Adventure found

I'm writing this at two in the morning, with the night's beer and events still bailando in my mind, and so I apologize for any confusing or incorrect spelling prose etc.

Yes, so, I've gone to my favorite Oaxacan convenience store, this is much earlier, dusk, and bought my buck fitty tlayuda and my sol, sol es cerveza, and have consumed both. A tlayuda, by the by, for those not lucky enough to be in the know, is a beautifully crispy quesadilla with various fillings. This particular joint makes vegetarian tlayudas, filled with tomatoes peppers of various kinds beans and the local wonder- quesillo. Quesillo translates as string cheese, but what us Californians recognize as string cheese and quesillo are nowhere near the same things. One could bungee jump with quesillo as rope, but at the same time it is not tough at all. Tender and mildly extremely flavorful, quesillo is Oaxaca's pride. It makes for an amazing tlayuda.

So I have happiness in my stomach, and my new mime friend, yes a fucking MIME, puts a fish called wanda on the television. If you have not seen this movie, you are probably a shambles of a human being who has missed out on most of life's great wonders: friendship well told stories sex happy buzzed watching the sun come up a moment in a family reunion where everyone is laughing your team winning the championship etc. Yes, watch the damn movie. Feel bad about yourself.

Apologies for the unnecessary rant. The point is, beautiful movie food drink and company. I feel wonderfully content. John Cleese and Jamie Lee Curtis are on their plane to south america, and my hostel friends are searching for the next dvd. The problem is, my contedness requires more than just watching one more movie, I cannot just sit in this courtyard, amiable though it may be. I hop out the front gate.

I ask the first fella I see ¨where are they still selling cerveza around here,¨ thinking beer might be, hell often is, the easiest way to find life on a miercoles night. He gives me directions that are long and complicated, very far walk, and I can tell that I would pass twenty cantinas if I were to follow these directions, that he just wants to fuck with a guero, and I don't blame him, completely understand the impulse. I remember Kurt Vonnegut, remember Bokonon, that travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god, and decide to follow his directions as close as possible.

I end up far from my hostel, desolate street, but lo, I hear pink floyd. I follow the sound and climb some stairs. I'm in a Mexican rock and roll bar, filled entirely with fellows, the only xx chromosones are the one's working there. But the music is cheesy and good, and I shout the metallica lyrics along with everybody else. The cover band is terrible and wonderful all at once. They finish their set, I meet some new friends who dub me Juanito, the sh in sean is hard to pronounce for spanish speakers, we raise our glasses, say salud, drink, I hop back down the stairs and into the street.

Walking, walking, the night is beautifully warm, perfect humidity, the architecture, yes, all the pastel colors these buildings are painted look beautiful under the orange street lights, I feel good and curious. I walk a big loop, pass the same bar, the bouncer and I familiar nod n smile, I keep walking. Hey now, that's a well played acoustic guitar, and that singer sounds like he means it. I step up and down into the cantina, grab a dos equis and a chair near the man with the microphone. It's just him and his guitar but it feels like a symphony. Wonderful, none of his words of love and loneliness ring hollow, he means all of them. I clap, holler, clap. I notice a chess game by candlelight in the corner, leer like a pervert watching a couple kissing in the park, totally interested in the game.

In my defense, it was an interesting one. Black was playing a completely by the book game, control the center, move out pawns, then knights, then bishops, then castles. White on the other hand, bust out the queen like he could care less about it, somehow ran a pawn all the way to a square away from the baseline, and slid like a scalpel down his left side, reducing poor white's lovely defense to a Maginot line. His king ended up running all the way to the opposite side of the board, tempo totally surrendered. White, being played by the bartender/waiter/janitor, didn't wait for checkmate, he jokingly knocked over the black king with his own, and gestured to me that it was my turn to play. I argued, no no no has perdido, puedes seguir jugando, but he was hearing none of it. He brought me a complimentary beer and offered up his seat.

I grabbed pawns black and white, hid them in my fists, let my new friend tap one. He chose white, which was good for me. I play better as black, which moves second. I react better than I initiate. He standard moved out his king's pawn two squares, immediately confessed that he was just learning. I found this fascinating, having just watched him unorthodox destroy a solid player. I set up a right side flanchetto, a bishop with a pawn on either side and in front, and we began warring. A good game, very interesting and weird opening, until he blundered. He let his queen die, I tried to get him to take the move back, arguing that I don't like to play with blunders, take it back, take it back, but he wasn't hearing it. I slowly, cause I'm not that good, took him apart. The queen advantage was just too great. We shook hands, I won.

By now, the singer was watching, we shook hands as well, I recommended that he listen to Elliott Smith. The mesero, the fellow who had played the previous game, was putting up the chairs, lights on, etc. My opponent bought us all one last round, and cigarettes for everybody, we toasted to our collective health, I was invited to come back the next night.

I stepped out into the gorgeous desert night, happy very content, thinking how I had imagined adventure gorgeous mexican girls barely avoiding an ass kicking running shots of mezcal when I walked out of my hostel, heady with the idea of it, and here adventure found was an intimate concert, good drink, a good game of chess. Oi, a good night, exactly what I didn't know I wanted.

When I got back to god's own Banana Magic Hostel, my roommates were very relieved to see me. They had been worried, looked all up and down the street, "you just disappeared!" I was already feeling good, and to have very new friends show real concern for me, while guilt-causin', was nice nice nice. I'm smiling as I type this. I think back on my life long friends back in the states expressing their concern about my trip before I left, and me just feeling good about their paranoia, that people who knew me very well wanted me to stay alive and conversational. I miss you guys, and I promise to limit my adventures to chess games and new friends and small concerts, so that in 49 and one half weeks we'll be talking and joking and I will be all in one piece.