Mall me

This past Saturday Luis and I went up to Lake Chapala to check our mailbox. We have a mailing address in the States which forwards our mail down here, but the closest location is an hour and a half away. So it’s usually a half-day trip for us at least.

From Chapala we decided to drive up to Guadalajara to the Home Depot for some furniture making supplies. We hadn’t had anything to eat all day and they were offering free hot dogs outside the Depot, so we noshed on those and decided to head home, stopping somewhere for dinner.

Now, most of what is available to eat in Tuxpan is meat. Vegetables are very rare and are usually mixed together and used as a topping for the meat. Sort of like when the US tried to call catsup a vegetable. Every once in a while I become overwhelmed and need something lighter than carne. That’s how I was feeling that day. Luis suggested one of our usual spots, but it was a meat-heavy spot. The other option was to stop at the Discount Mall on the outskirts of Guadalajara and eat at their food court. Yeah, kinda sad, I know, but at least they would have some other options.

At the food court we chose the Chinese place. Luis had eaten there before and it was passable. I had been fighting a sick stomach all day, so I said I would just share whatever he got. We sat at a table and opened the food container. It was awful. So bad that Luis took maybe five bites and couldn't eat any more. And he usually eats whatever is placed in front of him! So we tossed it in the garbage and went to see a movie instead.

The movie theatre at the mall is great. (Ok, there is a sentence I never thought I’d write!) You can see first run American movies (most have subtitles, some are dubbed! Imagine MI:3 dubbed! Hahahaha!) for the huge price of $38 pesos – about $3.80! And at the moment they are running a 2-for-1 special! So we chose “The Davinci Code”. Two hours later we walked out, not completely satisfied with our choice. So we coughed up another 38 pesos for tickets to “The X Men 3”. It didn’t start for another 45 minutes and we were still hungry. So back we went to the food court. Our first choice was Subway. Yeah, I know – Subway? But we had a previous eating experience there that was good, and considering the Chinese food earlier, we were willing to stoop to an American chain. Alas, they were already closed. We surveyed the other options – the Chinese place, a Japanese place, a salad place, a Mexican place (!?), a pizza place, and a Burger King.

Yup, we ate Burger King. I don’t even eat that shit in the states! But man, it was good.

Hamburgers down here (in Tuxpan at least) aren’t made from ground beef. They are made from some mixture of salchichas (hot dogs) and chopped ham, I think. No beef. Where’s the beef? (For those of you who remember the 80’s commercial.) So even though it was Burger King, at least it was partially beef (probably mostly soy, but beef flavored soy!). I’m not embarrassed to say I enjoyed it more than Victor’s hamburgers (a friend in Tuxpan who sells burgers and hot dogs at night). Just don’t tell him I said so.

Gone

So I now know someone here in Tuxpan who has died. She was a friend of Luis', whom I met the first December I came down here. At that time she had had at least one breast removed due to cancer. I can't remember now if she only had one or both removed at that point. She was slim but had a great enegy. This time down here, I re-met her once. We saw her in the center and she and Luis chatted for a while. Afterwards I commented to Luis that she seemed much more tired and low-energy. But she still had her fighting attitude. This was back in the early part of this year, I think. Maybe a month ago Luis heard that she had taken a downward turn. And today Luis told me that she had died. I never knew her, really, but I liked the energy she put out. She leave two children behind, and I hope they are well taken care of. She was only 33 years old.

Rainy Season?

It rained this afternoon. And I was so happy. We’ve had hot and humid temperatures here since I got back from the States. So hot it reminds me of my first years in Atlanta without air conditioning or ceiling fans. You can’t escape the sweat. I wake up in the middle of the night to use the loo and I return to damp sheets. (Wait, that makes it sound like I never made it to the bathroom! No, no, no! The sheets are damp from sweat! I am potty trained, dangit!) You realize why the locals always stand in the shade here. Why they thought you were a bit daft to enjoy standing in the sunlight earlier in the season, when it wasn’t so damned hot. Everything sticks to you, but there is no way you are going to wear more clothes and cover your overheated skin.

So rain today was a relief. Luis was taking a shower, and I tramped up to the roof to watch the storm roll in. The clouds were fabulous to watch – the high ones moving southward towards us, the lower ones moving northwards. A cold front moved in and my skin reacted quickly, cooling the rest of me down. Lightning flashed in the north. I counted the seconds until I heard the thunder rumbling towards me, trying to catch up with its creator. Then the first drops fell. I must have been sitting in some sort of void, or the heat coming off my skin dried the rain before it could reach me, because for the first few minutes I stayed dry. Finally I felt the rain on my skin and realized it was time to go in.

