produce here from an exotic mother from south of this border; obviously her roots drew history somewhere in this plane's past. She told me she loved to dance; I Should’ve brought her to Los Angeles with me to visit the nightlife. I had to forget about her eventually, which also stood for the city. A foolish city, that Los Angeles, I could never fall in love in a city who can't view its own mountains.
The view from the top Los Angeles Mountains is almost dream like, even with its popularity for pollution. There is a sheet of smog that has a giant hypocrisy. It is a fantastic view from the Eastern Mountains looking west onto the pacific. The smog creates a blanket that makes the streets and palm trees and fabulous buildings look as if they are swaying to a song that can't be ignored, eternal and eerie when looking as a foreigner. It looks heavenly with the lazy skies, the sulking July skies that are so fresh you can almost inhale it into your lungs. So that's what I do. I inhale a cigaret and breathe it back in even when I have stepped on it on Sunset Boulevard. So many damn billboards and sirens and all for the crazy dreamers alike. The only thing I can truly appreciate is the fact that no one comes to LA without a cause, even the lost and the lonely for they have come to be lost and alone.
I am glad to be back in the bay area. Truth hits a little harder here without the glam of having Hollywood's glory so accessible. The air is pure and so are its people. Maybe not so much here at home, where I live in Pacific Heights, but if you look with eyes of a native and you find exactly the right nook and people, you get the feeling of a champion, like you are forever right exactly where you are, so western, so modern, it barely hits me until the morning after I arrive back from LA to get The Girl. It is very easy to get lost in its superiority, which is a symptom around here. People love themselves. Their friends, their own lives. So many scandals, so many love stories. Their nice cars and beautiful people and beautiful opportunities. and look! At all the pretty houses! And that bay, and its view. And the gates with gold, and the front row seat to one of the best god damned sunsets in the all of this beautiful world. And to think that I am a bored citizen. Oh the day, and all its glory! Dear god, do we ever run out of luck in California?
-Bianca Gonzalez
2006 first draft, last paragraph
2007 second draft, story building
2009 first complete draft
posted 2012
back in editing currently 2013
back in editing currently 2013