Cancun on $400 a day
I've got to tell you. I like the new President.
A couple of weeks ago, I was in Cancun,
Mexico the day CNN announced who the Supreme Court picked for
President of the United States. And that night I had the first
of several recurring dreams where George W. Bush gets assassinated
by some lunatic. It's not because he's necessarily a bad man
or because of the strange way he got elected. It just seems in
step with the wanton disregard of semantics in our society. Think
about it. Bush chooses Dick as his running mate. Now he's entertaining
thoughts of Colin for his cabinet. So it only makes sense that
I would see the same headline, over and over in my mind's eye:
Bush Whacked
After I woke up from this bizarre dream,
I crawled out of bed and headed to the patio, which overlooked
the amazingly crystal blue ocean of Cancun. How did I wind up
here? I thought. I didn't deserve it. But most of the good things
in my life come undeserved. If I work, slave and strive toward
a goal, you can bet it'll never happen.
Same goes with things I say. If I say
offhandedly, "Yeah, I think I might do that," it'll
get done. But if I say it with conviction, and if I say it with
passion and determination - you can be sure it's a lie.
"I swear, I'll quit drinking after
the holidays."
"That's it. No more cigarettes for
me."
"Fine. I'll get a job then."
Knock, knock, knock. "Housekeeping."
Shit. It's the same woman from the Net Wits convention. She's
everywhere.
After the maid kicked us out of our suite,
my girlfriend and I went down to get lunch at the hotel restaurant
on the beach. Since it was11:30, the staff was in the middle
of the changeover from breakfast to lunch.
The sign on the restaurant marquee read,
"We'll be black with you at noon." Damn. Can't wait
to see that.
Another notice read, "Please throw
paper at the wasted basket." That's only fair. Odds are
the thrower is wasted as well.
But the funniest note came from the maid,
who wrote, "Please no pee off balcony, Haspeer." Haspeer.
What a hoot.
Besides drinking margaritas at the beach,
my girlfriend forced me to go downtown to the little shops, called
"mercados" in Spanish. Everything in Mexico is designed
to separate Americans from their money. It's like Vegas with
an ocean. The exchange rate is 9 pesos to the dollar, but the
Mexicans make up for that by charging nine times the normal price,
then adding a few pesos. They also don't care for browsers, so
as soon as you walk into a store, they shopkeeper assigns someone
to tail you. I felt like a black man in a Korean-owned convenience
store.
The girlfriend wanted to spend more time
at the mercados, but I just wanted to hang around the beach and
drink margaritas. True, I would not have had anything to write
about if I had gotten my way, except for one incident. As I was
coming back to my room from the beach, I took a crowded elevator
up to my sixth floor suite. As I got out, a tall blond woman
was getting in. I heard a guy say, "We're going up."
The blond said, "Well, I'll go up, then I'll go down."
Just as the elevator doors were about to close, I called back,
"My kind of girl."
I figure if I didn't get a laugh, then
at least I created an uncomfortable silence. Either one's fine
with me.
That same night, after I learned that
Bush had become President, I went into a small bar at the hotel,
called Club All Inclusive. You can drink there 24 hours a day
and the setup's sweet. There's no bartender, just several bottles
of booze and some mixers sitting on a counter. You go up, grab
a glass, pour yourself a drink, and take a seat at a table. I
went up to the bar and grabbed a bottle. Why should I hide behind
some pretense of manners when I could save myself several inconvenient
trips to the bar?
I sat at the table drinking Jack Daniels
and watching CNN. Hmmm. So the Supreme Court got to pick the
President, huh? Wonder who they like in the Super Bowl.
In the middle of my drunken reverie, a
Jewish couple came in and struck up a conversation with me. That
is, I thought they were Jewish. Turns out they had just moved
to South Carolina from Long Island and had converted to Christianity.
I don't know what's stranger. That they moved from New York to
South Carolina and changed religions. Or that they chose to sit
with me in a Cancun bar.
We immediately got into an argument about
politics, but that soon escalated to an argument about religion.
I was in my element -- watching CNN, drinking Jack Daniels, and
arguing with Christian Fundamentalists in Mexico. Is life too
surreal or what?
By the way, is there a new Calvinism in
America? Cause I don't remember seeing the memo. One tenant of
Calvinism says there are just a few reservations available in
heaven, but you could tell the ones who were going to sit at
the big table by the amount of money they made on Earth. I think
that concept's been changed. I think it's now measured by the
amount of food you put away.
Ren and Stimpy, as I came to call them,
tried to escape my table twice, but I convinced them to stay.
"Come on, we're just Americans talking here. I'm harmless."
They bought it.
The first time they tried to leave came
after I tried out the "Bush Whacked" line on them.
The second time came during an abortion argument, when I quoted
some Bill Hicks material for them. "Pro-lifers, murdering
doctors. You people crack me up. It's irony on a base level,
but it's a hoot. Why don't you guys protest cemeteries?"
But I finally came up with a line that
cleared the table for good. Stimpy leaned over to me, looked
me ever-so-sincerely in the eye and said, "Jesus is my personal
savior."
I said, "What a fuckin' coincidence.
He was my waiter at lunch."
Ren and Stimpy realized I was an evil,
bitter little man and stormed out of the bar. Now the bar was
empty, except for Jose who came to clear my ashtray.
"You know, Jose, I really like the
new President."
"Bush?"
"No," I said. "Fox. President
of Mexico."
* * *
CALIFORNIA BOUND: You may not see a column from me
for a few weeks. My parents are having some health problems,
so I have to go to California to help out. If you haven't already
done so, check out my archives.
When you're through with that, check out Will Durst. I've included
the link below.
* * *
STANDARD DISCLAIMER:
This column aims to be funny. If you can read anything else into
it, you're on your own.
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