Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll

by Todd Robinson

  “I don’t ever want to see you again, you hear?” Dad held my eyes while the lawyer grunted and looked into his envelope. Asshole.

  “Okay, Dad,” I said, and my heart was in it. I mean, Dad never wanted to see me again. I’d been praying for that most of my life. Also, we both know what prison would be like, better heartbreak than ass-rape.

  So this was a good thing. Let’s just hope ass-fucking isn’t a national sport in Mexico the way I heard it was in jail. Word to the wise—if you’re ever thinking about doing something that could land you in prison? Watch Oz…seriously, ’cause if that shit’s even half true, fuck that. Oz is about the worst concept on earth. It’s a soap opera for dudes…Wait, I’m not finished…mostly about dudes, and heavily involving penetration of either meat or knife variety.

  Either way, no, thanks.

  So I got in the car and did what I was told to do. I drove and never looked back.

  Hey, you know what the hardest part of drawing a big dick is? Not the head itself, that’s easy—it’s the fucking veins. They’re a pain in the ass. You need them to wrap correctly and make it look cylindrical. I fuck up more veins on dicks than anything else. A pussy is east to draw—it’s either a vertical line with a bunch of short strokes for hair, or it’s a vertical oval filled with something. Easy. Give me pussy any day over dick. Even as an artist I’m straight.

  Dammit, I got off track again. Any time you catch me talking about dick instead of telling the story, just remind me. Occupational hazard and all.

  So I drove until I got about halfway there, which took about a week. I would have been quicker, but the Percocet I was popping to combat the anxiety and the homesickness made it hard to drive. In between the puffs of sluggish thought, I remembered something about switching cars, because of something…It came to me almost a day too late that Dad was planning on reporting his car stolen. Fuck. So I switched the car and used the money Dad gave me for the purpose of buying another. But, fucked if I am, I spent a little of that money on good drugs, so the car I could afford was a little shittier than the one Dad probably intended.

  So me and my vintage—fuck you, it’s not just another word for old—VW Bug made it across the border in one piece. The first thing I noticed? Mexico is fucking hot, and ugly, and seriously? The square whores I could do without. Anyhow, I ain’t writing a travelogue or review and if this is whetting your appetite to come here? All I can say is, leave your scruples, sense of personal hygiene in your other pair of pants and get your shots.

  I found my way into a bar, got a beer, and sat down. Now what the fuck was I gonna do?

  “Those’re great veins, mang.”

  “Thanks, mang. And Eduardo? Don’t talk like a stupid Mexican, okay?”

  I was sitting at my desk working on a panel for yet another comic book—Los Vaqueros con Los Chorizos Largos, or something like that. What it amounted to was drawing another big cock in a long line of big cocks. The difference here was that it was the only thing in the panel. I had to pay close attention to what it looked like, so I was shading in the veins.

  Eduardo was a colorist. He was responsible for the lovely flesh tone with purple tints that would soon fully define my cock. The one I was drawing, that is. Eduardo went to a good university here, and while he is a Mexican coloring pictures of dicks, he’s certainly not dumb.

  “Okay, carnal. Damn ese’ pardong thee fock outta me ang sheet.”

  I sighed and went back to shading veins.

  That first day I got here, I was drinking in the bar, which happens to be around the corner. I still go there. Anyhow, I was drinking. After the third beer, I was a little drunk (painkillers—fuck you, I’m not a lightweight) and doodling on the napkin in front of me.

  I’d almost completed the drawing. In this case, a likeness of this pretty Mexican girl I’d seen in the street, walking to the bar with these incredibly bouncy unconfined tits. Unreal, miniskirted ass. Unbelievable. So I was sitting there putting the shading around the tits to give them some erect nipples…well, you know I can’t resist improving on reality. They call it artistic license.

  But a voice woke me up out of the place where I go when I’m drawing. It’s that place where I can see the hands on the clock just spinning by in fast-forward and my insides get quiet and painful. Like I’m bleeding directly onto the page. Doesn’t matter if I’m putting together my portfolio for art school or drawing a picture of a chick with huge knockers, it’s there.

