Ecclesiastes, Football and Life

I am tired. I stylistically chose to write with what you would call naughty words, not because I use them all that often in my day-to-day life, but because if I am to aspire to be as Hunter or Burroughs, then the foul language is part of the style, as well as the foul thoughts. I think those are important because they reveal honesty, but I do tend to make them fouler when in this style of writing.

Right now I am tired, and I will try another approach.

I come from Polanco, where I met four English adolescents that came from London, they didn’t look rich. Not at all, but they were here in CDMX all the way from London. They hustled a joke here and there, pretending they had lived in Mexico City their whole lives. They were funny, and I enjoyed my short conversation with them.

The day started early with a gym and a sauna and then after that a work meeting. A very important work meeting. The World Cup took a break for this meeting, I was planning a visit to CAR where the Mexican team are located in Tlalpan, yet the meeting ran so long, around three to four hours of straight-up business talk with my dad as a lawyer and the accountant.

It was productive as heaven. We are beginning to build Julian Enterprises and we are thinking and working around a way to gain the money we need in the most efficient and cheap manner possible. This will be done by dividing profit shares and it’s the way which in and around we will be able to finance the marketing and printing of The Rapist book, The Woman with the Red Dress movie, and El Azul documentary.

It is all coming together, but I can and will never be able to see the future, my accountant friend is sorta Kinda an alcohol guy, but maybe not holic. I don’t know. He is good at his job and so is my father. I would say so am I, but most people call me egotistic, so I will just shut up about myself.

There are many strategies and plans that have been thought up and people that will be involved from the beginning to give the thing structure. It’s all coming together, yeah money is short right now and sometimes when I look at social media views I think I am fucked. Sorry, screwed. In trouble? I don’t know.

I don’t like social media, I wish and I hope there must be a way to make money in this business with minimal social media use. But yeah the social media views are short and so is the money, not the money that matters, what must be raised to create the enterprise is certain.

But me. Me. Me. I. I don’t have money right now because I am willing to bet on my future as an artist, and am sacrificing my time to achieve and work towards that goal.

I hate pride. I really do, it’s my worst sickness. But Goddamnit I think I have some talent. I think I have lived a little and I think I can tell good stories. I don’t think there’s anything else I could do, plain and simple.

Well in Polanco we got Bible class. I was written by the Aztec Stadium girl. She didn’t tell me outright but mentioned. She wants to go to a match. I like her. I really do. I offered sex, which I don’t really want to. I want to get married you know, soon.

It would be beautiful, I read the Song of Songs from the Bible. It’s a poem about love and sex, it’s beautiful and I wish that was somewhere near me. I don’t want empty sex however much I talk about asses, blondes, boobs and brunettes.

I am a simple man. I want to be loved. Not for Aztec stadium seats, not for the coming fame, not for money, not for status. For me. It sounds so simple but my experience with heartbreak has been so pathetically sad that the only spiritual emotional romance I have ever received from women was at some sort of interest.

When I had the multiple lovers, it was all about the status, it’s been about the money, but it has never been about love. Maybe Anelisse for a few months there back when I was seven. So far gone, yet so true. Although I don’t think she remembers that I still feel it. Maybe it wasn’t real, maybe I am confused.

Tomorrow it’s back to the World Cup and back to the Gonzo. Shit fuck, tits……

I don’t have it in me right now anymore, I am hungry because I don’t want my parents’ money, and it’s late in Pedregal, walking alone the streets, dressed nicely but walking beaten.

The Bible is beautiful. It truly is beautiful. People hate on it and talk about it but just won’t read it. They just won’t read it. It’s the soul. It’s broken, and sinful and selfish and prideful, too prideful to read the Bible. That was Satan’s first sin. Pride.

Tomorrow I will dedicate the whole day to the World Cup, lot of activities planned and ready to do, but tonight I’ll be hungry I’ll drink water I’ll dream a dream and I’ll feel ill as lil.

Fear and Loathing style DEMANDS bad vocabulary and living on edge. But I said I would find the book in the book and if that is not its path? What is my path?

The World Cup is an event of the World. The world which calls with all its strength towards men and women to keep them thinking about money, concerts and forgetting the heavenly things.

I am fucking tired and beaten and lost, but tomorrow I will be found and strong, or not, maybe not, what is the past worth if it is never here, except in memory guiding how I will behave towards the future.

Am I more animal, when I go to the dirt after death or angelic as my soul flies out.

There are a bunch of hustles. A bunch. All around for the World Cup and I will, I will find them and I will continue Fear and Loathing, which some of you read as articles which are more a hobby, this really is a second book, is it literature, or journalism, both Gonzo.

Or something more, I want to try more styles, but I just gotta get the first two books ahead, the first movie, the first documentary and the Rogan Interview.

I can. I will, It can, It will.

There is just a lot of hard, good honest work ahead, but hasn’t it always been that way? But why do I toil? For what.

I am just dust grasping wind thinking nothingness to achieve eventual death. Rich and Poor we all die.

It is all going to that place. The last moment.

We exist in space and time and we are always in one place in space and time. At this moment there are moments behind and ahead and the current flowing one. But one day, no matter what I do, how many I kill or how hard I pray, I will be there at the last moment, all behind and nothing ahead. Just the dark.

When that moment comes I hope to be at Peace with God. So that I can bravely close my eyes waiting to see beyond the dark.

No matter how much work I have put it will end that way, and what I create, my children will cherish and then their children, and I will be gone. Maybe in New Jerusalem watching from above, or with such heavenly concerns that I lose concept of this earthly terrain.

When I think about all that Fear and Loathing at the Mexico City World Cup doesn’t seem that important. But I will die tonight, and be resurrected in the morning, and will do this all over again. All over again.

The disposition is always positive from my part, food and my attitude towards the present are things I will always live with so I must enjoy them as I can.

