Chapter 2

    Three weeks on a nude beach was what it took me to lose my sense of time. There was one day when I opened my eyes and found myself lying on a hammock beneath a palm-thatched ramada, and I didn’t know if it was morning or afternoon. I wasn’t sure if I had been sleeping all night, or if I was waking from a nap. The waves were breaking loudly on my left and I turned my head to look. Apart from the ocean, I could see two bare bottoms and I remembered where I was.
    It was difficult, but I managed to stand. Some of the sand that was dried onto my sunburned body fell as I got up from the hammock. My legs took me mechanically across the ramada to the crude wooden counter where refreshments were sold. The boy, anticipating my order, reached for a cold Corona.
    “No,” I said. “Coca-Cola.”
    At that point I realized I was naked. The informal etiquette of that place proscribed nudity under the ramada. There were two Canadian women seated beside me eating ceviche, and I could tell my nakedness was ruining their appetite. They were nearly holding their breath waiting for me to turn away. Instead, I looked down at my groin and admired with pride my sun-tanned penis as it hung free between my legs.
    The Coke tasted marvelous, and I knew I would order another. I had a feeling that something was going to happen differently to me that day to break the monotony of my Mexican vacation. It was the first time I had ordered something that wasn’t beer.
    “You’re masculinity is painfully evident,” declared one of the Canadian women. “How about putting some shorts on while you’re here under the ramada?”
    “I could do that,” I responded without moving. But the bottled pop was ice cold, and I was more naturally inclined to sip it at my leisure. When it was all gone, I passed the empty bottle to the boy and asked for my luggage. I hoped he still had it. 
    He did, but there was no accounting for my bathing suit. Apparently, I had stumbled back to the ramada naked the night before.
    “Are you going to eat breakfast?” he asked me.
I gazed at the sky with a special kind of knowing I had lacked only seconds earlier. So, it was morning. Yet, the hour had to be well advanced. The sun was already intense beyond the protective shade of the palapa.
    “I’d like a mojarra and a Coro--no,no.” 
Ordering beer had become automatic, but I was able to stop myself in time.
    “One more Coca-Cola.”
    At that point the Canadian women complained rather loudly about what they perceived as my twisted perversion and lack of respect. Their comments were totally out of line for a clothing optional beach, but what I think really annoyed them was an unfortunate itch that I was experiencing on my right buttock that led me to scratch vigorously.
    The boy looked at me in a concerned sort of way. “Could you please settle your account?” As he hadn’t made any movement to cook my fish, it seemed he was serious.
    “How much do I owe?”
    “Eight hundred eighty-six pesos and fifty centavos,” he answered discreetly.
It was a quantity that seemed exaggerated for an establishment that charged ten pesos a night for a hammock, but I couldn’t doubt the accuracy of the account. There was no way he could make up such an uneven amount.
    My wallet turned out to be in my pants pocket inside my backpack. There weren’t enough pesos in it to satisfy the account, and it was necessary to start haggling with the boy. While I did so, I slipped on my jeans, much to the relief of the two women who were witnessing the entire scene. I ended up giving him a few of my dwindling dollars, my mask and snorkel, and four identical hammocks that I had acquired by foolishly bargaining while handicapped with drunkenness. 
    I sat down uninvited at the table where the Canadian women were sitting.
    “I guess my vacation is over,” I said into the air, not addressing anyone specifically.
    “So you’re going home?” the taller woman asked with a hopeful tone.
    "I have just about enough money to make it back to the States, but there’s no reason for me to go back there.”
    “Are you running from the law?”
    “No, not at all. I’m running from my girlfriend.” It was nice to be involved in a coherent conversation that I would be able to remember. I began to confide everything to them. The two girls were patient enough to listen and, after their initial standoffishness, seemed to be genuinely interested.
    “Does she want to hurt you?” asked the shorter and better looking of the two.
    “No, she wants to marry me.”
    “Is she pregnant?”
    “She’s wanting to be.”
    “Well, you could just break up with her,” said the tall one. “You don’t have to run away.”
    “I’m trying to forget her. I would rather have had things stay the way they were. You know, seeing each other every night, having wild sex, but then going back to our own space. I don’t want to be tied down. I worked with her and saw her every day. I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I’m still free and can have adventures. I don’t want to settle down and be a boring married person. I wish there was a way for me to stay longer in Mexico.”
    “You could get a job and hang out. What can you do?” asked the attractive one.
    “Oh...I’m a coffee bar attendant: dreadfully underemployed with a college degree. Arizona State University gave me a good Liberal Arts education and foreign language skills, but no prospects for decent employment.”
    “Have you ever thought about teaching?”
    “Yes, and I thought I wouldn’t like it. In fact, I met a teacher on the way here who was running away from his job.” 
    The good-looking Canadian passed me a tortilla and I used it to scoop up for myself a generous portion of the lime-soaked raw fish. I wondered if they knew what they were eating. Mysteriously, I didn’t feel hung over. I must have been sleeping it off for quite a while. I had the hunger of Lazarus waking from the tomb and felt justified cleaning off their plate. Meanwhile, the conversation with those cuties was in danger of dying, so I continued talking where I had left off.
