I despise Mexico. Perhaps I should take more care when expressing that around strangers. I know most will presume I’m prejudice or some kind of racist. It’s not Mexicans as a whole that I hate, it’s the nation. I will never go there again, for a variety of reasons. The good people in Mexico are irrelevant. The evil and corrupt minority hold sway over the majority that are too cowardly or weak to organize, fight back and hold to that struggle. Mexico is a beautiful woman, gang raped in the street and beaten to a pulp while the people of the village idly watch from a distance. Beneath the blood and bruises, a once soft and lovely face drapes over a shattered pile of bones. Vultures pick at her flesh as she struggles for the next breath. In the United States we fight daily to protect our rights against the police, the courts and the ever intrusive local and Federal government. That battle was long lost in Mexico. The corruption there broke down even further and police chiefs, military officers and local governors fight amongst themselves like feudal warlords. The national government is little more than an actors, playing the role, but lacking actual power to enforce even simple order in most regions.
I mourn for Mexico. I have a picture in my mind of a lone old man, sitting on his porch. A guitar in his lap and head hung low. Thick, black smoke from garbage and homes set ablaze hangs over the city behind him. Women and children dressed in rags pass by pushing carts filled with the few belongings and supplies they could gather. A man in a paramilitary uniform and pistol on his hip stands in the street, rummaging through the carts looking for valuables. Anything that catches his eye he throws to three men smoking cigarettes next to a rusted flatbed truck on the side of the road. They’re wearing dirty blue jeans and faded military shirts—his militia formed from local thugs. The old man is only scenery, not a participant. He’s an echo of another age. He strums his guitar. The strings cry sad melodies, in the spirit of Francesco Tarrega and Fernando Sor. Songs that weep heartbreak, loss, complete and total abandonment. He was the husband of the beautiful Senorita Mexico. He waits for his time to die, expressing his sorrow, missing his beloved.
When you’re under twenty one and living in Southern California there’s a few options if you want to get twisted with drink. You can acquire alcohol through any means necessary and get groovy in private, hide from the fascists at the beach or drink openly somewhere the police won’t happen along. Another option is to go to the kind of bars that let the underage in with a wink and a nod. These places of full of idiots and having a good time can be difficult, unless your idea of fun is rearranging the facial features of idiots. Your final option is south of the border. Tijuana, Rosarito, Encenada or other Baja cities with bar districts that cater on the hoards of underage Americans. The most popular and simple option is Tijuana. You can park on the US side, walk across the border and catch a cab waiting to ferry gringos to the bar district. No one should at any time go to Tijuana for business, pleasure or any other purpose. I know that now. It’s the most ugly and desperate city I’ve ever seen. The only possible way to walk those streets is under the influence of serious drink to deaden the senses. But be quick about it and find yourself back in a bar before you notice the ugly reality. Of course with weakened senses, you’re more susceptible to robbery or worse. Every choice has its risks.
I visited Mexico many times. It went from fun to seriously depraved in a short time, just over a year. It may not have been the region that changed, but changes in our behavior that led to the events leading up to my last night in Mexico. With each trip we became more bold, more adventurous and ventured further out of safety. We mingled with the locals. Flirted with the Mexican girls. Went into bars with no gringos.
It was a Wednesday when William, Forrest and me headed to Tijuana. We served in the same battalion, 3rd Battalion, 11th Marines at Twentynine Palms—out in the desert between the windmills of Palm Springs and Las Vegas. Why we were going to Mexico on a Wednesday I can’t recall. We didn’t have to work the next day, so it must have been one of those holidays that only Federal employees observe. We made our usual ingress; parked at the Denny’s at the border, hit up the ATM, walked across the border and jumped into the first cab. The smiling cabbie sped us along, ignoring all traffic signs and we were at the main drag within minutes. The A Club, People’s and Buckets were the hot destinations for the barely legal San Diego sluts looking to get sloppy drunk and used by legions of drunk Marines and Sailors. We intended to partake, but our plan failed to factor in that most of the girls that pack these sleazy bars on the weekend have class Thursday morning. It was a pitiful showing. A text book example of a sausage party. The only course of action was to accept the situation and get so completely drunk it wouldn’t matter that there are no girls, because we’d be too inebriated to get an erection.
