Excerpt From New Novel IV: Trump’s America

In the third year of Trump’s presidency, Los Angeles has given up.

The only ones enjoying life were the tourists and wealthy conservatives, but LA is broken. The vibe of the entire city changed from the last time I was there. I didn’t even recognize the city. The laid back easy going attitude and networking love that I was exposed to is replaced with this desperate rage bordering on suicide and murder. It reminded me of back East but worse somehow.

And the long periods of awful weather punctuated that furious melancholy. The heart of the city had been ripped out. A terrible nihilism swept the land and the LA that cared was burned in the fires that eventually ripped through it. Will LA ever be what it used to be? Minimum wage is 15 bucks, so I guess they’re headed in the right direction.

Finding food was easy in LA. I ate once a day, but the meal was hearty and sometimes surprisingly delicious. The food kitchen in Hollywood is a miracle of nature. The volunteers were young kids, some quite attractive. I was so embarrased to take the food, but they made me feel welcome. Sure you had some who looked at me in weird shock. No man. I’m not researching a role. This is homeless me. I am no other me. Right now, I’m writing this on Christmas Day. So that means the soup kitchen is handing out 20 dollar bills. That’s the America I want back.

I remember going to the parking lot of a building around the YMCA once a week. They handed out blue tickets and you waited in line to get a free chicken dinner and a bag of goodies. They brought out young kids to give away the fruit and snacks, and pumped them up before they did. Good. The poor kids deserve to feel good for their charity. Most avoided my eyes, too ashamed to witness failures at life so young. There’s no worse feeling than inadvertently scaring a kid.

I wanted to be part of a program that helped the homeless find a job and housing, but of course I didn’t qualify. My Visa expired when I was twelve. So what the fuck was I supposed to do? Blame it on my parents but they’re dead and gone. I’m an immigrant so that means I ain’t entitled to shit in this country. No government assistance. No food stamps. Nothing.

I live afraid all the time. There’s never been a time I haven’t been afraid. June and I tried to get married, but could never live long enough to save the money that we needed to make that happen without trouble from the government. Now, Trump is president and I wonder if I’ll be able to stay in this country. 28 years here! And I’m still not entitled to shit! Journalism is dead, so I thought you should hear it from the horse’s mouth.

The American Experiment is on it’s last breaths and I’m afraid sometimes that – unlike the 30’s – there’s no coming back. Mother Nature howls in agony as the Fat Cat’s count their stacks. The Law is made to favor the fever of greed. Is there really a way out of this? Only God knows, but he went out for a pack of cigarettes millennia ago. We are on our own in the great unknown…

We bounced around a great deal. One AirBnB was a tent in the back of someone’s house. After the horribly chilly nights, the place was a godsend. We made palta: smashed avocado with a drizzle of olive oil and lemon and a pinch of salt and paired it with toasted baguette. What a bounty! We ate vegetables and fruit. We cooked our famous meat sauce. We even had breakfast and coffee. That was eight months ago. A Chicago born Thai lived there with his wife, who eyed everyone suspiciously and looked like something out of the Addams Family. His name was Ryan, and he was once the star of an Indie film in Chicago by a respectable Director, I forgot who. Now, he taught at a university about acting, though never quite making it himself. He took a liking to the desperate couple who held on, waiting for two things that were never going to happen.

Kyle was also there, the older guy in the tight jeans and leather jacket who got taken to the cleaners in a divorce and now he was trying to run his business while jumping AirBnBs. He restored films with his people, but the divorced bled him dry and his friends were nowhere to be found. Kyle cheated on his wife and when he admitted it, she nailed him. Still, he was a cool dude, and we got along with him just fine. His passion was music and anything about aliens. He had a son who was into EDM. We talked at night about obscure cinema and Aleister Crowley.

A flamboyant French Canadian gay man was also there named Pierre. He was the other long termer. He was a writer too. A lover of horror.

