"stupid VD"

Where to start?

In an effort to keep this brief, suffice it to say that at dinner last night I held true to my desire to be gracious, no matter what. I didn't roll my eyes when the Giant Gringo said that Lucia's beautiful teenaged daughter loved him...."She loves me," he said, "and I'm 50 years older than she is." My interpretation is that she tolerates him as he grabs her and forces her to kiss him on the cheek. But I might be wrong. I didn't let out a groan when with every drink he drank I got more beautiful. "You are one muy bonita senorita." Shit, just writing that makes me groan.

But I did do one of the rudest things I think I've ever done.

I left him sitting at the table while I went and joined two other men. I left him to pay the bill, not even offering to get the tip. I stayed at the bar with the two men as I thanked him for dinner. What a bitch.

You see, the meal was over and I saw this man come in who I had met before. I met him when he was with a man I thought might be my soul mate or true flame or whatever. That other man was a man whose resemblance to The Jailbird was so striking that it made my heart leap in my chest. We finally met and chatted and upon talking with him I knew he was the one for me. He had just bought a house here and so I looked forward to running into him on his next trip to Mexico.

Come to find out from the friend, my true flame just married a Mexican woman. Dang it.

But I rallied from this devastating news and ended up going to see the motel these guys (my true flame's friend and his friend) were staying in, meet the motel owner who treated us to shots of tequila, and then going over to the puta bar to dance.

My true flame's friend is very good looking. He is a very good dancer. And he is a Buddhist. Could he be my true flame? I doubt it. I think my allure (and probably my karma) lies more in the eyes of Giant Gringos with Giant Purple Bellies.

i'll try for a drunken stupor

Oh god. I told the Giant Gringo that I would go to dinner with him tonight, that I would share the Giant Steak he hand-selected for the restaurant and would partake of a bottle of champagne.

Oh god.

I had been feeling bad because I've turned down every one of his invitations, to dinner, for a margarita, for a shot of Laphroaig, and so when he invited me out for Valentine's Day I thought what the hell, I haven't had champagne in nearly a year. What the hell, indeed. The man makes me crazy.

The fact that I find him physically unappealing is not the worst of it. It's his personality and his overblown ego that cause me to behave badly when I'm in his presence. And in spite of my downright nastyness, he still invites me out.

I never should have said yes.

But I did and so for two days now, since the invitation, I have told myself that at dinner I will be gracious. I will clamp down on my tongue to keep from saying things like "God! You act as though you're some great white hope come to save all the little brown people" or "You need new material; I've only known you for a month and already I've heard your stories a gazillion times" or "You're an asshole"....all things I have said. And still he invites me out.

Certainly it's because he's desperate for female companionship and not due to our sparkling repartee. The only other single woman in this park is his neighbor the Ex Trucker and they hate each other. Their latest spat was over the mangy dog the Ex Trucker's been feeding - and truly that dog is one nasty-looking beast what with a missing ear and atrophied penis. Anyhow according to the Ex Trucker the Giant Gringo told her that he got scabies from that dog and he raised up his shirt and exposed his Giant Purple Belly and yelled at the Ex Trucker "look what I got from that damn dog!" Later, when he told me about the scabies, I told him that I didn't think humans could get scabies from dogs and so I googled it and sure enough, I was right but I haven't wanted to broach the subject. If he brings it up again tonight, which he will undoubtedly do beings as this is his "new material", I'll wave the scabies article in his face - all the while keeping my mouth shut, of course.

God. What a girl won't do for a glass of the bubbly.

my 6-word memoir

"We will be your representatives," Juan said and then he repeated in Spanish for the benefit of Carlos.

"In America we call that 'pimps'. You will be my dancing pimps!"

I had been telling Juan and Carlos about my night out at Bar Diego (the bar where the putas hang out) and that I had had a great time dancing not only with my fellow Americans (and the Fat Pigeon of a dog who since her outing on New Year's Eve has become a dancing fool) but with many of the Mexican men as well. That's when Juan came up with the idea of charging for my dances; I'd be like one of those old-time Dime a Dance girls.

I love to dance. It is the one thing I do well. It is the one activity I would do every day if I could, if I had someone to dance with. The Jailbird said that he is a good dancer and he told me about the time he taught the 8th-grade boys how to dance so that they could more actively participate in the 8th-grade graduation party. He used Samurai movements as the basic moves so it didn't seem so "sissyfied" to the boys. Alas, I never did get to dance with The Jailbird.

