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Mexican lobster
Sunday, October 3 1999
Four people spent the night in my room: Kim and I in one little bed and Steph and EJ in the other. Kim and I woke up kind of early, hungover and horny and trying to get it on with a minimum of noise but that's not really ever very easy.
We went directly from this sort of activity into taking a shower. It's times like this when you realize the importance of privacy, even from/especially from a lover. By now it had been nearly 24 hours of continuous accountability to various people, without even so much as a five minute break. I needed to take a shit really bad, but here was Kim wanting to take a romantic shower with me. So there I was playing along as best I could, trying not to spoil the mood, but being miserable all the same with a log up my ass. Despite my best intentions, the mood was still spoiled of course. Kim could sense that something was wrong. She assumed incorrectly that I was being shy. All I really wanted was to take a shit in peace. I would have paid money for the privilege.
Armed with a cup of coffee, I walked down to the ocean and let a wave cover my feet with water. It was so cold I was thrown into immediate pain, the kind of pain I remember from the occasions when I've walked barefoot in snow. I have no idea how coastal water in this semi-tropical part of North America can be so cold. It's hard to imagine any creature being very happy in such frigid water, but yesterday we could see a school of dolphins porpoising a little ways off shore. I collected a good little set of colourful shells including a number of limpets. Unlike when I was a little kid, I have trouble imagining what use I could possibly have for collected shells, but I collected them all the same because not to collect them would be an affront to their beauty.
Kim taught her NIA class this morning as the last event of the consortium. NIA used to stand for "Non-Impact Aerobics," though now it has evolved into some sort of mystical mumbo jumbo incarnation, with a dash of martial arts. Amongst her many talents, Kim is also a qualified NIA instructor. Being her boyfriend, I was coerced into participating as the only participating guy. It wasn't really my thing, of course, but I went along to pull my weight and prove to the world that I'm not a total jerk. By the time the lesson was over I had to admit that I was rather impressed with Kim's teaching style. It had elements of the ærobics coaching about it, but it was simultaneously more mystical and more informative at the same time.
When the NIA session was over, it was time to pack up our shit and abandon our villas. We had a last little closing ritual out on the grass and then went our separate ways.
After we left the resort, though, Kim, Steph, EJ and I rendezvoused with Vivienne and Kathleen in scenic Puerto Nuevo for a lunch of lobster. We went to this place called Restaurant Demariscos on the extreme Southwest of Puerto Nuevo. Parking was an absolute nightmare, what with all the other American tourists, but somehow we found a spot.
Restaurant Demariscos had a large outdoor section directly above the crashing surf, protected from seagulls by a skeletal network of old weathered two-by-fours. Down below on the cobblestone beach we could see the raw sewage of Puerto Nuevo emptying unabashedly out into the ocean.
Despite the obvious language differences (the waitress seemed to know less English than our Spanish), we managed to order an excellent meal of lobsters, complete (of course!) with rice, beans and tacos. And margaritas. And tequila shooters.
As I finished my lobsters I tossed them over the edge for the seagulls. Our table ended up providing such an embarrassment of riches for the gulls that eventually they all vanished, leaving plenty behind for later. We learned a valuable thing: sea gulls stop eating when they're full.
Way out in the gulf was a mysterious rock protruding steeply from the waves. We had no idea how big it was until a sailboat ventured near it and the rock proved not much larger.
After lunch, Vivienne and Kathleen left and we took a walking tour of the city. I found it to have something of a dusty Wild West quality to it, very different from California but not all that dissimilar from, say, Jerome, Arizona. The feel of Mexico, from what I can tell so far, is sort of a mix of ghost-town Wild West with European Mediterranean.
Of course, the merchants and restauranteers in Puerto Nuevo are much more aggressive salesman than anything you'll ever find in the United States. As we walked by their shops and bars they'd run out and offer us ever-inflating deals. "Women eat free!" "Free tequila!" That sort of thing. I found an unsmoked Marlboro in the dust. I was amazed to find something of such obvious value lying rejected in the Mexican dirt, and I knew the only way to honour the moment was to smoke it. And so I did.
The border on a Sunday evening is inherently slow. Our situation was made all the worse from the fact that we were almost out of gas. I kept wondering what would happen if we ran out of gas in the middle of all these beggars and hucksters who were selling everything except gasoline. I still shake my head at all the Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouses being sold at the border. What sort of Mexican souvenir is that? Do the Mexicans think that Americans go to Mexico to buy cheap trinkets that remind them of home? Perhaps they do.
The inspector at the border (who, judging from his accent, was an illegal alien himself not many years ago) decided that we were a suspicious car and he wanted to go through our trunk. We weren't smuggling drugs, so what was the harm? But despite all, it turned out that it wasn't a very thorough inspection after all; the customs guy somehow missed an item of blatant paraphernalia in one of the bags he searched.
I was so burnt out on tequila and over exposure to the sun that there was little else to do one we got home but kick back and watch Fox animated comedy. For the first time ever, I think, I watched nearly all of an episode of the X Files as well. There's something that really bothers me about that show. Tonight, for example, I was really turned off by the casualness with which Scull brought up the possibility of "spontaneous human combustion" to explain the circumstances of a certain corpse.
Today was EJ's 27 birthday. Here he is opening his presents while Steph looks on.
A dead seagull I found on the Mexican beach.
EJ drinks champagne while Steph looks on.
Various consortium group photos, planned and unplanned.
The scene from our Puerto Nuevo dining "room." The restaurant restrooms are the white sheds at lower left. They were actually fairly sanitary, though there was no provision for hand washing.
Kim & EJ against a decidedly Mediterranean backdrop.
Steph, EJ and Kim at our lobster luncheon.
A happy gull sails away after eating a nacho chip.
Dusty & rusty Mad Max-style satellite dishes on a building in Puerto Nuevo.
Little dolls with mobile heads moving in the wind, some of the many things being sold by vendors in Puerto Nuevo.
A shanty townlet in Puerto Nuevo. This is the most run-down of any settlement I saw in the downtown seaside area.
A variety of American icons being sold at the American border in Tijuana.
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