A mess on the roof and late night TV.

Across the street form my grandparent's house lived a young girl, her Mother, and young brother; Alejandra.  Alejandra was obese and foul, she would wear Stevie Nicks ensembles but was 100 lbs over the hippie chic limit. I remember thinking her brother was cute but now I cannot remember what he looked like. Her mother had cats and always smelled like a Mexican hotel bathroom.

The best part about hanging at Alejandra's house was that she lived in an actual house. Up to now all I've ever lived in was apartments and a loft with my mother's "modular furniture". Her house was on a corner lot and it had this amazing entry room with marble floors and a spiral stair case. Once again my novela dream was becoming reality.

One day Alejandra took me to a little room on the roof of the house that was built for the help, but after her Father died her mom could not afford anymore rural Mexican girls to do the cleaning, so the room became Alejandra's domain. The room smelled musty and had writings and drawings on the walls, candles were burning and incense was smoking up the place. There were also blood stains and a huge star of David painted on the floor.

I was not sure what that all meant , but after I went home and shared my adventures my grandma forbid me to ever go back.  I now realize that this marks the day on which I became obsessed with messes whom do drugs and talk about things that they only see or hear in their heads, much like Courtney Love. Although I'm not sure what happened to Ale my fascination remains.
I did not have many friends while living at grandma's, and now that she knew that Alejandra was performing chicken sacrifices on the roof top I was officially friendless. This allowed for ample TV time and since I had one in my room I would watch all kinds of programming that was not necessarily suitable for viewers my age.

One of my favorites was on at 1 am and I would make sure to stay awake. "My night with Shanik" was a talk/game show. Shanik was the hostess. She had amazingly awful bleach blond hair and was creepy skinny, her voice was as annoying as Chihuahuas in heat but all the sex talk and "position of the day" segment made her voice as pleasant as margaritas on taco Tuesday.  Shanik would interview celebrities and ask about their sex lives while they would lay on a bed that was set as the "sitting area" and sip cocktails. This, to me seemed like a dream and I made it my personal goal to lay in bed half naked with someone and sip on my vodka soda. Thanks to my perseverance that dream is now my every night reality.  There were also games such as: pop the balloon with your ass while sitting on a blowup doll, and pin the penis to the stud. The kind of entertainment every child should watch before bed.

After MY night with Shanik I would go to school in the morning and talk to the kids at school about my viewing experience.  To some, my sex talk was viewed as highly inappropriate, specially to my teachers. But for the horny few that were interested I was some kind of connoisseur; an explorer of sorts. Here I was  telling tales of my late night adventures and some of the kids didn't even know that Santa was just a fat guy in a suit popularized by Coca Cola.  Teachers would tell me to stop distracting the class, but it was not my fault that my sexual findings captivated my audience, I mean, someone had to stay abreast of the latest vibrator technology.