But whether my bed is kingly, priestly, that of a whore or a poor man’s cardboard it will all end in death, and The Mexico World Cup will be decades ago, then centuries, then millennia and then forgotten in the sea of life and information that is collective human consciousness, and my vanity and my pride will be forgotten.

I am counting words. What for? Who reads? Yeah some read. More than people would think, and we comment, but we comment death because they will die and so will I, and then I’ll be on Rogan, and… folly let’s not talk about the future, but great or horrible things will happen? What for?

This all comes from the Bible. Ecclesiastes. A book in the Bible about the futility of life. God understands the human predicament, and the fear of death, and what that used to mean before Christ.

Am I being too goodie good Christian now? Do I get back to the Fear and Loathing?

I will tomorrow, and that’s one version of me, Julian del Leon, which I don’t intend to hide, actually I find productive to show, not to hide from the prickly cactus but to hug it, and there are days for it.

But tonight is a day for sleeping feeling worthless whilst worthwhile simultaneously and also instantaneously, maybe I am sick with something that we call youth.

Tomorrow: interviews, camera, places, players…..

No use making today’s writing about soccer. Although it is, it is about soccer.

I think the first thing I remember is soccer. As children that determined worth, intensely, everybody wanted me to give a shit about it, and know about it, and be good at it, but I just looked at my shoes in the bench and talked about books as I thought about Anelise.

It hurt, that season of life. But so have many others and those that don’t hurt, love and then comes pride and so comes hurt.

I tried being good at football and combined it with what I knew. I read as many football magazines as humanly possible, and I started watching matches. And I enjoyed it, but I was never good at it. Playing it I mean, Fifa, well Fifa neither, I mean the usual.

I remember waiting for FIFA 16 to be released for months obsessively thinking about the game which had become my life’s purpose. Without God, an edition of a football video game that doesn’t really change becomes ALL. IT IS THAT IT IS FIFA SIXTEEN.

But football is life in a way, it has been in this world always all around me since I opened my eyes. I was born World Cup 2002, the next World Cup my brother always talked fondly of, 2010 South Africa is clear in my mind, so clear in fact that I remember I decided I would tell time not by the years but by Fifa World Cups, we would get off class to watch the matches and as a child I watched in a big projector as rain poured in the Higlcler and Mexico scored against France.

We were assigned to make a dance based on The Waka Waka Shakira song, and that is the first time I really paid any attention to Anelisse, just watching her dance that kid dance and realizing there was nothing more beautiful in the whole wide world and The South Africa World Cup went south interest-wise for me. It was all Anelise.

Then Brazil 2014. I cried in the final when Argentina lost and lost a bet also, a small one. A little small bet. Messi seemed sad so I cried messy tears, somebody has to have already written that. I don’t think it’s original, it’s too obvious.

Lemme try something else.

Messi… Messi… Messientosolocomosuputamadre.

Brazil was humiliated in the international stage, at their most iconic stadium in front of the whole world. Humiliation is good. It’s not bad, it’s better than praise. Humiliation brings you to your knees and surprisingly below the legs is God.

Germany won and my German cousins celebrated with us. Whaat is reality and memory that it has been so wonderful interesting with me, in a way that a new story is found every so often and maybe those World Cup days in Valle de Bravo are as Valuable as…..

2018 Russia World Cup. I realized I was getting older, I watched that one in Europe with my parent and siblings. Liverpool, the first time we ever went before my brother studied there.

England won and passed to the next stage and the whole city went out and screamed and sang “It’s coming home” in their scouser accent.

We visited York and watched them lose the next match as a tall English man tried flirting with my mother. My dad got incredibly mad and stung with jealousy. It was a sad sight that. My mother flirting with the Englishman. They lost the match. And my dad won his.

We watched the final in a hotel’s small television.

Russia, is the country I am the most interested in visiting. Read War and Peace and you shall understand.

Qatar 2022 started when I was jailed in Savannah and I got the Mexico scores through JailMail. I watched that Final in Pennsylvania and saw Messi look up to God. Messi is touched by God. He simply is. He is a proof of the power of faith, the faith I needed then to beat the bullshit and the manipulative lies.

Just as a caveat club football has also always been a part of my life. Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi, they’re fight rhymes with my childhood. The NFL Seattle Seahawks taste like wintery nights in rainy Seattle with my big brother, my dad and some hot chocolate.

Formula One was there for a while, but whether I like it or not, whether for bullying as a child, magazines as a teenager and scores behind a cell football is the one sport and activity that doesn’t seem to disappear, so there must be a lesson there, a lesson I will search for in this book with just a little fear and loathing.

I still don’t know about my box seats, the family all want them, they have to be divided, and again, will talk more football tomorrow, and it will be a very football-oriented day.

Now it’s the 2026 World Cup. Mexico, USA and Canada. Three countries. The three countries on the side of the world I got appointed to spawn in.

I am getting excited about the matches and the reporting and although life is indeed futile until death when it becomes purpose forever, here in this world there are good things, good things we can enjoy, a kick of a ball, a score on a match, and a burn in the heart looking to see how it will all end and if Mexico will be, champion of the world.

And what can I say about this World Cup, more teams, more money, less money, worse teams. Three colours, a cool ball. Big stadiums, corrupt countries, good people, good players, money, status, events, world, home, cup, golden, green, eagle, pass, Edson Alvarez moves it across he almost loses it but swiftly gets it to Raul Jimenez in the last second, the very last second, of the very last match GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL DE MEXICOOOOOOOOO and adventure that started in Mexico City ends in New York as Raul Jimenez scores and the world turns green as Mexico finally wins.

Poor, rich, humble, good, corrupt and hard fought Mexico are Champions of the world, they raise the golden trophy and kiss it, as Messi before them, as Mbappe before them, as Müller before them, as Iniesta before them as Pirlo before them, as Roberto Carlos before them when little Julian was just being born and football was before, and then, and after.

P.S. for the non smarts I made a whole allegory about Football God and Life. Read again if you must.

