redemption through pain

There is a gringo in the Mexican village I live in who is dying of bone cancer. His screams can be heard all around the neighborhood. He begs his wife and friends to kill him but they won't. I understand that there's no hospice there but why doesn't his family take him to the hospital in the big city to get end-of-life care? Why don't they go back to the U.S.? Certainly they have Medicare. I think he might've been a crook so maybe he's afraid he'll get thrown in prison in the U.S. Hell, a prison hospital would be better than what he's going through now.

Contrast that with the Landlord. If he experienced pain in the end it was very mild. The hospice nurses were angels.

Enter the hostile Catholic takeover of the local hospital. Supposedly one of their beliefs is "redemption through pain." That's their theory of end-of-life care. I have a hard time believing that in this day and age religion would stand in the way of a pain-free end. I've gone on their website and can't find a reference to that redemption crap but I'll make a point to ask one of the hospice nurses who, when she isn't making people's last days on earth peaceful, can be found picketing the hospital.

the last goodbye

Death doesn't give a final boarding call, an exact time of departure. I didn't think that Sunday night might've been my last goodbye to my friend, the Landlord. It was our last time together where he was lucid, actually joining us around the dining table and telling jokes even though his pain had increased and he was so frail I couldn't see how he could sit up let alone walk to the table.

He knew it would be the last time he'd remember my presence even if I was a little vague on that fact, thinking he'd be the same when I saw him in a day or two. There was a look he gave me, the same look another friend had given me the last time I saw her. At that time, I thought her look was "I wish I was staying at your house where there isn't a dog" but the Landlord gave me that same look so I've had to rethink the meaning.

They were knowing looks. Our eyes locked. I guess they were goodbyes.

I've never watched someone die before. I've lost many friends but they either died suddenly - heart attacks at 40, cancer at 35 - or they lingered and I wasn't around for the end, either off in another state or the family closed ranks not letting in outsiders. This time I feel privileged to be one of the watchers. Yesterday we sat in shifts, never leaving him alone. The house was very quiet and peaceful. Everyone focused on the man in the bed, now too ill to be conscious of our presence. No, that's not right. We believe he is. We were talking about him and Angel said "speak slowly. I think he's trying to follow your conversation." So we slowed down. "You always told the shelter volunteers to leave their egos and agendas at home." Things like that.

I left around seven, the Landlord in the capable and strong hands of his lover, his ex-partner and his current partner, a friend from the east coast. Four loving men, some of them having gone through this before, watching lovers die.

I think that was my last goodbye.

news from cortez

I’m in New Mexico, having left Old Mexico the beginning of July to housesit for a friend in way-southern Arizona and to experience the things I miss most about Estados Unidos: extra sharp cheddar cheese, Italian food, coffee houses and saloons. The latter being the most important if I’m to be honest.

Given that there are so few full-time gringos left in that little RV park in that little village on the Sea of Cortez this late in the summer, it’s surprising all that’s gone on in the past month.

First off peter, dick or willie (I’m not sure which moniker I’d given him) developed a blazing red raised rash that started on his forearm and then moved to the rest of his body. Neither the Mexican dermatologist nor the clinic doctor could get rid of it so he and his loony-tunes wife packed up their motor coach and headed north. I haven’t heard the outcome nor the diagnosis. I do know that the rash isn’t contagious because when I saw it in its infancy, I touched it and said, “ewww, what happened here?” before quickly removing my hand and saying “ewww, I touched it.”

With peter, dick or willie gone, the Skipper no longer had a fishing buddy so he invited the ex-trucker lady to go on a fishing trip. To make a long story short, as she was struggling to land a dorado, the dorado swam under the boat, tangled up all the other fishing lines, then snapped free taking off with about 100’ of line and $200 worth of lures, and the ex-trucker flew backwards and somehow impaled her butt on the filet knife. Blood spewed forth. The Skipper had her drop her drawers. None of the gauze from the first aid kit was big enough to stem the tide of blood so he grabbed the cleanest fish rag he could find and told her to sit on that while he drove hellbent back to shore. At the clinic she received seven stitches, whimpering the whole time. That evening the Skipper relished happy hour with his only companion, Jack Daniels on the rocks.

The one remaining fulltime couple (not the ones with the kidnapped Native American boys) got a call that their son had committed suicide. They, too, made a hasty retreat for the U.S., the man all the while holding his hand over his chest in dramatic fashion because he has a bad heart and that made his son’s suicide all about him. Last I heard they were “cleaning up the mess” and while doing so the man pulled his shoulder out of whack or something and so now his son’s suicide is even more about him.

The saddest and worst story of the bunch, however, involves my adopted son, Armando or Mando as we call him. (He’s my adopted son because I have the hots for his dad but that’s another story.) Mando’s job at the RV park means he works seven days a week and makes about $70/week. Jobs are hard to come by and his is one of the better ones. A gringo gave Mando a trailer which he moved to a squatter’s lot in the newest of the barrios, one without electricity so extension cords run from house to house searching for the source house. He was so proud of having his own space and he took such good care of his home, planting bougainvillea, building a palapa, even paying a neighbor boy 50 pesos a week to be his security guard. Mando kept the place nice but then he started drinking and the front window of the trailer got busted, trash piled up (there’s no trash service in the barrio), and the plants died (no running water either). I said I would no longer be his mother if he kept drinking so he said he would stop. “She is my soul” he said to a young friend. But one Sunday Mando started drinking and that became his habit, to drink on Sundays. Then he bought a car – a nice Ford Taurus. We all wondered how long that would last. Well, not long.

