COASTAL OAXACA, Mexico
Man down in San Agustinillo!
We had taken quite the terrestrial plunge. In a harrowing three hour drive downmountain from San Jose del Pacifico we dropped 8,000’ in elevation while blasting Talking Heads over the Bluetooth. From a tortuous captivity in the backseat, I endured endless spirals, burping through motion sickness with my head out of the window in a futile search for a horizon hidden by cloud forest. I would survive. Mas o menos, I would survive. Juan Inocencio de la Cruz however couldn’t clear his ears during our descent. Once we reached sea level, Juan Ino purchased a couple of Mexican-grade coca-colas and downed them in quick succession in an attempt to remedy the pressure in his brain. He was suffering from what scuba divers call “the squeeze”: when you cannot equalize the change in pressure as you descend into higher pressurized atmospheres, your head eventually implodes. I’ve seen it happen. Girl next to me in the Red Sea, half a world from here, she couldn’t equalize and her head just popped. The moray eels who lurk everywhere in those waters were quick on the scene & feasted. Yuck. As an experienced aquanaut, I would’ve advised Juan Ino against drinking two coca-colas – even those of the naturally sweetened Mexican variety – when suffering from the squeeze. But Juan Ino is our team medic and he would know best and to be honest I kinda wanted to see what would happen when he invited all that carbonation into his already furiously bubbling physiology. His head didn’t pop, but Juan Ino did erupt like a geyser, spraying his breakfast chilaquiles into a cactus who was just minding it’s own damn business. The mazunte land-crabs who lurk everywhere along this coast were quick on the scene & feasted. Yuck.
Feel better, Juan Ino?, I asked him. Pinche culero!, he said and vomited again. Pobre sito. Pobre cactus.
Man down in San Agustinillo!
Frank took the wheel at that point. Juan Ino dizzily moved into shotgun seat as we drove up a jungle track to our new mountain home.
Once we arrived at the compound on the hill we named “Cerro Chacalaca”, we setup an infirmary for our medic to allow him to wallow in his miseries as we went to play on the beach. Our casa at Cerro Chacalaca was a cement bunker perched in the jungle above the Pacific village of San Agustinillo and was surrounded by various chortling fowl. Primarily chacalacas: wild turkey who cry bloody murder at each other from rival treetops. It’s not as bad as it sounds once you get used to it. This stretch of Mexican coast bends east, parallel to the equator; facing south, there’s nothing between us and Antarctica but a hemisphere of water. In San Agustinillo, I’d spend evenings on this balcony cooling off with cerveza while watching for whales who’ve mostly left town on summer holiday. Once the last of the fireflies went dark I’d write by lamp or moonlight with the mosquitos and a shallow cup of endless mezcal. No, not the rotgut mezcal the local convencia shops sell tourists and shoeshiners. No, I learned my lesson. Instead, I drank from the stash of wild agave spirits I’d been collecting in the Oaxaca interior. Each night I would write until I feel asleep then sleep as deep into the day as I could before the heat became unbearable. There is no air-conditioning in these cement quarters, only fans to whip the hot around. By the time I rose each morning, Frank had been up for hours. He would rise at dawn to smoke & surf until his balls bled (before investing in proper rash-guard). He’d come back from the ocean, climb Cerro Chacalaca to our compound to shower, smoke a little more and watercolor. When I woke, I would find Frank had already cut mango & brewed coffee, leaving plenty for Juan Ino & me. I thanked his graciousness by critiquing his morning’s painting for not being the topless mermaid I requested.
¿Qué olas?, I’d ask Frank about the waves then point at his canvas, ¿qué es esta shit?
On mornings Juan Ino was upright, he’d translate my words to Frank, saying, Victor ask what is this shit. It’s the sunrise, Frank would describe his latest watercolor, saying, or what I call “the death of innocence”. Juan Ino would then interpret the art for me, Frank say we born with sin.
Here’s the thing about Juan Ino. He likes to feel needed. Who doesn’t, am I right? But Juan Ino feels most necesario as an interpreter. And the dude’s parroting is on auto-pilot. He can’t help himself. In Mazunte, a mermaid in a jean skirt read my palm with her chewed finger-nail and when I spoke to Anke (the mermaid was Flemish, I believe) in English (which she very clearly understood) I asked her what she saw when she divined my lines. Juan Ino butted-in to translate to the girl, Víctor pregunta qué lees. Anke looked at me, or really through me with that thousand-yard stare of hers, and asked in Euro-accented English, are you for real? Juan Ino flicked me on the chest and said, she want to know if you is real, man. Dude!, I said to Juan Ino, I understand English. I then turned back to Anke and spoke to her how I likely wasn’t real, how none of us were likely real, how we’re most likely living in a simulation and how this town of Mazunte, this well of lost souls, seemed to me like the Misfit Island of Simulation Glitches. Déjà vu all over again. Everything’s fucking weird here, is my point. Sensing Anke’s confusion, Juan Ino translated, saying to her, Víctor dice que está complicado… si, complicado y que le caigas a la casa.
