Update for Abena: Mexico & its aftermath

DEAR ABENA! I have decided to honor being back in touch with you by being back in touch with myself (my on-line version, that is). I am frightened by the idea that someone is Germany is actually reading my blog. Not for their sake, but mine -- my narcissism is already itchy to expose myself even more now! Incidentally, the words "itchy" and "expose" should really not go into the same sentence, particularly in a pubic, um, public forum. If I were an editor I would censure myself.

This, written after five days in Mexico with my love. It will be a month since we've seen each other when I go pick him up on Thursday.

August 31, 2006

I smell tequila in the air from my broken $35 duty-free bottle, probably cracked but unwrecked from a plastic bagged check-in. Still no liquids on planes, as with no shoes, which, having been instituted in 2002, is an indication of how the days of check-in-free travel have probably come to an end. I have to admit that a part of my anxiousness about getting home right now is not only to do with having to bear with the vigilante immigration officer in Atlanta, the re-check-in, the added security checks, the added hour to departure time and then the added hour sitting duck waiting for clearance. No, I need to get home so I can fix this bottle and salvage 100% agave 3 years in the bottle for my brother-in-law’s birthday. Think he’ll accept it in a couple Snapple bottles and a jello-cup?

The smell of tequila gives a different ambience to my midnight wait for Jersey transit. Fuck the baggage carrel. Carousel. Would it have worked properly I might have made the 11:41 instead. Now I feel like a renegade minor-league-model runaway with a drinking problem. Back from Acapulco with the last of my coco dulces and tamarindo candies attaching themselves gobule by gobule to my subingual line as I suffer this wait knowing that the wait for the AC at Penn Station – where the real alcoholics groove alongside parentless clans of touristing teenagers (why are they here? Why are they so loud? Why are they so tasteless?) – and the trek to Bedford-Nostrand means for Mel a grand total of 15 hours journey from love to normalcy and a vast, vast unknown.

Acapulco. Mecca of the fake breasted and leather-thonged starlet: Miami meets Hong Kong meets rural beach shack. The site for the shoot was owned by a sun-blacked man named Domingo, which, along with the location’s priceless sleepy castaway setting, made me look in the shadows for evidence of Friday and Crusoe himself. A 45 minute van ride and worlds away from our residence at the Hyatt, our Argentinian models were prepped on the glamour of sandblasted white plastic beach chairs, fed fresh-caught fish on long damp wooden benches and tables, and immortalized with their plastic beach smiles by the gift and artistry of my baby.

Baby I miss you. Interjection. This is what love is – a limitation to one’s tolerance for unnecessary people, because when your world only makes sense with one in particular you’d rather stare at wall textures then deal with predators and imbeciles.

Very happily was I made a companion golden labrador for the day of the shoot. Awake at 5:30 to be on-site by 7, I made the most of my guilt-free impromptu holiday squiggling calligraphy in wet sand with my tondus and toes, triangle-posing to the rising sun over a vista of palm trees, distant rocky hills, rising mist from excited breaking waves dusting bullet lines of sea birds fishing for a decent desayuno. A sweet-faced man that I only notice later is bearing a rifle approaches: “Do you want to see turtles?” A short walk to a protected harvest area, I dig with my too-long-nailed index, carving swirls around little black heads attached to flailing cartilaginous flippers. Newly hatched. I don’t believe the conservationist there when he says that naturally, were they to be digging their own way out, it would take them two hours. Maybe they hesitate from the vibrations of our presence, but their complete vulnerability and spasmodic flapping makes me think them yet weak diggers.

The babies safely bucketed, under the nearby tent I am feeling nothing but guilt and magic staring at a bucket of day olds and a water-filled hull of two-day-olds. By three days, these creatures will be set free into the ocean, and by a hundred years will be the size of suburban family dining table. Guilt? Only because I know Jose would love to see this. Magic? I am made a princess thrice over. Plus I score a terrific photo of beach dogs staring at me as I walk back to site, affirming my happiness.

Brooklyn. Morning: He calls. He’s arrived to Madrid and his family heaviness. He sounds fatigued. I don’t recall hearing the phone, picking it up, or answering. All I know is that this morning I woke as the last, his presence naturally and unassumedly intertwined with mine.

What is dance? Interjection. According to the man I love, dance is masturbation, and I agree. It is also mastery. My choreographer Maija encourages me to allow yourself to be mastered by the technique (masturbated by the technique, Jose?), to lay yourself substrate to its power, history, and knowledge. And to the fact that it has and will continue to outlive your conscious existence. Well, I added that last bit. But it’s true.

She says she sees herself at a younger age in me: the most dangerous dancer in the room, because its so personal and unforgiving. The problem is, the worst danger you can be in this situation is to yourself. But I refuse to feel inadequate, I refuse to self-sabotage. I will ride this wave of chance and newness.

.... Today, September 25th, I realize I might get in trouble now with this confession. Please don't be hurt by the fact that I didn't tell you, Mum, about flying to see Jose last month. It was sudden, and I didn't want to alert everyone about a relationship I wasn't sure was going to work out! But it's working out .... so far ... !