A Drinking Life: A Memoir

by Pete Hamill

  I was happier than I’d ever been.

  One Saturday night in December, on the eve of the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, there was a big party in an apartment shared by four MCC students. It was more formal than usual, because some Mexican girls had been invited from a commercial school downtown and we’d been told to try to make a good impression. I wore my only suit, dark blue with a thin pinstripe, a shirt and tie. The beer was flowing. As the Orquesta Aragón played a charanga, I watched the dancing Mexican women, in their formal dresses, their tapered legs, rustling crinolines, high heels; the American women seemed more formal than usual, even awkward, and the men worked too hard at being cool. I danced a mambo with a girl named Yolanda. Another guy cut in and I moved aside and drank beer. I danced slowly with a girl named Maria to “Sin Ti.” She thanked me and hurried away and I drank beer. In the kitchen, I opened another bottle of Bohemia and laughed when some of the louder gringos made bad jokes about La Virgen. Tim Lee was there with me but left early with one of the young Mexican women. I danced a cha-cha with a woman named Lourdes. She left early with two other women. Around midnight, there were about fifteen men still drinking and two American women, neither of whom was free. I was drinking with a Mexican-American friend named Manny when he suggested that we go out on the town.

  There’s gotta be some women someplace, he said. Let’s take a look.

  ¿Porqué no?

  We ended up down on San Juan de Letran, the wide neon main boulevard of la vida nocturna, where the dance halls and strip joints and burlesque houses called to the working class and the slumming ricos. Down here, you could go in pursuit of the women of la vida galante. On this chilly midnight, our goal was as clear as the vision was blurry.

  We moved off San Juan de Letran into dark side streets lined with one-story houses, their walls painted, doors and shutters locked against the night, iron grills over the windows. Then we crossed a small cobble-stoned plaza and a dry fountain and then up ahead there was a street full of light and noise and people and music. I remember hearing the song of Agustín Lara:

  Solamente una vez

  Amé en la vida,

  Solamente una vez —

  Y nada mas …

  (I loved only one time in this life, only one time, and nothing more.) I was singing the song — or those lines, for I knew no others — as we walked into the Calle de la Esperanza, the Street of Hope, lined on both sides with bordellos. These were the ten-peso whorehouses, the cheapest in the city, and had been here since before the 1910 Revolution. Each had a tall locked door with a window opening into a parlor. Dozens of customers, all of them Mexican, strolled along the street, gazing at the women through those windows, making comparisons, whispering offers or compliments before moving on or choosing admission. I kept humming, Solamente una vez, and thinking, in a thrilled, tingling way: Orozco must have come here, and Cuevas, to look at these whores who were old and listless or young and frightened, to see these altars to La Virgen made of cigarette tinfoil and fat candles, to remember the pale harsh light from the ceiling bulbs and the worn furniture and the drinks served on beer trays. From one parlor, glimpsed through the window, a young girl smiled at a visiting gringo, her wide mouth full of gold; another looked up and turned back to a comic book; a third stared at the patterns on the rug as if she would never again have enough sleep.

  And then in one of the parlors I saw a frail young woman with cinnamon skin and liquid eyes. She was sitting alone on a flowered chair with worn arms, a Dos Equis calendar of a bare-breasted Indian princess above her on the wall. From a radio, Los Panchos were singing, and I went by, wishing I had a sketchbook, imagining myself sitting in that parlor and drawing that girl, the way Pascin or Toulouse-Lautrec sketched the whores of Paris; imagined then taking her away, to live with me in some other place, where I could draw her and fuck her and sleep with her and then draw her again. She wasn’t a beaten hulk, like the whores in Orozco, or a grotesque out of Cuevas. She was beautiful. I was certain of that. In all the other parlors, the women repelled me, and as I moved on down the street, I had a sudden moment of panic; someone else would see her, go in, take her into the back and I would lose her.

  Let’s go back to that place up the block, I said.

  You see one you like?

  Yeah.

  She was still there. I went up to the door, bent down, and leaned in through the window.

  Perdóname, señorita.

  She looked at me and smiled.

  Uh ¿cómo se llamas? What’s your name?