“Horror is my life. Oh my god, I l-love horror.” Pierre sounded like a French Truman Capote on a happy bender. “It taught me not to be a-afraid and cope with – uh – many tragic things. So much tragedy I tell you. Much. My friend lost her son to pills. Uh! Horrible. My other friend in Ontario k-killed himself. Uh!” He moved his hands around in emphasis and hugged himself tightly. “Uh! Sorrow everywhere. I broke up with my boyfriend of seven years. Horrible breakup. Horrible.”

The way he pronounced ‘horrible’ made me almost laugh. He frequently said that word, more often than he thought.

“No!” Pierre continues, as June and I listen. “I h-had to get out. So, I sold my whole life and decided to travel. My dream was to live in Paris, but uh! The cold. It’s unbearable. I hated it.”

We start laughing and he enjoyed the conviviality.

“It was h-horrible. That damn city has the best – the best – public transport, but no heater in the buildings? What the fuck is wrong here?”

We laugh together. He really enjoys our company and talks about how disgusting Montreal is. He then tells us that he is from a really wealthy family. His mother was a model and father some kind of bureaucrat, ambassador maybe. They met at a party and the rest is history. The reality is probably much less glamorous I’m sure, but Pierre has stars in his eyes when he relates the story.

“I’ll tell you guys because I like you: I used to stutter really bad as a child. I h-had bad anxiety all the time. They didn’t even let me answer the phone. I couldn’t answer t-the door when people knocked. It was horrible.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” June said, looking on with empathy.

“Thank you sweet. But I’m much better now. When I lost – what I thought – was the love of my life, can I tell you something?”

Pierre leaned in but I already knew what he was going to say.

“When I lost – or thought I lost – the love of my life, I tried to commit suicide. The ambulance people found me and were able to save me. After that I was in a hospital for psychological treatment. Uh! It was horrible. I did not like it. But I realized I wanted to live. I wanted to see my art on the big screen. I wanted to see the world. So I wrote a screenplay and it won first place in a contest. That was when I decided to come to Los Angeles. A magical city! I love it. Magic everywhere. But it’s so hard. It’s so fucking difficult. And the homeless. Uh! I don’t understand it.”

“It’s a broken system here.” I said. “A lot of Europeans don’t get it either, but their systems are better. You don’t get the benefits you get there: close-to-free college, travel, work exchange. Here, you can work hard your whole life, and still get canned.”

“Canned-?” Pierre looked confused. “What is this?”

“An expression.”

“Ah! Yes, of course. I love American expressions.”

“Canned means fired.” I continued. “Too many mergers and monopolies here, and it’s deep in government too. You can work for a company for decades and not get retirement or anything you’re entitled to. No priviledge whatsoever.”

“That’s h-horrible.”

“This is America.” June says with a sad smirk.

And they laughed the laugh of the damned.

From Riches to Rags: Excerpt From New Novel

There was a secret behind locked doors. It was about money and fame and failure. The ADULTS did a good job hiding it from me most of my young life. Nevertheless, I peered through the cracks at a broke-down palace. My family: the worker bees, nursing it in futility and despair. Cracks are in the walls; it reeked of cat shit and ruined ambitions; everything was imperfect, askew, wrong, out of shape, disproportionate, unbalanced, not where it’s supposed to be. The ADULTS tried to contain this, and keep it from me as much as possible, but I saw through the cracks and the clutter, and the heat and the grime. I saw something alive that should’ve been long dead. What perversion is this? I screamed. The Navarros, the failed Navarros, the worthless and helpless Navarros.

I confess that I grew a chip on my shoulder as my mom drove delivering newspapers. I would lay on the backseat, with my older brother Michael in front, and watch the sky of Miami, Hollywood breeze by. I remember my mom had the radio on, and a new song just recorded called ‘Mi Tierra’ came out by Gloria Estefan. It’s funny now that I read about it. It was recorded a year after Andrew devastated South Florida, and not far from where we were at the time. In a way it was a herald of our eventual and more permanent stay in Miami Beach proper. But then, I had no idea. Our life was chaos. Even at eight years old, I had a hard time keeping track of things. Did we stay with some families? Did we stay in a broken house in Homestead when the hurricane hit? How long have we lived in our car? Didn’t we drive on a long empty road? Was it Florida or Chile? I was plagued by haunting questions as the song played for the tenth time in the night. Palm trees floated by. Mom took a right, then left, then straight… then stop.

