Too Much Tequila, Too Little Sunscreen

I’m reaching down into that bulging neck-line and just begin to caress those magnificent tits when someone shakes me.

“Señor Bob, Señor Bob, Wake up. Wake up. It’s time to go home.”

Where am I? I’m shivering; I’m cold, so cold. I sit up to see Chui squatting beside me. I’m nude and shivering on top of a bunch of pillows. Chui is dripping wet. Oh yeah, I remember now, I’m down in the Playboy Mansion grotto with Lori.

“Where’s Lori?” Is all that I can think to say.

“It was her turn with Boner and she didn’t want to miss it. She stumbled across Brenda and me in the cabana as she was running up to Hef’s room and told me you were down here. I had to swim to get here and I don’t swim so good.”

The ride back to the our motel is quiet and uneventful except for Boner‘s constant subconscious whimpering, “Mimi kuja, Mimi kuja, Mimi kuja …”

Apparently, I’m the only one that got any sleep last night. My colleagues are both dead to the world. I shower and shave and start packing up my stuff when I see an envelope sticking out from under the towel I wore home this morning. It’s addressed to me. I open it and find a handwritten note and 50 crisp new one hundred dollar bills. Not bad for a days work. I unfold the note.

I pull the covers back to wake my associates and discover that Brenda is wedged tightly in between Boner and Chui. She has her knees pulled up to those huge implants and her ass pointed towards Chui. My guess is she’s not letting Boner anywhere near her ass again … or at least until she heals.

I rouse my grinning-in-their-sleep traveling companions and we head south. The trip is quite pleasant once you get through L.A.’s bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic. We creep along for a hundred miles or so in typical L.A. stop-and-go-and-stop-and-go traffic. How and maybe even more of a mystery, why … why do these people put up with this?

If you think the L.A. traffic sucks wait til you get to the US/Mexican border. Its seven lanes collapsing into six creeping lanes as the Mexican customs officials rummage through the incoming cars looking for contraband. The closer we get to the actual border the more Chui sweats and squirms. Finally he says, “Señor Bob, I can’t go into Tijuana. Those pinché assholes will kill me just to piss on my grave. Can I borrow some money from you so Brenda and I can catch a bus back to Juarez?”

“If you think that’s what you need to do. Here take a couple of hundred and write down where we can find you when we get back home.” I say as I hand Chui some money and a pencil.

We finally get across the border and are making that sweeping turn just after the bridge when Boner hollers for me to stop. I pull over and turn to the back seat only to see that Chui is having a seizure. He is shaking and Brenda is hanging on to him like a bronco buster to a wild stallion. She’s doing her best to calm him down using the only CPR technique she knows but I’m afraid her blow job, as lovingly as it’s being administered, is only contributing to his agitated state. I tap her lightly on the head and she rises, wipes her mouth and begins struggling with Chui’s fly. I hope she puts his manhood back before she yanks on his zipper. All of this attention or maybe it’s the cessation of Brenda’s activity seems to calm him a bit. Before anyone can speak he hops out of the car, dragging Brenda behind him, hands me a note, turns and runs across the street. Brenda turns and looks back at us helplessly as Chui yanks her out of the path of an oncoming car.

I yell, “Be safe, my friends.” But they are gone, lost in the congestion and bustle of this huge city, this city of one and half million desperate souls.

Boner and I don’t know what to say, so we just sit here on this busy avenue watching the traffic race by. Finally it dawns on us that Chui and Brenda won’t be coming back.

“Vipi kuhusu pombe.”

“Yeah, I could use a cold one too.”

We ease back into the frantic Tijuana traffic and I head to the public parking lot on Avenida De Revolución that I remember from my days in the Corps.

I read that Mexico’s drug war has really played havoc on the tourist business all along the border especially in the larger cities like Juarez and here. One report said that 75% of the shops on Avenida De Revolución, the main street in downtown Tijuana, have closed. I’m not sure I want to see what those thousands of senseless drug-related killings have done to my old town. I also read that the U.S. Marine Corps has declared Tijuana off-limits to the 40 thousand or so Marines stationed in Southern California. I can’t even imagine what life in the Corps is like without being able to slip over the border for a cold one. I could tell stories about my good ole days in TJ before we shipped out to Nam but I’ll save them for another day.

The parking lot is right where I remember it but its empty. I hope it’s open. It is, we park, pay the guy and start ambling up, or is it down (I’m never sure which) the avenue. Boner doesn’t look too out of place in his Count Dracula cape and his droopy sweat pants. He holds his cape closed in the front and no one notices his ah … ah … bulge. If I’d have thought this through we might have chosen a Zorro cape and mask. It might be a better choice for Mexico or … or … don’t bull fighters wear their capes over their shoulders when they’re not in the ring tormenting bulls. Yeah, Boner could have been a bull fighter … but … but then again how would we ever have gotten him into those skin-tight torero pants. Okay, his Dracula cape ain’t such a bad idea after all. It works.

