Ciudad Juárez

Old Yosemite Sam comes to mind when I think of Ciudad Juárez, from now on simply Juarez. The wild, wild west . . . Even wilder than the real wild west was . . . Mr. Dillon would have had a lot of trouble "settling down" Juarez, even with his trust sidekick Chester. I, the num-nutted hick from Arkansas could never have dreamed of such a place. Caliqula would have been shocked. Well, maybe not Caliqula, he might have set it up the way it was, however.

Biggs AFB and my job took a backseat to the goings on in Juarez, Mexico. Biggs was about drudgery work, Juarez was about S-E-X!!! Pure and simple. The border town thrived on sex and everything which went with it. I smoked my first joint there. Didn't like it, it just made me sleepy. Still, I persisted trying because that was the hip thing to do. I never learned to like it though, and found my niche when I popped my very first truckers' Bennie . . . Amphetamines . . .

I realize I was a prime candidate to fall headlong into the super sin city of the world. For that is what Juarez was . . . At least to moi. But nobody put a gun to my head and made me set up residence in that stink-hole of a place, I was more than ready and willing to have at it. Even if I hadn't been raised in a little, dusty south Arkansas town, where for the longest there weren't even any sidewalks to roll up at nighttime, I am sure the delights of the town's wares would still have titillated me.

Maybe not to the extent it did, however. Maybe I wouldn't have let the town and its vices overwhelm me as it did if I had been a bit more cosmopolitan. Other guys from the base partook from Juarez's delights and didn't allow it to become absorbed into their skin. I did though. I never had enough money and that meant borrowing from people who wanted half as much back as you borrowed. These bastards were on-the-job-training-shysters.

By the time the Air Force, in all its undefinable wisdom decided to send me back to whence I'd came . . . Francis E. Warren AFB, Cheyenne, I was doomed to follow the road paved with feel good intentions and physical satisfaction with the notion that I was the only one in the world. Juarez was a stepping stone to that inglorious realization of my life. But let us not forget the presence of Georgia Orean Bolton, which was embedded within my psyche, which caused me to rebuff any woman who wanted to get close. Her face and her words and her meanness came between any sort of a real relationship with a woman I might have wanted. I fought her, however, by marrying much too young to someone who was probably as fucked up about life and what it was about as I was . . . It wouldn't bee too much longer before that would happen.

Tomorrow . . . Leaving Sodom . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742