Cast of Characters, part 2: Julio

Julio is the cook, and Julio is awesome. I wish as many people thought I were awesome as think Julio is. My problem may be that I speak English. But enough about me: Julio is awesome.

Julio is 25, has been in the States for about three years, and looks, in any official photo ever taken of him, like a stone-cold murderer. My favorite unofficial photo of him shows him sitting in a large kiddie pool, wearing goggles, surrounded by 10-year-old cousins, looking like a hairy pool toy. The way he normally looks is somewhere in between.

Julio is working here, sending money home to build a house for himself and his family, current (parents, brothers) and notional. He's from near Actopan in the state of Hidalgo. His family does all right at ranching, selling enough animals and vegetables to buy what they don't raise or grow, and they have a small business delivering gas. So they get by, but there's not a lot of capital floating around--someone had to come to the States to raise the house-building money.  It was apparently felt that Julio was perhaps the best to skip town, being the most capable of his brothers as well as having a habit of getting in lover's quarrels with young men from the adjacent burgs. Now, Mexican lover's quarrels involve lots of ancient family grudges and by the way everyone carries guns all the time, so there may have been some wisdom in this decision. I'll tell you what--my pansy ass feels a lot better with Julio around the bar, and he holds what I believe to be the record on the punch-it-as-hard-as-you-can machine.

Julio claims to be a changed man--a lover, not a fighter. Again, the truth lies somewhere in between. He did borrow my truck once, and leave it parked in front of the apartment of the married woman he was seeing, which, while technically the act of a lover, is also the act of a man asking to have a fight brought to him. Or to me, should the cuckold see me in my own truck and make an incredible leap of faulty logic.

People, particularly girls, tend to think of Julio as kind of a teddy bear--and there's no mistaking it, the man is bashful and rotund. But there's nothing soft about him. This is a guy who, after six other tries, packed himself into the false bottom of a truck with a half-dozen other people so that, if he was very lucky this time, he could spend years away from the only people on Earth that he knew, in a country whose language he didn't speak, working his ass off and always looking over his shoulder. I know he looks to me for advice and help, and he has frequently said that he holds me in high esteem because of my evident education. What I hope I've successfully communicated to him in my textbook-sounding Spanish is that he's the one to be admired. I've never done anything half as ballsy as what he's done just by being here. Julio is awesome.

Wanna see some barfights?

The thing about barfights is that they're rarely knock-down, drag-out brawls. Usually it's a lot of bro-ing, one punch gets thrown, people get in between them, and the bartender, if he's smart, runs everyone and his cousin out of the place. These are no exception--blink and you miss them. Now, I'm having the damnedest time getting the video (a) converted and (b) embedded, so you'll have to click on the links rather than view it on this page. I know. It's difficult. How quickly the world owes you something.

Orville v. Dan

Yes, Orville. You can see Dan give him the "you son of a bitch" point, and it looks like Dan actually shoves him first. Orville cuffs him about the ear and gets in a pretty good right to the jaw before being heroically taken down from behind.

Result: Orville is 86'd, Dan is not. Why? Well, Orville is an asshole and doesn't tip, and Dan is the world's nicest guy and does tip, generously. All present agreed that the fight was Orville's fault. My favorite part: the high-five that Wayne gives Dan after everything calms down. Also note the fellow in the white cap and shirt entering from the right: that's Julio the cook, about whom more later. The bartender, being a female of slight build, called him over--though by the time he got there, there wasn't much to do other than for him to stand around being large.

See it.

2 Native Chicks v. TJ

I hate to indulge in base racial stereotypes, but Indian women are mean drunks. In the parking lot one day, one nasty regular punched her husband right on his stitches just days after his emergency appendectomy. These two jumped a nice guy named TJ, pulled his hoodie over his head, drug him out to the parking lot, and started beating on him until his friends interceded.

Result: TJ got beat up by a girl, hahaha.

See it.

It's a hard-knocker life

Woman, apropos of nothing, grabbing and jiggling her ample bosom: Do these look fake to you?
Me: I'd have to get a closer look, but offhand I'd say no.
Woman: [some stupid story about some guy thinking they were fake]
Me: [looks at her breasts]

Beats a desk job.

A licky boom boom down

Today, someone put on Informer, by Snow. I was very, very happy about this.

You are fooling no one with your mohawk

You are going bald in front. No amount of punk rock can save you.

You want to WHAT?

Tonight it was a slow-eyed Mexican playing weepy country songs on the juke while frat boys played pool and a stripper told me stories.

"So this guy comes in and he's all decked out and I'm thinking he's some kind of mobster. He comes up to me right away and he says, 'I know what I want, and when I decide I want something, I get it.' So I figure I'm going to take this guy for a lot of money. I'm giving him lap dances wearing clothes and he doesn't even care--he just wanted to get busy with his hands, but he kept laying down so much cash so I kind of let him.

"So at one point he says to me, 'Baby, I'd like to take you out and rape you,' and I said, 'What?' and he says, 'Oh, not like that. Just show you a good time and then maybe we fuck.' [Ed.: This is when most guys are kicked out of the club, maybe even handed over to the cops.] So I figure OK, I'll play him a little longer, let him think whatever he wants.

"He says he's running out of money and he'd like me to come out to the car with him. I shoot the bouncer a look so he comes with me. This guy takes me out to a nice Expedition, rented, and opens up a suitcase that's just full of sex toys, KY jelly, and plastic bags full of money. He asks how much more he owes me, and it was only $200, but I said $320, because, well, yeah. He ended up dropping, what, $1,200 dollars on me. I mean, I barely made $14 today. $1,200. Me and Gary were about to not make rent, and I paid rent and I got new contacts. I made sure they kept him in the club while I left so he couldn't follow me home."

Yes, the glamorous life of a 44-year-old stripper in Southeast Portland.

Portland's leading manufacturer of rape and rape-related accessories