  She didn’t answer. Suddenly, an older woman stepped over and heaved a pan of water at me, drenching me, shouting in Spanish. I didn’t know why (and never found out). But I reacted. I lunged forward, like a fullback hitting the line, driving my body half into the window. The door came off its hinges and went straight down, with the older woman under it, screaming. In the same wild action, I stepped on the door, squashing her, and then the young woman, my model, the woman I would take to a more gallant life, attacked, swinging a pocketbook at my head. Other whores came out of the back, belting me with more pocketbooks and ashtrays and a tray of tacos, all shouting and cursing in Spanish, and then Manny grabbed my arm.

  Let’s get the fuck out of here, man.

  We ran out of the Calle de la Esperanza, laughing and still a little drunk. In the cobblestoned plaza, a beat-up rented car pulled over. Inside were three gringos, looking for directions to the whorehouses. They were in their twenties, tourists from Texas, beefy, drinking from a rum bottle. We blurted out what had happened and they opened the back doors and offered to drive us away. We were all laughing now. Broke down the door of a fuckin’ whorehouse! In Mexico! Gab-damn!

  We were laughing right up to the moment a taxi cut us off. Out came the two whores followed by two policemen in blue uniforms. The young whore, mi vida, mi corazón, amor de mis amores, was enraged, her body coiled, her nostrils wide, her eyes glazed in fury, with her arm straight out and one painted fingernail pointing at me.

  ¡Eso es! she screamed. ¡Este cabrón, eso es! That’s him! That son of a bitch, that’s him!

  And then the cops were aiming guns at us. They ordered us out of the car. The three Texans were jittery. I kept my eyes on the guns while the whores shouted curses. Manny was talking very quickly in Spanish, his manner conciliatory, now smiling, now worried. The policemen were small and mustached, with brown complexions and worn uniforms. They did not look convinced of our good intentions. They ordered us all back into the car, and one of them barked orders at the two women, who hurled a few final curses, entered the taxicab, and were driven away. In our car, Manny sat in the front, between the nervous Texan who was driving and one of the cops. I sat in the back, the other Texans beside me and the second cop planted on my lap. The cop in the front was giving orders to the driver. Izquierda aquí. As commanded, the driver took a left. A la derecha . . . . The Texan dutifully turned right, down empty streets with blind windows.

  I was suddenly very sober, struggling to believe that this was happening. Clearly, we were under arrest. All of us. I was the guilty party, but they were taking us all to a police station. Over a broken door! But, hey (I told myself), I didn’t do anything so terrible, did I? I asked a whore for her name and another whore threw water on me and then … Shit. What a pain in the ass. Still, it wasn’t murder. It wasn’t some great armed robbery. We’d go to a police station and pay for the broken door and that would be that. And I remembered that I had almost no money. About sixty pesos. Less than five dollars. Maybe Manny had money. Maybe the Texans could loan us whatever we needed and we’d pay them back when we got home. A few bucks. Just for now. Solamente una vez.

  But then, as the cop ordered an izquierda, the driver took a derecha. The cop on my lap cursed at him, this pinche gringo cabrón. The fucking gringo son of a bitch kept going into the wrong street. And then the Texan beside me changed everything. He threw a punch at the cop in the front seat, hitting him on the side of the jaw. The driver panicked, slamm
ed the brakes, the car skidded, everyone was shouting, and we spun to a halt. The cop on my lap had his gun out. I pushed down on the door handle and he and I rolled out in a tangled heap. I got up and started to run. And then heard shots.

  Pap, pap. Pap-pap-pap.

  I heard at least three bullets whiz past my head.

  I ran. Thinking: They’re trying to kill me.

  And then, up ahead, I saw a blue wall of police. They were piling out of a police station, alerted by the shots, and I was running right at them. I stopped and one came at me swinging a long club. I bent down and threw a punch and knocked him down. Then all the others were on me, swinging clubs, punching, kicking, screaming pinche cabrón add chingado gringo, until I was on the ground, pulling myself into a tight ball as they stomped me some more.

