How fancy; or, Domonic books a flight to Breakdown City.

Surely you've all been there.

Oh, there are those among you who claim to have it all together, all the time, under punishing duress as well as in nearly intolerable pleasure.

But I see you, Together-and-With-It-People.

Oh yes, I see you, With-It-Chick, watching Judge Judy stripped down to your skivvies with a Fuzzy Navel wine-cooler in one hand and a hog-trough-sized bowl of Lucky Charms in the other, weeping hysterically into your skim milk because your insensitive cow of a boss critiqued your latest monument to banality at a packed staff meeting so hard that sniggers could clearly be heard.

I see you, young With-It-Dude, with your hand poised mere inches away from the whirring blades of your In-Sinkerator garbage disposal because the shapely enchantress you'd fallen desperately in love with online was actually an ennui-afflicted 21-year-old white guy whose fascinating hobby is inventing unrealistically attractive online vixens to ensnare unfortunate cyber-geeks into revealing their long-hidden paraphilias. After all, it might be of interest to the people in your life that you are unnaturally aroused by the sight of girls in saddle shoes.

I see you all in the splendiferous ruin of your lives, yet I feel the sodden weight of your judgement pressing moistly upon my shoulders.

"What the feck", you begin while preparing to microwave your third Lean Cuisine of the night, "could you possibly have to snap about? I mean, it's not like you've been forced into providing excruciatingly slow manual pleasure to truckers behind the Flying J Dumpsters for donut money again, right?"

Well, no. Let me rephrase: not recently. But that is beside the point.

I suppose that I happen to be one of those people who diffuses stress through quasi-healthy channels. Instead of lying on the floor, moaning and twitching , in the presence of my coworkers, I gather some liquid fossil fuels and find a lovely orphanage to immolate. Instead of taking my "cat" out into the countryside with a shovel and a bag of dime-store lime, I support local bum-fights with generous contributions of the bricks they use beat themselves into bloodied unconsciousness. And, when thoughts of my thesis bring me to the brink of sanity, I just have to remember the twelve nurses stacked up like cordwood in my crawlspace and I can breathe easier. With a mask, but easier.

As months go, this particular August could potentially be likened to driving naked on a fourwheeler into a sun-bloated deer carcass at 40 MPH. The entire month could consisely be summed up thus:

Domonic was informed that he has less than three months to finish his MA thesis or else his department will unceremoniously "release the hounds" on his student records; his office experienced record numbers of new and, if I may be frank, profoundly "needy", internationals, all of whom firmly believe that they and they alone are the focal point of the universe; the "cat" now has to be locked into the doorless laundry room and held at bay with three count them THREE baby-gates because he had begun howling at the door for his morning feeding at FOUR AM and, finally, there have been five doctor visits in the past thirty days with one more on the way.

A typical day in August/early September for Domonic:

4 AM: Awaken to unearthly moans coming from under the bedroom door; the "cat" had inserted his muzzle completely under the door itself and was howling through the gap between it and the floor. When I arose to hose the cat down with the Squirt Bottle of Divine Intervention, he would quickly run away and hide under furniture because, and I swear to the infant Jesus, he KNEW HE WAS BEING A COMPLETE FUCKSTICK.

6 AM: Alarm goes off. While showering in the dark, I begin the slow process of bracing myself for the unyielding horrors that await me in the office - horrors which, while muted by the fantastic Orientation we had this Fall, began in earnest weeks beforehand. Oh, I see: you're on a livestock-filled lorry in the middle of Equatorial Africa on your way to get your visa today and you haven't, as of this moment, gotten your I-20? Good. Yes, good.

7 AM: Begin 45-minute commute to work. During said commute the thought of my impending thesis completion makes me so physically ill that I nearly have to pull over to vomit a load of righteous bile onto the grassy shoulder.

Noon: Healthy Choice microwave lunch: on today's menu, Gristly Sow Cheek in a Watery Trucker-Phlem Sauce on Overdone, Mealy Pasta. With a caramel-apple "dessert."