The picture would stop on gray storms, blinding blue skies, buildings, power lines, flashing lights, birds, airplanes, loud talking, loud music, loud cars with loud horns, loud styles, attitudes, spending habits, bills, tips, drinks, joints, white lines and rolled up dollar bills, horniness and heat. Drugs and guns and cops and people flow and network and are all connected together. Miami pulses with corruption that sets everyone on edge along with the heat and FPL. Everyone is paid or laid to rest or can’t afford the game. People clump together under a roof with their faces in front of the AC. Jesus and welfare and Sunday church and divorce settlements, and suspects in shootouts. Get rich quick is the name of the game. If you can’t make it on your own, regulate homie. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. In Miami anything goes… past the car window. The song finished, and I wondered what Tierra I thought was santa…?

I rarely slept in the night. I was fascinated by the newspaper life. With my brother sprawled on his side, always sleeping like an angel, I felt the cars hum beneath me, a hum of life that pushed us forever onward in the streets of North Miami. Atlanta Drive, Sheridan Street, Hollywood Ave, Bird Road… my mom drives in the night, filled with worry and newspapers. She is a newspaper boy. It has come to this. She stops, leaves the engine running, opens the door newspaper in hand, and goes to each house. She feels her health already debilitating. Why is it so painful to throw this paper? She has to walk most of the way to throw it properly. The ritual continues, over and over, in reverse and in drive. The tape rewinds and she hops into the car, again to streets, again the radio plays the same music, the same haunting songs, the ones you can’t help to associate anguish and sorrow, even if they are happy, again the sky would move before my eyes, and so did the city. What a city! What madness and cacophony! What miracles and blunders! What a salivating treat you want so bad! Miami is like a seasoned whore on the point of becoming a violent con. She takes but you never see. You are too enchanted with her slender figure, her full fake lips, and tits, and sweat. You are rooted to the spot like a shipwrecked sailor beholding a perfect Siren. She is whatever you want her to be. She hides in disguises and becomes what you want. It could be anything, for it’s not man or woman. It is the sexiest thing on earth, the object for which even a cultured gentleman of the 21st Century would beg for. You want a touch, just one, and you try your hardest to succeed. Some aren’t able, but it’s worse for those that do. You’re left wanting more than that. It wasn’t enough, because it never is. And all the meanwhile, she takes, takes, takes; behind your back; a small piece at a time, always every time. A conviction here, a promise there, a selfless act, a resolution… but it’s always worse when you succeed. What a feeling when you touch Miami, when you fuck Miami, when you snort her up in a ballroom party, smoke her down in Overtown from a crack pipe in bushes outside tenement buildings, roll her up with Phillies in a stairway, feel her up in a club and dance with her the night away before the real fun begins! What oh what a fucking feeling! God, that feels so fucking good! And in the clear light of an endless summer, it hits you. You lost something, you don’t know what. It could be money, a phone, a shirt, a gun, a wallet, a pipe, a pill, an eight ball, anything but what you lost is much more than that. Miami took your soul in the middle of the night. You were played fool. You were cheated.

I don’t know about anyone else, but that was to be my relationship with Miami. I confess I didn’t get laid nearly as enough as you might think, growing up in such a place. Maybe it was my crooked stare, crooked teeth, sad doughy eyes, soup bowl haircut, button nose, scrawny build, small height, and young face which stuck with me until my late teenage years. I always felt like the little kid who interrupted their parents having sex, only it was with kids my age. At eight kids in my school were already getting bulky, hairy and big. At thirteen, some looked like they had kids of their own. I knew that there was no way to compete for the attention of girls. I lusted after them very young, but understood my place as a child. At the time I don’t think I could’ve handled that kind of humiliation if I went too far and acted on my sexual impulses. That’s right. I took notice of Miami long before the other boys while they played flag football and kickball… and I couldn’t stop thinking about her while my mother continued her newspaper trek.

