Tipsy

Paradiso

by Jay

So there we were, in Ricardo’s Jeep, with a head carved out of coconut wedged onto the dashboard and grinning wildly at us as we bounced along the dirt roads somewhere deep in Nayarit  , Mexico. My ankle stung from my freshly-inked tattoo, and my body ached from the antics of the night before. My roommate and partner-in-crime Patricia seemed fine.

And then the road stopped.

“Ready?” Ricardo asked. “For what?” I didn’t know what we were about to do. “Wrong answer!” he shouted and we dove right into the chunky dirt. I was almost knocked out of my seat. “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked, thinking I probably should’ve asked that before we’d even left Vallarta. “Well, we were here last week… hopefully we can find it again…” Bruce noted. He already had an open beer in his hand. It wasn’t even ten o'clock.

“What kinda shoes you got on?” Ricardo asked. He looked at my thin sandals with disdain. “They’ll have to do. Everyone out.”

It did occur to me that this might in fact be the end. Having just met Ricardo and Bruce the week before in Vallarta, I had no way of knowing if all of the niceness was just a ploy to earn my trust for when they would sell me. A dirty, tattooed, and hungover me surely wouldn’t fetch as much as I would’ve the previous week, but being young and white was enough.

We trudged along behind Ricardo, who did indeed seem to know where he was going. Bruce brought up the rear with a case of beer under his arm. We came to a river and had to wade through it – hence Ricardo’s disdain of my sandals – but he helped me keep steady on the rocky bed. We ambled up the other side and came to what looked like a mudpit. Patricia and I stared at each other as the guys dug in with spades. Within minutes, there was, miraculously, a hot spring.

We all stripped down to our skivvies and eased in. It was hot, which may be obvious, but I’d never been in a hot spring before. The four of us settled in slowly, my ankle stinging in pain from the fresh needle marks. Ricardo looked at my wincing and told me it would heal all the faster because of the minerals. A week later, his prophecy proved correct.

The heat got to me and Bruce so we got out and jumped back into the ice cold river. I floated on my back, looking up at the flawless blue sky and wondering how I ended up here. Ricardo watched us throwing water at each other and belly flopped next to me. We got out to dry off and lay in the sun to tan for a while. Bruce gave me a beer and I finally gave in to my destiny. Patricia was still in the hot spring, so Ricardo would whistle periodically to make sure she hadn’t passed out.

We suddenly heard a loud engine revving in the distance. Out of nowhere, a Jeep painted like a watermelon came crashing along the riverbank. Four teenagers were screeching with pleasure as they bounced along the dusty bed. They drove in wild circles, kicking up a cloud of dust. The Jeep repositioned itself straight at us. I sat up, watching, getting a little nervous that they would run us over. Of course, the river was between us, but they seemed bent on driving through it. And suddenly, the Jeep lurched forth, flew in the air, and immediately got stuck in the river. The kids burst out laughing.

We watched as they tried to pry it out, but nothing worked. They pushed from the front and then from the back, but it didn’t budge. Bruce got up to help them. “Fuck that,” said Ricardo. “That’s the price of stupidity.” I thought it was sweet of Bruce to help them. He found a huge branch that he fashioned as a lever to lift the Jeep a bit. They shoved it just enough to get it moving again, and the kids hopped in and drove away in the direction from which they’d come. Bruce walked back up the bank and sprawled out on his towel next to me, both of us laughing at the prospect of getting run over by a giant watermelon.

I drifted in and out of sleep a little bit, feeling the sun bear down on my skin, feeling my youth, feeling alive. Ricardo looked at me and smiled and said “Yep, kid. Just another shitty day in paradise.”

Tipsy Abroad: Yelapa Edition

by Jay

I stumbled across the thin strip of beach between the laguna and the ocean. Walking in Yelapa at night posed many challenges, not the least of which was the margarita I’d already had. But that night, I was also contending with the threat of scorpions, wading through still water, clenching a penlight in my teeth, and a big plastic bag wrapped around me.

