Mary Sands

Excerpts from Honor Rock

June, 1991. Puesta del Sol hotel. Beautiful poor maze of tiny buildings, thatched roofs, open arched windows. Immersed in a bevy of nut palms and banana trees, leafy protuberances knocking at screens each night. Think to ask owner of hotel whether any nearby places are good to rent. Maybe should ask Theodore, local fisherman also from Europe, southern France, where to go--what to do. Finally buy netting. It's an imperative. Not that I haven't had my share of bugs and strange sea fish and creatures flashing by my skin on land, water, but mosquitoes here are deadly. First off bus from trip inland to see ruins, someone says two people have contracted Malaria. I put repellent on the netting and also my skin. That seems to keep them out. Everything so tropical here, but the jungle draws me. It is the outskirts of life as I've known it 30 years. People co-exist here. Reminds me of why I came: Zipolite Beach. Not nudity I'm after, but the flock of expats who've made their way here. Reminders of life they too left, even though they try to be different--they only take their ideas somewhere else. Good surf, interesting people. Though not my type either, wholly. I never felt so free as to bare my all to people I don't know. Nothing can take me from where I was raised, and how I was raised, even jungles and ruins caked in slimy air sweat thousands of miles away. It's not only like being in a different county, but in a different time-zone, on a different planet. Surely the same elements exist in this atmosphere: oxygen, carbon, traces of helium, zinc, nickel. Yet what a poor nation--junkyards like shimmering apocalyptic Christmas leftovers. Strange shiny streamers, chrome bellied by sun, stench for miles (remember road to Zipolite, off highway, never again; they say more toll roads will be built).

September, 1991. Baja California Sur. San Jose del Cabo. Ho-ho-ho. First major stop in Mexico. Passed all other areas due to night driving. Finally is morning, and I am wiped out. Sleep it off 'til noon in back of jeep. Dumb thing to do maybe, but too tired to travel anywhere to find hotel at 4:00 a.m. Wake up to butterfly sitting on nose. Am happy I don't believe in omens, but still delighted. The Baja riverside village, nothing about it but passengers on a trail. Tons of them. This is the outback up to Cabo San Lucas. Am parked on lonely mesa that overlooks the Rio San Jose. Make my way inward for coffee and huevos. Breakfast at cantina on the Marina. Surf is flat. Go east/west? Cortez-side, Pacific side?. Choose west, take off in jeep after shower and find lovely surf here. Assiduous set of waves, which I take to immediately, joining up with a guy named Scott and his wife Ann, who also surfs. Great couple, and they warn of sharks. We drink wine that night at his little hut on beach, then go back out next day to be greeted by two dogs, one with a bandana around its neck. I am to get used to beach dogs and possibility of sharks. "Come back in April, you see whales," says Scott. Surf more, tired and wonder whether to ferry over to mainland. Will do, but must secure some money exchange. Traveling further to El Sur, says everyone, watch your back. Swim in Sea of Cortez, tanning body, feel like a raisin in the sun. Hair is getting longer, blonder. People eye me strangely. Feel removed. Can't believe three weeks ago told boss to fuck off, NYC shit, sold everything, packed up jeep. Got here. Need to get Mexican car insurance.

Zicatela, 1992. May. Nothing but rain, and for days. Had caught rad swell last week and surfed it for three days before more rain came. Mudslide took out part of the old barracks on hillside north of beach. Floods made everyone move inland, up to hills. I stay with a girl named Pam, from Illinois, who came down here some odd seven years ago or so. She's generous with her humble ramshackle house, but is nursing wounds she doesn't care to talk about. Spends nights shooting cocaine into veins. She's got two regular boyfriends, if that's what you want to call them. The whole place a disaster. They come and share her coke, and she's off to her tiny bedroom, where plaster is falling and shadows cogitate. I sleep in hammock out front, try to ignore sex sounds. Think of doing the coke myself, pass it up. Drink cheap wine instead and stare out to the wild Pacific below. Can barely see it, so much rain. The rotten smells here, pork rinds everywhere. Chickens cluck outside, a goat brays. I finally leave, thank Pam, see her empty eyes nod, sorry she hadn't gotten me to bed. Tear down hillside to find jeep sitting in three-foot high water. Manage to get it out with help of a few local fisherman sitting around bonfire, ruing the rain. Drive inland and spend entire night at a real hotel where I gorge on beer and choirzo tortillas. Feel sick later, but have bed to sleep it off. Rain, rain, rain. Will it ever end? Need to find real place to stay. Am thinking of Zipolite Beach, which has been settled somewhat by Europeans who run naked. Curse this humidity, I think.

