“Happy [belated] Cinco de Mayo”
(or, if you prefer, ‘Much Ado About Mexies,’ a random pagemonkey rant)

I had almost decided, Gentle Reader, to simply not mention Cinco de Mayo at all this year, due to the flu wave running thru our southern neighbor’s digs.

But I find I simply can’t. So much of Mexico runs in my blood, courtesy of a long and happy association with the country’s citizens both here and there.

They were not able to celebrate this year in the way they’ve become accustomed to, and due to fears and worries, neither were we - so, as good neighbors, we must continue to celebrate for the rest of the month! They have ‘been there’ for us many times, therefore, we should ‘be there’ for them. Drink up!

Before I pop up words about the wonderful times I’ve had in Mexico and show dirty pics of Mexican boys, I need to express my thanks to VP Joe - perhaps the one person who made an intelligent statement during the early days of the H1N1 outbreak.

Joe’s proven himself a loving, smart, worthy patriarch many times in the past, and he reinforced his reputation by deliberately walking into the jaws of a media-set beartrap with his answer to the question of what he would advise his family and friends to do about H1N1.

I’m not going to paste the exact quote, but what he basically said was avoid small places with highly recirculated air which can carry viruii and avoid being around people who are obviously sick.

“I would tell them not to travel right now” was not bad advice at all, given at the outset of what some hype mongers had already compared to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 - and I like old Joe for having the sack to come right out and give that advice, knowing as he spoke he would be taking blast furnace heat from travel and airline people.

Fortunately for the entire world, the hype mongers are at least temporarily wrong - H1N1, formerly monikered as Swine Flu to the objection of obese women and hog farmers everywhere, seems to lack some basic elements to make it a truly pandemic worthy affliction.

It’s high time for a dirty picture, so here’s Jornalero (courtesy of bi Latin Men) - a sexy, strong, masculine guy who currently lives in Tijuana and has the Devil’s own time driving north to visit his friends and family in Los Angeles.

He’s a very typical northern Mexican - split across the border, with some family and friends living in his homeland, and some family and friends living here.

And he’s very typical in that he’s trying to move here legally and legitimately.

My buddy Jose @ bi Latin Men does what he can as far as providing guys like this the contact information they need to make their move here on the Up and Up, fully legally.

Speaking from the heart, we need more new citizens like this - hard working, honest, with a belief in the American Dream. I don’t think those Wall Street assholes understand this concept as anything other than something to laugh at - us “sheep” who still feel that really working for a living and expecting nothing for free is an honorable and viable way of living seems to be so out of scale for them, given their actions of the last few years.

---

I’ve had some stellar times in Mexico, tooling around from town to town, learning about each little town as I mosied through it. You need only to be smarter than the livestock, and be very honest with the Mexicans you meet on such journeys. If you’re not, they’ll usually do the worst thing they can do to a stranger - give no advice, good nor bad. “I don’t know, senor…”

My first journeys into Mexico were in the 1980s, unless…

…you want to count those awful trips my dad took us on to see the bullfights in Tijuana back in the late 1960s. Dad was a cultural menace and managed to find his very ilk south of the border, so we never really had a good time on those trips. image: www.earlkemp.com

He always made it very clear that he didn’t trust anyone around him, and would promptly spend several long minutes pissing off every one around us, then pick the least trustable Jose in the crowd he created by his loud behavior to be our official gotcherback, dog guy.

To my dad, every Mexican was Jose. Go figure.

Dad’s approach - all the while passing on valuable information to me by saying semi-quietly you have to show these breeds who’s boss - invariably resulted in what I’ll call crimes of spite - missing, vital car parts - because he managed to get us “advised” into the worst motel in town and then trusted another Jose he had pissed off with his spouting to park our car down the street where it would be “safe” while assuring us we were staying near a “good place to eat” that, and, now that I think about it, places that didn’t even have the usual cadre of strays raiding its rubbish.

But without someone like my dad (a racist even Aryan Nation members would smell from half a mile away and shun) directing the adventure, I’ve always had a huge amount of fun in Mexico.

