RAH RAH RAH !

In a few hours I'll be flying out of Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and landing in Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport. No wife, no kids, no alarm clock, no commute and no "stackin' cheese". It's time for some communion. It's time to slip "The Ghost of Tom Joad", Chuck Berry and Giant Sand into a car's cd player and to don the sunglasses. It's time to inhale hot rural desert air that grounds me and infuses my spirit. It's time to misbehave with a childhood friend and together conquer lonely Interstate-8 at 85 miles an hour again. No golf, no beach, no fancy hotels. A swimming pool, yes. But, I have to soothe my thirst with the truly naked Sonoran Desert. I have to speak, think and dream in Spanish for four days straight. For me, this is a basal way to regenerate. It is compulsory and it is a way to bind with family and friends over distance.

I have friends. I have good friends. And then, I have close friends. One close friend's name is Julio and he is my oldest friend. I've known him since I was 14 years old. Anyone I deemed a friend before Julio at 14, are now just folks I knew when I was a kid. He and I went to the same high school and graduated from the same university. His life took a different path than mine after college. For a few years there, we lost track of each other. A twenty-something marriage that ended in divorce and then a second marriage for him. A professional cross country re-settlement for me. Events like that will tend to break the link. Our childhood friendship re-ignited, however, after just one phone call some 15 years ago. There is no pretension between us. It's never a contest. I'm embraced by everyone that he knows, and everyone that I know embraces him. I can't pretend with him. There's nothing to think about, as far as we live away from each other, he is my best friend.

I called Julio a week ago. It's just been a series of staccato e-mail communiqués for a couple of months between us. The phone conversation floated as if we had talked recently. He drones about me. His concern for me always is whether I'm driving people crazy or have plainly begun acting crazy. The reason for this? He's known me since and he knows me now. He claims I'm a different fella' livin' in the big city and all. He believes that I've turned into a bit of a hyperbolic control freak. Wifey agrees with him a lot. If anything, granted, perhaps a better way to describe it, I metamorphosize or "Hulk" into that slightly askew type over a long period of time. Then, a deprogramming of sorts is in order where I then morph back down to the Bill Bixby personality type everyone wants to see. I have a generous vacation and day-off allowance over the course of a work year that is enviable. Yet, some JNJ insiders feel I do not use it wisely.

So, over the phone call, I mention that it's about time to again head out to Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico to see my two elderly uncles, revel with my cousins and their friends, eat their food and drink their ethyl. Before I could say anything else, Julio blurts out ...."LET'S GO, I'LL DRIVE YOU THERE!". I graciously tell him that I can fly to San Diego and then have one of my cousins drive me to Mexicali; that you shouldn't push aside any time away from your sales obligations. I add that a week is somewhat of a short notice. Julio remains unfazed and insists that I fly to Phoenix and together drive down there to stay the three days. He only mentions that he can't do it in June because of a cruise that he and his wife are going on. So he insists that I get on a plane soon.

This will mark the third time that he does this: he drops what he's doing and heads out on a 250 mile road trip to Mexicali with me. Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever picks Mexicali, Mexico for an "r and r" destination except him and me.

Mexicali is a very unusual city. I've had Chinese food in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. This big border city incongruently offers the best Chinese food I've ever eaten. The last time that we were in Mexicali, the trendiest drink being served at Mexicali night clubs was beer mixed with Clamato juice. The last time we were in Mexicali, I did something that would have outraged preservationists and landed 20 or more of us at a slaughter-Q in jail: I ate "Caguama". We also had "menudo" and "tripas de leche". I also drank beer and tequila like a dead man walking. The last time Julio and I were there, we went fishing off San Felipe with the gang. The high level of excess can best be underscored when a ranch hand that my cousin-in-law brought to town to help with a bar-b-q, did a tequila shot up his nose! I've never seen anyone get so drunk so fast ever.

It happens every time we both head to Mexicali, the trip becomes Thompsonesque.

Julio gets excited about doing this and going to this forsaken corner of the world.. And why wouldn't he? We become bacchants the moment his car swings bye the arrivals ramp in Phoenix when he picks me up.

I have some regrets every time I leave Mexicali. Both my uncles are getting elderly. I get a little melancholy when I leave them. I get sad when we pull away from the driveways on Calle Arista and Calle Rio Sonora. My uncles are very fortunate. Both my uncles Louie and Rogelio did very well professionally. They have no needs or wants this late in their lives except their health and youth. One suffers from early Parkinson's and the other underwent open heart surgery in Dallas a couple of years ago. I always leave hoping that I will come back and see them again, but my head tells me that both are on borrowed time. Both Julio and I know that. I remember the last time that we drove away, both Julio and I were silent for a couple of minutes. It wasn't awkward, it wasn't strange, it was how we mourned our departure.

One other thing that I regret, and it's not like it sounds, is that both Julio and I aren't single any longer. With all the beautiful single, married and divorced young "simpatica" Roses that are friends of my cousins Marcia and Claudia, who parade in and out of that one huge kitchen throughout the days that we're there, it's my marriage that protects me. It is my self-preservation. My shield. It keeps Julio and me alive and allows us to keep coming back to do this again.

It keeps us from killing ourselves........from fuckin' our brains off.

*!*

posted by JerryNJ @ 5:16 PM