January. Year? Finally paid Guillermo advance for room in hut near Zipolite. Too tired of all the hullabaloo there! Freaking sandal-makers, Jesus hippies, free free free. Run like children into the waves. Beautiful in some ways, I think. But this ain't Woodstock. Litter everywhere. Some organization tries to clean it up. A celebration of the dance here every night. Bongos, tiki-torches, strange shadows. Guillermo is cool, a fisherman with steady eyes and hands. Builds his own pangas to sell. Has a special eye for red snapper. Sells his catch each day to local restaurants. Tourism has brought Mexico a dollar or two. Guillermo is part of the equation. Tourists, yes I am one still, I think--miss Belgium, too, and parents--but tourists! Come here to get back to primitive ideals. Get more than they bargain for. Some girl gets raped and killed, pure daylight. Terrible ordeal. Local police really need to get a clue if they want this extra income to their country. Ah, the horror of such a place. Yet the barracks is a nice little home. Still, it's becoming disheartening. Giving surfing lessons now to earn extra income. There's enough rich children come this way to really learn something they can do in their own country. I don't charge the fishermen's children. Hardly make any money at first at this, 'til I sign a deal with a local agent. Part of a hotel package. Feels like I'm selling out. Fish with Guillermo, too, and he pays me my half. Or it goes toward rent. Need a new board. Need to stay, need to get out. But where to go? Everyone I meet has been both a stranger and a strange insight to myself.

Puerto Angel. 1999. Mid-July. Met Amanda. She watched me surf two days at Zipolite, followed me back to cabana where we watched sunset. Thought all was well, spent night with her. Then next day she talks of a hashish connection, her main business down here. I take off, she says "screw you, Mr. high-mighty." All good women are somewhere, not here. Didn't feel right with her body. Nobody's body. All to touch is the surf, forget the women from here on out. Crank up my headset at night, listen to Count Basie's "April in Paris," think of Ostend. Purer days. What am I doing here? Oh yeah, I remember next morning as a panga takes off from shore and a mutt barks behind it. I see the righteous swells coming in just for me. Dive in for a swim and then surf some. That's where it's at. Nothing else. Thought I saw a shark fin, got out quickly. Spent rest of day lazy in hammock. Thinking. Surf lessons keep me renting these bungalows. Meanwhile Guillermo back at hut in hills. Good home to know as any, I wonder. Guillermo hardly around, anyway. When he is keeps to himself, and when he talks has show of morals unlike others I keep meeting. A hard-working fisherman, that's all. I go home tucked away by myself. Just how I like it. Listen to sometimes jazz, sometimes older stuff that kept me occupied stateside: Smiths, The Damned, turn it off--go back to jazz to get rid of the noise. Operation: solitude. Been all over these parts, down to Central America, up to Baja, over to the gulf side. Each place, everywhere, some new wave, some old scene. People are junkies or poor, sometimes both. Tourists come in sets, like waves. Some are choppy, some are perfect. Expats seek around like me, sometimes establish themselves on little hillside or beach huts, raise naked children or no children, get a little cantina going or volunteer to save exotic turtles. Drugs are everywhere. Junk is all over. You never saw a crumbling grotto 'til coming here. Mules are everywhere. Chickens everywhere. Beautiful mothers and their tiny ninos sit out on porches days in innermost mountains. They smile as you drive down their isolated road. They wave to offer "clean" water (you spit it out when they're not looking and splash it around your face instead). Little brown faces light up, try to sell you grass or vanilla. You buy, feeling sorry for them but wondering later if they have the real life. You give your watch to them. That is the 19th watch you've bought in the last nine or so years. Wave good bye. Drive days to the next beach. Run along white sands to dive into the womb that makes everything alright. The board your placenta. At night, a grapey sky covers you until the stars come out. I think about Mary and cover up with the flesh of the night.

December, 2000.