A la casa? Did… did he just invite her over to the house? I think he did.
I’ve said too much without even explaining Mazunte. While San Agustinillo is a fishing village with lovely beaches, Mazunte is to the immediate west and is a full grown-ass town with an actual ATM. Civilized and shit. Mazunte is a favorite nesting site for sea turtles because of ocean currents and proper beach sand and access to ATM machines. The founders of the town named Mazunte after the Nahuatl word for “let me watch you spawn”, a reference to the egg-laying of sea turtles. The mazunte land-crabs famous in this region are named after the town in-theory, but could just as well derive their name from the root word for their voyeuristic nature. The creepy-crawly pervy crabs are ubiquitous, lurking any & everywhere. Even all the way up on Wild-Turkey Hill. The mazunte crabs do not ask permission to watch you spawn, however. Nor do they ask consent to watch you shower or defecate or practice procreation. No. They just show-up and observe. Even if you throw a shoe at them.
(Casual aside: shouldn’t English have a word for “let me watch you spawn”?)
Mazunte is also one of the seven Oaxacan towns given the prestigious label of “Pueblo Mágico”. What better publicity could you ask for? Inevitably the Age of Aquarius folk found out about the magical turtle-spawning beach-town and migrated here en masse, turning Mazunte into hippie-fucking-central. The Spanglish spoken in the fish & fruit markets has a French-German-Aussie-California accent to it. The town people are still mostly indigenous Zapatec, but more and more are güeros running the full color spectrum from lily-white to sunburnt-peach to sun-bronzed. The new-agers invading this new world town come with all the expected accoutrements: bleached hair, sometimes dreadlocked, faded tattoos, hemp necklaces, beaded bracelets, excessive piercings, trust-funds, fogged brains, political quirks, drug dependencies and dietary hurdles but otherwise chill-as-fuck. The streets are covered in flyers advertising the kinkiest brands of yoga, something called “craniosacral sessions”, ecstatic dance (scheduled “TBD: next time it rains”), ice baths and goddess awakening photography which I signed Juan Ino up for. It’ll do him good to reconnect with his inner goddess.
The heart of the hippie town revolves around a palm-thatched drum circle emporium & cocktail lounge called Umami (or as Juan Ino calls it, “ooooh Mami!”). It was here we met Anke. And the billy goat girl. While the Flemish mermaid was cute, the billy goat girl was a damn revelation. Except she spoke in bleats. I would later ask Frank, the fuck drug is she on?, midday MDMA? Who?, Frank asked, Goats?, she is on mushrooms. That look on her face of absolute bliss can only come from psilocybin, he said of the billy goat girl. I have to trust Frank on his diagnosis as he is the only one who could communicate goat bleats with her. Juan Ino might be a good translator of language, but only Frank can decipher vibes. Over the years, Frank has introduced me to a lot of strange women I wouldn’t have known how to approach if he didn’t act as mediator. Watching him with Fifi, the mysteriously gorgeous French-Polynesian girl who spoke in nays & beeps & boops, I might as well have been back at the compound watching chacalacas talk turkey from the treetops. Frank vibed with Fifi, singing back to her Sammy Davis Junior-style, beep-beep bo-do beep-beep! The dude is a man of the people! What else can I say? A man of the people and the goats.
As Frank & Fifi beeped & booped, I looked to Juan Ino who was equally flabbergasted. Translate this shit, hermano. No se, man, he said with a head shake. Juan Inocencio de la Cruz doesn’t dabble in hallucinogenics. He sticks to his coca-cola y un poco perrico (solo si es necesario). The Bohemian bar of Umami, to Juan Ino, was a foreign world in his own backyard. Pinche culero…, Juan Ino said but I was left uncertain which pinche was so culero.