  I looked up and saw this guy sitting next to me, ogling the drawing.

  He started asking me questions about the drawing, asking me if I could always draw shit like this. What, tits? Yeah, I can almost always draw tits. In between the broken bits of language overlap between us, I figured out that his cousin worked at this place where they needed artists to draw shit like this. He called them las historias, told me he was gonna bring his primo by the bar tomorrow. He was gonna give me some trabajo—drawing titties.

  I got up to leave and put some American dinero on the bar in front of me (See? My Spanish is gettin’ better already) and walked out the door. I left the napkin with the naked chick on it on the bar. By the time my conversation with the guy was over, she was sporting a sombrero and leading a burro on a rope. Just your everyday naked vaquera. Big ten-gallon titties and sombrero.

  By la semana proxima I was working in this little office, making pesos.

  The first letter I received was directly after I had this huge argument with my boss. That beaner’s got no sense of humor whatsoever, or imagination. How the fuck’s he expect me not to go crazy without a little variety? He checks over all the finished art boards for the books before they go to the writers, who, incidentally, have gotta be even more bored than me…. I mean, Christ, how many times can you write “devora me otra vez,” really?

  So I happened to draw a few of the girls in my drawings with smaller tits than normal. I just wanted to inject a little variety, a little realism in with everything else. Shit, maybe some of the guys buying these things don’t like enormous titties? Right? Maybe? No. They all like enormous titties…and for some reason every guy in the audience likes to see a huge cock too. Someday someone is going to, how you say, ’splain this to me. Why the fuck does it matter to a bunch of straight, male porn freaks how big the guys’ cocks are?

  So I got hauled into my boss’s office where he spent the better part of a half hour ripping me a new asshole about how he wanted huge tits and huge cocks—no kidding—he actually said the people want huge cocks…Mi gente quiere culo grande y la carne aun mas grande.

  Oye, Jefe? Tu gente, maricon son. Serio…Buncha faggots.

  I was at my desk afterwards, fuming about the exchange and redrawing the art boards so that they could get to the writers and then to the press because they were due today. I was giving every girl a rack so big that you could nickname her cleavage Silicon Valley and every man a schlong large enough that they’s gonna have to register it with the local police department, when this envelope landed on my desk and Eduardo’s words drifted over the divide between the desks like some kind of ugly-voiced whorish siren.

  “Oye, Buddy-Love, there’s some mail for you.”

  I don’t know why he calls me that.

  It was addressed to the name I use down here, for bills, payroll, rent, yadda, etc. What’s that? No, I’m not gonna fucking tell you. Anyway, there was this, I guess, fan letter in there, it was all in Spanish, and there were these awful drawings all over the letter, in the margins and along the top, breaking the text up. It was these stick figures with these huge circles, which I guess were supposed to be tits…somewhere underneath the little lines that were supposed to be arms. All I could think of was Juan at the local bar, telling me when “I find the pendejos who draw all that shit on the bathroom walls, I’m gonna matalo, cut off their huevos and whatnot.”

  Hey, Juan, I think I found their art teacher.

  So the text was a little hard to read, looked like a third grader did it. It was so badly missp
elled and there were these creepy little misshapen hearts all over the place, dotting the Is and replacing some of the Os. Like some kind of perverted, malevolent and prepubescent lesbian-retard wrote me a letter. I checked the front for the return address and saw it was from La Penitenciaria de la Ciudad de Mexico. What the fuck?

  I managed to pass the next several weeks without pissing off El Gusano Grande, my boss. Eduardo and I passed the time talking about art in these oddly hushed tones…we might have been the only actual educated people in the place. Discussing actual art in here was like discussing multiplication tables at a George Bush address.

  While we sat there, I got the next letter. So far, it had been six weeks since the first, and six letters. One a week. Each had gotten weirder. I asked Eduardo to look at them and tell me what this person could possibly be talking about. I found out the following things.