The new plan was working well. We were ejected from one bar due to a casual misunderstanding between my fist and a bartenders face. We stumbled across the street to another establishment and they were eager to exchange our American dollars for a steel pail full of ice and bottles of warm beer. Forrest apparently hadn’t completely accepted defeat and was soon chasing a young Mexican girl around the dance floor. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t beautiful either. If you closed one eye, squinted and looked at her though a bottle of Tecate, she looked like Selma Hayek. I know this to be true, because that is exactly what I was doing while I watched Forrest trying to feel up her breasts. He eventually talked her into sitting down with us and she sat quietly, nursing a beer that Forrest gave her. She whispered something in his ear. They both got up and walked out of sight to the far side of the bar. He came back after a few minutes and had that I’m going to abuse our friendship look in his eyes.
“OK, she’s got a friend and they want to go somewhere else, but she’s kinda big.”
I was most decidedly drunk, but even scum like me have standards. William doesn’t, and after a short internal debate he screamed out, “Hell, I’ll jump and the fat grenade”.
In war you get the Medal of Honor if you jump on a live grenade to save your friends. There’s only shame and ridicule for jumping on the fat grenade, but there’s always a taker.
Forrest ran out of sight and brought them both over. Her friend wasn’t fat. She was grotesquely obese. Fat flaps that hung off her triceps provided built-in elbow pads. Even if she lost a 150 lbs, she’d still be horribly ugly. Next to this beast, Forrest’s catch WAS Selma Hayek. William is true to his word though. He went right into flirting with this monster now sitting at our table. It was nauseating.
I have difficultly clearly recalling what transgressed from this point on. I was the third wheel and I’m convinced that one of the two women drinking our beer and seducing my friends had slipped something into my drink. I remember sitting at the table. Then I was sitting on a bench swing like you’d see on a porch in the suburbs. This was between the mens and womens bathrooms. Vomit was down the front of my shirt and pants. The bathroom attendant was yelling at me in Spanish. This was a classy joint. They had bathroom attendants to restock toilet paper, wipe down the counters and eject vomiting gringos. William rescued me, handed the attendant a ten dollar bill and led me down the stairs out onto the sidewalk. Forrest and the girls followed behind.
Complete darkness. And then I was in the back seat of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, William on my left, the beast to my right. William explained to me that we were headed to the monsters car and he was going to her place. I was going with Forrest and Selma and I could sleep there.
“Sure. Good luck with that” I said and I pointed at the beast with my thumb. Darkness came back.
When I drifted back into my body I was crawling across a floor next to a bed. The lights weren’t on, but it wasn’t completely dark. The shades were open and moonlight lit the room. I found a reasonable area to rest between the dresser and the foot of the bed. A plaster Marvin The Martian about two feet tall mocked me from the corner of the room. I couldn’t take any more. I’d had enough and retired on the berber carpet.
I was woken by a unneighborly kick to the gut. It was delivered by the girl Forrest had chased all night and I assume fornicated with. My now sober condition was not kind to her appearance, she was no longer Selma Hayek. She was screaming in some sort of Spanish dialect or slang and I couldn’t understand a single word. I knew it wasn’t good and I was relieved when Forrest ran into the room a few seconds later.
“We need to get the fuck out. I don’t know what happened, but she’s crazy.”
That much was obvious and we bolted to the street. It was daylight, probably around 8 or 9 am. I had no idea where we were. We recognized none of the hills or tall buildings. We choose the sensible option and picked a direction for no reason whatsoever and started walking. No matter what direction you travel, you’re bound to get somewhere. We eventually found a cab and before I even closed to door I screamed the one word every cabbie in Tijuana understands. “Border!”
It was at least fifteen minutes before I recognized any surroundings. The border was a few minutes away. I reached into my pocket for money to pay the cabbie. My pocket was empty. I tried the other. I had nothing. I whispered in Forrest’s ear, telling him I had no money and asked if he had any. He felt up his pockets and shook his head. No. We may have spent all of that on alcohol, but it’s most likely that his date robbed us. That was probably her plan all along. She could’ve just asked and Forrest would have probably paid her. He probably would have found an ATM to get more than she had stolen from us. There was no need for treachery.
We knew exactly what to do and said nothing. We launched as soon as the cab pulled up to the border station, setting a new land speed record. The US officer at the border didn’t stop us. If the high-and-tight haircut didn’t give us away as American military, the panicked look of gringos that got more than they asked for certainly did. He just stepped aside with a smile and we didn’t stop running until we were at the Denny’s.
