Thursday, February 15, 2007

heart cake

Mexico journal snippet:

" . . . Monterrey, where, as luck would have it, Jose-Luis was waiting for us just outside of customs (which is astonishingly simple and I don't think they checked our passports), with a friend in tow. Jose-Luis says his car broke down at the bus station (maybe this is what he said?), so we were taking this other guy's car, whom [Jose-Luis] didn't know - a friend of a friend of somebody he met at the bus station, I think - and we drive around Monterrey. It is dark and we are digging it bigtime. All the walls are painted with advertisements. The buildings are tall and rich. People outside. I don't understand the traffic rules. Eventually, we park outside of a taco/hamburger stand connected to a house. They invite us in. This is where we're staying, they say. At the house connected to the taco/hamburger stand.

"Everybody meets us. There are lots of people to meet us and they all do. They offer us food and laugh when we want hamburgers and fries. They give us lots of beer in small glass bottles. They apologize for the beer not being good (in their opinion (I don't know if this is really what they said)). They make us try menudo, which is a hangover soup that has, I beleive, bull pancreas and hoof in it, although I could be wrong here as well. One of the people there, Augosto, is having a birthday party. He is also a fantastic painter, with abstract, dark paintings hanging up all around us. LC loves the paintings. They talk at length about this. Augusto is turning 49 and has, in one hand, a bottle of whiskey, and whenever I make eye contact with Augusto he points at me and smiles and yells, "WHISKEY!" and fills his glass up. A few women dance to music playing from a boom box. Everybody drinks. They sing along. They are wonderful singers. It is cold. I dance with a woman who I think is one person's wife, then another person's, then another. LC and I both keep drinking. Jose-Luis sits in the corner and does not say much, which doesn't help us, because we aren't speaking Spanish well, because we're not used to it yet (and don't know Spanish that well anyway), but we still talk, and people still talk to us, and they couldn't be more nice. This goes on until 4 in the morning, with bottles breaking, dancing and singing, little children staying up later than me.

"In the morning, Augusto takes LC and I to meet his sister, then his mother. Then he gives us each a painting to take back to America."

2 Comments:

Blogger Stanley said...

There were paintings?! You never said anything about paintings. Damn. Still, this story is even better as told by Ryan in-person. Everyone who reads this blog should be gaming to meet Ryan.

16/2/07 3:12 AM  
Blogger t(h)om said...

i enjoyed this part of the story, esp how Augosto took you to meet his other family the day after the party.

why don't you also tell the part about the car getting towed?

16/2/07 5:27 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home