Symptomatic 5

As soon as I had a chance to look at a map and actually realized where I was, I quickly made a change in plans, and decided my itinerary must perforce take me through the state of Chiapas to its capitol Tuxtla Gutierrez. Mexico City would have to wait a while, and even at that, I figured I’d have to pick up a little work along the way if I wanted to survive. Little did I know there were few if any opportunities for an empty-headed stranger such as myself that would pay any kind of money I could live on. In my research, I’d come upon a memorable old black and whiter from the 1940s wherein a shady businessman on the lam pretended to be a teacher in order to hide out in a little town far away from the pursuit of his nemesis, a friend he had grown up with who had joined the police force, and I thought I could probably get away with something like that. Sure, he had the woman between them on his side alerting him to the cop’s progress over her radio show, and I didn’t even have anyone chasing me, yet, but I was up to a little subterfuge to add spice to my adventure, so it seemed like the way to go.

Symptomatic 4

Something Kafka once said about Truth being indivisible and not being able to recognize itself held sway over my decisions in the next few days. I wanted to maintain high ideals and believe I was in the right, to be an adventurer, to earn my stripes, to boldly go…blah, blah, blah, but I knew I was waffling, and would not admit to myself that I had just fucked up and could not bring myself around to rectifying. Like a cat that bumps into the furniture and then continues blithely across the room, I would say I wanted things to happen so. I was meeting my fate. Recalling both the film I had watched and my primo’s maxim, I wondered how difficult it might be to shimmy through the space between traveling without proper documentation and the pain of retribution if caught, and foolishly compared myself to all those poor farmers who creeped up North out of necessity, though I knew full well they did not begin their journeys from capacious Acapulco on a whim as I had.

Symptomatic 3

My curiosity got the better of me and I decided to cut out the middle-person, my lady friend in Amarillo, and rather too quickly arranged to fly down to the Mexican Riviera and take a cruise stopping at some of those southern ports. Acapulco struck me as similar to other places I had visited, flashy and touristy, but when I visited Tapachula, I was taken by the homey ambiance. I thought it felt like Queens, New York with a heavier touch of tropical design. Still hung over from the previous evening’s indulgence in a cantina near the beach, I found a quieter place, just to shave off the hair of the dog, but after several caguamas, and an interesting chat with a couple of locals, I unfortunately fell asleep at a corner table, then woke up to find my wallet gone, and that I had missed the ship’s sailing. I had tucked enough money into an inside pocket along with my passport and cards, so I was able to pay for all the beer, and could have arranged for a wire transfer to catch up with my passage in the next port, but optioned instead to strike out on my own, and travel to the capitol. The words of the one who robbed me (I believed it was José 2), echoed in my disappointment—en Mexico, primo, a man can do anything.