2003-10-03

Hi again! I am traveling around the US and writing about it, and there seems to be no end in sight.

I am looking for nice, fun people who can put me up for a few nights and feed me and pay my way (since I am broke) and show me a good time (since I like good times). If you think it might be fun to host me for a day or two or three, email me at justingrace AT mac DOT com. Please make sure to include your address and phone number. I am especially looking for places to stay in the southeast USA and the East Coast.

I will be traveling all over the USA, though, so email me no matter what! Here are the places I will be in the next few weeks that I am still looking for a place to stay at:

� Texas: Between Austin, TX and Louisiana
� Louisiana
� Mississippi
� Alabama
� Tennessee
� North/South Carolina
� Georgia

After a brief stint in San Francisco to move out of my house (which totally sucked and was upsetting and painful and NO FUN), I am back in Austin again and gearing up to continue my trip east. Please contact me ASAP if you are in or around Austin and want to hang out! Thanks in advance for your help! And now, more of my banter...

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US Tour Day 17: Mexican Fast Food

There are so many things I will miss about Tucson. But, I will especially miss Mexican Fast Food.

Is it unnatural for someone to want to eat Mexican Fast Food every day for every meal? Ever since I tasted it my mind has been ruled by thoughts of when I might get to eat there again. And again. And again.

And really, by being open 24 hours they are inviting behavior which may border on insane. Think about it. I could potentially choose to altar my circadian rhythm and only stay awake, say, between the hours of three and six in the morning, and I could choose to eat seven meals during this new "day"—instead of my usual two meals—and I could eat them all at Mexican Fast Food.

Would God smite me for doing this? There may be no harm in entertaining thoughts of such things. But, is it a crime against nature to actually indulge these thoughts and breathe life into them? Part of me wants to rejoice that I have found such a font of sustenance, a place where the quesadillas are vast and greasy like a fluffy flour parachute with a thousand dead chickens inside—poultry forever entombed inside a hot cheese slip and slide. Yet another part of me wonders if such glory, and the constant tasting of such glory, might upset the delicate balance of the universe—much the same way that some fear the effects of cloning or genetic modification is the meddling of fools where only gods ought tread.

But, I am a great fool. And, I like danger. With only one exception I have eaten every meal in Tucson there. That's five meals in three days.

And I notice that the same woman works behind the counter no matter when I visit—late at night for dinner or around noon for lunch. My friend Olivia observed that the heavy, Mexican woman doesn't ever seem happy to see us. It's funny, because I am so happy to see her. She always brings good news with her, how can I not look forward to our visits?

If she knew what she meant to me maybe she might be more appropriately enthusiastic, maybe she might leap to embrace me and spank my ass or finger me while stroking me all over and stroking me between my legs with her hands all wet with salsa and machaca beef. But, instead she only scowls and tells me that they don't put hot sauce in the burritos, I have to put it in myself. Someday I will let her know about our relationship, but the time is not yet ripe.

When we arrive at Mexican Fast Food we don't order immediately—I like to put off the pleasure. Instead we sit on the bench facing the vast, backlit yellow menu on the wall above the place they take your order. From this bench I can see the nice woman and her register and the trough where they keep the little containers of salsa. And of course I can see the menu. They place it there to tempt you, keeping the words and the names of the foods just above your reach to tease you and whet your appetite, a sort of culinary foreplay, a prelude to the eat orgy to come.

Today I looked at the floor during the few seconds before my Fast food was handed to me. You don't get a lot of time to look at the floor there, as everything is soon eclipsed by the food and the eating.

But, today I stole a peak at the floor. It looked so cool and refreshing and I wanted to lie down there and feel the heat of my body's life be sucked into the brown tiles. I would spread my arms out like a snow angel, fondling the familiarly filthy, black grout with my familiarly filthy fingertips. I looked up at the ceiling and imagined how it would feel to allow the chill of the tile and the coarseness of the grout to take over my life as my eyes soaked in a landscape of the acoustic panels and hanging lamp fixtures above.

But, soon my food came and my fantasy was replaced by the stark reality of grease and salt and a million dead chickens.

The first time I visited there was a man whose face was horribly disfigured beyond anything I could imagine. His features had been smeared into nothing more than darker spots on the melted area where a face should be like a plastic mannequin in a fire just before it completely melted into an unrecognizable puddle.

He had no ears. And his face was concave—some terrible injury had scooped out the front of his head. It amazed me that someone who had suffered such extreme damage to his face and head could still be alive. He howled strange, animal noises at the friend who ate with him. His friend understood these alien sounds and replied in plain English between bites of burritos.

This concave face man was the most tragically mutilated person my eyes had seen. His soul may have been beautiful, but I wouldn't know. I was too busy eating a quesadilla to think about talking with him. But, his appearance was so fantastically repulsive. It's incredibly sad, but, I'm sure that many children and adults have run, cried, hid their eyes, or even become physically nauseated by this person. But, not me.

I was happy to be eating there with him, as we had a lot in common. We both were drawn by an inescapable gravity to this place of holy eating. We consummated our relationship with the woman behind the counter when we handed her our money and she handed us handfuls of dripping, hot loins. We both stuffed our smeared mouth holes with tortillas which were noticeably more fluffy than the ones I'm used to. We both used our misshapen eyes to locate napkins to wipe rivers of grease off our chins. We both made do with primitive animal communication, each expressing an indulgent pleasure as melted cheese slipped down our throats like phlegm.

Last night there were cops there, three cops eating. It was so perverted and hot and corrupt that three men of the law sat together in public and indulged their most intimate need to have their lips and tongues bathed in the hot juices of the Mexicans and their Food which is so much Faster than they would allow in more moral parts of the nation.

But, morality and ethics melt away this close to Mexico, I'm sure. Soon marauding gangs of Mexican Fast Food will flood the landscape like clouds of locusts, leaving burritos the size of 50 gallon drums in the stomachs of all they pass, plugging city streets and human arteries, bringing all sorts of traffic save for eating to a standstill.

And, I will rejoice when that day comes, laying in the streets with them, begging them to plug all my holes with their fuck burritos, crying tears of insane junkie pleasure as they smack carnitas and cheese around my face and mouth in a scene of Mexican Fast Food master–and–servant.

I'm sad I have to leave this town and the Mexican Fast Food, but maybe it's for the better. It is better to leave a place—or a place in one's life—when the times are still happy and beautiful, so that your glowing, idyllic memories may forever remain. And so now I will leave, and Mexican Fast Food will forever dance with me in romantic memories, until we are reunited in my dreams, dreams where fools dance in the footsteps of gods.


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