Tijuana. The name itself tastes like stale beer and regret. You want a hot dog down there? Oh, they got ‘em. Side of the street, some vendor who probably slept on his cart. Wonder Bread buns, steamed soft and pale on a grill that is caked with sevearl layers of forgotten meals. The hotdogs themselves, wrapped tight in bacon, sizzling over those little braziers, the grease adding its own special flavor, cooking till the bacon’s crisp and the dog’s practically screaming to get out of its skin. Roasted jalapeños on the side, naturally.
The master creator of this goodniess, his hands slick with the rhythm of pesos and grime from the last dozen customers, no gloves in sight, he’d grab that steamed bun. Squeeze in some red chili sauce that looked like murder, a smear of something green he called relish, maybe some chopped onions if you were lucky. I always went for the extra chopped jalapeños, burn away the sins. He takes your crumpled dollar, with his hand extended showing you his hand as dirty as the sidewalk under your feet, and hands over this… this masterpiece of street filth. And goddamn, it looked divine. 6:30 in the morning, the city already stinking like an ashtray, and me, sucking down a Pacifico I’d been nursing for two hours, needing that greasy bastard in my gut like a drowning man needs air. Stray dogs in packs now sniffing around, already reminiscing about their own nighttime scores, just like us.
Back then, active Navy, Tijuana kept us on a tight leash, or tried to. Military curfew was the law of that particular jungle: be off the streets from six at night till six in the morning. Didn’t matter we were out of uniform, looking like any other young suckers on the prowl; if you tried to drag your ass across that border at the wrong hour, you were government property, and they’d have you by the short hairs. Your ass was grass, plain and simple.
So, what did we do? Being young, dumb, and loaded with that particular brand of stupid courage that comes with a shaved head and too much time on your hands, we found all the motivation we needed to spit in the face of sunrise. A few lines of cheap crystal, enough to keep a dead man dancing for a goddamn week, and we were off. That chemical fire let us pound the floor in some smoke-filled dive, music blasting like a shotgun to the eardrums, until the first gray fingers of dawn clawed at the sky.
Then came the real performance: trying to walk a reasonably straight line back to the U.S. of A., pretending we were just a couple of choirboys out for an early stroll, not a pack of wired sailors in rumpled civvies, stinking of stale booze, unable to pass a drug test, and the kind of desperation that clings.
The girls, the ones with any sense, they were mostly ghosts by 4 AM. They didn’t have our chains. So, us military heroes, we’d linger, the dregs, for another two hours, squeezing the last drops of booze from the weekend, trying to forget we had to play Navy Boys again in a few hours. The bars, the strip joints, the greasy spoons the fed us – they all shut down around six, synchronized like a cheap watch. And those Tijuana hot dogs, a dollar a piece, they were waiting. That grimy hand stuffing another dollar in his pocket – a precious moment, a perfect little snapshot of the crazy life I lived, so leaning to the edge looking down sometime.
From the age of seventeen to twenty-one, that was my Tijuana sentence. Pretty much every Friday, every Saturday. Same damn ritual, over and over. And for a while, it felt like good times. Called myself Scott Lyons, Everyone down there seemed to hate the military. The kids, the college girls from north of the border, they all had a chip on their shoulder about us military losers, and I cant blame the. So I created, Scott Ltons from San Diego State, studying to be a mechanical engineer – that was my cover. The women, most of ‘em weren’t regulars. A new crop every weekend, fresh faces to practice your lies on.
Once in a while, you’d get yourself into a jam. The girl you were all over last weekend spots you on the dance floor, grinding on some new piece of ass. She’d just stand there, middle of the strobe lights and smoke, burning holes in you with her eyes. “Really, Scott? After everything last Saturday? You’re with HER? I came here to see YOU, you sonofabitch! Why are you such an asshole, Scott?” Yeah, good times.
Yeah, I owned those Tijuana dives, or at least I told myself I did. Strutted around like a king in my own personal kingdom of shit and stale beer. Kept my powder dry, most nights. Didn’t spill my time or my seed just anywhere, not usually.
But that game changed. Especially with the younger ones, the so-called “fresh” ones. You’d give them their first real taste of a man out in some piss-stinking parking lot – this stranger, “Scott” – and next thing, they’re a goddamn waterfall. Bawling their eyes out, snot running, needing a priest or a shrink to patch up the terrible tragedy of a broken hymen. Christ, the waterworks, the whimpering. Too much goddamn drama for a boy just looking for a quick tumble and a quiet drink. Wore you down to the bone.
So, you got wise. Started sifting through what felt like the leftovers, the ones already broken in, the “litter” some might call it. Started hunting out the “older,” “mature” ones – hell, maybe all of twenty, twenty-one. The ones who’d already been dragged through the town’s meat grinder a few times. They knew the score. Less tears, more transaction. A lot less goddamn noise.
