Life Style Refugee – The Ajijic Blog

My visitors?

My mother does not succumb to the challenge that small tasks present. She takes in stride that things that should be easy–sitting, standing,  tedious little exercises that were automatic once but have the nerve now to be major undertakings, each movement requiring it’s own strategy session. She meets these pain-in-the-ass negotiations with valor. “Never surrender!”  she seems to say.  Or actually does say, thumping the floor with an African spear she borrowed and is presently using as a hiking stick.   “Shit a fat brick!” she may holler when she’s in a less Churchillian mood.

She is saved from being just another courageous old lady- ho hum!- by her delight in technology, and idles away the hours fiddling with her i-phone to bring up google earth or take her turn at international online backgammon.  Much more interesting, in my opinion, than one of those tiresome old “rappin” grannies that wear converse sneakers and hang out in discotheques.

My niece is here with her, she of the gold skin and gold hair, hair that makes anything she sticks or clasps into it, no matter how innocent, instantly  look like it was purchased in a sex shop in Amsterdam. If she were to tie a black velvet ribbon into a bow in that hair, she would be arrested.  My stepson, who is thirteen, isn’t sure he’s allowed to be in the same room as his step-cousin, although he doesn’t know why, any more than a herd of buffalo knows why they have the urge to stampede before an earthquake.  She likes to travel with my Mom and is perfectly comfortable with the assortment of innovative approaches that Mom employs to get out of a chair, displaying not a trace of embarrassment,  something I find charming in a nineteen year old.

The last time my niece visited, she lugged a steamer trunk with her that cost the price of a new wardrobe at the airline counters both coming and going in extra weight charges. I was pleased to see her strolling out of customs this time with a more modest suitcase, thinking that she had internalized my lectures about how to pack.  Now that I ‘ve seen the collection of Ed Hardy string bikinis she brought, I can’t think why she needed a suitcase at all.

As miniature as they are, they weren’t small enough to satisfy the wardrobe requirements of a “Pimps and Ho’s” ball that she was somehow invited to attend her second night here. She borrowed some trashy lingerie from a friend to wear to the party. Not because she didn’t bring any underwear, although it’s entirely possible that she didn’t, but because whatever she did or didn’t bring wasn’t sufficiently “ho-ish” to be her costume. Fortunately,  her local friend had a sufficient supply of bustiers. I don’t spend too much time wondering how it’s possible that she was invited to such a ball, or that she has such a friend, several thousand miles from her home.

The thirteen year old is in a class by himself. He lives with his mother and stepdad in England.  I entertain him and myself by finding other thirteen year olds, and studying them with an anthropologist’s eye, wondering how it’s possible that a kid from Brighton Beach and a kid from Ajijic, Mexico can start talking gibberish before introductions are even finished. “Pixels!” they say. “Call of Duty 4! GTA, Halo!, ” This much I sort of can make out. The rest sounds like football signals or spy code.  “OPM! Megabytes! 42! ” and then once in a while a word that I can definitely recognize, along the lines of  “Boobies!” and oh boy, then we’re back in a world that technology has touched not at all, the world where a word like “pencil dick” will get them rolling in the aisles, just like it did when I was thirteen, and when Mom was thirteen.

These characters are in my world this month, to my great joy. I may not get much blogging done.  This month I may spend living with my beloved knuckleheads rather than writing about them. But next month will be here soon enough.

Our little village abounds with urban myths of well heeled widows taking up with strapping young Mexican gardeners. One minute these guys are sweating in the sun, laying their, er, sod. I can’t even picture it without hearing imaginary porn music.  The next thing you know the senora is coming out on to the terraza with a big glass of limonada and a gleam in her eye. Chapter Two? The gardener moves into the big house. His latin machismo soon surfaces,  and he starts bossing the senora around. She is such a slave to passion that when he starts staying out all night all she can do is beg, clutching his leg and being dragged across the floor while he sneers in contempt and shakes her loose so he can go spend her money on some tart at the cantina, and the senora  starts drinking straight tequila. The next thing you know, you never see her for lunch any more.  According to the local grapevine, this pattern repeats itself all the time.

As common as these tales are, there seems to be a little something extra in the water at the moment. There’s been a recent spike in the number of stories regarding single women and their gardeners. It seems that the notion of  this kind of big house/ field hand carrying on doesn’t have the salacious firepower that it once did, and the local gossips are trying to make up for in quantity what they are missing in quality.  Last week, I heard three different gringa-and-the-gardener stories, which is pretty hot for the local demographic. We’re  kind of a small town to be having  this widows gone wild action all over the place. Frankly, I’d have a hard time swallowing three patronas falling for their gardeners in greater Los Angeles, never mind  the village of Ajijic.

