Sunday, January 25, 2004

posted by: copernicus on 1/25/2004 02:30:00 AM
Puerto Aventuras, Vol. 1

"Monday the 19th, Sometime after 9 p.m.

I'm sitting on a 7th story balcony in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico listening to the surf and admiring how the ocean and the black sky merge so perfectly that you can't tell where the horizon is. Went snorkeling in the lagoon today with the angelfish, lobsters, sea urchins, parrotfish and pikes. The group I'm with (there's 12 of us - 3 straight couples, 2 gay male couples, 1 single gay man, and 1 single straightboy - that's how they refer to me, their "token straightboy") wants to go to Xel-Ha (pronounced shell-hah) tomorrow to buy t-shirts and exploit the eco-system.

Xel-Ha is an outdoor adventure/waterpark with all kinds of captive wildlife so the tourists can swim and get their pictures taken with depressed dolphins who can see the open ocean but will never reach it. I refused to participate on the grounds that I have a conscience. Just like in Australia where a man had a Koala that you could get your picture taken with for 5 pounds. Maybe someday she'll get fed up and latch herself onto the head of one of these "Hell Yes I'm American" jackass tourists. The dolphin thing would be okay, it would actually kind of reaffirm the whole spirit-of-life thing if they were rescued dolphins. You know, injured-rescued-rehabilitated but they wouldn't survive in the wild so we look after them and train them to do flips sort of thing, but my gut reaction was to be pessimistic about it. People should listen to their gut more, it doesn't do what it does to trick you, it's a survival mechanism.

Anyway, fuck all those negative thoughts. They don't deserve to take my attention away from this incredible night on my balcony. It truly is beautiful here, I just wish I had a cool girl to share it with.

Orion is hovering high above the horizon right now with a bright, brilliant blue Sirius in tow. Somebody is watching American Idol at high volume with their balcony door open. What the fuck is wrong with Americans and what they settle for as "Art"? They will eat a plateful of shit if the garnish is right. Right now some cookie-cutter media product is butchering Simon & Garfunkel, and the crowd is screaming like it was watching the Beatles.

If I may quote Bill Hicks:

RANDOM QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"We live in a world where John Lennon was murdered and mediocre hacks thrive."
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Sorry I got negative again for a bit there, it's out of my system now. It's a few hours later and there've (am I'm inventing a new contraction here, or have I just not seen this one for a long time?) there've been a few developments.

The air-conditioner broke in Nick & Veva's room and dumped water into the closet, soaking all of Veva's clothes. The hotel is washing all of her stuff and upgraded them to the corner luxury suite, which has a kitchen, bar, living room bigger than my whole room, bay window looking out over the ocean and a wrap-around deck with a hot tub on the 7th floor. The party has now changed locations.

All 12 of us sat around the hot tub with our legs in up to our knees and drank and laughed and told stories. Eventually things died down and people started heading to bed, and I could be found where I can usually be found: outside, in the dark, soaking in the sky. I pulled out my notebook and was about to jot down some thoughts regarding how bright Sirius was now that it had risen fully, and that Venus was rising over the lights of Cozumel, when Casey came out to check on me. (Editors note: Molly, you'd be proud of me. A tropical bug of some kind was crawling across my note book as I wrote the last sentence, and I took it out to the deck and it flew away.) Anyway, Casey, who is 6'4" and about 270 lbs., came out, pulled up a chair and sat down next to me. He handed me a beer, put his feet up on the railing, leaned back and said: "So Galileo, what's that constellation over..."SNAP!!! The back of the chair broke off cleanly at the base and he started to go over backwards. I dropped my beer, shot my hands out and caught him, laughing hysterically, but didn't have the leverage to pull him up. All I could do was hold him. The rest of the group heard the snap and my laughter and came running, turning the corner to find Casey, heels still on the railing, butt in the chair, back hovering a foot above the ground and splintered plastic everywhere. I have 2 fistfuls of his Hawaiian shirt and cannot stop laughing. Casey manages to keep his beer upright above him, but everytime I laugh his arm shakes and dribbles beer on his head which makes me laugh harder. The rest of our friends rush in on this scene and instinctively stop in their tracks, cracking up but not interfering with the situation 'cause they want to see if Casey's going to go all the way over and dump the beer on his head. He managed to get his feet down and we got him upright again. He chugged what was left of his beer and wandered of in search of another, muttering about "...shoddy Mexican craftsmanship..." and the evils of plastics."
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Well that was my first entry, and it used up 9 pages. 31 more to go, I'll try to do the next installment tomorrow night. Stay tuned. What an odd phrase, "stay tuned", like our brains were radios. You know what, I like "stay tuned", set aside the television meaning and it can mean "keep your brain fine tuned and in good working order". I think that's a good thing to remind someone of.

STAY TUNED