The story is that last week Mando was driving drunk at night and he drove over the town drunk who was lying half in the street. Mando decapitated him. Justice is quick in Mexico. Because the town drunk was partly at fault, Mando received a light-ish sentence, a year in prison. His father – mi amor - has to sell everything Mando owns to pay restitution to the drunk’s wife.

My understanding is that Mexican prisoners rely heavily on their families for basics like toiletries and food. I know that when I return to Mexico I will go see Mando in prison, loaded down with provisions donated by the gringos. Mando will have lost everything, maybe even his job (although the owners have been known to take felons back). He will have to start over. Maybe he’ll have to move to Agua Prieta to be with his real mom. But gringos can be kind and generous and just maybe Mando will get another home and hopefully this time he won’t fuck it up.

signs your husband has a mexican girlfriend

Let's say that for years your husband has gone to Mexico to fish. He's got a little trailer and fishing boat down there and he'll be gone weeks, even months at a time. He loves to fish. He lives to fish. It's no big deal because you have a job you like and you like having the house to yourself. But then after a particularly long trip he comes home and...

1) His eyebrows, nose and ear hairs have been trimmed. Just last month his eyebrows rivaled Andy Rooney's from 60 Minutes. Surely you noticed they had been tamed. And that when you kissed, your lips were no longer tickled by his nose hairs. Or that when you whispered in his ear you didn't have to spend 15 minutes spitting out hair balls.

2) On his next trip home he speaks Spanish. And not just typical words us gringos throw in our normal conversations like, "excuse me, I'm going to the banos" but he'll use big words and nearly complete sentences. For instance, instead of asking if you'd like him to cook dinner for you tonight he'll say something like "quiere que mi cocine la cena esta noche....

3)...mi amor?" Mi amor! He's never called you "my love" in any language. If you missed signs one and two, surely this one should set off those alarms. If you even care. Because maybe you don't. Maybe you've got your own amor on the side. I, for one, hope you do.

lean on pete

Damn you, Willy, for making a grown woman cry. I mean, really, I'm used to your gritty down-on-your luck stories and songs but you've never made me cry. There I was, reading this book as I watched pelicans dive for fish and I've got tears running down my cheeks. I hoped no one would see me. Especially a Mexican or a Seri Indian because I'd have a hard time explaining those tears in Mexican.

I hated myself for rushing through this book. It was like sitting down and eating a whole box of Cheez-its when it's your last box or really wishing you would've made that bottle of Tangueray last a little longer. I didn't want the book to end but I was anxious to see how it ended. Please have a happy ending, I begged as I raced through the pages.

I was in Portland last year and I was planning on seeing you at Music Millenium because your band Richmond Fontaine had just released a new album. I had already seen Pete Dexter at Wordstock and so I couldn't believe my luck that within a matter of days I would meet two of my favorite writers. But you got sick and had to cancel the Music M show.

A friend of mine knows you, knows your girlfriend so maybe I'll get to meet you one of these days. In the meantime, I'll need some time to recuperate from "Lean on Pete." Too bad I drank all my gin.

we got us some pedophiles, too...

one for the girls and one for the boys.

We thought the one who likes little boys was kicked out after the parents called the police but I guess not. He's still here and he's still trolling. I saw him out on the pier watching the little boys fish. I felt my skin crawl. But because I was there, he left, taking his little dogs - the bait - with him. Next time he's here, maybe I'll follow him everywhere he goes, so he knows someone's watching.

The one who likes girls tells every new snowbird that shows up how all these rumors were flying about him and none of them were true. Except the problem is he's the one who told a happy hour gathering "you can't believe how quickly these girls will take off their clothes for a few pesos." When confronted by one of the lesbians he said all the girls are over 18 and sign consent forms. Oh yeah, right. He moved his rig to a back corner lot so he'd have more privacy but in the winter the frenchman pulls in right next door, so close that the pervert can't open his awning, so maybe that cramps his style a little bit. Maybe not.

The crazy ex-trucker lady says "american men living in mexico by themselves, they're all perverts or running from the law" and I'm beginning to think she's right. Or they're married and looking for a Mexican girlfriend.

kidnappers among us?

In the middle of the trailer park sits a smallish RV. It has no awning. No patio. Outside there's a pile of old toys including a rocking horse. There are plastic bottles and other junk scattered about. Most of the windows are covered in that silvery insulation stuff. Inside the motor coach - which had to be towed here from Hermosillo or some place because it doesn't run - lives a white anglo couple and their two Native American boys. Twins. Navajo or Apache, I can't really tell which. I see the mom out hanging laundry or walking into town for groceries. She wears the same dress everyday. The boys and dad might leave the RV once a day, usually around 5 o'clock to go to the beach. But not everyday and never any more than that.

The boys seem smart and are very polite. I don't think they're being abused unless you consider being kept inside a small RV all day with no school and no other kids their age, no socializing, abusive. I get the feeling the parents are hiding out. Why else would they be here? It's not as though they're here to teach their boys about the Mexican way of life or to give them a new experience.

So my theory - and believe me, I've always got theories about some gringo or other here - is that maybe this couple wanted to adopt those boys and the tribe wouldn't let them so they kidnapped them and took them to Mexico.

The question is, of course, if you suspect abuse or something like that, what would you do? It's that terrible dilemma of not wanting to be overly dramatic, imagining a scenario that doesn't exist, but on the other hand, speculating and doing nothing could lead to a couple of pretty fucked-up little boys.

I'm not sure what to do. I don't know the parents' names. They don't have a license plate I can track. So I just watch and hope those little boys will be okay. And that they don't have a family somewhere missing them.