Freelance Kerfuffling

After slogging away for several years in New York, I snapped. I gave away my winter clothes, shed my coat in the airport, and landed in Mexico with nothing more than my backpack and six months’ pay. I naturally fell into a fold of international drifters.

One of my new friends shared rental in Yelapa, just south of the tourist town in which I was staying. Yelapa wasn’t all that easy to find. I had to take a water taxi that skipped down the Pacific coast from Puerto Vallarta. The tide was too high to dock, so I hopped out and paddled to shore with my belongings in my mouth like a Golden Retriever.

I was invited for a weekend costume party. Packing costumes hadn’t been on my mind in New York, so I was at the mercy of an artist who wrapped me in clear plastic and covered me with pastel squiggles. I gingerly descended from the palapa to the bar in time for the festivities.

A Vallarta acquaintance called Em was already there, in the midst reconciling with lover Kent. He was the direct descendent of a founding father, but a disinherited one, and he spent his days drunk in a beach shack, tossing money at locals to bring him more booze. The night of the costume party was one of the rare occurrences that Em was almost as drunk as Kent and she stumbled in next to me, watching my face as I soaked in the scene.

Kent was spiffed up, his pitted jaundice softened by dusk. He wore a seersucker suit and a hat was jauntily perched on his head. I couldn’t believe that this was the same man I’d seen only the day before, yelling in the midst of a drunken temper tantrum. He played with an iguana on the arm of a passing kid. It was the only time I’d ever see him smile.

A menopausal mermaid traipsed in on the arm of her Poseidon. I recognized them from Vallarta. They were a couple only in Mexico, leaving their respective significant others back in the States every year to see each other. The moment they reunited, they’d bicker and spend their romantic rendezvous fighting and breaking up. That night was no different, and moments after their entrance, she caught him eyeing a finer fish.

I tried to make sense of it all. American royalty slowly killing himself on a Mexican beach, couples recreating the dramas they sought to escape, all throwing money and privilege around arrogantly. Em suddenly leaned into me and, with an imperial sweep of her arm, voiced my very thoughts: “You can travel the world and you’ll never find anywhere as stupid as this.”