(L to R) Lynn, Amanda and me at the Mexico City airport.

the "to be continued" traveling story--CONTINUED!

Before continuing with the story from my last blog entry, I would like to issue two caveats. (For those of you who dislike self-absorbed fancy talk yet love being patronized, “caveats” is another word for “warnings.”)

1. Do not read this blog entry without reading the one immediately preceding it.

2. The following paragraphs have the potential to be offensive to certain people, or at least damage my own status as a role model. If you cannot handle either of these possibilities, do not read any further.

For those people who choose not to continue on this delicious, humorous adventure, you can use this time to fulfill your patriotic duty: checking the status of national treasure Abe Vigoda. Go here.

For the rest of you, some requisite information:

In order for the complete implications of this travel experience to come across, it will be necessary for you to know some things about the lives and personalities of my traveling companions. Here are relevant excerpts from the series of bottom-secret dossiers I keep on people and situations with which I am familiar:

Amanda: My best friend in Mexico. West Virginia native. Came to Mexico through a 4H program seemingly designed to systematically alienate and frustrate well-meaning college graduates. Author of such essays as “Canada: America’s Hat” and “Don’t call me skinny, you fat bitch.”

Lynn: Amanda’s housemate. Pure, devoutly Christian, 21 year-old college student from Florida. Movie collection consists of the following: Finding Nemo, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King. Feels the need to leave the room if discussion at hand veers in direction of anatomy, biology, or general controversy. The daughter of parents who, along with being even more devout than she (they sign all their emails with the closing “In His hands”), don’t approve of her relationship with Eric, her first and only boyfriend.

Eric: [Information withheld temporarily, because it’s funnier that way.]

Lynn and Eric: Have been dating for seven months. They talk about eventually getting married.

Anyway, here we go:

PART I: JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF QUERETARO

So Eric’s plane lands in Mexico City about seven hours later than scheduled. By this point Amanda and I are not unlike Andy Rooney, the aging 60 Minutes commentator: cranky, with messy hair, and smelling like old-people medicine. Lynn, however, has the same daisy-fresh perma-smile on her face that she’s had for the last two weeks—a smile brought on by the prospect of seeing Eric.

While waiting for Eric to emerge from the customs area, Amanda readies her camera, because, she claims, moments of reunion are often touching and photogenic. Her eyes preemptively brim with heartfelt tears.

I try to point out to her that just a couple of weeks ago she remarked that “dead babies are better than live ones, because they hold still for photos,” but she elbows me violently in the gut, and I double over in pain.

At that moment, Eric came out of customs and into our lives. Here is the paparazzi-style photo that Amanda took just before security threatened to take away her camera:

After quickly introducing ourselves to Eric, Amanda and I herd the lovebirds toward the bus terminal so that we can buy our tickets to Queretaro, where one must change buses to get back to Guanajuato.

(Side note: Question: What makes people who are “in love” walk so goddamm slow?)

We buy the tickets. In the little time to we have to kill until the bus leaves, Lynn and Eric decide to go somewhere to “talk” (i.e. make out and whisper sweet-nothings to each other). Amanda and I decide to go far away from them, as neither of us wants to contract diabetes. And, realizing that we’re going to have to spend five hours on the bus tonight with an affection-starved couple, we invest in a bottle of rum.

Timeline of events and feelings for the next few hours:

9:00ish—Get on bus to Queretaro. Banish Lynn and Eric to the back seats to avoid witnessing horrifying spectacle of public affection. Start drinking with Amanda.

10:00ish—Make fun of horrifying spectacle called Bad Boys 2, which is being shown on bus. Talking loudly now, thanks to rum. Fail to notice volume of own voice, also thanks to rum.

11:30ish—Get out at Queretaro. Tired and cranky still, but intoxicated. While walking into bus station, allow mind to wander to timeless debate of which five celebrities I would send on a rocket ship into deep space.

