4.

I muse on this when I leave, before the party ends. I pass through the center of town. On the steps of el Parian, as they do most nights, teenagers have gathered, some of them cholos in the baggy pants of their L.A. idols, some quasi-punks who seem rather  embarrassed by their nose rings. None of them have Uzi’s or even cheap pistols, no knives, no daggers, no bludgeons, I feel no sense of danger as I pass them, but I am quite conscious of a kind of loose, angry energy, a different kind of rebellion than I witnessed at the party. The teens smoke unrelentingly and stare at me as I pass: sullen faces, unhappy faces, arrogant faces. None of them have dignity.

In the Mina, in the small cracked mirror in my bathroom, I stare at my face. I see gray streaks in my hair, as tousled as ever, and the cropped white beard that sprouts directionless across my cheeks and chin. What do we have here, I wonder? There are folds of skin around my eyes—hooded eyes, I think—and teeth yellowed and broken. Years of wandering have left their mark on this face, the fierce sun has burned away the youthful elasticity of the skin, the eyes, always pale, have faded even more. Is this an aging man hankering after an idealized past? I recall in Mexico—and elsewhere in the world—being subjected to acts of great generosity, by strangers as well as friends. Such generosity is as likely to appear tomorrow as it was yesterday. The world is still the world, people are still people. But I suspect something has changed. The air has grown heavy. Chilangos are everywhere. Crudities. Vulgarity. Ah, I think, there is no dignity, it is dignity that is vanishing. As I prepare for bed I decide to leave: I’ll cut short my stay, I resolve, I’ll leave the Excelsior, the crowded streets, the plaza with its feathery jacarandas. In the morning I’ll buy my bus ticket, and begin the 1500 mile journey home. Mexico has vanished, and I am gone too.

. . . . .

The Excelsior Cafe and the Disappearance of Mexico was written in Mexico, in the Excelsior Cafe, in January of 1999. I indeed left a few days later, another long ride north on Mexican buses. But California is equally rife with Chilangos, just paler, and after a few months I drifted south once more, eventually meeting my wife, Jacqueline, in the same Casa de Cultura that holds the Desiderio Macias Silva Room. This is the essay's first publication.

Copyright 2009 by the author.