Seventh Letter: Something Intensely Darkwave

Nearly two weeks ago, I was practicing bachata on Boots’ terrace, cigarette in-hand. I was sweating with the 6 o’clock sun and a couple shots of bootleg mezcal. The mountains of Del Progreso loomed in the distanc, blurred by the smoke rising from the mercado. In that moment, wordlessly, I knew I’d finally done it. I’d dug out a little pocket of life I could slip into here, a space that felt like mine—for now, at least. Even Boots is impressed with my rate of adaption.

I was comfortable and having a damn good time. I was excited for the coming month. Now that I had found my footing, I was ready to buckle down and figure out how to monetize my writing.

Oaxaca has a way of upending expectations.

I don’t say this as a strictly negative thing.

I hadn’t expected to get laid in Oaxaca–not really. But by my second hostel stay, I had a french guy railing me in the one and only shared private shower. I fully expected my lover in the states to give me the silent treatment about it. But he didn’t. As a Seattleite, I feared I wouldn’t touch a good latte for at least six months. but Oaxaca’s espresso culture had evolved since my time here 2021. I planned to be on the beaches of Puerto Escondido by January, but a last-minute change left me hustling for housing. Somehow, I managed to score two weeks of rent-free living and secured a one-bedroom starting in February. (I have no websites or Facebook pages I can fully recommend for this. I’ve discovered word-of-mouth to be most effective.)

I also contracted the most aggressive case of food poisoning I’ve had to-date.

It hit rapidly as I was on my way to a posada (read up on posadas here) with my newfound amante. Boots calls him Chilango because he’s from Mexico city; I call him Cuervo because he’s smart, gives me sweet things, and listens to Darkwave. We were walking into a Piticó for a bottle of wine when I knew something was up. I was running hot and actively stripping off my sweater. My head swam as we paced the aisles looking for our options.

By the time we got into a cab, I was unsure about how I would feel in an hour, but was committed to our destination…for about seven minutes. Cuervo patted my thigh with his tattooed hand, cradling a bottle of white in the other. I put my head on his shoulder and tapped out.

“Quizas, me siento mal?”

We were hardly outside the city limits at that point. He told our driver we had a quick change of plans and gave the driver his address.

On our short walk from the drop-off point, I joked, “Maybe, I’m pregnant.” (Which is a weird thing to joke about only a couple weeks into a fling.)

He laughed softly and said, “I don’t think so.”

Two or three hours later, I was hurling and shitting liquid in the dark of Cuervo’s bathroom. Initially, I thought it was a little strange that his bathroom was disconnected from the rest of his apartment. But the more time I spent there, the more I realized how genius it is. Not only would he never have to pass by an unwelcome waft or hear the labor of my morning shits, but as my entrails spilled forth, I fantasized maybe he wouldn’t have to witness this either.

Ants crawled around under my feet as I crouched.

By the third round of puking, he handed me a chair to keep in the bathroom and scampered away as I threw my head back to the toilet bowl.

In my life, I have these moments where my instinct to run and escape is so equal to its futility, I’m not quite sure what to call it. Like if fight-or-flight had a violentlysurrender™ option. Sometimes, the feeling gets so bad, it collapses in on itself and I go into a state of shock. Something like a panic attack, but worse.

The first time it happened, I was in sixth grade watching a maturation video with my classmates. A cartoon showing the various stages of pregnancy had me feeling intensely drowsy. I put my head down on my desk. Then I flopped back onto the girl next to me and had a seizure.

It happened when I got my first trans-v*ginal ultrasound and I was still a virgin. I fell off the exam table and woke up to shadow of the technician towering above me. My fists were clenched above me in defense. I was humming.

It happened after taking a tab and a half of acid with a friend who turned out to be a narcissist. The LSD uncovered this detail a little too late into the experience and all I wanted was to get out of his apartment. I was at the tail-end of the trip when I took the chance on twenty-four hours without sleep. I got lost in the streets on my way back to my car and the drive home was terrifying. The freeway from Seattle to Tacoma snaked up around me while my hands cramped around the steering wheel threatening to let go in a fit of dissociation. I fought my body’s shock by screaming Frank Sinatra’s “Witchcraft” all the way home.

I felt it when I hiked up to Camp Muir on Mount Rainier. Level land was gone and all I had were melting hills behind me that ended with boulders. I couldn’t help but imagine myself slipping down and cracking my head on one of those rocks. My dad and sister had to do the last few hundred feet up an ice slick without me as I plopped myself down, unwilling to move any farther.

I felt it sixty feet in the air on a challenge course, caught in a climbing net between swaying trees.

I felt it on the hospice bathroom floor when Grandma Ana was rattling in her deathbed.

I felt it when I tried to kill myself at twenty-three.

I felt it, afterwards, in St. Joe’s flight-risk facility, too.

And, I felt it in the hospital at 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning.

As my fever built, I tried to get Boots to send me contact info for a doctor that could come to me at Cuervo’s place, but Boots was drunk and “entertaining guests.” (To his credit, he says he looked for the contact for a hard five minutes. When you’re drunk, that’s impressive.)

I realized that I would have to take a taxi to get any help.

Even without Cuervo to confirm my suspicions, I already knew I was dehydrated. My fits of vomiting were coming faster and faster like labor contractions. In the D*D* (Mexican Ub*r), I certainly felt like I was birthing something from the depths of my guts.

We got caught in a traffic choke at one point next to the Virgen de Soledad’s fair. I looked up and out the open windows in time to see a massive acrylic mermaid on a pirate’s ship staring down at me. I felt like an insect smeared out on a bike path. I bobbed with the car as it jolted through the street.

