El Pinche Desierto - Part 2
Eighteen hours of sleep later, I’m awake. Except the guys are already packed and heading out. It’s too early for me. I’m famished. Remember the pounds of poop? Back from eating, the two dogs I had played with earlier in the morning are waiting for me by the hotel entrance. I briefly contemplate staying back to hang out with them. For a while now, I’ve harboured visions of myself sitting bare-chested in the winter wilderness wearing a fur coat aside my wolf companion. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s a Jamiroquai video. Montana had proved too cold. Or rather, I had proved to be too ill-prepared. Maybe I could try again here with mis amores perros. Oof. No.
I catch up with the güeyes in a nearby town where we are waiting for a bus headed towards the border with Texas. It’s very clean. The traffic lights and road signs are new. At least in the centro. A beautiful girl also waits for the same. She has nice skin. Somewhere between a 24 and 26 on the now discarded von Luschan scale. Black hair with bangs. Wearing all black. 5’7″. She fidgets a bit when I barge into the central and loudly greet my friends, but quickly returns to a composed state. It’s a practice she has probably developed since the first time guys started gawking at her. Sit still in silence so as to give not even the slightest indication that might prompt any nearby douche bags to start a conversation. So, I don’t. Louis and I go to the supermarket. We are very tempted to purchase donuts, but decide against it. Mostly fruits. I can’t resist buying a cone of soft-serve ice cream on the way back though. Sweet temptations line the streets here. I am overjoyed. Except, how can you have too much joy? The childish grin on my face as I prance back to the terminal seems to soften her stance momentarily. She is sat across the aisle from Louis as we board the bus. She moves her bag to the floor. My natural body movement is towards her, but it’s short circuited by something. Perhaps poor gut health? Or maybe it’s the numerous times I’ve done the same only to get ghosted after a seemingly meaningful interaction. Nothing happens. Hours later, we stop at a dusty desert town. The road is just hard ground. She gets out. A minute later, I step outside to smoke. She’s already in the back seat of some kind of jeep on the other side of the street. Everyone drives a FWD here. I stare at her as it drives away. She stares back. Frantically, I ask the bus driver standing by the door. “Where are we?” Maybe I can come back to the town and ask around for her. But the moment has gone. And it’s never coming back.
A checkpoint managed by the military. Or the police. Or the military police. Or any one of the other hundred police departments. I am nervous. There is no entry stamp on my passport from when I crossed the frontera in Nuevo Leon a week ago. Nobody on either side seemed too bothered then. The search is all a show. The whole thing is. But, for whom? This trip is all Davíd’s show incidentally. His friend wrote a book about the specific section of the desert we’re going to. All of this and more was once the Mar de Tethys. Or some other water body millions of years ago. A period of time difficult to fathom. We’re dropped off on the side of the highway. A supply run, a short cut through a ranch, a few more kilometers and we’re here. Well, not according to Davíd, but I’m tired of lugging all this crap. Why the fuck did I bring a 15″ laptop?! He wants to keep going. Where? I’m not actually sure. He relents and we setup camp. The last embers of the sun bathe us as we rest for an hour until it’s the moon’s turn to illuminate the sky. Lunar energy is strange. Transmission towers hover above. At least a 100,000 volts of electricity are surging through their AC cables to the city of Juarez glittering in the distance. The arid clay-ish tierra and shrubbery has given way to waves of silky smooth sand. Soft like a woman’s skin. We have disappeared into the médanos. The moonlight from above reflects off the surface below. Red. White. And black. Everything about this place is pure Bladerunner. Or Dune. Or better put, the inspiration for those works of fiction lies in front of us.
We see something crawling near us. In all it’s detail. An insect of the sub-class Pterygota. The order, Coleoptera and sub-order, Polyphaga. Beetles. Or escarabajos. And to near perfect timing, Perturbator starts blasting out of Louis’ speaker. I look at my phone. ‘Welcome Back’ from the album Dangerous Days. Not near. Actually perfect. The savage has returned.
Most of the people I used to know are getting married, going back to school, or moving up the ranks at the biggest companies in the world, but here I am. In the middle of a fucking desert. “Yo estoy aquí, cabrones.” I'm fucking here, assholes.
A moment of self-indulgent bullshit. Ugh. Louis then adds. “We’re in one of the most treacherous places on earth but also one of the most beautiful.” The spectacle is indisputable, but the danger? Nah. México is for lovers. Of course, it’s also for political cabals. And sexenios. For notions of fear. And marginalised cultures. For declaring war on a certain arrangement of molecules. We keep walking further into the desert until I declare that I want a mango. “Wait here, I’ll go back and get some.” Wisely, the guys follow me, because although it was only a couple of kilometers away, we somehow managed to get turned around more than once. It reminds me of the time my mother and I got lost in Monument Valley. Lulz.
We hear coyotes howling. Of course, it’s not an issue. They only attack when their prey has already been driven to the point of exhaustion by the desert. The border with the USA is not far. Many of Davíd’s friends had tried to cross it when they turned thirteen. One of them died. Davíd is slight with pale skin and slightly curly hair that hasn’t been cut in a couple of months. He is energetic. Industrious. And only eats and drinks the bare minimum. Everything about him makes me think of my Taiwanese friend with the same name. Both are equally impressive. Except this one shits only once every three days. We don’t sleep. The night slowly turns to day in a bewildering manner. With the moon still shining bright in the dim sky towards the South, the sun turns the vista in front of us into a mix of bright blue and pink. We walk towards the light, but our heads swivel frequently towards the darkness. In a few minutes, the sun begins to peek out of the hills and the transformation is complete. Louis and I laugh maniacally at the scene while Davíd scurries around with his tripod. He tells me about his uncles serving life in prison and the family gathering he arranged in Tijuana for which he has to leave in a few hours. Tears form in his eyes. On the way back to the highway, a corre-caminos darts in front of us. They’re fast. Like the cartoon. And tiny. Unlike the cartoon. They rarely leave the ground. Davíd asks:
Would you run if you could fly?
It’s barely 9am and it’s already scorching. We seek shade behind the Oxxo. There are two drifters here with the same idea. They give us some cardboard to place under the ground. They’re drinking mezcal and are dressed identically. Cap, full sleeve shirt with a tee underneath and worker boots. It’s hard to understand them at times. One of them is particularly annoying. He is plastered. And in despair. I just want to enjoy the respite from this heat and rest my eyes. He has been deported multiple times from across the border. Says he has family there. Stop encouraging him. That he was imprisoned for three years after some people he helped cross were caught and fingered him as the coyote. The relatively sober one swears all of this is true. They rattle off all the places they’ve been to. Maybe we’ll find something in common. Every English word is with an American accent. ‘Wisconsin’. ‘Man’. ‘Fucking’. We don’t. Louis is leaving. Contempt. Or has already left. Compassion. They have lost their social masks. Or had them taken away. David and I nod in agreement. We have to put ours back on.
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