I seem to recall a girlfriend I used to have when I lived in the red house on Atlanta Drive. She always sat with me during recess, and we would kiss each other on the cheeks much to the shock of the rest of the kids in our group of 1st Graders. They considered us mature, and grown up, and brave, and maybe a little crazy too. We were the talk of the playground, and the talk of our class. I don’t remember her name anymore, but I do remember her. She had milky white skin filled with freckles like specs of nutmeg in eggnog. Her hair was the lightest blonde and her eyes big, blue, and cat-like. We used to hold hands and sit on the swings or near the slide and look at each other. I was in seventh nirvana. I was so happy with her. Child relationships are a marvelous thing. We rarely spoke, because we didn’t have to. We were a team, and most importantly: grown up. I was immune to cooties unlike the other boys who teased me mercilessly about my ‘girlfriend’. We loved each other the way adults have to learn to all over again in the later stages of life.

I barely recall what happened to our ‘relationship.’ One day, we had to go back home to the motherland Chile, just like that. And just like that, we found ourselves having to say goodbye. I didn’t understand why we were leaving. Now I know what happened. The contract was up. The television station didn’t renew it, not even for another year. My parents fought constantly in the little red house on Atlanta Drive in its remaining days. I guess the defeat was nigh for them. Dad gambled some more, and tried his luck looking for other places, other opportunities. But the doors began to close, one by one, station to station. No one hired him, no one wanted him. Armand Navarro had become a marked man. And so, we left to what we thought was greener pastures in the homeland.

I never saw the little girl again. All I remember is her weeping at the news and clutching at my shirt. I walked away underneath the arched pathways that lead to the school entrance, tears streaming down my face, still hearing her wails in the background. My mom was by my side, reassuring me. I cried in silence. It was my first experience with death. I knew I would never see her smiling face again. I knew that I would never see that little red house. I knew that the normal and stable life was over… for a long time at least.

The memory completely fades after that. All that is left is a faint impression of airports. I love airports and it’s probably due to that trip. Such a strange comfort that comes over me when I’m at an airport, it’s so exciting to see planes take off and arrive, hearing the tumulus sounds, the buzzing and droning of bags and suitcases with little wheels, and different languages and intercom announcements… to me as a child, I imagine it was my Alexandria. An amalgamation of different wears, styles, speech patterns, accents, nationalities, stories…what a place!

I imagine I didn’t have a bad time at our temporary sojourn in Chile, but for whatever reason I couldn’t remember much about it. I’ve repressed it. Perhaps my mother wept in front of us or exploded in frustration. I don’t blame her for any of it. Doors continued to close. More television stations, more radio stations, more channels, more, more, more…. Chile itself began to close. Mom would hang up and scream in anger at the odds, before trying another number, another failure. Why is this happening?

‘Why the fuck not?’ Answered the voice on the other end, almost innocently.

“Where are our friends our families, our contacts?” Maria demanded. “What’s happening?”

“They can’t help you Maria.” The voice told her. “I’m sorry. They have more pressing matters to deal with. I mean come on! You know people have their own lives right? They can’t support you when you make bad investments. I mean, think about it. Isn’t it your fault? You were irresponsible. Some will try to carry you… back in sunny North Miami, but they’ll regret it. Oh yes they will. You were not meant to be a mother, or stay with Armand. All the signs were there. You should have listened Maria. Now the Navarros are cursed, and so are you. The curse is in your head. It’s too late. You will never see Chile again. And you will never see your children succeed. You know why? Because life is pain…”

The doors continued to close like a sinister domino effect. My mom always heard the same recording in her brain after that. Nothing deterred her from that view, which eventually became reality for her. She was changed forever. Maria felt abandoned more than ever in her life, abandoned by God. I will never know how she managed to juggle us and the dogs the entire time. Somehow, I’m not quite sure how, we managed to hang our heads and leave in defeat.

