The doorway stood open, its rusting yet stout grill not exactly screaming a welcome. A concrete partition set just inside the threshold shielding curious eyes from the internal action. The lack of ear piercing mariachi tones making this bar more appealing to the three gringos searching the shuttered Sunday streets for some afternoon culture.
And into the florescent stage they strode, all eyes darting toward the fresh-faced new-comers, the barmaid, a mass of shaking flesh in vibrant make-up sharply directing the trio to centre stage. The white table revealing its previous occupants revelry in a swath of sticky amber residue. Acknowledging the stares from all corners of the spartan room, a large beer, similar to those decorating the tables of other patrons was ordered in haltingly bad Spanish. The trio sat down, slightly confused as to the addition of toilet paper roughly jammed into the neck of their beer and began to digest their environment.
Painted a nicotine yellow, the roughly rendered walls held few decorations. The interest to be found in this room was not with pictures or posters, but patrons. The women looked like men, the men looked like cowboys ,the barmaid looked like a bouncer and facial hair on all of them. Some wore the smiles of a few-too-many while making gestures to come and join them, their eyes begging the chance to break the monotony of their wives tyranny, others holding poker-faces, unreadable to the outsiders, a knife edge between hostility, unwillingness, and indifference.
In stormed Andres as if word had spread that some gringos had crossed some strange untold boundary into the world of Mexican pubs. Asking for a permission to sit he barely hesitated to wait for he launched into a scathing tirade of his wife. A woman of untold virtue whose very title would spew forth a fountain of profanity, language more amusing from his foreign tongue than insulting. Slapping hands and hanging heads, his grief was as stale as the stains on the table. The gringo show took off into act two as defenders leapt from all corners of the room. The behemoth barmaid a force to be reckoned with sending a kick his direction, a silent yet smiling sombreroed man attempting sober solutions while passive watchers made sympathetic smiles to accompany their crazy gestures towards our new found partner.
But enough was enough, the trio realized that their new-found excitably slurring puppy could not be shaken. Refusing the repeated pleas in his un-focused eyes for another drink the trio beat a hasty retreat, excuses made it was time to return to the streets and seek shelter in solitude.