A night with Jorge Campos

I’m on the back of an Uber in Mexico City, writing after six coffees. The title of this book points to a certain style that most people think you have to be a drug fiend and a drug junkie to utilize. Don’t get me wrong, I am a fiend, and a junkie, and an asshole, and every kind of drug-addicted verb and adjective you can imagine, just in recovery.

I quit cigarettes and all drugs. Women, I am quitting as much as you can quit them, you know, the one drug with a mind and legs that can actively devise ways to take revenge. Porn. Fuck porn, it’s evil. I watched some last night after a month of not touching or coming near that shit. I hate it. But I’m hooked. I have been hooked since I was what? Ten. Yeah, fuck you, internet molestation. It should be illegal, but it lines powerful people's pockets with cash, so yeah, no.

Anyway. The World Cup is here. A lot of people say this World Cup doesn’t feel like the previous ones, and I agree. There is something about the multiple countries that takes away from the national identity of just one country, but we Mexicans, we hold the record. We have hosted three World Cups. Three is a big number, especially in a country that, apart from its centralist capital, is so poor that most of its citizens live day by day. And we host the World Cup.

Mexico and the world? Is Mexico now considered a fantastic country by those outside it? I wouldn’t know. I used to hate Mexico. Ardently hate Mexico. Now I realize I live in possibly the coolest city in the world, and the world is noticing it. Trendy neighborhoods are filled with foreigners, even before the World Cup hype. And I mean filled, filled.

Actually, one time I was high on coffee with my sponsor. I talked to Americans and asked them where they were from, to which I replied I was jailed innocently in America in a disgusted and punishing fashion. I hate and I love America. I don’t know what came over me.

On the way to an event that a good friend invited me to. You don’t have to know someone for very long for them to be a good friend. He is a good friend. Famous reporter, big eyes and dark skin. Charismatic in an innocent, fun, comfortable, friendly sort of manner. He probably learnt it when he was a kid star in the most famous Mexican kid band from back in the day. He has a lot of celebrity.

Writing on the back of the car, coffee’d up. The idea is to do Gonzo journalism à la Hunter S. Thompson, which goes with a certain raw style that I think is honest and pure literature.

Going to an event where Jorge Campos, possibly the most famous Mexican goalkeeper, is opening a gallery, I think, and greeting people. Haven’t eaten a lot, might have a little food there. He used to play for Pumas, the university football club that just lost the final not too long ago.

Mexico and football, like the rest of the world, is ingrained. I knew Jorge Campos’s name as a kid when your football skill determined your worth, and my absolutely horrible skill level led me to be bullied constantly, even once when I was tied to the goal and my team kicked as many balls as possible to hit me as I cried tied up in the “red” and the ball kept flying and bouncing painfully of my body

Fuck, the car has arrived at the hotel and the event. Must stop writing. I hope I get to talk to Jorge Campos.

So I got there. As soon as I got there, Jean received me as if we were old friends. He has a way of side hugging, very secure man, and as if to say, I brought this guy, he is my friend.

Had to pee and leave my bag with the concierge, and then I got right back to it. The event is like all other supposedly fancy events, people dressing to show wealth and a few very beautiful women, because of wealth. Beautiful women are always around wealth.

There was this kid boy celebrity. I mean, not really, but he had shaken President Claudia Sheinbaum’s hand that morning. There was an event in which all the managers and owners of the Mexican football league joined up to celebrate football and harden agreements next to the lady president.

I actually know someone very close to her. Two. Adrian Prado is now head of AI in the biggest university in all the country and works even beside the president’s sister. We talked about AI. Makes me wonder about God.

Anyway, I also live with someone very close to an ex-president. VERY.

The kid had a disability. I like using the other word, but out of respect for him and his parents, who were very forthcoming and kind and, just looking at my little journal in which I took my journalistic notes, they trusted me fully. If you look the part, you can play the part.

The kid looked tired, and I am no one in relation to the president of the country, so the now-famous disabled kid answered and wanted me to leave. He also met Roberto Carlos and a bunch of other famous footballers.

This kid is the World Cup make-a-wish, make-rich-guys-feel-better product. Matias Morales was his name. I asked him if he thought Mexico would be champions, and he looked towards his dad and made a funny face. Almost making fun.

There is no way we will win the World Cup, according to the kid that met the president today. He thinks Portugal will win and is a big Cristiano Ronaldo fan. Makes sense. Internet culture kids love Ronaldo.

Met some guy. He gave me his number. He manages Jorge Campos. Then there was another guy. The security guard guy. He looked like a fucking bulldog and was aggressive and not forthcoming at all. I got scared. Big guy.

But hey, I’ll get my interview. The other guy is good friends with Jean, who brought me here. He was handsome and charismatic and gave me his number. It made sense. His job is representing the greatest Mexican goalkeeper of all time, and there are two days until the World Cup. His element, what other could be.

Even here there are reporters wearing Pumas shirts. Pumas. They always lose and the fans keep going, like with the national team, which eventually always disappoints. Mexican loyalty is something else. Browns are loyal to whites. Loyalty is lived and learnt here in Mexico City.

This last final Pumas lost to Cruz Azul, as people said, el que nunca gana y el que siempre pierde.

My brother is applying to that university. The other day I walked its campus. The people looked at me nonstop. I’m trying to be humble, but the world makes it so hard. When people always look and talk about you, you can’t help but feel special.

Step six and seven in AA are all about humility. I was high on ego a week ago. I thought I was winning, but this life I have lived and will live is more a weight than anything else. When someone looks at you and feels inferior, most people would think it is something good for you, and one thinks that too, but when the ego bubble is popped, it is nothing but hurt and weight.

It hurts when people, who one loves by nature, feel less than you. All those “good” things are just weight in the soul and responsibility. I must attain humility, no matter the cost....

Back to Campos. Everybody wants to talk to that piece of sweet Lindt dark chocolate because of exactly that, he is sweet. There are cameras everywhere, and then there’s a blonde.