That was the end of a saga, and the beginning of our long and painful crawl back to below poverty. My parents agreed that the United States will be the best bet, Miami in particular with its strong Caribbean presence. My father assured that it will be a matter of time before he found something. They still had their American Visas, and so did the rest of us. We will work, and save our money. We just need someone to help us, and give us our start, pathetic as it may be. That was the best solution. Or so we thought.

On Turning Thirty-Three

I just turned thirty-three and I’m anxiously waiting for my crucifixion.

Bureaucracy in Heaven is slowing things down. What’s different in Heaven? People have halos and wings but that’s about it. Bureaucracy is a necessary stain in this Universe. The Milky Way is spilling, and the insects are getting hungry. They’re attracted to failure, of those that get close, so close, so damn close, but no cigar! No sir! Then the insects come, galactic insects as big as Lexx, floating in the vacuum of space, attracted to the scent, affecting your mind.

You lie there in spoiled Milk and Honey waiting for the worms, for the Old Ones, for the Lovecraft nightmare to digest you… and you finally look through the cracked looking-glass of a servant.

You were never a God. You were never a blip. You were a servant the whole time and you didn’t even know it.

Know your place. Stasis. Enoch says it isn’t time yet. 33 and it seems like light-years away. Forever stasis. Forever dependent. Control is an Illusion. Control is a psychotic break. Control is a Soul Mate in her tailormade prison. She followed the blueprints to a T. Signed on the dotted line. And Fate sped that result.

People talk but no one engages. Must be a computing error. Brains are similar to computers that way. Tech has made people socially impotent. Very little exchange. The self important ones drone on and on. I find it pathetic. Don’t they know how they look for fuck’s sake? How they sound? How embarrassing they are? Even if they’re doing important things? I hate them so much, yet they surround me, smelling the lies and the stink of failure.

And I serve them. Always serving them.

They smoke me out, give me free drinks, and of course try to teach a thing or two. The horrible realization is I need them in my life. Why? Without them, loneliness would kill me where I stand. Without them I fade away to nothing.

I meet better types but they usually end up ditching me. They are right to leave me behind. I would leave me behind. For the first time in my life, I’m getting used to the notion. Know your place and so I do. I will submerge myself in liquid nitrogen and wait for the tech to catch up; revive my downtrodden brain. Maybe I’ll be better then. Maybe I won’t be what I am now. Maybe I can be something I can respect and love. But how do you love an epic failure? How can you embrace a Supernova? Kiss a Black Hole Sun? You wait until the ice melts. You give up the ghost.

That’s what I have done now. Whatever I am, I will be. And whatever I will be, will be Power. I know my place at this moment but I never lost my power-lust. I have a world to save. But I’ll keep my head down. I’ll serve. I’ll take the hints and passive aggressive words. I’ll rub their backs and wash their feet. Never send a Cat to do a Dog’s job. But that’s the best they got. So I go and do as best I can, which isn’t very good. I am trying god help me. But it isn’t very good.

It’s hard to keep your head down when you’re so exposed though. People are curious about me. Prying eyes. I feel them. I meet them. I alienate them. Pitying eyes. I might be frozen in Amber but I want dignity. Is that too much to ask for? Keep low. Exposed and in the open. Opportunities flower, blossom, then turn to glass and shatter. Expect the unexpected! How do you stay positive? Is being positive another trick the devil pulled?

Evil is attracted to a broken heart. It’s not fair. Are atheists right? Are the nihilists right? Before, I thought it was a way to avoid thinking about the unexplained, about the undiscovered country, about a future with too much progress and too little wisdom to handle it. Even THINKING is filing for divorce.

Let the computers worry about our minds. Let the pills worry about our emotions.

I am the Voyeur Absolute. I live outside the world. A slow-going Pornhub ecological disaster plays and replays. Dissolution is the only solution. But this goddamn EGO! How can I kill my nurturer? Why would I break free from my only freedom?