Within minutes the rain was pounding down into the courtyards, the scent of dusty concrete rising up in response. I dashed across the back courtyard to get to the bathroom, then dashed back, feeling the cool air and rain on my back.

Luis and I stood at the front door with the upper windows open so we could watch the rain come down. A couple of kids were running down the sidewalk. The stopped at our door to hand us a flyer for one of the local political hopefuls, then ran on to the next door, squealing in the downpour. “Pobrecitos”, I said. “Nah, they’re getting paid,” said Luis. We closed the windows and went back inside.

Eventually the rain stopped. In Atlanta it was more likely to heat right back up once the rain stopped. Here it stayed cool. An hour later I went to the Internet café and actually had to wear jeans and a light jacket. No need to run the room fan tonight.

Felipe’s Bar, Part 2

One reason friends and family suggested we keep the bar here was the upcoming World Cup games. Soccer, beer and a big screen – why wouldn’t there be a huge opportunity for income?

Three words: no night games. Since the Cup is being held in Germany this year, the time difference means all the games are daytime games here. The first game of the day is around 10am, the second around noon, the last one around 2pm. Now, in the States, I could imagine soccer fans taking time off work, maybe taking a long lunch, or calling in sick so they could hang out at a bar to watch the game.

Here in Tuxpan, going to a bar to watch a game just isn’t the thing to do, especially during the day. People will take time off from whatever they are doing, but they would rather stay at home or go to a family member’s house to watch the game. If I had known the games would all be during the day back in April when we were trying to decide what to do, I would have had no problem dropping the bar. As it is, we made the right decision anyway. Now it’s Felipe’s turn.

Felipe is doing what he can to get people in the bar. There is a big sign above the gates announcing the bar will be open for all the games – starting at 9am. He is probably announcing around town too. But I’m guessing he’s losing money worse than we were. Karma is a bitch.

Luis has calmed down a bit about it all. For the most recent Mexico game we were getting some last minute supplies in the center and ran into a few people who were going home to watch the game. They still thought that we were running the bar because they asked if it was open. Luis, in a gesture of good will (I guess) said yes it was open, “vamos al bar” (come to the bar). It’s much more than Felipe deserves, and I said so to Luis. I’m not sure he still feels that way as he didn’t respond.

But it’s true.

Is he making money or not? I have no idea, but I’m sure he’s getting a taste of what it’s like to run a business – the good and the bad of it.

Boys Club of Tuxpan

There is a boys club down here and I will never be a part of it. And that really bothers me.

When I was growing up I was a tomboy. I’ve always had male friends. It’s not that I wanted to be a boy, but it always seemed that boy things were more fun than girl things. I wanted to run and play in the mud, I wanted to play tag, I wanted to build things and take other things apart to see how they worked. Makeup didn’t interest me, dolls didn’t interest me much either. One of my first toys was a Tonka truck. But it was the 1970’s, and gender stereotypes were breaking down it the US, so no one questioned my boyish habits. At least not to me, they didn’t. Perhaps amongst themselves there was speculation, but if I caught wind of it, it never bothered me enough to stop me.

But down here in Mexico there is a definite split between the sexes. Men hang out with men, women hang out at the house with their relatives. Luis’ mom never really left her house. She would stay there all day, cleaning, cooking, and taking care of her kids. And she was apparently happy that way. Cynthia has a job, but her circle of friends consists of her two sisters and their children. The same holds true for Laura and Pati. So I guess I have a built-in group of friends, if I want them. But that’s not who I want to hang out with.

The women I’ve met here in town are nice enough, but I think they buy into the gender roles that have been laid out for them. And in small town Mexico there is considerable social pressure to assimilate, to fit into predefined roles. Rebelling is not as accepted or as common as it is in the US.

So I have looked to Luis’ circle of male friends. They all seemed fairly modern, and being that I am a gringa, I thought maybe there would be some flexibility in the attitudes towards my behaviors. I thought I might be accepted as one of the boys. As if I could somehow lie outside of the social roles. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Luis’ friends talk to me and include me in their events, but I’m seen as auxiliary, an addition to Luis rather than a member of the group on my own right. I’ve realized that I won’t ever be included that group as an equal. And it’s not just because I am Luis’ girlfriend – although I’m sure that factors into it – it’s because I am a girl. And here in Tuxpan, males just don’t make friends with females. Females have their roles, even if they are modern gringas.

