Paper or Plastic? (Part II—Double D’s)

    I used to work with a red head girl everyone called Double D’s. She inherited the nickname after she banged Robert the produce guy on a stack of lettuce boxes in the produce cooler. Double D’s stood for Dirty Dana, she was the store slut.

Beyond Palace Walls

    Drunk, I staggered down a Tijuana alleyway. A moon bent like a finger nail clipping lit my way. I watched a mangy brown puppy eating old tacos from a tipped garbage can as I dragged my tired feet back towards the U.S. border. I had just been drinking, laughing and dancing with friends at one of our favorite bars when that familiar anxiety came over me. I had to leave. I told everyone I was taking a taxi back to the border, but I had something else in mind.

Porky’s

    Tucked in the back corner of Tijuana’s Plaza del Zapato there’s a dirty gem responsible for some of the best nights and worst mornings of my life. Porky’s was a melting pot for Tijuana’s punk kids, cokeheads, Goths, gays, hipsters, and

Expensive Brownies

The Batting Cages

    I had just turned fifteen, had no money, and since I didn’t want to get stuck driving the rusty hatchback rotting on the side of my parent’s house, I got a job working at the local batting cages. Most of the time, I just chain smoked behind a tattered net, watching the softball girls in their tight spandex shorts. The college guys that worked inside the shop were amazed by how much I smoked for fifteen and my habit earned me the nickname “Smokey.”

Expensive Brownies

    I stirred a bowl filled with gooey brownie batter as my accomplice Christian looked over my shoulder. “So how much should we put in?” I held up a zip-lock bag filled with pot. I had just graduated high school, moved out on my own, and was ready to try any mind altering substance that came my way.

Trouble with Authority

    Whenever I ask my friends if they would care to join me for a cup of tea, or when they see me reading the latest issue of Poets and Writers, their response is usually the same, “Man, Old Pat would kick New Pat’s ass!”

Sixteen

    I was sixteen, a virgin, working at Vons as a bagger. One day an Italian woman named Monique was hired as a checker. Two honeydews sat on her chest; her ass was flat as a flour tortilla. She said she was twenty-six, but Tony the Butcher told me, “Don’t let her make-up fool ya kid, she’s over 30.”

Another Vodka Night

    I knocked and was greeted by a pair of leather boots, dangerous hips, tits that screamed like howler monkeys, and two Latina brown eyes. My guts churned, it was our first date.

One Step off the Narrow

    The day I grabbed a microwave meal out of an Albertsons freezer and stuffed it down my pants, is the day I realized I might have a problem. My father once told me, “This one time, I caught a guy stealing my guitar. I tackled him and choked him for fifteen minutes til’ the police came. You know something, that’s the worst thing you could be in this world—A God damn thief.” And that’s exactly what I had become.