BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS (1985)
Monica was only 19, but she was fearless and resilient. She was ALWAYS going to power through so DON’T WORRY ABOUT HER.
I had graduated from NYU in 1984, then traveled in Europe that fall, and then flown back to New York at the end of December. My next move was to ride the Greyhound bus cross-country to Portland, taking the southern route, so I could do a side trip into Mexico.
In the meantime, I was couch surfing in New York. My former NYU girlfriend, Monica [not her real name], who was a sophomore in the film department, let me stay with her in her dorm. When I told her my Mexico plan she wanted to come too, not so much out of love for me, as out of jealousy that I was gallivanting around the world, while she was stuck living the dorm/cafeteria life at NYU. Monica was a person who was hungry for experience and adventure and was very ambitious about her future film career. She didn’t like it when other people did interesting things that she believed she should be doing.
I was still somewhat in love with her, so I agreed to this plan. She had several weeks winter break and I had no time restraints at all. So we’d go to Mexico. She talked to a classmate of hers whose father lived in Brownsville, TX, which is the southern-most tip of Texas. We arranged to stay with his father. I knew this classmate as well, he was an odd, but interesting guy. So the Brownsville stop seemed like a good idea.
Monica and I got on a night bus at NY Port Authority, in the dead of winter, in a snow storm. I still had the same unwieldy suitcase I had dragged around Europe. Monica had her efficiently packed super eight movie camera, her regular camera and a ton of film.
We’d traveled for about two hours when the bus broke down and we spent the next 6 hours shivering inside the freezing bus on the NJ turnpike. I don’t remember how they got us out of there. Monica at this time was only 19, but she was fearless and resilient. She was ALWAYS going to power through so DON’T WORRY ABOUT HER.
The bus finally got us clear of the East Coast winter and three days later we pulled into the balmy Brownsville bus station. We called our friend’s dad, and he came to pick us up. He arrived in a giant Cadillac. He was a big, thick, Texas guy, wearing aviator sunglasses and talking a great deal. We pulled into his apartment complex and went into his apartment. On the kitchen table was—I’m not making this up—several tall stacks of gold coins (Krugerrands?), several bundles of American and Mexican currency, and a sawed off shotgun.
Monica and I looked at each other. He then showed us the extra bedroom where he’d rigged up a double bed for us. He continued to talk. He was in the currency exchange business. We were a little nervous, but also a little thrilled. What crazy adventure had we stumbled into? Monica always had to be tougher than me, and more streetwise, so she was fine with our host having a sawed off shotgun on his kitchen table. I was less into it. But also somewhat intrigued by the situation.
After lunch Monica and I went for a swim in the pool of the apartment complex. It was thrilling just to be in Texas. The ominous grey skies, the tropical humidity, the lightening rumbling in the distance.
That night we walked around downtown Brownsville. Neither of us had been in a border-town before. When we wandered off the main street, we were shocked by the shacks and shanty-town living conditions. There were little wooden huts selling tacos for nearly nothing. There were tiny stores, dimly lit. You could buy cokes out of ancient glass-faced refrigerators. Everyone spoke Spanish. There were chickens wandering around in the road. And children.
I probably said something profound to Monica, like, “Brownsville seems more like Mexico than America.” Monica was taking pictures of everything.
We went back to the apartment and slept through more thunder and lightening that night. It was a pretty exciting situation. My balls-to-the-wall girlfriend. The mysterious electricity of the Texas night. Our host with his stash of gold and guns and cash.
The next morning, our host gave us a taste of his working life when he drove us over the Mexican border and into Matamoros, Mexico. He knew everyone at the border. There was a lot of joking around in English and Spanish, and not much checking of passports or credentials. Once over the border, we cruised through Matamoros in the big Cadillac. He gave us a tour of the town, including just enough details about his business operations to inflame our imaginations.
He dropped us off at the Mexican bus station. (We were headed to the city of Monterrey, Mexico, two hours to the south.) We thanked him profusely. We were also aware that for him, it was probably fun to occasionally expose ordinary people like us to his world. I also reflected that his son was at NYU, studying the dream-constructing media of film. And here he was, living just such a dream-life, but for real.