Friday, May 19, 2017
Monday, January 02, 2017
Nude Taco
How I became a Gay Gringo
By Cal Avocado
©
2017 Roaming Gardens Press
Foreword
I am a Gay Gringo facing old age and
looking back on history through romance, especially one. I arrived in Mexico
bursting with dreams for love after 25 years in San Francisco and New York as
the AIDS epidemic began and burned through. Fulfillment came but not as I
hoped. My conflict is not wanting boundaries for love and sex in a world of
homophobia, disease, poverty and the nature of men. A world full of obstacles.
I planted my desires into
Paco like a container that would take them. Each event between us leafed into
possibilities and problems. My thoughts grew seeds of doubt and hope, and
rained and shined over them. He might not recognize himself from my point of
view and feel insulted as will others. These are my opinions. I’m not a camera.
Names are changed to blur identities, to protect the innocent from my
distrustful and hurtful speculations. Most people prefer a portrait of
themselves as a flower or a god, myself included. I present details without
vanity or consideration to hide ugly. I want the dirt of real history on my
pages. We name streets after ideas we support, not diseases we suffer, but both
are guides to living. The HIV crisis shaped my life. The empathy of biography
smells like real bodies, fresh or stinking. Biography is musty paper crumbling
apart in your fingers recalling original oils, delivering an unrepeatable,
nostalgic experience fiction cannot.
Obsession
It blows around my mind like a trapped bird
Trying to fly out my eyes like windows,
Arriving in Mexico
An outsider arrives
discovering strange boulevards and gardens in Mexico City and new pleasures like
tasting orange papaya and yellow mango for the first time. And Mexicans to
love. The one that stirs me today from a safe distance occupies the gaudiest
memory from the list. When we were near, it got hot, and thinking about him
mushroomed into uncontainable emotions and a desperate need for someone to hear
me talk, to get him out.
Like one empty night in San Miguel de Allende, a small city north
of the capital where I rented a room in the winter of 2002. On weekends, I
traveled down to Mexico City hoping to meet him, but I was back. It was Monday
and I went to a support group for the addicted and lonely, Alcoholics
Anonymous. I wasn’t alcoholic but it was available and anxiety qualified me.
Although the moderator was a straight man, a warning sign, I noticed he was
friendly with a lesbian type so I took a chance sharing, misjudging his
tolerance for confessions of one man’s loving addiction to another. Shortly
into my release he cut me off ordering, Who wants to go next? A
cold sweat and past insults ran through my mind. Foolish faggot, dicks
are for chicks.[1] Perhaps he meant no harm, or wasn’t repelled by me, but he became
a villain I resented. Usually I avoided inflaming homophobic prejudice by
keeping silent.
I was testing livability in
San Miguel for a gay man in the expat community and failing to find enough. In
New York, it had been easy to find support in the gay community but no gay
groups existed in San Miguel. So, I sought out an individual I'd met in his
40's like me, one partner of a newly arrived couple from rural California. It
didn't go much better with him and I was convinced the time it would take to
knit support in this town would not be worth it. He was out for a night time
cruise in the vacant central plaza where gay men covertly hook up. He grew up
in Texas where family had disapproved of his sexual orientation. His
relationship was open, and probably sexless. He was starved for some. I had
accepted an invitation to his house once. A laptop computer was conspicuously
placed in the entry way playing a porn video as I entered, as a hook. But I
wasn’t interested, somewhat annoyed, and ignored it.
Tonight, wasn’t different.
I wanted his ear not the cock he was offering. I'd returned from Mexico City
frustrated and Roger impatiently listened to me climb out of worry before
rudely cutting me off, You need to get on anti-depressants! He
was revealing his lack of interest. He didn’t want to listen but did want to
tell his story. I decided to hear it rather than be alone. In a tense
outpouring, he recalled a Prozac overdose in a California supermarket. He
squalled in his pants before making it to the bathroom. Naturally he was
embarrassed and it was dreadful, but I thought to myself how much worse it
would be if caused by a disease he couldn’t control, not an optional medication
he could dose down or exchange. He finished his story and left right away. It
was clear after two meetings, he’s too self-absorbed to listen to anyone. He
has scant potential to be a friend.
