Mexico Story

When Things go Wrong and You're NOT in the United States...

Photo by Marisol Benitez on Unsplash

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Mexico Story

The story I’m about to tell happened when I was 22 years old—17 years ago now—when a buddy and I lived in San Diego. We shared a cramped one-bedroom apartment in a little complex on Thomas Avenue, between Jewell and Kendall Street, two short blocks south of Grand, and about 10 blocks east of the ocean, in Pacific Beach.

            The buddy and I couldn’t have been more different, let me say that from the start. He was 19, born and raised in Summerland, had come from the working-class, was 6’0, half white, half Mexican, with dark hair, dark eyes and thick sideburns which made him appear sinister in some terrifying, yet juicy way. His name was Pablo. He wore a beat-up, perennially unzipped leather motorcycle jacket, smoked Lucky Strike 100s constantly, and, comically, drank Scotch on the rocks.

            I, on the other hand, was three years Pablo’s senior, but was much more naïve. I came from a family with money, born in Ventura, raised in wealthy, protected Ojai. I’d gone to private parochial school all my life. I was short (5’8), sensitive, angry, and had way too much to prove.

            We were both pissed-off punk rockers who’d met at a show in Ventura a few years prior. We’d known some of the same people. We drank hard, we chased women, we got into trouble, we went to punk shows, we brawled.

The idea had been very simple: We both wanted out of our respective towns. We had little money; we worked menial, dead-end jobs. Pablo had never expected to go to college, and I had thrown my private school education (very expensive) at my parents’ face by not even taking the SATs. In the end I barely even made it out of high school. Pablo and I knew nothing about San Diego but we figured Why Not; it was a few hours away from what we knew too intimately and wanted to flee from, and it was a reasonably large city. So we started looking for a place—remember this was the fall of 2005, so a one-bedroom was not insanely expensive, at least as compared to current times—and within a few weeks we scored the place on Thomas Avenue.

We didn’t know a thing about Pacific Beach. Within a few days we grasped that we stuck out like sore thumbs. We wore all black; we dressed punk; we looked haggard and mean. Surrounding us were shirtless dudes with beards and flipflops, saying things like, Bro, you fer SURE gotta hit those lefts out there today. Sexy beach-bunnies were omnipresent: They were great to look at, but there was just no way. They didn’t even see us. It was a different culture, a sense of having suddenly landed on the moon. Not that Ventura, Summerland or Ojai didn’t have some aspects of this culture…but still, this was new to us.

The months passed and we both found jobs. I worked behind the register of a tourist clothing store in La Jolla and in the Gaslamp Quarter. Pablo worked at a costume store. We drank nightly, went to some punk shows at The Zombie Lounge and Scolari’s Office in North Park, got laid a couple times, wandered aimlessly at night around Pacific Beach, mocking locals, cursing ourselves for signing a one-year lease. Sometimes we ended up with Old English forties down by Crystal Pier, at the beach, our bare feet padding the cool soft sand, the small waves crashing in the distance. I can still smell the salt and the seaweed from those nights.

I think it was sometime in early March when we decided to go to Baja. We’d both been before, but it’d been years ago, and with our respective families. We figured, What the hell; we’re in San Diego, might as well taste the treasure of Mexico.

The plan was simple; and if only things had worked out the way we planned. (Then again, if they had, I wouldn’t have this tale to tell.) We were going to take the trolley to Tijuana and then snag a taxi to Rosarito. We decided to just go for one amazing, drunken, Dionysian night. We didn’t even get a motel—the plan was to head over there, get wasted, and then take the trolley back in the wee hours of the morning. Who needed sleep? We were young, damnit!

Everything started out fine. (As it so often does in life when you’re young, dumb and clueless.) We caught a ride to the trolley. We got on. We arrived in Tijuana. It was sometime after dark when we got dropped off by taxi in downtown Rosarito.

We picked a bar, I can’t remember any names now. Pablo and I must have looked like aliens, just as we did in P.B. I remember the dust everywhere. I remember the banner above the street that said, ZONA ROSA RITO. I remember seeing the tourist hotels all over the place. Seeing the Rosarito Beach Motel spelled-out in curling, arcing blood-red letters. I remember the smell of the ocean, to the west, and the tourists and local Mexicans intermingling everywhere. All the little cafes and restaurants and markets. The smell of crab and lobster and fish for sale as we walked.

