the fool’s back pocket…

I’m on the fucking case. There was a little scrap of paper with the words Escalido Junction” written in blue ink. I couldn’t remember where I’d heard the term, or what (or maybe whom) it referred to. To be honest, I wasnt really sure it mattered, but I was pretty wasted and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I smile as I write that, because it makes me sound like I’m grounded in some kind of derisive philology putting square boxes on spherical objects. It’s all out of place, foggy like a dream but without the mind numbing quality of sleep. Of course, there’s an element of self-rationalization in the whole thing, a kind of fastidious notice of the various threads that make up this particular tangential tapestry. I want to learn another language so I can tell you where to stick in Swahili.

Cigarette: Did you like it, or love it?

All kinds of bad jokes, said in detective speak, like a Spencer Tracy movie in black and white. Everyhting shadows, moving curtains letting in different amounts of light playing around with my senses, making my pupils dilate then widen in unexpected patterns. I can’t shake the feeling that I was looking for something, but I’ve got my wallet in my back pocket and a pack of smokes in my pocket, so nothing comes to mind but some very general feelings of mild discordia, like approaching disaster. Wait. Wait a second and let the moment pass. Say it. “There’s nothing wrong.”

Why does everything have to mean something? Is my species so uncomfortable with the indeterminate that it has to be eliminated by any means necesary? That seems so fucked up. That’s the place where all the fun comes from. It would be a shame to see certainty take over every last prominade and providence, no matter what the dirty salesman tell us. Sorry, sales-people. Fucking forbid anyone gets left out in this day and age. It’s just that I was wondering what the words “Escalido Junction” meant, and somehow ended up on the subject of disharmony. Fucking riot.

My best guess is thus:

Escalido Junction is the the name of a hooker in Mexico City. In her off hours from the whorehouse, she slings rocks to peasents intent on getting that last fix in before the make a run for the border, and i do not mean Taco Bell. Her connection is a mysterious business man that goes by the name of Aldo and isn’t well known amongst the usual collection of gringos, peasants, migratory workers and prostitutes that hang around this squalid piece of slum.

There was a war between two rival drug gangs, and Aldo ended up supporting the losing side. He was shot in the back of the head and dumped in streets as a warning to rival dealers that didn’t kick up their points to the winning gang. Escalido barely escaped with her life, having to blow her way through a maze filled with various ganglord hangers on, barely making it over the border before dying in childbirth. Her name is now the name of a suburban community built on the exact spot where she fell, a victim of multiple STD’s and a gunshot wound. Also she was stabbed by a jealous rival whose husband she had infected with her various icky ickies. I believe there are plans to rename the local high school in her honor, though the community has not taken up a prospective change in mascots from Raging Indians to the Escalido Junction Memorable Lay. The debate rages on, and somewhere, Escalido’s bastard son roams the countryside, eating raw beef and learning from a pack of feral dogs that took him in as one of their own after his mother died in childbirth.

TO BE CONTINUED….