11: 34—Finalize my list of celebrities. Realize that I have included Martin Lawrence twice, but then decide that it’s for the best.

11:37—Snap back into consciousness to find that I am talking to man at ticket counter. Discover that there are no more buses back to Guanajuato until tomorrow.

11:38—Realize that we’ll have to spend the night in Queretaro. Weep, blame Martin Lawrence.

11:45—Round up traveling companions. Spend 10 minutes seeking name of a hotel in town.

After finding the name of a hotel, we needed to get a taxi. I was the first to broach the subject.

Me: Well, it looks like we’ll have to get a taxi. Do you want me to arrange for it?

All present: Yes.

Me: And shall I do all the talking at the hotel?

All present: Yes, please.

Me: In that case, I’m going to need something—

At this point everyone started digging in their wallets, thinking that I needed help with the taxi fare. “Nay,” I said unto them. “Belay those wallets. What I need is a promotion.”

You might recall that in the previous episode I was made Official Airport Liaison—a title I relished, but also one that failed to cover the current responsibilities with which I was charged. I needed a new title—one that would make it clear, either during elaborate conversational introductions or as a feature on old-looking stationary—just how dashing and important I was to this group.

When no one proved capable of providing potential titles that didn’t end in the word “head,” I suggested an acronym: HYRO (pronounced like “hero”): Handsome Young Rake O’Brien.

Amanda: Good Christ, Kevin. Are you—

Me: Um, hello? That’s HYRO to you. I’ll ask you again: are we all agreed on my new title?

I took their relative silence as an affirmative. Following the confirmation of my promotion, I attempted to commence with the crafting of my official HYRO badge and the necessary mission statement, but a shower of encouraging words disguised as expletives urged me to go ahead and look for a taxi. Besides, the mission statement could wait until we got to the hotel.

So I found a taxi—and that, believe it or not, was when the hurricane started.

It may not have been an actual hurricane, but it was probably the hardest rain I’ve ever seen. Seriously—this storm meant business. And you know that by the fact that the taxi driver put on his seat belt, which is an action completely contrary to Mexican standards and practices. (This is a country where mothers drive while holding babies on their laps, and where winding mountain roads have no guard rails. Trust me: a local wearing a seatbelt means there must be some scary shit on the way.)

The driver putting on his seatbelt made us all tense—as did the fact that the windshield was so foggy that you couldn’t see through it. With all of us scared, I tried to relieve tension by joking around with him a little. (“What’s the deal with airline tamales?”) He tried to be polite and accommodating, but kept losing the conversation in favor of mumbling something about “Dios” and “mis niños.”

We drove very slowly because of all the water flowing down the streets. When we stopped at a red light at this one intersection, we saw that the water level had suddenly risen significantly: it was now up to the doors on the car. Large bags of trash were being carried away by the torrent of water all around us—a scene reminiscent of the part in the movie Twister where the cow gets carried away by the tornado. Except this time the audience was bigger (there were five of us in the car), and the whimsy was missing.

On seeing the trash bags floating away, the driver and I looked at each other. Then he made the sign of the cross, kissed the steering wheel, and stepped on the gas.

We plowed our way down the next block until the driver pulled over; our hotel was apparently on the opposite side of the flooding street. I asked him if he would mind pulling over to the other side. He looked at me, then out at the street, then at me again.

“No,” he said. “Now get out. And please hurry.”

Before abandoning the taxi, I marshaled the troops with an inspirational speech reminiscent of Churchill on the radio:

“On the count of three we’re going to make a run for it. Lynn, you open the trunk. Eric, you grab your flowered, amusingly effeminate suitcase. We’re making for the hotel across the street. If anyone falls, don’t look back. Don’t help them. Just keep going. They’re dead to us. Some of us might not make it; that’s what happens in Mexico. If someone’s face-down in the mud, forget about them. Unless it’s Amanda. If Amanda falls, go back and get her backpack—that’s where the booze is.”