---

I’ve never even bothered to learn their language, because I’ve always been able to communicate superbly with pidgeon Spanish, pidgeon English, nods, shrugs, grunts, waving, little bursts of drawing stuff on paper Pictionary style, the occasional pissing-on of something after cervesa #3, and hugs - and that honesty has always fostered communication instead of holding it back, which says a lot for the average Mexican.

I’ve had people tell me that most of Mexico is 30 years behind the times - and in some respects, that speaks well of them. They haven’t embraced the materialism that we have, and haven’t developed our deep craving for being ahead of the status quo - what works good is still okay-fine, which is how it should be.

I haven’t been to Puerto Penasco for several years - but one of the things I miss about going there for a week is buying food. You just don’t find warm eggs in our supermarkets. You have warm eggs in the smaller groceries in small Mexican towns until about 8am, because they come out from underneath hens at about 5am instead of sitting for 2 weeks in a refrigerated warehouse waiting for the highest bid.

I miss the shopping - or rather, the honest haggling and good-natured mutual insult-fests that go hand in hand with shopping in Mexico.

As in, “Senor, a man with a belly like yours needs un grande chiminea for his patio so he look thin… Or perhaps su casa es poquito?”

And my late Mad-Man Mike developed a love for Mexico on his first visit. At the time, Mike had just taken over managing a RadioShack store whose previous manager had driven most of the neighborhood customers away from with his shitty attitude, which meant poor Mike was doing “customer service recoveries” on a daily basis - listening to aggravated shoppers and going the extra mile to win them back.

He immediately felt the friendly attitude, and remarked several times about the way Mexicans treat folks like family until proven they shouldn’t.

We had a great time those three nights, hitting all the bars that cater to the 18 year old crowd - who welcomed us like old friends, without undue emphasis on the “old” part.

 

(The only thing Mike wasn’t fond of was the pink motel room, which I had already told him was the lesser of all evils available - but he got a chuckle when inquiring about the other rooms in that particular motel. “We have some very orange rooms, a few brown rooms el nortes say look like poop, and a bright yellow room that doesn’t rent well. But we have an unpainted room we can paint if you will be here for a few days and want to help pick out the color, senor…”)

And I miss the shrimp. You can’t buy live shrimp here for $12 a pound, you can’t buy them for any price.

We’ve grown way and far too sophisticated in our tastes, we no longer appreciate the sheer joy of a nicely restored auto, and it has become almost ‘illegal’ in the Gay world to invite people over for a home cooked dinner made of comfort food made from scratch.

To our own detriment, I might add - it takes a constant flow of equally resource consuming new products to keep the average “us” happy.

Note that I’m not saying everyone should get back to simpler, kinder times by boating around town in a 19 foot long car that gets 5 miles per gallon - I’m simply saying we might have become too sophisticated to enjoy such basic, elemental pleasures.

And I’ll also say that I don’t think your new cell phone (”hello, Sam..?”) carries as much deep down satisfaction as something you built or rebuilt with your own guile and wit and your ability to learn how to do something.

 

 

Another thing Mad-Man Mike remarked upon was the creativity he saw in Puerto Penasco - where, as it goes in most small Mexican towns, things can run from the brilliant to the absurd.

Do something unique - throw off our consumeristic, hedonistic ways for just a moment and get back to basics.

Find something elemental to do, even if it means getting a little grubby and asking stoopid questions at an auto parts store or home improvement store, or best yet, at a salvage yard, to accomplish your vision.

I think you’ll relish the grub and dirt, and get a kick out of your friends’ reactions.

And it’s high time for such behavior.

 

Frankly, if a buttoned-down guy like my old Mike could do it, so can you.

It’s time to get back to treating life like a long party, one at which the party games involve creativity and genuine satisfaction - which takes participation on your part.

Many folks have cut back on spending, because it’s just not in the budget to keep the steady stream of “new and improved” crap flowing into our homes and later into our garages or mini-storages lockers when we’re tired of them.

So, cut forward in the other direction - build stuff, invent stuff. Make the most of the money you have, and hell, you might even have a good time doing it!

Here’s one more big ole dirty picture (courtesy of bi Latin Men) to inspire you…

~ pagemonkey