an old memory

As we drive through the city, along the avenidas, stencils advertising the PRI and Peña Nieto still watch from long walls of abandoned buildings. A blend of modernity (cyber cafés and coffee shops) with wilderness (the wide open Coahuila desert eating up any free space) reflects this part of Mexico: main roads are newly paved, but most others are dirt and caliche.

US consumerism looms along the main streets. McDonalds. Burger King. A big red Coca Cola truck next to us at the traffic light. The maquilas of Samsung and other electronics and auto parts manufacturers locked behind high fences and barbed wire. Logos and products are as common of fixtures as the stray dogs trotting up and down the streets. Banda shouts from little food stands, selling their lonches. Many of the cars going up and down the neighborhoods bounce Reggaeton. And every so often, the silk smooth voice of Chente swims out, in slow motion.

This place feels like a secret. A last kiss between lovers. The space between sun and sky, a cemetery of complex matter, where the history of the city is told by the corpses of the stars, buried throughout the sky.

One night we went out to a bar. She wanted to dance. The banda onstage was too good to keep sitting down where we were. But it made me nervous to ask her. To think of her small hand clasped in mine. To feel her hot skin against the palm of my hand. It was too close to listening to her heartbeat. It was too delicate of a position to put myself in. I would be able to smell the combination of amber essential oil and hand soap she dabs everywhere. Her loose stray hairs would kiss my throat.

You will dance with me, won’t you?

I’m such a bad dancer.

It was a Harvest moon. We sat outside in plastic chairs, underneath a graveyard of stars. The local bar was full of people. She pulled off her shawl, exposing her copper shoulders and the dip in the front and back of her tank top. I didn’t like the idea of her making fun of me later for being a poor dancer, but I couldn’t just sit and not dance. The accordion player of el grupo on stage is too good. It would be an insult to not dance. So I threw back the remainder of my margarita and crushed the edge of my Delicado against the heel of my boot. I stood up and held out my hand.