  They shoved me into the delegación, and I saw Manny at the far end of a high-ceilinged greenish room, surrounded by cops. The Texans were nowhere in sight. Obviously, they had chosen a better street, and we never saw them again. But in flight, they’d also taken one of the policemen’s pistols. So I found myself charged by a fat lieutenant with lesiones (causing cuts with punches), destruction of private property (the whorehouse door), assault, resisting arrest, and robo, for stealing the pistol. I didn’t have enough Spanish to explain myself. My back and ribs and legs hurt. My nose ached, and when I touched the bridge, blood came off on my fingers. Worse, my teeth felt cracked and sharp to my tongue; one small piece broke off, and when I picked it out with my fingers, one of the cops smiled.

  I was in a mess. I asked for el teléfono but the lieutenant shook his head and grimaced. No hay, he said; there is none. No hay teléfono público. I looked out through the dirty window at a car passing on the street and wished I was in it, heading home. The sound of the shots and the whirring of the bullets now seemed louder. And I realized that I could be dead. One bullet in the head and I’d have ended on the sidewalk with my life over before it really started.

  The cops shoved me through a door and down a corridor and then opened a blank steel door that led to a cell block. In some ways, the long night was just beginning.

  They put me into a large dark communal cell at the end of the block. One high barred window opened to the night. As the cop locked the cell door behind me, I gazed around. There were about fifteen men in the cell, a few in modified zoots, most in rough clothes; I was the only one in a suit and tie, and I was certainly the only gringo. There were no beds, but some men were sleeping, huddled on the filthy floor against the scabrous walls. The air was a compost of stale beer and rum, sweat and entrapment and shit. The only toilet was an open hole in the floor in the far corner. The men gazed at me. I nodded, shrugged, said buenas noches, and smiled. A bone-thin mustached man came over and asked me for a cigarette. I patted my pockets and said, No fumo, which was true. He stared at me in a chilly way, his face impassive, his eyes searching for some sign of weakness. I stared back, tense, ready to fight. But he turned and walked away. I felt exhausted and drained and hurting, but I knew that I could not risk sleeping.

  I squatted against the bars of the cell, wondering where Manny was, and as my eyes adjusted to the murky light I realized that there were three men in the cell directly across the corridor. There was also a pile of bricks. Some kind of construction must have been interrupted by the holiday weekend. Now more men were being brought into the cellblock, the gatherings of the holiday, and I could hear shouts of recognition from other cells and banging on the steel bars and much drunken laughter. I called Manny’s name, yelling in English, Are you there, Manny? But there was no answer. I wondered how I could get word to Tim, to arrange for bail, to get a lawyer, maybe notify the American Embassy. But there was nobody to ask. The guards came in with prisoners, threw them into cells, ignored all pleas or shouts, and disappeared beyond the steel door.

  Then they started bringing in the women. Two of them were thrown into the cell across the way, where there were now about eight men. One of them was a worn-out woman, her hair gray and wild. But the other was young. She was wearing a yellow blouse. I could see her white teeth against dark skin. The men in my cell moved toward the bars to examine this new arrival. Suddenly the mood shifted; sexual excitement seemed to thicken the air. Across the way, two men were easing around the young woman. She was terrified, backing away from each of them, screaming in a thin voice, Ayúdeme, por favor, ayúdeme …

  Help me, please, help me.

  Nobody came to her aid. One of the men, short, compact, muscular, reached out swiftly and tore open the front of the blouse. She made a yipping birdlike sound, her voice weak and trembling, and then he grabbed the center of her black bra and ripped down, exposing her heavy dark breasts, and now all the men in my cell were shouting encouragement. ¡Vaya, macho! ¡Ándale! The old woman cringed against a wall, but the rape was delayed. The second man intervened and shoved the short, muscular man, who threw a punch and grabbed at him, the two of them closing violently, throwing punches to do damage, the short man’s shirt coming off, the girl retreating in wide-eyed fear, covering her breasts, screaming. And then the combatants found the bricks. Their eyes were wide, faces gleaming with lust and violence, as they circled each other like boxers, each armed with a brick, the men in my cell roaring now as if at a prizefight in the Arena Coliseo, urging them to use the left or throw the right. Every time one of them landed with a brick there was a loud thwacking sound as if something had broken. Sweat glistened on the body of the shirtless man. Blood ran from a gash in the other’s cheekbone, and their shoulders and arms were welted and raw.

