San Luis Potosi

Okay, that's it: no more hookers.

As I drove into the capital city of San Luis, mapless with still no smart phone, I nudged myself toward the shopping area but ended up at the wrong Home Depot. They didn't have a door knob/lock assembly for a two inch door I found out with help from a nice young woman from another company translating for me. I didn't even bother to get directions to the bigger Home Depot at Tangamanga, just had them call me a taxi. The circuitous route he drove validated my decision.

As he was about to take off I mentioned wanting to find a woman. He told me of a house he knew in his neighborhood, scrawled down the address, and gave me his cell.

They didn't have the lock I wanted at the bigger Home Depot either and I was directed to a big hardware store downtown. I called the taxista and he said he'd be back in twenty minutes. I sat out front in the shade on some comfortable garden chairs and took out my English-Spanish dictionary to study random verb past tenses. (And I really mean “my dictionary,” the one I made thirty-two years ago in Matehuala.)

There were about five or six well-behaved dogs lounging around in the shade with me and it reminded me of the pack of dogs I'd seen earlier that day driving through Cedral. At the time I thought someone should come by and shoot them. Almost every night up in my mountain hideaway I hear dogs barking excitedly and it makes me wonder what's happening in dog-world. Are they running around the mountainside for exercise? Hassling the burros? Fighting amongst themselves? Challenging other gangs of dogs? Mating and having sex? (There are too many dogs running around in Mexico. If anyone has a better solution than shooting them please come on down and work your magic.)

Leonardo showed up on time, we drove downtown, and passed a doorway where he said there were women for hire.

“Stop!” I said. I had the photo of the door knob with me but this was urgent. (Priorities, right?)

There was no answer to my knock so we continued downtown. I had no luck at the hardware store and they directed me down the block to another. Still no luck so I gave up finding a replacement lock for my front door. It was working all right—I just didn't trust the previous caretaker and didn't know if there were other keys floating around out there.

I told Leonardo about the cathouse at Augustin Vera 650 but he thought that after twelve years it would have moved. We debated the point.

“Well, there might be a 25% chance it was still active,” I said. He said after a year they might have changed locations.

“How much extra time to swing by on the way to the one you know?” I asked. He said it would be another half hour in heavy traffic.

“Okay, then let's just go to the one in your neighborhood.”

(I pause in my accounting of this episode the next morning, outside Motel Las Palmas by the pool, wondering why I am putting myself through this? I am doing penance I decide, have another sip of coffee, and continue scribbling in my notebook.)

We got to the house, I pointed out the padlock on the door, and Leonardo seemed ready to quit. I asked him to call a friend for more leads and in a few minutes we were in front of another house. I went through the patio to the door and rang the bell. A woman in a bikini with breasts bulging out the side answered and I knew I was at the right place. She put out the call and soon there were five more women in skimpy tops and bottoms.

“Pick which one you want,” she said. I looked them over and couldn't decide.

“How much?” I asked.

“200 pesos (ten dollars) for twenty minutes, 300 pesos (fifteen dollars) for thirty minutes, and...” I didn't listen to the rest of the prices.

“Medio hora,” I said. (Half an hour.) I picked the only girl who wasn't scantily clad but had the friendliest face and we went upstairs.

There was music blasting throughout the house, a big bed in the room, and a wall of mirrors. I gave her the 300 pesos and waited affixed to a spot in the middle of the room until she came back. We stood facing each other, I started touching her, and motioned for her to do the same.

She objected and said only sexual relations were included, not touching. What?! It would be extra she said so I handed over 200 more pesos.

I took a condom and some vinyl gloves out of my man bag and handed two to her. They were old and kept breaking but finally we each had a pair on. “Has anyone ever given you gloves?” I asked.

“Never,” she replied.

“Well, I'm very careful.”

(Just then the cab driver texted me, said he had an emergency with his kid, and had to leave. I put him off with a text that said I'd be out in fifteen minutes.)

I took her dress off and noticed many tattoos, some of written phrases.

“Gracias,” I said, when the underwhelming transaction was completed a few minutes later. She said the same and I went out to the waiting cab.

We drove in silence for a while then he asked how it was. “Pretty crazy,” I said and told him about the extra fee for touching.

As we drove back to Home Depot I asked him why he didn't buckle his seat belt. “You have a son after all,” I said. He made a garroting motion showing that if he wore his seat belt someone in the back seat could strangle him.

“So that's why you have me up front?” I said. He pointed to a sticker on his windshield commemorating the murder of a taxi driver friend of his and made the gun motion to his head. 

“How many cabbies are murdered each year here?” I asked.

He thought about it then said, “About seven to ten.”

When he dropped me off at my truck I looked at the meter. It said 236 pesos. “Will quinientos be okay?” I said. (500 pesos.) He said yeah and I paid him off.

Across the way at Costco I investigated the organic products for an hour and bought way too many vegetables including a huge bag of carrots. I will never be able to eat them all.

It was a nice drive back, the mountains on each side of the highway were green and beautiful, and then it started to pour during the last ten miles so I cut the speed down from 70 to 65. When I got back to Matehuala I showered off the filth of San Luis and the cathouse in my motel room then went across the street for a delicious cabrito dinner.

Later, stoned outside my room, I watched an attractive couple from next door walk holding hands to dinner at the restaurant and once again I'm impressed with the plunge into degradation I'll take to touch and be touched.