Don't learn my name
the nickname culture
Gringa, give me $10!
There’s a guy who calls me gringa or guera and I call him Brownie. I figure if we’re being obvious. I’ve never met him formally and he’s never introduced himself. He’s kind of a town drunk and maybe a meth user so he’s still in the labor pool. Doesn’t seem like anyone not needing that overnight fish packing gig or a 4am call at the ice factory would need meth.
Brownie is Martin, I’ve learned, but you have to go through 3 sets of people to find that detail. Oh, you mean El Cantante? Yea, that’s Martin. El Gato’s brother? No that’s Jesus Roberto, El Flaco. Ohhhh La Canela, si, that’s Martin.
If I address Martin as such, he replies, it’s Juanito. It’s weird that people who have four names need a nickname too. Reading the arrest details in the Cartel Times news it takes 10 minutes just to go through the Jesus Horatio Blandito Reyes “El Pinky” aka “Cerdito” was charged with 12 counts of manslaughter.
It’s easier if we just stick to Brownie and La Gringa. Most people know my name but I’ve never told anyone but my landlord and I see in his phone he has me listed as The American. Whatever works.
Anyway, Brownie wants $10. Some of the drunks will ask for enough pesos for a beer which is 25, which until recently, was a little over a dollar. But Brownie is asking for $10 dollars. “US dolares?” I yell across the road where I’m schlepping 4 grocery bags of bones and kibble. Chivalry isn’t a thing here. It’s a pretty unhelpful lot. I figured as I got older, there would be offers to carry heavy things. I’m not grandma old but I’m not “of a courting way” aka no one is trying to sleep with me, nor me them, so I can carry my own bags.
Brownie should have hit me up a year ago when I was still feeling altruistic and the exchange rate was better. I got an alarming $16pesos/$1usd down from 20 the other day. Suddenly everything is 25% more expensive. Same crap I don’t want and more money. Things fluctuate and I try not to panic. It’s still cheaper than the US where you need to auction a kidney to make a down payment on a condo you don’t want.
Mexicans in small towns and those who haven’t traveled much or who have a cousin who hangs drywall and sends $500 a month home to some pueblo in Morelos thinks that Americans are rich. And some are. About 2% of them. Some are middle class fancy and most are wallowing in debt. Lots are poor and some are living in their cars. Some call it “vanlife”, like me. Sabbatical, in between houses, downsizing—midlife reboot stuff. Your house never recovered value from the 2008 crash and the reno you spent too much on. Your career tanked during CV19. Your vanlife ended when the van got totaled and here you are living in the Mexican desert spending the last of the savings on street dogs with missing eyeballs and three legs. But a year of rent here is equal to one month in the US, so. And I could probably do better if I went further South.
Anyway, Brownie is operating on Gringo Guilt from the past. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I want to explain that if I WAS RICH I would have moved to a town with a decent market and a coffee shop a long time ago. Transport out with pets is a few thousand USDollars, so here we are. But now I really consider the pesos in my pocket. I sort of hate having to tip the lady who half ass bags my groceries incorrectly at the tienda because she keeps letting that poor white chihuahua get preggers and sells the puppies and she is always getting her hair highlighted. The rich lady who held a puppy out the car window like a dirty diaper with her dagger bejeweled nails who said I needed to take it…she has cats. And anyone who has cigarettes, satellite dish TV, or a 12pack of beer. I’m super judgey. Mean to dogs? Dead to me.
Brownie is in front of the beer store when he asks and his motives are transparent. The beer store also sells the dog kibble so $10 is about 9 kilos. I just bought tick meds and neutered the last remaining boys in the rescue pack. My choice is obvious. I just laugh and say, Nope. “You should hit up Oscar,” I say (the guy who owns the beer store, the weird motel on the other corner and who makes pay day loans with high interest to everyone) Who? Oh, El Carnita Chingon? Nah, he charges me and I have to pay him back.
The audacity.