  Thing number won: The letters espoused their love to the recipient. Me. Eww.

  Thing number tu: The sender was obsessed with me—he somehow figured out which comics were mine and read every one.

  Thing number fwee: “My” little porno comics made los noches solidades y tristes—those lonely nights—so much easier to bear.

  Thing number kwatro: La Pencitenciaria de la Ciudad de Mexico was a men’s prison.

  The following week was memorable for three reasons. The first was that my boss was on vacation in Caracas with his wife. I’m sure he had no earthly idea why his wife insisted on hiring a personal valet assistant for the trip. I just hoped Manuel was smarter than the guy who was signing his paychecks. The second reason was that because my boss was gone, I got to fuck off all I wanted. I drew small titties all week. The third reason was that I got another letter that really crossed the line. It’s not that I was ignoring the letters, it’s just that I decided to drop them into a drawer under some unfinished sketches under some crap, and then not think about them at all.

  But when this week’s installment of Male Prison Pen Pals in Love arrived, I got a truly fucked-up little nugget. The mystery and revulsion was delivered in two parts.

  Eduardo was sitting right there when I opened the letter. It was oddly colored, and once more written on paper that looked like it had been torn from a marble notebook. You know, one of those composition books? But the color was off and it smelled funny. Some of the paper was normal looking, but huge portions of it looked like something had been spilled on it. Like the guy who wrote it was eating or drinking something at the time. Eduardo’s theory was that it was tea or beer or something….

  “Carnal, that shit looks like beer,” Eduardo espoused with certainty.

  “How could this possibly be beer? He’s in fucking jail!”

  “Oye, homes, don’t get all fuckin’ aggro with me.”

  “Eduardo, please, cut the shit for five seconds…this is freaking me out.”

  “All right, relax, let me think for a minute. So it’s no beer? Could be tea.”

  The image of a hardened criminal sitting in his cell drinking tea, one pinkie finger extended and writing me love letters, was pretty terrifying.

  “What about coffee?”

  “Too dark.”

  “Soda?”

  “Same thing…and it doesn’t explain the smell.”

  “Shit, I don’t know. Anyway, who fucking cares? He’s in jail.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not comforted by the fact much. “Sure.”

  “Just hope he doesn’t get out. You seem to have one hardcore faggot after you.”

  “What makes you think he’s hardcore?”

  “He’s a fag who writes letters covered in little hearts, maybe drinks tea, and he’s in a Mexican prison—and as long as you keep getting these, it means he’s staying alive. That’s one badass maricon.”

  Point.

  Later that night, I was home after a short visit to the bar and a tequila-pounding session. The nice thing here is that you can buy painkillers over the counter that you would need scrips for in the States, so lucky me, I had alcohol and painkillers.

  I got home and was flipping through some of my drawings and some of the other magazines that the place puts out. Some of the more conventional ones. I started to get my own personal motors running and, as I have been wont to do, since being here and unable to meet women, I rubbed one out. As I was getting up to clean off, I noticed a smell that was really familiar. I walked around for a bit, smelling my hand, trying to figure out where it was familiar from. I mean, not like it’s the first time I’ve done the five-knuckle shuffle, but it was different. Closer somehow. Then I remembered the letter. I went to my bag and got it out. I brought it up to my face and caught a big whiff—way too similar to what I was smelling just moments ago. And vomited all over the letter and the kitchen floor.

  “Eduardo, he fucking came on the letter!”

  “You mean, the letter came, right?”

  I forced a little more patience into my voice before answering. Eduardo was smart, and he was educated but this wasn’t his lengua primera we were speaking, out of respect for my blancito ass, no less.

  “No, he ejaculated all over the letter,” I said, suppressing the gorge rising in my throat.

  “Ewww.”

  “Yeah.”

  We both looked up at a voice that came from the entrance to my cubicle.

  “E’cue me, can I talk to you for a momento?” my boss’s wife said, looking at me.

  Eduardo looked at her, looked at me, pursed his lips, and got the fuck out of there. I toyed with the idea of calling out, “Take me with you.”

