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Jim Marquez. Photo by Rick Mendoza.

WAITING

by Jim Marquez

The silence of it all is the thing that first gets you. So fucking quiet at 2:37am on a Thursday or Friday or Saturday morning in Downtown Los Angeles.

The men wait at a corner, huddled in twos and threes and fours, the truly adventurous man waits alone. Dressed in white T-shirts with oil-stains, jeans, and trucking caps. Some are drunk, red eyes glisten under dull street lights; they waver in place, trying to remain upright, while others are wide awake, jittery, hands shoved in pockets, rocking back and forth on their heels, taking quick glances at their buddies, wordlessly asking each other in Spanish if they should leave or make their move.

It’s cold out this night, unusual for this time of year, but that does not deter them; they gather here on this corner and wait for the taxi dancers to come streaming out of their place of business on this and every other night and I know this because I’m the only drunk that bothers to look at them rather than push past as the amateurs do when they stumble out of a bar in their own groups of 17-30 deep, sloppy and loud and obnoxious, catching the ears of all the pigs that increasingly patrol the downtown streets now.

I’ve been to whorehouses and strip clubs and swingers clubs all over the world, but, I have never seen the inside of a taxi hall. Talk about old school. Buy tickets, pick a girl, actually slow dance, be close, pretend you’ve taken her out on a real, old fashioned date, then, if the friction is right, or not, retire to a back sofa, in the dark, and hope for a hand job or, for the truly adventurous woman, a blow job.

So I’ve been told.

But after is when the real money is made. When the real action takes place. And it’s all for the asking, apparently.

The women gather under the awning of their building. Wrapped in bad coats, holding big purses, teetering in cheap platform sandals, whispering in Spanish to each other about this guy or that guy that is standing across from them on the sidewalk. They don’t smile. They don’t wave or encourage. But they do await the first moves.

Christ, it’s like being at a junior high school dance.

(Continued)

Bertrand Smith’s Acres of Books ~ 240 Long Beach Blvd. ~ Long Beach

(Continued)

Jim “The Beast” Marquez reading from his latest book “L.A. Bitch IV” at the “L.A. Bitch IV DVD” release party last Friday night. The DVD is a slide show of Downtown life with words written and read by Jim Marquez, photography by Rick Mendoza, and paintings by Carl Ramsey. The DVD was produced by Dale Youngman and Gail Zone.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the candid, outspoken and poetic style of Jim Marquez’ “PG 13″ book - in Jim’s own words - “East L.A. Collage,” I was looking forward to hearing The Beast unleashed in “L.A. Bitch IV.” Since the show, I’ve started reading his X rated tales. As disturbingly real and graphic as Jim gets, his heart is the leading force behind his unnerving depictions whether he rants against or achingly needs his fellow mortals as in “After the reading” (see excerpts below,) an undeniable proof that Marquez has mastered the art of the short story and is right to have moved on to writing his first novel. If I were you I would get a copy of his self-published books fast; in my opinion Marquez has already transcended his beginnings as an “East L.A. writer” to possibly become one of the most authentic recorders of our 21st American century.

“I should’ve been happy after the reading and signing of my latest book: big crowd, standing room only, college girls sitting on the floor and gazing up at me like I was the Mexican-Charles-fucking-Bukowski himself, but something was off…” Jim Marquez, “After the reading”

Paintings by Carl Ramsey.

“The booze flowed well, it always does when I read, and I read the fuck out of the material; freaked everybody out and even surprised myself with the ferocity and rage in which the words exploded off my tongue.”

Downtowner and “Bathroom Graffiti” author Mark Ferem with whom I got to sip iced coffee before the show. During our animated conversation, which I hope to continue with Mark soon and share with my readers, Mark waved and smiled at a friend across the street. “It’s Gronk,” he said. I grinned. How cool was that! Above him are paintings by Eric Jones from the Dale Youngman’s gallery’s closing exhibit: “Father.”

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www.rickmendoza.com, www.lulu.com/JimMarquez, Carl Ramsey

“Lickable Wallpaper” is James Gabriel’ second self-published work and his 4th novel. Here’s an intriguing excerpt from this California Native. For more info on James Gabriel, go to www.lickablewallpaper.net.

“The foot.

