Let me tell you about last night.
Their nipples were hard dark bellicose peaks perched atop surgically perfected breasts, clearly visible through the filmy cheap pastel colored fabrics. Advertising designed to strike anyone within sight better than any sweaty American ad-man’s wet dreams; stock in trade for the Mexican whores that swarmed around me in a clausterphobic cloud of perfume, cigarette smoke and fetid smoke machine exhaust. I couldn’t tell if it was the air conditioning in the ratty strip joint that made their nipples so fucking pointy and mesmerizing — no doubt cranked to a few degrees cold enough to keep the goods perky — or if it was the chemical perfection of this club’s even-numbered cheap Mexican boob jobs that held me rapt to their bounceless missiles. More likely, the $3 diazepam I’d bought outside the club and swallowed with a Pacifico in the toilet was kicking in. Finally, the fucking drugs were kicking in. Because as usual, the strippers and whores were ignoring me.
Mermaids is a strip joint and bar in Cabo San Lucas; the ugliest, tackiest tourist pit — a town that’s a lot like a cold sore on the lovely mouth of the prettiest bay in Baja California. Being white makes you a target par none for hawkers, pickpockets, timeshare shillers and everyone else looking to rip off a gringo, and there’s an unending stream of gringoes seeping into it daily like Montezuma’s revenge from Carnival cruise ships and spring break bachelor party destination bullshit vacation packages. So the fact that I was even allowed into Mermaids as a female patron was (to me) a surprise ($5 for men). Through a weathered, badly painted metal rollup door that featured festively illustrated namesakes with seashell nipples and up the rickety wooden stairs, and you’re in. First a greeting from a bouncer with deep facial pock mark scarring, and then obligatory $7 beers, a bargain compared to American strip clubs. Seated at a table near the stage gave me a terrific view; grimy stripper pole, dull and bored women taking their turns tossing their purses on the stage to do a few listless dances to Mexican rock or Metallica, all trying in vain to get those frozen titties to move.
Each man that walked in was descended upon by one woman after another, trying to get the gringoes to stop sucking on those phallic Cuban cigars long enough for a private dance behind cloying red lipstick-kiss patterend white curtains that hid booths surrounding the entire room. In my own apparently untouchable world I watched the Mexican girls hustle and simultaneously avoid eye contact with me, although I admired their luscious hips and bellies (this to me was most exotic; no boy-hipped Barbies here). They’d take the men behind the curtains. The men’s clothes would get tossed over the curtain rods. The curtains would move in rythym this way and that; then, job done, out comes the girl with maybe a quick hair toss or a strap adjustment, and behind her a sheepish white dude would emerge and rejoin his buddies, or leave. My last night in Mexico and all I wanted was to have one of these women in my lap, drinking with Hornboy and I, and maybe I’d try to tell her in my crippled Spanish about our week. I’d tip her better than grandpa frat boy, for sure.
I wanted to tell some fragrant, soft Mexican mermaid about how I came to Baja to surf but it was so covered in garbage from the highway to the water, from Todos Santos to Cabo, that it fucking broke my heart. That the beaches were so trashed I cut my toe on glass. That at night the beaches smell like human waste treatment plants and surely the resorts and shantytowns near rivers are dumping their shit into the water — my cuts didn’t heal in the water, and every surfer knows that’s a bad sign. I wanted to explain that I thanked my lucky stars for my Hepatitis A and tetanus shots. If my stripper cared, or was still interested in hearing my drug and pisswater beer induced ramble, I’d have told her about what I think will happen to the coral reef off Cabo in ten years or less. The reef is a huge draw for tourists; nestled at the base of a stunning rock formation at the very end of California and where Highway 1 fades into a sunset, brightly colored fish bring day trippers and snorkelers to the warm, easy waters. It’s so pretty and perfect it’s almost like a dream. But every day, with the same relentlessness as the hot rising sun, at dawn the bay turns into a boiling cauldron of parasailers, waverunners, jetskis, cruise ships, and a bevy of ripoff water taxis, all hemmorhaging fuel and twostroke premix into the water. And a quick snorkel gets you such a snootful of carbon monoxide that the beach reels like a drunk’s worst bedspins the minute you exit the water. This will kill the coral very soon. The fish will all leave. Beauty dies. Coral can’t get a boob job, and the fish won’t hang around to soothe their woes with easily scored diazepam. Ask Kauai or Belize how long it takes for the coral and fish to come back. You’ll be waiting a long time for an answer.
* My camera went “tits up” the second day out. Another reason to be mad at Sony.
Is my lovely sugically altered import from La Paz still with me? Yes, I’ll give her another tip, and maybe then she’d wrap those big warm thighs around my waist so I can feel her hot pussy on my stomach. Mmmm. Another 200 pesos and maybe she can lean back so Hornboy can do a bodyshot off those hard, hard titties while I hold onto her. Then I’d tell her how I said fuck this and went to crazy places in Baja, to cowboy country where fields of cactus stretch to the horizon, hours down the most fucked up washed out white knuckle tooth-chattering dirt roads imaginable, and opposite the catus were the most beautiful sapphire inlets and white sand beaches I’d ever seen. How the road ended once so abruptly at the “future site of Jack Nicklaus golf course” that we sat stunned and marveled that the last shanty town we passed through had no electricity. How Mexican bikers drove up right then and sat there just as confused, saying “We har es confused es joo.” We all laughed and the Mexican bikers gave us these crazy directions down more dirt roads, through more blue-tarp toppped tin shack towns with dogs and dirty children in the streets and no power and only well water, to drive and drive and drive endlessly to beach ourselves at a marine reserve on the other side of the world. The only living coral reef in the Western Hemisphere. Another shack town, but a peculiar one full of friendly Mexicans and extremely odd American ex-pats. A shack town run entirely on solar power. Here, I’d tell her, here is where we landed.
