But Once Upon a time in Mexico

I was driving around in the country in the middle of the night sometime in the mid ’90s with my friend. We were smoking on this fatty, and I said, “Do you wanna go to Mexico?”

He said, “Isn’t that like two and a half hours?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “Let’s go.”

So we grabbed two more friends, packed ourselves tight into this tiny red Toyota I had at the time, and took off with maybe thirty bucks between all of us. I didn’t think about money, or a plan, or anything else. I just split.

All that grunge was on the radioNirvana, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, etc... but none of us were really on that train. We were all throwbacks, listening to 60s music, certified Texas weirdos, even if there was some strange grunge hippie overlap in the air back then that I didn’t understand yet.

We made good time, rolling plump spliffs, smoking, and flying down the highway with Jimi and so much Doors. By the time we got to El Paso, we needed gas. Back then, you pumped first and paid afterward, except we didn’t go in and pay. We filled up and drove off.

Yeah, it was bad. I know that. But that was the kind of dumb, reckless momentum we were running on.

When we got close, I looked at my little car and said, “Man, let's just park it here and then walk across.”

So we parked, crossed over, and went into Juárez on foot. We were mostly there for sativa and cheap cigarettes because cigarettes were practically free compared to back home. I found Camel cigarettes and bought a whole carton for about five bucks, which felt unbelievable.

Then this woman started talking to me. She was friendly and casual, like it was nothing, and pretty soon I was following her around Juárez with my friends trailing along behind me. I didn’t know Spanish. I didn’t know where we were going, but I thought she could get us some sativa, even though she hadn’t explicitly said that.

She led us through a gate, down a narrow passage between two houses, then into another alley and through another gate. Suddenly, the whole place turned into a concrete maze cinder block walls, tight little corridors, no sense of direction, no sense of where we’d come from.

That was when I started getting nervous.

Then she took us into this tiny room, and the whole thing snapped into focus. She started making offers, throwing out, “Mexicana, lesbiana, what do you want?” Then she said, “Five hundred dollars.”

I just stared at her.

“Ma’am,” I said, “I’ve got maybe five bucks.”

Then she realized what we all were not customers, not guys with money, just a bunch of broke, dirty hippies who had wandered in way over our heads. She started screaming at us in Spanish and throwing us out. Then this guy appeared and said we needed to pay her.

That was the moment it all went bad.

We were in this tiny cinder block alley, barely wide enough to move through single file. I shoved my friend and said, “Go, man. Go now.”

He pushed my other friend, who was in front of him. I said, “Fucking run,” he's coming, and suddenly we were all going full speed.

We ran blind through that concrete maze, cutting through alleys, corridors, and parking areas, just trying to get back to the border crossing before somebody caught up with us. My heart was pounding out of my chest.

I was still thinking about those cigarettes. Stupidly enough, I thought I would somehow get in trouble for buying them, so I was trying to hide them while we ran.

Somehow, by pure luck, we found our way back near the border crossing. We kept our heads down, crossed back over, got to the parking garage, climbed into my little red Toyota, and got the hell out of there.

That was it. No money, no plan, no sense just a car full of hippies, a carton of cheap cigarettes, and one of those nights that could have gone a whole lot worse.