Driving down and up the same city streets all of our lives. Giving self guided tours of El Paso. Like passing by the Big 8, that’s now a Lowes, located past Socorro, passed Ysleta. And directly next to it is a cardboard apartment complex. Unconnected chains that make these situations complex. Up on the second floor three of us watched family guy on vhs and listened to the Smiths after filling your restroom up with smoke. Stars and beads and I believe there was the standard Misfits poster on one of the walls. You came in looking like a raver kind of girl. Walking quickly towards your room you halfheartedly issued a greeting. Never once really acknowledging us. At the time we were just strangers that would probably never really meet. And that was that and all that was then. That story picks up a couple years down the line.

Construction on a main street. There always seems to be construction on the main streets. My aunt lives down this way if you take a left. But we’re not going that way. We’re headed straight. Over the bridge where underneath I was captured in my favorite photograph.

Tonight I’m drinking absinthe to help alleviate a hangover. So take a right over here. Don’t go straight anymore or we’ll be forced to pass the store where we counted change to buy the Boones we drank in the driveway of a house I used to live in a long time ago.

We took cigarette breaks in the front yard to keep the dogs at bay. I was having fun but just wanted to sleep. There was a box of kittens waiting in my dreams.

Somewhere along the course of events. There they are the corner of the eye glances. Silent conversations felt in the brow. Pulsing in the frontal lobe of the brain. Some homes are just dustier. Slow violence equal to big budget entertainment. Did I tell you of the dream where the fecal bat was trying to fuse itself with the world’s tallest raccoon?

Driving up once again over the bridge. Towards the right is one of a couple of churches that I’ve stepped foot in and lived to tell about. It’s a lot like the church with the metallic Jesus the color of oak, radiating gore inside St. Peter and Paul. He hangs from a wooden cross and we put our asses to sleep in wooden benches. Did you ever really believe in heaven? I’m not sure if I did but I was always terrified of hell. Then the mind latches onto a link. This is hyperspace.

How many water bottles have you seen hurled in the air like battles axes tossed by suicidal Vikings?

How many times have slack artists sat in dive bars, many of which have since gone under, playing their soundtrack on the jukebox, on Lee Trevino, by downtown, off Montana drinking Amberbock from pitchers and chain smoking cigarettes while scribbling such poignant mind vomit such as this::

“Let us reveal our innermost secret. I like to think your mom is hot. Your girlfriend is hot. I love pretty bartendresses/pretty girls who don’t try to make themselves too hot. I’ve been here all day. I’ve been here too long. I’ve been here enough for you. I’ve done enough to know. I know you don’t need me anymore. Anymore than I need anything besides you. I love to think to think that I might still love you. I might still need you. I will always need you in my mind. In my thoughts. In my heart. In my soul. Girl. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t. NEED you anymore. But I will always love you. I will always need you in my mind. In my heart. In my soul. You are the light off the eyes of the prettiest girl in the room…”

Then there were a couple times where esteemed instructors put down things like, “ITS ABOUT INTIMACY” in their living rooms with a glass of expensive wine in one hand and some guy smoking an apple on his fire escape.

Over here you can see them constructing yet another Wal Mart promising commitment to community and ensuring that gentrification is around the corner. Everyone will be forced to shop here and brush off the guilt of knowing that for every low wage job guaranteed there will be a local business sent to the chopping block. Everyone will have no where else to shop. Everyone will always be there, ensuring that the anxiety will never relent. Preparing yourself for the same conversations because that’s life and there is nothing else to talk about that matters. So they say.

“Where are you working at?”

You tell them something you hope comes off as witty because you don’t wish to go into the details about unemployment by choice. Ashamed that your unable to shrug off the fact that management is full of disappointed individuals who wanted more and only got the right to belittle you and constantly remind you that, “in this economy everyone needs a job and if you don’t do it as I tell you to,” regardless of efficiency or common sense, “there are a thousand other people who will gladly do so.” You’ve come to realize that dignity is frowned upon here.

“Are you married? Do you have kids?”

No. No you don’t. And they look at you as if you’re an amputee. You want to tell them it’s one of the best things you’ve never done. But you see that it would do no good. They like the responsibility. It makes them feel grown up. That fairy tale is so appealing. But you know that they hate what it’s done to their sense of self. What it’s done to their figures. The pot they could have smoked. You resent them and they envy you. Or so you like to think. You can envision yourself as an old man

Every so often you wake up with a hangover at someone’s house that you know is trouble but they make a good drinking partner so you ignore your good sense. Breathing hard to suppress the tiny chunks of late night Taco Cabana inching their way up your throat. Drink down 16.9 flowing ounces of water in a single gulp; refill it from the tap and down it again. Its past dawn by a couple of hours and you’re driving, sweating as you recollect the night before. On the freeway you make a promise to yourself that today is the start of a new life and you mean it this time.

And then you meant it.

By J.V.M