William wasn’t at the car and he had the keys. I’d forgotten about about him up until that point. That beast was ugly when I was fall down, vomiting drunk. What kind of twisted reality is he waking up to now? Dear God! What if she’s crazy too? Where the hell did she take him? He’s probably dead or at least penniless, alone and lost on the wrong side of the border. We never should have allowed this to happen, but it’s done. Nothing can change that. Forrest and I decided to give him some time before we hit the panic button. Luckily Forrest kept his credit card under the insole of his shoe. Some coffee and greasy breakfast food is exactly what we needed to develop a rescue plan.
No plan emerged from the breakfast brain storming session, so we fell back on the wait-and-see approach. We walked back to the car and found William asleep in the front seat. He was a mess. His shirt was torn, one eye was swollen and he had small cuts on his face and arms. He was in no condition to drive, but we needed to head north before some sort of trouble found a way across the border to our position. Everything was going wrong. I forced William into the backseat and Forrest rode shotgun.
I wasn’t paying attention to road signs and we rode in silence for an hour. I knew I was completely lost, but I kept the hood ornament pointing north. We were going to Canada, or as far as that tank of gas would allow. When we started passing orange groves Forrest broke the silence.
“I don’t remember seeing those before. Where are we?”
“Orange County, I don’t fucking know. Mexico is south, we’re going north.”
They accepted that answer apparently. In the absence of a plan, a direction will suffice. With the silence finally broken, William filled us in on what happened since we last saw him.
“We got into her car and we headed south out of town, down the coast. I decided to fool around while she was driving and I reached over between her legs. It wasn’t what I was expecting. She had a hard on. I don’t know if she was a guy or something else, but I freaked out. I opened the door, jumped out and barrel rolled into the ditch. I started running and kept going until some cops picked me up.”
The Police are the last thing you want near Tijuana or most of Mexico. You don’t go near the police. If they look at you, get out of sight and do it fast. They carry submachine guns and they make good money by shaking down Americans or holding them for ransom.
I adjusted the rear-view mirror so I could see his face. I needed to see if he was lying about this whole thing. “Are you serious? You fucking around?”
“No man, they asked me a few questions and ordered me into the car. I didn’t have a lot of choice and I figure I could always jump out of another moving vehicle. They drove me to the border and let me go. I went back to my car and waited for you fuckers.”
He was never a good liar, at least not to us. He couldn’t help but smile a little every time he tried. I was pretty sure he was giving us the no-shit truth.
“We were at Denny’s. His bitch robbed us and Pele kicked me in the gut this morning.”
I truly wish that Forrest stayed silent or that William and me went temporarily deaf for the remainder of the day. There are things that you can’t help but visualize when said.
Forrest had been looking out the window for the past hour, but he turned forward, looked down and said, “She stuck a dildo in my ass. It was pink, six inches long and vibrated when she squeezed the base.”
“What the fuck are you telling us for you sick fuck!”, I immediately screamed. Which is of course being the only appropriate response.
“You were there watching.”
“The hell I was. I don’t remember shit from last night and now I don’t feel the least bit sorry about that. Now shut the fuck up and never tell me that again.”
He did shut up, but we didn’t hang out much after that. He got into a different scene and failed a drug test. The Marines are serious about the zero tolerance drug policy. That’s the rules in the contract. He tried to fight it. He demand a trial instead of an automatic other-than-honorable discharge. He waited around in custody for three months until his Summary Court Martial, which resulted in an other-than-honorable discharge, a short sentence at the Camp Pendleton stockade and loss of all pay and benefits.
William overcame his brush with the wild side. He’s a resilient bastard, at least he was until he settled down with a wife. I was the Best Man at his wedding. Before the wedding I teased him that I would tell his fiancée about our last trip to Mexico. Looking back I should have. William and me don’t speak anymore. I saw less and less of him after he was married, until he finally disappeared. His wife considered me a bad influence. It was apparently my fault that the morning of their wedding he was still drunk from the night before. His wedding was at Big Bear Mountain and his parents and sister wanted to take him out on the town. Who am I to disagree? There are some other details I’m leaving out, but that’s another story altogether.
There’s no moral to this story. Not anything poetic or meaningful like Aesop. It’s more of a cautionary tale. Three Marines went to Mexico. One went home covered in his own vomit. He had the best night of the three, only because they had it much worse.
Viva La Mexico, you dirty whore!
[I assure you, this story is regrettably true. I am not nearly creative enough to imagine a situation like this. Rarely is truth so tragically or stunningly stranger than fiction. Pay attention when it happens. File it away and save it for an appropriate time. These events occurred approximately ten years ago. It was either 98 or 99. It was before I went to Japan, that much I know. I did use first names only, which is strange. We always called each other by our last names or a nickname. But I felt it was necessary to protect the depraved.]