Cinco De Mayo

I can't get over how clever I think the name of the busline is that takes you from San Diego into Mexico.

Mexicoach. I don't know why I find that so clever but I keep thinking about it. Mexicoach.

Every once in a while I visit a town that fills me with equal amounts of fascination and repulsion. Last week, while visiting Tijuana, I couldn't reconcile the two feelings of wanting to leave right away and wanting to move there. What a difference a few miles can make.

I woke up in the laid back, white-trash mecca of Oceanside, California and drove through the spotless, shining city of San Diego and by noon I'm walking down the streets of Tijuana being accosted by pimps trying to get me to enter their stripclubs and get a "massage".

Thank God, I was with my brilliant friend, Thom Wise, who speaks perfect Spanish and knows the value of a peso. Like a fool, I went to the ATM machine and pulled out 50 pesos (5 dollars). He tried to teach me that 1 dollar roughly equals 10 pesos but I guess I didn't listen. And there aren't ATMs on every corner in Mexico like there in America. I actually had to go track one down. It's a hard life, huh?

Unlike the ATM, sex is everywhere in TJ. I kept yelling out, "I'm gay", every time a stripclub manager tried to lure me in but they don't take no for an answer. "We have transvestites!" Hmmmm, no thanks!

I looked at a blanket. He wanted 40. I began to walk away and the price dropped to 30. I'm almost out the door and the guy yells out 22! Sold, to the fat American tourist. I might go back next week and buy another.

My problems, my worries, my fears, they all seemed to lessen while sitting on a park bench watching 6 year-old kids sell chicklets for a peso. When I was 6, I was going to school, vacationing at Disneyland and stuffing myself on Saturday morning cartoons. How different would my life be now if I had spent my weekdays hustling chicklets on Revolucion Ave in Mexico.

My friend Thom has travelled the globe and spent much time in third-world countries. I, however, have not. Still. the next time I'm having a shitty day I need to think of the gum-selling kids in Tijuana and remember that my shitty day isn't really all that shitty.