Weekend: Part(y) II

After watching the dancers, I took a quick spin through the artisan craft (read: tourist) market at la ciudadela. Realized it was huge and fantastic ( I love markets) and resolved to come back Sunday.

I’d arranged to meet M and J at the museo Tamayo, a modern art museum in brutalist concrete in parque Chapultapec. I got there early and grabbed a beer from the incongruous small portable bar set up in front of the entry. The bartender handed me a icy corona and when I asked him how much it was he said it was free. There was apparently some conference going on and it provided free beers apparently.

Fine with me. Museums that hand out free beer get bonus points in my book.

Met up with J and M and we wandered through the museum. I thought the architecture was better than the contemporary art, except they had a really fun room filled with a massive mobile of cymbals and visitors were encouraged to go at it with mallets.

From there, we walked to the new Monument to Victims of Violence in Mexico, one way of talking about the bloody storm of the drug war and the pile of skulls rolling out of it. It was a beautiful monument in a horrible location. It is located right outside the main MILITARY fields where a polo match was ending, and the solemnity of the site was broken by the radio announcer and smell of horse. It’s someplace I’d like to revisit.

Jose split to take a nap and Moises and I took the metro back to my neighborhood for a bite of pizza. My coworker A had invited me to a rooftop house party in Coyoacán, and I said sure! He offered to pick me up since he lives close. Actually, once I bought a six pack and brought M over to my apartment we found out A didn’t have a car today and was already at the party, so I loaned M a pair of jeans ( he was wearing shorts) and we took the metro down. It’s a long way.

Very hard to get to Coyoacán (rich) from the (poorer, industrial) side where Tasqueña station is. Hard to escape from the metro station too. Had to constantly ask people how to get over. Theres a major road which apparently people don’t really cross. The walk at night along basically a freeway was pretty ugly and boring and dirty so I was happy when the houses suddenly turned super nice (and enclosure walls topped with razor wire) and the sound of a party filled the air. A let us up and we climbed up through a very expensive apartment to reach a roof patio filled with maybe 50 young, expensively casually dressed Mexicans. This was no campesino fiesta, it was much more upper class. We got there at 10, an hour after I thought we’d arrive.

It was a fun and interesting party. I found out it was the 22nd birthday of the host. The drinks of choice seemed to be various liquors and lots of Coke and Diet Coke. As friends were nice and they tried sincerely to engage me in conversation. I feel so stupid in Spanish. Time to really start working the grammar. Actually, the first question put to me was one that I could only throw my hands up:

What kind of crude rhymes did American guys catcall girls with?

Mexicans love wordplay and double entendres, and their construction workers and salty cantina inhabitants apparently will whip out a variety of quick phrases of varying cleverness, lewdness, and vulgarity.

I am ashamed to say that I could not even think of one even measly pick up line or come on in English that rhymed or used a double entendre.

Anyway, we all got a little drunk, and we ordered more booze delivered by a motorcycle delivery whose cartoony mascot was a cross between a vampire and a grape. (Vampiritos was the company) and the bottle of booze had a set of plastic vampire teeth around the neck as a calling card.

They played some Salsa and A and his friend twirled a few girls around (A, it turns out, also teaches salsa). The music got loud and I asked if the police would come. I got strange looks. Probably they wouldn’t care. Probably they wouldn’t come knock on doors in THIS neighborhood.

Anyway, party came to end at 3 am and we warmly shook the birthday boys hand as we left in a reception line of drunk partigoers, still clutching our cups of whatever.

I remember piling into a friend of A’s car and the five of us drove to a nearby club, hiding our cups when we passed by a lone police car. I gathered that A’s friends had some connection to the club owner. We paid the $100 peso cover and went in.

All nightclubs are the same. I’ve been to this same club in St. Louis, Scottsdale, Shanghai, Buenos Aires. Dark, lasers and blue lights, loud, throbbing DJ music, expensive white swoopy surfaces, packed with drunk, elegantly dressed people drinking outrageously expensive drinks or getting something on on the packed dance floor under the pulsing lights and fog. We stayed for about an hour and drank a bit more from the tiny table that A’s friends wrangled, dodging waters and other clubbers. I actually like going to clubs once in awhile, especially a little drunk. It’s an environment intended to heighten and intensify feelings of intoxication- a deliberately psychedelic architecture, although it made me simultaneously feel old and miss Saori of course.

Anyway, M decided it was time to go home and we took a cab back to my apartment. I offered to let him crash here since it was a long way back to his place and we were both drunk, and the cabs here are incredibly sketchy.

The next morning, my hangover was not so bad ( note to self- stick to hard alcohol and drink slowly) and M felt fine too although he was entirely perplexed as to why he was sleeping in my bed, having no recollection of the evening after we got to the club.

Anyway, the rest of the day I used for showering, some souvenier shopping, resting, and skyping.