Is she looking at me? I wouldn’t know, but if I flirt with her a little, I might achieve a dos por dos with Campos!

Moved around the room and talked to another one of Campos representatives. I asked him how long before the World Cup they had been preparing for all this, you know, to make the big buck out of Campos’ image. Two years, he said. I tried talking to him and then left, he was a conceited short green-eyed prick.

The second biggest star in the building was my friend Jean, kids and adults asked for his picture. He is nice, not fake nice, so nice, his job is actually being nice, I would say, he told me to move around, find the story.

I went to a back room where a lot of cameras were pointing. I hustled and moved and looked around, behind a wooden curtain in what looked like a Michael Corleone type room there was Campos being interviewed by two guys, I only caught a glimpse before the bulldog moved me. I have the managers number though, I still could get that interview. Do I want to?

Apparently Jorge does physically prepare before the yearly legends match, which I watched in my box on the Aztec Stadium not too long ago. You know, with Mexican Margot Robbie who broke up with me. Short lived. Fun. Gone.

Jorge prepares with food and exercise before the legends matches, and in his position goalkeeping there is no other legend such as him, except maybe Memo Ochoa who will play this World Cup.

Fuck the pickle. Green-eyed prick. Short. Green. Pickle. Let’s call him that, the pickle. Campos favourite moment of the year is the legends match. Because the legends are good friends of his but mostly because he get’s to play football. I think. I don’t know. Pickle didn’t give me a right answer.

One of Campo’s teammates this year was Cuauhtemoc Blanco: Football legend, governor, gangster, fat. There could be a good movie made about that guy, and he was fat in his prime. Somehow, that man is just good. Ugly but a good soccer player.

Hunter. S. Thompson. My inspiration for this, reading him for style, but I already got style, not just the way I dress but the way each letter is combined to make a timeline of thoughts, one next to the other, interesting for consumption. So yeah, like Hunter. But I can’t do drugs. Not anymore. Do athletes use recreational drugs? If so what effect do they seek?

I have to find the book in the book, the adventure in the adventure, life in life, the World Cup in the World Cup.

Jorge Campos is all anybody here wants to talk about, and then she calls me. Lola

Sixty-three and lookin’ great. We spend a lot of time together nowadays, yeah she is old, but gracefully belle and has had the most interesting life… she showed me (at my incessant petition) a 90’s magazine where she was the cover and main feature. I couldn’t help but smile as I looked at that magazine, I know what kinda girl she was, she would’ve been way out of my league. She posed next to a lion she owned, like that lion in her good old days she was untamable. Who owns a literal lion? And for what reason? And has the bravery to pose with it. Today at sixty-three she is more calm and willing and loving, we hang around. Handsome Julian aka The “Rapist” and the untamable sixty-year-old seductress.

There are flashing lights and luxury drinks around me but people aren’t talking football or is it that I am not talking to people. I’ll drink some water and get back on the scene.

The two lady waitresses in the restaurant's entrance aren’t all that excited for the World Cup. Brown and pretty, pretty enough to be the front for the restaurant even in Jorge Campos World Cup Visa Day. They said three host countries sucked and looked at me with desire as they asked what I did, I just mumbled movies…books…smn...smn or other. Most people I talk to seem to agree about the three host countries predicament, but mostly, it is an American World Cup. Mostly, we get the inauguration. I have a box in the Aztec Stadium, always had it, but everybody, family wise, wants to go and I don’t know if I'll get to watch the match in the box. I hope so. Guess we will have to wait and see and write either or. Find the story in the story and the book in the book.

Oh shit there’s a hot white girl with huge puffed up almost afro hair, but she is white, just very puffed up hair. Like a lion.

It’s getting stale, stale boring people pretending pretentiously porto drinking.

Where are the old wild adventures?!

The slutty/fine blonde has a green Mexico shirt and a boyfriend, rich guy probably.

Talked to the biggest guy I could find and he only spoke English, he was next to a buchona Mexican cunt. He said he tried to get tickets, too expensive…we talked about Mo Salah and how he is an icon in Liverpool where my brother Alejandro lives. The buchona was mean. Forgive her, and don’t call her a cunt, she has insecurities just like ya. Be more Christian in your writing.

The Egyptian pyramid said that Egypt probably won’t get past eights. Not even with Salah. He said Liverpool aught to forget about him. But he is one of today's greats alongside Yamal and Mbappe.

But is one good player enough to get shit team wins?

There’s a new Visa Ted Lasso Jorge Campos advert in the biggest screen constantly on repeat.

Just remembered I gotta interview my mother and my uncles on what it was like seeing Maradona’s “Mano de Dios” and the greatest goal of all time against England. Will do.

Messi got Argentina a championship last World Cup, but he had a good team. Saw that one on Pennsylvania. Depressed. Cold. Accused.

Maradona, well he is a junkie like myself. I wonder why he didn’t stop. Though, I guess some don’t get to the other side of the drug thing. Even an international soccer athlete superstar.

Talking about athletic superstars, been seeing Gon and his family strategizing about the boxing documentary. He has been signed by the greatest living boxing manager. Can’t say too much about that, but we are raising good money for the documentary. He says he has to win the Mexican Pueblo. But he is afraid because he comes from wealth, I told him not to run from that. It’s part of him. Yeah, he is handsome and rich: Bruce Wayne, but in the ring he is el Azul: Batman. Blue gloves and blue shorts. El Azul, the next great Mexican boxing star and my dear friend. Had a meal with his family. It was good.

Met two English reporters from the BBC, Jim and Winston. They were astonishingly nice which isn’t astonishing because they’re Brits and they’re usually nice. They interviewed Campos and in English too! Two things he said stood out to them. Jorge said he didn’t join the Premier League because he was too short, he talked about his Acapulco heritage and stardom to what I answered they should visit. They said they loved Mexico and will come again… Oh! And before I forget, Jorge quipped to them that Mexico has struggled winning the World Cup, something the English could understand firsthand. The reporters laughed and so did I.

