Tijuana Dust by Cruz Nicholas Medina

Author:Cruz Nicholas Medina [Medina, Cruz Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-06-11T12:00:00+00:00

“Enrique, no.” Someone said from behind me.

“No Enrique,” the same voice repeated.

The grip on my shoulder and belt loosened, as the big guy pulled me back from the edge.

“Hey man,” a guy said, approaching me as Enrique let go. “Sorry about my primo. He gets drunk and fuckin’ jealous because his girl likes to go around with other guys.”

“Shit,” I said, straightening my shirt. “That guy needs to chill.”

“Yeah man, sorry. Let me buy you a beer,” the guy said motioning to a waiter who had seen the whole exchange.

“My name is Ricardo,” he said. “What’s your name amigo?”

The waiter came back with a round of Dos Equis and bottle of Patron tequila that he set in the center of the table. The crazy, big guy Enrique sat across from me and didn’t say anything else. We all took turns throwing back shots. My stomach was brimming with Cuervo, but the Patron went down smooth. Ricardo joked and gesticulated with his arms the entire time. Pretty soon, I had a girl sitting on my lap, rubbing my thigh.

When the bill came, Ricardo pulled out a roll of fifties and didn’t say anything to me about money. He asked me to come out with him the next night, and a whole slew of nights that blurred one into the other.

After a few weeks of partying at bars and strip clubs, Ricardo said he wanted to take me to a bullfight. Ricardo stood out in a crowd with his red leather jacket and peacock colored shirts that he said were “Dolchee and Bersaché.” But he was also the first guy I knew who could walk to the front of any bar in Tijuana and be taken straight to the VIP section. From golden-tanned waitresses, he ordered tequila poppers with Patron and girls always seemed to gather around us. A punk kid from Chula Vista San Diego, I partied in TJ for a couple years before I was in the right TJ bar at the right time to get in good with Ricardo. Even if his ponytail was a little too Steven Segal for me, Ricardo impressed me. After a night of shots, he told me, “I’m gonna take care of you Martinez, make you one of the familia.”

And I liked him better than my family. It’d only been a couple weeks and he wanted me to “Mira los toros en vivo.” I was excited because my father had been a gambler and bet the horses before he bailed on my mom and me. He was a lousy gambler, but claimed he had a system. I remember my mom shouting, “Your system, your system. Always with your goddamn system.”

“It pays,” he said. “You just got to play it long enough.”

My mom would ask, “Well what’s long enough? Long enough that I have to ask my parents to borrow money to pay the rent that’s past due?”

My mom could be a real ball buster sometimes. And it probably didn’t help that he slapped her around.

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