5 PM: Begin the 45-minute commute home behind two vehicles travelling at the same speed in both lanes, five miles under the speed limit. iPod chooses this particular astral moment to shit the bed and sepulchral silence fills the car.

6 PM: Arrive home. In the mail: bills. On the mat outside the catbox: a decaying lake of catpiss. In the air: the piquant aroma of unwashed dog, feet and said catpiss. Candles cannot fix this smell; first beer of the evening is opened and slammed.

9 PM: Golden Girls on DVD.

10 PM: Bedtime.

Things are fine now. But I tell you, if it werent for Little Debbie snacky-cakes, sourdough pretzels, Diet Pepsi "Jazz", the Golden Girls and cüceyim, I don't know what I would have done.

Though I'd like to think that it would have involved ninja-stars.

Until next time, I remain,

Domonic (Iliveamanforbid) Potorti

The end of the innocence.

The brush with death by parasitic infestation and subsequent utter dessication in Mexico City had taught me several valuable lessons.

1) Sometimes, even when it may be socially less-than-gracious, it's OK to politely refuse food and drink if you know that it probably contains foreign bodies that would enjoy nothing more than to briskly drain you of your energy, your body's resources and, eventually, your sweet life. If someone is peeved that you decline to consume an undercooked chicken neck, that person is not your friend. S/he is, in fact, Satan.

2) If one plans to nearly perish of, say, a debilitating case of the Hershey Squirts, it's handy to have someone around who fluently speaks the language of the country you are in so as to minimize actual mortality risk. "The Spirit of Adventure" can be damned all to Hell on that one.

3) One only actually means "I will never eat another thing as long as I live, so help me sweet Jesus" until one recovers from said affliction. Really, Jesus, I didn't mean it. I want to eat again. Me gusto comer.

4) Liver flukes are never your friends, no matter how much they tell you that they are.

Our last night in The Big Enchilada was spent in, of all places, an Irish pub in one of the city's swankier suburbs. And by "suburb" I mean "an urban enclave that, most likely, contained more people than the entire state of Maine." We'd deferred to Hugo to choose the restaurant on that particular evening as a hearty thank-you for dragging our whiny, white silly asses around a city the size of Switzerland. After listening to a live band cover Coldplay songs, drinking Guiness and creepy weird margaritas and, most importantly, consuming victuals that hadn't been prepared with corn products, we stepped outside into the "fresh" air of a Mexico City evening. It was at this point that a small commotion from the opposite side of the road caught our bleary, smoke-crusted eyes. Apparently, the entrance to a small apartment complex had gotten blocked by a random bar-goer and one of the tenants - a man who clearly could crush a Brazil nut out of its shell using only his neckrolls - had returned. He'd returned, and by the sweet infant Jesus and his rose-scented mother, he desired nothing more than to broach the sanctity of the complex. We came to know this because he blocked traffic on that side of the road for nearly ten minutes attempting to honk the car into petty nonexistence. When this failed - and as the sheer number of vehicles stacked behind him grew to a critical mass of unadulterated rage - he clambered into his vehicle and turned the block. Disappointed that the scene hadn't devolved into a Thai-style fistfight, we almost missed it when he returned from the other side of the block and parked next to the offending vehicle. Then, as we stood rooted to the ashy sidewalk waiting for the valet dude to return our Japanese rental car, Mr. Button-Mushroom Genitalia dug around in his pockets, withdrew a cluster of objects and then proceeded to

key the motherfeck out of some random person's car

That we were witnessing a crime in broad daylight wasn't to be disputed. Most interesting, though, was the fact that he was clearly not just scratching random lines into the [white] paint of the offender's car; no, he was noticeably drawing things and, perhaps most insidiously, writing things. We weren't close enough to have admired his artwork and, I have to be honest, even if we were I probably would have begun to sob if I'd gotten within ten feet of this particular hominid, but it gave us pause. Why take the time to festoon the vehicle with products of creativity when simply scratching the hell out of it would be just as affective?