Perhaps I’m not the only one to raise an eyebrow at the sudden uptick in ravenously horny homeowners who can’t watch their lawn getting watered without dropping their negligees.   I notice that recent stories include the addition of  details that are getting juicier all the time. One thrilling variation includes the added twist of the faithful servant caring for the senora when she twisted her ankle, and subsequently getting her addicted to heroin! How awesome is that! Now he is rumored to be keeping her docile with regular injections  of  exotic drug cocktails, and is moving her hand across the signature lines of various deeds and titles while she is nodding out in an opiate  coma. Once he gets the combination to her safe, well, I wouldn’t think much of her chances then….

Some of these chestnuts come my way in my job as a realtor, usually with the hopeful notion that it will result in an undervalued property, as in “I heard about a house in Chula Vista? where the woman is having an affair with her gardener? and she’s signed over all her property to him because she’s mad at her children for not coming to see her, and he doesn’t know how much it’s worth, so when she dies, he’s going to sell it for cheap!” Hope springs eternal, is all I can say.

Believe me, if you can’t take this level of small town drama, you are not ready for Lakeside. I  personally thrive on it,  the more lurid the gossip, the better. Unfortunately, the element that  interferes with my ability to suspend reality long enough to enjoy these stories is the fact that’s it’s always the gardener. Jesus, not my gardener! Nobody in their right mind would have an affair with him, no matter what kind of drugs he was packing in his truck along with the WeedWacker and pruning shears. All the gardeners I know are completely retarded, or have glass eyes, or —in the rare cases where they are under 50–would rather shoot themselves up with drugs than have to throw a schtup into one of the old babes I lunch with. Give me a break. There are a few brown eyed  hunks with flashing white smiles driving around in Chevy Avalanches, but believe me when I tell you, they know how much the land is worth. They know what they’re worth, too, and it’s usually a bundle, owing nothing at all to any dame in a negligee with a dope habit.

There is, of course, a kernel of truth to these stories. Somewhere along the line, some gal with a taste for margaritas in the afternoon probably did start a little something with her gardener, who was probably close to her own age and may have been with her for thirty years, and maybe her kids did neglect her.

The other dramatic structure that local gossip is likely to take involves lesbians, usually on motorcycles, who come into town and  break up marriages with their irresistible lesbian powers. Like cobras hynotizing helpless birds, these black leather clad fembots have only to crook a finger and cast a certain sort of glance, and wives who are about to celebrate their golden anniversary are unable to prevent themselves from packing up and moving into the poolhouse with them, a slave to unnatural sex that couldn’t be imagined before these mighty sapphists rolled into town.  A key element of this story is that everyone has sex with the ravishing seductress, who isn’t particularly fastidious about gender preference. Obviously, sooner or later the husband loses his mind and kills the lesbian, the wife, himself, or some combination of the three.

That story actually has a little  more than  a kernel of truth, happening pretty much just that way back in the ’80′s, when all the good stuff was happening around here. Frankly, the real story of that episode is even more sensational than the recycled fiction that gets handed around along with the gardener gossip, as it had the added zest of communism and theatre people.

There are local webboards that supply us with a cyber version of the back fence, but I never get any good stories there. The gossip on the internet is not more reliable than the stories I hear from  flesh and blood nut jobs all over town and it  seldom has the color and dash that I love so much. Who can get worked up over exterminators and visas? Bah. The internet isn’t always such a giant step forward.

But I’m sure glad to have it, so that I can share the really good stuff with you. Just between us, right?

My adventures with the furniture salesman last week are only the latest chapter in an ongoing saga with our refrigerator. Some months ago, it started behaving badly. The ice in the freezer melted, and the refrigeration compartment, while perhaps a degree or two cooler than the outside temperature in the hottest month of the year, was obviously struggling.

I was raised by intellectual parents in the gleaming atomic age. By the time I was old enough to own my own appliances, the world had divided into them and us, them being qualified to keep things running, us… not.
I know that at the first sign of trouble with anything significant, I’m going to have to initiate diplomatic relations with an alien, but necessary, group of redneck fix-it types who know about repairs. Members of this intimidating nation are free to tell me–and charge me–whatever they like, because I’m completely at their mercy. It has always been a more comforting option to just go buy a new car than to live with the anxiety of trying to keep one running after it starts having problems,and staying awake at night wondering if the guy in the jumpsuit is laughing at me behind my back.

People who move here and then complain about the “manana” attitude and whine about a shiftless work ethic strike me as highly suspicious. In the States, as a realtor, I was held hostage by workmen too numerous to count, plumbers, electricians, heating-and-air-conditioning guys, repair people of all stripes. As for the Manana attitude, well, the only way I ever knew where any of my handy -man type guys were is because I happen to attend AA meetings myself. It took precision timing, but I developed a strategy that involved catching a painter on his way back from a binge. If they’d been attending meetings and managing to accumulate some sobriety for a few months, I’d give them a wide berth, so great was the likelihood that they were about to pick up a bottle and go on a bender. None of this would have been so harrowing, if it weren’t for the fact that it cost hundreds of dollars every time one of these characters got involved, and you were never sure what they were doing, or if it would work, or if by the time you needed some warranty work you’d be able to find them again without calling Dog the Bounty Hunter. And the idea that they were more likely to show up when they said they would than the guys I’ve dealt with in Mexico is just ludicrous.