  Finally the young woman was shouting something to them, something about death, and offering her breasts, then placing a hand up under her skirt, as if saying that she didn’t want them to kill each other for her. I couldn’t make out the pleading words over the roar of the men in my cell. But she seemed to be saying, Stop! Go ahead and rape me if you must, but stop.

  They paused.

  My cell went silent.

  And then the short man lunged at the other, prepared to kill or die, and the roar was immense, the codes of men triumphing over the mercy of women.

  Finally, the steel door opened and guards rushed in, hurrying down the corridor. One drew a gun, shouting into the cell. The men stopped, then sullenly dropped the bricks. The girl looked forlorn. The guards opened the cell door, first called out the old woman, then the younger one, while one guard shouted at another about his stupidity. The fighters were locked in with their inexhaustible supply of bricks. The men in my cell were still roaring, calling out to the girl, Muñeca, eres mi reina, Hey, doll, you are my queen, and offering to never fight again if only she would take them forever to her bed. But she stared at the floor of the corridor, walking sadly on one high-heeled shoe, the other in her hand, covering her lovely breasts with the shredded blouse. The two women went out through the steel door. I didn’t know what had brought her to that cell; I supposed she was a prostitute, perhaps a thief; but I felt certain that she would carry that hour of horror with her for all the years of her life. I knew I would too.

  7

  IN THE MORNING, they started moving me around. The first stop was another jail, where I was put in solitary confinement. The room was like a closet, no windows, no toilet, no bed, with a thin line of light at the base of an iron door. I ran my fingers over the wall and found letters gouged in the surface. My eyes slowly adjusted. The letters said: Viva Stalin, el Rey de los Rojos. Long live Stalin, the King of the Reds. And I thought that maybe Siqueiros had been here, or the leader of the railroad workers, or some amazing guerrilla fighter brought down alive from the Sierras. I wondered too if I was a political prisoner of some crazy kind; maybe they’d separated me because they were afraid the Mexicans would kill me, a gringo, one of the people who stole Texas and California and New Mexico and Arizona and Oklahoma and Utah, one of the people who called them greasers, spics, beaners, and wetbacks on the cold scary other side of the border. Maybe the cop I hit had died. Maybe I fit the descriptio
n of some other killer. Some fugitive who killed eight people in Nebraska and made it across the border.

  And how did I get here? In the black closet, as I gazed at that sliver of light, the night played out in my mind. If I hadn’t gone to the party, or if nobody had cut in when I danced with Yolanda, or if I’d said no to Manny, said, Manny, I don’t want to go anywhere, if I’d gone home and read a book or made some pictures; if I hadn’t seen the young girl in the crib on the Street of Hope, hadn’t gone back to see her again; if I’d had some money to bribe the cops; if I’d run down the street behind the Texans; if. If, I said. If. I wondered what time it was too. What day. Where Tim was. Wondered what my mother would think if she heard I was spending my life in a Mexican prison. Wondered if I’d ever read a book again or paint a picture. And fell asleep, wedged against the wall, under the name of Stalin.

  That evening, they took me out of solitary, with no explanation, and put me in another large cell with a dozen guys. I was starving now, aching with thirst, my tongue furry with hangover. The mood here was brighter, kinder, the men speaking slowly so that I could understand their Spanish. I quickly learned that nobody was fed in these jails. Food was delivered by wives and girlfriends, and when the other prisoners discovered I had neither, they shared their food with me. They told jokes. They laughed. They explained why they were there. A busdriver was arguing with his girlfriend and ran his bus into a limousine whose owner — a politician — had him arrested. Another man had beaten up his father-in-law at a family party, for coming on to some woman in the kitchen. A third had stolen some shirts from a market and tried to sell them to buy a dress for his mujer. When I told my story about the whorehouse, they laughed and slapped each other and handed me some water. I was one of them: another crazy bastard fucked up by women.