Yes, oh yes. It was meant to be. At least for six months, until my husband finally put his foot down. All because Putt hated people, especially men. Especially him.
He didn’t like our four-year-old’s new language either.
We were at our elderly neighbors’ one day, precious Yankees of all things, chitchatting, when my daughter spotted their new dog. She picked it up and tried to look at its hiney.
“Does she get blood on the booger?” my girl asked, and my face flamed with what I knew would come next.
“I’m not sure I understood you, sweetheart,” our neighbor said.
I squeezed my daughter’s hand hard as a warning. “Ouch!” she screamed. “Let go of me.” She turned to the neighbor and smiled, shaking her hand as if I’d broken it. “A booger is a pagina,” she said, pointing to her crotch.
“Girls got paginas. Dogs got boogers.”
Going to Pot
I figured I was pretty close to going to pot when my husband and I took a trip to Cozumel, Mexico, shortly before I turned forty.
Mexicans usually love me. I can always count on these sweet gentlemen to wink or smile or say something flattering, like “La dama es muy bonita,” which I think means “very pretty” or maybe it just means I’m wearing a fine bonnet.
I like to flatter myself and pretend they are seeking more than a green card when they follow me around town, getting all out of sorts even if I’m having a puffy-faced, fat-armed, retaining-fluid day.
My husband and I decided we needed a vacation from parenthood and signed up for one of those all-inclusive deals frequented by fatties and alkies, both of which I could qualify as being, depending on the day.
It was supposed to be four nights of romance and adventure away from our kids. It turned into four nights of my husband either sick with a cold or pretending to be, and me enrolling in every activity alone. Everywhere I went I was solo, and not one man, not even a toothless, wrinkled wreck or a staggering alcoholic, hit on me.
This was one of life’s biggest wake-up calls, even bigger than when the postal clerk quit blushing when I licked stamps in front of him and he told me to move my business away from his counter.
I mean, here I was, a woman without a man, and not a single Mexican was wanting my affections and thus a chance to fly back to America—land of dreams—with me as his bride and ticket to better wages and a McDonald’s in every town. Land of outlet malls and Tommy Hilfiger. Land of Gucci, Vuitton, Pamela, and Britney and other people and possessions those outside our borders find alluring.
This was as bad as walking through a construction site and hearing nary a catcall. This could mean one thing, and one thing only. Someone had gone downhill. Or straight to pot. All that motherly advice about working on my mind had left me with baggy eyes, loose skin, and a goiter stomach. Not to mention the boobs. Let’s, for a moment, leave them out of this.
Each day in paradise as my husband flopped across his bed, hacking and snorting phlegm and bemoaning the bad food and concrete mattress, I’d lounge by the pool or beach in my two-piece suits and even the total drunks wouldn’t so much as glance. If they did, they quickly glanced elsewhere because at these all-inclusives there are Sluts-a-Plenty!
One afternoon while my husband lay curled like a scorpion in the bed and snarling about how miserable he was, I decided to take this all-inclusive resort up on its free horseback rides.
The only ones signed up were me and a couple of geeks who looked as if they lived in a town where the sun hasn’t come out for months. They were wearing matching “I Love Cozumel” T-shirts and were obviously on their honeymoon, thinking they were about to enjoy a romantic romp through paradise on a former Kentucky Derby winner.
A stout Mexican with a nice smile, tequila breath, and only one missing side tooth introduced himself. I was drinking a beer in a red tumbler that appeared to be the type Pizza Hut uses for its soft drinks. The beer, along with the watered-down liquor, was free, and though I’d later suffer a weeklong bout of E. coli, one doesn’t think of such as she sips her diluted offerings and tries to envision the getaway of a lifetime.
The Mexican eyed my tumbler thirstily.
“You want me to get you one?” I asked.
“I’m not supposed to drink,” he said, darting his eyes toward a counter where his boss was explaining the cost of rental cars. “Go now, yes. Sí. Get me one, por favor.”
I brought him a draft from the bar and the honeymoon geeks gave me the evil eye. I believe they were Pentecostals, not that there’s a thing wrong with them, but they don’t like it when tourists and Mexicans fraternize over mind-altering substances poured from a keg and teeming with deadly parasites. They just wanted to get on their horses and pretend they were in a romance novel, the wind on their faces and in the armholes of their “I Love Cozumel” tees.
I, on the other hand, just wanted to drink a bit and escape my nose-blowing, mucusy husband who was probably sweeping the tile floors or making the beds. This is what he enjoys doing in fine hotels. Cleaning and pretending to be deathly ill from germs circulating on the plane rides. He is convinced airplanes are nothing more than petri dishes with wings.
The Mexican downed his beer in two gulps and led us across a dirt road to a patch of scrubby wilderness. He kept eyeing me because I had no mate, a slight buzz, and a snug swimsuit top paired with shorts. It was one of those padded push-up deals, part of a tankini, nothing slutty about it, but I was looking hot in that top. It might have all been an illusion, but it was working. Took me from a saggy B to a full firm D.
We rounded a corner and there they were, a group of swaybacked horses that looked as if they were ten minutes away from an Elmer’s conversion. The honeymooners got the horses with both eyes and at least three decent legs. The Mexican winked at me and said, “Los caballos son bonitos,” which I later learned meant the horses were pretty. I thought he meant my bonnet-style hat and thus I smiled.
He grabbed a set of tattered reins and handed over a snuffling horse that he called the “La Mula,” and I knew what he meant. It was a damned mule. A mad-ass mule. I threw a leg over its dipping back and the thing snorted and turned its head and tried to bite me, nostrils flaring and shiny. The honeymooners had already taken off through the brambled path strewn with litter and discarded auto parts, while I tried to get my la mula to take one step forward.
The Mexican, who had swilled his one beer much too fast, stared at me with wobbly eyes. He tried his best to speak perfect English and get the words out just right.
“I like a mature woman,” he said, his eyes going up and down my tankini.
Mature woman! What did he mean by mature woman? He must have been fifty himself, old geezer, and calling me a mature woman.
He trotted off with a wink, trying to catch up with the honeymooners, who were halfway down the path, viewing the scenic trash piles. Burning tires and stiff iguanas left the air redolent of reptilian death and toxic fumes.
I was trying to get my la mula to move. When I bit its neck and said, “La Mula is muy malo and I’m going to cook your haunch for dinner,” the blessed animal stumbled like an old woman with two new hip replacements.
After ten minutes of me trying to get my mule to make some progress, the Mexican leader returned, smelling of belches and lust. He rode his horse next to my mule and grinned.
“I like a mature woman,” he said.
“I know. You said that already.”
“You have nice breasts.”
“No, I don’t.”
Move, mula, move. I started to bite its neck again just to escape this man’s conversation and boozy perversions.
“They are beautiful. I like a mature woman’s beautiful breasts. Not like senorita Pamela Anderson’s