Pretty beach nymphs notwithstanding, the most significant character we met in Mazunte was 9-fingered Wout. A wild-man with gravitas, the dude dwarfed me with his radioactive aura despite my half-foot height advantage. There are many tales told around the mango popsicle-stand about a Belgian pirate yoga guru and this must be the dude. Wout. Shaped like a goat on hind legs. He has decades of dreads which he’s knotted behind his head yet the thick nasty ropes of hair still dangle to the small of his back. His once blue eyes have faded like beach rock; cataracts waiting to happen. His skin appears to have suffered abrasions… welts or maybe those are jaguar-spot tattoos or the remnants of a jungle STD. The locals call him “Rey de los Cangrejos” – the king of the crabs – based on an urban myth involving a plane wreck in the 1980s, somewhere along this mosquito coast, which Wout survived out of sheer cunning and a touch of cannibalism. As the sole survivor; who can argue with his story?
His introduction to our team of came via the jean-skirted mermaid, Anke, who after noticing his entrance into Umami called Wout “daddy” and kissed him passionately on the mouth. No tongue. Just a quick… few… seconds of a familial peck. I’m not judging. Are you? Besides, there isn’t necessarily any relation between them. She could just as easily be his disciple sister-daughter-wife in a culto a los cangrejos sexuales. Nevertheless, Juan Ino from then on began referring to Wout as my suegro, father-in-law.
After Wout’s entrance, Anke asked if he’d eaten and in Belgian-accented surfer-brah English, Wout said, it is too fucking hot to eat! He then noticed me. Anke introduced me as her friend Marcel (I know no Marcel). Looking down on me from his lessened stature, Wout asked what the fuck I was doing. Juan Ino dutifully parroted the hippie lord, saying: he ask why the fuck is you doing… I considered Wout aggressive but did not back down. I’m just talking to the girl…, I said with a wave of the hand towards his mermaid daughter-wife. I didn’t ask what he was going to do about it, but my tone and inflated chest implied as much. No man, Wout said with a shake of his heavily crowned head. What are you doing in Mexico. Juan Ino asked me, ¿por qué estás en México?
We’re roadtripping!, I explained to Wout. We’re the good, the bad and the ugly. Or in our case, el Guapo (Francisco), el Guerrero (Juan Inocencio) y el Buzo (Víctor). I’m personally here for the crocs. I’ve been chased by reptiles on every continent (except Europe & Antarctica) and wanted to seek out the resident scaly fauna. Juan Ino said to Wout, Víctor he like los cocodrilos.
Wout’s eyes widened. He said he had something for me and departed. I ordered a margarita as I waited. I drank that and ate through a swordfish quinoa bowl. Ordered another margarita. Wout finally reappeared with a paper sack of marijuana cigarettes. Que el fuck?, I asked the dude. Sorry bro, I said, I don’t smoke mystery Mexican weed. Wout looked confused. But what…?, what were we just speaking of?, he asked. Crocodiles, I reminded him. Yes!, he exclaimed, rising out of his plastic chair with such urgency the chair toppled backwards. He dug into his board-short pockets and eventually withdrew El Chingado: the ring to end all rings. Gollum would’ve been impressed. Dark magic metallurgy created this crocodile skull hoop complete with an upper-jaw of chompers. You could sense this shit was cursed. I sensed it. Juan Ino called the ring Pinche Culero. And yeah. I bought it. After some haggling, I bought this shit off of Wout. My very own cursed crocodrilo ring. Wout was very happy counting the pesos I handed him. Something very good, my man, he said to me, something very good will be coming your way.
On our drive back to San Agustinillo, Frank joked about my toothsome ring: we need not ask how your father-in-law became known as “9-fingered Wout”.
Not that the night was through. We had a new mission. A new destination. Our transactions with Wout earned us an invitation to a party east of here in Zipolite.
While not designated a Pueblo Mágico like Mazunte, Zipolite does have another charming origin story in its Nahuatl translation. Zipolite is interpreted as “beach of the dead”. Just as Mazunte is as responsible for as much turtle-spawning now as ever, Zipolite too is as deadly today as it was when the Zapotecs and Mixtecs first began wintering here centuries ago. The undertow and rogue waves are not unique to just this beach (my swims along San Agustinillo came with a backdrop of red flags), but it is Playa Zipolite where the most wayward swimmers are sacrificed to the sea each year.
Zipolite is also Mexico’s only official nude beach. The saggy-ball per capita capital of Central America, they say. Sure, women are welcome to go full topless mermaid, and they do, but the majority of the naturalists are gay dudes from cooler climes. A lot of sunburnt dong looking for aloe in all the wrong places.
(Nope!, won’t find it there!)
