slam his head against the pavement until his brain comes out his nose. You want to fill his stupid mouth with dirt so he can feel what many others feel as they try to cross la frontera and end up with their faces in the dirt as the sun devours the flesh of their backs. But you don’t. You stay put and put all your strength on ignoring your desires. Instead of teaching the huevón a lesson, you take the keys he’s holding out to you and enter your new casa for the first time ever. Then you put a mattress on the floor and a small television next to it. You put some food in the fridge and build your altar and start trying to convince yourself that it isn’t so bad. Then you settle in somewhat and stay away from the leasing office, never check your mail, and get the fuck out of there for the entire day whenever they leave a note on the door saying someone will be entering the apartment to kill some cucarachas or check the batteries en los detectores de humo. You don’t know it yet, but this vida de mentira, this hiding around, it starts turning you into a ghost, a transparency on two legs, a shadow that’s not attached to anything solid. Then, when you notice, you also realize that being almost invisible is helpful and that your indistinctness is the only reason no one really notices you working the door at the bar and selling all sorts of overpriced pharmaceuticals to kids who think they’re really cool.
You’re in the corazón of a large city, completely exposed for hours to thousands of faces that come to 6 th Street to drink and dance and try to fuck someone, but no one pays attention to you. You’re a darker spot moving within a charco de sombra, just another brown face in a town where brown faces look out at you from every drive thru window and brown hands clean every car and a woman from a country south of the border cleans every mansion and every landscaping crew is full of guys who look just like you and every precious toddler at the park knows a bit of Spanish because his nanny only speaks Spanish when mommy and daddy aren’t around.
What happens when you cross la frontera is that you don’t know what’s going to happen to you and you hustle harder than you ever hustled before and you pray to la Santa Muerte and ask for protección and do bad things that you convince yourself are not that bad because la frontera crossed your abuelos first and no one is really pinche ilegal because people can’t be ilegal and we’re all atrapados en este puto mundo. Then you try to forget about everything that came before, you try to pretend like the familia and the women and the amigos and the laughter and the fear and the bodies and the money and the years are just not there and you focus on making money, staying alive, and being invisible. And the easiest way to be invisible is to be in front of a lot of eyes that don’t give a shit.
Working at the club is the best way to make money and hide in plain sight. Most Mexicans come to this country and end up doing backbreaking work for fucking centavos because they’re afraid of la migra and think being out in the open and having a visible job will lead to deportation. Al carajo eso. You do what you have to do and even learn to enjoy it a little because you can pay your bills and have plenty of pills at home and own a car and a gun and an iPod full of buena música and even have more than enough lana at home to replace the iPod some pinches mareros stole from you.
What sometimes happens when you cross la frontera is that you go to work the night after some assholes kidnapped you and chopped someone’s head off right in front of you. Being there is weird and your butt clenches every time you think about walking to your car alone after all the rich white drunks have gone back to their homes and dorms, but it also makes you feel like life is already doing its thing and moving on. Because the thing about life is that time gets between facts and memories and as memories turn
You’re in the corazón of a large city, completely exposed for hours to thousands of faces that come to 6 th Street to drink and dance and try to fuck someone, but no one pays attention to you. You’re a darker spot moving within a charco de sombra, just another brown face in a town where brown faces look out at you from every drive thru window and brown hands clean every car and a woman from a country south of the border cleans every mansion and every landscaping crew is full of guys who look just like you and every precious toddler at the park knows a bit of Spanish because his nanny only speaks Spanish when mommy and daddy aren’t around.
What happens when you cross la frontera is that you don’t know what’s going to happen to you and you hustle harder than you ever hustled before and you pray to la Santa Muerte and ask for protección and do bad things that you convince yourself are not that bad because la frontera crossed your abuelos first and no one is really pinche ilegal because people can’t be ilegal and we’re all atrapados en este puto mundo. Then you try to forget about everything that came before, you try to pretend like the familia and the women and the amigos and the laughter and the fear and the bodies and the money and the years are just not there and you focus on making money, staying alive, and being invisible. And the easiest way to be invisible is to be in front of a lot of eyes that don’t give a shit.
Working at the club is the best way to make money and hide in plain sight. Most Mexicans come to this country and end up doing backbreaking work for fucking centavos because they’re afraid of la migra and think being out in the open and having a visible job will lead to deportation. Al carajo eso. You do what you have to do and even learn to enjoy it a little because you can pay your bills and have plenty of pills at home and own a car and a gun and an iPod full of buena música and even have more than enough lana at home to replace the iPod some pinches mareros stole from you.
What sometimes happens when you cross la frontera is that you go to work the night after some assholes kidnapped you and chopped someone’s head off right in front of you. Being there is weird and your butt clenches every time you think about walking to your car alone after all the rich white drunks have gone back to their homes and dorms, but it also makes you feel like life is already doing its thing and moving on. Because the thing about life is that time gets between facts and memories and as memories turn
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