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The
quaint little Jalisco opal mining town in which my then future wife was
born has dating rules which are a bit more rigid than in the rock’n’roll
culture I grew up in. To put it mildly. There, on Sunday evening, the young
single men and boys congregate in a large circle in the Plaza across from
la Catedral de Magdalena. The young single women and girls form a concentric
circle, close enough to rub elbows with the guys. These two human chains
then begin to walk very, very slowly in opposite directions, and this is
how her parents met quite properly. Luckily, they later moved to sin city
Mazatlan where real dating is allowed. Sort of. Sometimes. Maybe. I’m almost
ashamed to admit that I went out quite a bit with another señorita, but
since I never got to first base with her, I don’t consider her an ex-girlfriend.
She looked a lot like Katy Jurado, the Mexican actress in High Noon who
tells the wimpy Quaker Grace Kelly that if Gary Cooper were still her man,
she would fight alongside him. Anyhow, this lovely señorita spoke proudly
of her pure Spanish pedigree. She sneered at the USA’s culture and lack
thereof, but avidly watched the worst Hollywood movies. And she loved to
eat at the finest restaurants in town. It was a great introduction to the
good life in Mazatlan. We’d go to Mr. A’s, the Shrimp Factory and Los Arcos,
we ate and drank like royalty, and it was all so incredibly cheap, compared
to taking a classy babe out on the top of the town in Seattle. She would
order something extra to go, maybe a dozen oysters and a box of ceviche
de camaron, so she and her Mama would have something to snack on later.
As Groucho used to say, with a table between us, she looked like Venus,
but all that fine dining was taking its toll on her waistline and my wallet.
Finally, I got fed up. On our last date, her mother tagged along with us
to the bullfights, and the old girl drank me under the table. Meanwhile,
my future wife and I were not dating, rather, I was helping her with |
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her homework. She was in her senior year of French and English studies at
the University of Sinaloa, and I was playing the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
For our first non-date, we met at the restaurant where she worked. She ordered
nothing, just said “ Vamanos.” I started to flag down a taxi, and she laughed,
“You say you want to learn Mexican ways? Let’s take the bus.” Back then,
she was too skinny and with her bag of schoolbooks looked a lot younger
than her twenty-five years. She told me I reminded her of her late grandfather,
who had been a drunken musician. It was all so unromantic, and I was getting
nowhere with her, month after month. Until my mother came to town for a
week. The power of the maternal figure here in Mexico is impossible for
most Americans to grasp. Anyhow, What’s-her-name was so impressed with my
Mom, a retired professor who still looks like Teri Garr, that suddenly I
became husband material and the rest is history. At this point I should
confess that, although I enjoy making fun of my mother-in-law, she is actually
very nice, helpful, even cute. She’s one of the factors that led me to want
to upgrade her daughter from amiga to full-fledged esposa. Like they say,
before you marry a girl, check out her mother and see what you’ll be waking
up to one of these days. All in all, my Mexican dating experiences were
pretty limited and not something I would want to go through again. Aside
from all the delicious food, it was not much fun, more of a means to a happy
ending. Wise men say, “The road to paradise is paradise,” but the road to
my personal paradise was kind of boring. I mean, can you picture the Fonz
telling Richie, “Listen, Cunningham, whatcha gotta do is spend six months
wid da gramma books and stuff, and den when she’s all warmed up, ya bring
ya mudda down for a visit. Score!” I think in heaven you do your dating
in the good old US of A, back in the carefree days of drive-in movies and
vans with waterbeds. But when it’s time to settle down and raise a couple
of mosaic tile rats, “Viva Mexico!” |
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