Rio De janeiro, 1973.

At once I was at home here, somehow and without knowing why or even wanting to stop and contemplate the strange feeling I just knew that there was an inner sense of peace and belonging in my step that strange, quasi-mystical culture shock that I’d felt before, first stepping on that Mexican train and then my first impressions on arriving in Veracruz but somehow more profound and permanent and without an apparent motive. I’d traveled by foot, bus, thumb, boat, train, ship and truck across the wild and savage forgotten backlands of the Americas over years of hunger and struggle, violence and brotherhood, loneliness, despair and personal strife and triumph to get this far and I felt quite qualified to fit in here as well as anywhere I’d ever been before, but there was something else, something ephemeral in the air that led me on past decaying colonial buildings and coughing groups of shirtless bastard sons of decadent history and tradition that bid me a fair welcome that stoked a sudden and dreamlike sense of wellbeing that transcended all the sordid mundane details of the stark reailty of my present situation; alone and largely unfamiliar with local language, culture and idiosyncrasies, an eternal stranger in another strange land, wandering unknown streets without destination, two steps away from being homeless and penniless. Well fuck it. The words of Antonio Pedro resounded in my ear “Here’s to destiny and fuck the whole miserable world”. Right on time, I thought, smiling like an idiot. Who needs a destination when one has a destiny? “Vagabundo corazon- Sem destino- Fuck the world.” The pieces were falling into place in my mind, like lyrics to an old song sung by a madman somewhere deep inside of me and I liked it.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009

Rio De Janeiro, 1973

Not knowing or really caring where I was, or having the slightest idea where to go, I simply chose a direction and started walking, instinctively choosing the shady side of the street, slowing down briefly here and there to glance in a shop window. One place in particular that caught my attention was a store whose shelves displayed a baffling variety of strange and colorful effigies, statues of voodoo deities, devils, saints, mermaids, hags and harpies, skeletons and serpent-headed mytheological beings of the netherworld. From the ceiling hung chains, pendants and rows and rows of colorful beads, shells and other strange and exotic tributes and offerings to the bafflling complex Afro-Brazilian spirit world which obviously dominated even the most mundane aspects of daily life in this misleadingly easygoing place that seemed somehow more inviting and enigmatic with every step I took.

I walked past street vendors, hawkers and bars while huge blue macaws stood sentry on wooden perches at the doorway clutching tropical fruits in black talons. Shirtless men argue amicably over football score blaring from transistor radios they hold jealously in one hand, small water glasses of stale looking beer or rum in the other. There was something homey, warm and welcoming about the whole atmosphere of the place and I glided along in an easy rum dulled lethargy. The sights, smells and rhythms of the place and the people began to subtly envelop me in euphoric warmth.

Veracruz, Mexico. 1974.

Her mom had basically told her to bring home the bacon or not come home at all. And for a while she didn’t. She ran the streets and did what she wanted in a spell of adolescent rebellion, turning tricks for food and shelter and spending the rest on drugs, mostly pot and pills and cocaine, those being her favorites, and not bringing home the bacon.
Finally her mother tracked her down and convinced her to come back to the fold, mostly on account of her having three younger brothers to whom she’d always been a surrogate mother- as young as she was- since her mother was nothing but a drunken old pig of a useless bastard’s whore who never did anything good for any of them.
As if to underscore the point she suddenly hailed a scruffy little Beatle-headed Indian street urchin over. He was five or six with wise old man’s eyes that had a common flash of life force that told me immediately he was one of the brothers.
I’d seen the kid around the bars a lot too. Now I remembered I’d even given him a few pesos from time to time when he’d come over and sit at my table, playing with the napkins or whatever.
She talked to him like a mother might and told him to go get his little brother. With a playful pat on the ass she sent him across the plaza and soon he reappeared with a jet black haired Indian doll of a toddler in tow. She took him up in her arms and playfully cooed and coddled him and it was obvious from the love and tenderness she displayed why she hadn’t been able to stay away for all she despised her mother.
The way she treated those kids with strong and tough playful spontaneous affection and love was a work of art. A beautiful thing and tragic at the same time. Because I knew that for all her sweet and tender joyous force of character, the fact was she was a drug addled crazy little whore now. And I knew that she too would soon enough end up just like her own old haggish washed up whore of a mother, hovering in the shadows of a piss-reeking whorehouse alley like a fat, bloated old spider. Shit…
She told me as much, perhaps without meaning to when she told me she never wanted to have any kids of her own because she wouldn’t want them to have the life she and her brothers had. Which sadly foretold exactly what would happen to us all soon enough.
She knew it too and by talking about it that way it was as if she strived to exorcise the inevitable. Demons. Demons all around us as we sat there talking and drinking.
Then suddenly they almost seemed to materialize, as the winds began to pick up and the palm trees swayed to the south as if bowing to a harsher northern master. A storm was rolling in off the gulf.
You could hear cups and beer cans and trash blowing away down the street.
Her little brothers scurried off to find shelter from the coming tropical deluge as little Lupe whistled loudly for the bill.
It was time for us to go.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2009.

