Life Style Refugee – The Ajijic Blog

On Sunday night, at a house on the fourth block of Calle la Paz, the police burst into a dance attended by 41 unaccompanied men wearing women’s clothes. Among those individuals were some of the dandies seen every day on Calle Plateros. They were wearing elegant ladies’ dresses, wigs, false breasts, earrings, embroidered slippers, and their faces were painted with highlighted eyes and rosy cheeks. When the news reached the street, all forms of comments were made and the behaviour of those individuals was subjected to censure. We refrain from giving our readers further details because they are exceedingly disgusting.

Oh my God, my eyes are on fire. Honestly, you just don’t know what you’re going to find when you pick up one of the two free magazines that come out around here on the first and the fifteenth of the month, respectively. In this month’s issue of the Ojo Del Lago, I had to re-read an entire article to make sure that I’d got it right the first time. But yes, sandwiched between the monthly LCS news and the birdwatching column, there was a thousand words on the subject of “Mexico’s Third Gender.” Captivated, I read on to learn that gay men in a particular city in the Yucatan are so petted and cosseted by the general population, including the Church, that they stroll around the market in field hockey skirts with flowers in their hair passing the time of day with one and all, knowing that local mamacitas prefer gay sons to any other blessing. What? Really? Yes, and that’s the Catholic Church, by the way.

This was by far and away the most intriguing thing I’d ever seen in our local taco wrapper. And, as often happens, it seems to be serendipitous. First, Mexico City has approved same sex marriage. To celebrate, I was invited to a fabulous dinner by my friend Michael, at which the conversation was brittle, witty and interesting. Suffice it to say that I had to work a little harder to hold my own than I do when I’m one upping farmer’s daughter jokes with Bruno’s golf pals. And then to find Herbert Piekow’s very interesting story about Juchitan. ( “Ha! I should have known it was Herbert,” I thought smugly to myself. Herbert was responsible for getting the presenters to the Writer’s conference I attended in January, so he knows his way around an article. I had been having a hard time picturing the guy who writes the regular column “Thunder on the Right” getting inspired by something as colorful as the drag queens of Oaxaca.) And to top it all off, the icing on the cake, Chapala’s first Gay Pride parade was held this week.*

To understand my connection with the gay community, you have to remember that I spent twenty five years in the ballroom dancing biz. Let’s face it, we’re talking about feathers and rhinestones here, and nobody ever walked into a ballroom because they couldn’t find the place where football practice was being held. My competition dance partner was wildly popular on the dance floor because of his muscles and hairy chest—important to the illusion that we were a couple in the throes of passion. Even at my competition weight I pretty much dwarfed the majority of the willowy chorus boys in the ballroom, so his size and power on the dance floor mattered– but when the music stopped it was a race to the elevator to get to my make up box and lock up the false eyelashes before he got into them.

Drawn like a crow to things that glitter, I’m always going to have more fun hanging out with “los boys” than almost anyone else. Which is not to say that I get along with everyone equally. I met the evil Blaine, a viciously tanned and sunbleached homo who gets botox and wears creased bermuda shorts in the colors of jello with button downs in coordinating sherbet colors, in my early days in Mexico. He introduced himself to me by grabbing a fistful of my dress and saying, with a surprised look, “Oh! I always thought these peasant frocks were made out of some kind natural fiber,” Bitch. This is a small town, and Blaine is part of the arts scene, so I have had many opportunities since that first encounter to freeze him with my haughty stare, not that he ever notices. Anyway, tolerance for all lifestyles is part of Ajijic’s personality, and where you find art galleries you will find Friends of Ethel Merman. Beware of Blaine though. Blaine and his kool-aid colored natural fibers. Hmph.

Mexico has an ancient history of treating it’s homosexuals with respect. This is often the rule with indigenous peoples, although the Aztecs got a little narrow minded on the issue. Frankly I doubt being discriminated against by an Aztec was any worse for you if you were gay than if you were a virgin, or even just a regular working slob. Any way you sliced it, your chances of being brutally sacrificed were pretty high, but there you go. The Spaniards, naturally, had mixed feelings on the issue. On the one hand, a conquistador never met a hate crime he didn’t like. On the other, those soldiers were no stranger to the “down low,” and cheerfully accepted the company of a doe eyed Indian boy as a perfectly logical way to preserve the sacred virginity of their imported senoritas.

Thank God, Mexicans will write a song about anything, generally within a few hours of it happening. Otherwise, I might have missed an episode called the “The Dance of the Forty One”, a scandal that occurred during the days of Porfirio Diaz, days when a lot of the good stuff went down. Some of the sons of Mexico were discovered at a private party carrying on with lace fans and mantillas. The scandal might have gone unmarked, except for the widespread rumor that the most tightly corseted and fetchingly bustled guest at the party was married to Porferio’s daughter. He was allowed to sneak away on his high heeled slippers, but the rest of the gang was rounded up and conscripted into the army. They were sent to fight in the Yucatan.

