One of my earliest and most profound memories reaches back to the Carter years. It has nothing to do with the president, anything he said or did. I tend to divide my life by presidential administrations. I think it was ’77, maybe ’78. I was eight or nine on a family vacation out west for as much as we could cover. We parked our cab over camper on the Juarez side to roam the Mexican streets. It was safer back then I suppose, not that we really cared. Safe was for pussies and we wanted adventure so into the streets we went. There were vendors abundant and one in particular was a hooker selling small daggers. I was tiny and blonde with Toughskin jeans and a shirt from Kiss’s first tour. I got erections a lot and wanted a blade to potentially stab some villain. Some bastard I’d yet begun hating. I said “fuck” quite often without getting beaten because I murmured the word like a secret. I also said “shit” and “dickbrain.” I heard a carnie say “dickbrain” and I really loved it so I threw it around like a javelin, or an atlatl, something like that. The prostitute had a table with an oilcloth cover and about twenty items. All of them would kill a human. Part of the allure was that she wasn’t wearing panties so I stared at her crotch for an hour. Standing directly in front of the table. Wow, this gal was great. She wore a mini skirt, the kind hookers like to wear, and her lawn chair was red and white. I don’t know why I was alone. Perhaps we divided as a family to cruise for whores and booze? After drooling until my legs were weak, I approached the stand and bought an eight-inch blade, which to this day hasn’t killed another. It has a jaguar upon it eating a lamb and on the blade is dripping blood. It was four dollars even and I tipped her a buck because I thought the lady was swell. The prostitute asked me in broken English if I had any interest in “muling brown dope” across the border in my anus. I thought she said “ruling through a periscope” and I replied, “I play first base. Would you like to go to the Fall Festival? The bouncy house is only a quarter. Hey, let’s be pen pals!” That shit was huge back then. She wouldn’t give me her address so when I got back to Dora I wrote her a letter about riding in cars and about my big green comb. It was the size of a tortoise. I mailed the letter to the PROSTITUTE in the MEXICAN, JUAREZ and the missive never came back. She never wrote and I hope she’s not dead. She’d be about 65. Maybe 66. I still haven’t stabbed anybody. I really don’t want to now.