“So she said that he said he thinks about her brother when they’re fucking” Elisabeth said, glancing up from her BlackBerry.

“Really? That’s weird,” replied Angela.

“Yeah, real weird. Does that, like, mean Michael’s gay?”

“I don’t know” Angela replied. “Maybe he just likes her brother better.”

“But, like, why would he tell her that? She’s not even breaking up with him.” Elisabeth went back to reading, adjusting her Ray-Bans against the harsh Acapulco sun.

The two girls were on spring break with ten others from Cornell. The group went out clubbing every night, but was wont to get split up as things got messy. Michael’s girlfriend and her crowd had opted for a different tropical locale for their trip. Though it was meant to do the opposite, this split spring break between Cornell’s bright young things had already fostered a great amount of gossip (which they took to calling “goss”). Here, in Acapulco, they had to put their shoes in closets to keep the scorpions out.

II*

Bill, who had lost his watch somewhere between Palladium and Tabares, was unbearable. “My girlfriend gave me that watch” he moaned, repeatedly. No one among the assembled company liked Bill’s girlfriend very much; they were not inclined to care. Michael, who was not yet drunk enough to be losing things, knew he had about 10,000 pesos in his left pocket, in addition to what was in his wallet. He was unsure of how many dollars he had subtracted from his checking account at the ATM outside Señor Taco’s. When the barefoot native who promised cocaine disappeared, Tabares was the next logical place to go. The bouncers were midgets with submachine guns and the waiters moved about on rollerskates. Michael, aware and embarrassed that his girlfriend had shared one of their many secrets with Elisabeth earlier that day, left the table and sat down in a vacant seat facing the stage.

A bosomy dancer with coffee-colored skin made love to the pole and, as Michael finished his drink, caught his gaze. She signaled to a roller-skating waiter dressed as a coal miner, and he returned in seconds with a chilled glass of champagne. Michael threw 1,000 pesos on the stage.

At approximately 4:13 a.m. Michael was very drunk and the dancer he had decided to call Lolita bent down and whispered in his ear “where do you stay?”

“La Cruza,” he responded, “vivo en La Cruza,” handing her the remaining pesos from his left pocket.

Lolita met Michael at the door, draped in a sheer aubergine gown, perched atop aqua McQueen heels. She was stunning; he wanted to be her. An armed midget hailed them a cab and as they slid into the backseat all he could muster was “vamos a La Cruza.”

Lolita held his hand for the duration of the cab ride, attentive as he told her about how his girlfriend back at Cornell spread rumors about him being a pre-op transsexual. When they arrived at Casa Mariana, the villa in the shadow of La Cruza, Michael considered haggling with the driver but ended up handing him the remaining pesos in his wallet.

As Michael closed the garden gate and led Lolita up the dimly lit marble steps, she turned to her right and admired the view of Acapulco; the boulevard, the bay, and the colonial fort opposite the villa, all 400 meters below. Then she craned her head up and to the left to examine La Cruza, a 35-meter monument to Mariana’s tragically deceased brother, an Acapulco landmark visible from anywhere in the bayside city.

“One night when she was stoned out of her head she admitted to me that she had told it,” Michael said, “she had started these rumors…What this chick does is—and she’s an expert at this—she starts a rumor and says, ‘Michael, I heard that so-and-so said this about you. I didn’t want to tell you, but I thought I should tell you.’” Michael and Lolita were naked, swimming in the pool. The rest of the party (including Bill, Angela, and Elisabeth) had left Tabares around two and were presumably asleep or at large in search of Señor Taco. Lolita pushed the hair back out of Michael’s face, behind his ear, and asked him with her eyes to continue. Or maybe she was coming on to him—he was too drunk to tell.

“Then she says, ‘I know how to fix it.’ And I’d say, ‘How you going to fix it?’ and she’d say, ‘I’ll talk.’” The sun was beginning to rise, a glow around La Cruza, and Lolita was lovingly caressing his body; his arms, his chest, his head. “And then she’d work it up into a thing where suddenly 20 people were all crazy about it—by then everybody was nuts over some rumor about something. And she’d say, ‘Let’s organize a dinner at Ruloff’s—we’ll get a table downstairs and get it straightened out.’ I did this a couple of times, mind you. So I went, and we’re all sitting around, wondering what the fuck we’re doing. She goes on about how awful it is to talk about someone in this way, that there are real transsexuals out there who are suffering because of what she called their ‘affliction,’ but it turns out she’s the one who started it. It’s her way of finding something that would annoy the shit out of me.”

Lolita looked up from playing with his dick and said “she is your girlfriend?”

“She’s pure evil, that’s what she is, especially when she coughs it up one night that she started these rumors when she was so bombed out of her head that she didn’t know whether she was coming or going.”

“Oh,” said Lolita, disappointed that he couldn’t get it up.

The maid was stirring and the gardener, who they called Raúl Raúl, looked anxious, peeking around the corner of the master suite, to pick mangoes. It was 7:36 a.m. Michael decided it was time for Lolita to go. “Vas de La Cruza,” he said, hoping his message was clear. She protested briefly in her quiet, demure way, but consented, climbing out of the pool and into her evening wear. The dress was startlingly see-through as a result of the dampness on her skin. Michael envied her, radiant in her beauty, the object of so much desire. He signaled Raúl Raúl, still partially in hiding, to drive her home. As she descended the marble steps, the sun peeking over La Cruza, he called after her, “I think I’m gay.”

“Sí,” she replied. “Ditch the bitch.”