I was heading to a costume party. I’d thought it was a joke at first, but no- in the middle of the Mexican nowhere, I was really going to a costume party. An artist-comrade grabbed a clear plastic bag and ripped a hole for my head. He decorated my plastic-wrapped body with quickly drawn kings and fish. “Don’t smudge,” he warned. I stood carefully, waiting for the sketches to dry. I didn’t know what exactly I was supposed to be, but that was irrelevant.

We made our way down the stone steps from the borrowed palapa towards the beach, keeping our eyes and penlights closely linked for potential scorpions. Once safely down, the phosphorescent specks in the sand gave the beach an eerie glow. I lifted my skirt and plastic carefully – don’t smudge! – to wade through the sweet water that was trapped earlier in the day from the receding tide. Later, I’d have to spray down my body to make sure nothing toxic attached itself to me during the wade.

I got to the beach bar and surveyed my surroundings. Lang, drowned royalty himself, was propped up against the bar, draining his second bottle of liquor. He was wearing a linen suit, and his long, greasy hair was combed back into a ponytail. By torch light, he didn’t look half-bad; the puffy, alcohol-bloat was softened a bit and his pitted skin smoothed from its normal orange-peel texture. Lang was on a suicide mission and had a damned good start. He was American blue-blood, the direct descendant of a founding father, but his family had long since cut him off. He didn’t care. Once upon a time, he had built a beautiful palace perched high above the beach with an incredible vista of the jungles and water. It was, however, empty, because Lang’s denigrated body wouldn’t allow him to climb anywhere other than into his bed. He instead lived in a shack on the beach, wasting away in a dirty navy bathrobe, skin flaking off his ashy legs and yellowed eyes demanding more liquor. But that night, you might not get all that at first glance.

Lang’s girlfriend was already with him, and she was equally as drunk, a truly rare feat. Emelle was a seemingly sensible woman, so I never understood her attraction to someone bent on self-destruction. She leaned over sloppily to peck me on the cheek as I said hi. I’d met her in PV and was staying at her palapa for the weekend. This gave her a sense of entitlement with me, and she would say whatever came to mind, whether appropriate or not. She pointed to my small chest, hidden under the plastic and my black tank top. “S’a shame about those,” she said. “I know a good surgeon.” Since I was 25 years younger than her, I let her enjoy that. Her implants were the only part of her still perky.

A couple appeared decked out as Poseidon and a mermaid. I recognized them from Puerto Vallarta. They were married but not to each other, and each would leave their respective spouses for their annual month-long fling in Mexico. But after eleven months of long-distance pining, they’d fight by Day Two and spend the rest of the month alternately bickering, cheating, and making up. Tonight, they were on again, and she’d crammed her menopausal frame into a bustier and fishtail skirt. She held it well, considering, and Poseidon looked proud to be at her side until a younger, prettier model would catch his eye. The mermaid would glare at him angrily every time his attention strayed. She said hello to me and asked who I was. I’d never formally met her before and this felt quite intrusive, but I’d noticed such inquisitions would often hail upon those considered outsiders. I answered politely, and she immediately pressed me for details: where was I from, how long was I down there, who did I know, how did I get there, although she offered none of the same information about herself. Finally, she smiled haughtily and said “Exactly how old are you?,” implying I was a lost waif, pathetically flitting about. “Twenty-four” I smiled. “And you?” She scowled and turned her attention back to her Poseidon, who was already drifting towards a finer fish.

As I worked on another margarita, I watched the personal politics among all these gringos who’d fled to Mexico to escape the dramas they were now recreating. They considered themselves more cultured than the PV set, and much more adventurous which was clearly evidenced by their presence in Yelapa. Never mind that there were generators hidden away to churn out the electricity they demanded, or that they paid locals peanuts to cart their stuff to and from Vallarta; they enjoyed boasting that there was no power to be found, and that only a water taxi could get you there.

Emelle stumbled back over to me and I felt her eyes watching my face. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right,” she declared. And with an imperial sweep of her arm, she indeed spoke my very thoughts: “You can travel the world – and believe me, I have – and you won’t find anywhere as stupid as this.”