In the beginning, all was invisible, the sky was immobile, just water, just the quiet ocean, the silences, the night; then there came the word. - from the Popol Vuh, ancient Mayan scriptures

Flew on one-pilot small plane from Playa de Carmen to island of Cozumel, in the Caribbean Sea. Left jeep with Guillermo and his fisherman buddies who'd come to Calicia to scout eastern beaches for barracuda (got a 50-pounder, made shark-steaks for fiesta and sold rest). Subtropical Yucutan Peninsula is best place in Mexico I've been yet. No surfing this time--went diving near Villa Blanca Wall, mesmerized by terrific sponges and gorgonias, and awesome schools of jacks and angelfish. Visibility goes down at least 150 feet; the reefs here are surreal. Spent two days by self before joining up tiny celebration on west side with small family who saw me walking rugged nearly across island; invited me for meal of Wahoo and sat outside with head of household after dinner, smoking pipes and drinking Belekin, a beer made locally. Talked long into sunset and after about marriage and settling down. Said his wife is his cornerstone in life. Most important outside his children. Made me think hard as I hiked back to my camp that night. Darkness and frogs sounding so golden. Next day woke to indigo waters lapping the white sands at limestone-edged shore, thought wow, time to go diving again. The turquoise and other shades of ocean breaking on sands and further out are some of the most varied strata of blues and greens I've seen.

July, 2001. Think of Mazaltan. Think of Elaine. I wonder if I should offer to visit. What a pleasant woman after such long, silly years. In search of waves, you find that the perfect one is blown along at an utter moment that cannot be totally predicted. It becomes perfect in the moment you ride it, and more impeccable in hindsight. Each part of the wave is its own equal composite: movement, texture, speed, momentum, curl, barrel, wake. The external factors such as wind, skill of rider, mindset of surfer...in all actuality, as well as the superiority of the surfer's movement during each turn, twist...to combine these things into the soup, one bite extremely gratifying, more than you can ever remember. Ah, waves are like raindrops. They come around often--if one lands precisely at the edge of your eyelash, you commune with it and always remember it.

Waves. Raindrops. Perfect Soup. Too many analogies. Hahah, silly Bron.

Women. You find great ones and poor ones. You screw up on some great rides, make the most out of poor rides. My friend Hans said the perfect wave was in northern Africa. He said the perfect woman was in southern Italy. How he managed to find both in one lifetime? I used to envy him, 'til I realized he just got lucky. Maybe I will too. I gave up on women until Elaine. Something about her. The grace with which she hiked into the jungle with three sorry-looking guys. Wow. Her soft golden hair like the halo of the group. Her light brown eyes, like a doe. Her stubborn antics, calling Peter an "ass"--hahah, you can't get purer than that. It was such an innocent word at the time. I gave her a stern look, but turned and smiled. She just got out of a love in which her guy really fucking took her for a ride. Made her feel as though she were the worst person on the planet. Not worthy of his attention--all in a period of a few weeks after he'd wanted to marry her. Not the first time it's happened to her. I hope the last. Does she go paint her toe-nails and eat bon-bons? Go dress up and meet the next savior in a nightclub? Find someone rich? Go fuck the next goon? Not this one. She comes down to Mexico. She stays out of reach from her parents, also here, and chooses a less-traveled pastime. Goes to the mountains to recollect her wit. Is not frightened, but is. I can see it all; she's so vulnerable. Still in love with someone who treated her with no greater compassion than a doormat.. How can you love someone who is vulnerable? Others do it all the time, easy to use. So what can I do but hold her one night in my hammock. Be a friend. Reminds me too much of James Taylor or something. Too sentimental and mushy. But we strike a chord, I know we do. She even wants to surf, and we get out and she keeps trying. Finally stands up later and won't quit then. Could there be a more perfect woman?

