I accept the offer with reluctance and drink the enormous tequila shot in sync with the drunken tourist who orders it for me. I don’t normally drink tequila, ever since the public debauchery, pervasive car crashes, naked blackouts, and arguments with cretin vagrants made it difficult for me to stay in control. The bartender is speaking perfect English, while I’m working on a post Christmas cerveza binge. The female tourist sits across the bar and smiles as I file another few Noche Buenas into the briefcase of my stomach.

I finally decide to reciprocate her offer and order another couple of tequila shots. She accepts, but with trepidation and much less enthusiasm than before, which makes me immediately regret the gesture. Embarrassment festers in my mouth like an infected cold sore. The vile liquid tastes like fire. I often admire the local gringos who bathe in tequila every afternoon at Tanga Tanga–talking, smoking cigarettes, and wasting away the hours of each day in the lazy comfortable shade like a demented coffin maker convention waiting for the wonderful call from heaven.

I bid goodbye to Rips and begin walking out into the night—a horrific vision of an apparition with way too much tequila and holiday brew broiling in his gut. Leaving Plaza Mariachis and the delicious smell of fish tacos mixed in with humongous burritos simmering from the grill of Taco Loco, I walk into the night. I get about seven yards before the familiar gentlemen’s club pushers begin to offer the lusty lascivious intoxication of the naked ladies inside.

“You want to look at the ladies?” he asks.

I’ve heard that about a hundred times in Cabo, and probably a dozen by the same man. It’s like a malignant cancer that you can’t escape from because it always discovers you on the streets every evening to demand a lonely meeting with the sweat-glistening flesh of the other sex.

“Claro que no compa,” I answer.

I’ve never understood why anyone would pay to look at naked ladies, but maybe I’m crazy and capable of things beyond just paying exorbitant amounts of money to sit with a bunch of tourists in a smutty and salacious club. The men continue with the fallacious accusations and exaggerations of the beauty inside.

“But everybody wants to look at naked ladies…que onda? You want to come and look at the beautiful young girls, right?”

“Gracias, no soy tourista, pero gracias–no voy pagar un centavo ver chicas desnudas, nada, nunca…the naked ladies pay to see me.”

“Oh, ok–ahhh ok,” they say. They turn away to concentrate on the next guys walking down the street minding their own business. They never say anything to the ladies. You can almost hear crickets chirping when a woman walks past, then back to annoying the males. They actually happily stand out on the streets and do this all night long.

I make it around another corner and am no longer even going to look them in the face the next time they decide to ask me about the girls. I can see them waiting for me, like a bunch of sharks who can taste blood in the water. They’re hungry for my money, and there’s nothing I can do to avoid them.

“Hey buddy, you want to look at the beautiful women?” they ask.

“Estoy bien compa,” I tell them. “No tengo tiempo ahorita, y puedo ver chicas desnud—“

Something suddenly stabs my in the head, just above my right eye. It’s a street sign and I just walked right into the sharp edge and cut an inch of flesh from my face. I wipe the blood on my t-shirt, dabbing the cut since the blood’s not gushing at all, even though the wound is very deep, and probably could use a few stitches.

Even as I mutilate my face trying to avoid the losers on the street, I can’t escape their incessant gibberish. At least this time they stop talking about naked ladies. Maybe my blood would stain the beautiful bodies.

“You’re cut,” one of them says, as if I hadn’t noticed.

“You’re bleeding,” says another.

He sounds sincere, even though I can’t help but feel like he got his pound of flesh out of me. I probably left my skin on the street sign.

“Estoy bien, es nada,” I say calmly.

More than two years have passed since this event. If I could go back and change anything—take back the scar or the pain of looking like a monster for a few months after putting so much peroxide on the cut I bleached one eyebrow orange, I would not change a single thing. My wound has healed, but the scar will always remind me of the molestos en la calle. Next time I intend to hit the street sign so damn hard it nearly decapitates me, because there’s so much more to Los Cabos than hearing about naked ladies.

 

 

Matthew Dexter is an American freelance writer living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He writes novels, memoirs, poetry, journalism articles, short stories of literary fiction, short stories of narrative nonfiction, and everything else in between. When Matthew is not writing he enjoys life by the ocean; beautiful beaches, breathtaking views, reading, and being inspired. But never candlelit dinners on the beach. He’s afraid of Pirates.