Becoming a Gringo
Every Friday I walked
through colonial San Miguel to the bus station for an enjoyable ride to Mexico
City. San Miguel always seemed delightful when I was leaving. I reluctantly
returned on Monday mornings knowing I’d feel isolated again. In Mexico City, I
spent the weekend at gay cantinas shedding 20 years of New York City striving.
In New York, it hadn’t been convenient to go to gay bars. Work or distance
interfered. Mexico was a long-crafted plan finally become reality. I'd left
before to faraway places. After high school from Phoenix to San Francisco and
eight years later, with just 2,000 dollars and a million in excitement, from
San Francisco to Manhattan. I was splitting ready to move in each case but
breaking off was excruciating. The fight for courage to go just a little
stronger than fear not to.
During my last years in New
York I took trips to Mexico that got longer and longer. It was so exciting,
turning off to sleep could be hard. My favorite destinations were Mexico City
and Oaxaca but I wanted the entire country and fantasized living where ever I
happened to be. Being a foreigner was interesting for many reasons, including
speaking Spanish, and the handsome men, a mixture of Spanish, Native American,
and African. Apart from the different culture and people was new scenery and
plants. Jungles as astounding as any northern forest I’d enjoyed. Mexico also
offered the comfort of familiar landscapes from Arizona and California I'd
grown up in, recalling home after two decades in New York. Finally, Mexico had
low prices.
I'd lie awake in bed unable
to sleep, Mexico City racing my heart, and get up tired the next day. It was a
huge city, too big to understand, and mine to discover. I'd felt the same in
New York and San Francisco each in its era, but they had gotten smaller over
the years. Here, I had the money to choose where I wanted to live, not forced
to last choices like in the former. If I had a tail it would be excited.
Sunday, January 01, 2017
Blooming Man
I.
Your fire next to me
On a chilly morning
Gets in me like a small sun
As we hike away from the cold
Two hermits disappearing
In free green mountains.
We begin as strangers,
I get to know you deeply
As the day passes.
We pursue a welling spring
Starting in a trickle,
Giving into a creek,
Then a waterfall
Chanting for our climb.
The furious water
Warns its danger.
To take us.
We puff ahead
In surges of inspiration
Up through early mountains
Warming from green to violet,
Stopping by clear pools to drink,
Wading knee deep in swirling ponds.
Bees dusted in yellow nectar
Bum honey from flowers.
Oil of pine scents our fingertips.
Your sharing starts mine.
Our hearts merge in a single star.
Shining white for hours.
II
Meanwhile, loitering in the West,
The coming night waits like a Tomcat,
Arrogant in a cave by the sea
Attracting fainting spiders
That scramble from webs
In damp crannies
To ask for poison.
He massages a cold serpent
From icy blue to hot black tar.
The relaxed snake twists around
And looks in his eyes
Flicks its forked tongue,
And hisses, yearning for another bump.
Hunting down the day,
Hijacking the earth,
To grunt its heft
Away from the sun.
Coal dust gathers in the sky,
Blocking sight of hope
For the day going blind,
As night begins.
III
Black mist settles out there,
Haze ambushes oceans,
Light rays through crystals dim,
Green elephant ears, freckled tiger lilies,
Waving banana fronds disappear.
A flock of day birds shrieking madly
Murmurs to silence
In a steamy tropical garden.
A slow-moving shadow
Falls over croaking frogs,
And insects rubbing out a call,
It creeps over iguanas
Hard to the touch,
Inches along pyramids
And lost plantations hidden
Under matted jungles.
The black bird goes over paths
Hemmed in by sticker wire
From post to rustic post.
Towards a silent graveyard
Behind rusty gates
Where your grandparents,
Younger than you are now,
Read, in disbelief, their epitaphs.
Shade obscures ripe red berries
And gooey figs on sticky branches,
And muddy rivers swelling up summer banks,
Mossy oaks blur into swampy bottoms.
The advance continues,
Past desert highways
Leading up to watermelon hills,
By pregnant vines sucking up afternoon showers.