And today their descendants can be found strolling the market place in cocktail gowns, advising young wives on how to keep their man.

You can’t make this stuff up.

*The first Gay Pride parade in Chapala turned out to be four or five barrel chested Mayans wearing sequin tube tops and Marlo Thomas-as-That-Girl wigs in the back of a pick up truck. It’s a first step.

“Honey, we’ve got to go to the beach.”

I said this because I was in front of my bookshelf, and the selection of tattered paperbacks there did not inspire. Managing the procurement of books around here requires some creativity but, as is true of everything in Mexico, there’s a way. Although I once doubted that there could be intelligent life without a Barnes and Noble, I have adapted, which means learning when I have to go on a big game book hunting expedition. The ugly selection of pulp romances and mysteries that looked back at me from the shelf had been recycled through all the restaurants around the village that had “take one leave one” libraries, and I was starting to run into my own books, placed there several months ago. The beach, though, oh boy, that’s where the trophies are! Those sunbathing Canadians and beer ponging spring breakers don’t leave home without their paperbacks, and once they’re finished with them, they cast them aside like summer romances.
So, Bruno and I decided to head to the coast town of Melaque for the weekend. There are two types of beach trips, the kind that involves planning, and the kind where you simply take off, no reservations, no guidebook, just a wish for the ocean and the desire for some new books. The mighty Pacific is a hundred miles from here on excellent toll roads, and it’s nothing to just throw a bag in Bruno’s jalopy and go.

You know about Bruno’s jalopy, the hideous maroon sedan that has none of the redeeming idiosyncrasies of normal old cars, no tailfins or ragtops. No, it’s a 1991 Ford Taurus that miraculously escaped it’s obvious destiny in a fleet of sales cars and somehow ended up down here, just like we did. We were flabbergasted the day we realized that it came from Ted Britt Ford, a dealership not 5 miles from the Virginia home we left.

Bruno has taken up body work for a hobby since we’ve been in Mexico. It’s useful, since you can’t knit a new door panel or put a stamp collection where the side mirror was before it got knocked off by a soda truck. Still, he and I share a desire for instant gratification, and hobbies that require waiting periods in between steps seldom work out for us. His efforts with the car have been iffy. The bumper on the maroon sedan has become a conversation starter since he discovered that he could buy spray cans of fiberglass at the local hardware store. I don’t know what fiberglass is used for any more, never mind fiberglass in spray cans. When I was a girl, we threw clumps of it at our Christmas tree and called it angel hair. If you can imagine nests of that glued to the front of our car, and then painted black, you would have an idea of what comes out of Bruno’s body shop. This chariot, loaded with books to exchange and pillows to put on the beds that we knew would be rock hard, is what we took to Malaque. Almost there, Bruno asked me where the name Melaque had come from. My hobby, of course, is knowing the answers to questions like that.

“Well, darling,” I cheerfully launched into my subject. “Nobody says “Fuck You” like a pissed off Irishman. That’s just the way it is, and if you’re down here in Mexico and you suddenly see a restaurant named O’Malleys or a street called Irlandes, you are looking at evidence, more than a century old, of the day that Irishmen in the American army looked around and saw that they, by being soldiers in the army of a powerful bunch of Protestants who were trying to conquer a neighboring country full of Catholics, were on the wrong side. A side that reminded them a good deal of The British side, which had been such a giant pain in the ass back in the auld country. When they heard the familiar sound of bells pealing at the Mother Church they said “Fuck You” to the United States and crossed the river to the Mexican side, where they could fight on the side of the papists. Once on Mexican soil, the San Patricios, ( more formally, the St. Patrick’s Batallion ) proved themselves to be as bloodthirsty and ferocious as any of the most irritated Celtic warriors in history, cheerfully shooting not only every Yankee officer they came across, but also their brand new Mexican best friends. The San Pats were deserters, as far as the U.S. was concerned, and hanging was certain if they were captured. When they saw Mexican soldiers eyeing the white flag of surrender as the ammunition ran out, Bam! they got shot, too. Even so, the Mexicans can get behind the romance of dispossessed Catholic Irishmen coming to their aid and to this day, the San Patricios are honored all over Mexico, and St. Patrick’s day is celebrated with reverence”

Resting his head tiredly on the steering wheel of our 1991 Ford Taurus, Bruno sighed and asked again. “Elliott, where does the name Melaque come from?”

“Oh,” said I. “It’s because they can’t say Malarkey.”