But I am happy to report that at Bar Diego I mastered that held-tight-bodies-as-one dance the Mexicans do. (We may have to charge more for that one, what with all the physical contact.) With a good leader, I can grasp almost any dance. I used to watch the ballroom dancing competitions on PBS, knowing that with training I could have been just as good as some of those salsa dancers. Or quicksteppers. Or tango-ists. Dang it, I coulda been a contender, but I was too short. Short women cannot be successful at ballroom dancing competitions which was always pointed out by the dance competition color commentators. "She just doesn't have the long flowing lines of the other dancers," Juliet Prowse would say whenever a petite dancer was on the floor.

Smith magazine held a contest a couple years ago and has recently published a book of entries. The competition was this: Write your memoir in six words. Here's mine:

Not tall enough to dance professionally.

But hell, now that I'll be charging for my dances, I'll be considered professional, right? Comment on that, Ms Prowse!

all the pretty horses

All the pretty cowboys!

A couple months ago the Bicycle Vendor asked if I'd like to go to the rodeo. He said that it was a big event, that there would be a lot of music, a lot of dancing, that people would come from all over the state. I marked the date on my calendar and so on Saturday we lead a caravan of gringos to Suaqui, a tiny pueblo which sits about 30 miles down a dirt road in the middle of the desert. Quite a few of the park residents - mostly Oregonians and Californians - went to the rodeo but nary a Canadian. The Canadians said they had seen the Calgary Rodeo, the granddaddy of all rodeos (at least according to them) and so why did they want to go to a Mexican rodeo. Did they miss out! Believe me, this was not your mother's rodeo - unless she happened to be Mexican.

First off, there was a group of musicians in the announcer's booth and they played music throughout the entire 5-hour rodeo. As it turned out, the music was an integral part of the day's events. After all, the dancing horses needed music to dance to:

And between bull-riding competitions, the young men and women needed musical accompaniment as they leaped off the rails and danced in the arena:

Even I got in on the dancing, held close by this young cowboy (who thankfully was wearing boots as I stepped on his feet about a gazillion times):

I don't imagine that rodeos in Canada or the U.S. let people sit on the rails while bulls try to buck their riders. Can you say LIABILITY?


This particular roper was one of my favorites. Not only was his horse beautiful, but between roping duties he sat astride his horse with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other.


And of course there were the children. They, too, were cowboyed up and they, too, danced in the arena between bull-riding competitions.


Considering that some of the people danced in the ring before the bull was caught and led back to the gate, and considering that they danced among the dancing horses, it is a wonder that only one person got hurt. A young cowboy got gored by the bull. I was very close to him and it looked as though he took a horn in the eye. I hope not. I hope the blood was from a gash in his forehead.

There was a big fiesta after the rodeo but we didn't stay. Driving Mexican roads in the dark is not a safe thing to do. But next year, next year I will be back for the rodeo. I will throw sleeping bags in the van and camp out at the rodeo grounds. By then the Bicycle Vendor will have completed his self-imposed three years of sobriety and so we will dance together (he said he only dances when he's been drinking). And if I can't get him to dance, hopefully I'll be able to fall into the arms of another pretty cowboy.

nada nada nada

Que pasa? Que tal? What's up? No matter how you ask, my answer is always the same: nothing, nothing, nothing.

I went to the US because I had to do that six-month Mexican visa thing. I had to deal with the State of Arizona which had revoked my vehicle registration because my Oregon vehicle insurance wasn't good enough for them, the bastards. I had to do something with the color of my hair - the gray roots and screaming white blond ends was not a pretty combination. I had to stock up on supplies for every fucking gringo in the park.

So I went to Tucson where I accomplished all of the above. In addition I got to see my niece for the first time since her trip through a car windshield. She is doing great. For the first time since his leaving The Home of Dashed Hopes, I visited with The Rancher at his new trailer park. He is still one of my most favorite people. I caught up with him in the billiards room where he shoots pool with other old farts every single morning. I had a beer with Jailbird Jr, caught up on the whereabouts of The Jailbird (stuck in the Midwest), and was thrilled that Jailbird Dog went nuts when she saw me.

I checked out my feelings as I drove through southern Arizona. Is this my home? Is this where I'm meant to be? Will I return there?

The Home of Dashed Hopes looked sad and depressing even though it is fairly cleaned up; the piles of junk and burnt out RV's the old owners left lying around have been removed but still most of the trailers in the park are old and beat-up adding to the air of dereliction while the rigs in the park next door are all new and grand.

I visited my fellow barflies and they seemed sad and depressing, too. One with good reason (like an impending court case where he may lose everything he's worked so hard for) but most because they spend their days inside a dark bar drinking Budweiser and telling the same old stories over and over again.

I don't want to go back to that trailer park or to that bar. However, southern Arizona still has its draw.

"How long will you be in Mexico?" people asked and I said only "I don't know."
"Where will you go?" and I said "I don't know."
"What kind of work will you look for?" and I said "I don't know."

