8:43 a.m. - 2022-08-06
isla
Don't get me wrong--there's a certain kind of gal that really takes to the stuff, so I'm not unfamiliar w/the upside. But anyone who's picked up a newspaper over the course of my lifetime would be hard-pressed to justify the high vis-à-vis the social consequence... So the last place you'd think I'd compromise my moral stance would be in Mexico, on the tiny island where I vacationed annually. Where they've started posting soldiers with automatic rifles at the ferry-landing to protect a quaint cobbled fishing village and its tourist trade from the cartel violence so rampant on the mainland...
~ ~ ~
If you're a gregarious boozehound who hangs out for a week every year on the same quarter-mile wide spit of rock and sand, you get to know the locals. B_ had quit his old gig as cruise-line sommelier to open a modest cafe on Av Matamoros. A place where I'd logged many hours the previous summer, indulging a bartender crush. Showing up just after siesta, sitting in the oppressive humidity at a window-bar that opened onto the street, trying to down my gin and tonics before the ice melted...everything sweating on the bartop, cocktail napkins soaked and smushed like paper-mache. I'd been introduced to him then, but it was on this trip that we'd really conversed, noted a shared aesthetic/worldview and hit it off. Anyway, I don't recall what specific dude-topics we were chopping up that afternoon, but at some point he mentioned that there was a strip-club on the island. This was a surprise. Because the place is so tiny, and my nose for debauchery so true, that the idea of such an establishment remaining secret-to-me after so many trips down seemed impossible. But it wasn't on the north end, where the docks, hotels and discos were. It was mid-island, in the barrio. Where the housekeepers, bartenders and fishing-guides who worked on the north end (along with a your less-affluent ex-pats) lived. And if I wanted to field-trip out to the joint I should meet him tonight when he closed the register.M_ had worked that evening shift. Older than the other barmaids, she had a young son back in the States whom she'd left in the care of her husband and in-laws when she was deported; and thus was in the unusual circumstance of sending money FROM Mexico to Michigan while she sought legal recourse. She had a sweet, maternal air about her and my family (there were a lot of us on Isla that year) adored her. Which is why my eyebrows lifted when, well after midnight, in a tiny office above the bar, she did a fat bump of cocaine off of B_'s proffered door-key. He partook in kind and then offered me a snort...
~ ~ ~
Have I mentioned that I'm really more of a morning-person? And was, after a day spent out on the water and an evening spent in the cantinas, flagging a bit? Also it didn't look like anyone was about to make coffee. So yeah, I when-in-Rome-d it and did a bump myself. Possibly two. It was good stuff. Cut half-as-much as what a tourist might buy, and exponentially less adulterated than anything we'd get back home. The high was keener too; with more of a “motivated Inca-stonemason” or a “Sandinista with a live grenade” vibe than the shabby, molar-grinding “Why are we all standing in this dirty Hollywood toilet?” buzz I remembered. We bid M_ adieu and climbed into B_'s old Volkswagen.A short drive along the coast followed, during which my hitherto steady drip of Tanqueray-sweat evaporated down to a cool film across my sunburned face. “We're here”, I was told.
“Here” was a sidewalk in a nondescript neighborhood, abutted by a waist-high stucco wall. This was topped by a dense tropical hedgerow, and they both ran the length of the block. There was no indication of a bar or business. B_ , in response to my “what gives?” expression, indicated some loose cinder-blocks stacked a short distance away. These served as makeshift steps intended to help one over the wall, so you could access a rough hole hacked through the foliage. A hole beyond which I could see Christmas lights and hear the muted, manic thump of Reggaeton. We were a world away from the Sunset Strip, and I liked the joint already.The club occupied a small, gutted, ranch-style house (we entered through a sliding-glass patio door...). Walls had been knocked out and replaced w/post and beam supports and there was no flooring, just concrete slab. A makeshift bar w/ice chests separated the pool table from a “dance floor” ringed by plastic card tables and folding chairs. There was no stage, the entertainers just strolled out high-heeled into the middle of the room and commenced w/their routines. Dancing under a disco ball to whatever booming Latin-pop the DJ kept spinning...bathed in colored light, getting progressively naked. It was great. There were four, maybe five, girls working that night—which means I owe an apology to two, maybe three of them. Because as lovely as they doubtlessly were, they've been eclipsed-in-memory by a pair of their peers...
I could dip my bucket in the poetry-well here and draw up something florid about “lithe and sunkissed limbs” etc...but I lack the craft to do these ladies justice. And I think a crasser metaphor serves as a more apt characterization-in-context: they were top shelf. Top fucking shelf. B_ told me that they must have ferried over from Cancun, because if girls that striking lived on gossipy little Isla everyone would know their names. I would later learn that they were close friends, and that for whatever reason (go ahead...speculate) they cottoned to me and B_. The next hour blurred by wonderfully. He chatted up one of them in Spanish while I pantomimed and misconjugated some rough approximation of the same with the other. I befriended the bartender, who was aging fabulously behind her bedazzled-leather bustier, and met the DJ, who was home on break between semesters at Universidad. The vibe was simultaneously small-town and exotic and beat and sexy and our evening (at the club, anyway) crescendoed with a round of tequila shots and a toast I couldn't translate. We were at one of the plastic card-tables, w/the girls sitting side-saddle on our laps and I was feeling officially euphoric when B_ leaned over and said, in a low-voice, “It might be time to go” .
