Cajones will be a four part story focusing on Mexican American Marines who guided my military experience.
In the winter of 2001 I took a trip with a friend to visit his father in San Diego with the intentions of slipping into Tijuana Mexico when I was sixteen. I made the trip with sixty dollars, twenty of which was lollipop money from a school fundraiser that I hid in the back of my wallet in case of an emergency. I owed the money to a teacher of mine that coming Monday. After spending a day meeting my friend’s father and his family, and after a paintball game with some friends who played with no protective masks, we took off to the Promised Land. His father dropped my buddy, his younger brother and I at the border and recommended against drinking the water. The last thing my father had told me before I had left for the trip was, “Don’t go to Mexico.” We walked through the state fair styled turning pole gate and found ourselves in a new and magical country.
The first thing a person may notice when crossing the border to Tijuana on foot is the smell of feces coming from a concrete irrigation channel holding shallow brown water that children play in and vagrants wander. Ahead waves an enormous Mexican flag in the air, surrounded by what appears to be dilapidated housing and make-shift shacks. Filthy and impoverished children run up to the new arrivals selling “Chiclet” gum and begging for money. If you have a heart it should be shattered within ten feet of clearing the pole gate. Welcome to Tijuana 2001.
My friends and I made it to the initial shops before we reached Revolution Street, which is the main hub of the city. We stopped at a bar and sat outside as the server brought my friend and I a couple of beers and I bought a pack of smokes in my new found “Donkey Island”. His younger brother abstained from the beer and nicotine, he was a nice curly haired kid who should have been entering his freshman year in high school but had skipped so many grades that he was preparing to graduate ahead of us, and needless to say he was a genius. We finished our beers and continued the quest. I didn’t have a lighter so I would light the cigarettes back to back chain-smoking. My Spanish was good enough to get around and I knew the culture of Tijuana well enough not to get in trouble, the lollipop money would be for police, if we ran into them. My friend and I were in search of a strip club and talking about it as we stood by a fountain that is a local landmark. Out of nowhere a shady looking Mexican guy interrupted our conversation and exclaimed, “Hey! Three amigo’s, did someone say strippers?” We nodded our heads and he said, “Follow me! I know a great place!” My friend and I were determined to be the first kids in our class to get a lap dance. Our new friend guided us passed Revolution Street and passed the never ending bars until we reached our destination. A large man sat on a stool and asked for our I.D.’s, my friend and I shook our heads and said that we did not have I.D.’s. Our new friend vouched for us and the younger brother told us that he was cool with his older brother going in but that he would wait for us outside. My friend and I entered the strip club.
Having knowledge about how such things operate and having made many trips to Tijuana after this trip, I have still never told my friend the secret to my hot stripper trick. As we entered the club a server approached us and offered us a seat by the stripper pole. I let my friend lead and I put a twenty dollar bill in the servers hand and told him in his ear that this was a tip and to make sure we had a good time. My buddy had never seen my move and we took a seat. The server brought us a complimentary aluminum bucket full of ice and beer, happy with his tip. The strip club was dark and empty except for the two under-aged gringos and smelled heavily of cheap perfume. American hip hop music began to bump in the club and the DJ announced the entrance of the first stripper with gusto.
She must have been in her fifties and was missing a front tooth. She mounted the pole and went to work; my friend and I loved it, I think because we both wanted to be writers and had read Hunter S. Thompson. As the song played and the old lady danced a hot stripper came and sat on my lap; my friend looked at me bewildered as to why me and not him? I put together that it was the tip I had dropped the server but said nothing. She flirted with me and asked if I wanted to go to the back room for a lap dance that would cost twenty dollars? I explained to her that I only had ten dollars and at first she refused but finally caved. I had seen that done in a favorite war movie about Vietnam. She led me to the back room and a four foot tall Mexican man held his hand out for advance payment. I put ten dollars of the lollipop money in his hand and he shook his head no and said, “Twenty amigo.” I put the last of my money in his hand and disappeared to the back room for three songs worth of a lap dance.
After the first song ended my friend entered the backroom with the elderly stripper who had been dancing on the pole. I raised my beer at him and he waved…I laughed the whole way through the next song because I had the savvy to win the hot stripper and he had no clue why. My dance ended after my third song and my friend had one more to go when the four foot tall bill collector came rushing into the back room and asked, “Do you have I.D. amigo?” I shrugged and explained that I had already told the door man I didn’t. He looked at me alarmed and said “Policia amigo, you need I.D.” My heart sank as I looked passed the bead curtain at Mexican police who were questioning some new arrivals. “You got a back door?” I asked in a panicked voice. “You got money?” He responded.
I had spent the last of my high school lollipop emergency funds on the Tijuana stripper but figured my friend had some money so I pointed at him and said, “No but he does.” The short man broke up my friends lap dance early and ushered him to where I was standing. My friend was confused and I explained the situation as our guide ushered us out the back door that led to a courtyard where a scrap metal fence with a rusty hinge stood between us and Mexican jail. We could not open the gate that had probably been closed since the Mexican Revolution so the three of us desperately put our backs into it until the gate was forced open. The short man made my friend tip him and he guided us back to the front door where my buddies little brother was having an intellectual conversation on the political impacts of 9-11 to the doorman who could not understand a word the curly haired gringo was saying.
When I got back home I told my step-brother who was the same age the greatest story he had ever heard about a city he had never seen; a land where a sixteen year old could drink beer, smoke cigarettes and pay for a lap dance. Next I told him that I was short the twenty dollars I would owe the next day. We laughed at the story. He thought I was pretty screwed as we walked down our suburban streets heading back to our house. I saw something on the black asphalt and picked it up. It was a twenty dollar bill.
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