I’d spend time with the guys, cruise the dance floor, scope out the scene. See who looked easy, who looked like she’d make you work for it and then probably give you nothing but a headache. Back to the bar, another drink, another lie. Do that for an hour, maybe two. Then some song would hit, usually something sappy like George Michael’s “One More Try,” and that was my cue. Some switch would flip. I’d make a beeline for the one I’d already picked out, extend a hand, drag her to the dance floor, and that was that. Rest of the night, she was mine. Easy. Too damn easy. After a while, it got boring, had no goddamn value to it. But then, maybe that was the point. Kill the value, kill the feeling.
Being young back then, Christ, it was like a license for any damn insanity you could dream up, a daily pass to the freak show. Connections got made in piss-stinking bathroom stalls – quick, sweaty arrangements, the kind that usually ended badly or just faded into the general grime.
I remember once, finding myself butt-naked behind some beat-up delivery truck, going at it with some girl while some free range scrawny chicken, just pecking around our bare goddamn feet, clucking away, probably wondering what all the grunting was about. The universe has a sick sense of humor.
Most of the time, though, it was the dark spots in parking lots. We’d turn some poor bastard’s car into a makeshift temple of lust, grinding away on the hood or in the backseat if we found something unlocked, probably adding a few new dents to his collection. The rhythm of ruin.
Sure, in teh act of love making, there’d be barking dogs sometimes. Maybe a few onlookers, shadows pointing from across the street, wide eyes in the dark staring at my bare ass. Me? I’d just grin, maybe give ‘em a little wave, and keep right on with the business at hand, not missing a goddamn stroke. The show must go on, especially if it’s a good and dirty one.
No, not my proudest moments, if you’re keeping score with God or or todays political correctness. But that was a different time, a different gutter. Before they started handing out medals for being a Beta Boy and put a choke chain on every Alpha Man with hair on his chest. Back then, a man was a man, and if he was a bastard, well, at least he was an honest bastard about it.
This was the hangover from the sixties and seventies, or maybe just the same old human circus with a different soundtrack. They told you sex was love, sex was freedom. What it really was, was power. Just another rung on the ladder in a society that measured your worth by the bulge in your wallet and the number of notches on the bedpost. That was the American Dream they dangled in front of us, wasn’t it? A greasy, grunting climb to nowhere special.
But an adventure at that age? Yeah, you could call it that. A dirty, rotten, sometimes beautiful, mostly miserable goddamn adventure. The only kind that felt real enough to leave a scar.
Yeah, and the real frosting on that particular shit-cake? Protection. Condoms. Never bothered with the damn things. Horrible little bastard I was back then, a real public health menace with a charming grin.
Yeah, sometimes, when the whiskey’s flowing just right, when it’s burned through the bullshit and hit that raw nerve in the brain, I feel it. Not a real laugh, more like a… a dark little tremor starting in my gut. A private joke with my own rotten core. A dry, nasty little rattle in the back of my throat, like old bones shaking.
The mind, it wanders back, you know? Thirty-five goddamn years. Some slip of a girl, seventeen maybe, all big eyes and cheap perfume, down in TJ. After a night of too much tequila, sweaty dancing in some dive, and me whispering sweet nothings and practiced lies into her ear before we ended up grappling in some piss-stinking parking lot behind a busted-down cantina.
And the real kicker, the thought of her, nine long months later. Sucking down ice ships and breathing as she pushes the littel head out, and trying to spell that damn name she remebers, across to some bored clerk. “S-C-O-T-T L-Y-O-N-S.” Her trying to spell it out, getting it stamped onto a birth certificate. Another little bastard with my borrowed name, a genuine Tijuana souvenir. Christ who thinks like this?.
You gotta wonder, don’t you? Some poor bastard, a full-grown 35-year-old man now, walking around TJ or maybe even north of the border, going through that whole angsty “who the hell am I?” phase. Contemplating his navel, trying to piece together the legend of his mythical father, this “Scott Lyons” character, the supposed engineering whiz. I can see him now, hunched over some flickering computer screen in a dusty internet cafe, scrolling through grainy San Diego State yearbooks online, jabbing a hopeful, nicotine-stained finger at some random schmuck’s photo. “Is that him? The professor? The one who knocked up Mama and vanished like a fart in the wind? Daddy? Daaaaddddeeee?”
What a wild goddamn legacy that would be, eh? Makes me laugh. Then I just hear that booming voice in my head, like some sleazy daytime TV host, confetti falling: “Scott Lyons… when it comes to little Pedro or Consuela… you are NOT the father!” Giggle, fucking giggle. Yeah, the whole rotten business is a laugh riot, if you’ve got a dark enough sense of humor.
Yeah, maybe there’s a splash of red in the toilet bowl these days, a little souvenir from all that hard living. The body, it’s a damn good bookkeeper, always keeps score, every last sin tallied up in your guts and bones. I’m sure it’ll cash my ticket in the end; the house always wins, doesn’t it?
But sitting here now, sifting through the ashes of those years, a man could almost crack a smile. It’s still kind of funny, you know? Funny in that rotten, kicked-in-the-teeth sort of way. The whole damn circus. Yeah, what a show.