“What?”
He nodded ever-so-slightly towards the rest of the room where, despite the fact that a beautiful woman was actively disrobing, everyone was staring at us. And where, despite the festive atmosphere, no one seemed to be smiling. Apparently we had over-endeared ourselves to the star performers in the eyes of the other patrons. Two tables seemed especially aggrieved. And a bit agitated. I also noted that we were the only gringos in the joint...
B_ went to college on a hockey scholarship and had played in the minor leagues. So he was fit and, as a bar owner, no stranger to physical confrontation. And I, while wiry-of-frame, was still high enough on cocaine to cut my own heart out with a stone knife and leave it on an altar erected to Akʼbʼal the jaguar god of fire... So in retrospect it's a good thing we weren't 20 years younger. Because the chances of us doing something stupid and ending up forcibly escorted through the glass patio doors, opened or not, would have been great. But we left without incident, and crawled back through the hedge-hole like grown-ups. Which was a bit of a downer...until B_ informed me that the party wasn't over. He'd given the girls his address and the # of a friend who drove an all-night taxi. They got off shift in an hour and were going to meet us at his house on the south end. So that's where we were headed when we stopped at the cottage.~ ~ ~
This was the barrio proper. Clothes-lines were strung between buildings tagged w/half-assed graffiti, skinny dogs slept in the street, and a bicycle borrowed from a better neighborhood lay casually abandoned against a concrete stoop...your typical scene. What wasn't typical was the modest Craftsman-Style home with a manicured lawn, picket fence and (I kid you not) ivy-covered exterior, plonked somehow down amidst it all, like it had been airlifted in from Pasadena or some shit. A dim porch light shone. “Wait here for a minute”, B_ crossed the street and opened the fence gate.I don't remember if we'd done a booster-bump at the club (though reading back over that “stone knife/jaguar god of fire” bit, I suspect I might have). Regardless, my synapses were starting to feel the frazz, and I was uncomfortably cognizant of my beating heart, its workload and significance. “Please don't be buying more cocaine, dude” I thought, as B_ appeared to negotiate with a back-lit figure on the porch, and was secretly, if momentarily, relieved when he returned to the car empty-handed.
“It's all set man...he's gonna deliver it to the house in 15 minutes.”
~ ~ ~
The guy who owned the cottage had been a successful restauranteur on the north end who, after retirement, had come up with a convenient (albeit less-than-legal) way to supplement his income. Given the competition and the vagaries of the tourist-trade on the island, bars here tended to operate on a thin margin. If they ran out of liquor late on an unexpectedly busy night, they just lost money. So he started stockpiling booze and would deliver and sell it after hours (at a premium price) to establishments in need. I reckon this is how B_ met him. It was a sought-after service, and at some point he expanded it, using the same access and connections to deliver another product as well. A product that proved popular with busy bartenders and harried waitstaff trying to make it through their shifts...sandwiches. So when the knock on B_'s door came, we opened it to greet not a twitchy cartel runner w/a pistol and a bindle, but a smiling grandfather with a bag fresh from his all-night home kitchen. A bag containing one of the best sandwiches I've ever had.~ ~ ~
We seem to be caught up in an arms-race (driven in part by online-culture, I suspect) to see who can combine the most unlikely sandwich ingredients. Kimchi and french fries, flaming-hot-Cheetos-crusted shrimp, melon, duck confit...and I'm all for experimentation if it's done in the service of a superior product (not just for Instagram engagements and the like). And I would never dismiss a recipe for flaunting tradition. But novelty is no substitute for the two keys to a successful sandwich: quality of ingredients, and proportion.The roll that anchored this sandwich was clearly fresh-baked (there's a very good panadería on Isla), and had been toasted to that delicate point where the top ever-so-gently flakes; resisting just-enough with every bite... So the quality battle was half-won before I'd even gotten to the marquee ingredient: carne-asada. This had been well-marinated in citrus and peppers (and probably MSG), and was so tender it could have been rib-eye, for all I knew. On top of that was some shredded iceberg lettuce and fresh sliced tomato. That's it. All in perfect proportion to each other and, collectively, to the roll. There was avocado, onion and cilantro on the side for those so inclined, half a lime to wake up the asada, and a container each of Mexico's ubiquitous red and green salsas, Yucatán style.For those of us given to certain predilections, memories of debauched revelry or carnal adventurism tend to stack up as we get older. Some of these return with a grin, some with a grimace. Some return with both. (Should I write about that one? Probably not.) But many fade away with time, or are eclipsed by more recent episodes in a similar vein. The memory of a perfect sandwich though...eso es de por vida.