All I do know is that things will work out without much intervention from me. At least that's my plan if you can call it a plan. What's going on? Nada nada nada.

what the hell happened....

to my blogging? It's not like I've purposefully stopped, or went on hiatus, or lost interest. Time is just kinda slip sliding away. This is not the first time I've wondered how in the hell people have time to work. After my morning coffee, email catching-up, checking in on the outside world via the internets, visits from the neighbors, feeding the dogs, walking the beach, reading a book, imbibing at cocktail hour, making dinner, after all of that there is no time left in the day for blogging. How in the world will I ever squeeze in working? (Shit, and I didn't even include staring at the sea and stringing shells and trips to town.)

Briefly, here is how 2008 has started off for me: I'm having fun. There you go. After all those boo-hoos and blah-blah-blahs about how I don't fit in with the RVing life and how I hate not being coupled up, I'm actually having fun with all these coupled-up RVers. With most of them, that is. There are actually two camps of happy campers in this little RV park on the Sea of Cortez. One camp consists of mostly Canadians with a couple of U.S. couples thrown in (from New Mexico and Nevada). The other group is known as "The Californians". Oil and water, the camps do not mix. I hang with the Canadian camp but am friendly with the Californians. I strive to be neutral.

Small battles rage. The most intense is between the Giant Gringo and his neighbor the Ex-trucker. He really hates her (the fact that her name is the same as his ex-wife's doesn't help) and, as I've told him, his yelling at her and calling her names is juvenile. In that battle, I have chosen the Ex-trucker's side.

Another battle is between Boobs and Everyone Else. Upon her return from the US where she and her husband had made an emergency trip, Boobs came back, I swear, with bigger boobs. Or else the giant stick up her butt makes her boobs look bigger what with that rigid shoulders-thrown-back walk of hers. The incident that did in her acceptance in the park was when she went up to one of the Canucks who was selling handmade shell jewelry and demanded to know if she had a permit for selling the jewelry. A universal "what the fuck" went through the gathered crowd. Needless to say, I have chosen sides on that little battle, too.

But still, for me, the most fun is being in Mexico, being with the Mexicans, struggling with and laughing over language barriers. After the summer here I couldn't wait to go home-wherever-that-is. Now I feel differently. I could see making this little town my home. However, not in this trailer and not in a park overrun with gringos, but maybe in a little concrete house surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron fence, a covered porch with tile floor, ceiling fan, potted plants, and maybe with a dog, a rooster, a man. A man with money because, after all, who's got time to work?

manana maybe

It's weird to be in your house and to hear people talking about you, or at least mentioning you in conversation.

Dean asks "Where is everyone? Too much partying last night?"
"I was good; I was home by 10:00" says Dan. "I do know that The Princess and Gary are feeling a little rough around the edges."

"A little" I wanted to shout from my bed, "ha!" but shouting would've hurt my head.

New Year's Eve was fun and Gary and I managed to stay out way after midnight, ending the night with our chairs pulled up to the sea wall, marveling at how bright the stars were, listening to fireworks off in the distance.

Today we aren't the only ones who are feeling "rough"; the fat pigeon of a dog can barely function.

We managed to get out of the park last night without Osita but the Fat Pigeon followed us to the restaurant. For a while she was content to lie outside the door but then whenever someone entered the restaurant, she'd sneak in behind them. Lucia would say "Antonia, su pero" and I'd get up and put Pigeon out. Finally she began coming in on her own, having figured out how to push the door open, and finally Lucia gave up and said Pigeon could stay. She became the Belle of the Ball. Everyone loved her and wanted to take her home. She got fed leftover pork. She lounged in the middle of the dance floor. She got more attention than she's ever had in her life. She didn't leave till we did which meant she didn't get to bed till about 1:30.

She's been snoring outside my trailer door ever since.

Me and my two amigos had big plans for today. Dan was to furnish fresh green beans with sliced almonds. Gary made bread (yep, he bakes his own bread) and was contributing bleu cheese and sweet mango chutney and fresh tortillas, the latter two ingredients to be used with the grilled shrimp I was to prepare along with rice. We dug out some white wine and champagne.

I managed to make it through the shrimp cleaning process without puking and got those suckers marinating in some ginger/olive oil/lemon/wine concoction.

Gary showed up around 1:00 and said "I can't do it." I said "Me neither. Do you think Dan can find some place to eat?"

So our big plans got put off till tomorrow. Which is fine. It's not like we have to go to work or something. Besides, who said you have to celebrate January 1st on the first?

I like the way 2007 ended and 2008 is starting out. I hope we all have fun watching our lives unfold. After all, manana is another day.

image is a catherine anderson painting called "manana"