why doesn't it say 23:00?
21:45?
That's, what, nine and oh my fuck.
I watch the digital clock switch to 10:01. Panic, sweat, cry, scream. Heart rate shoots to a million bpm, I can't think straight, I run in circles, baggage check, security, sent to a special line up where the lady seems to only help the people who stroll up out of nowhere. An eternity passes, maybe I can catch up to it in a cab? Should I bolt? Waiting... a half hour of everyone being helped but not the white girl at the front of the line, then finally, I can get it sorted out.
Go, she says, go to your terminar uno. No, no, I say, look, look, tiempo passer; fuck, I can't find the right words, don't know how to say, don't know what to do. Oooh, no, no mas owtoobooses... si, I know, but when? Cual? Donde? Shit, I don't know how to ask. She says there's another on the 25th, tomorrow, same time, and I will only have to pay a portion, but the guy over there has to write something on this ticket. Can you just sell it to me now? I ask. I'll take it. Te vende aqui por favor? Por favor por favor por favor!! No, go over there. Guy over there says, no, I write nothing, they sell you another... so I line up for another hour. But now she only has one for the 27th, and it costs more because the two hour discount window is passed. Oh Fuck, I'm going to explode. Okay, let me go now.
Catch a cab and pick a hostel from the book. On Christmas Eve, with no booking, I'll be lucky to find one. First choice is full but they make room for me, giving up a bed that someone has booked but not shown up for. It's nearly one am now as I settle in and pop an Ativan to settle this unmanageable worry around how the rest of my plans will play out if I am held up for the next four days. Deposits on two hostels and one tour lost, precious days of freedom and adventuring lost, swimming around other rivers and waterfalls on my way up into the mountains won't be happening. I'll skip Palenque and...my head won't quit spinning around which plans to change and drop so that I can pull off the others. And I was so looking forward to a respite from this heat.
Wake up groggy and not keen to go outside, but thats just the drugs still workin, Feeling groovy, slept in, ate a fab buffet breakfast that would have cost the price of the stay at any restaurant. The hostel is lovely.
Walking today. This town has a lovely crustiness to it. Little is kept perfect so it has all the crumbly imperfections I appreciate. Churches, churches, even bigger churches abound, but the temperature is quite nice.
I've been thinking about the cat houses I passed on the bus ride into town. I'm dying to go to one. Drink cheap beers. Watch the goings on.. but I'm not up to it on my own... or am I? What if I take a cab? I could watch and observe...chalk it up to earning my writer's stripes. They were so ...out there and obvious.
I imagine it as dark inside with wooden tables and chairs. Christmas lights around the bar, yellow orange yellow light. I've seen the outside, the 'storefronts' with women in small fitting tube dresses leaning against the pillars on one leg, other leg bent like some kind of pinup, tipping forward, spilling out, hands behind them. A gaggle of young men look on gingerly, leaning on a wall nearby, one store front down, leaning cocked at all kinds of odd angles.
But what happens on the inside...?
Drinking in the dark. Girls floating around, sitting down to halfheartedly seduce the men who come in. Disappear into back rooms. Dingy, dark, normalized by the presence of SO MANY of them.All of my favorite authors have explored these places, so I must.
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