Not the Real Jesus

Photo source: Matt Nelson, Unsplash

NOT THE REAL JESUS:

OAXACA

While travelling in Mexico with my friends from the Czech Republic, Tomas and Igor, way back in ’97, we had an experience with two Mexican guys, I at least will never forget. Jesús and Ramon were from the city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. We met them by chance.

“What are we doing tonight?” Igor said to me.

I was lying on the bed in our cheap hostel, reading Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, trying to attain some Buddhist insight in the land of Montezuma.

“We can go out for a drink?” I suggested.

“We did that last night.”

“So, we’re on holiday.”

Tomas came in from outside, where he had been smoking on the balcony. I’d travelled with Tomas across the United States, from New York City to Los Angeles, the year before. And we’d had a blast. Igor and his attitude were starting to annoy me.

“He wants to go drinking again?” Igor said to Tomas in English.

“It’s all right,” I said, “you can speak Czech if you like.”

They spoke a while in their native language until they’d come to a decision:

“Okay, get your ass up,” Tomas said to me, “we’re going drinking.”

We were headed for El Zocalo again, the plaza in the centre of Oaxaca, and a place The Lonely Planet guidebook described as ‘one of the most beautiful in the country’.

The previous two nights we’d sat and watched the world go by, drinking copious amounts of Sol cerveza and tequila, three gringos enjoying ourselves while sitting at our favourite cantina, a name I can’t recall.

“Let’s try another bar tonight,” Tomas proposed.

“Why?” I asked. I liked the one we’d been to before.

Igor, meanwhile, was quiet: he wanted to go sightseeing — our next destination was Mexico City, having come to Oaxaca from the Chiapas region.

“Let’s not go to a fucking bar. We need to see as much as we can before we leave,” Igor then said.

He had a point, I suppose, but I was tired. Tomas too. We’d been travelling by bus for six weeks already. Starting off from San Antonio, we’d crossed the US-Mexico border at Nuevo Laredo by bus. Monterey. Tampico. Villahermosa. Half the cities and towns in the eastern side of the country before we landed in the tourist town of Palenque, Chiapas, home to Mayan pyramids right bang in the middle of the jungle.

“C’mon, Igor,” I said, “don’t be boring.”

We sat down in my cantina. The waiter who we recognized, Pedro, came over. I ordered. I spoke some Spanish. Not a lot, but enough to do the most important thing on the trip: order drinks.

“Me pone un cerveza, por favour,” I said to Pedro. “Boys, what do you want?”

It was a stupid question: they were Czechs: it was beer, of course, because it flowed through their veins. Both were from Moravia: Igor from Ostrava; Tomas, Zliín.

“Dva piva,” Igor said to me in Czech, holding two fingers in the air.

“Perdon, tres cervezas, por favour.”

As well as a cultural trip, I was learning more Spanish and Czech every day.

DOS AMIGOS

Two men, locals, were at the next table. They were drunk, that was clear. After Pedro came back with the beers, we made a toast. Almost immediately, then, one of the men came over to us, a bottle of beer in his hand.

He said something to us in Spanish. Something I didn’t understand. He tried English with us:

“You Americano?” he asked Tomas.

“No,” Tomas said.

“Where from friends?”

“Czech Republic,” Igor answered.

“Europe,” I said, realizing that saying the ‘Czech Republic’ wouldn’t mean anything to the man.

He looked back at his amigo, much older than he was, and called him over. The older man carried the half a dozen beers on their table over to ours.

The younger man’s name was Jesus. He was about thirty. Ramon, silver-haired, bespectacled ad wearing a Stetson looked like Steve McQueen and in his fifties, if not older.

We started a ‘conversation’, though it didn’t get very far, as between us we only had a very rudimentary form of Spanglish.

The night wore on: more cervezas, tequila too. Smiles and jokes. We were beginning to warm to Jesus and Ramon — though that wasn’t difficult: since we’d been in Mexico we’d been treated with nothing but friendliness and kindness: the Mexicans were — and still are — a wonderful, hospitable people.

We soon found out(with the help of gesticulation, my Spanish dictionary, a pen, and serviettes), that Ramon owned a beer warehouse in another part of Oaxaca.

“You come, you come!” Jesus asked us. He wanted to take us to the warehouse.

It was getting late. Igor yawned.

“What do you wanna do?” Tomas asked us.

I looked at Ramon, smiled, and said:

“Let’s go… Igor, do you want to go?”

“Why not.”

“¡Vamos!” Jesus said.

They took us to Ramon’s ancient white VW Beetle, parked around the corner from the plaza. We got in the back, a squeeze if ever there was one. Jesuús in the passenger seat. Ramon, pissed as a fart, driving.

“Policía? No policia?” I said, rather naively — we were in Mexico after all.

“Chingada policia!” Jesus exclaimed — he then pulled out a joint from thin air. “Boys, por favour, para ustedes…” Tomas, a bit of a drug fiend, took the joint off him.

