Dexter

I have a lady friend who works out at the same gym as Dexter, the actor, the character, the show.

            “I saw Dexter today. He seems like a nice guy.” 

            “He’s a serial killer.”

            “Yeah, but he seems nice.”

            I’m not a fan of the show, but my friend Jessie Sweet is. He loves it. He thinks it’s great.

            “What do you like about that show?” I asked Jessie one day.

            “I don’t know. I just relate to Dexter.”

            “You relate to a serial killer?”

            “Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Interesting.”

            I didn’t press the issue, but I was beginning to wonder what was going on inside Jessie’s head. 

Globe Arizona

Lee and I were just outside of Globe Arizona and we needed a room for the night. We ended up at the Econo-lodge, which looked nice enough on the outside. Now that I think about it didn’t look nice at all, but I wasn’t complaining. It was Lee’s call, Lee’s money, Lee’s film.

The room was cheap, forty bucks plus tax, and Lee was happy about that. When I walked into the room it looked nice enough, a little run down, not quite to my taste. There were two rooms. The first room had a queen size bed and the second room had two queen size beds. The first room was much nicer than the second room.

“Which room do you want?” Lee asked.

“I’ll take this room.” I picked the first room.

The more we looked around the more we realized the place was a dump. Lee refused to sleep in the either of the queen size beds in his room, for fear of the unknown. Instead he grabbed a cot that he kept in his car to keep his gear off the ground and slept on that. It was pretty bad. It smelled like cigarette smoke. I could smell alcohol on the sheets. We slept with one eye open.

At three in the morning I heard a car pull up. It sounded like an older car, a gangster car. I heard knocking on the door to the room next to us.

“It’s your cousin!”

“Who?”

“Your cousin!”

“What do you want?”

            The guy kept knocking, but the cousin inside didn’t answer the door. The knocker finally got back in his car and drove away.
           We woke up at six-thirty in the morning. We packed the car and hit the road.  

Family Matters

I’m going to stray away from Arizona for a moment. I still have one more story, but I’ll save it for later.

I’m a card carrying member of a Mexican-American family. It’s a good family, but as time passes it has become more and more unsettled.

            I have a cousin who is in Virginia studying to be a doctor. She’s in her fifth year now, and I’m very proud of her, as are her parents.

            I was talking to my aunt Maggie the other day, and she told me that my cousin Lily was trying to talk my Virginia cousin out of being a doctor. Lily said something about the preponderance of lawsuits and time, and money. Lily's argument was that it wasn't worth it. 
            I was sitting there listening to the story and all the while I was thinking how god damn ridiculous. I’ve never heard of such a thing. I was appalled. Only in a Mexican family will somebody try to talk you out of being a doctor. 

Yuma

I’m falling behind on my blog, sorry about that. Here’s another story from Arizona.

Lee and I stopped for gas in Yuma. I was sitting there with nothing to do when I got the idea to take some pictures. It was a desolate setting, the arid desert and a singular palm tree offset by concrete from the gas station and an abandoned car. I took a picture. It wasn’t all that interesting, but for maybe the clouds hovering overhead.

I noticed a gold Ford van from the seventies filling up next to us. The van had three six inch wide pin strips on the side of it. The pin strips were in three different colors orange, Sedona red, and a deep shade of brown. There was a four foot by four foot square tinted window half way back on the drivers side, and when I looked inside the cab area I noticed a teenage girl sitting in the passenger seat.

I had the camera in hand, and there was something artistic about the scenario. I pointed the camera at the girl and the van and took a picture. Then I took a picture of Lee in his cowboy hat, and put the camera away. I saw the young girl talking to someone, but I didn’t think much about it.

Out of nowhere a big fat woman approached Lee.

“Did you take a picture of my daughter?” the woman asked in an high pitched aggressive tone. She was a beast, a big ugly woman. I saw her husband shrink. He didn’t want anything to do with the situation. He was whistling to himself. He wanted to move on. He got behind the wheel as quickly as he could and waited.

“We have an old camera and we were making sure it worked.” Lee said to the woman.

Lee’s answer took the woman by surprise. She wasn’t sure what to say.

“Oh,” was all she could muster.

With that the conversation was over. She got in the van and they drove away.

            “Did you take a picture of my daughter?” I kept saying over and over.