Maudlin week part#5: Stupidity as wide as Miramar’s beach.

Love can make you do real stupid shit. That’s a given and it’s cliché. Love can supposedly make people better. That’s an even worse cliché and I think it’s bullshit.

But what if it’s not love? What if it’s a midlife crisis in advance? And one that is as contagious as a cold?

The waves crash against the concrete breakwater. The jack-shaped thingamajigs are doing the lord’s work and the wind is a cacophony as loud as the thoughts and the regret in my head.

“Chilango, come out and play!” I hear in the distance.

Fuck’s sakes, I didnae want this book to be all about dishy stories and confirming biases about men, but the truth is the truth, and like cork in water, no matter how much you push downwards, it eventually climbs up. The buoyancy of the real story always emerges.

I don’t blame Rebecca for what happened. It was our last semester, she was absconded to Monterrey, which she hated, and I was stuck in Mexico city, which I loathed. So first and foremost, we wanted what the other had. In more than one way.

When we met in ’95, I was in an arts major, she was in engineering. Electronics and the like. We crossed paths in a stupid class that basically filled out the syllabus with the fleeting knowledge of Stephen Covey, Ishikawa’s fishbone, and Erich Fromm, for some reason or another.

It was a project based class, so we had to learn how to use Gantt charts, and do quality control stuff. The rest of the people in the team did help out with the projects, but at the end of the day, it was the two of us, burning the midnight oil.

She used to chastise me for “wasting my talents” in arts, and that I should go to engineering, since both my parents were chemistry majors. I ended up following her advice, but when the second semester started, she was nowhere to be found.

A fleeting one semester friendship, and I just continued with my life. It seems to be a trend to have people just leave my life without a goodbye, but I think that’s as common as it happens. I never understood how my parents stopped hanging out with their friends. I think it just happens. Like spontaneous combustion.

February of 99. 4 year time jump and it’s 8th semester. 7th and change for me, due to the change of majors. Who could’ve thought that Marshal MacLuhan’s teachings weren’t relevant to electronics? Dang it, I say it is! I’m at some PLC microcourse with a friend that’s too hungover to be here, and too achey to be back home, chundering his Chilango intestines into the nearest buckets. Fucker decided to eat a shrimp zorrito. Shrimp. In Monterrey. Fuck’s sakes.

The class ends and I feel observed. You know the feeling. I look at the mousy hair, the freckles and the kind smile. It’s Rebecca. The fuck’s she’s doing in Monterrey of all places?

We catch up over coffee and stale biscuits (penny pinching University!) She left Mexico in Winter of 95, leapfrogged to Monterrey via Toluca, and now was part of the organising committee. It’s a good chat and we agree to meet the next day. We part ways at the closing ceremony on that warm February saturday. My cousin Primate (don’t ask) drives me next day to meet her. For some reason or other, he decides to walk with me inside the university and I don’t know why. We meet Rebecca by the library, and my cousin slips into my hands a yoghurt for her.

I know it doesn’t make sense. Welcome to my family.

Catch up takes another hour or so, and then Rebecca excuses herself because she needs to go back to work. She still leads projects, but is confident enough to delegate responsibilities to other team members. We hug and Primate takes a photo of both of us.

Jump now to february of 2000. Last semester. Last months before diving into real life shit. We communicated by email, telephone, and ICQ (the 90s cupid!) and I get ideas. Because it’s our last semester. Because we don’t know if we’ll meet again.

So I make her a mix-cd (which was in style at the time), wrote her a letter, and went to the engineering congress in Monterrey. Again, belting heatwave in February and me as a jerk wearing a full suit. Primate hands me a rose for her, chastising for my lack of romanticism.

While registering at the event, I ran into a friend that also moved to Monterrey from Mexico City. What the fuck, were they handing free scholarships or something? Anyways, we catch up, we talk shit about a common friend (her ex) and she asks me who else I know there. I tell her about Rebecca. She remarks “ah, the organiser’s girlfriend.”

My heart sank. I left the rose near some bushes and decided to keep the letter to myself. We did meet on the first day and I did give her the mix cd. I felt observed and it turned out the boyfriend’s parents and his three best friends were in front of me when I gave her a mix CD. Jesus, you think I gave her an engagement ring or shit.

We met as much as we could during the day, and at night, during the disco, things got weird. Not the way you think, but it didn’t seem like something passing. The boyfriend got increasingly angrier, I almost got jumped by his three hefty friends a couple of times, including at a night rave at Fundidora Park. They chased me with empty beer bottles, chanting like Luther from The Warriors, a movie both Rebecca and I loved.

The last day of the congress, before the closing ceremony, I met Rebecca by the coffee and stale cookie aisle. We talked and for some fucking reason, I asked her for how long had she been with that guy. She realised that day was their anniversary, so I think they started dating the very same day I gave her the yoghurt in 99.

What a world, eh?

It freaked me out that she didn’t remember the anniversary, but not as much as when his boyfriend came up to us at the coffee stand. He had this massive shiner on his eye and I thought: well, he’s got his three bodyguards, right? Who could’ve given him a black eye as massive as this and still roam this earth?

I tried to be civil with him, as much as I could muster, and congratulated him for the event and for his anniversary. He smiled, honest, and then hugged Rebecca. He sobbed, then moaned loudly. She stood there, with her arms down, ignoring him, looking straight at me, just like she looked at me at the Fundidora park rave. The one she said she didn’t go to at first, but then admitted she did.

I left Monterrey the next day, pondering seriously about what happened. I realised I never truly knew her and was just in a desperate moment before graduation. I assume both Rebecca and her boyfriend also were at that mindset and it was all a momentary lapse of rational thinking.

It’s now easter of 2002. I was drinking with Broncolópez and decided to walk around the beach. I just told him what I told you and he said “you should’ve kissed her at least, blue balls.” I nodded but replied “it wasn’t the right thing to do.” He took a puff of his now 100% cannabis ciggie. “It never is, pal.” I walked for a while, thinking about things.

Miramar beach was a beehive of activity in 2002 and I was starting to feel okay. At the distance, I saw my cousin and I was ready to approach and say hi when I realised to her right, the three dudes who were friends with Rebecca’s boyfriend saw me. They pointed at me and started running. I run too, leaving my cousing confused and rather annoyed. She still holds a grudge to this very day.

I ran until my legs pumped battery acid. Jumping over radios, beach mats, cases of Modelo Light and Corona. Then I ran some more. Stumbling over sandcastles, beach bums, and the odd broken sand dollar. I make my way into the crowd at the wavebreaker, all the way to the end of the pier and catch my breath.

The wind intensifies, I think about all the stuff I’ve done in my life. All the people I’ve hurt and the damage I’ve inflicted into friends and foes. Sweat is acid and makes my eyes cry. I puff and stand up, thinking about Rebecca and still thinking she punched her boyfriend so hard she left him with a mark on his face.

“Chilango, come out and play!”

The three gentlemen in my back. I can’t run forever. I guess chickens came home to roost.

-Ósgar García Torres, as told to Sam J. Valdés López in 2007.