Another thing I’m seeing is that men here have different relationships from the men I know in the States. Up there, men may have friends, especially during certain years like college, but those friends seem to dry up once they get married. Or they are incorporated into a circle of friends, both male and female. Men of my age, and older, are more solitary in the states. They are not expected to have a group of male-only friends. They might get together with a group of men to go do something perceived as manly in the States – like going to watch a football game at a bar – but not just to hang out and shoot the shit. (Or am I wrong about this? Tell me if you think otherwise.)

Here in Tuxpan men will continue to hang out with their friends long after they are married. Men go out in the evenings to meet up with their friends and drink. Men see each other in the street during the day and stop to chat. Luis and his friends regularly get together just to talk. They don’t need to have some sort of organized event to bring them together. I don’t imagine those conversations are particularly touchy-feely, but I do know of at least one conversation which centered around a friend’s marriage problems.

I just can’t imagine that happening as often in the States as I see it happening here. Men are much closer in that way here than they are in the states. Some of that comes from the built-in gender split here. The most blatant example of that is when family is all gathered at our house. In general, the men will sit in one area and drink beer or tequila while the women sit in another area, drink Coca-Cola and watch the kids. I’ve seen this happen in the States too, but it seems it’s more a matter of conversation – people tend to gravitate to the group that is talking about something that interests them. Sometimes conversations are about topics that interest both genders, sometimes they are about a more gender specific topic so the group becomes gender specific too. Here it somehow feels more confining, more expected – men just don’t talk to women as friends, and vice versa.

Now, it’s not always as cut and dry at that might sound. The sexism isn’t always that blatant. But it’s there, it exists.

So since I’m a woman, I am excluded from Luis’ male group. And it kills me. I don’t have any real desire to hang out with the mothers of the town; I don’t have kids of my own and don’t plan on having any. Women here marry early and have kids early, so the other age group that is available to me is teenagers. And we all know that teenagers have a hard time communicating with adults, especially when they speak a different language - literally.

So I’m left out of the women’s group by my own choice, and the men will never accept me as one of their own. Dang.

Raw

When I moved to Mexico, I decided to try to be as open as possible to the new experiences I would inevitably have. I’m not completely a “go with the flow” kinda gal to start with, so some of this was going to be an uphill battle. But I find that I have left myself so raw and open that it’s hard to protect myself against attacks, whether internal or external, real or perceived.

And I’m really good at attacking myself. My old joke was, “I’m neither Jewish or Catholic, but somehow I got their guilt complex”. Being down here seems to have brought that out even more. Everything I do stays with me for days. If I screw up, I attack myself for whatever I did or didn’t do, and won’t let myself off the hook. I can’t seem to forgive myself for being human and fallible.

Today Luis and I went to Guzman to see if we could track down a lumber resource for our newest venture - a furniture and cabinetry business. We stopped at a friend’s business to see if he had any leads. He said he knew a carpenter, but wasn’t sure if he would be open to talking to “the competition”. So Luis and his friend went alone to talk to the guy. I stayed behind at a coffee house and waited.

Now, all of this seems logical. And I agreed to wait. But I quickly got resentful at being left behind. This is apparently a big issue for me, but I haven’t gotten a good enough hold on it to be able to either deal with it or explain it to Luis so he knows where it comes from when I freak out about it.

Which is exactly what happened when he got back. Turns out the carpenter was more than happy to give him a number of leads and a bunch of information. This is good, right? Of course, getting all that information down in one conversation takes a while. Luis said it would probably only be gone for half an hour. But half an hour passed and he wasn’t back. Meanwhile, all I could think of while Luis was gone was how resentful I felt. I had been left behind again with nothing to do while he was off taking care of business. Again. I thought I was going to be justified when he came back and I gave him shit.

I knew that I was in that bad mental space, and I knew it would be best for me to get out of it. But sometimes it gets ahold of me and it’s difficult to shake off.

So Luis returns after 45 minutes and I try to stay calm. I let him talk for about 3 minutes and then lean into him. I tell him I feel like I was left behind and tried to compare it to one time when he went off on me for a similar experience. In the middle of my bitching I realized I had made a mistake. I was making a big deal out of something that didn’t need to be bothered with, that I was lashing out at him for something that was really my issue. I tried to back track, and told Luis that I realized I had fucked up, that I realized that I was in the wrong. He said ok.

