FLYING UNDER THE TEXAS RADAR WITH PACO AND LOS FREETAILS
Ernest Hogan
Hogan’s trail blazing novel, Cortez on Jupiter (1990), lives in the same neighborhood as Oscar Zeta Acosta’s novel The Revolt of the Cockroach People, except for the fact that Hogan shoots his Chicano hero into outer space. In an interview with Rudy Ch. Garcia, Hogan reports: “When Norman Spinrad reviewed Cortez on Jupiter for Asimov’s, he assumed I was an Anglo. I wrote the magazine declaring, ‘I AM A CHICANO!’” Though it may seem an impossible error to make given the deep familiarity with Chicano life in the novel, the ethnic confusion shows the barriers and assumptions faced by Latinos wanting to write science fiction. In addition to a number of short stories, Hogan has written two novels High Aztech (1992) and Smoking Mirror Blues (2001), which while departing from the tradition, are very much in dialogue with the genre of cyberpunk. In the short story included here, Paco, who is currently residing on Mars, relates the adventures of the rock band he had back on Earth and how he ran into trouble with the CEO of Texas, Billy-Bob Paolozzi.
Why did I leave Texas, and come to Mars? Why does everybody ask me that? Haven’t you ever been there? Or heard anything about it? Especially way-the-chingada back then, when they were worried about who was Texan, and the whole Great Texas Identity Crisis broke out.
In case you don’t remember (nobody seems to remember anything these days, history becomes myth before you know it — I have a hard time convincing my daughter that I wasn’t born on Mars) the whole Texas secession thing was largely the work of a billionaire/politician/entrepreneur named Billy-Bob Paolozzi who, quasi-legally, in the name of the Second Amendment, acquired some nuclear weapons. “If nukes were outlawed, only outlaws would have nukes. Besides, I’m just a concerned citizen looking out for the security of my proerty and/or country!” Billy-Bob forced what used to be the United States of America to let Texas go and declared himself interim President/CEO.
It was a hell of a time to be a young man full of talent, hormones, and the urge to fuck and fight, scream and shout, and do something that would shake the world (or at least make for an exciting weekend).
Suddenly, everybody was making a big deal about Texas and how free it was — there was even some talk about officially changing the name of the country to Free Texas.
But, as Billy-Bob put it. “Texas ain’t free — it’s expensive!”
So there I was, a young Jewish Tejano, figuring that this was a real ¡REVOLUÇION! My chance to jump on the center stage to impress the world with my incredible talent, to send civilization off in a new direction, and to lasso me some babes while I was at it. It seemed so right.
Little did I know that the powers-that-be had other ideas. But then, don’t they always, no matter who they are, or what planet they’re raping?
It was my first taste of the cheap thrill of deluding myself that I was on top of the world — now, all these years later, I have a totally different idea of what it is to be on top, and of what a world is. Then I had a talent for music, and my parents kept exposing me to an eclectic mix of sounds. They actually encouraged me to go wild.
They were kind of wild themselves. Probably why dad died young, and Mom got sad and quiet.
My meshuguna antics made her smile. And that made me happy. There was still some sadness in those smiles. As if she could see how it was going to end.
“Mijo, don’t be yutz!” she would keep saying. “Why can’t you make beautiful music?”
“I’ve got ambition. I’d like to do a symphony someday, but it’s got to come out of the life I’m living and the world I live in. I can’t just pretend I’m Zappa living back in the 20th century.”
Then she started humming Dog Breath Variations and smiled.
I loved the way she smiled.
Anyway, I soon founded a band called Paco and Los Freetails.
And of course, you can’t find any information on Los Freetails — the Texas government was working on wiping us out of all electronic memory just before the Big Kerblooie, and the shitstorm that had me hightailing it out off the Earth prompted the Texas’ Bureau of Infomanagment to seek&destroy anything they could find about us.
It really is too bad. Some of those songs weren’t bad.
By the way, I’m not calling Los Freetails by their real names.
Except for Tongoléléita — her folks actually made that her legal name, without a surname like a real mondoultramegasuperstar. Then she did become kinda famous.
The others sort of disappeared. Maybe they’re dead. Maybe they escaped to somewhere better than Texas. If they did, I hope they’re alive and well.
Tongoléléita had become a masterpiece of plastic surgery. Her family had so much faith in her voice that they went into serious debt making her face and body into something that could compete with other corporate sex idols of the era.
Her body was a bit too hard from all the implants to give her a fashionable superhero/bodybuilder-with-big-bubble-boobs&butt look. The unnatural dark chocolate skintone did make the mouth water. And those sculptured lips could do things pushing toward the supernatural.
I got distracted thinking about that, sorry. Where was I?
Why Los Freetails? It’s like BúmBúmi, our drummer, said: “We’re like the Mexican freetail bat. It revitalizes our desert environment by shitting on it.”
She was a bit of a genius, and we came up with some fun songs together. If she hadn’t preferred women we could have been a real item. As it was, we just got together a few times, because she thought she could get me in touch with my feminine side — talk about a disaster! She would have gone for more of a dikey look if the anti-homosexuality laws weren’t so severe back then:
Or, as Billy-Bob put it: “Sex not according to God’s laws in the Christian nation of Texas? I don’t think so — we need to make it a capital offense! Or at least banish the perverts! Maybe we should just round them up and put them into the camps.”
