Mexican Tricks of the Trade

6/28/06

I just thought I’d take this opportunity, ladies and gentlemen, to throw out some random information for those of you who have never been, or might be thinking of, visiting our Mexican brothers and sisters to the south. Also, there’s some just plain funny crap that happened to me while I was down there with my girlfriend, her roommate and her friend. You’re welcome.

None of us spoke Spanish, of course, since most English-speaking people view learning a foreign tongue somewhat like buying volcano insurance in Massachusetts. Two languages? Why on earth would anyone want that filling up their head? Everyone speaks English, right? – is I guess what we’re thinking. Fortunately, in Cancun this is pretty much the truth. I took French in high school, don’t ask me why; there are a limited number of Frenchmen on the ground here in the States. But it’s not as if Spanish is the hardest language to pick up; even accidentally it’s almost impossible not to pick up six or seven phrases.

By the end of the trip I was rattling off gracias and de nada and uno mas like…well, like a white guy very pleased with the way he can pronounce 5 words of Spanish. Incidentally, did you know that the best way to learn to say “gracias” (thank you) properly is to pronounce the “c” like a “th”? Give it a try. Oh, and another good tip for faking another language, slur your words just a touch. It gives you the air of casualness while mildly masking the fact that you gleaned the information by flipping through a guidebook in the lavatory.

If you’re going to exchange your dollars for pesos, wait until you’re in-country to do it. Believe it or not the best exchange rate can be found in the little kiosk-like things dotting the landscape of the streets. Most everyone will take American cash, and the street vendors usually prefer it. As one fellow with a staggeringly amazing grasp of the English language put it, “Eh, pesos are fine, but I’d rather have In God We Trust.” Good stuff. The only places that may not take dollars are the convenience stores. I don’t know this for sure, but I had exchanged a few hundred dollars into pesos because the money is colorful and it made me feel like I had more than I did due to the exchange rate. Said exchange rate is a nice one; approximately 10 pesos for every dollar, which makes it easy to figure out how much stuff costs when listed in pesos; you just move the decimal one jump to the left and bingo!

I hardly think the simple fact that a person leaves their ocean-wet swim trunks in a plastic bag for the better part of an entire day is cause for ridicule. Was it foolhardy? Sure. Did I end up throwing the trunks away because they smelled like a catfish’s vagina? Yes. Even so, I do not believe the simple fact that it did not occur to me that my trunks would mildew at alarming speed in the heat and humidity of a tropical region is cause for one’s girlfriend to mock and laugh at them. Even the smartest individual has idiotic lapses sometimes. I once saw her take upwards of twenty minutes to dice a medium-sized tomato with a paring knife. Take that, Ms. Your-trunks-make-me-want-to-projectile-vomit!

Near our hotel was a bar which had live music from a Mexican band every night. The band was Mexican in ethnicity only; they played the same contemporary play list for Baby Boomers that you can hear at any wedding. There’s something decidedly surreal about going for ice and hearing “Hard Day’s Night” sung with a Spanish accent in front of a large, orange edifice with “Tom Cruise’s Cocktail Was Filmed Here” emblazoned on the front.

Just across the street from the bar was a wide corridor which led to the next street over and more clubs and bars. This alley, fronted on both sides by bars, restaurants, tattoo parlors, hair braiding and tourist merchandise, was a main pedestrian thoroughfare and was always kicking, no matter the time of day or night. Anytime I walked down this street I was invariably offered drugs in a very amusing way. Some dude with a big smile would walk directly up to me and say, “Hey, you need drugs?” They’re very to the point down there, I find. Sometimes the pitch was more specific: “Hey, you want some smoke (pot/weed) or coke?” I have since heard anecdotal evidence that the blow in Cancun is really primo stuff, so perhaps I should have had a sampler, but the idea of either getting baking soda up my nose or being incarcerated in a Mexican hooskow didn’t seem worth the risk. Remember, kids, always know your dealer.

The strangest thing about this was that the girls were never offered drugs. Yet anytime I was more than ten feet away from them I would turn around to find a grinning man willing to light up the pleasure center of my brain with illicit substances. Do I just look like I am desperately in need of narcotics? Maybe it’s just the fact that I was a white male in my twenties; bread-n-butter for partying in Cancun. Maybe the machismo of the culture figures women don’t have any interest in that kind of thing, or they simply don’t wish to deal with them; I dunno. All I do know is that if you want drugs, just be white, male and young and go walk around for awhile.
There was one incident in particular that deviated slightly from the norm. One of the times I was wandering about alone a guy came up and offered me drugs, as per usual, and I responded “No, gracias.” I was getting quite good at that by that point, having said the damn phrase no less than seventy times a day to maybe the most savagely aggressive vendors in the world. Seriously, these guys should work telemarketing. At any rate, I refused and he nodded and then said, “You want to go to a strip club? I’ve got a coupon, get you in 20% off; VIP!”

“Oh, no thanks,” I said. “I’m here with my girlfriend, so…”

Without missing a beat he said, “Yeah, but you can get away, right?” and gave me a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Somehow I managed to keep from soiling myself at the hilariousness of this response, kindly thanked him no, and wandered back to the hotel.

On the way back I was propositioned by a lady of the evening. I turned that down, too. In relationship parlance, if a strip club is a firecracker, fucking a Mexican hooker is the goddamn hydrogen bomb.