My observation here in Mexico is that there are three possible phases involved in a repair. If you’re lucky, the problem will be resolved in Phase 1, which is the guy that you called shows up on time and fixes the problem, charging a miniscule amount, thirty pesos or something.  I’m here to tell you, that happens far, far more often than not, and a whole helluva lot more than it ever did in the States. If it doesn’t, you move on to the second phase. This only happens if the original repair was unsuccessful. The repairman returns. After this, things can go in a couple of directions. People here are awfully, awfully good at what they do, and they will do it right the first time if they know how. There’s some wiggle room here for human error, of course. If that’s the case, it will be immediately spotted and corrected. If it’s not, you enter Phase 2b. This is where the gifted repair guy has taken his best shot and is about to start making stuff up,and down the rabbit hole you go. We had been stuck  in 2b for a while with the extended family of father, brothers, sons, and wives– They are the Flying Wallendas of major appliance repair –that are responsible for keeping local refrigerators running.

The problem with this phase is that most Mexicans would rather commit ritual suicide than give you bad news, so they’ll try anything, but at some point, they move into Phase 3. That’s when the repair person has exhausted what he knows and what he can make up, and the object still doesn’t work. At this point he’s smart enough to quit showing up, even though we’re not smart enough to quit calling and bitching. It is probably the uninformed gringotard who has been graduated to this phase without receiving the memo that is responsible for all the kvetching about “manana.”

There came a moment when the refrigerator had been muscled out onto our front terrace so that it could be worked on by repairmen who, having entered Phase 3, abandoned it there. The freezer was stocked, not with ice cream and frozen vegetables, but with milk and fruit. In other words, it was now being used as an auxiliary refrigerator. Which made a total of three, because there was also a blue igloo chest sitting in the kitchen where the fridge was supposed to be. It was a low moment. Generally, I am perfectly convinced of the rightness of our move to Mexico, but cut me some slack. I’m a 52 year old woman, and subject to, er, fluctuations in mood. The multiple unsuccessful attempts to fix the refrigerator were making me feel anxious,  helpless.  I would have liked to go buy a new one. However,we had just gotten back from ten days at the beach. It’s not a great time to be replacing big ticket items. While I was mulling this over, a prehistoric looking spider, probably imported from the Puerto Vallarta jungle in the trunk of Bruno’s 1991 Taurus, ran across the porch.  Worse! Now I was a person with a cooler in the kitchen, a refrigerator on the porch, a car from the last century, and giant hairy spiders running around loose. I felt that moving to Mexico was a colossal mistake, that I had sacrificed any chance of every achieving anything, taken a left turn when I should have gone right. I felt broke, a failure, and that, more than a loser, I was a loser living in freaking Mexico. Uber Loser!

In a scenario that didn’t need any help to depress me, there was a pair of jeans sticking out of the fridge and revealing a healthy slice of ass crack, but neither belonged to Javier Castellenos, the local appliance repair man who had gone missing. No, the jeans, and the crack, belonged to my husband, who–coup de grace!–was trying to fix the ice box himself. For some reason, that was the last straw. Something about my husband trying to fix a broken refrigerator made me feel as though we were teetering on the brink of disaster.

Ah, don’t worry, there’s a happy ending! Like I said, mood swings.

Bruno has more experience than I with this whole pattern, because he drives a 20 year old car that has been driven into a horse. At this very moment he’s chasing down Chui, who is responsible for the day to day upkeep of our valiant 1991 Ford Taurus, in spite of his complete lack of qualification for such a job. Or any job! He lives outside the network of competent repair people that are the subject of this post, believe me. He tends to leapfrog into Phase 3, but he’s been with us for a long time.  Chui obviously neglected some vital step when he painted the car, as that paint is now peeling off in long strips.

For some reason that has never bothered me, but the whole refrigerator thing caused me to  panic. Here’s the happy ending; Bruno fixed the refrigerator. Returning to some joyous boyhood passion for tinkering, forgetting that we don’t have the necessary clearance from the brotherhood of redneck repair guys to do this kind of work, using some common sense, he fixed it. It’s sitting back where it’s supposed to be, making ice cubes like crazy–we both grin at each other every time we hear another batch thunk into the receptacle. It makes me feel like he, like we, can do anything. That we are self sufficient, that we are not intimidated by guys showing their butts. We  show them ours!

That, no I didn’t miss my chance by moving to Mexico. Far from being my undoing, is the making of me.