Ever since that day, Mike has watched Tijuana boom and grow, from the Vietnam-era city of his infancy to the maquiladora megalopolis of his adulthood. Somehow, because of that early childhood denial of pleasure, the city on the other side also became associated with his father's memory, the father Michael never knew, who was shot down over Hanoi in 1972. This intuition solidified when his aunt -- actually his father's sister, not his mother's -- showed him some old letters from Vietnam. In one of them, his father mentions going to Tijuana for the night, the same night after he had an almost divorcing argument with his wife. He wrote that he met a woman there, a nice society girl, not a whore, who had just had a breakup-fight with her fiance. Michael's father was hoping to see her again when he returned from the East. But a SAM missile proved otherwise.
Finally, in the year nineteen ninety-nine, seven years after reading that letter, Michael decided to begin the new millenium in another world. He moved twenty kilometers south, leaving behind the soon-to-be new-baseball park district in downtown San Diego, and advancing into the future of the planet Earth. Only one trolley ride away.
No, he still hasn't told his mother about the letter. His aunt said she never did. Wanted to leave it up to him. Depending on what he finds out in Tijuana -- where society ladies have long, long memories -- he may....
But Michael is seeking something more basic, more real. Not a fabricated affect, but a living day-to-day habitus of the other. First, the language. The other language of the frontier where he grew up. A latin-american experience. A Mexican reality. The border, as a zone of contact, offers him this double-edged possibility. Not only to experience the "other" as an everyday reality, but to become, himself, an "other" in their eyes. "Ah," they say, hearing his accent, "you are an American, yes?"... "From the other side, yes? El otro lado?" Yes. That is what they say. Other.
"Her name was Trudy, Dano."
Oh yeh, that's right. Daughter of the director of public health, wasn't it, Askor or somebody?
Silence. Michael only grins in the mirror at the writer. Well, all right then. One of his first girlfriends was a painter -- "I hope she still IS" -- he says. She took him one night to an opening by some sculptor or other. He can still remember the guy's name... isn't it phunny how things stick in the cracks of your mind -- Joe Nyiri, yeah. Every since then Michael's had a special place in his hart for gallery inaugurations. He can't even go buy the Gallery Florist on Forth Avenue -- or is it Fifth -- in San Diego without remembering Trudy and that evenink. And meking more typhos.
So of course wen he started investigating the art scene in Tijuana he perforce started going to art openings. They're a good buey to spend a phew hours talking and drinking. Not to mention seeing art. But....
From the novel, Tijuana Gringo
1.
"Diga," the woman said, glaring at this gringo in her motel breezeway. Big backpack hung from shoulders and waist. Only your writer knew what burden bent his heart.
How did I get here?
Running from depression and divorce.
After five years of marriage, Cece left me. For another woman. Went east to Baltimore. Took our son with her.
We sold our condo; I gave her the money. Still in shock, I moved in with my best friend Jeff. Began to waken to the pain, until, sick with grief -- and denial -- I look for another world where I can forget.
Gringos always dream of escaping into Mexico. Why? The other? On our very doorstep? Yes. That must be it.
So I make a run for the border, grasping at cliché. Go live in Tijuana, armed with only books, clothes, and a few hundred dollars.
You ain't really running, boy man. You will keep your job in San Diego. Have your taco and eat it, too. Tomorrow go back to work in Troy, crossing the walls of empire. Like so many others who live on both sides of the line. There once was a giant two-headed horse standing at the gates. Now that artist is famous. You dream of the same.
"Diga," the woman said. Speak. What's my story? Tonight I move. That's the plan. First a motel room, then an apartment, in the beaches - las Playas - a most comfortable part of town. Hey - I want to escape, not to suffer! Here there be streetlights, water, electricity, middle-class houses, and the sea.
So you take the evening trolley from San Diego to the border. Grab a late bus across TJ to the beaches. At last arrive by the dark ocean of night, on the threshold of the Latin world. There this guardian figure steps from mythology and orders you to speak - "Diga," the woman said.
Diga, she said, imperative from DECIR, to speak, to tell. Is she my first muse here, ordering me open my mouth, tell my story? Be she Viking valkerie, or Aztec cihuateteo, goddess guardian of the dead, choosing me like a warrior poet, to lie down on the stone of sacrifice, and...?
Or is she only mistress of motel? My soul. My soul aches. University forbade that word. This your antithesis dialectic.
No matter. Mexico. Mexico. Mexico will lull me to sleep....
Not Dorothy nor the witch's poppies nor the bluenoses of literature....
"Diga," the woman said, ten seconds ago....
Answer her, Michael. She's starting to wonder if you can speak the language....
Nod your head. Hope she will return the sign. Gaze in this numina; ask with slight accent: "¿No hay un cuarto en el motel?"
Is there room in the inn at eleven p.m. Thursday night on the beaches of Tijuana? If yes, I will begin my new life in TJ forever; if no, I must go back to San Diego tonight.
Michael, you are stark raving mad. Only God can rescue you now. Cast off your lines into the sea.
"Sí hay. Pasele por favor." Into the office. Fill out the registration form.
FROM: Tijuana Gringo, the novel. Want to see more?