Slouching into Oblivion

Mexico moves slow. S-L-O-W As in suspended animation. No one is in a hurry. Get an invitation to a party at 7? Show up at 10. No problem. You're early. Need something fixed? “I’ll be there Tuesday.” But you don’t know which Tuesday. At the gas station where my chiquitas work , they are renovating an old convenience store. “How long until it’s open?” I asked the gas man a month ago. “Two weeks.” “How long until it’s open?” I asked the gas man yesterday. “Two weeks.” “If I ask you next week, ‘how long until it’s open,’ what are you going to say, gas man?” “Two weeks.” He smiled. He knew. That he didn’t know. Mostly he didn’t care. Everything is slower here. I like it that way. Time spreads out. Life becomes a stream of consciousness novel. You can focus on what you’re doing or going to do, rather than the time someone you don't give a shit about expects you to do it. Everything is slower. Everything except driving. Last week, I was on a two lane road...

The gas gauge was flirting with empty between Celaya and San Miguel, a deep-night high-speed run on a particularly dangerous highway, when I noticed the lighted PEMEX sign on my right side near a drug dealer holding a cardboard sign, “METH.” PEMEX is Mexico’s government-owned oil company, their gas stations littering the countryside, places where there are no fewer than a dozen ways to be ripped off, most of them involving diversion by the attendant. I noticed three tall, young girls with long legs and short skirts. As I pulled into one of the lanes, the prettiest of them knocked on my window. As I rolled it down, she reached in, touched my face, and said, “Hi, young man. We are the chiquitas,” motioning to her scantily-clad girlfriends. “Aren’t you cute?” Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was my perpetual emotional vulnerability, but I thought to myself, “Fuck it. If this is this week’s diversion, they can rip my ass a new one now.” “What’s your name?” she asked. She had wond...