I tried to imagine him with a squeeky voice, with bad breath. Ultra-macho, ultra-right wing, slow off the mark. It did not help. The sun burned down on me, I was wearing my ridiculous fashion cowboy hat - better than nothing. If only I would have paid attention to the direction, I get lost everywhere, I have no landmark memory, I would not even recognise the place if I was right in front of it. Two local engineering students had taken me there yesterday, I had met them in a rather touristy place a couple of blocks from the main square. He had immediately caught my eye when we walked in. Unsurprisingly, because he was tall and showed off his muscly arms in a sleeveless black shirt. Mexican men are romantic, my Mexican friend Maria had always told me. They make you laugh. They dance with you, write you poems, but they are not handsome, they are small and fat and funny. But the few ones that look good, they look really good, and then they are better than all the Europeans. "Tienen la cara de: Te cojo bien." Their face says: I'll fuck you good. I had not been convinced until yesterday.
I had admired him from the periphery, maintaining the conversation with the students that took me there. God, he was cute! He had an amazing physical presence, he moved with such a masculine confidence. 100% testosterone. He made my blood boil. And he checked me out, I saw it, I felt it! I tried not to stare too obviously. Pretty face, too. He looked like the older rocker brother of Gael García. The two midgit engineering students, who additionally were 5 years younger than me, started getting on my nerves. Asking me if it is true that western women are so liberal when it comes to sex. Who do they think they are! Ricky Martin, or what? He wiped the table next to ours, he sure realised I was watching him. God, he stayed there at the table for an extra two minutes, looking over, doing nothing and I tried to ignore him, because entering with two midgits and then flirting with a supermodel-waiter is not exactly good behaviour. We had gone on to another place, he had pierced me with his eyes as I walked out, I had looked down. His image stayed in my mind all evening, I went home early and he had visited me in my sleep.
I could not stop thinking about him today and so I had set out to find him. I was sent from bar to bar, I kept asking, it was hot, and I was myself not sure what I was expecting from this, maybe just to be able to say to myself that at least I had tried. It was my last day in town.
I entered yet another bar, this place could well be it. Small, plain, dark, empty during daytime. I went to the back bar and my heart stopped - was that really him? I had never expected to actually find the bar, let alone the waiter. Unsure what to do, I walked over to the empty bar and sat down, not showing any emotion, any interest I ordered
"Una Indio, por favor."
He put the open beer bottle in front of me and said, in English, with a smile and a cute accent
"You have come back!"
I ignored that. What had I been thinking? I wanted to go to the loo, my stomach was a little upset, I was wearing that hidious hat, but did not want to take it off, because my hair must be sticking to my head, soaked in sweat, my face must be bright red.
"And where is your boyfriend?"
Oh shit, he did not even take the time to ask my name. That's the dilemma with latin men, particularly with Mexicans. If you want their respect, you have to make them suffer, take months to let them get in your pants, be jealous, mean, stress them out. Pretend you have only been with two or three men before them. Difficult, if you only have a couple of hours left in town. But I would rather leave with my pride intact than to enter the records as yet another easy blond white slut, no way I was going to let myself be used like that! I did not know what I had come for, maybe just to look at him once more, but I felt my anger build up. What did he think he would achieve with that kind of question?
