It’s not so much funny as it is almost incomprehensible the shift by which the themes of my writing have recently taken. Like a wee chick who’s lost its down, the silent lull after a sizable storm, or the impenetrable sleep one earns once they’ve bridged the cusp of whether or not to vomit following a devoted evening of dirty martini consumption.
Not a year ago you would have sat reading, jaw clenched, while I accepted a dinner date and no sooner declined a marriage proposal from a strange Iranian man in Istanbul. Or gasped as I smuggled various recreational substances into an underground gay bar along side a shoeless South African drummer whom I briefly christened my “lover” in the heart of Cape Town. Perhaps even giggled slightly as I crashed a private thirtieth birthday party at a pub in south London, proudly coveting the birthday girl’s badge and crown, and whenever my presence was questioned, maintaining that I was a dear friend of “Gerald’s”. Or simply shook your head while I happily accepted, in nearly forty degree heat, a handful of complimentary oysters from inside a man’s rusted hatchback, deep in the south of Baja California.
However, as you’re about to discover, the extremes of my sordid tales now teeter on the trivialities of how it is virtually impossible to furnish a Mexican house on a humble dime without losing at least ten years of your life. That cockroaches do in fact live forever (mostly turned upside down and flailing on your bathroom floor. How remembering to take out the trash once a week is inarguably the most challenging aspect of adulthood, and that wild horses, despite what one may think, do not make for ideal neighbours.
For it seems, much to my mother’s solace, and the influence of a certain lingering pandemic, that this reckless vagabond has hung her compass, traded her mobile existence for the permanent roots of a Mexican casita, and, dare it be said, has become domesticated…(ish).
I’d be lying if I blamed this rather unorthodox transition into my loosely conventional lifestyle on the dreaded coronavirus alone. As I’ve often recalled, ever since my UK banishment I’d been searching relentlessly for a replacement home; Todos Santos being the sole nominee worthy of consideration. The fact that a tall, dark, and almost repulsively well matched Mexican was eagerly awaiting my return certainly didn’t hurt. After six long months in Canada, picking fruit and pining after long distance love, I exited the San Jose airport eagerly in search of my otro media. In true, yet mildly racist fashion, I proceeded to confuse my impatiently awaiting Jorge Perez Espinoza for one of a multitude of equally voracious cab drivers soliciting for my potential business.
Though I’ll say this for the dreaded virus, there ain’t nothing like a good old fashioned quarantine to conclude what felt like an eternity spent on opposite sides of a continent. For the first five or so days anyway, until you’ve taken possession of your first ever house rental. Though try as you may to enjoy the endless romantic hours of blissfully half naked nothingness, in your mind that casita is just sitting there, unfurnished, while each rented day passes painfully by like a giant hole in your pocket. Suddenly, you’re trapped inside four encroaching walls, glued to Facebook Marketplace, arguing in broken Spanish over the exponential price of a forty year old sofa that most likely smells of old age and cat piss.
Thus was my life for the next month, or more accurately what felt like all eternity: a ceaseless and often unsuccessful search for used couches, bed frames, ovens, cutting boards, and waste paper baskets. But above all things, the most immediate of things, the thing by which all my independence hung, was the necessity of a vehicle.
Someone asked me recently what was the easiest way to acquire a vehicle here in Mexico, where I at once replied, DON’T! as if this person were about to walk blindly into oncoming traffic or purchase moisturizer from a leprosy colony. There is simply nothing easy about purchasing a vehicle in Mexico, especially if you are not Mexican, even more so if you’re Canadian tourist. And on a budget. So much so that the idea of buying a horse became a far more reasonable alternative.
“What if you need to take another person with you somewhere?”
“I only have one friend. A horse seats two.”
“What about when you dress up for a night out?”
“I’ll side saddle.”
“Remember when that horse bit a chunk out of your hip last year…”
“This Pathfinder looks nice.”
And the Pathfinder was nice. In the same way that the century old, barely standing, mold ridden London flat that I gleefully agreed to rent was nice; solely on the grounds that the living room came equipped with an out of tune piano. It was not nice. But it had character. It spoke to me.