Veracruz, Mexico. 1974.

She didn’t ask me anything about me. None of the usual shit, where did I come from, where was I going. Why, what, where, when, who, all that shit. She didn’t care, I liked that.
Maybe it was because I was just another trick. I just liked that she talked freely and openly with me and told me of herself, her life, took me into the world of HER. Shit, any fucking world that I was welcome to was always better than the one that I came from….
I wondered if she felt that way too, if anyone else on earth really did but me.
Anyway, for her, who I was, where I came from and why I was sitting there now was all irrelivant and unimportant… and that was just fucking fine by me.
What fully mattered was this moment and the strange bond that attracted and repulsed me at the same time.
As she chattered in my ear, of course her story was a horror story of sorts… Like most people’s stories. But the way she told it, with that little lustful lively flashing madness and staccato little rhythmic voice, it sounded like a fairy tale. And I guessed it was a little of both. Like most people’s…
We were both old and jaded and young and innocent enough to see it that way too… and maybe she knew that I knew that. And maybe it gave her the freedom to just spill it… Or maybe I was just another anonymous ear like so many others coming and going in the ancient port. Coming and going before we were born and coming and going long after we’d be long gone, dead and buried…
She had that ancient, timeless quality of the port. And maybe for that reason more than any other she probably was just open and forthright and natural that way and it didn’t matter who was listening…
She probably didn’t fucking care, God bless her..
That’s what I liked. And I didn’t care that she didn’t care. Did she know that? Did she care that I didn’t care that she didn’t care?
I didn’t care, and maybe that made it all the better for us both.
She’d been around those bars all her life, she told me, from the time she was a baby in her mother’s drunken shadow. She’d grown up in these streets, these bars, they’d been her home and her school and her family, all that…
Her mother’d been a street vender and a hooker and had brought her up to be the same. Selling chiclettes and trinkets and flowers from table to table… and then one day when she was deemed old enough, her mom had turned her out to a traveling Mariachi who was flush and eager to bust a tropical cherry. From then on it had been into the whoring life for Lupe…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2009.

Veracuz, Mexico. 1974.

A vague recollection suddenly crystalized and then was gone. Like a postage stamp image flash in a vast photo album of memories and fragmented particles of hazy images. It must’ve been months ago, seemed like years now. Back when I was relatively newly arrived in the port.
I remembered sitting at one of the outdoor bars around the portales with a bunch of sailors or maybe Paco… Yeh – there it was. She’d been out there selling flowers from table to table. She really seemed like just a child at the time. Amazing, I thought, as I recollected the charming little flower-vender girl of less than a year ago. So that’s how it went, I thought… The kids of the night, the doll-like little chiclette vendors… From chiclettes, to flower girl to whore – and then, in time just another fat old hag peddling stale pussy to drunk stevadores… Man, life was a cruel puppet master.
Suddenly I felt very old for my own short twenty years of life… I silently thanked the fates for having been born a male – not that I really thought I’d like to see thirty anyway, but man, those old ladies down in the alley, that was just too fucked up to even think about…
As we drank up she moved closer and began to talk. I hung on her words, riveted, fascinated awestruck. At first she just started to ramble, stream of consciousness… The sound and rythm of her voice was as melodic and hypnotic as the merry chatter of my dear little tropical blackbirds. Her words rolled across her tongue as smooth and effortless and graceful as the rolling sway of the salsa/rumba music dancing in the night air.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2009.

Veracruz, Mexico. 1974.