She thinks I'm being charitable, and invites me to come down with her to plush Huatulco, Bahia de Tangolunda, to meet her parents! Groovy people. Her step-father concerned about her, too protective. Mums, the mother, a giggly sort with serious ambitions for her daughter. We eat at Maguey Bay's Cameron Gigante, drink Sol beer. I munch on calimari and seared ahi. Remember my predisposition, pre-Mexico, to places such as this. After years in the jungle and callused feet, I'm still no stranger to the comfortable side of life. I could have either, if only one side always had the door to walk out and see the other side. Still prefer the more primitive side of things where there's less pretension, but face it, I feel older. Elaine makes me feel younger. Our birthdays, can I believe it, are two days apart--born the same year. She breathes out fresh air, reminds me unknowingly that I always wanted to settle down, but long ago gave up the dream. For a dream to blow my way like some perfect wave--unpredicted, perhaps even accidental for it to have all the composite parts hook together so immaculately--she fills my nights and days, even when she's gone back to her home in Laguna Beach. I remember her selfless opinions, her charm with the locals, her solitude upon rethinking her life, her intelligence and wit, her desire to keep going, her blanket of friendship that was easy in coming, her sensual nature, her touch. We never slept together, not in the vernacular that most people would think. I wanted to kiss her when she left, but we held hands instead. Like a flushed schoolboy, I drove away with major lust. And later wanted her back, couldn't fathom she was just another tourist with nothing to latch onto. We write, talk on the phone. I want to go be with her, let her know who I am with her--a stranger to myself, a product of old dreaming that settled instead on primitive beaches and illimitable watching the sea for that wave to ride. I had stopped endlessly searching horizons for women, and here comes the perfect one. Yet with women like that, it is not like a wave. You don't ride them once and always look back in nostalgia. Women need more. I do too, I realize. But am afraid, hesitant. What if I go and she is hooked back with her ex-lover, living in some fancy house and painting her toe-nails? What if I am wrong?

Costa Rica. Jungle. Hitched ride with toothless native from Zicatela. His old jalopy with no suspension, a terrible crotch-ride and surfboard bouncing out rear seat. Convertibles here are not the kind in old movies, where lovers cruise PCH up to the wonder of Monterrey and eat chicken by the sea. It's not Cary Grant eating chicken out of a picnic basket. The driver's name is Leonardo, and he smokes rugged Himalayan marijuana in home-made bowl. I offer to drive, don't sleep much. Spend nights on top of jalopy being eaten up. In half-sleep, mosquitoes become helicopters buzzing overhead, clipping my skin. Bromeliads inland, Caoba trees like cypress but flatter, the shorter tea and red mangroves have hummingbirds flitting about, small thorny Viscoyal palms, flowering Panama palms, wild plantains, big swamp trees with trunks that'd make large hollowed-out canoes. I know they exist, and here I am getting stung and bitten. Takes two days to get here. I immediately don't even shower, head toward surfside cantina for cold beer. Meet Tamara, big Amazon woman of the sun! She lets me shower in her room at end of street. Filthy barrack hotel. Hotel, if that's what you want to call it. Madame's house, without the plumes or perfumes or canopy beds. The shower water's brown, and the soap some kind of lavender masked by grimy finger marks. Tamara is brown and bodacious. I get too drunk and end up almost fucking her. Can't. She's living in a dump, no telling what she's got. Instead buy her drinks 'til she passes out and I go on my way to cheap bungalow. Lose Leonardo (how to get back?). Lose surfboard. Next day find Leonardo passed out in his jalopy. Can't believe my board's still there. Take it and go hit the waves. Choppy water. Bath-temperature water. I wonder if wax is melting off my board. Board is severely dented from pot-hole trip down here. I give it to a boy on the beach who doesn't speak English, Spanish, or Portuguese--the latter two are languages I've learned a little. He happily goes out to body surf on my old board that had stayed with me for five years, since New York.

2001. Dear Elaine,

Miss you bunches, to be sure. Went to Mazatlán a couple weeks ago and led a pack up through the same mountains we hiked in, Sierra Madres del Sur, only up toward the Sea of Cortez. Had great grueling ascents in said mountains, with too a little oasis down into Copola for great banana cream pie plus visits to old mining places in the quaint village. Lots of fun. Pedro joined in again (he says hi). Am now at a Zipolite rented bungalow, giving surf lessons to the trendy hipsters who come here to shed clothes and get back to nature. Damn huts, increasing by the week. Population of beach: 2,114 (exaggeration, though sometimes I wonder). Haven't been home, ten miles east, as my jeep's in the shop, but hope to hear your sweet voice on my machine or get some kind of good letter. Be well, loves and kisses--Bron.