I immediately became enamored with it’s ever disintegrating matte black exterior. The broken door handles tickled my fancy, while the rugged upholstery dazzled with each newly discovered rip and tear; the stuffing pouring out like the breaking of a brimful pimple. As I pulled myself into the driver’s seat, it jerked forward and back, not unnerving me, but rather giving the adrenaline boost allotted to any nineteen year old female intoxicated enough to mount a mechanical bull in the back quarters of some seedy pub. I turned the key and nothing happened. I turned it again. Then again. And still nothing. The owner reached from the backseat and repeated the same, but with success. Stubborn thing, prefers the hand of man to get her going, I can appreciate that. The infatuation had fully bloomed into love. Bounding through the Walmart parking lot as if it were an open highway, I countered Jorge’s skepticism leering from the passenger’s seat with a convincing grin, my teeth clattering against each other while the suspension failed to minimize the tread of so much as a passing pebble.
“I love it!” I gleamed as I placed my newly beloved into neutral and pulled the emergency brake. I opened the door, not noticing as the vehicle continued to roll forward on its own accord. I swiftly sprang back onto the mechanical bull, and slammed on the brakes.
“So it has a few flaws…”
My passenger frowned. But turning to the eager seller in the back he asked,
“Que año esta?”
“1997”
“It’s a 1997, Jorge. You can never trust anything born after 2000, human or otherwise. It’s perfect.”
And so followed a long negotiation interpreted and translated by my muchacho.
“What did he say? Did he call me American?!”
“His wife’s American. They’re moving to California. That’s why he’s selling.”
“Tell him I want it. Did you tell him I want it? Tell him I want it but for less. Remind him of the brake. Did you remind him?”
“I asked him if we could put down a deposit and take it home to our mechanic to be looked over before we commit to buying.”
“Oh good one! What did he say?”
“He said no.”
“Oh.”
“But he agreed to drive it to Todos Santos tomorrow and I will meet him there to have it looked at.”
“Perfecto!”
Tomorrow came, but my car salesman did not.
“What do you mean he said he’s not coming?? He was supposed to be here at one o’clock!”
“He said he didn’t want to spend the gas driving it all the way here if you don’t decide to buy it.”
“He said what?? I told him-- you told him that I told you I would pay for his gas to come here! You told him, right?! The prick!”
“Yes. I told him. Minus the prick. What is prick?”
“And…?”
“He said he would have no way to get back to Cabo if you were to buy it.”
“Son of a bitch! I told him-- UGH-- YOU told him I told you we would drive him back to Cabo if I chose to buy it.”
“Yes. He’s not coming.”
“This is complete bullshit. You need to get back on that phone and explain that he cannot behave like this. He made an agreement. We shook hands. In a pandemic! This is an outrage!”
“Chelsea. He’s not coming. He clearly doesn’t want to sell. No use wasting breath.”
And herein lies the problem when imploring an easy going Mexican surfer to interpret the debates of a hotheaded Canadian fueled by Italian blood and a relentlessness for justice.
This paradox continued to prove challenging as I spent day after day sifting through illegal imports, cars with mounting debt, cars without original papers, and cars that were so overpriced it made walking everywhere seem almost as feasible as a horse. But ultimately success fell upon me l, as finally the day approached where I came face to face with a winning four wheeled companion. Though it had all its door handles, and started and stopped on demand, what it lacked in character it made up for in reliability, which I suppose to some is a draw. After completing the exchange, I called my car-connoisseur-of-a-father to break the news.
“Dad, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“You bought a Ford.”
“I did. I’m sorry.”
“Me too kid, me too.”
With the purchase of dependable transportation, gradually my barren casa began to take the form of somewhere one could actually reside, and comfortably. First a bed frame, then outdoor furniture, a custom made desk that upon receiving turned out to be deceptively smaller than what I had seen in the pictures.
“Está escritorio es para niños.”
“No, no señorita. Esta para adultos. Es mas grande.”
“No es grande. Es chico. Mucho.”
And this is when I made the carpenter man remove the desk and chair from his truck, place it in the parking lot of Walmart, my now go-to meeting point in both bordering big cities, so that I could prove to him just how ridiculous this play table was by sitting in it and pretending to write on my invisible laptop.
“Esta perfecto, Señorita!”
