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Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life

Foreign Desk
Mexico
by Kirby Olson ||
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Dear Andrei and Co.,
     
     Here's a hot tamale incited by Rex Rose's excursion by proxy in the Corpse cafe into Mexico the summer last.
     I enjoyed your latest excursion into porno-land mixed with terror. I wonder if you remember the piece by Andrea Dworkin on Saudia Arabia as the world's worst place for women. But it is totally free of pornography, at least for the hoi polloi. How did she put together this equation? How does her jihad against pornography square with the fact that the place  least amiable for women is also least amiable for porno? Should we therefore conclude that porno is good for women, because in this place where porno is punishable by crucifixion, women have to wear those fucking burkhas? I'd write an essay on it, but it would be short and mean as a black gnat in the Alleghenies at sunset. If not, please enjoy my excursion by proxy into the fabled land of the taco. It's so PC you'll want to pour on the tabasco sauce.
     
     - Kirby Olson



It had not been long after I had embraced the Mexican aesthetic when my wife began to grumble.
     "Your feet are now your shoes, and you sleep in a poncho, what next?"
     It's true that I had begun to sleep a lot in the afternoons, but even I was stunned when I found myself surrounded by cactus and stars on a clear Texan night, preparing to swim the Rio Grande.
     As I crossed the river, I met many compadres going the other way, but long have I known the attraction of opposites - they were fascinated by the platinum jets and the strange regularity of attaché cases; I was attracted by a country where no two things were even remotely similar, not even two eyes in the same head, according to my travel guides.
     I was lucky, the Mexican border patrol was taking a siesta. I had grown a moustache and dyed my hair black, and had taken along a little guide to Spanish grammar. I had heard there were American enclaves around Mexico City, so I headed there on a colorful little bus pulled by a happy-go-lucky donkey.
     Seven years later, we arrived. I had grown accustomed to the pace, the language, the climate.
     My first day in Mexico City, I landed a job in an experimental chromosome factory. I ate a gila monster sandwich on a taco, drank guava juice, and felt I was fitting in. All around the city were gigantesque pyramids, where monsters roamed, speaking languages forbidden since the conquistadors.
     I awoke in the middle of the night to find eyeball regarding me. I turned on a light. Creatures of various sizes stood around the room, escapees from the genetics lab. They had shrunk themselves and fastened themselves to my clothes, and walked out with me. I should have worn a lab coat, like the others.
     They began to attack, making themselves small and running at me with clubs. I squashed them like bugs with my feet. They quickly learned and got bigger, bashing my head with their clubs. I laughed. They stood there, dumbfounded that I had won them over with my intimidation and soon I had an army. We marched on Mexico City that night. We were easily beaten and I was thrown in jail. I called my wife, who called our Senator. It had been so long, it was thought I had renounced my citizenship. My wife flew down, bringing me a cup of coffee and an aspirin. The gene monsters remained devoted, and sprung me. We live in the hills now, training to be thespians in Mexican shadow puppet plays, plotting nothing, amidst the timeless hills of Mexico as the green sun disappears in a mirage of tricycles.

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