The biggest I have ever seen or imagined was held by a few famous basketball players’ whose shoe sizes are on display in a many native sports shrines which I have had the misfortune of wasting hours of my time in. This one dwarfed all of them. It was wrapped in a large black sandal, but the appendage was so wide it spilled around the edges and the base had been squeezed into a puffy cushion of skin framing it with stretch marks as if it were threatening to burst. The owner of that must be extremely heavy I surmised and if this had been the only curiosity I would have returned to my business without a thought, but the toes of this hoof were the most interesting of all.

The big toe of the mammoth pad was like a sausage. It started early and reached out beyond the others and past the tip of the sandal to curl beneath the next toe and a portion of the other. By my word if that failed to strike me on some way, the other toes did it. Each was quite long and knurled with thick nails that came out and curled down, almost as one would imagine a claw. Ideally it had no business displaying itself in a sandal of any type, but it thoroughly escaped me as to what shoe would enclose such a foot. I was suddenly struck by the image that it did not belong to a man, but some sort of troglodytian creature like the Moorlocks from Wells’ Time Machine and it was then that I decided I needed to see what this person looked like, if not learn who he was altogether.

As a result I doubled my efforts to finish my business which was no small task and my straining had me afraid of causing an aneurysm. The foot stepped out of the stall and I heard the sink turn on for a short moment, then off. I quickly wiped and buckled my pants, with a sudden air of thanks when I heard the drone of the hand dryer.

I stepped out.”

A few months ago I’m heading North on Lincoln Blvd. when, on an impulse, I jump out of my car to pixellate The Red Garter’ sex-appealing logos.

As soon as I see the closed door and the yellow notice my natural born protector-of-the-small hops back into my car, grabs my cell phone and contact the real estate broker. “Hello, I’m calling about The Red Garter in Venice. I was wondering if you could put me in touch with the seller because I write for an LA blog and would love to preserve a little bit of LA history by photographing the interior of this vintage “cocktail lounge” (before it gets recycled into another retail store.)” I keep the last portion to myself as I hear a voice in my head arguing that what I call “a vintage cocktail lounge” most people would call “a dive,” including the real estate agent at the other end of the line judging by the awkward silence. “The property’s been sold.” “So maybe I could talk to the new owner?” Upon my insistence, the broker reluctantly gives me her e-mail address, gets mean on me when I ask her to repeat it and hangs up before I have a chance to deliver a spirited: “Thank you for your commitment to…” She didn’t commit to anything but I nonetheless rush home to pen a passionate appeal to the new owner while I fail to swat the annoying buzz in my head that keeps repeating “Frankie, it’s a dive!”

This incident takes an unpredictable turn when I learn that at about the same time, a young woman by the name of Lauren Everett answers her own maternal call for the preservation of the human over the commercial when she sees an ad on Craigs List for the sale of an apartment complex where LA’s own dirty old poet, Charles Bukowski, once lived. Everett and other preservationists contact the Cultural Heritage Commission and manage to halt the sale of the East Hollywood property long enough to attempt to build a case for the designation as Historic Landmark of the DeLongpre Avenue bungalow where USPS worker Henry Charles Bukowski became, at 49, a full-time writer. Just as I assume my e-mail to the Red Garter’s new owner was dragged across the real pain in the esstate’s broker desktop and dumped in her Trash Bin, I don’t believe for one moment the author of “All the Assholes in the World and Mine” will get the seal of approval from the City and when I see a picture of the building in question I even wonder: “Why? It’s a…”

Photo by Phil McCarten for Reuters.

I look online for an answer and give to my dear Taco readers a story in quotes almost as unpredictable as a Bukowski title:

Blogger AF Duncan of Kung Fu Rodeo.”The impulse to make Bukowski’s home a monument comes from a feeling that he was a more accurate chronicler of the city than other writers, said David Fine, author of “Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction.” Raymond Chandler, Aldous Huxley, Nathanael West and F. Scott Fitzgerald are far brighter literary lights, along with others who came here to toil as screenwriters. But they tended to portray an apocalyptic landscape of crime noir and empty celebrity. Bukowski grew up here and saw it from a less cynical, more authentic down-to-earth vantage point.”
(Continued)

Oh, yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it’s too late
and there’s nothing worse
than
too late.

Charles Bukowski

Photo by M. Avelar

George Wither