  “Que tu hace, Gloria? Gonyo, you’re gonna get me fucking fired.”

  “Que tu hace? Fuck joo, pendejo. Joo said joo was gonna call me.”

  “What’s the matter, Gloria? Get bored with the valet?”

  She pouted and sat down, going for hurt and vulnerable and just succeeding in looking cunty and swollen…. Works for me.

  I’d fucked my boss’s wife last month. Yeah, I know I didn’t mention this earlier. I don’t really remember it too well. A bunch of us went out to the bar after work, and my boss showed up with his wife and driver in tow, trying for a folksy “get to know you” with his employees. It worked like a solar-powered flashlight.

  He started drinking immediately, got a cheer when he bought us all a round. I was thinking of making a statement and not drinking it, but fuck—a free drink’s a free drink. So we all got kinda sloshed, but then he started arguing with his wife and she ended up shrieking, throwing a drink into his face, and bursting into tears. I hear communication is key to a healthy relationship, so maybe that wasn’t such a big deal. But then he stood up, said, “Puta!” nice and loud, and stormed out, stopping long enough to grab his driver by the arm and split. Leaving wifey to find her own way home or not.

  She continued to drink and we all tried to deal with it in our own way. Most everybody else ignored her, but I ended up talking to her—and then taking her home. I think. The next morning I woke on the floor next to the bed, with the pattern of the molding at the base of the wall embossed in my cheek. Further inspection revealed that my face stank and my dick hurt. I popped my first herpes sore a month later.

  Puta.

  By the pointed looks whenever she came by the office and by the way she was looking at me now, I guess I fucked her.

  “You gave me herpes, Gloria.”

  “No. I no ’ave, wha’ chou say, ’erpez.”

  The only woman I’ve ever come across that could make the word herpes sound sexy.

  “Well, maybe not, but you should get checked. Because I have it and you’re the only one I’ve fucked recently.”

  “Chou lie. Chou ’ave beeng fauckinngg deez Tijuana whoooars.”

  “No, I haven’t….” This was bullshit. I didn’t know whore had that many Rs.

  “Chou dong care sheet forrr mee. Bastardo!” she said, and stormed sobbing from my cubicle. By the time she was three feet away, it was a full-on siren wail that didn’t seem to require breathing, since
it never stopped all the way to the elevator. I followed her half of the way. I don’t know what I was thinking, just trying to get her to shut the fuck up before somebody got theories. But when she stormed into the elevators and gave me the finger as the door closed, I gave up and turned to go back to me desk. Only to see my boss staring at me from the open door of his office.

  That afternoon, at five, I packed the stuff from my desk that was mine into a shoulder bag, swept everything else into the trash, and got ready to go. I walked out, passed by Eduardo’s desk, and gave him the finger on the way out. I don’t think he saw me. I decided to hit the bar on the way back, just to take the edge off. I was still flipping out a little from the scene in the office, what with it looking like I had made my boss’s wife cry. Not a great career move. I couldn’t even put that on a résumé should I get fired.

  I sat down at the bar and the bartender nodded to me, the height of familiarity for him, and I ordered a beer and a shot. After that, I started to think maybe things weren’t that bad. After the second round, things started to seem downright okay. I had a good job, never mind that I hated it…tons of people around the world hate their jobs, right? I had a place to live. So did (what seemed like) half the cucarachas in Mexico. But it had a roof, didn’t it? I ordered a third beer and shot, and at the end of that I was the luckiest motherfucker in the world. I was like a cat—nine lives and feet that no matter which way I was thrown stayed beneath me. Everything was great.

  I paid up, tipped well, and left the bar. As I tottered to and fro on the way home, I had the sudden urge to sing, so I did. I warbled the whitest, most off-key version of “Guantanamera” ever to defile the empty uncaring streets of Mexico City. I turned down alley and street, side and back, before I learned that I was lost. You see, I hated the place. So the year that I had spent there, I literally spent walking only to work, the bar, the taqueria, and back. Tacos there suck, by the way.