Had a seizure moment last night. Programming error. My legs gave way underneath me, but all I saw was a still image of the hostel lobby in front of me.

“Dude are you alright?”

I look up and see the young guy at the front desk looking so worried I’m nearly touched. State of confusion. What happened? Why does my body hurt? Mr Robot shit. And it happens again in the bathroom, twice. Second time, I bang my head so hard, half the hostel is at the bathroom door. I had tried taking a piss, and blip! I’m on the floor with a howling pain in my head. My junk was out for the whole world to see. Look at the drunken buffoon at 33 years old. Look at the very personification of failure. I was scared of getting kicked out. But the kindness of strangers is something that I’ve always been able to rely on in the wicked Miami Beach. One silver lightning.

Two picked me up off the floor and took me into the stall. Asked me all the usual talk to the wasted: “ Do you need to puke?” “Are you bleeding?”

The genuine concern swelled my heart. I wanted to be pulverized by the Sirens of Titan. I wanted to be a satellite. Forever stasis. Swallowed by shame and regret. I was an apologizing machine, but they gave love in return. Is there a lesson here?

“You have nothing to be ashamed about bro. It happens to the best of us. We’ve all been there yo,” That’s the hostel manager. Salt of the earth no bullshit homo sapien. Gives as good as he gets. A man of his word. Never a shamer.

“It’s ok man.” That’s the Dominican New Yorker. Another genuine soul; a vegan with the ambition of a meat-eater. Very smart and really into theology. “Nothing to feel bad for.”

Maybe there ARE good people in this world. Have I not been looking hard enough?

Skip to the future. I’m making deals with these men. I’m shaking hands. We’re signing Contracts together. The stasis ceases. But for now, they’re picking me up from the literal floor.

The New Yorker insists he saw me hit my head against the floor with brutal force. I believe him but he doesn’t know how hard my skull is. I’ve fractured it on many occasions. Just a bump remains, to remind me that I have to take care of my brain; that it doesn’t work the way it should; that it’s compromised. To remind myself that age makes it harder to live with epilepsy.

I am not afraid. No doom and gloom. I take things as they come. Easy come, easy go. Go forth into the great unknown, with or without your consent. Better with. I am a breadcrumb of identity in an endless sea of identities, bigger than Andromeda. Everything is alive, more alive than the living, more human than human, more awesome and terrifying than we could ever conceive in our feeble inept 3 dimensional brains. You know that feeling when you see a horror-creature for the first time? A spider? A snake? A jellyfish touching your skin? That’s what I mean. We are constantly being dominated by the unseen knitting hands. Little monsters no bigger than our hands can determine our fate. Do we really have control in this life? Or are we being slowly digested, like Lovecraft believed?

In my case the literal truth is in the facts: A stacked deck. Not even a pair of twos. All I have is my bluff, which is the worst bluff in history. No one buys what I’m selling. No one ever does. Some come close, but when other people come into the mix, they toss my hand away in shame. What’s the use of a vexed hand? I was born with a deformity called poverty, from a deformity called bureaucracy, from tension between two nations that I had nothing to do with. Fate decided my path before I was born; when an ancient black woman stared at the fire Prometheus gave, and saw the face of a curious blinking boy thousands of years in the future, staring back.

Some have the life of choice, everything choice. But I wasn’t in that category. No matter what choice I made, no matter where I went, the weavers of life had different plans. Enoch laughs, arms folded, sitting on a bench of toothache.

But not all is lost. I seem to be upgrading. The level of people surrounding me aren’t all shit anymore. For example, look at the guy coming in to check on me in the bathroom.