“Ok Martin, you win. But considering you were two weeks late finishing it, you might have had time to add an inch or two.”
“...Espanol?”
“Muchas Gracias, Martin! Me gusta mucho!”
With every trip taken to retrieve more and more furniture, the same game was played between Jorge and myself, and every time I lost… or won...
“Did you bring rope to tie the bed frame to the roof?”
“I have my surfboard leash.”
“Your surfboard leash. You’re going to strap a double sized wooden bed frame equipped with four drawers to the roof of my car with a single surfboard leash.”
“Si.”
“A plate of tacos says you fail.”
“Deal. But just so we’re clear, if I win, you’ll have a bedframe and I’ll have a plate of tacos. If you win, you’ll lose 1500 pesos on a broken bed frame but gain a plate of tacos.”
“Si.”
“Ok.”
One would think after unloading a perfectly intact bed frame and losing fifty pesos on tacos I’d learn to have a little more faith in my impressively resourceful boyfriend, but no. This is rarely ever the case.
“A plate of ceviche says you can’t fit all of that outdoor furniture on the roof.”
“Pfft. Shelsea, come on.”
“And I want the big order. Not the half.”
Anyway, all four of my outdoor pieces look great, and despite having spent ten days painstakingly sprawled across yoga mats piled atop my bed frame while my mattress seemed to make its way to every town in Southern Baja before finally arriving at Casa Joni, I was officially situated. Sort of.
All that was left were appliances. Jorge had offered to purchase my stove as a housewarming gift; an item which a year ago I’d have questioned its necessity altogether, but now, having learned of it's imperative role, I can no longer be without.
We had driven into Cabo for what felt like the six hundredth Walmart excursion when Jorge got a response about a stove.
“He says he can show it to us now, but he’s in San Jose.”
“San Jose! Christ that’s like another twenty minutes away!” (When you live in a small town, you learn that anything longer than a seven minute drive might as well be ten thousand miles.)
“More like forty-five.”
“Well damn. Should we stop and get snacks?”
Upon entering San Jose, our instructions were to look for the Soriana on the left, then an overpass and there would be an OXXO shortly after on the right where we were to wait for the stove man, whose house he assured us was one minute down the road. We saw the Soriana, went under the overpass, and pulled into the OXXO. After fifteen minutes of unanswered calls he finally picked up only to tell us we were not at the correct OXXO. The next Sorianna, he said. The bigger overpass, he said. Then that OXXO on the right, he said. I will be waiting in my yellow CR-V, he said.
First of all, OXXO’s in Mexico are like Starbucks in, well, anywhere else. Why anyone would use an OXXO as a reference point is beyond me. We passed what seemed like twenty Sorianas and fifty OXXO’s.
“Is that it?”
“No, there’s no overpass. And no yellow CR-V.”
“How about there? Is that another Soriana?”
“I think it’s here.”
“Jorge, that OXXO is on the left.”
“Yes but there’s a CR-V parked.”
“It’s burgundy.”
“I know.”
“That’s not yellow.”
“I know.”
But wouldn’t you know, as we slowed towards the OXXO the man in the very much not yellow CR-V waved us to follow.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
And so we followed the colourblind man through the dusty side streets of rural San jose.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if this guy isn’t actually our guy and he was just throwing out a cigarette or something and we thought he was waving at us and now we’re just chasing around some random car?”
“No.”
Jorge chuckled. My blood simmered. But sooner than expected our CR-V came to a stop. We pulled up beside it. He waved, once again, to Jorge and exchanged words in Spanish that didn’t compute. I looked at Jorge to explain.
“We’re waiting for his wife.”
“We’re what?”
“He needs to grab his wife.”
“Oh, of course. How could one possibly sell a stove without one’s wife. Very good.”
An eternity later, the colourblind stove man returned to his very not yellow CR-V with his wife and off we drove to a house that was entirely NOT “one minute down the road”.
As we approached the house in question, Jorge advised me to take note: we had officially entered the slums of greater San Jose. As we pulled up to the gate, I saw standing amid the rubbles of a barely erect cement foundation, surrounded by a disconcertingly large number of feral cats skirting between piles of garbage and the occasional indoor furniture that had, to its detriment, become outdoor... the stove.
“Jorge. Is that a six burner stove?”