They had that room I was trying to get into but the bulldog didn’t let me, all to themselves! BBC!

Campos! Will I see Campos?, wait I'm at a table and he just came out the Corleone room with the bulldog. People and cameras everywhere, reminds me of the CADI film fest. All the noise is surrounding him, there’s also another killer blonde, strawberry blonde, killer strawberry blonde dressed in a sports fit.

She must be foreign!

The presenter is saying he isn’t just a great goalkeeper, he helped people, changed the rules of the game… apparently, I wouldn’t know.

I have to find Jean.

Should I chat with the killer strawberry blonde?

He is leaving, I mean Jean, he has an important meeting, all the football people are on edge and quick moving.

I have a good friend Bernardo Alcantara, the definition of a football hustler, becoming friends with Ronaldinho and basically every football player that passed through Mexico City. He has every shirt with every autograph and the World Cup was his perfect opportunity and the social media job FIFA gave him was just for him, will talk to him in these days. He once got tied to a chair at school with tape as if he was being kidnapped on purpose to make a hassle and a laughl.

Will interview tomorrow if God permits, he is watching a friendly match in Puebla. He sent a picture and a message. Stadium noise.

Gotta pay attention, Jorge is speaking now. He seems drunk and is thanking the country, the banks and everybody quickly. He is trying to get off the stage ASAP because he drank too much. He finished in a sentence and tried to get off the stage but the bank people wouldn’t let him so he went back up. Everybody is here because of him, he can’t leave that quickly! But as is his goalkeeping nature he is trying to keep as many questions as possible away from himself.

Goddamn Jorge Campos the multicolored jersey bastard. He said football is a game and we must enjoy it. My take: it’s a simulation of war, and that’s why we enjoy it.

The Visa ad shines on repeat.

This guy is drunk, I think, he looks smug. I mean he is a star. When I am famous I'll be different I hope.

Hoe’s searching for money and a seat at the match. Fuck hoes.

Jorge is sitting down with the bulldog behind, bright shining sport-star smile, pretty hoes around around around him. They’re fishing for status.

The camera flash is hitting my eyes as I write but Jorge’s smile has the most flash.

This all has a classist feel to it all, which goes to show this World Cup has been money and status oriented planned by greedy FIFA fucks and North America. Not just the U.S. Mexican politicians and football people tend to be corrupt, cranked, bought, altogether dirty. Mexico is and can be a very dirty country, some say that has stopped our economic growth.

Wanna be wealthies and wealthy pricks are getting on my nerves and I think there is no longer a story here so time to go!

It’s ten, it ends at twelve. There are beautiful women here. Status and wealth, they’ll do anything for that. Wonder how they look without all the makeup on. And their picture of Dorian Gray must be horrendous.

Football guy, I must find a football guy, and shit I still gotta place my bets, otherwise I wouldn’t be paying homage to Hunter.

I could stay here all night as I did with Rogan and Kanye. The only thing is right when Kanye passed by after five hours I was shitting. Two minute windows and I missed him before the concert, which rocked. I’m not feeling it here anymore and there’s a special event in the AA group, I will go there.

I need to find a football expert guy. Bernardo? Maybe?

As a finishing note: all the suits are white, all the service is brown except for Campos which is both.

Before I left I talked to the English strawberry blonde. Stunning English woman, reminds me of my Highclere days, very pretty. Loved talking to her, invited her to a match at my box, hope it comes through. Maybe Mexico vs England? If it happens. Most people think it will.

Will get more into the sports aspect next writing, but I can’t lose the Gonzo.

Del Toro Dispatch signing off Julian del Leon.

I Sought

Del Toro Dispatch First Edition:

The World Cup is near, my next book is also near then. Fear and Loathing at the Mexico City World Cup. Oh what a joy! To write today on a computer, I can half incline on my pot belly in a state of relaxation whilst living. Do I have to pay someone to live? Everybody seems to be telling me all the time I gotta pay someone to live. I don’t know.

I came to Acapulco, as an act of faith, to pray, read the Bible, and get close to the GOD of my fathers, the GOD of Abraham. Is this book the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me GOD? It must be because it kept me from swearing the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me GOD in a Georgia court. So I have nothing left to do but have FAITH. But faith works. If GOD is like gravity, if you have a relationship with HIM, then you shall see His WONDERS.

Still, I am scared. So I came to the beach in search of answers. I sought and I searched for them… I prayed and read. And then I prayed and read again. In fear and not in love. Wrong. Search with your spirit, call out as you did that night in that County Jail cell. To the stars.

They told me not to talk about jail. Well, fuck them.

It’s the third night of searching and after writing this and playing some rummy, I’ll kneel by the beach with the waves lapping against my feet. Looking at His wonders with my mind, my body, and my spirit, which is His wonder. And isn’t that the last act of faith? Oh my God, giving up the spirit. I am not ready, the world still calls me, and as I walk the beach and see a probably underage girl with a great body, the devil pulls me back from my talk with God. I see her body and I want to be inside it, but then I think with my soul, not my mind, and let the seventeen-year-old girl out of my mind.

Then I am alone and it’s nighttime and I look at the pool and there she is next to a scrawny seventeen-year-old boy and then the Devil calls again, not in the sexual aspect, which a strong soul can withstand, but the romantic aspect, which is the sweetest dew of life, and to see it below in the pool water, in the ocean, and in the sky, flowing even there on the pool, around the bodies of these two young loves as they’re covered with water and their heads get near. That’s where the Devil pulls back to the world.

There is only one for me. Who she is, I still don’t know. That’s fine. It’s not time. Only one. I have fought the good fight and I have kept the faith and I will wait for my reward, which is her reward. But today it is not time, although the world pulls me back from the Kingdom of Heaven as I see the two silhouettes kissing by the moonlight and the song of the sea, and the whispers of the wind.