That’s Terrell, the nice kid from Trinidad. He stays in my room and shows me all the music that the Caribbean and Indians offer. We laugh at how promiscuous they are. He takes to me easily. He’s repairs air conditioners and freezers, an engineer who never finished school. Tyrell is in pain. I can tell. His eyes are trying not to hate the cruelty of the world and the fate weavers. He is an anomaly in Trinidad. I can tell. His parents were able to provide a better life for him than many of his friends. And the shame is there. I can’t blame anyone. But his father is dead, and his girlfriend and mother want him to stop chasing these silly dreams of being his own businessman, of being his own boss, of providing a better life to his country. He came on a 2 week Visa and found a job in 5 days. I love pumping him up. He was scared of not getting the job. I told him not to be too grateful, to prove his skills and be confident, to play the game without shame. He laughs and laughs with a giddiness only people from the Caribbean have. His one flaw is the flaw many Caribbean people have: worry about gays.

“Emulate the worst motherfuckers at the top, wear a suit, BE a suit, and that’s how you take that power for yourself. Take that power back from those greedy money makers.” I tell him. Words from a bum.

Whether true or not, this gives him confidence, a second wind he was losing when we met.

“I got the job man!” My heart is filled with relief and happiness for him. It’s rare when good people win. You have to celebrate that when it happens. We wax nostalgic about an unwritten future where we are running the world amid clinking glasses aboard planes and yachts. He wants to study to be a pilot but he doesn’t have the money.

“I’ll buy the plane and you can drive us around.”

Tyrell laughs with a grin bigger than Cheshire Cat and fist-pumps me with Caribbean enthusiasm. Days later I seem him hovering over me looking slightly disappointed but I don’t mind. He cares about me a lot. How strange.

“You’re wasting your life with drink man.” His accent pleasantly tickles my ears. His concern is real, not like my fake friends. That’s why it doesn’t piss me off like usual. He cares about me so it isn’t sanctimonious. I try to explain to him that I don’t always drink, that I’m epileptic and I haven’t treated it at all. He believes my words. How strange. What is this feeling? Of people caring about me? Are the times finally a-changing? Bob Dylan’s net worth is 200 million but he’s the voice of the voiceless. More computing errors. Life is a missing file; something deleted and only half recovered. Fate is shaped by sins of another life.

“Why do you drink the way you do? Why do you do this to yourself?”

I want to scream how much I hate myself, my situation, my so-called partner and friends and family. I want to wage war in heaven and carve pentagrams on the foreheads of Michael, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel. Lucifer was right to be so fucking pissed off. And I’m there with him (or am I really him??) filled with rage, storming the Pearly Gates, calling for the spilled blood of the worthless angels. I will tear the bureaucracy down, brick by brick, bit by bit, ripping my hands open and not caring about the pain. Helter Skelter on the face of God, on the atrocities committed in his Name, on the chest of Hernan Cortes, on the Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, on monarchy and country and good morals and bad sense, on the history of the world, on Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, on the Romans that killed the Gnostics, on the scientists that split the atom, on the addiction of opioids and social media and the doctors that write the prescriptions.

Depression: the ultimate pre-existing condition. Sorrow is the links of a never-ending chain that wraps around our throats and hearts, that binds our wrists as we are herded to the New World like cattle. And here I am, pulling with desperation, slamming my blade against the chain as the ocean slams the slave ship, threatening to swallow me up. If I die tonight, my vengeance will bring me back. Spin the cruel wheel of karma! Break it off its hinges!

Tyrell goes back to Trinidad, decides to get the appropriate paperwork to work legally. He has to sell his pickup and refrigerating equipment but doesn’t want to. I wish him well and promise to keep in touch and for the first time I mean it. His road and mine are the same. Fly-by-wire in space. Good luck Tyrell. I’m rooting for you.

“Peace my bredrin.” He texts me when he gets to Trinidad. Shows me a pic of his truck and a video on FB of his house flooded by the unforgiving Tropical weather. Hang in there bro. Jah love.

It’s only appropriate coming back to Miami the second time, that all the people I hang with are foreigners and transients. A surprising number of them are running away from something; unrelenting responsibilities, exes, failed familial relationships, shattered hopes, frustrated sex…

Have I found my tribe?

CONTACT INFO: carvallodan@gmail.com