“Correcto.”
“And you had told this man we needed a four burner stove.”
“Si.”
The blood which now boiled quite profusely within must have been visibly spilling over on the surface for Jorge quickly suggested that perhaps this time I wait in the car. I agreed.
From what I had been later informed, the conversation I was better not made privy to at the time, went something like this (en espanol, por supuesto):
Jorge: “This is a six burner stove.”
Colourblind Stove Man: “Yes.”
Jorge: “You told me you had a four burner stove. We need a four burner stove.”
Colourblind Stove Man: “This is a good stove.”
Jorge: “I’m sure it is. My girlfriend’s kitchen only fits a four burner stove. You sent me photos of a four burner stove. This is not a four burner stove.”
Colourblind Stove Man: “I can get you a four burner stove. No problem.”
Jorge then returned to our vehicle and to my wanting conviction.
“He’s going to get us a four burner stove.”
“Is he now?” I looked at a watch that did not exist around my wrist.
“He said five minutes.”
“Of course he did.” I watched his not yellow CR-V pull out of the driveway. “Are you sure he’s not going to come back for his wife?”
I rolled my eyes and Jorge kissed me; whether its purpose was to reassure me or shut me up, it didn’t matter. Neither worked.
We waited five minutes. Then ten. Then seventeen.
“Jorge.”
“I know.”
“No. Jorge. Necesito hacer pipi.”
“Oh. Ok. Do you want me to ask the man’s wife if you can use their bathroom?”
I looked towards the decaying structure, through its doorless frame and contemplated my chances of catching hepatitis from a toilet seat.
“Or you can pee here.” He opened the car door. “I’ll cover you.”
I scanned the street and counted seven men staring very committedly back in my direction.
“I’ll ask.”
“Oh! There’s my local girlfriend!”
He thinks this is funny, I thought to myself as I rolled my eyes hard enough in his direction to have easily catalyzed a small stroke.
I walked through the graveyard of Tostitos wrappers and Tecate cans, and as I spoke, a sea of cats parted and seemingly multiplied.
“Disculpa, puedo usar tu baño, por favor?”
“Claro que si!”
The woman rose from the cement stoop from where she was squatted and fleeted to the back quarters of the… house. There proceeded the clanging of things, throwing of other things, a large splash of water (?) and then her return.
“Listo.”
Christ. I turned to Jorge,
“If I do not come back from this, don’t bother telling my parents. They already assume this is how I was always going to go out.”
“I’ll at least make mention of the cause of death on your first world tombstone.”
He still thinks he’s funny.
I didn’t die. But I now know what it feels like to urinate into a toilet without a single part of your flesh coming in contact with any part of the porcelain, whilst a handful of mangy felines circle around you like a pack of ground vultures, licking their sunburnt kitty lips, blinking not once.
Nearing thirty minutes from the moment Colourblind Stove Man vowed to return, he did. With a four burner stove shoved in the back of his not yellow CR-V. Jorge asked to have it hooked up to make sure it works. No problema, he said as he commenced to return the stove to his trunk.
“Jorge. What is he doing?”
“He has no gas. We have to go to another house to check that it works.”
“Of course we do.”
And so, once again, we proceed to follow the stove man through the winding, dirt roads of nowhereland; his imperative wife left behind with the company of cats.
We approached another barely existent housing structure. A woman sat just inside the gate, on another piece of indoor furniture now shafted to the unforgiving temperaments of the outdoors, absently peeling some sort of fruit. A chihuahua nursed a set of puppies beside her, and beside that a tubby child content amid her belly rolls; all seemingly unphased by our sudden appearance. The stove man hauled the stove inside the strange house while Jorge and I waited in the yard, nodding awkwardly at the woman and her entourage.
“What do you think?”
“What do you mean, what do I think!?” And here I went. You could see in Jorge’s eyes he was preparing for an unleashing of fury, unparalleled by any he’d yet experienced by yours truly.
“The sun is about to go down. I am literally stood in some strange woman’s yard-- does she even know why we’re here???-- while this lunatic has strung us along for the last twelve hours and I JUST PEED IN HELL. So what I THINK is that you’re going to go into that kitchen and YOU are going to decide whether we take this god forsaken stove because at this point I am not fit to consort with anything breathing, Spanish speaking or otherwise.”