We’d smoked the blunt by the time we got to Ramon’s ‘warehouse’.

“Please,” Jesus began as we got out of the car, “Siganme!”

Ramon’s warehouse was a little store — called a tienda in Mexico.

“I thought you said it was a warehouse?” Igor asked me, laughing.

“My Spanish is shit. Sorry.”

The shop was open. A woman, Ramon’s wife, was at the counter. Outside the tiny establishment, there were crates of beer stacked up to the height of a man: Pacifico. Dos Equis. Leon and Montejo. They cracked open some bottles. We drank. The joint and what we’d already had was starting to make me feel a little weird, but the company was good, and the beer ‘seemed’ to be free.

Ramon’s wife eventually closed up shop. Before she did, however, we helped the guys stack the crates inside the store. It was the least we could do after the free beer.

“I think it’s time to go, guys,” I said as I yawned.

Not quite Ramon, but the Stetson is definitely the same. Photo source: Stephen Lustig, Unsplash

THE TITTY TWISTER

“No, no,” Jesus. “Go. Us. Chicas. Dancing. Dancing. Baile. Baile.”

He wanted us to go to a nightclub or a titty bar or something of that design, but I was tired.

“Let’s go!” Tomas said.

“What are you saying, Tom?” I said to him.

“C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

They’d persuaded me — Igor, who hadn’t wanted to come out, was the most enthusiastic of us all.

We got back into Pedro’s car, me the most reluctant. He’d had five more beers since coming back from the plaza.

Driving off into the dark, mostly unlit streets of this part of Oaxaca, we headed into the unknown, the radio blasting some Mexican hit that had been the anthem — and Tomas’ favourite song — since we’d crossed the border nearly two months before.

I had premonitions, bad ones: I’d seen From Dusk Till Dawn, I didn’t want to end up at a place like the Titty Twister, three gringos out of our depths.

Soon enough, though — and to my surprise — we were at our destination: a nightclub. We went inside. We got a table and sat down. Jesús bought the first round. Ramon the second. It was my term then, but I’d had enough — I bought four.

“Hey, Chinga tu madre, pendejo!” Jesus exclaimed, angry that I hadn’t bought myself a drink. He got up violently and disappeared, coming back a moment later with a bottle. He placed the tequila on the table before going back for the glasses. “Vamos a beber, cabron!”

“No, I can’t — er, no puedo, I said, not knowing if that was correct or not.

Ramon grabbed the bottle, opened it and started pouring. The atmosphere suddenly went tense, awkward — I think I’d offended our hosts.

“Okay, let’s drink!” Igor said, a big smile on his face. He was enjoying himself.

All five of us stumbled out of the club in the small hours of the morning.

“¡Vamos!” Ramon said, leading us to his car.

Before we got in, Jesus pulled out another blunt. We smoked it quickly. After it, my head was spinning. Ramon fumbled in his pockets for what I presumed were his keys. Eventually, he found them.

“El Zocalo, por favour, Ramon,” I told him where we wanted to go — the plaza was a five-minute walk to our hostel.

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

Again, we jumped in the back of the Beetle, and I closed my eyes.

I woke up suddenly, a pain in my side — it was Igor, nudging me:

“Where is he taking us?” he asked me.

It was pitch-dark apart from the car’s headlights, and we were driving in what looked like a country road.

“Donde estamos?” I asked Ramon while Jesus was smoking another joint, more stoned than a hippy at Woodstock.

They chuckled together. I started to panic. Igor too. Tomas, meanwhile, was laughing his head off — he was in the place the two Mexicans were currently.

And then the car suddenly turned right, into what I can only describe as an abandoned factory or industrial complex.

Oh, shit, that’s it. We’re dead. We’re gonna die, I thought as Ramon stopped the car just outside the rusty gates, then turned the engine off: they were going to tell us to get out at gunpoint, I just knew it, rob us blind then shoot us and leave our bodies for the dogs. Forget about what I’d said about the Mexicans being wonderful, hospitable people. I lied.

Ramon and Jesus turned to each other and started talking.

“What are they saying?” Igor asked me.

“I dunno.” They turned back to us.

“Estoy perdido,” Ramon said, his face serious.

“What did he say?” Igor asked again. I got the perdido part and heard it before, but I couldn’t remember what it meant. I quickly pulled out my pocket Spanish dictionary I’d had in my back pocket, and using the car’s interior light, I flicked through the pages searching for ‘P’, my heart racing, knowing this word could be a matter of life and death — did it mean ‘robbery’, or ‘give us’, or ‘it’s your unlucky day?’

“Perdido — Lost!” I exclaimed. He’s lost!”

I breathed deeply, Igor as well, Tomas still away with the fairies.

Eventually, they got us back to the plaza, where we bid adioós to our new-found amigos mexicanos.

Oh, and sorry, what I said about the Mexican people, I take it back again — they are wonderful, hospitable people.

Ramon’s car was in much worse condition than the one shown above. Photo source: Dan Gold, Unsplash