    “He was an American dude with a commission to teach in Mexico.”
    “What subject?” asked the taller one.
    “What grade level and in what part of Mexico?” inquired the one I liked.
    “Who knows?” I replied while reaching across the table to eat more of their food. My answer did nothing to satisfy their curiosity, so I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the envelope the teacher had given me. It was still in reasonably good shape, because I hadn’t worn my jeans at all since getting to the beach. It was only the conversation that had reminded me of the envelope which had been entrusted to me with so much confidence, and about which I had almost completely forgotten. My distaste for that envelope was so great, I nearly threw it at the girls. “Everything’s here, if you want to read about it,” I said with food in my mouth.
    “You haven’t even looked inside?” asked the cute one.
    “I only tore off a piece to throw my gum away.”
    Indeed, she noticed that one of the sheets had a big corner missing as she removed the papers from the envelope. Her companion examined the documents over her shoulder. They both read the first page thoroughly and browsed through the other three. I started to order a Coke but remembered that I could no longer run a tab. The boy was collecting bottle caps from the sand and piling them into my diving mask. I was wondering if the girls were ever going to tell me what was in those papers.
    “Have you ever been to Chiapas?” asked the tall one. “You could go there and teach history in a secondary school,” she added without waiting for my reply.
    “But secondary school in Mexico means Junior High,” I said defensively.
    The cute girl looked at me tenderly and spoke, “Why don’t you go try it? If you go back to Arizona, now, your problems will still be there, and your vacation will have been nothing more than time wasted being drunk. If you try teaching, you could use your skills and your education. You could do something constructive to help others, instead of just wasting your time and energy serving coffee to people who are living a real life and doing the things you wish you could be doing. If you don’t like it you can always go back to Arizona, but you’ll never have another opportunity like this one.”
    I was staring at her lips as she was talking to me, exposing her perfect white teeth. Wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and a knit bracelet, she had medium length brown hair, freckles, and beautiful brown eyes.   Her fingernails were long and her slender legs were tanned and shaved. For some reason, an idea formed in my mind that if I agreed to pursue the teaching job she would kiss me on the lips.
    Her name was Angie. I said to her, “You’re right. I have nothing to lose and it might be a wonderful experience for me.” I think at that point, I closed my eyes and opened my lips, and then she parted her lips.  But it was only to introduce me to her companion, Betty. I refused to give up hope.  The dream of kissing the Canadian babe persisted and sustained me during difficult times ahead.  They both shook my hand and wished me luck. Then, excusing themselves, they got up from the table, and walked down the road to the bus stop to return to the nearby town where they were staying.
    I watched them get on the bus, and I kept my eyes on it as it carried Angie away from me. Then, without getting up from my chair, I turned my attention toward the ocean. The regular interval at which the waves crashed offshore was a hypnotizing backdrop for my churning meditations. There were a few nude and semi-nude European tourists, playing in the water, but they didn’t enter into my thoughts. Even though I was looking at miles of virgin Mexican beach, I was seeing Lydia, my Arizona girlfriend, standing on the sand smiling at me and holding a tray of large cappuccinos. I thought I had genuinely been attracted to Angie, but I realized she had only been a surrogate for my persistent affections for the woman I had left.
    What advice would Lydia give me right now--imagining of course that she were a disinterested third party. She wasn’t a risk-taking person. She had been working at the coffee house since she was an undergraduate and had already been there for two years when I was hired. We both stayed on after graduation. She had tried hard to find a job in the professional world. Many nights, I was out partying with friends, while she stayed home typing cover letters for resumes. Over time, it appeared, she had finally given up. Her Liberal Arts degree was as equally unsuited to finding employment as mine. Of course, I had reached that conclusion without even trying. She had stayed on at the coffee house despite the miserable tips because I was there. She had a plan, however. Her savings were to pay for graduate school. Unfortunately, there were always other urgent expenses that prevented her from accumulating the amount she needed.
    She would probably say to a person like me, “Go back home. Work. Study. Get ahead the best way you can.” Then I imagined her giving further advice, “Get married. Have several children. Buy a house and become hugely indebted.”
    “No, no!” I cried out loud. “Stop it and leave me alone!”
    The young employee didn’t even turn around to look at me while I was shouting. Maybe I had done things like that before, during my stay.
    “Well,” I thought, “What is it I like about her anyway?”
    “She’s incredibly good-looking,” I answered myself. “She’s intelligent and very kind to me.”
    If she would have been with me at that moment, I’m sure I would have rolled around with her in the sand right on the ramada floor and made love beneath a table or in the corner next to the beer chest. I was really missing her. Among other emotions I had for her, she inspired lust.
    “Well, I’m not going back to Arizona, not yet, anyway,” I said aloud to nobody. “I’m in Mexico and I came here for an adventure. I don’t intend to run home to my girlfriend the first time I get a boner. I’m going to Chiapas!”

Chapter 3