Waiting for the Sun

“After so much talking
We save one minute of silence
To hear the rain that dissolves the night.”
-José Emilio Pacheco; El silencio de la luna.

The Santa Ana winds were thunderously howling on Venice Boulevard, but the slippery streets were nonetheless at ease with the silence of the moon. We were playing The Doors’ album, Waiting for the Sun, loudly in the serene solitude of our truck and the hotel was right around the corner from eventual collapse and Pacific Ave. Both Octavio and I perfunctorily smoked cigarettes, as he abstractedly peered into the rearview mirror at who knows what— who knows why. We pulled into the hotel’s dimly-lit parking-lot and leisurely tossed our cigarettes into the weathered asphalt, letting the rain consume the sour ashes and everything Van Gogh. Without thinking we slammed the trucks’ doors (of perception) behind us and headed for a night full of decadence and perpetual lapsing. Octavio had the twenty-four pack of freezing Coronas ready to descend upon the night at the Hotel California.

As we checked in at the front office, I noticed that it was already midnight but was essentially indifferent to the night’s idle tardiness: drugs and alcohol would be consumed regardless of the time and the silence of the moon. After giving the hazy-eyed attendant my I.D. and Master Card, he signaled to the maid to guide us to the room. Walking anxiously now, Octavio tried in vain to ask me if I had remembered the extra pack of smokes in the glove box, but my eyes were heavily fixated on the maid’s intrepid necklace: It had an image of the Virgen de Guadalupe and I remember thinking: holy shit, man: we are in for some genuine fucking madness.

The door opened/closed behind us: when we entered the hotel room we quickly sat down, lit up a couple of smokes and immediately started drinking like the gratuitous plane was going down— splashing: sinking into an ocean— into a Season of Hell. Skipping the ‘salud’ we yanked open another pair of cold, crisp beers. After about three sips, Octavio nonchalantly reached into his pockets and pulled out a container of vicodin and we each took an undistinguishable amount of the bitter, shallow pills. Throughout the tick-tock of Salvador Dali’s collapsing clocks, we discussed a lack of rhyme; and mechanically consumed the Coronas/ and the splendor/ and the cadence/ and the silence of the moon. The trail of cigarette smoke, adjacent to the moon, pervaded the silent air as if in subtly sullen care.

At about who knows what the fuck time it was, Octavio’s girlfriend Sylvia swiftly opened the hotel door and promptly asked me for the keys to the truck. I tossed her the keys and she took out the bag of cocaine and began to break down the rocks. Once it was sufficiently broken-down, she lined up the drugs into three relatively long lines. We consumed the drugs. We each calmly inhaled from our still lit cigarettes and contemplated madness as the pitter-patter of the rain maintained a grip on silence; as the exhale of the smoke seemed to glide--to crash: the silent moon collapsed.

Who knows what the fuck happened the night before; I woke up to the sound of the doorbell and noticed that Octavio and Sylvia were nowhere to be seen. The room was unequivocally a scattered mess— damn. I desperately reached for the pack of smokes on the coffee table but only found the disfigured, empty pack. I dropped the barren pack back on the coffee table and walked to the front door to let the maid inside the upside down, descending Sunday room. I avoided eye contact and struggled for my keys as I frantically walked to the truck. Once I entered the truck, I immediately searched the glove box for the pack of smokes Octavio had asked about the night before. Finding the pack under a book with a stained, torn cover, I inhaled my first breath of smoke and glanced at the packed streets’ still collision of a drive. As I exhaled the scattered smoke, I heard a violent, amber scream coming from the hotel room as loud as autumn's moon. Initially, I thought the maid was just shocked from the blatant mess, but then I thought: no, that was too much of an affected scream. Cigarette still in hand, I raced back into the room and found the maid hysterically praying at the doorsill of the bathroom. When I entered the bathroom, I saw Octavio and Sylvia spread out on the shower's slippery floor, in fetus position: Consumed! Elapsed! Entombed! And I remember thinking: holy shit, man! Holy shit, man! The bitter fucking moon!