Nude Taco
How I became a Gay Gringo
By Cal Avocado
©
2017 Roaming Gardens Press
Foreword
I am a Gay Gringo facing old age and
looking back on history through romance, especially one. I arrived in Mexico
bursting with dreams for love after 25 years in San Francisco and New York as
the AIDS epidemic began and burned through. Fulfillment came but not as I
hoped. My conflict is not wanting boundaries for love and sex in a world of
homophobia, disease, poverty and the nature of men. A world full of obstacles.
I planted my desires into
Paco like a container that would take them. Each event between us leafed into
possibilities and problems. My thoughts grew seeds of doubt and hope, and
rained and shined over them. He might not recognize himself from my point of
view and feel insulted as will others. These are my opinions. I’m not a camera.
Names are changed to blur identities, to protect the innocent from my
distrustful and hurtful speculations. Most people prefer a portrait of
themselves as a flower or a god, myself included. I present details without
vanity or consideration to hide ugly. I want the dirt of real history on my
pages. We name streets after ideas we support, not diseases we suffer, but both
are guides to living. The HIV crisis shaped my life. The empathy of biography
smells like real bodies, fresh or stinking. Biography is musty paper crumbling
apart in your fingers recalling original oils, delivering an unrepeatable,
nostalgic experience fiction cannot.
Obsession
It blows around my mind like a trapped bird
Trying to fly out my eyes like windows,
Arriving in Mexico
An outsider arrives
discovering strange boulevards and gardens in Mexico City and new pleasures like
tasting orange papaya and yellow mango for the first time. And Mexicans to
love. The one that stirs me today from a safe distance occupies the gaudiest
memory from the list. When we were near, it got hot, and thinking about him
mushroomed into uncontainable emotions and a desperate need for someone to hear
me talk, to get him out.
Like one empty night in San Miguel de Allende, a small city north
of the capital where I rented a room in the winter of 2002. On weekends, I
traveled down to Mexico City hoping to meet him, but I was back. It was Monday
and I went to a support group for the addicted and lonely, Alcoholics
Anonymous. I wasn’t alcoholic but it was available and anxiety qualified me.
Although the moderator was a straight man, a warning sign, I noticed he was
friendly with a lesbian type so I took a chance sharing, misjudging his
tolerance for confessions of one man’s loving addiction to another. Shortly
into my release he cut me off ordering, Who wants to go next? A
cold sweat and past insults ran through my mind. Foolish faggot, dicks
are for chicks.[1] Perhaps he meant no harm, or wasn’t repelled by me, but he became
a villain I resented. Usually I avoided inflaming homophobic prejudice by
keeping silent.
I was testing livability in
San Miguel for a gay man in the expat community and failing to find enough. In
New York, it had been easy to find support in the gay community but no gay
groups existed in San Miguel. So, I sought out an individual I'd met in his
40's like me, one partner of a newly arrived couple from rural California. It
didn't go much better with him and I was convinced the time it would take to
knit support in this town would not be worth it. He was out for a night time
cruise in the vacant central plaza where gay men covertly hook up. He grew up
in Texas where family had disapproved of his sexual orientation. His
relationship was open, and probably sexless. He was starved for some. I had
accepted an invitation to his house once. A laptop computer was conspicuously
placed in the entry way playing a porn video as I entered, as a hook. But I
wasn’t interested, somewhat annoyed, and ignored it.
Tonight, wasn’t different.
I wanted his ear not the cock he was offering. I'd returned from Mexico City
frustrated and Roger impatiently listened to me climb out of worry before
rudely cutting me off, You need to get on anti-depressants! He
was revealing his lack of interest. He didn’t want to listen but did want to
tell his story. I decided to hear it rather than be alone. In a tense
outpouring, he recalled a Prozac overdose in a California supermarket. He
squalled in his pants before making it to the bathroom. Naturally he was
embarrassed and it was dreadful, but I thought to myself how much worse it
would be if caused by a disease he couldn’t control, not an optional medication
he could dose down or exchange. He finished his story and left right away. It
was clear after two meetings, he’s too self-absorbed to listen to anyone. He
has scant potential to be a friend.
Becoming a Gringo
Every Friday I walked
through colonial San Miguel to the bus station for an enjoyable ride to Mexico
City. San Miguel always seemed delightful when I was leaving. I reluctantly
returned on Monday mornings knowing I’d feel isolated again. In Mexico City, I
spent the weekend at gay cantinas shedding 20 years of New York City striving.
In New York, it hadn’t been convenient to go to gay bars. Work or distance
interfered. Mexico was a long-crafted plan finally become reality. I'd left
before to faraway places. After high school from Phoenix to San Francisco and
eight years later, with just 2,000 dollars and a million in excitement, from
San Francisco to Manhattan. I was splitting ready to move in each case but
breaking off was excruciating. The fight for courage to go just a little
stronger than fear not to.
During my last years in New
York I took trips to Mexico that got longer and longer. It was so exciting,
turning off to sleep could be hard. My favorite destinations were Mexico City
and Oaxaca but I wanted the entire country and fantasized living where ever I
happened to be. Being a foreigner was interesting for many reasons, including
speaking Spanish, and the handsome men, a mixture of Spanish, Native American,
and African. Apart from the different culture and people was new scenery and
plants. Jungles as astounding as any northern forest I’d enjoyed. Mexico also
offered the comfort of familiar landscapes from Arizona and California I'd
grown up in, recalling home after two decades in New York. Finally, Mexico had
low prices.
I'd lie awake in bed unable
to sleep, Mexico City racing my heart, and get up tired the next day. It was a
huge city, too big to understand, and mine to discover. I'd felt the same in
New York and San Francisco each in its era, but they had gotten smaller over
the years. Here, I had the money to choose where I wanted to live, not forced
to last choices like in the former. If I had a tail it would be excited.
