Roman Showers, Mexican Flowers

The other day, while I trapped at home without a warm wet hole to plunge my throbbing purple headed warrior into and the fridge devoid of any form of fermented hops and barley, the specter of a horrible memory came crashing down my mind's heavily barricaded door. The Ghost from Johnny Past threw me down onto the cigarette stained carpet floor and screeched into my ears the tale of a memory so horrible and ghastly I had only hoped it was forever erased from my mind through years of alcohol abuse and heavy concussions. Sadly, this was not the case, and now as my duty to the faithful readers of this high brow blog, I must prostrate myself upon the alter of embarrassment to tell you all this sordid tale.

I'll take you all back to a number of years ago. The place: Sunny Tijuana, Baja California. The mission: To bang some dirty beaner hookers on the cheap and make it out of Mexico back to the sunny shores of San Diego before the sun rose. I had taken that very same mission quite a number of times in the past few months while I lived under the Socialist thumb of the State of California, so what would make this time any different? On this occasion, my cousin had come to visit on vacation from New York, away from the iron clad rule of his wife and screeching kids, and wanted so desperately to experience Tijuana much in the way I, his little cousin, had been doing for the past year and half. Fine, I said. Be forewarned though, I pleaded, we of the twisted state of mind no longer dwell where normal people wouldn't even dare to dwell. We thrive on filth and depravity, cheap booze and even cheaper women. Your cousin Johnny is no longer the innocent, fresh faced little boy you once knew. Take my hand, and come with us now to the Zona Roja, a twisted and warped adult Disneyland where all your dreams and nightmares come true in one single night.

As many of you may know, Tijuana holds a special place in this cavernous black pit I call a heart. It's like my second home, because no matter where I live, Tijuana still calls to me in the middle of the night. I will most probably be buried in TJ, no doubt found in some piss puddle in a grimy alleyway, stabbed to death and vital organs removed for the black market, both balls and wallet emptied of their contents. Such is my fate, and I have chosen to accept it whole-heartedly. So on the night in question, a group of us all drove down past the border and proceeded to spend the next 6 hours consuming cheap Tecate and watered down Tequila, the bosoms of greasy wetback strippers bouncing merrily in our faces and hands in our laps. Hazy eyed, stinking like all of Mexico's collective waste, and with the Devil on my shoulder leading the way, I took my cousin and my small loyal group of twisted minds through a maze of back alleys toward the vilest, worst little whorehouse in all of Baja California...

...the Hotel Paris.

Oh, don't let the fancy name fool you. The Hotel Paris is a sewer built on the pimpled backs of a thousand venereal disease-ridden beaners, with a penchant for kidnappings and heroin overdoses. My kind of place. When one finally finds the bravery to search out such a place, be prepared to witness all kinds of human atrocity. The street it is located on is a haven for crippled and dying homeless, starving rabid dogs, human waste, and broken streetlights that flicker randomly like something out of Nightmare On Elm Street. We had barely avoided the advances of a footless and scarred up degenerate looking to prey on our innocent American souls, when there at the end of the block, was Satan's Playground. There the women of the night stood, shrouded in inky blackness and cat calling us over to their shadowy, pimply, hunchbacked advances. Even in the dim light, when up close, they were truly a horror to behold. Toothless maws cackled in broken English, faces caked in pancake batter makeup, their dress stained with grime and sweat. My cousin, a much wiser man than all of us, bravely decided against actually going inside the hotel and waited outside, while the rest of us stumbled into the front corridor like lambs to the slaughter.

The doorman, a one eyed granite slab of a Mexican, demanded 20 dollars from each of us, as a short doughy bat faced girl grabbed my arm and dragged me up the stairs, rambling on in Spanglish and stinking like 5 day old dogshit. Before I knew what was happening, she shoved me into a room and locked the door, cackling like a witch woman who had just kidnapped a young virgin from the woods and was preparing to drink her life's blood. Her face was pockmarked with acne scars, her mouth capped with three gold teeth, the rest rotted and worn to the nubbin. Sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do, people, so I took off my pants and hoped for the worst. What I got was just that, and so much more.

She waddled around the room like a penguin on methadone, rummaging through a dresser before pulling out a bottle of what she called Mescal, but from my eyes it look far more insidious. The liquid was a greasy shit brown, with bits of effluvium floating and dancing under the 20 watt bulb like Sea Monkeys, and lying at the bottom of the bottle is what appeared to be one of two things: a greyish green turd or a worm. Either way, I was in for a taste of something horrible. She uncorked the bottle with her one good tooth and cackled again, before taking a Herculean swig and then demanding I imbibe with her. She shoved the bottle into my trembling hands, already stinking like tequila and burnt cocaine, and watched me take a swig. It slid down my throat like liquid Sterno, and tasted even worse, my gag reflex immediately taking over and making me choke on it. My stomach started to churn around the contents of my previous meal, 5 street tacos filled to the brim spicy random meat no doubt freshly killed in the gutter that very week, and the threat of cold sweat started to rise upon my brow. Before I could change my mind, she threw herself onto me like 50 pounds of soggy shit in a 40 pound bag and proceeded to give me a ghastly blowjob reminiscent of a girl with Downs Syndrome going down on another retard. It was all spit and teeth, I tell you, and my stomach was at Defcon 4, vomit very imminent. I desperately tried to distract myself from her ghastly visage, but that proved to be even worse as I looked about the room. The trashcan next to the bed was filled with used condoms and toilet paper, the latter stained with blood and what appeared to be chunks of shit. Horrified, I turned my head towards the pillow, only to discover it was stained yellow and yes indeed, the back of my head was laying in it. Now panicked, I looked over at her again, only to discover a roach crawling across her shoulder and into her hair. But before I could throw her off of me and make a break for it, she did something probably not either of us had expected.
She raised her head suddenly and violently upward, like a breaching whale in the surf, cried out a prayer to the Virgin Mary, and then forcefully threw up all over my chest and cock. Then I threw up. I cried out, "MY FUCKING CHRIST!", and unleashed a torrent of my stomach's contents right back onto her and all over myself as well. The stench was unbearable. She flew off of the bed, covered in my vomit, hers covering me. She screamed out loud bloody murder and then came at me, all claws and teeth, but slipped on a puddle of vomit and crashed into the dresser. Vomit still spilling from my mouth, my head exploded with pain and all I could see was the flashing brilliance of starlight, before realizing she was actually punching me in the head and cursing my family's name. I grabbed her by her pudgy little bat face, shoved her across the vomit covered bed, grabbed my pants and ran out the door, barely avoiding the trash can she threw at my head like a waste covered missile. I was in a daze, my body a machine now, as the stench and horror of being covered in someone's and my own vomit started to take over my mind. I ran down the stairs and leaped over the head of the approaching doorman, now looking at me with a look of murderous Mexican rage, but my leap was spectacular and I cleared the stairs, and bolted out the door, into the night to grab my brother by the shirt and make our escape.

My cousin is no fool, and asked no questions during our mad frantic escape through the maze of alleyways back towards his rented car. Because he knows this lesson well, folks. To paraphrase comedian Dave Attel, when you see a man covered in vomit, running towards you, cock flapping about in the wind, you run WITH that man, because something far worse is just around the corner. Pantless and covered in a Mexican whore's vomit, I swore never again to tell this tale I have just told.

But hey, much like swearing off fast women and cheap booze, some oaths were meant to be broken.

Fuck Tijuana, and fuck the Hotel Paris.