Nate with a Creative Piece About San Miguel
Nate offered this creative piee about San Miguel we thought we’d share with you….
Like a Drum
The rainy season started two weeks into June. The gutters shot water into the cobblestone streets at full force. At times it could be like a river, water flooding down from the top of the hill and zigzagging its way from street to street. It you were smart you gauged the curves in the road before you left the house and then skipped through the lesser of the puddles hoping that you hadn’t planned wrong. This didn’t always work. Sometimes the intersections were just impassable without stomping through a foot of water. And on those days I was happy I’d bought waterproof shoes.
I hadn’t planned on the storms. Mexico was a place of deserts and air that was thick and black. It was a lesser India in my mind, a country where you went when you had trouble back home. That’s why it was surprising that I had the waterproof shoes. Most of my other belongings were cut for summer. Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian t-shirts , flip-flops, the type of attire that openly calls attention to the fact that you’re a tourist. Little did I know that it was unnecessary to wear a bright red shirt with palm trees on the back, the locals knew I was a gringo the minute I stepped off the plane.
Some of the writing program had come early and since I’d been in town for a couple of months already they’d asked me to take them out. I tromped through the puddles towards the center. We met in the Jardin, under the thick canopy of leaves that somehow worked as an umbrella. The mariachi bands seemed to have taken the evening off and besides a couple of other tourists the place was vacant. It felt odd speaking my native tongue after months of only conversing in Spanish. I kept my voice low even thought there was no one around to hear. English came out like a cough.
“You didn’t bring an umbrella?” I asked.
No, they hadn’t. They’d expected it to be warm and tropical with cabana boys running around serving Coronas and Mai-Tais.
“What about your shoes?”
They both looked at me quizzically. I decided against telling them that my hush puppies were waterproof.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked.
The first one, the one I’ll call Cat, had a sundress with pockets in the front. She stood there with her hands shoved inside, silent.
The second one, the one I’ll call Missy, crossed her arms over her low cut top and shrugged. “You’ve been here for months. You choose.”
We traipsed through the fading light past burger stalls covered by pieces of tarp and turned down a side street. There were a lot of places we could go. There were the tourist joints with liters of beer and the high class restaurants that brought saucers of guacamole with two expensive corn chips sticking out the top. But I was sick of those. Instead I lead them to a dive.
They shivered in the entrance as a cockroach scurried across a table and into one of the holes in the wall. The domino game immediately stopped. Every single man in the place turned to stare. If music had been coming from the jukebox it probably would have scratched to a halt. But it was silent except for the groans of a woman coming through the TV speaker. I waddled up to the bar leaving them to debate whether they wanted to come in or not. A gust of wind eventually pushed the door closed behind them. They stepped inside and studied the decaying walls as if we’d happened upon a strange art opening.
“Tres tequilas y sangrita—Three tequilas and bulls’ blood,” I demanded. The bartender jumped off his stool and began rummaging around under the counter. Soon three shot glasses appeared followed by three more. The girls started to shake their heads. Tequila with some sort of red concoction was not what they’d been expecting. “Come on, it’s Mexico,” I told them. Surprisingly this argument seemed to work. Sure there were bottles of everything from Rum to Vodka on the shelves and sure you could get tequila back in New Orleans, but this was Mexico.
“How do you do this?” Cat held the shooter and the backer at eye level.
“Drink some of the tequila and chase it with the bulls’ blood,” I told her.
She sniffed the edges of the glass, and then set both back on the counter. “I don’t like tomato juice.”
“It’s not tomato juice,” Missy said after taking a sip. “It tastes like bloody mary mix.”
“Umm,” I said tasting the tequila and smiling over the rim.
“At least try it,” Missy said before gulping hers down.
Cat twitched her nose as if she was holding her breath, but eventually she followed suit.
I’d planned on savoring mine, but I did the same.
“Hey, that’s pretty good,” Cat said. “It does taste like bloody mary mix.”
Missy nodded while motioning across the counter for three more shots. The bartender grinned.
“To your first time out of New Orleans,” Missy said. And our glasses clashed together and the liquor went down quick.
I can’t be sure who ordered the next round or the one after that, but for the next half-hour the bartender seemed to be constantly filling shot glasses for us. The saloon began to take on a livelier tone. Someone threw some pesos in the jukebox. A group of art students staggered in and started trying to dance between the tables. Cat and Missy swayed to the foreign singers, giggling and slapping the bar each time they finished a shot.
I told them about my shoes. “They’re waterproof.”
“Really?” Cat asked.
“Yeah.” I’d gotten them in Bombay. The salesman said I could walk through a monsoon in them.
“No, you’re really going tell me about your waterproof shoes.”
“Hey, I’m not talking smack about your pockets.” By now she was using her right pocket to hold a bottle of Victoria and the other one was filling up with stolen shot glasses.
“True.”
“They are nice pockets by the way. If I was a girl I’d get some.”
“What’s your deal again?” She raised an eyebrow. “Why are you here?”
“I’m the tour guide. I’m showing you the bars.”
“No, why have you been in Mexico this whole time?”
We strolled down the sidewalk. The rain had stopped, but there were still a fair amount of puddles reflecting the street lights. Fireworks exploded in the distance. Church bells sounded. I followed the scent of pork sizzling, leading them back towards the center. Missy leaned against Cat as they zigzagged up the hill. The stolen shot glasses chimed with each step. I stomped through the puddles trying to soak my feet, but nothing would get inside.