After working our way through the labyrinth of M*l*na hospital, I was admitted to a private room.

Three nurses set to work on getting me into bed and giving me an IV port to pump whatever they could into my body. They were going in for my hand when I redirected that train-wreck. I showed one of them my tried and true and she immediately agreed, setting the tourniquet. Because I know this vein well, I averted my eyes to the remaining steps. I knew what was coming and didn’t need to be any more involved than I already was. Cuervo was at my other side, my arm in full sight, holding a wide and shallow silver bowl to my cheek. The feeling came at me then, announcing its arrival from the back of my head, squeezing. Once it starts, it’s very difficult to stop.

Then,

the Sick.

Thick sweet bile; corn yellow. It felt like seafoam to my dry mouth.

Blood from my arm, vomit from my mouth, my eyes rolling, reposed and pale on a dingy hospital bed. My body surrendered to it all like a classic renaissance painting. All I could do was lie there and leak.

I wasn’t quite finished when the bowl began to travel away from me. I strained to look up in time to see Cuervo’s grey face. His slanting lids. Preoccupied as I was, I caught what he said in Spanish. He was going down.

He fell with my bowl of puke right to the fucking floor.

The nurse working on my IV stayed put. The others rushed to him. Then, like a relay, one nurse diverted from the group to grab the bowl quickly as I retched, threatening the open air.

It happened again when I fell asleep on my IV. I woke up, none of my liquids had drained from their bags. The nurse came in and noticed, too. She told me to straighten my arm. Only seconds after she left, a horrible pain seared straight to my shoulder and neck. I didn’t know my body could sting on the inside, too.

“No, no, no.” A murmur that came from me as I pressed my help button. An ice-cream truck song came from the speaker next to it. Cuervo, who had been sleeping on the guest bed, woke up and tried to translate my tears as the nurses came in. It was so obvious to me what I was feeling, but I had no vocabulary to describe it. I could only say, “Me siento mal. Me siento mal.” I feel bad. I feel bad.

The episode was quick and strong, heading like a freight train to a stress seizure. And if that happened, all bets were off. I was going to give them a show of shit, piss, and convulsions.

I got very heavy, my ears closed, and I could barely see.

This feeling I’m talking about, it’s what I imagine it must be like before death. Or to be abducted by an alien. Or to be at the come-up of an overdose. Or maybe it’s what comes after being ripped up by a bear. I watched the nurses watching me try to claw my way out of it like a wild rabbit. I kicked under my thin sheet and roiled against the guardrail saying, “no, no, no.” My hands became thick with static.

That’s when the doctor decided to shoot me up with a slick whap of lorazepam.

A month ago, when I imagined my Christmas in Oaxaca, I knew I would probably be alone. It wasn’t an emotional thought. Just reasonable. Most people have their own families here. Or were traveling to see theirs. I imagined maybe I would walk out to the Zócalo on the eve and drink some chocolate de agua and let myself get swallowed by the crowd. Maybe I would phone my family back home and enjoy a glass of warm red wine. Maybe I would wriggle my way in with my European hostel-mates and scout who might have a joint with them. Or maybe I would just pop a Tr*zodone and fall asleep to stand-up comics on YouTube.

After Sunday, I spent the following week swallowing down horse pills of antibiotics, antispasmodics, heartburn reducers, and other unmentionables, fighting nausea every morning and evening. (I sh*t myself for the first time.)

But like I said, Oaxaca has a way with expectations. Even the smallest ones.

Only the weekend before, I had attended a Festival de Brujas with my English friend, E***, in lieu of her original idea to go to Txalaparta and dance.

“I want to dance to some Reggae” E*** had told me. “We should go out.”

While she did agree to my last-minute suggestion of the festival instead, I felt guilty when I realized too late that I had led her into a den of Gen Z goth babies. This wasn’t a festival of witches–it was just a music festival with a lot of harnesses and dark makeup in a confined space. And there was my friend, with her purse, open-toed wedges, flowy blouse,and cherry earrings. If I had to guess, she is in her late-forties (maybe early fifties). She’s quite beautiful and the way she pronounces the word Mezcalita slowly with all of its separate syllables is charming only because it’s quite bad despite her delicious accent. But I know she’s fluent in French. So, I can’t say shit.

The festival was a bit much–even for me in my white eyeliner and mesh top. We both bought a beer to ease the overstimulation. After we drained those, I lit up, and she declined a cigarette from me.

Up ahead at the front of the stage, a DJ with white hair, black sclera lenses, and a chain painted across their face was amping the room up without many beat drops. I felt compelled to move, fighting the desire to leave immediately. I danced. Everything smelled like cigarettes. Emma swayed unconvinced next to me, commenting on the appearances around her.

Turns out she was a punk in England back in the 80’s or 90’s. (Like I said, I’m not really sure.)

“I had boots and a leather jacket, back then,” she said. She had a Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshee’s poster on her bedroom door.

She also had a friend die recently, suddenly and tragically.

I was relieved when a band made their appearance. Something church-like. Something intensely–

“Darkwave,” I told her.

“What’s that?” she said.

We moved closer to the stage as the lead singer emerged from a crouched position like an egg, chanting moodily. A fog machine choked out full white puffs in the swimming red light.

Then the synth came, slow and sexy and cold, and I was so grateful.

I was so grateful in the way I’m grateful for a lover who doesn’t carry my fear and vulnerability like a burden. Or in the way I’m grateful for water at three am. Or for a fully-charged phone. Or for in the way I don’t feel so heavy with my disappointment and expectations anymore.

Two songs deep, I looked over to E***. She was dancing with her eyes closed.

Mom, if you’re reading this…