The woman next to the chihuahua placed a piece of the foreign fruit in her gaping mouth, eyes fixed to us as if we were the live version of her daily novela stories, not understanding a word we were saying but certainly comprehending the dire state of Jorge’s mortality.
He stared at me. I stared at him back. She stared at us both. The tension mounting. Then he stretched out his hand. She held her breath, encompassed by whether or not I’d accept. I grabbed his hand and followed him into the kitchen as her and I both exhaled… for very different reasons.
We now stood before four flaming burners and a raging oven.
“It works!” Jorge proclaimed victoriously. The Colourblind Stove Man stood, gleaming.
I opened the oven door, closed the door, then commenced a gloating stance.
“Ask him where the oven racks are.”
“The what?”
“Look inside, tonto.”
A sequence of Spanish words were passed.
“We probably should have checked that first.” Jorge admitted with a soft chuckle. I returned his laughter with a straight face, then punctuated our acknowledged foolishness with yet another eyeroll.
So I had no stove, I’ve been left with less. And who was I kidding, the most I generally do with my stove is heat water for hot toddies in an attempt to mature the nature of my alcohol consumption. The real issue was my lack of refrigerator. And by refrigerator I mean freezer. Why? Was it because of the thirty pounds of pork loin I had impulsively bought at Costco that was bound to spoil? Tal vez. Or the fact that my diet mainly consists of smoothies which poses a challenge when one lacks frozen fruit? Probablemente. Or was it because no man has ever successfully made a dirty gin martini without the critical component of ice? The jury was out.
As I scoured the interwebs, the concept of an affordable fridge that didn’t resemble a cockroach fertility clinic was deeming itself ever more elusive. In the meantime, a friend of mine graciously loaned me her wine fridge which had the capacity to hold very little else than, well, wine. This was not exactly a concern, though it still carried the issue of my inability to martini.
But by the middle of month two, it looked as though I had finally settled into a fully functioning house as a fully functioning adult. With a fully functioning bar.
And then there was Marta.
Marta is a ten foot painting I found on facebook by a local designer. Marta sits among desert plants adorned in nothing but a bright blue shawl draped over her shoulders and strategically between her outspread thighs. One arm is crossed over her bare breasts while the other shamelessly holds a cigarette; its smoke circling her curly black hair like a juxtaposed halo. Marta is my housemate. And I love her.
Jorge does not like Marta.
“Does she have to be hung right in the middle like that? Every time I eat at the table, her panocha is right in my face. Just staring at me.”
“You don’t hear her complaining.”
I covered my freshly unpacked mattress with newly purchased Costco sheets, filled an empty jumbo olive jar with the neighbour’s stolen luscious, pink bugambilia and placed it between Marta’s plump legs. I lit an array of candles in each of the three rooms that make up Casa Joni, then sat outside and indulged in the sight of my very first immobile home.
The sun was setting over the crack of ocean visible from my palapa while the wind gently rocked the granadas chinas hanging like engorged Christmas lights amid the scaling vines that bordered my property.
And then, as if I’d been catapulted into a scene from Legends of the Fall, a wild horse leapt from the adjacent field and glided across my yard, pausing once to shake its glorious mane in the fading light of day.
I immediately got on the phone.
“Jorge! I have a horse in my yard! My neighbour is a wild horse and it came to welcome me! This is my Mexican life. In my Mexican casita with my Mexican horse friend chilling with me like it ain’t no thing.”
“Shelsea. You do not want a horse in your yard.”
“What are you even talking about? Of course I do. She’s magnificent! There is literally nothing I would want more out of living than spontaneous visits from a horse.”
“No, Shelsea. They are the worst.”
“You’re the worst.”
“I don’t even know why I say anything, you never listen to me anyway.”
“Lo siento, I can’t talk to you right now. I have a horse to host.”
Two days later, I came home to a pile of manure the size of Mount Olympus deposited in front of my doorstep. Jorge merely smiled.
So I still had a few things to learn. Like leaving anything remotely edible unattended on my kitchen counter for more than 60 seconds. Between cockroaches, ants that multiply by the millions, and the occasional stray cat that saunters in through my window, so much as a residual spoon of peanut butter warranted a hostile takeover.