The answer was, of course, that time was all this guy had. Time, and Honda keys. Time, Honda keys, and a predisposition for equine steroid consumption.

And a fantastically small petie.

***

Until later, I remain,

Domonic (disturbed,yetlikewatchinganaccident,onecannotturnaway) Potorti

Without further ado.

Mexico City

Part One: 2 AMish, Hugito's bedchambers

***
Cost of a round-trip flight from Indianapolis, IN to Puebla, Mexico: $375

Cost of a rental car for twelve days: $600+ USD

Cost of the enchilada that did you in: $2.50

Waking up with a malarial fever in a foreign country, entrails poised to eject themselves from your basest orfices and bathed in your own precious brine, only to wonder if you have repatriation insurance: Priceless.

***

I'd been having the most extraordinarily vivid dream. In it, I'd managed to somehow ingest a completely living Fijian blowfish while I was simulaneously being vivisected by a filthy carnie who paused periodically to partake in the sooty pleasure of his Erlenmeyer flask filled with crystal meth. As he savaged me with what I can only assume to be one of those damn "Larry the Cable Guy" baseball-cap fish-hooks, an imp appeared to spray a tincture of bleach and lemon juice mixed with ocean water into the gaping crevasse that had become my abdomen. All told, it was a good time for all.

Needless to say, when I awoke into the predawn of a midsummer Mexico City morning in a bedroom I scarcely remember entering, relief caused me to be not nearly as concerned as I would have ordinarily been. I was interested, though, to see that I had managed to wind myself, shroudlike, into my bedclothes, which were unpleasantly clinging to my moist, Swedish sauna of a carcass. My eyes felt as if two charcoal briquettes had been inserted into my orbitals and, when I moved any portion of my anatomy outside of the shroud, the cool of the room assaulted the choice extremity and reduced it to a pallid, shivering mass of protoplasm.

Oh, I was stoked.

As the part of me that hopes and dreams was cooked alive, kicking and shrieking, I became slowly aware that my problems were not entirely fever-related. OK, there was nothing slow about it - I sat upright so quickly that the bedroom momentarily swam out of focus as blood rushed out of my head and tried to remember the layout of this particular Mexico City condominium. Of particular interest was the room wherein my salvation would lie.

The throne-room.

*ten minutes later*

As I mentally set all of my affairs in order in a sliver of pale moonlight on that black (I dunno, either), mercifully cool commode, I began to bemoan my fate. True, I'd not been careful with my consumption, but when one is presented with a single option (eat what the family is eating or subsist entirely on the ginormous bottle of water I'd stashed in my bag), you have to hope that things turn out for the best. As I felt every single electrolyte escape from my pallid, ashen body at speeds I generally associate with Formula One racing, I knew that Luck, that vapid wheezing cooze of a temptress, had FMITA yet again.

I returned to the bedroom and mummified myself against the damp cool of the early morning. Lying corpse-still so that I didn't ache like I'd been assaulted with a ballpeen hammer, I remembered with a start that this day was to be the day that I was forcing my uncle, his friend, my cousin Mary and our guide, Hugo (Hugito) to take me to the largest anthropology museum in the Americas, the Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

And there I was. Moments from utter dessication. MF.

***

Dawn came and with it - why even bother? I thought - a large, egg-laden breakfast and a please-make-it-so-that-I-don't-have-to-wear-dignity-pants bluish pill. A look in the mirror in the hall confirmed my worst fears: I had begun a slow, yet relentless transformation into a largish, ghastly hunk of human jerky. And all of this before a half-hour drive through a city where traffic regulations are the merest whispers of suggestions and where, as my cousin Mary aptly put it, "I feel like I am breathing dirt."

[adventure!]

***

Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia

Part Two: 10ish: I am the Bat-God.