Finally, to sturdy pines dripping amber sap,
The tallest guardians of the highest peaks of
May,
Young man trees yearning to poke holes in the
sky.
IV
The wind arrives at our retreat,
Blowing in after hours of pleasure
Passed in a minute.
We’re like children unaware of time,
Our brains are honeycombs
Of sweet thoughts,
Our hearts sugar,
As we lay back on
Glazed green grass,
Talking and eating white clouds
Seeing beauty through
Your brown eyes.
As dusk orders curfew.
Nags down primary colors and rainbows,
Pulls curtains over iridescent peacock feathers,
Stops the pomp of strutting turkeys,
Censors cock tails and low hanging fruits,
Conceals grapes from my grabbing hands.
V
Behind us the past camps in Autumn by the shore,
Naked boys jump in the water and feel fine.
Exercise flushes their smooth red cheeks
Fading as time moves away.
Dramatic sweeps of valleys dim,
Jillions of unseen leaves flutter
Across the border of night.
Flowers paint the last scene of the day,
Until the sizzling colors of sunset
Blend to muddy gray.
The sun’s glassy sparkle on the lake
Disappears.
Doubt enters my brain,
and reproduces in darkness.
I squeeze the climax of our union
Until rivulets of molten gold
Flow out of us.
As the last spot of sun
Sinks below the horizon
VI.
Later, a daydream explorer
Discovers a warm memory
And picks it up, rubs it against flint.
Sparks fly and it catches fire
Being remembered.
A musky vision rises out of the blaze,
Part sun, part man, part goat
It’s your ghost from that perfect day!
Alive and relaxed in afterglow.
Then your apparition withers in smoke
Changes to charcoal,
Finally, to a diamond chip,
My blooming man.
Obsession
It blows around my mind like a trapped bird
Trying to fly out my eyes like windows,
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Friday, June 24, 2016
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Wednesday, June 01, 2016
Friday, February 19, 2016
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Friday, October 30, 2015
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Friday, September 04, 2015
"Downtown Desert" T-Shirt available from Society 6
Follow this link to purchase one at my Society 6 store
Keywords: Orange, T-shirt, city, pattern, orange, houses, aerial, view, desert, downtown, fashion, phoenix, roosevelt row
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
"Brain on Love" T-Shirt available at Society 6
Follow this link to shop: "Brain on Love" T-Shirt by Charles Harker
Keywords: T-shirt, design, colorful, vivid, tempestuous, romantic, alive, red, pink, heart, society 6
https://society6.com/product/aaron-in-love_all-over-print-shirt#57=422
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Summer in the Suburbs Color Print on Canvas
Prints Available at Society 6. "Summer in the Suburbs" Color Print inspired by the Roosevelt District in Central Phoenix
Art Consultants contact me for further information about licensing and corporate usage.
https://society6.com/product/summer-in-the-suburbs-nix_print#1=45
Keywords: clean, abstract, graphic, illustration, aerial, houses, streets, city, urban, vector, modernism, hard edge
Monday, July 20, 2015
"Three Spools of Yarn" Color Print inspired by Guatemalan and Mexican Traditional Textiles by Charles Harker
Prints available at Society 6. "Three Spools of Yarn" Color Print inspired by Guatemalan and Mexican Traditional Textiles by Charles Harker
Art Consultants contact me for further information about licensing and corporate usage.
https://society6.com/product/three-spools-of-yarn_framed-print#12=65&13=54
Keywords: clean, abstract, textiles, guatemala, mexico, vivid, color, modernism, crisp, pop, art
https://society6.com/product/three-spools-of-yarn_framed-print#12=65&13=54
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Abandoned gas station in Arizona Desert at Quartzsite
This image is available for licensing from BIGSTOCK:
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-94867934/stock-photo-old-abandoned-gas-station-in-desert
Keywords: 1930's, gas station, abandoned, desert, Arizona, gas pumps.
Old Rusted car from the 1930's in the Arizona desert between Phoenix and Prescott.
This image is available for licensing from BIGSTOCK photo:
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