 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Bienvenidos a San Blas By James Tipton in© James Tipton 2006 -
How did Robert Mulligan find himself, in August, in a Mexican jungle, running a small flat-bottomed boat up a sleepy little river into the steamy interior, pointing out tiny alligators to the wives of two retired telephone executives from Detroit, Michigan?
Three years ago when he left his tenured position teaching literature at a small college in the Midwest, divorced his wife of twenty-five years, and took very early retirement, he could never have imagined this. Robert Mulligan felt vaguely like the Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon, the defrocked Episcopalian priest played by Richard Burton in The Night of the Iguana, driving his tour bus load of church ladies (along with the nymphet daughter of one of them) along the then undiscovered southern Pacific coast of Mexico, later breaking down near Mismaloyla, above the thatched inn of his former lover, played in the film by Ava Gardner.
Here, though, on the river called La Tovara, there was no Ava Gardner, and no nymphet daughter either. Only two quickly aging tourist ladies, sans husbands (themselves off on their own for two weeks of deep sea drinking and fishing), two ladies anxious to arrive at the modest restaurant farther up river where they could experience jungle dining at its finest and splash in the little pool, alligators be damned. They were, of course, disappointed that Robert, a gringo, was filling in for the real Mexican - his partner and buddy Rodolfo Santiago - who had collapsed for the day due to the excesses of Sunday night in the plaza, and to whom Robert owed more than a single favor. It was Rodolfo, after all, who took him in three years ago when he wandered into San Blas alone, confused, sad, wondering what to do with his life. It was Rodolfo who introduced him to significant members of the Mexican community, and at least to a few eligible and lovely Mexican ladies.
Clad in immaculate khaki shorts and blouse, with equally immaculate pith helmet, Sarah was the taller, the older, still trim, almost thin, late fifties. With a tennis tan, with the easy sophistication that significant wealth always carries with it, she was, on the surface at least, the more worldly-wise of the two. She talked without ceasing, apparently to no one in particular, about her adventures of at least three decades in Mexico.
Helen was her quiet partner, her red hair falling in curls. She gazed meditatively at the water, her short red shorts and flowered red shirt contrasting dramatically with her very white skin, almost as white as las garzas, the snowy egrets, nesting in the mangroves. On this slow-moving river perhaps she was hoping for the tiniest sign of a cocodrilo sufficiently large to be potentially dangerous.
Sarah was toward the end of her telling of a rather long, lurid, and sad story about a young man working with Mexican teenagers at a very isolated orphanage in Sinaloa; but receiving no response whatsoever, not even a glance from Robert or Helen, in her frustration she almost shouted.
"Helen, are you listening?" Sarah spoke as if she were demanding the attention of a sorority pledge so that she could give her instructions on how at long last to lose her virginity.
"Helen, you need to listen to me so that you can let Mexico get inside of you. You need to let go of all of those old ways of looking at yourself and let Mexico get inside of you."
Helen kept her eyes on the water, today refusing to fall easily under the crippling spell of those grey eyes of Sarah. In fact she had been moved by Mexico; but it was a different Mexico from Sarah's Mexico. It was this Mexico Helen wanted to embrace and at the same time keep entirely closed off to others.
The previous week, only a couple of weeks before Easter, she had, with Sarah, stood on Isla del Rey, the little island just off San Blas. There she had watched the Huichol people, hundreds of them: the men in their woven sandals and embroidered white pants and shirts; the women in their colorful skirts and blouses and bright scarves pulled low and tight over their foreheads - their daily dress. On this occasion, the men wore magical hats with circles of feathers, or colorful, woven balls. From a respectful distance, Helen witnessed them performing their marriage rituals, observed them at their feasts, and later she watched them fill their little boats with arrows and food, and consecrate them to Aramara, the goddess of the sea, so that their good hunting, good crops, and good lives might continue another year. While Sarah entertained the other tourists in the little party, Helen escaped for a few minutes to follow the little Huichol pilgrimage trail past El Faro, the lighthouse on the small hill named Cerro Vigia; there she felt a longing, so strange to her, to offer up something inside of herself to that same Aramara, Goddess of the Sea. She was so quiet returning to their little hotel that evening that Sarah thought she must be catching a dose of Montezuma's revenge and tried to force her to consume some Immodium just to be safe.
Robert glanced at those pale legs… white, even puffy… too much television, he thought. Clearly, even after a week in Mexico, Helen had little exposure to light, those legs probably hidden inside of long pants and billowy Mexican blouses.
Like most guides, including his friend Rodolfo Santiago, Robert fantasized about his customers. He knew Rodolfo fantasized because Roldolfo loved to brag about his conquests and near conquests of the gringas who had hired him. Of the two women, Robert felt that with a few drinks, the older one, Sarah, might be quite available should he be able to muster up the interest. Over the years he had found women who talked on and on to be easy conquests. One simply had to listen to them, and with only a tiny bit of attention, they began to fall in love. Understanding that single concept can turn any man into a Casanova, he mused. Her companion Helen, though, had too much the quality of bread dough made with white flour to appeal to Robert. Robert thought she showed no excitement whatsoever about this boat trip up La Tovara with her travel companion, and she certainly showed no interest whatsoever in him. Frankly, he thought himself a rather dashing, rugged-looking, pleasantly intellectual guide steering them along La Tovara.