III

Michael slept for three hours before waking up to drink black coffee and smoke unfiltered Mexican cigarettes with Raúl Raúl. He had missed breakfast, but after drinking for almost 12 straight hours didn’t care. He made his way to the kitchen to retrieve a beer, popping the cap with the opener on the wall next to the refrigerator, to continue the bender and erase his memories of Lolita. “The hair of the dog that bit you,” as Raúl Raúl put it. Michael joined Elisabeth, Angela, Bill, and the rest of the spring break crew next to the kidney-shaped swimming pool, all sharing the goss from the night before and enjoying the hazy but stunning view of Acapulco in the daylight. They were above the humidity, which settled like a fog over the bay below.

“So we got in the cab and told the driver ‘queremos Señor Taco’” said Angela.

“Yeah, and then he drove us around the boulevard for twenty minutes before finally settling on this little joint that was definitely not Señor Taco’s” said Elisabeth.

“All we wanted was a little yayo, but apparently that’s too much to ask in a city ravaged by the drug wars” said Angela, gesturing to the mountains beyond the bay, where Raúl Raúl had told them in a sad voice that gangs were killing each other over rights to the corridor between Central America and the U.S. border. An American tourist had been gunned down on the boulevard the week before the group’s arrival.

“Michael,” said Bill, “what did you end up doing after we left Tabares last night?”

“You stayed at Tabares last night?” asked Angela, incredulously, operating on the theory that Michael was a homosexual. Elisabeth rolled her eyes.

“Yeah,” said Michael tiredly. “I brought a stripper back here and we banged in the pool.” This lie was pretty standard for Michael, an obligatory exaggeration for his friends’ benefit.

A chorus of “ew” went up from the assembled group. Just then, one of the cooks appeared with a tray of freshly sliced mango, followed by another with a tray of mimosas, and the Michael-Tabares-stripper subject was dropped.

IV

The group was back at Palladium, drinking at a table next to the dance floor. They had taken tequila shots before leaving Casa Mariana and were in a state of ebullience. Bill was considerably more bearable than the night before, but Angela and Elisabeth were miffed about Michael’s cheating on his girlfriend, who they had promptly messaged after the mimosa brunch.

The Casa Mariana group’s reputation had preceded them, and as they had made their way through the entrance’s metal detectors a magnum of Moët and a platter of strawberries were prepared. They were quickly ushered to this prime real estate by the white-coated club owner; followed by a procession of three wait staff bearing the bottle of champagne (now festooned with sparklers), the tray of strawberries, and a tray of twelve crystal glasses.

This activity attracted the attention of a well-built European man with a strong jaw line. He caught Michael’s bored gaze from across the dance floor. Michael, drawn to him and his expensive-looking suit, quietly excused himself from the table, putting down his glass of champagne and stubbing out his cigarette.

The European introduced himself as Julian (with little trace of an accent) and asked if Michael wanted to dance. The latter preferred to get a mixed drink from the bar first, trying to work up the courage to dance with this intriguing man. After three more drinks at the bar, imbibed in quick succession, Michael and Julian danced out of view of the Casa Mariana table, drinks in one hand and each other’s hips in the other. When Julian made a move to kiss him, Michael assented, enjoying the touch of another man in a way he never thought possible.

Michael’s friends left without him, trickling out in waves to seek out Señor Taco or prostitutes or, in the case of Angela and Elisabeth, sleep. He felt free to enjoy Julian. They danced, talked at the now-abandoned Casa Mariana table, and shared a few stiff gins and tonic, sipping from the same straw. Michael felt himself getting drunk enough to crave cocaine when suddenly Julian propositioned him: “Do you want to come back to my hotel?”

“Yes, I would,” replied Michael assuredly.

Back at Julian’s hotel, which was on the bay side of the boulevard, Michael quickly disrobed and sat on the edge of the king-sized bed waiting for Julian to be done in the bathroom. When he emerged he was naked, which excited Michael in a way he had not experienced with Lolita. Julian fell on top of Michael as he approached the bed. Michael explored the former’s body the way Lolita had his.

“Is this your first time?” asked Julian, noticing Michael’s slightly uncomfortable demeanor.

“With a guy, yeah” said Michael.

“Well, I’ll be gentle.”

V

The Casa Mariana group unloaded their bags from the VW guagua, assisted by Raúl Raúl, and entered the tiny Acapulco airport. They were leaving behind the mangoes, the scorpions, the clubs, the view, and new experiences. They did not, however, leave behind the goss. All wondered where Michael had been when he wandered back into the villa as they were loading up the guagua, but his face told of good news so they left it up to decidedly wild speculation.

“What the fuck do you think he was doing?” Angela asked Elisabeth in first class.

“Fucking?” replied Elisabeth.

“Fucking whom?”

Michael thought about Lolita and Julian for most of the trip back to Ithaca, wondering how he could combine his desire to be one with his desire to be with the other.

Notes

All places and characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real places or to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2012 Thomas Naples.

* Some of the dialogue in this part of the story was gleaned from “Michael Cimino’s Final Cut,” a March 2002 Vanity Fair article by Steve Garbarino. The full text is available here: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/classic/features/ciminos-final-cut-200203.

Update: Two commenters using the real names of Diplo & Switch and listing Mad Decent e-mail addresses assure me that Switch is still very much a part of Major Lazer. What do you think?

I attended the public visioning meeting in December, and the ideas I was most enthusiastic about had to do with agricultural tourism, green technology, and higher education. I’m happy to see these things included in the report.

A song for 2012–workout, partying, driving!

This song has been stuck in my head aaall day. Also, obsessed with Kimbra.