ENSENADA I
DATELINE: Ensenada, MEXICO
This story begins in Ensenada, Mexico. It’s a coastal city about 100 miles south of the border, and about 40 years behind modern times. I’m with 2 of my best friends in the whole world; Joe and Schultz. Joe is a finance major at the University of S.D. He lives in Pacific Beach. It is Joe’s burden to wake up each day and absorb the roar of the Pacific Ocean. It is his duty, each and every day to take in the sites of hard body thongs rolling skating down the boardwalk. Tough Life.
Schultz and I are USC students. We matriculate in the Ghetto of Los Angeles. We wake every night to the sounds of LAPD choppers flying over our rooftop. I can understand why we road tripped to San Diego to see Joe. But what possesses us to leave Joe’s ocean side splendor for the arm pit that is Mexico? Well my brain doesn’t have a portal that retrieves that exact memory.
This Mexico story begins in a bar, as they so often do. It isn’t just a bar, it’s kind of a joint. It’s actually a big square box with a roof a few support beams scattered about to keep the place from caving in on itself.
I remember the walls as a burnt orange. The lead based paint is peeling like palm husks. Behind the curling paint you can see layers of history of countless Ensenada fist fights and songs sung and love; won and lost.
The floor is concrete slab and has seen a thousand spills and gushes of vomit. There is a rickety old bar with a Dos Equis neon sign. There are a few black and white photos of some man wearing a sombrero. Maybe the guy in the picture is a movie star, maybe a beer vendor? who the hell knows? Everywhere you look there are Mexicans, dressed in polyster and wife beater shirts.
Like Vegas there are no clocks anywhere. In Vegas a lack of clocks is designed to keep you gambling. In Ensenada, a lack of clocks is probably because nobody can tell time and time doesn’t really exist. The country’s motto is: manana.
There are no shades on the windows of this dusty cantina and the sun is filtering through. All I know is that it is late in the afternoon and the Western Sun is pushing beams of golden warmth onto the dance floor. In the dust and cobwebs of this Mexican beer hall, you can literally see the filaments of light twisting and torquing as they pass through the dirty glass.
I am standing at the Juke Box. There are hundreds of selections, all written in Spanish. Like Chinese math, I don’t have a damn clue what any of this means, so as Joan Jett once said: I put another Centavo in the Juke Box baby, and push selection G-4.
“What’d you pick?” Joe asks.
G-4 I reply.
“I love G-4, Joe bursts out, spilling Tecate beer from his bottle.
Schultz has that crazy look on his face. The look that says we have been up for several days now and we are looking for a romantic liaison. That usually means trouble is close by.
Suddenly G-4 fills the room with a lively Mariachi tune. The dance hall erupts like an impromptu Klan meeting a Jay – Z concert. Mexican men grab Mexican women and pull them onto the dance floor. The song sounds like any of a hundred songs I have heard played at a Sunday Brunch at the Mariott Hotel.
That’s you baby. That’s you!” Schultz says referring to my musical selection.
Schultz is 6 foot 2 inches tall. He has brown shaggy hair and dark, souless eyes that reveal nothing of a brain that is predisposed for irrationality.
Schultz is grinning ear to ear. The music and energy have once again ignited this human keg of dynamite. He guzzles the remainder of his beer and slams it on the bar.
“Garson,” he shouts. “Another round of Cervezas por favor.”
The bar matron smiles a toothless grin and nods. She reaches into a plastic garbage pail on the floor filled with ice and retrieves 3 frosty beverages.
Joe laughs out loud.
Being an accountant, Joe is sensible with a wild side. He doesn’t know Schultz that well but it doesn’t take long to get to know “El Diablo.”
And this isn’t just your normal venture into Mexico. This isn’t your typical, spur of the moment, tourist-like “let’s go to Mexico” crossing the border into TJ mind you. This isn’t just taking the coast highway 69 miles to Rosarita beach for five dollar Langostas (Lobsters). This is some 100 miles south of the United States of America. We are a 2 hour drive into a wild west continent where time has stopped and laws only exist when the guys toting the guns find you.
“We need to dance,” Schultz hollers.
Suddenly two women sit down beside us. Schultz smiles as if the Easter Bunny has just delivered the golden egg.