We opened the doors to the sound of the crashing rain and slogged our way across the street to the hotel on the other side.

Drenched and cold but finally safe, we staggered into the lobby. Cheered by the hotel’s warmth, I asked the man at the desk for his best rooms at his lowest prices, some towels, and perhaps, if there was one laying about, a cranberry scone.

His words came back across the counter like a punch in the face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re all full.”

PART II: A ROOM IN NEW SPAIN

After recovering from the initial shock of his response, I asked if he could call us a taxi. He scoffed at this, saying that no taxi driver would come here now because of the flooding.

At that moment, as I stood there sopping wet, deflated, and realizing that I had worn black socks with brown shoes, I hated him. Having no real recourse for revenge, I resorted to what I usually do when Mexico pisses me off: I refer to the country as New Spain, and speak with the lisping Spanish accent used by its former colonial oppressors:

I told him that New Spain was a beautiful country, and that I hoped to try the cerveza (pronounced thervetha) ath thoon as pothible.

Thinking that there might be another hotel up the block, we decided to make a run for it. We did, in fact, find a hotel—and they were full, too. So we made a run for it yet again. We repeated this procedure three or four times, each time finding a fully booked hotel, until we finally stumbled upon one that had rooms available.

Or I should say, one room with two queen-sized beds. I consulted with the group to see if we should take it, all the while trying to read Amanda’s face for sentiments matching my own: hesitation at potentially sleeping three feet from Lynn and Eric—a couple who, undoubtedly confused by their ritualized denial of pleasure (i.e. intense Christianity) and the probable boiling-over of their primal urges, would likely attempt to engage in a semi-silent, certainly awkward under-the-covers make-out session.

But Amanda’s countenance seemed instead to say that now was not the time for modesty; now was the time for clean towels and mints on the pillows and warmth and…

I pulled her aside for a moment.

Me: Do you still have the booze?

Amanda: Yes.

I booked the room. My shirt cuff was dripping so much I almost ruined the hotel register when I signed in.

PART III: ERIC

You may have noticed that I have left out any description of Eric until now. That is because Amanda and I did not really get to talk to him until we were all confined to the same hotel room, and I want you to gain knowledge of him in much the same way we did.

So who is this boy for whom the innocent, devout Lynn has been pining all this time? What kind of boy would she go out with? A fresh-faced altar boy? A slight, bookish lad with pure intentions and a collection of Disney movies?

If you guessed either of these, you’d be wrong. But if you put your money on “bepimpled, seven-foot-tall, built-like-a-flabby-brick-wall college dropout who supports himself by working at a Florida liquor store,” you should start playing the lottery full-time.

As we parceled out the towels in our hotel room and started changing into the driest clothes available, we all started talking. We got to know Eric a little, and gathered much of the information found in the preceding paragraph. But then we turned on the TV and, along with discovering that the hotel apparently specialized in providing its patrons with extensive coverage of the softcore porn industry, unwittingly provided the catalyst for a series of anecdotes that told us much more about Eric than we ever wanted to know. The stories and quips he launched at us that night included:

“So my friend got really drunk and was making out with a really, really fat chick on camera, and it was his first kiss…”

“I never really felt comfortable about the idea of group sex until I got to know my family.”

“My mom was having a dildo party one time, and…”

As you might have guessed, it was a long, uncomfortable night. I tried to quell some of the awkward conversation by appearing to busy myself altering the hotel stationary to reflect my newfound HYRO status. Other times I gave up and drank straight from the bottle. Amanda didn’t stoop to such lows.

No, she poured the rum into a glass first.

The next day the sun shone as we got onto the bus for the last leg of our hellish airport adventure. Amanda and I once again distanced ourselves from the young couple who, now that we knew them both somewhat more, seemed to be dating against all odds. Sitting in the front of the bus, we settled in for a peaceful trip.

And what movie did they show on the bus ride back to Guanajuato? Speed, of all things. But New Spain is like that thometimeth, I gueth.