I also quickly learned not to leave my vehicle’s windows rolled down at night. Not in the name of theft prevention but due to the fact that a family of birds had swiftly begun setting up camp in the Ford Explorer.
After losing two decorative outdoor pillows to the teething necessities of the neighbour’s puppy, I even learned to keep my gate shut at all times. Although it didn’t take long for the newly evicted birds to find inspiration for a nest within my dead pillow’s lingering stuffing. Such is the circle of life.
My first night spent in Casa Joni was like breathing air for the first time. Everything felt brand new. The initial hours of occupation were spent aimlessly wandering from room to room, just because I could. Turning on the burner for a cup of tea and then hearing it whistle distantly from the kitchen was like discovering euphoria. Yes I’d lived alone for years prior to this, but never in a house. Never with excess space, that I seemingly had little idea what to do with other than skip around gleefully; the occasional deep lunge, followed by a risque cartwheel.
When you’ve lived out of a van for three years you quickly learn to acclimate to minimalism. Minimal space, minimal existence. Everything becomes simplistic. Meals are limited to few ingredients, general movement consists of the two steps it takes to get from your bed to your fridge to your bathroom and back again. I was always content with this lifestyle, overjoyed even. But now that I had space, now that I could cook with three pots at once and shower without having to put my shoes on, now that I could expand and spread myself between vast walls with colours that I had chosen and had painted, the appreciation was palpable.
As night set in and bedtime approached, Casa Joni came alive. Every sound was tangible. The waves crashing against the shore could be heard as if they were pouring across my very feet. While lying in bed, however, immersed in darkness, these distinct sounds quickly turned from majestic to unsettling. Every creak of a door had me wired to attention. Every barking dog convinced me I was being burgled. As someone who cannot, for the life of them, sleep without the assistance of fresh air, the sliding door to my bedroom remained open, its flimsy screen all that divided myself from the threatening outside world.
“Shelsea, you should never leave your doors open at night. Si, you’re in a safe neighbourhood, but people can always get broken into. You are no exception. In fact, you are asking for it.”
“Pfft. Jorge, it’s totally fine. I’m an independent woman. I’m not about to let fear keep me from indulging in the faint smell of the ocean. Plus I have my pocket knife.”
“Oh, your pocket knife. Muy bien. Don’t need to worry about you then.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t look good on you.”
But the Mexican’s words had infiltrated my delusional sense of invincibility. And now I was alone, with a wide open door and a head full of the various ways by which one could rape and pillage me.
It only took confusing the shadow of a discarded refrigerator outside my window for the shoulder of a half hidden predator to prompt me to sleep with my pocket knife in hand. How I finally managed to fall asleep, I will never know. But by four in the morning, I was jolted awake by the warning cries of a thousand furious dogs followed by the acute sound of unwelcome intruders wrestling their way through the bushes lining my precious house. The sound grew ever more distinct and it became clear that someone was outside my bathroom window. A window which looked out across an empty field; the perfect place for a foreboding prowler to succeed, unseen.
My heart pounding in my throat, I flipped open my knife, switched the flashlight on my phone, and repeated to myself the most effective places to stab someone as I crept towards the bathroom’s open door. Once in the bathroom, I stood, holding my breath, hoping to muffle the sound of my frantic heart beat. The rustling grew louder. A mere plate of glass was all that stood between me and potential manslaughter.
In an instant, I jumped before the window, my knife lifted in defense, my phone’s light flashing before me as my eyes rushed to adjust. A foot in front, a horse shook its head and expelled through its flopping lips, an agitated bray, then returned to feasting on the tall grass lining my fence.
I slumped down on the edge of the shower, adrenaline coursing through my veins, unsure of whether to be relieved or disappointed. Regardless, I returned to bed and decided it best not to speak of the evening’s events to my know-it-all novio. From that night forward, I would sleep like a baby dosed with morphine, though my bedroom door would forever remain ajar.
Life seldom continues on the path you set for yourself. After almost a decade of indulging in the inability to sit still, I have welcomed the idea of permanency with open, albeit armed, arms. For one’s journey does not always need to be in flight in order for it to take you places never before explored...