“Shitting on it,” said El Muertonto. “I like that!”
Except for his darker-than-a-black-hole sense of humor, and the fact that he could turn his brain off and play a bass line forever, El Muertonto wasn’t very likable. “Shit. Everything’s shit,” he would always say. He was totally death-absorbed. Skeletons and calaveras were tattooed all over his body — he even had skull features tatted onto his face. He liked groupies, but I think the babe he really wanted to bed was his beloved Santa Muerte. The image comes so naturally — him banging away at a skeleton in a wedding dress.
“Sounds more like you guys are expecting to get a lot of free tail,” said Tongoléléita.
“That too,” I said.
“What?” She pressed her perfectly spherical breasts against my arm. “I’m not enough for you.”
“You? You’re too much.” El Muertonto slapped her buttocks, which weren’t quite as spherical as her breasts.
“Too much for everybody.” Búmbúmi blushed.
Tongoléléita made a pretense of being my girlfriend, but mostly because of her instinct to seek out alpha males and demand their attention. I knew damn well that once out of my vicinity, she’d go after whomever she figured was the nearest top dog.
I preferred my women soft and natural, but there was something about when Tongoléléita wanted you. When she focused those sapphire eyes on you, you were doomed.
She’d done the hotchachacha with El Muertonto, and Búmbúmi. The three of us discussed it behind her back. We let her think she had us all fooled. It would have broken her brittle heart if we didn’t.
It was a gig at this place called Galaxia Tejana, one of those music places that was popping up all over the Earth back then the way nanohudu shrooms do on Mars in the spring. A Franketech fusion of an intimate joint where folks of assorted sexual identities could get together for high-decibel entertainment so they could do their own biological fusion later in private — though sometimes they did it right on the dance floor — hooked into the megawebs and satellite systems for live pa
rticipation and monetary input from beyond the Texas borders. A lot of things that went on weren’t exactly legal under the post-secession regime, but then when a lot of people start having a lot of serious fun, you gotta watch out for the authorities.
Mostly we were doing the download thing and private gatherings. By viral underground standards we were a success. This got us some breakout global corporate deals. Not to mention real money, rather than the peanuts they were throwing at us up to this point.
We were all excited.
“Do you think there are any corporati here?” Tongoléléita asked no one in particular as she scanned the smoky — it was legal to smoke government-approved tobacco everywhere in Texas then — room.
“Maybe even something better than that!” Búmbúmi’s grin was more than natural — she had just amped herself with some of the cyberpsychedlics she couldn’t seem to live without. “I feel a powerful presence. Something cosmic.”
“I just hope I can get me one of those gals out there before we get some kind of police action coming down on us.” El Muertonto was his usual morbid self. “Some of the gadgets I see out there aren’t just for sharing entertainment.”
The crowd was well-peppered with flashing and twittering gizmos. Most the usual, fashionable, wearable electrosocial hardware, but some exotic, custom-jobs that could be some renegade connoisseur’s playthings, or the tools of law enforcement.
“I can feel something out there,” said Tongoléléita. “We are going to be discovered.”
“Yeah,” said El Muertonto, but by what?”
Búmbúmi closed her dilated eyes. “I feel something … beyond … human….”
“Whatever it is,” I said, “we better get ready to play.”
“Yeah.” El Muertonto squinted through the lights, trying to see the crowd. “Let’s get these zombies dancing.”
“Maybe we could de-zombify them!” Búmbúmi grinned too hard.
“How do I look?” asked Tongoléléita as she did that peculiar tiptoe spinaround that she did when trying to see her own body.
“You look great,” I slapped her implant-stretched ass, and almost hurt my hand.
“I’m gaining fat and losing muscle! If only I was rich enough to afford a tech to make surgical adjustments on me before every performance.”
“Mija, you look great,” Búmbúmi said with a flirtatious wink.
“Delicioso!” El Muertonto did something obscene with his tongue.
The owner drooled onto the jutting lapels of his cornball zoot suit at the sight. El Muertonto actually did the casting couch boogie with him to get us booked. “He was almost as good as this guy I did in jail once.”
I was all decked out in a Huichol shaman’s hat, a guayabera shirt, made-in-Vietnam Levi 501s, and my prize Virgin of Guadalupe cowboy boots. I tucked the 501s into the boots to expose the Virgins. My mother always liked it I when showed an interest in religious imagery.
El Muertonto was all in black as usual, his shirt cut to show off his skeletoid tats.
Búmbúmi was in a strobing cyberpyschedlic suit that left multiple after-images on your retinas when you looked at her.
Tongoléléita was dressed in a lacy film that clung to her implant-festooned form like a second skin. Male and female eyes locked onto her like bugs.
Bugs were different back then. Bigger, louder, less subtle. Not like the ones these days that either look like real insects, or you can’t tell they’re there. That reminds me — l should do a sweep with the sniffer, just to make sure.