We strike up a conversation which is hard to do with the music blaring.
My bus boy Spanish is weak and Schultz’s Guatemalan heritage doesn’t exactly qualify him as a multi lingual expert for the C.I.A.
In Mexico, it’s less about talk and more about eye contact, a smile, and how much money do you have stowed away in your sock. Bailar means to dance. Cerveza means beer. Hola means hello. In bus boy Spanish I think I tell the woman next to me that I like riding donkeys. Either way it illicits a smile and that’s an open invitation in Mexico to keep searching for love.
Time is irrelevant in Mexico and it seems darker now. We are dancing to our 20th Mariachi greatest hits song of the night.
After way too many adult beverages, we leave the women at the bar and we hit the rest room.
Schultz is a lighthouse of excitement. “We’re gonna take these girls home,” he says proudly.
“What home?,” I say staring at a hole in the floor that I assume is the toilet.
Joe bursts out laughing. “You’re kidding right?”
Schultz is dazed by Joe’s tone.
“Hell yeah,” he declares. “My girl’s beautiful.”
Joe spits his mouth full of beer into the sink. “She’s 60 years old,” He chortles.
Schultz’s eye roll around in his head like a bobble head doll.
“She’s so old, it’s like you’ve been dancing with your grandma.”
I start laughing. “I thought she looked old,” I say. “But then I thought maybe it’s the light.”
“It’s no light,” Joe says, his booming voice filling the tiny disgusting beer hall restroom. “And you were slow dancing with grandma like it was the prom.”
Schultz begins chuckling like a madman on a caffeine buzz. “Oh no! She 65 years old?”
“every bit of it!” Joe says patting Schultz on the back.
“Yeah, dude, she’s got crags in her face like driftwood,” I say aloud.
Schultz laughs so loud I almost expect the mirror to crack. I lean on the wall and hold my sides I’m laughing so hard. I wipe tears from my eyes and scream at Schultz.
“You’re trying to have sex with your own grandma.”
Schultz is laughing so hard, he can’t breathe. He sits on the toilet so he doesn’t fall down.
“What are you laughing at AC,” Joe says to me with renewed vigor.
I give him a confused look. “Hey whatever, my girl’s in her 20’s and she’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, but did you notice anything weird when you were dancing with her?”
I scrunch my face and take another sip. “She has a tight little body and a pretty face. What?”
Schultz is leaning forward, a huge smile on his face. He’s hanging on Joe’s every word.
“What?” he screams aloud, his excitement spilling over.
“Your girl only has one arm!”
Schultz screams so loud it sounds like cattle being slaughtered. HA HA HA HA. He is stomping his feet on the floor around the toilet like a three year old having a tantrum.
I look at Joe inquisitively. “One arm?”
She’s wearing a dress, dude. She only has one arm! You didn’t know that?”
I look at my tecate bottle and search my memories.
It’s not like she was wearing a winter parka. I should have noticed that at some point, I think to myself. She was wearing a flowered dress. Nice legs I think to myself. She had two of those. Eyes, brown and beautiful. 2 of those. Arms. HMMM?
“Come to think of it, I was wondering why she wouldn’t hold onto me during that slow dance,” I say laughing.
“That’s cause she couldn’t hold you and all the beers you bought her with the same one hand,” Schultz says using Schultz logic.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and we head back to the bar. As if I have put on corrective goggles I see Joe’s version of the truth.
Schultz has been dancing with Abuela (grandma). She is portly and her face leather hard. She is easily 65 years old. I imagine she has 14 grand children one of whom I am apparently trying to pick up. She is beautiful and shapely in her clingy sun dress. I look for an arm and Joe is right. The sleeve is flapping in the breeze.
I look at Schultz and Joe and they at me. We burst out laughing. The women are all ready talking to other Gringos stupid enough to sit at the bar with this grandma and granddaughter freak show.
“They’re hookers you idiots,” Joe hollers.
A one armed hooker? Only in Mexico baby!
We laugh harder as we get back into my 240 Z and begin the dangerous trek back North.
Tomorrow in Ensenada II: We head back to the USA, but first, Schultz decides we should stop and meet some of his buddies in Rosa Rita beach.
OH NO!!