When presented with the plan to attend the Zipolite party, Juan Ino voiced his concerns. I don’t know, man, he said. Porque dude?, I asked. Do you have a neglected segundera in Zipolite?, I asked Juan Ino as he is notorious for having mistresses far afield – even Texas! No, man, no segundera…, he said with an oh-gosh shyness. No jealous husbands?, Frank asked Juan Ino. No, man, nothing like that, Juan Ino insisted. It’s just the gays, man!, he said. There are many gays in Zipolite, Juan Ino said. Frank & I laughed. Frank assured Juan Ino, don’t worry, hermano, if you find yourself making love to a man just remember to hold your breath. If you hold your breath, it doesn’t count. ¿Qué qué?, Juan Ino asked. Frank said, yeah, top scientists agree: if you hold your breath during man-on-man sex it means you will not turn gay. Oh, Juan Ino said with doubt and a nervous laugh, I don’t know man!
We went to Zipolite. The entire time, Juan Ino was taking quick breaths as if preparing to dive under water.
Sin Nombre was the name of our destined bar. I wouldn’t define Sin Nombre as a gay bar but, like most of the bars along the cobble-stoned Avendia Roca Blanca of Zipolite, it is not not a gay bar. The drink special (of which I had a few) Muerde mi Labio (“bite my lip”) is as painful as it sounds because it arrives with an extra shot of rotgut shit mezcal. Frank stuck to his mineral water, but Juan Ino ordered the piña colada the bar calls “the second cumming”. And this cocktail ain’t for Jesus. His drink had the extra flair of coconut cream spilt down the interior of the cocktail glass to complete the drippy innuendo. Juan Ino loved it! He had two! And held his breath with each slurp.
Wout never showed. Probably for the best. Conversation would have been awkward given the gangrenous ring wounds left by El Chingado. Our plans for a family Thanksgiving in Mazunte were certainly in jeopardy. Not that the idea was not still appealing: Wout was going to shoot chacalaca wild turkeys out of the trees with his slingshot, I’d open a bottle of pechuga mezcal and Anke would prepare stuffing using corn masa, jalapeños and mazunte crabmeat. A Thanksgiving feast fit for our pilgrimage, though perhaps not meant to be.
Sin Nombre was packed. Locals, güero ex-pats, yoga chicks, hippies, high priests, borachos y pedotes, all dancing to the house band. A few nalgonas Juan Ino pointed out to me. Howdy, I’d say to an curious Oaxaqueña and Juan Ino would say to her, Víctor dice: ¿Qué pasa, mami? When I asked the bartender for another drink, yo quero ‘muerda mi labio’ otra vez…, Juan Ino told the bartender, le gustaría otra bebida igual a la anterior. I turned to Juan Ino and said, dude!, am I speaking bad Spanish? If I am saying something wrong, tell me. No, Juan Ino said with one of his trademark shrugs, is okay. “Is okay?”, I repeated at a heightened volume, if “is okay” then stop fucking parroting me! Juan Ino shrugged and nodded, okay.
This is all neither here nor there because my grievances with Juan Ino and the missing Wout are all precursor to the only goddamn thing which matters: Frank’s performance when he took the mic and guided the house-band in a reggae impromptu riff on Roadhouse Blues. The song was perhaps closer to The Clash performing the Magnificent Seven but with Frank embodying Jim Morrison. He spoke to the band, got them harmonizing on his vibe before turning to the gathered crowd and sang: this is for anyone who doesn’t have a home to go to tonight… Our resident surfer dude, the improvisational beat-poet, the goat-whisperer, Frank: our guy took flight.
Come home!… Come home!… No one tonight should be without a home to come home to, come home!
There are too many karaoke singers and not enough karaoke songs… come home!
I ordered the broccoli and received poached stalks; they’re keeping the florets for the elites… come home!
No one liked the Hapsburgs except orthodontists… come home!
Come home!
Juan Ino was the only person within Sin Nombre unmoved by the show. He turned worriedly to me and asked, todas a nuestra casa? No, dude, I told them, Francisco is being figurative. We can’t bring everyone home. Nuestro auto no es grande, dude. Claro que si, Juan Ino said.
While Zipolite was becoming to feel like home, if we ever wanted to get back to our sweat-drenched beds tonight we were going to have to talk Juan Ino out of his third second-cumming. No mas piña coladas, hermano. Vámonos a casa, compadres! Let’s go home.
We arrived to Cerro Chacalca to find the mazunte land-crabs had stayed-up waiting for us, arms crossed with judgment over the late hour.
Uncharted Dives 