There were probably bugs watching us at those Austin gigs. We were too busy — and too distracted — to notice. Lately, here on Mars, I’m on the lookout for such things — you can’t be too careful with all those rumors of new-improved killer ninja bugs. It’s possible — the technology exists.
They say I’m paranoid. But the older I get, I get more convinced that I’ve been watched my entire life. Like everybody else.
We’re probably being watched right now.
The only thing that saves us is that there are too many of us, and there’s just too much going on for them to ever figure out. Unless, of course, it’s too late.
Anyway, the old zoot suiter tore himself away from leering at El Muertonto, and introduced us:
“Greetings, Amigos and amiguets, cowboys and cowgirls, tonight, we here at Galaxia Tejana are proud to present, some very talented young people …” He winked at El Muertonto. “… who have been really attracting a lot attention on the webs, and in various seedy dives, and vacant lots around town, so we’ve decided to give them their big break here at Galaxia Tejana, so let’s make some noise for them … Paco and Los Freetails!”
They made a glorious noise. Alcohol and other chemicals were having their effect.
We made some back at them. They responded. Good. I gave the nod and Los Freetails cranked it up — including Tongoléléita delivering a killer high note that qualified as a sonic weapon in some of the more civilized parts of the planet. We drowned them out. They quivered in spastic ecstasy.
As Mr. Zoot Suit said, “Once they have that decibel-driven orgasm, you could play like squashed armadillos, and they’ll love it.”
I was determined that we not play like squashed armadillos. I saw this as our big break and was determined to send shock waves all over Earth and leaking out into the developed Solar System.
“Hola, Galaxia Tejana!”
The crowd roared.
“I’m Paco, and these are Los Freetails.”
More roar.
“You’ve probably heard some of what we’ve got buzzing around the webs.”
Laughter. Cheers.
“Like this little diddy that’s been getting some criticism from certain gente in high places.”
A wave of approval. They knew what was coming.
“It’s damnear close to being a hit. It’s all about how aesthetics isn’t about giving in to your anal-retention and obsessive-compulsive disorders. It’s isn’t about control. It’s just the opposite. It’s not about perfection. Or purity. Control, perfection, purity … that shit’s for losers. We call it Texanization Without Representation!”
They went, what they used to call in the old days, apeshit as we laid down the beat. El Muertonto and Búmbúmi got to work. Tongoléléita wiggled up to the edge of the stage, nearly knocking me over as she shook her implants. Individuals in the primo seats reached up and got zapped by the security system.
She bumped, grinded, giggled and worked the crowd into a state of premature esctasy. At the right moment, she threw a wink at me, and we harmonized:
“Texanization!”
The verbal explosion blotted us out.
Texanization was the big word back then. Ever since the secession. Some folks loved it, some folks hated it.
She then took it away with:
“Since when are rules and
regulations Texas style?
Who says your cowboy hat
is more Tejano than mine?
Billy-Bob Paolozzi
why don’t you just
go and die?”
With that the audience explodes with a mass ejaculation of approval that drowned out our amps.
Then they were blasted off any sensory range.
Several flash-bangs went off.
We were all blinded with ringing ears.
I closed my eyes, positioned my guitar so it could be used as an instrument of self-defense. I’d been through this before. I knew the drill.
The chaos I felt thrashing around me hit me a few times. Soft impacts, arms, legs, Tongoléléita’s implants. No boots, cubs, or gun butts.
Yet.
As my distorted eyesight and hearing crept back, I could hear:
“EVERYONE STAY WHERE YOU ARE! DO NOT MOVE, OR YOU’RE GONNA GET A TASTE OF A QUASI-LETHAL ENFORCEMENT DEVICE! YOU ARE NOW IN THE CUSTODY OF THE BUREAU OF TEXANIZATION!”
Speak of the devil.
“THIS PERFORMANCE HAS BEEN STOPPED BECAUSE THE SONG I
NSULTED THE HONORABLE BILLYBOB PAOLOZZI, CEO OF THE FREE, INCORPORATED NATION OF TEXAS UNLIMITED!”
And flowing out of the club’s dark corners they came, shadowy hulking figures with cowboy hats, gas masks, and body armor that bristled with weaponry, lighting equipment, and combat electronics.
I was tempted to start playing Ghost Riders in the Sky, but the flash, zap, and thud of someone being tased stopped me.
Like giant, intelligent termites, they sorted through the crowd, checking IDs: “Hey! Looks like we got us an illegal here!” Flash! Zap! Thud!
They zeroed in on us. Targeting lasers seemed to pin us in place.
Tongoléléita stood there, her arms crossed, causing her breast implants to stick out in that way never found in nature. You could almost see steam coming out of her ears. Her eyes darted around — they couldn’t decide who she was the most mad at for ruining her big night. But she did keep shooting lethal looks my way.
El Muertonto smirked with his usual “fucked again” look.
Búmbúmi shook and sweated with her mouth wide open. Her drug cocktail de noche was sending her over the jagged edge instead of inspiring her.
Soon we were zip-cuffed and packed into urban aerial assault & transport, being flown off to an undisclosed location.
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