The last two days have taken me through an emotional ringer. There were memorable breakfasts on the beach in Zona Romantica, a terrific dinner with friends at Barrio Bistro, a pleasant encounter with Trump haters from Canada which was immediately followed by an equally unpleasant encounter with Trump lovers from the good old U. S. of A., a 45 minute delay at DIA waiting for a gate, the news of the detainees and protests at airports across the nation, and an email from a former student wanting to make amends. Bear with me.
Friday morning started with breakfast at La Palapa, a relatively upscale place on the beach with linen table cloths, one of those little coat rack-like stands for Katherine to hang her purse, uniformed servers carrying baskets of amazing pastries, perfect bloody marys, and the kind of unfailingly friendly service you always get in Mexico. We floated away from there and took a cab (100 pesos, about five bucks) back to Villa del Pal Mar where we headed to the pool to read and catch a few final rays.
It might sound surprising, but I try quite hard not to discuss politics, even if someone else starts. I am helped toward that end by my tinnitus. In a crowd, or around a lot of competing noise, I can only make out what someone is saying if I focus in and read lips. This comes in especially handy at the locker room at the Y where I find myself surrounded by FoxNews Republicans (read: major assholes). They talk politics non-stop and all I can hear is this unpleasant murmuring that I can conveniently ignore (Our friend Terry calls this White Noise). On those few times when I focused in and tried to hear and respond, I only ended up making enemies.
The same holds true at places like swimming pools filled with fat white men in baseball caps with various and sundry slogans emblazoned across the brims. We were sitting there, me engrossed (kinda) in THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, when two couples sitting on the other side of Kathie started talking loudly. I could hear the name Trump floating like a balloon over the conversation. Much to my surprise, they were Trump bashers from Canada and we had a lovely forty-five minutes helping one another reach some kind of catharsis over all the shit that has been going down since his inauguration. They had to leave and were promptly replaced with a family who substituted the lounge chairs with a table which they gathered around to discuss the previous evening's fun and games. The father, bleary eyed after a long night and downing an alarming number of beers, held court. The mother looked away. The two boys, somewhere between 18 and 21, were busily matching dad beer for beer.
Hey, I have no problem with this. But then the T word started floating above their conversation and it was clear, even to my deaf ears, that they were ecstatic about everything Donald. In between ordering beers from the pool waiters, who did a nice job of acting like they enjoyed the loud and obnoxious revery, they talked about how they couldn't wait for the wall to be built and were looking forward to keeping all those Mexicans the hell out of our country. They finally changed the subject and the dad proudly proclaimed that he had been coming to PV for eleven years and went to the same strip club each of those years, but this year was special. This was the first time he was able to take his son and his friend along with him! He was so proud. Kathie and I beat a fast retreat to our room.
With that lovely father/son bonding moment (I'm still trying to picture it like a Norman Rockwell painting) still bouncing around in our heads, our friends Eric and Terry picked us up and we went to dinner at Barrio Bistro, one of those ramshackle looking joints where the food is totally surprising. We had a wonderful time. We always have a wonderful time with those two. That, and the fact that their name for me is Hyacinth (a long story that I will only tell in person), was a perfect way to spend our last night.
The next morning we had breakfast at La Palapa again, went back to the hotel, checked out, and got to the airport about an hour and a half before boarding. We were in row 11. Across the aisle in row 9 (United planes don't have a row 10) sat the strip joint dad and his sons. They must have gone back to the club because they looked even more hung over than the day before. I watched them from time to time during the 3 1/2 hour flight. The dad kept ordering drinks and looking straight ahead. The sons followed suit. For three full hours, they just sat there sipping drinks, looking vacantly into space, and being bored. I'm an English teacher! That kind of behavior drives me nuts. I wanted to reach across the aisle and slap them around. When the plane landed and we were stuck on the runway for 45 minutes, they altered their behavior a little to alleviate the ennui. One of the boys reached over and flicked open the little latch that holds the tray in place in front of his friend, causing it to fall down. They both laughed uproariously over their joke. These, I thought, are Trump voters. These are the people who we liberal elite types need to reach out to. Like I said before, I'd like to reach out to folks like that with the back of my hand. The only good news is that when we finally deplaned, they had to rush to catch another flight. Thank God. At least they weren't from Denver.
When we turned on our phones, we discovered that while we were in the air all hell was breaking out at airports across the land. We heard about the children being detained along with their parents and we cried. When we got home to discover that a judge in Brooklyn issued a stay, we were cheered, but only a little. When the news on MSNBC degenerated from actual news to commentary, we switched to the Nuggets.
Then Kathie showed me an email from a former student. He was someone I remembered as being a slight pain in the ass from time to time, but basically an okay kid. He was writing to tell me that after getting out of prison he had been trying to contact those people he thought he had short changed over the years in order to apologize. Needless to say, I was taken aback. It was the first one of those I had ever received. But I think we had a pleasant exchange and I wish him well.
Now it is Sunday morning and I'm recovering from all the drama. All I want to do is go upstairs and look at the art on our walls and listen to jazz.
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