At that first bar we drank tequila. Shots. Then beers—Tecates and Pacificas. We started to feel good. Standing outside the bar, buzzed already, I stared at the people as Pablo smiled and lit a Lucky Strike 100; I heard the sizzle as he lit up with his silver Zippo, clanking the lid back hard, and smelled the rich scent of the tobacco.

Then we were in another bar. And another. Finally we ended up dancing in some nightclub. This is when the evening begins to be a bit fuzzy to my recollection. We were drunk, clearly. We danced with a couple girls. We each got into a dancing cage, making the girls flee, and danced wildly—stupidly—at each other, our expressions dire and sincere, from across the nightclub.

Next thing I recall is being at a strip-club somehow. Low, red pulsing light. Loud Mariachi music. The stink of male sweat, body odor, beer, and a faint whiff of urine. We sat right up there at the stage, looking up at an attractive Mexican girl who couldn’t have been more than 16. I remember vaguely feeling ashamed, and then thrilled, and then annoyed at myself for feeling thrilled, and then ashamed again, and finally just confused. I watched her liquid body move like a naked shadow back and forth across the stage. Somehow in that moment I recall feeling suddenly completely alone, isolated, as if I were alienated from everything and everyone in the world. That made me feel sad. What, I asked myself, was I doing here, in Mexico, with Pablo? Why did we live in a town we did not like? Was punk rock my true identity? Did it have to be? Why was I so angry, at my parents, at “society,” at myself? Who was I?

Pablo stood up, the metal legs of his chair screeching against the concrete floor, and said he was going to the bathroom. He walked off.

Immediately—and to this day I still don’t know why—after Pablo disappeared, I jumped up and left the strip-club.

Ostensibly, when I think back, I know I had it in my head—Lord knows why—to make my way west to the beach. Something about the beach had always comforted me. I lived my first eight years of life in Ventura, near the ocean. When we moved to Ojai in the early 90s, I still attended Episcopalian school in Ventura, and, around age 12, I became, for a while, an avid surfer. The ocean seemed an obvious symbol: It’s where life had first originated. It seemed to represent perfectly the ups and downs, the storms and joys of being alive. Some days the waves were small and boring; other days bigger and fun; still others the waves were gnarly and massive and brutal and they could hurt, even kill you. You learned how to paddle around the channel and avoid being roiled around by the sets. You learned how to measure the waves coming in carefully. You learned not to fight the current by paddling against it. You learned when to battle and when to let go.

But, unsurprisingly, drunk as I was, I quickly got lost. I was turning around in a spastic 360, attempting to gain some perspective, when I heard the tires of a car rush towards me and then stop abruptly, sliding in the loose dirt. A bright white light surged in my eyes. My heart thudded against my chest. I smelled burning rubber. Both the front car doors burst open and I realized it was a squad car; they were police.

The next 15 minutes is a blur. What I recall is them half talking, half yelling at me in Spanish. Me, trying drunkenly to conjure up some version of High School Spanish. More yelling. One of the cops spread my legs and arms out wide and frisked me. They looked at my passport and wallet; they checked for cash (there was none); they opened and glanced at my flip cell-phone. One cop pulled out a pair of shiny silver handcuffs; I remember vividly the bright headlight beams ricocheting off the silver into my right eye, nearly blinding me. Then the two of them argued with each other. One of them raised his voice to a terrifying degree. And, finally, they suddenly turned around, got back into their car, shut their doors, and burned out in the dust again, taking off, the smell of burning rubber and dust again, leaving me grateful, scared and confused.

*

Ten minutes later—I had carried on in my quest for the beach as if nothing had happened—I was lost again. And exhausted. Very drunk. Not quite blacked-out but close. I found an alleyway and decided to sit down, sliding my back against the wall. No one was around. I patted my pockets in a quick panic, realizing the cops had hurled my passport, wallet and phone onto the dusty ground. But it was too late. I passed out.

*