Cabo Pulmo. Books were read. Roosters and chickens stared, cats claimed us as their own. The wind blew the palm frond roof of our shack, and girl, have you ever seen more stars at night in your life? So many stars it nearly frightened me. Meals, all organic and vegetarian. Papaya and kiwi over pasta with fesh basil — aeons away from the rest of Mexico’s cuisine, a mass of processed fright and sugar.
Now in my fantasy, my girl shifts into reverse cowgirl of sorts for the end of my story; with her ass in my lap she leans back on my chest, resting her head back on my shoulder so I can whisper into her ear my secret of deep secrets. I can smell her hair. Our soft cheeks touch. I can tell her the most personal thing, my holy of holies. This: It was in the water that I finally felt okay again. Emerald green and aqua blue, away from the boats, and in the sanctuary I floated weightless and watched. I hoped death would be like this. Rays of sunlight through warm aquamarine. Just watched and breathed and listened to the crackling of the coral; it sounds a lot like high pitched popcorn. Immobile, the fish always hang around me, and this time in Mexico was no different. They nudged and shoved me and every time I looked again, I saw another beautiful fish. This, I’d whisper, this is as close as I get to religion. The sea. Alone in the water, I find something so beautiful, both in front of me and within my own sense of wonder that it rocks me to the core in the most graceful way. It’s how I feel after fixing a machine at SRL, too, and the exhilaration I’ve felt after hitting the ground during an SRL show to avoid a very dangerous blast of flame or a surprisingly strong explosion. Oops, it’s beautiful, and look how beautiful and strong and lucky I am to still be here.
Another 200 pesos in my mermaid’s G-string and I’ve got a few minutes more with a beautiful girl who really feels it, too. She shares my secrets. Because the truth is, I needed a vacation for sure, but I needed so much more than a vacation and I don’t know if I’ll ever find it. I always feel like pieces of me are missing, and it’s nothing to do with my past or my orphan status; I have friends that love me. Chosen family for me is fierce, loving, a true home. But I am relentlessly consumed with ideas, they make me crazy, they make me disappear. I’m angry a lot; I want to save everyone. But I don’t know what I want to be, or who, and I don’t want to do anything except have fun with others, and not ever get bored. I want to change the way people think about sex in every possible way, I want to fuck up everyone who tries to make sex in all its beautiful crazy painful delicious frightening awesome permuations into a bad thing. I want to be Kali to Focus on the Family, know what I mean? And intelligent design, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me — go to a museum and get a clue. I want to destroy, I want to create. I want good porn. I don’t want to be a celebrity but I want to talk to everyone. And my memories, fuck, I tried to read J.T. LeRoy’s “The Heart is Decetiful Above All Things” and had to stop at chapter 3 because it was just way way way too fucking close to home. It was like being that scared little blonde girl all over again. My hell comes from inside, and I want to write it all down, but who will read it and who cares? And what’s the rationale behind an empty penniless effort like that when I just found out (welcome home) that I owe the IRS thousands of dollars because my fucking accountant fucked up royally, even though I might be able to weep out a book of words that might give me peace and make me stop thinking all the time about how easy it would be to go back to working in a cafe, which is really all I feel qualified to do sometimes. And I miss talking to strangers about the weather while eeking out a few tips sometimes, I really do. But here I am. I have no plans; I’ll float on okay. Forgive me, I’m drinking wine and blogging.
But there was no brown eyed beauty in my lap last night; it was *just great* to be ignored in a Mexican strip club cum whorehouse just like back at home, like when I went to Mitchell Brother(s). It’s a fantasy, and for the hour that Hornboy and I sat like turds in a swimming pool in the middle of Mermaids, we came to the conclusion that they either didn’t know what to do with us, literally didn’t know what to do with me, or we were getting a dose of good old Catholic same-sex homophobia. No matter — it’s good to be home. I didn’t find myself or figure anything out but I had a nice break. Jackson West was the ultimate housesitter; I came home to fat noisy felines and clean sheets, and even a rearranged living room thanks to Jackson’s overly dramatic gay party guests who just *knew* my chairs were all wrong. Saturday I lecture at the UCSF extension to human sexuality students; that’s a nice homecoming, too.
Inbox tidbits: my pal Russ Kick‘s new blog Rare Erotica, Regan Books is trying to find a shill to write a book about sex machines but isn’t asking anyone whose written about the topic before (that’s gossip, yo), and did anyone here in SF save a copy of last week’s Guardian with this article in it? Jackson drank my bar dry and kinda forgot… I think there’s a picture of me in it in iPod bondage that I’d really like to see…