She snatched up the C-note like a baby alligator taking its prey in one quick hungry bite. She motioned for me to wait. I waited. I was her slave and maybe she knew it… or not, but a hundred pesos was a hundred pesos…

She turned and walked a few steps down the alley. I watched as she talked awhile with one of the old hags. Her mom, the pimp. She handed over the money, gesturing in my direction with that animated series of motions that I’d spotted from afar.

The mother eyed me like a cow and nodded her head at Lupe and that was that. Deal done. She strutted back in my direction, head high and nodding merrily with an almost haughty swaggering stride.

She came up and took me by the arm and led me out of the alley. Now I had my prize and we were on our way. Where to? I wondered… but not for long.

As if by mutual unspoken natural propulsion, we wound up sitting at a table in one of the crowded outdoor cantinas by “Los Portales”, the place where I’d spent a good deal of time drinking with Paco or in the company of foreign sailors from the port. It was almost midnight. The place was going full pace by now, marimba bands playing, crowds strolling as the good times rolled. Suddenly the night was all lit up like a crazy drunken carnival again and life was good. The fiery little Indian girl beside me was heating up the night expertly with her own weird little hoodoo spell.

There was a cool breeze off the gulf riding in over the choppy waves beyond the port wall just across the way. All the usual characters were in attendance and sitting there at the open aired bars. Lupe was sitting by my side, life seemed okay. Yeh, life was good. All the feelings of desperate alienation and loneliness dispersed like a fog under the sun-the burning fire of crazy life emanating from this crazy little Lupe.

She hailed the waiter with a sharp whistle and called down two beers with a practiced working girl’s authority. She was in her element there. The waiter obviously knew her. A few other local characters acknowledged her too. She was no stranger to this place where I’d also spent so much time lately. Why hadn’t I ever noticed her here before, I wondered.

Then it hit me. I had seen her before!

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2009

Veracruz, Mexico. 1974.

She seemed to be thinking it over now.
“Don’t worry about the money, nena” I repeated. “I got enough to cover the night. It’ll be worth it to ya… Vamos?”
Her eyes rolled back like a cash register for the briefest tenth of a second… Like a cartoon character, rolling up twin cherries in those deepest black pools, like lightning flashing unheard off in the distance before an approaching storm.
It was good, I liked her…
And I guessed she would like me alright too. The whores usually did… especially the young ones like her. I knew she liked the little bit of money I had to spend on her. Or maybe both the money and me… Whatever. No importa….
Finally, she spoke. “Esta bien, Guero,” she said. “Just lemme go tell my mother I’m gonna be away for the night.”
Her mother? Oh-key… I looked around. Where was her fucking mother? Lurking in the shadows down the alley I guessed. One of the old hags hovering like a fucking bloated spider in some dark corner somewhere. Great! Fun for the whole fucking family out on the ho-stroll tonight!
With one hand she brushed my chest as lightly as a tropical wind and my dick near shot out of my pants! It was like an electric shock. I kept my cool… Her other hand was already extended. Gesturing urgently. Demanding…
“Dame algo, guerro, Gimme something for my mother and then we gonna go…”
“Whaddya need?” I asked stupidly.
“Dame cien… A hundred pesos.”
I shouldn’t have asked. Twenty would have done just fine down there…
But we were already testing each other out. It was the game and I knew I’d already ended up with the losing hand no matter what now, at least money-wise.
I didn’t wanna be played for a sucker right off the bat… But at the same time I didn’t want to queer the deal with this one, especially after already playing the big shot high roller to get her to come with me for an all nighter in the first place… Either way I was fucked… and even though I was usually the one to be hustling someone, I knew I’d met my match for tonight. And I didn’t mind.
Money was about the last thing on my mind right then. When iit came to the good pussy I was always a sucker…. easy come, easy go anyway, right?
We eyed each other in a flash and I knew that she knew that I knew and I felt that mad electricity in her eyes again. Dark flashing wisdom eyes that had seen alot and would soon enough grow dull and stupid and corrupt after seeing alot more…
It was a hard life and I loved the power of her joy, her youth, her fire. I wanted more than anything to be near it tonight. Urgently…
It had been a shit week for me, ever since they carted my partner Paco off to jail. Who knew if I wasn’t gonna be next…
I handed over the hundred.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2009.