Sarah Weinman - Sex, Thugs, Roll, and Rock & Roll

I sat down at the bar and the bartender nodded to me, the height of familiarity for him, and I ordered a beer and a shot. After that, I started to think maybe things weren’t that bad. After the second round, things started to seem downright okay. I had a good job, never mind that I hated it…tons of people around the world hate their jobs, right? I had a place to live. So did (what seemed like) half the cucarachas in Mexico. But it had a roof, didn’t it? I ordered a third beer and shot, and at the end of that I was the luckiest motherfucker in the world. I was like a cat-nine lives and feet that no matter which way I was thrown stayed beneath me. Everything was great.

I paid up, tipped well, and left the bar. As I tottered to and fro on the way home, I had the sudden urge to sing, so I did. I warbled the whitest, most off-key version of “Guantanamera” ever to defile the empty uncaring streets of Mexico City. I turned down alley and street, side and back, before I learned that I was lost. You see, I hated the place. So the year that I had spent there, I literally spent walking only to work, the bar, the taqueria , and back. Tacos there suck, by the way.

There was no exploration and no deviating from this formula. When a place simultaneously makes you want to vomit and scares the shit out of you, it tends to happen.

When it was definite that I was lost, I turned around and figured out that I wasn’t completely alone. There were some guys behind me enjoying the night air too… Excellent. I’d just ask them for directions. So I called out:

“ Buenos noches, caballeros, ayuda me, por favor, con los direciones. No se ir a mi apartamento .”

They didn’t say anything, just kept walking closer to me, and that’s about when I started to get scared. I started to back away but they just got closer. The beer goggles kept me from really gauging their distance to me until one of them sank his fist into my gut, and I stupidly thought to myself: Yup, they’re too close . I was dragged, gagging for air, into a nearby alleyway, where I guess the beat-down of the century was supposed to take place. I got hit a second time and one of the guys kicked me on the way down, where one guy, the linguist of the group, leaned down and said:

“Stay the fuck away from Gloria, maricon .”

I would have laughed if I could have gotten air. Gloria was fat, ugly, and I had already drunk-fucked her once for which I was given the parting gift of a lifelong STD-plus the bonus for playing, a gang beating. I really could have laughed, but it would just have dissolved into tears. Luckily, I was spared having to think about this. They started the beating in earnest.

But just as soon as it began it seemed like it was over. I looked up for my aggressors and saw somebody taking out of all of them. I saw steel flash in the streetlamp and this short, stocky guy was alternating between kicking, punching, and slamming what looked like an ice pick into anything soft enough. Sheer aggression won the day. Pretty soon, the two that were able were running away; the rest looked like they were either dead or wished they were. Then strong arms were lifting me to my feet and a shoulder snugged itself under mine. I was slowly half dragged, half carried home, where I was tucked into bed like I wished my father had, and I passed out gratefully.

When I woke up the next morning, my legs, arms, head, and torso each resonated with pain like the brass tubes on a pipe organ. I could hear somebody puttering around in the front of the apartment near the front door and living room. I lay there for a minute, trying to put together exactly what happened. I remembered the beating. I remembered being helped home by that guy, who during the moment was just a shadow. So with Captain fuckin’ Nemo playing, like, an aria or something on my body I got up and walked out into the other room.

And nearly shit myself.

What could only have been my benefactor from last night was standing in the kitchen wielding a frying pan like an ex-con version of Martha Stewart. Okay, fine…you know what I mean, an ex er -con Martha Stewart. Whatever. That’s not the point. The point is that he was wearing this little dandelion-yellow apron that he had to have brought with him. And, yup-that’s all he was fucking wearing. Plus he was flexing his butt cheeks in time with the Enrique Iglesias track pumping on the stereo.

Oooookay.

He turned around and looked at me and I felt naked. I mean, more naked. Fuck. Anyway, he was looking at me in approval.

“ Me gusta tus huevos, y pinga .”

“What!”

“Do you want some brekfas’? I said.”

I stared.

“Are you the guy who saved my ass last night out there?”

“Sí.”

“And you brought me back here?”

“Sí.”

“How did you know where I lived?”

He ignored this one and put a plate with eggs and beans on the table and gestured at it with his hand. Not knowing what else to do, I sat down and started eating. All fuckin’ around aside, it was really good. The cross-dressing, Mexican ex-con Martha Stewart had a gift. He stared at me with a disturbing fondness and ruffled my hair and touched my cheek before turning around to go back to the kitchen counter to fetch a carafe of orange juice.

I sat there eating, the place on my cheek feeling hot and violated. He returned, putting a handful of pills on the table for me, I suppose-three of which were white and recognizable as generic Vicodin, the rest were little and blue. Those I didn’t recognize.

“For dee paing and dee possible infection, que no ?”

I swept up the pills, swallowed them down with OJ, and kept eating. It was about the best fucking meal I’d had since I got here. You know, for Mexico? The Mexican food sucks mammoth shit. But this guy could fucking burn, man. It was righteous. He could cook and he could fight.

Then I remembered the butt-flexing in time with ol’ Enrique “I’m so straight I’m queer” Iglesias and my blood ran cold. I looked up at him, he still had his back to me and he was dancing around. He was the ugliest motherfucker I’d ever seen. He was all lumpy and his ass looked like two pit bulls fighting in a sack and one has managed to claw halfway free and the other’s dead. He was covered in bad tattoos-knives, la Virgin de Guadalupe , prayerful hands on one arm, but there was a razor blade pressed between the fingers. Nice.

At no time during this ridiculous exchange did I stop and say, “Wait a fucking minute. Cut. Hold the phone.” I gotta put that up to shock…or maybe I was hypnotized by the butt-flexing. But this was outta hand. My brain was having a rough time connecting Tammy Faye Bakker over there and the display I had witnessed the previous night with those hired thugs. I was officially having a hard time with this. So when he put down a plate of chicharron to go with the eggs and beans and everything else, I figured freaking out could wait until after breakfast. But then I saw him sit across from me with what looked like a salad. I had to ask.

“Dude, you just made all this good food. What’s with the salad?”

“I watching my figure, I want to look cute.”

Well, that’s when I snapped.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You look like a Sailor Jerry ad, for fuck’s sake!”

Then I witnessed what must truly be the most disturbing thing ever. Somebody who looked like a cross between RuPaul, Carlos Mencia, and Ron Jeremy…pouting.

Fucking pouting, for Christ’s sake.

“Look, man, I’m sorry about that. I’m just a little on edge.”

The pout faded, replaced by ice-cold eyes and a stone-hard thousand-yard stare. My nuts shrank up inside me and lodged in my throat like an extra set of tonsils. Desperately, I tried a different tack.