Okay, here's the deal: as the tax year draws to a close, I realized that I can claim the costs of my travels this year as business expenses as long as I write about them here, earn at least a penny in upvotes, and convert that to fiat before 2018. If I'm wrong, then fuck it, let the IRS read this series of quickly-written posts and then tell me that I'm wrong, but that's my understanding. I have no intention of avoiding taxes (although I will just as soon refer to those taxes as il pizzo), since so many people tell me you can't escape death and you can't escape taxes.
Still, I can tell you three times I cheated death on 17 March 2017. So let's talk about it!
Alright, I've got a dear friend who lives in Mexico City. Here's the two of us at la Casa Azul in 2012... oh damn it, that photo is on my external hard drive in another state. Fuck it, I need to get this written, and I'm sure she knows how deeply I will regret it if she would prefer I not post a photo of her, but still, you all deserve to know that a deeply wonderful person exists on this Earth. Introduciendo Chess:
If you live in Mexico City, just know that I'm jealous. Your city enchants me and I adore the whole of its population.
Anyway, so I go down from Minneapolis to Mexico City every once in a while to hang out in a room above Chess's cafe, Estación del Té (Diego Arenas Guzmán 233, Col. Villa de Cortés, Delegación Benito Juárez), pictured here:
I sleep on a bed in the room with the window on the upper left. I took this photo in March. Although some graffito-rapscallion (I bite my thumb at him for putting cheap wildstyle letters over the delightful mural) forced the original artist to paint another one while I visited in August (when I met, among others, the wonderful writer of Libretita, and also when I locked myself in the courtyard and made myself sick eating limes all night), let's get back on topic: the events of St. Patrick's Day, 2017.
Unfortunately, my accursed former employer (and reliance on that income) would force my return to the United States the next day, so instead of having breakfast at the cafe, I thought I would go for something special: specifically, una torta Cubana especial, just because it's the most expensive item on the board of a vendor in the park across from the cafe.
Don't order the Cubana especial unless you are eight people. That sandwich stands twice as tall as the maximum width of my mouth. Of this I had been unaware, and felt now that life had offered me a challenge: one similar, in a sense, to the night I spent trapped in the courtyard simply because I felt too proud to call for help.
Just as I would in August, I accepted the challenge in March, and I sat down in the park to eat what seemed to have the proportions of a royal wedding feast. Let me tell you, I worked to eat this sandwich. I mean, I became exhausted and felt light-headed from the effort, and for a moment, I simply just feel tired.
In my next instance of consciousness, however, I'm laying on the ground with a crowd of police, paramedics, and civilians surrounding me. Evidently I had begun to choke on that sandwich without knowing it, because a gentleman named Juan Carlos (teased as "Juan Diego" or "el indio" just as I am teased simply as "güero") performed the Heimlich maneuver on me. The police then took me back to the cafe as a precautionary measure, whereupon I discovered most of that giant sandwich now covered my shirt, as the aforementioned writer behind Libretita can attest.
So, that's the first time I cheated death last St. Patrick's Day. The second time came a few hours later, after I'd recovered and changed my shirt, while Chess and I went walking to the store for some cafe supplies. She walked on my left, and the street ran along our right, and I turned my head to her while we talked. For that reason, and because I'm rather tall in comparison to the average Mexican (193 cm vs. 162 cm avg.), I ran into a tree's low-hanging branch, which struck me in the forehead and knocked me not just into the street, but into the path of an oncoming mini-bus. (If you're a Mexico City local, you know the ones I mean: the green Volkswagen with drivers who look about fourteen years old and drive like it too.) Oddly enough, this isn't even the first time I've almost been hit by a bus, but whatever: the driver hit the brakes in time.
So, that's the second time I cheated death on St. Patrick's Day. At this point, Chess says, as a joke, "You've been born again! Ahora tu nombre es Patricio." Personally I spell it with a Z, because that's the first initial of my given name (and I'm an Italophile), but that's "por qué me llaman Patrizio."
But! We've got one more death-cheating instance. Alright, this one pisses me off a little, because I had been planning to go see Trainspotting 2 that evening, but anyway, Chess has a dog named Maty. I'm just on the second floor playing with Maty, rough-housing maybe, whatever, but the problem is, I'm wearing socks, and the cafe's whole interior is tile-floored.
While playing with Maty, I slipped and fell down those fucking stairs! Not even to the landing where the stairs reverse direction: I actually tumble from the second floor of the building into the kitchen. Fucked my shit up, yo, and any one of those stairs' edges could have cracked my skull. No bueno en absoluto, 'man@s.
So, that's it. Me llamo Patrizio. Ciao!