I came for other reasons and I must not forget. To talk to GOD. I have questions and I need answers because I don’t want to lose my track. So I prayed and I read the Bible, which is to pray, and sought. In the quiet moments in the pool where light seemed to just be and therefore God, and the pool made no sound before the little children came and played as they splashed, I felt my God who brought me out of bondage, not from Egypt but from the United States.

There is one question in my mind. My career. Now that money is tight and I couldn’t buy my used-to-be girl a 13 peso Bonafont. HAHAHAHAH.

Then I felt fear.

It’s just me now. But it was never just me, we are all part of the same force, stronger than gravity and more faithful than a promise. And I wonder. That time outside Joe Rogan’s house, I thought God placed me there and I always thought that was His promise. Do I still want all that for the wrong reasons or am I learning to hate it for the right reasons? Is that a promise? Should I keep this path? Should I keep the faith? Should I continue the fight like Joshua and conquer the land that was promised to my forefathers?

I seek answers by the beach at night near the stars and the frolicking children. There is a movie about a Woman with a Red Dress, and a documentary about a boxer, and a play about a book about a movie about a real-life story, and a second, third, and fourth book. But I have to eat, and wash my clothes. But like my mattress, which I found outside a taco restaurant twenty minutes after I asked for it, does God provide? Does He really? He has. Always.

So why do I doubt?

Because demons shout in their sly whispers through other people and worries in my mind, trying to make me forget the things I have seen with my own eyes. They are sly at first and before you notice it their whispers are everywhere until they are shouts and you can’t hear anything but doubt, both inside and outside.

So I must not forget the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you fear the Lord Jesus Christ, demon?

The scripture says man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of GOD.

I sought again.

I feel the pressure, but should I feel it? Wasn’t I told I was chosen through that glass, through that jail cell as it became foggy? The preacher said he saw a halo and he promised in the name of God I would be let out. Twenty-five years to life didn’t become twenty-five years to life.

But sometimes I don’t see the halo. I only not see, which is to perceive only the dark.

Romance.

The most powerful drug through which the nymphets make us men fall. I shan’t. Not until it’s a godly woman, which will not make me fall but rise. Never again a woman like the Woman with the Red Dress, which it wasn’t really. It was white.

So work.

What work. Which work. How work. Why work. Where work. Prize work. Fear work. Love work. Work.

So I sought. And I will continue to seek, not only en el Paraíso del Puerto but everywhere I go. I must search.

I am afraid, and the world screams be afraid and everything in it, but God gently touches my shoulder, makes me turn around to look at the waves and the sun, and presses upon my soul.

DO NOT BE AFRAID.

But I still lack in trust. How many more miracles, how many more signs? How many more halos? The Woman with the Red Dress, The Golden Boy, Fear and Loathing at the WC, The Rapist or so they said but HE saw and said NO, The “Rapist” then it will be. Understand the importance of quotation marks.

And how can I be afraid?

But still I am afraid. Always, constantly, all the time in the metro looking at the brown folk and me so white? But am I really? I wasn’t white enough for the American Justice System.

I could dance with the keyboard all night long, but I shan’t. The effort is null, it just comes out.

This is not a book, it’s prose, in a way, the commas and the stops marking the rhythm. Is there rhythm in this as in music, as in life?

Fame, the price to pay for art.

I am a nobody, must I be a harlot on social media? Must I? Must I be a harlot on social media? Must I? Or is there no other artist under heaven in this particular style, even if he is never read or heard but only by GOD?

I am afraid.

I will continue to search, the journey isn’t over and the answers take time. I want to break my back. But which way ahead? Where shall the train go so that I place the coal, shovel after shovel after shovel?

I don’t mind.

But where shall the train go, God?

Letter to a proffesor

Hi Jaramillo,

I’m writing this in English and will then translate it with Chat GPT. I’m not a wannabe but I was educated in an English school my whole life, learning England’s English as my educational language. But believe me, although I grew up with money and obviously don’t fully realize the benefits I’ve had from that money, I’m not a materialist or an asshole. My father is a very hard-working humble man.

My passion is writing and cinema and I hope in this essay I can bring light to both. So Tarkovsky. I must confess, Professor, that I had lost much of my passion for cinema but after your classes it has returned in a giant wave I am only now learning to surf. I watched all Tarkovsky and made a list of all the movies I should watch.

I’m AA so I don’t really go to parties, not because I can’t — I have made a decision not to take any stupefiers anymore with the help of God — but because I find that lifestyle genuinely boring and empty.

However, Tarkovsky, holy fucking shit!!! It’s like I found a director that read my soul, looked into it and showed me just what I wanted to see. As a sign of respect I write this essay for everything I’ve learnt from you but mostly for reviving my

passion for cinema and making me question my biases.

I’m sorry I didn’t watch the movie when you asked it of me but I was working on what I believe is the most important thing I’ve made in my life. Only God shall see, but even if the book isn’t successful I make art for making art, although the temptation of the devil for fame and money is always there and I am prone to it. Although what I’ll never question is Jesus Christ. But that’s besides the point. Sorry, I had a lot of fucking coffee and it’s 3:19 am.

Tarkovsky is the most incredible filmmaker I have ever watched. I began watching Solaris as it seemed the easiest watch and as I watched it with my father we were both duly impressed. The sound, in which you are an expert, is completely off the charts. Truly I had never heard anything like it in any movie.

But after watching all his movies and reading his book Sculpting in Time, well, I find my view of the world based on what I was taught as a child and what I learnt throughout my experiences is very similar to Tarkovsky’s — mostly in the fact that the search for a deeper connection to God and spirituality should be the purpose of life.

My favorite book is War and Peace which I read when I was 19 and I understood from that moment on that Russian culture is one of the most interesting of the world and they are not just the bad guys the Americans have led us to believe they are. Americans, fuck. I know them well. I went to college with the woke students, I fucked many American girls, I lived next to the rednecks in the cold Pennsylvania mountains, danced with the cowboys in Texas and survived jail

with the oppressed Black folks of Texas. But I must confess although I will always believe it’s a beautiful country I was beginning to see it as the only thing in the world.

