Finding Myself in Mexico: Part VIII

    I’m trying to decide if it is the power of Puerto Escondido that is making me feel like life is possible again, or if it is simply that we have all been shut off from the daily activities we are so used to, that mere contact with humans at bars, restaurants, parties, community activities, and in-person dates, has brought a part of me back from a deep coma that we have all been put into for the past year. Since I am a little more familiar with my past than most, I will say that I have not had a sense of community and eagerness to make friends and meet people, like I do now, than I have in nearly 10 years. Something is awakening within me while I roam the streets of Puerto, while I swim in the oceans, and while I run amok in the streets looking for the next best drink/food/date. Moving here - even if it is so temporary - has had the exact effect I was looking for: freedom to be whoever it is I want to be. 

    I’ve begun to find a sense of community through the soft-schedule I have slowly put together: Yoga classes that are my favorite because of the people who attend and teach; karaoke mondays in which I have people remember my name and later call it out in the streets; the cafes I frequent to inspire my tepid pieces of writing, that match the tepid cups of tea I sip on for hours; beaches I go to for swimming, for diving through the waves, for snorkeling, for socializing, for the sunset; restaurants I lurch into because I crave their food with a hunger I thought disappeared years ago; lazy cats that meow in greeting and I translate to a familiar hello with a spanish accent; dogs that bark at me when I forget to walk around their patch of grass; bar owners who nod in acknowledgement at my arrival and sometimes throw down a shot of mezcal on the house. All these things are what make communities, and here it is done with an eagerness as everyone feels the need to ingratiate themselves into a town that churns as fast as the breaking waves of the ocean, but is balanced by the calming winds that whistle through the palm fronds, creating nights of mezcal fueled chaotic fun and mornings of beach hammock naps with fresh squeezed juice. 

    Most recently I was happy to attend the first gay happy hour at a wine bar called La Bruja in La Punta (or more geographically correct: Brisas de Zicatela). The man who organized it reached out via an internationally popular gay-sex app - which seemed pretty smart to me, if not a bit too commercially intrusive - and immedietely I was sold. It being days away, I had more than enough time to build up anxiety, of course, and nearly talked myself out of attending. The day of, I walked by and decided - upon hardly any visual evidence - that the event was dead and I would be the only sad queer in attendance, one of my worst nightmares. So I took a dip in the rather calm waters of the ocean, gathered my courage, and finally made it to the open air second floor bar. And I couldn’t have been happier with my decision to attend. The man who organized it turned out to a be a fun-loving and quick-witted powerhouse who whipped up the little table of us five gay men into a night of frivulous fun. Shots of mezcal were free-flowing, that social lubricant working it’s magic on strangers in a foreign land, sending us into a night of pool parties in a hostel, sexual escapades in another’s hotel, broken bottles in an OXXO convenience store, and witnessing a fist fight in the palapa of a palatial rental house that overlooked Puerto Angelito. These are the types of nights I haven’t seen since I first moved to NYC 10+ years ago. Albeit, I was 21 in those whimsical nights in NYC, but that has been the beauty of these journeys on my own, I have connected to a part of me that otherwise has been adrift in waters I haven’t been able to find my way back to.

    Now the downside of these sporadic nights: the day after. There is a balance I am trying to find where I don’t need to pay the price the following day, because at 32, the price is becoming higher and higher. But it isn’t only that, it is the fact that part of this journey through lands unknown is that I challenge myself to accomplish things I haven’t been able to before. I know how to be the socially drunken butterfly. I know how to create adventure from the fuel of mezcal. I know how to have drunken sex with strangers. But what if I was able to do all of that and more while sober? What part of me would be unlocked if I found I had the power inside of me all along? What could I do with the strength I would build by continuously flexing that unknown muscle? These are the questions - and more - that I want to find the answers to while out on this sojourn. I am so energized to have these feelings of joy and accomplishment flooding my central nervous system, and I want more. 

    So here I go, today even, to take the next step. In the efforts to be true to myself and put out what I need back in return, I have found a community of writers who are meeting tonight for a writers’ circle and workshop. Perhaps nothing will come from this event, perhaps I will not make a new friend, nor make any new connections in the writing world, but I will have accomplished something that is foreign to me - and I’m not only talking about the language barrier - which is to put my vulnerability out into the world for others to comment on. I am throwing myself into the chaos of the crashing waves because I trust that the gentle winds off the ocean will carry me into cradling fronds of the swaying palm trees.