If the Drunk Doesn’t Kill You, Perhaps the Coconut Will

Where the pavement ends in Ciudad Obregón

My friend Randy’s future father-in-law had my kind of sense of humor. Back in those days, I wasn’t conscious of the term “pillar of the community,” but I’m sure Dr Lara was one of those pillars. Certainly successful and comfortably well off, yet down-to-earth. He’d purposely butcher Spanish colloquialisms into gems like “for yes the flies” and “between and drink a chair.” Dad jokes. Way before that term existed.

Must have been the summer of 1986, the same year I drove my sister Annie’s car from the suburbs of LA to Astoria (NYC) in the second or third most indirect way possible. My original plan was to drive up and cut across Canada, subsisting on fish and grass or whatever the cave men ate when the world was wild and untamed. Instead, I drove as far north as possible in California so I could visit friends from my first year in college, then turned right, hiked with a buddy in Salt Lake City, didn’t stop to try and catch my old creative writing professor in Iowa (despite a low-grade desire to get into their MFA program), acquired my first two speeding tickets ever, after a nine year driving career, in Nebraska and Rhode Island (or was it Connecticut?) and ate lobster and berries in Maine before heading down to New York. Also passed right through Chicago without stopping to see my cousins, because I was on a roll.

The big deal about lobster in Maine was that my diet back then consisted of mostly fruit and nuts. For five years straight. But when in Maine, do as the Mainers was my philosophy.

Ciudad Obregón is the second largest city in the Mexican state of Sonora. I don’t know if anyone outside Ciudad Obregón could point it out on a map, and I doubt it’s high on anyone’s must-see list. But that’s where my friend Randy was going to marry his college sweetheart, Pati, and that’s where I was going to be, too. I’m pretty sure I even wore a suit, or something suitable, certainly not my usual shorts and cutoff t-shirt. In 1986 in Ciudad Obregón, perhaps throughout Mexico, young men did not wear shorts. I did. I was unfazed by local customs, not because I was an “ugly American” or some sort of asshole, I just had my own way of doing things, and the world be damned. So what if the sonorense thought I was gay?

The Laras put us up in a nearby apartment, and I was mostly left to my own devices as Randy and los Lara attended to wedding details and activities. I decided to go for a walk.

2

Ciudad Obregón in the summer is ungodly hot (¡hace mucho calor!). I don’t recall any details about where we were staying, but I’m pretty sure there were mangoes and parrots. Yet it’s not a tropical location. Very little rain throughout the year. My memory’s faulty, so I can’t paint a picture you can stash in your mind. Hopefully, you’ve been there and can fill in the blanks.

I was studying Spanish (my second major to go along with Political Science; I was going to save the world). A walk in Ciudad Obregón would give me a chance to practice with the locals. I walked past where the pavement stopped, and I eventually encountered a group of young men with whom I struck up a conversation. The one with long hair, glazed eyes, and a big brown bottle of something strong talked the most. He was hard to understand due to a combination of my Spanish not being all that good and his slurring. Based on the little I could decipher, and his hand gestures towards my pocket, I was able to piece together his intent. I expressed every version of “no” and “ya me voy” (I’m leaving) I could think of, and we went back and forth for quite some time.

One of the other men argued on my behalf, saying to leave me alone because I was cool or something. He was right, of course. I just wanted to practice my Spanish. After a seemingly infinite round of “give me your wallet” and “no, I’m leaving now,” my would-be robber backed off. I waved goodbye and off I went down the unpaved street.

I reached a river or canal and walked till I met another young man, standing outside a tin roof shack. He seemed like a good guy. I stopped and described my adventure with the drinking gang. He invited me in, and we talked a while. He said something along the lines of “eres loco” walking past where the pavement ends. Maybe, but I lived.

We said goodbye, and I was feeling pretty good about how things were going. So I stopped to celebrate my survival by buying a green coconut from a street vendor. I drank the juice and took the rest back to my apartment to eat over the next day or two.

One of my proudest accomplishments as a fruit and nut eater, and one which I bragged about incessantly, was that I never got sick. Almost never. But something was wrong with that coconut. Maybe leaving it out in the hundred degree heat. It might have even tasted a little funny. Maybe it wasn’t the coconut. Sticking to the facts, I got “muy enfermo.” Sick. Real sick. Bedridden and delirious sick. Waking dreams of meeting my maker sick. The worst headache imaginable. Stomach ache. The runs. The only thing I didn’t do was throw up. I hate throwing up. Looking back, it’s possible I did throw up and am just blocking it.

I didn’t take any sort of medicine. Against my fruit and nut religion. I rode it out. Two solid days. And then I felt fine again. The wedding could proceed. The wedding would have proceeded anyway, to be honest, but now I could go.

I’ve never been a thrill seeker. Yet I’ve managed to walk into potentially dangerous situations due to lack of situational awareness. I’m not saying you should, but I did. That long-haired drunk could’ve killed me. That coconut could’ve killed me. Fruit and nuts could’ve killed me. But here I am. For what purpose, I have no idea. We should all have a purpose. As long as I’ve been here on earth, you’d think I would know mine by now. But I don’t. Some days I think I know, and others I have no clue.

What if we don’t need a purpose? What if being here is enough?

3

Randy and Pati split up when their son Ruben (Boo) was two. She married a cop, and Randy and I talked on the phone now and then. I remember his sympathizing with me on a particularly bad day, telling me “you sound like you’re sittin' in a frying pan, sliding down a razor blade.” That’s how he talked, coming from Athens, Georgia (home of the B52's). I don’t know what happened to him after a while.

I avoided coconuts for a long time after Ciudad Obregón, and I never walked past where the pavement ends, either. Call it wisdom, or lack of opportunity. I can’t think of another time I was anywhere similar.

My risks are more calculated now. I’ve developed situational awareness. I’m way past the age when friends are getting married in Mexico.

Part of me wants to jump out of an airplane, strapped to someone who knows what they’re doing. Part of me wants to play it safe. And part of me wants to just “between and drink a chair.”