You showed me it’s not that way, through Tarkovsky, and I saw the true beauty in that which the Americans call the villains. Solaris was amazing. The reeds in the water were mesmerizing. Hari made me analyze my life and realize that if I ever went to that planet my apparition would be that of Ellie, who broke me through monstrous lies but I somehow still love. Seeing Hari and the effect seeing her had on the protagonist made me think of the ghosts of my own past and what I would do to see them again, especially because of Hari. That movie touched me and I realized I had to watch more of this man who operated the camera so marvelously.

After that I watched Andrei Rublev. As a Christian I found it a deeply touching work. First and foremost it’s a movie about faith as I find all of Tarkovsky’s movies are. Of how one man who was taught the faith loses it after seeing so much cruelty in the world but then through experience finds it once again and elects to create art as is shown in the last scene with the mural.

P.S. I’m not doing this for extra points for real, I just want to connect with someone through art. What higher purpose than that, only knowing God. Well, my experience with faith was quite different. I was taught there was no such thing as a God all my life and through suffering quite differently to Andrei at first I found Him when I had nothing left. I think at the end Andrei came to the

same conclusion I did: there has to be a God and the highest way I can honor Him is through art, the meditation and appreciation of His creation.

Impressed, I went on to movie number three and I watched Mirror. What can be said about this movie except that it’s a masterpiece. It’s life, in a movie — mother, father, son, childhood, old age. It’s like watching an abstract painting come to life and it is truly beautiful. The acting is superb and I watched it again with my parents. Tarkovsky reminded me why I chose this career and what my purpose in life was. Watching him was a spiritual experience which I find the closer you are to God the more often happens.

The scene in the newspaper factory was my favorite — something about the acting, the cinematography, the wardrobe and the pacing is a master class.

Impressed, I went on and watched Stalker and well. It’s amazing. What the holy fucking shit. Stalker and the writer in general are the most impressive. Their acting and their philosophies of life which are Tarkovsky’s — and although the stalker seems like a pathetic loser he is a sad hero but a hero nonetheless. How is there so much beauty in something so dystopian? Only Tarkovsky can find it. WOW. Magical. And the car moved with such delicacy.

Then thinking I would be disappointed I watched Ivan’s Childhood. It broke my heart. The scene in the forest had the ambience of the movie as all the characters had an innate sadness that transfers from the screen up to our hearts — little Ivan wishing to die to find his family and the soldiers obliging. I cried. I hadn’t cried

in a movie in a long time.

Then I watched Nostalgia which I must accept... Wait fuck I’m listening to Paris Walkways Live at Royal Albert Hall by Gary Moore and the solo is fucking majestic. Anyways back to what I was saying. It disappointed me until I understood in a way that is the purpose of the movie.

The feeling of nostalgia is one I can deeply relate to. I was exiled from American college unjustly just like Tarkovsky was from Russia and every day was grey as I could only think of the Savannah, Georgia southern nights which had meant so much for me. Well for Tarkovsky it was Russia and everything was grey without it. The way the actor moved and the color palette and the last candle scene as a symbol of undying faith. Masterpiece. I just had to take it in.

And The Sacrifice was also very good. The last scene with the burning house reminded me of something I hear in AA: I will give you a new life but it will cost you your old life. And it seemed as if the whole movie could be explained in that one scene and now understanding the situation in which it was made, well. Beautiful.

Thank you Professor. You have inspired me as has Gardoni and Marcelino and all the staff and my companions. After what I had lived I thought I had no reason to live. But now through my book and telling my story through art and eventually a movie I am inspired in this school CENTRO.

If I had never left Savannah, Georgia I would never have met all the wonderful

people I have met and I would’ve been lost in the idiocy of American culture. Viva Mexico and thank you for your teachings. I understood what you wanted us to do with the stairs — understand the rigor needed for cinema of quality.

Thank you Professor and I hope this essay serves as an apology for not watching them earlier as I said I was working on the most important project of my life. But you have renewed through Tarkovsky my faith in cinema as an art form. I’ll send you the Google sheet of all the movies you’ve inspired me to watch. And I get to make my own short soon. How marvelous.

In conclusion, Tarkovsky is deep-seated in spirituality and love for the world in all of its horrendous beauty and he inspired the hell out of me. I must go to sleep although I probably won’t — will go on with revision number six for my book. Hopefully we can work together in the movie about it one day, together teacher and student.

The American Jail and The Mexican Annex

I just drank a strong black coffee and it’s 2:30 AM and I thought I’d get to writing. Maybe nobody gives a shit, if it is that way so be it, I heard once you should write like no one is watching you because no one is watching you, and anyway the act of writing in and off itself is a source of great joy for me although I must admit I have sinned in the fact of liking my own voice a little, no rather a lottle too much.

I write this journalistic article to give insight into two experiences of unwanted confinement in two different countries that pride themselves both on not being the other when in reality they are in some way not too dissimilar. I will talk about the American Jail, Chatam County Jail to be more precise and the Mexican Annex (for those who don’t know what an annex is it’s a rehabilitation center if it can be called that often illegal in which the living conditions are beyond terrible not too much unlike a jail).

I think my reputation is already fucked at this point in the wrong and in the right circles because of my own irrational, prideful, lustful and at some points altogether crazy actions (I did lose my mind at multiple points there, chasing ghosts with golf clubs in Texas neighborhoods and hiding in Artz Pedregal thinking a billionaire was planning to kill me. The first one because of drug addiction the second one because of an incorrect dose of medication when I was already in recovery and you know I do have a mind prone to the occasional hallucination and manic episode. Just the way I was born I guess).

One girl at my second Uni, an incredibly beautiful blue eyed white skinned beauty told me I should be more humble. She was right my pride led to my destruction and I had to be humiliated constantly to understand that lesson. Humility, Faith, and Charity which is love for everyone whether they are deserving of it or not are the three values I try to live my life by today. It wasn’t always that way.