On the other hand, maybe he was of no interest to them at all because they found him boring. That was a possibility he did not like to consider but one that existed ever since his two years in the Peace Corps when assigned to a little village near Asunción in Paraguay. One weekend, after months of abstinence, he and his equally horny Peace Corps buddy caught a bus into the city to get some authentic Latina action. The first taxista they asked told them he knew just the place for them.
They stayed in the cab while the driver knocked on the door of a drab, one-room concrete building. He then waved them to come in where two smiling teenage girls greeted them. The driver said he would return in thirty minutes or so to pick them up. Two infants of perhaps a year or two wandered aimlessly around the little, badly painted room cluttered with laundry and toys. A tiny television set turned up too high rested on a fruit-crate stand between two twin beds. Over the television hung a plaster Guadalupe. He and his buddy each handed over the Paraguayan equivalent of $20, and with no other formalities one girl grabbed him and one grabbed his buddy, pulling both to their beds. They peeled off their thin, one-piece summer dresses revealing their chubby bodies that, because they were young, were nevertheless appealing.
Robert still remembered the feeling he had that afternoon in Asunción up to the precise moment of the girl offering herself naked to him on the bed: "Wow," he thought, "they are really going to enjoy these big, horny American studs." Instead, his young señorita lay on her back, spread her legs, raised her knees for easy access... and then, without even a glance at Robert, turned her head and continued to watch the telenovela, the soap opera.
Robert looked down at her profile. She was totally absorbed by the show and, he noticed, she had never stopped chewing her gum. His buddy was having the identical experience. The two infants ran around naked, oblivious to their mothers and the two strangers on the beds. Robert had never felt so unwanted sexually as he had that afternoon. To let loose, he finally had to close his eyes to fantasize about a high-school sweetheart. When he opened them, he looked down at the disinterested young puta and then at the worn and stained sheets for the first time. He knew he had to escape. He and his buddy waited outside fifteen minutes but the taxista was, indeed, on time, faithful to this word.
Everything that happened sexually in his life thereafter was a high pleasure by comparison.
Robert did wonder, though, whether Sarah and Helen had any thought about him at all. What was Sarah thinking about? Something about him perhaps because she demonstrated to him every time he looked toward her that her body was svelte and limber. What was Helen thinking about at this very moment? And why even was it important to him whether she was thinking anything at all. What was going on between those two white pillows that were her thighs, and why did it matter to him?
Helen had rapidly tired of Sarah's tales, and also of the titillating comments she regularly made to Helen regarding finding a couple of young Mexican males to entertain them for a few days. Sarah had long suspected, probably accurately, that those little hunting trips their two husbands took in northern Michigan provided a lot more in the way of entertainment than the wives were ever told. It was common knowledge that young, dusky-skinned whores in Detroit migrated north with the hunters each autumn, in search of their own prey. She had, of course, shared these suspicions with Helen, partly to justify contemplating such activities for themselves on this south-of-the-border adventure.
But at this moment, Helen, in fact, was realizing that indeed it was not the Mexico of Sarah that she wanted inside of her, and certainly not another man. In fact, she far preferred to cuddle with a good book than to cuddle with any man, including her husband. And who was this stranger, another American, guiding them up this jungle river? What was he thinking? How strange that both she and Robert were hearing but not listening to Sarah talking… how strange, she thought, that three really totally unrelated lives shared this one little boat. She was with Sarah only because their husbands had been buddies for years. Robert was here through who knows what chain of events. And each of them was headed, through this tunnel of mangrove, up La Tovara, as though each were on a separate journey toward what would be for each of them, in fact, a separate destination.
Robert wanted to say something to break the moment of silence that had descended over the little boat: "You can hardly tell those thick roots hanging suspended in the water from the pythons that live along the river, so be careful what you touch." He said this to amuse them, to be clever, to start earning his share of the $40 they had paid for three hours on La Tovara, and perhaps to pick up a decent tip.
"I would love to see a python," Helen said, breaking her own long silence; and Sarah, arching her back, licking her lips seductively. . .
James Tipton is a celebrated fiction writer. Where is he taking his characters? Will they connect? To read the rest of the story, we invite you to join our family of subscribers... it isn't expensive. A monthly subscription is just $5.00 USD - that's $1.15 per week. An annual subscription costs $30.00 USD - only $2.50 per month or 58 cents per week. We think you'll find it's money well spent.
Subscribe and read all the complete articles . . .
His Bio
His Stories
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|||||||
             |
||||||||
|
For MexConnect.Com LLC & Conexión México S.A. de C.V. © Mexico Connect 1996-2007 |
||||||||