There’s not a lot of foot traffic and about four out of every five stores, pottery shops, cantinas or old titty bars are closed and boarded up. Heavily armed soldiers seem to be everywhere. This famous street, once full of tourists, horny servicemen, street vendors and hustlers of all kinds, is now barren except for an occasional local and a host of nervous and scared looking teenage soldiers. This is a sad day for me. On my last visit here this was a hustling and bustling city and now it looks like the set for The Omega Man.

Finally we find a cantina that’s still in business, barely. We take stools at the bar and look around. We’re the only patrons in what was obviously once a tourist bar. Probably a titty bar by the looks of the elevated, dark and dusty runway. How many lovely senoritas danced here …?

“Ni nini tunaweza kufanya.”

“It’s too early to go over to the Blue Fox so I thought we’d have a couple of beers and relax. You must be worn out after the day you had yesterday. Let’s see you wrapped up after … what was it … eight to ten hours of … of … of movie making with Anal-Annie. You never told me … was she really like riding a mechanical bull with an ass …?”

“Takatifu fuck.”

I turn to see the bartender coming at us with a shotgun. I don’t know whether to duck or …

He points his sawed-off 12 gauge towards the door, lays it gently on the bar next to me and says. “Ain’t none of those drug cabróns gonna come in here and shoot none of my customers. I run the safest bar in town because I’ll kill their sorry drugged-out asses if they so much as poke their heads in my bar.”

“Takatifu fuck.”

“That’s reassuring, I’m glad to see that someone’s fighting back. I read in my local paper that some patrons of this restaurant in Chihuahua beat up this gun totin’ drug trafficker and tossed him out on his ass. I wish there were more like you and oh … we’ll have two Dos Equis.”

He continues talking as he gets our beer, “What else are we gonna do? The government can’t do anything. The cops all run an’ hide and our poor soldier boys are shakin’ in their boots. I don’t blame ‘em, the drug cartels have them out-gunned and out-witted most of the time. What are we going to do?”

“Nobody seems to have the answer to that question. I think the government’s plan is to dismantle the cartels at the very top, kill or capture the heads of the cartels and then break up their organizations from the top down.”

“And how’s that working?” The bartender asks as if he already knows the answer.

“Not very well at all. We hear about the death of some big time drug king-pin and we expect something different afterwards but nothing changes. Maybe you’re on to something. If we arm the little people, the people most affected by this mess, people like you; they will clean up this drug cartel trash in their cities.”

“I’d like to think so, señor but those pinché drug assholes know what they’re doing. They buy their respect in their neighborhoods by giving to the charities, providing for the needy and paying off the politicians and the police.”

“A little less than a hundred years ago you guys successfully pulled off an armed revolution. You overthrew the abusive land owners and the exploiters of your people. You could do it again. Where is Pancho Villa, now when we really need him?” I say with a chuckle.

“You know señor; I think you might have hit upon the answer. I don’t know how to start a revolution but maybe you could teach me. Here have another beer on me and let’s talk.”

“Takatifu fuck.”

“Did you know that the word revolution, or as you say revolución, is derived from the Latin word revolutio which means a turn around or a fundamental change in power or organizational structure? Copernicus named his 1543 treatise on the movements of planets around the sun De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. The term revolution later came to mean an abrupt change in the social order.”

I’m on a roll lecturing my new best friend and Boner on the little I know about revolutions. Their eyes are glazing over but I contiue on.

“Revolutions are power struggles between competing interest groups that occur when two or more groups cannot come to terms within the normal decision making process within their political system, and simultaneously have enough resources to employ force in pursuing their goals.”

”Kubisha mbali bullshit.”

“Eric Hoffer in his ground breaking The True Believer taught us that revolutions are brought about by passionate people willing to sacrifice themselves and others to achieve some idealistic goal. Revolutionary leaders must instill this passion in their followers by glorifying the past and devaluing the present in order to appeal to people who are dissatisfied with their current state, but share this strong belief in the future. As well, mass movements appeal to people who want to escape a …

“Sisi ni Outta hapa.”

I look up to see that Boner is so bored he’s falling off of his bar stool while our revolutionary bartender has fallen asleep with his head on the bar and his arms wrapped around his shotgun. Here is a picture of what’s wrong with Mexico and a quite possibly why I love it so much. Picture this: a man downtrodden and impoverished by the current state of affairs in his country, a man extremely critical of his government’s ability to rectify this untenable situation, a man immensely passionate in his desire to personally bring about the necessary changes, and … and a man even willing to listen to a gringo’s boring lectures but … but before he does anything he must … must take a siesta. Viva Mexico!