You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Bar Mexico.
It’s soap.
I received this soap as a gift.
The soap touts itself as “Mexican Beer Soap.”
That’s right; Mexican Beer Soap.
For the man who loves Mexican beer, Mexican women, Mexican lawlessness, do we have the cleansing product for you.
The wrapper says: Everyone needs to get away from time to time. Made with beer, agave, lime and aloe. These classic beach scents will transport you to a better and more relaxing place.
I don’t remember Mexico ever being any of these things.
Mexico was secondary inspection and little children selling Chicklet gum at the border.
Mexico was hookers with one arm and arm wrestling for food.
Bar Mexico?
The only bars I remember in Mexico were the ones incarcerating me. The bars I remember were iron and forcing me to sit in a pen with a dirt floor and a hole in the center of the pen that I assume was the bathroom.
Soap Bar Mexico? I used it this morning in the shower.
My 1st thought? This soap is nice like that 1st beer buzz is nice.
The soap was smooth on my skin. I detected no evidence of broken glass or someone elses hair all ready melted into the bar.
And it did smell clean, kind of like a lime tree on a beach vacation. Which is exactly the opposite of what Mexico smells like.
Mexico is the grease on the underside of your gas grill. Mexico is a two lane highway piled high with dirt. That’s where the banditos hide and rob you when you crash. Mexico is a Pemex gas tanker that provides a place to hide from the local police.
As Bar Mexico cascades across my body, I imagine I am cleaning my underarms with fresh-cut limes. I imagine washing my face with sparkling ice-cold Corona. I imagine cleaning my man parts with Guacamole and onion dip.
After the shower I get out smelling like a Gringo’s version of Cinco De Mayo.
“This Bar Mexico is great!” I say to myself.
It was fun and rarely do I smile in the shower alone.
Rarely.
Compared to other soaps, this was an event.
Dove Soap? Boring. It smells like comatose corpse.
Irish Spring? All I think of green hills and bloody Haggus.
But Bar Mexico?
It’s a soap for outlaws, a cleanser for Pistoleros, a rub down for Drug Cartels that are ruthless, but sanitary.
As I lather up, I inhale a soapy memory of a road trip from my youth.
I remember crossing the border in a rent-a-car. We are wearing tuxedos and there is half a keg in the back seat.
I’m not sure what lead up to the border crossing, but I know that 48 hours later we would all need a good delousing and a bi-lingual lawyer.
As I rub Bar Mexico across my glistening man-scape, I feel my skin suck in the ingredients that include olive oil, coconut oil, beer, mango butter and raw blue agave.
That’s quite a cleaning lineup.
You know when mango butter is part of your daily hygiene you’ve gone to the dark side.
As I clean my legs, and around my thighs, I’m laughing.
Bar Mexico smells wonderful, like happy hour at the corner cantina. Bar Mexico is little children named Pepe and dogs that wag their tails knowing they will not be on Tuesday’s taco cart.
The fact that Bar Mexico smells good is a red flag. The fact that Bar Mexico makes me feel refreshed like a lime wedge in a margarita is how I know that something is wrong.
My 1st thought? Bar Mexico is made in Sweden or Hungary. It can’t be made by a company that understands Mexico.
If Bar Mexico really wants to capture the essence of Mexico, it would create a soap that smells like Mexico.
If it were produced in Ensenada, by real Mexicans, Bar Mexico would smell less like Blue Agave and more like raw sewage and soiled ass.
Mexico is dust and cat tacos and scorching sunshine on Calle De La Revolucion.
If I was going to name a soap, I wouldn’t use the word Mexico. EVER!
Not if sales were important to my e-commerce platform.
To me, Mexico smells like corrupt Federales and the stench of a Tia Juana Donkey Show.
Mexico smells like stagnating beach seaweed and half-finished cinder block buildings that will only be built if cocaine prices go up in the U.S.
I’ve been to Bar Mexico. It is really a bar in Mexico. Above the door, someone painted the word BAR on the stucco.
So simple. So direct. So Mexico.
B A R.
I remember arm wrestling for beers in this dirt floor establishment. I certainly don’t remember a damn thing about soap.
In any language, Bar means bar.
In most languages, bar never means soap.
So today I will go to work smelling of Dos Equis and fresh fruit.
My boss will remind me that I can’t drink at work.
“My skin is drunk, boss. And my liver jealous,” I will retort to his mystified look.
I will walk away in a vapor of lime, secure in the knowledge that my skin, like an epidermal pirate, will not get scurvy.
Bar Mexico reminds me once again that SALES is MARKETING.
If there were truth in advertising, this product would sneak over the border and immediately get a fake i.d. and try and send money back to its relatives, dish soap, shampoo and baby Jesus popsicle stick wind chimes.
Sniff. Bar Mexico. Arriba!
I love washing with the scent of a 3rd world country.
Life’s Crazy™