Junior Bonner Hospitalized...

"He has tasted good and evil in your bedrooms and your bars,
And he's traded in tomorrow for today
Runnin' from his devils, Lord, and reachin' for the stars,
Losin' all he's loved along the way
But if this world keeps right on turnin' for the better or the worse,
All he ever gets is older and around
From the rockin' of the cradle to the rollin' of the hearse,
The goin' up was worth the comin' down..."
- Kris Kristofferson, The Pilgrim, Chapter 33

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

HARLINGEN, Texas - Libertine writer Junior Bonner was admitted to a local hospital late last night after suffering what doctors said was a massive heart attack while making love at his mobile home in the tiny community of Combes north of here. The prognosis is guarded, a spokeswoman for the hospital said early this morning.

"He's an old goat," said Arnoldo "El Soquete" Lara, a neighbor who helped the 44-year-old Bonner onto the back of his pickup for the ride to the emergency room. "I mean he looks old, but the guy is not that old. Too many weemin', as he likes to say."

A Colorado transplant, Bonner has written for The Paz Files and other area publications. No one knows if he has any relatives, although another neighbor said he'd heard it from someone who'd heard it from someone else that Junior has an older brother in the national rodeo business. "But he's alone in the Valley," Lara went on as he smoked a Bugler outside the hospital. "The guy drinks like crazy and and he parties way too much, but he's got no relatives here."

The woman at his side during the heart attack said everything was fine for the first 30 minutes.

"He was doing what he always does with naked women," said Inez Jeantete, a waitress at a Harlingen bar who declined to give the name of her employer for fear of being fired. "Junior is a healthy man, but he lives a hard life. His mobile home could use some cleaning and that bed is just too damned saggy. Maybe the cheap mattress had something to do with the heart attack, quien sabe?"

Jeantete, who gave her age as 24, said the two met shortly after Bonner ambled into the bar and she walked up to him to ask about his cowboy clothes. "He looks a mess, like someone you want to take home," she explained. "Plus, the guy smells like cookies, and what woman can ignore that."

Bonner, said an editor at The Paz Files, had been lax in submitting articles during the past few weeks, but was reportedly working on a story about a monster in the Laguna Madre he told editors was known to Port Isabel and South Padre Island residents as "The Loch Mex Monster." Bonner had been stalking the waterway in hopes of landing a photo...

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