My Life in Clothes by Summer Brenner

Author:Summer Brenner [Brenner, Summer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Published: 2010-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Monkey Suit

After six weeks in the Yucatan, Simon and I hitched a ride from Merida with a lepidopterist who insisted on stopping every few miles (on dangerously narrow roads) to dash about with a net until he succeeded in trapping and pinning an exquisite specimen of butterfly. I watched as he exercised the superiority of our species, the principle (inspired by science and religion) that man will always have inferior beings to kill, eat, convert, and kick around.

Our trip transpired over a couple of days through backwater Mexican towns (Chable and Catazaja) filled with beggar children whose ingratiating smiles were dingy, black nubs. “Where are their teeth?” I asked with alarm. They had no proper teeth because during pregnancy their mothers had overdosed on antibiotics (available at pharmacies without a prescription along with codeine cough syrup, a favorite of gringos).

We arrived in Palenque, high in the Chiapan jungle. Our sole intention was a visit to the temples of the Mayans, and after spending a night at a local campground, we set out in the morning by foot. A friendly American couple in a VW van stopped and offered us a ride. They knew nothing about pre-Columbian splendor. We were equally ignorant of the crop of psilocybin mushrooms, flourishing in local pastures. When they dropped us at the ruins, they handed us a jar of honey dotted with discolored nubs (the size of children’s teeth). Honey, I would discover, was the best way to preserve, disguise, and transport illegal mushrooms.

We trucked up the road on an unmarked path into the mist-drenched rainforest where a pyramid appeared in the clearing like an hallucination (who needed mushrooms?). The near vertical ascent up the temple steps was terrifying. Climbing down into the interior even more so.

An ancient guardian of the site, reminiscent of Charon himself, held me firmly with one twisted hand while he tapped the stones with his staff. The narrow passageway of steep steps was slick with humidity and haunted by gloom. We descended slowly into the deep tomb. Dating back to 222 BCE, the tombs beneath the pyramids (unearthed only in 1952) once contained giant pearls, jade and obsidian masks (since removed to the Chapultepec Museum in Mexico City).

Palenque was a small, off-route town, quickly familiar. In one of its two cafes, we met a young Mexican (dressed like a college student) who attached himself to us. “They’re federales,” he whispered, his eyes sweeping across everyone in the room. “They arrest mushroom hunters. You like mushrooms?”

We weren’t sure. However, we agreed to drive with him into the countryside of rolling emerald-green pastures, violet mountains in the distance, fields enveloped by soft moist air, and a canopy of cloudless blue sky.

Around us, a herd of Brahmin cattle munched happily except for the silvery bull who eyed us sideways with a proud, wild look of dominance. Briefly, he let us admire him, then lowered his candelabra horns, and kept them lowered until we turned around.

We retreated to the far end of cleared land where pasture met rainforest.

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