My point is I got no one to impress and no reason to lie, so you can take my word when I tell you the truth about both these two experiences, I do sure hope so you don’t get curious and try to experience them yourself and my account is satisfying enough. If not well I can give you a few tips.

I chose this subject because it’s something people constantly ask about. So here goes: Which experience was worse?

I’d have to go with Jail so I’ll begin with that.

Being driven towards a jail, cuffed looking out the window of a patrol car at the outside world not knowing if it’s something you’d be able to do again is very frightening, and you can’t even roll down the window to feel the air.

Jail is interesting and the exact opposite of the annex in the fact that is industrialized, economized, mechanized. People make a lot of money off you being in jail, the whole criminal justice system economy in America is so big I think it incentives injustices as a source of income, as a friend told me inside Chatam County Jail, it’s privatized so they make money off every inmate. Whether Chatam county was privatized or not I don’t know.

The annex on the other hand at least the one I was on was very rural in a very poor area of Mexico and was only inescapable because it was in the middle of nowhere and getting to society would be very dangerous so your only option was to try your luck at the annex, but we’ll get to that.

So yeah jail feels like a big fucking machine from the moment you walk in and it swallows you up, even the police men seem swallowed up by the architecture, lighting and structure of the jail. As I said, industrialized. Americans are physically big people so both inmate and cops are very imposing.

I think with the history of enslavement in Georgia it was a particularly bad state to be jailed in as some inmates told me and later a friend at a diner in Memphis also told me, locking up people like cattle systematically based on not fitting certain criteria is the norm in Georgia, or so he said, inside Jail there is a feeling of you the little guy fighting injustice (in my case although I do admit responsibility for bad choices) and the big American machine. Like a movie. But not a fun one because it is very fucking real.

Jail etiquette is flush as you shit, annex etiquette is throw and pull up forty buckets of shit stained water from the drain at 8:00 AM in the morning to start the day.

The oppression in jail is clear and concise, there is no way in fucking hell you’ll ever get out of this place if we don’t let you, every corridor is exactly the same and it links at the end in a four way intersection to the same architecture, the demeaning in the Annex is be free to roam about, try to escape, where will you go?

The Annex is demeaning in a terrible way, unlike in a rehab clinic where professionals usually compassionate professionals seek to help the spiritual broken addicts towards recovery the annex staff are resentful horrible people who delight in mistreating and humiliating the addict at his worst moment when abstinence has him always in the brink of emotion, you are constantly provoked so as to be punished and humiliated.

I was hated in the annex, I say this with honesty not hate or a sense of superiority, everyone in the annex was brown and poor I was white and rich, they hated me for it, and in their abstinence which makes you always uncomfortable angry and unhappy they banded against the white man.

In jail I was also the black sheep, or rather the white one because most of the inmates were black. Georgia’s racist past could be felt through the jail walls, In jail you are in more danger of being raped. Plain and simple.

In jail you are idle always inside a cell except an hour a day, in the annex you are never idle, you are always working, for example carrying rocks from one side of a field to another for no particular reason, cleaning, mopping, cleaning the drain with the shit bucket, burning the trash etc….

The food in jail is awful but at least it is varied, in the annex we ate soy and soy and soy and then soy and more soy. Fuck soy.

Both as you can reasonably guess are filled to the brim with drug addicts. (Kids don’t use drugs)

I even encountered Tusi and marihuana in jail, one actually being smuggled by a cop! Can you imagine that! In the U.S.A?!

In the Annex you see extreme poverty, which I am very thankful for because it gave me incredible perspective as to my luck and grace. I met three kids two 12 years old and one 13. They were addicted to crystal meth, cocaine, alcohol, marihuana etc and their father was a low level drug lord. They never had a shot.

I had a black friend in jail whose use of drugs had turned him into a crazy person and although he was very funny and genuinely good his insanity had brought him to shoot at his girl. Lotta guys in jail cuz of girls, because of lies and also because of shit they did.

Homosexuality is also rampant in jail and in the annex, although in the annex it feels more like a distorted choice and in the jail it is imposed on unsuspecting victims.

Religion is in both places as a small beacon of light. Religion is good in jail and in the annex, although in the annex it was distorted and weaponized by the abusive management, which consisted in the big amount of three persons meanwhile in the jail hundred were employed.

I have thought about it and I don’t know which is more demeaning, one treats you like a dangerous animal at the zoo, the other like a plague, there is more respect in jail, as if you were meaningful enough to have so much security around to keep you submissive, in the annex you are just repeated to constantly that you are a worthless piece of shit.

Showers in the annex were cold and lasted three minutes, showers in jail could last as much as thirty minutes but you had to constantly click two buttons hot and cold simultaneously every five seconds.

Liberty of movement didn’t exist outside a cell in jail for more than one hour a day whilst in the Annex you could when not being worked like a slave walk across the desserted nature into nowhere.

Is it better to be alone or to be surrounded but hated. I can’t say.

In both you don’t know how long you’ll be there, there are many people that stay up to three years against their wills illegally in the annexes of Mexico.

I was threatened at some point with the annex’s affiliate annex which was just the second floor of a run down house in which in a cage there was six bunkbeds and nothing more, and no space, those guys, I was one of them for a small time couldn’t move and they peed and showered with a bucket, it smelled like cigarette and sweat and it’s not a place I’d like to ever see the inside of again unless in a police raid, to arrest the people managing it. but there you are safeish.

Jail, alone in a cell with a repressed gay huge man. That’s danger.

For recreation people in jail played chess, poker and basketball, in the annex we just smoke shitty cheap Chinese cigarettes, both places you wake up and you hate reality and yourself for making that your reality, but places scream of the devil but are where many people attest to finding God.

I did.

In both.

In many ways and I hope I can visit both places one day again in the future as an outside and a helping hand to those who have lost their way.

Humility.
Charity.
Faith.

Signed
Jeronimo del Toro