The mere act of walking to the entrance of the museum was likened immediately in my parasite-laden mind to a Soviet gulag death-march, but it was hot and, uh, people all around seemed to be happy, enjoying themselves with ice-cream, fruit-in-a-bag and lovely agua fresca. As I began the grim task of counting which of my organs had failed, I decided that I wasn't going to let something silly like a parasitic load keep me from one of the highlights of my trip.

Mind over matter.

I studied the map of the museum while we were in line so as to immediately memorize the location of the twenty or so restrooms, knowing full well that this knowledge would mean the difference between me having an OK day and me wetly taking a dump in my pants in a crowded, clean and foreign museum. As I silently cursed myself for not honoring my Boy Scout training and bringing a change of trousers, we began to make our way into the vast halls of Mexico's past and present, which had been attractively labeled and displayed for our viewing pleasure.

I won't bore you with details of the museum itself. The internet is a wonderful thing, and if you want to know more of what I actually "saw" that day, I urge you to Google its sweet ass in your own time.

One thing was clear, however: I seemed to have been the only one that lovely Mexico City afternoon who had held lively, animated conversations with several key pieces of statuary.

Me: Good afternoon, Creepy Zapotec Bat-God Mask. How's it hangin'? Upside-down, yeah?
CZB-GM: Haha, asshole. What do you wish of me?
Me: Well, seeing as how this entire experience will later be chalked up in my mind to a paralyzing bout of Montezuma's Revenge and the accompanying dementia, I suppose I can be frank. Where should I seek medical attention?
CZB-GM: Dude, don't ask me. In my day, a toothless old woman would have given you a llama placenta which you would have had to have eaten, raw, while standing waist-deep in the urine of several hundred young boys.
Me: MF. No wonder the Spanish took forever to whip your asses. You guys were totally HC.
CZB-GM: You're telling me. Say, you don't happen to have one of those corn-liquer enemas on you, would you?

I met up with my uncle and began to tell him about how much I wanted to die. To my -relief? - he told me that he'd also been stricken and that he, too, had been speaking to inanimate objects all morning long. As I sat on a bench in the little courtyard watching Mexican schoolchildren in curious little boarding-school uniforms cavort about heedless to my impending death, he left to seek medical attention for us.

He came back about fifteen minutes later with a sack of magical dust he'd procured from the nurse on duty in the museum. This dust supposedly, if I drank it suspended in two liters of bottled water, was to restore my stolen electrolytes while providing me with the bracingly delightful opportunity to pee every seven minutes.

With the aid of the horrid suspension, I miraculously managed to see the whole museum AND spend some time bathed in the splendor of the gift shop. While in the gift shop, I found myself looking for something I couldn't really place. I knew there was something I had to procure, and after about fifteen minutes I found it: a black-framed artsy postcard of the Bat-God mask. As I stood at the counter with pesos in hand, I looked down at the card and could have sworn that the creepy mask had winked at me.

***

Stay tuned for the final installment of the Dom Goes To Mexico series, wherein I travel to gorgeous but slightly troubled Oaxaca and make my way back to Tlaxcala AND Huajuapan.

Soiling my drawers the whole way.

Until then, I remain,

Domonic

PS. OK, I am not a whore for readership, but my counter says that only, like, ELEVEN people a day stop by. FTLOJ, send my page to friends! Send it to enemies! Send it to that ex of yours whom you wish would be beaked to death by a savage flock of sandhill cranes! If I haven't posted recently, I have

TWO HUNDRED NINETY

other older posts archived by month!

Help a brothah out!

Interlude: The anniversary.

I, too, can scarcely believe it.

This blog is 2 years old today. Two years and nearly 300 entries. All told, when compiled and printed, this blog is over

FOUR HUNDRED PAGES LONG.

I've written a book and I didn't even know it.

Anyway, when I return, the final chapter in the Dom Poops His Pants in Mexico series.

Until then, I remain,

Domonic (transparentfortwowholeyears) Potorti