 

 

New Category Alert: Tipsy Abroad

By Jay  

The inaugural Tipsy Abroad column. This category came to me one day whilst driving around for work (yes, my job drives me to drink). After being told I needed to write a book for the umpteenth time, I began to replay the many nonsensical escapades in my mind, little of which had been captured on camera. Mercifully.  

So, grab your passport, stow your tray table, and return your seat (or yourself) to the upright position: Welcome to Tipsy Abroad.  

In 1998, I went to Venezuela. I hadn’t planned to go there; I believe I was meant to be heading to Antigua, but my cheap tickets fell through last-minute. After a full 36 hours in the Newark airport, I freaked out and bought a ticket on the next available flight heading south. Caracas it was.  

After a mapless week wandering the streets and slums of the capital, I got on a bus and headed to Puerto La Cruz on the coast. There, I could get a ferry to Isla Margarita, and from there, I planned to go on to Trinidad & Tobago. The bus rumbled through the dusty countryside, blasting past tiny shacks that miraculously managed to have fresh looking Coca-Cola vending machines. Capitalism at its finest.  

I arrived at Puerto La Cruz and, for a lack of Spanish, drew a picture of a big boat and said “Donde esta…?” while pointing to the picture. It worked and I got on a huge ferry that crept through the water for the next 8 hours. We arrived on Margarita deep in the night.  

Again, mapless, I wandered around town until I found what seemed to be an area with hotels. I rang the bell of one hotel and woke up an elderly man who ushered me through his house, into a back courtyard, and up a fire escape. He showed me to my room: one light that didn’t work, a mattress, and a toilet with stagnant yellow water. Perfect! AND, it was only $7.  

Although the elderly man was wonderful (he and his wife plied me with coffee in the morning and pointed to the map, babbling in Spanish that I didn’t understand), I changed hotels the next day to be closer to the action. Porlamar is the capital of Margarita and is a bustling tourist area. Over the next few days, I figured out which bus to take to get to the gorgeous Playa El Agua, where to find the best café marron in town, and located the perfect grimy ex-pat bar.  

Amsterdam Café was on a side-street. Owned by a Dutch man who simply went by “The Duke”, Amsterdam was a haven for seedy Europeans and the local hookers that loved them. Kas, another Dutch man, worked the bar, and you could tell Kas had seen way too much. Francisco, the Danish foreign legionnaire, would pound hard liquor and threaten any and everyone over nothing. Neil, the retired Brit, would laugh at the antics of the others, always maintaining his head. And I somehow fell into this fold a little too easily.  

One night, The Duke insisted I try his favorite vodka, appropriately called Sonovavitch. I’m not a vodka drinker, but I indulged The Duke. Every time someone would have some, he’d yell “SONOVAVITCH!” The locals didn’t get the joke, but I thought it was hilarious.  

I joined a heated poker match between Neil, Francisco, and another drifter. I agreed to deal. After a few hands, a card flipped over mid-deal. I picked it up and shuffled the cards again and kept dealing. Francisco grabbed my wrist. Everyone froze. “Never… NEVER… stop a deal…” I didn’t know what to do. He was very drunk. He was a nasty guy to begin with, but worse when he drank too much. I looked to the other guys for help. Just the night before, Francisco told of how he’d killed men with his hands. Whether it was bullshit or not was not something I cared to find out. The dude was fucknuts insane. Neil, the Brit, gently patted Francisco on the shoulders. “It was an accident,” he said calmly. “She didn’t mean to…” Francisco didn’t quite believe him, but he let go of my wrist. “Uhm… I think I’m done for the night, boys…” I said. I was losing money anyway.  

As a little post-script to the story, I was once telling it to coworkers and said “I thought he was gonna kill me! It was crazy!” There was a slightly uncomfortable silence until someone piped up with “What I find crazy is that you didn’t find it crazy to play poker with a hired killer to begin with.”   Touche, my friend. Touche.