peeny wally

I just remembered a terrible conversation I had seven or eight years ago. I was in Boystown, Nuevo Laredo in one of those kinds of bars. We had passed a good portion of the evening at a pleasant-enough bar called the Western, where most of the staff were transvestites. After everyone in our group, save me, had paid a man for the privilege of standing still while he gave them electric shocks, we decided it was time for greener pastures. We went to a really bad place, some really terrible bar. There were all sorts of strippers and prostitutes around, you couldn’t get a regular-sized beer (solo chicos, ay caramba!) and the place was obviously the front for the brothel. I mean, most of the drinking establishments in Boystown have accomodations in back, but some of them are worthwhile places to hear music and have some drinks, and I guess most of them are like this one was, plain and simple sleazy, dark, smelly and sad.

I was 21 years old, and I thought I’d seen a lot, and knew a lot, but I was wrong. Sitting in this weird, dark bar, drunk as hell and way out of my element, I realized I was having some sort of culture shock. Not Mexican culture shock, not even necessarily Border town shock, but something else. I don’t even guess that culture shock is the proper term for it. I’d been to strip bars before, but this was different. I was staring hopelessness in the face in a way that I never had before.

While we had been at the Western, we were drinking with the dancers/waitresses and having a big old time. They liked us, because we both knew what was up, kind of. There’s a natural affinity between punks and trannies a lot of times, I think. They knew we weren’t there for sex, and we kept buying them drinks and making dumb jokes and complimenting them on their shoes, and we all got on famously. Or maybe I’m flattering myself. Maybe they just wanted to drink our drinks, and were holding out in the hope that they might seduce one of the sexy, young punk boys with us. I doubt it, though. The place was full of sex tourists, all obviously with much more money than we had.

It was different at the next place. Talking and coversing were strictly preludes to paying for backroom interludes. We found a table and two women immediately joined our mixed (that is to say, male and female) group and began making advances. Drunk and simple-minded, I tried having some sort of “real” conversation with the older of the two women. I don’t know if she couldn’t understand me, or if I was even trying to speak in Spanish or English or if she even was listening. All I know is that she offered a “lesbian show” for the likes of me. Oh, right. Of course. I had a buzzcut at the time, and had made sure I looked sort of butch before heading out so I wouldn’t be grabbed or solicited sometime in the night. Our new friend continued, “I like to do a lesbian show! I do it with her [indicating the other dancer at our table]. I do like it… She doesn’t like to, but she does it. I prefer it [to being with men]…”

Now, I was young, but not sheltered. I started working when I was 13, and everyone I knew at the time had shitty jobs, and most of them didn’t have many better prospects ahead. I’ve heard people complain about their jobs, their working conditions, but I’d never heard anything like this. And I couldn’t say anything at all, because there weren’t any answers. I mean, me not liking my dumb coffee house job or my sexist jerk of a boss, was nothing on this woman having lesbian sex and letting other people watch for money, who didn’t even like having sex with girls!

Later when I tried to talk about it to the people I was with, all they really got out of it was that I was insulted because an old puta thought I was a lesbian. That wasn’t the case at all, but I was just as shocked that they weren’t as upset as I was as I was at the fact that they thought that was what bothered me. “We’re from Texas,” they said. “Border towns are weird.” “You just have to get used to it.”

I knew right then and there that when I moved to Austin I wouldn’t be good friends with any of them.

I was thinking of this because I’ve been thinking about employment, and how everyone I know is unhappy in theirs. I had a conversation recently with a friend of mine, wherein she gave a perfectly acceptable argument for prostitution (which, for what it’s worth, she’s not engaging in.) She said, “All work is prostitution. I’ve had some very unsatifactory sex with men. My time is very precious to me. Why shouldn’t I work where it will take a minimum of my time and make more money than I currently make at a coffee shop?” I immediately gave her three very good reasons why she should not. It’s a compelling argument though.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here. There such a huge gap between the way things should be and the way they are. I think about all these things. I think about the riots over the Miss World Pageant. I think about all the hawks in Wahington who are dead-set on having a war. I think about disparity and economics and working-class people everywhere. I wonder what the huge differences between Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism are. You may not see the link from the above to these headier, more global thoughts, but I don’t think it’s a very big jump. I see all these things in the news and I see all their effects on everyone down here on the lower rungs. All these things are intrinsically linked. You can’t throw your hands up and say that one person can’t make a change, but I sure as hell don’t know what you can do. I can’t start speaking on any one subject lately, because it leads to another and another and more hopelessness… I try for lightheartedness most days, and silence when I can’t manage that, but I know that’s not any kind of an answer.

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