But I couldn’t let it go. I was worried that I was fucking the whole relationship up, not just the conversation. And I couldn’t forgive myself for going down that path when it wasn’t necessary. I wanted him to give me a hug and tell me it was ok, I’m just human, he still loves me. I was looking for him to be my support system. The one I don’t have here – no girlfriends, no male friends, no family (at least not family who can speak English). But that isn’t possible. Luis can’t be both my lover and my support system. So I ended up feeling like shit and not having anyone to smack me upside the head and tell me I was being silly.

It’s a big circular mental fuck. And it’s hard to pull out of when you’re in the vortex. It’s neverending. And I’m so raw from it.

I think I have lost myself. I need someone else to confirm that I exist. Is this rock bottom? If so, it’s all uphill from here, right?

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

So I’m reading this book about Mexico, supposedly about the non-tourist places of Mexico. But what boggles me is that the author has gone only to places that a tourist would go to: Mexico City, Guanajuato, Oaxaca City, San Miguel Allende (where he has a home). The most alluring place so far (I’m about half way through the book) is a place called Los Pozos, near a town called Xilitla in the Sierra Gorda mountain range. It’s a “surrealist ‘art park’ built by a wealthy English eccentric”. The way the author writes about it reminds me of a place I once visited in Georgia with my friend Ann. It too had been built by an eccentric (Eddie Owens Martin or St. EOM as he called himself) and was quite fabulous to walk around. And of course, for anyone who has lived in the Atlanta region for any amount of time, think of the Reverend Finster and his Paradise Garden where he made “native” art, and it sounds like you’ll have an idea of what this place is like. But with statues instead of paintings.

But I digress. Back to Mexico.

So I’m reading this book and I’m wondering when the guy is going to cover some area of Mexico that doesn’t sound like a tourist spot. I mean, every town he goes to has a café! We don’t have one of those in Tuxpan. We have to drive 12 miles to the next town to get a coffee drink made for us!

I guess I’m just a bit disappointed in the book. I was expecting to hear more about the people and the culture, but he mostly talks to other ex-patriates and goes to places that have some cultural or historical tourist draw to them. I was hoping he would interact with the natives, maybe live in a small town in Mexico to see how the “real” Mexico is.

Guess I’ll have to write that book.

New Ink

So it's kinda funny how I got these new tattoos. Way back when I lived in Atlanta, I came up with the kanji idea. Actually, I had found a great poster with a kanji of "chaos" and a little blurb about how we sometimes need to go through a lot of chaos in our lives before we can find some order again. I really liked that idea and I liked the kanji design too. I thought it would be great to have "chaos" tattooed on one arm and "harmony" on the other. But just the kanji themselves seemed... too little. I needed something more. A lot of thought and research and drawing and I came up with the two-headed snake I currently have on my back. (Btw, the two-headed snake is a symbol of movement between life and death, dark and light, harmony and chaos.) But when I went to have the snake put on, I couldn't figure out a good way to include the kanjis. So they remained off my skin.

Some years later when I had been in Portland for a year or so, I came across Dan at Atlas Tattoo. I went so far as to give him art work and some description of what I was looking for. I even had a scheduled appointment with him and a $40 deposit to reserve it. Well, that appointment never happened. I never found the money to get the tattoos, and I eventually forfeited my deposit too.

Zoom forward to three months ago: Luis and I went up to Portland to take care of some business. I emailed one of the other artists at Atlas tattoo to see if she had any time to put the ink on me. No go. She was booked up for two more months, and so was everyone else in the shop. No big deal.

This past month when I went up to Portland again, I decided to stop by the shop and say hello. I ended up talking with the receptionist for a while and she said:
"Well, Jennifer is booked up for the next month. Everyone here gets booked pretty far in advance. Let me see if someone else might have time. Sometimes we get cancellations. Nope, no one has time available."
So we kept talking for a few minutes about music or tattoos or whatever. Then the phone rang.
"Yeah... ok.... well, it happens. So your appointment was when?"
Turns out someone had to cancel on Saturday the 3rd, the very day I was leaving Portland (on the midnight flight)! Suddenly Dan, the guy I had originally wanted a tattoo from, had an opening. The receptionist rearranged another appointment on that day and I had an 11.30am tattoo appointment with Dan!

I didn't feel like I had the right to turn that opportunity down. Seems the universe was telling me to go ahead and get the damn things already! So here they are:


Left arm (kanji translates to "harmony")


Right arm (kanji translates to "chaos")

I will eventually get some sort of background behind the flower, kanji and snake head. But that will come later.....