Justin Halpern: Sh*t My Dad Says

A small Mexican beach town right next to Tijuana, Rosarito is a lot like the bleachers in Fenway Park during a Yankees–Red Sox game: crowded, dirty, and filled with thousands of loud, drunk Americans who haphazardly throw their garbage on the ground. Yet somehow it’s still kind of charming. Rosarito’s biggest draws are that the drinking age is eighteen, and everything is dirt cheap. The five of us spent the ride down the Pacific Coast Highway drinking Tecates and talking excitedly about how drunk we were going to get as soon as we arrived in Mexico.

“I’m gonna get so fucking wasted,” Stacy’s friend in the passenger seat said. “Justin, are you going to get fucking wasted, or are you gonna be a fag?” she asked, turning to me.

I wasn’t sure how she decided those were the only two paths to go down this weekend, but I clearly saw the direction she was hoping I would lean toward.

“I’m getting fucking wasted!” I screamed, trying to match her intensity.

Apparently I did, because everyone cheered, and then Stacy grabbed my crotch. It was a pretty unsexy move—and sort of hurt—but any interaction my crotch had with Stacy’s hand was welcome.

A couple hours later, we pulled up to our hotel in Rosarito and checked into our dingy room, which contained only one bed, a bathroom, and three different paintings of a large-breasted Mexican woman being carried off by a Spanish conquistador. We immediately started taking shots of tequila from the bottle we had purchased at the hotel’s gift shop. I went into the bathroom and put one condom in my sock and one in my baseball hat, just in case Stacy and I didn’t make it back to the hotel room. I threw some water on my face, patted my hair into place, and brushed my teeth.

When I came out of the bathroom, all three of Stacy’s friends were crowded around her, and she was curled up in a ball on the floor, crying hysterically.

“I miss Peter! I can’t believe we’re fucking broken up!” Stacy sobbed as her friends tried to calm her down.

Then Stacy got up, ran past me to the bathroom, and vomited in the toilet. For the next day and a half, Stacy sat in the hotel room with her friends, bawling and rehashing every detail of the breakup. A couple times I went out to a bar by myself, stood around for an hour, talked to no one, then went back to our room, which still reeked of vomit.

On Saturday afternoon, we piled into the Blazer and drove silently back up the coast to the U.S.–Mexico border. Stacy sat next to me the entire time, sleeping. As we crossed the border, I turned my cell phone back on, since I hadn’t had reception in Mexico. It began buzzing to indicate that I had new messages. As I punched in my voice mail access code, it dawned on me that I had forgotten to help my dad with the garden.

“You have four new messages,” the robotic voice declared. I was half expecting it to add, “You are so fucked.”

The first message played. “Son, it’s Dad, I need you to pick up something from the Home Depot before you come over. Call me back.”

“Next message,” the robotic voice mail alerted me as I began to feel nauseous.

“Son, where the fuck are you? I said to be over at four, right? It’s four-ten. Call me.”

The next message contained just a few moments of silence, and then the sound of hanging up. I felt a little relieved. Maybe he was over it by now.

“Next message, received today at three-thirty P.M,” said the robot.

“WHAT IN THE FUCK IS GOING ON? I stopped by your place and your roommate said you’re in Mexico! Are you in fucking Mexico?! CALL ME!”

I started sweating and couldn’t keep my legs still, which was unfortunate, seeing as we were just about to drive through the border patrol inspection. The officer waved us through even though I’m pretty sure I looked like I was sitting on about two thousand pounds of cocaine and hiding a half dozen illegal aliens in our trunk.

Once we were across the border, Stacy’s friend pulled over at the first exit.

“I am totally fiending for some Jack in the Box,” she said.

“No. I need to go home right now,” I snapped, my voice ascending to a note I hope no woman ever hears out of my mouth again.

“Whoa, chill out. We’re just gonna grab some Jumbo Jacks—God.”

In my head, I was fantasizing about jumping into the front seat, drop-kicking her out of the car, slamming the door, and stepping on the gas. Instead I just sat in the dining area of the Jack in the Box while the four girls leisurely enjoyed their hamburgers. I called Dan to see how much damage was done.

“Your dad looked all pissed off. I told him you were in Mexico,” Dan said.

“You told him I was in Mexico?! Why did you tell him I was in Mexico?!” I screamed.

“Because you were in Mexico.”

I hung up the phone. Shortly after, Stacy and her friends moseyed back to the car. We continued our drive up the coast and, upon reaching San Diego, headed to Stacy’s apartment, where my car was parked. I grabbed my travel bag out of the back of the Blazer and briskly walked toward my car.

“Um, okay—bye?” Stacy said snidely.

“Yeah, yeah, bye—sorry,” I replied, jumping into my car and slamming the door.

I began the drive over to my parents’ house, trying to figure out what lie I could tell to diffuse the situation. I came to the conclusion that there really was no diffusing this because it had too many volatile elements: I blew off my dad; I disappeared and was unreachable; and—the final straw—I had gone to Mexico. My parents had irrational fears of Mexico and assumed that once you crossed the border, drug runners made you swallow a heroin balloon and then within the hour you were in a bathtub full of ice and they were harvesting your kidneys.

As I pulled up to the house, I spotted my dad’s car in the driveway. I walked up to the front door and opened it. I saw my dad sitting in the living room, staring right at me as if he’d been in that position for the last two days.

“WHERE IN THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?!” he screamed, getting up from his chair and quickly moving toward me like an overweight panther.

“Listen, hold on,” I said.

And then I launched into an elaborate lie about a school project and a birthday that made no sense before he cut me off.

“Mexico!! You went to fucking Mexico? They’ll gut you like a pig, piss on your corpse, and then say ‘Welcome to Mexico!’” he screamed. “You say you’re going to fucking be somewhere, you fucking be there!” he added.

“I know, I know!” I hollered back in defense.

“No, you don’t know! You don’t know shit! Everyone is worried sick about you. I got your mother freaking out, then everybody else. I called the cops to look for you!”

“You called the cops?” I said.

“Yeah, I called the cops!”

“Well, shouldn’t you call them and tell them you found me?”

My dad paused for a split second.

“They’ll figure it out,” he said, the tone in his voice changing.

I looked at him. He very rarely lied to me, and when he did, it was obvious.

“You didn’t call the cops, did you?” I asked suspiciously.

“I called somebody,” he replied.

“Was that somebody the cops?”

Silence fell over the room.

“No,” he said, a little embarrassed. “But fuck you! I could have called the cops! I should have called them, but I figured you were just being dopey, and I’d have wasted their time!”

I realized I had somewhat disarmed him and should just cut my losses now and try to make things right. So I apologized profusely, explained that I had gotten caught up and completely forgotten about our date, and reaffirmed all the reasons why I was an idiot.

“Okay, okay, I get it, you don’t have to keep listing reasons why you’re a dumb shit,” he said, interrupting my laundry list of self-insults.