1985. The trip that started before my life in Mexico started.
The first trip is always the one that does it.
1990 was not my first trip to Mexico.
In the spring of 1985, I was a senior at Clarion University in Pennsylvania. A band geek. Marching band, jazz band, concert band. I played the baritone sax. The biggest in the saxophone family. It was almost bigger than I was. The university announced a trip for the symphony to Mexico. The director said they didn’t need a bari player. But if I could learn bass clarinet, I was in.
I learned.
The harder part was the money. My parents were going through a rough spot. I may have embellished the home situation when I pleaded with the director for a scholarship. I got it.
The only other big city I had ever experienced was a field trip to NYC in high school.
Landing in Mexico City, I had a nervous excitement I had never felt before. Spanish was not really spoken in the US at the time. At least not in Pennsylvania. Everything was foreign. VW Beetles, trucks, horns, men pushing diablos stacked with cases of Cokes. The city felt enormous and small at the same time.
We were told no shorts. Prostitutes wore shorts.
One evening a group of us girls went to a bar around the corner from the hotel. Guys took turns singing songs in Spanish and we would sing them back in English. Happy Birthday, back and forth, two languages. That night a car literally jumped the curb in front of the tuba player in her scooter-skirt.
I spent one afternoon sitting on the steps of the Presidente Hotel flirting with the doormen. When they got closer, I’d scoot up a couple steps toward the doors. They’d back away. I’d scoot back down. Nobody said a word. Teasing on the staircase.
Our first concert was at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. There was no internet. No photos I had scrolled through beforehand. So I had zero expectations. Inside, the ceiling made the space feel cavernous. I was sitting in the middle of the orchestra, watching people filter in through the doors at the back of the room.
I had been playing bass clarinet for six months. I was faking it and I knew it.
But when the music started, the acoustics took over. The sound blended and filled the room. The music hung in mid air. Whatever I was honking got swallowed by the hall. Only me and the person sitting next to me knew.
We played three concerts.
One day we toured the ruins of Teotihuacan. Arid, dusty, the sun scorching. No people hawking t-shirts, keychains, or ceramic mini-pyramids. On the way back we stopped at some roadside stalls. I bought some obsidian bookends and a handmade tablecloth. My mom still uses it. At this pitstop I had my first taste of pulque, a fermented drink that dates back to pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica.
The next morning off to Acapulco.
Acapulco was small then. People sunning themselves. Little kids swimming in their underwear, clutching their mother’s leg. Barkers with their wares going blanket to blanket on the sand.
Saturday night we played at Sinfonia del Mar. An open-air amphitheater near the famous La Quebrada Cliffs. Our backs to the sea, playing into the carved stone seating that amplified our sound. Waves crashed behind us and seemed to blend with the music. Across the water you could see the Tarzan House, once owned by Johnny Weissmuller and John Wayne. After the concert, our hosts provided mezcal in bamboo shot glasses. They told us to just shoot it back. It was vile tasting. We all shot it back anyway.
Our last day was Easter Sunday. A bunch of us attended mass. Not in one of the churches like Mexico City, the ones that looked like architectural art. This was a cinderblock building. Unfinished. Rebar protruding from the top of the support beams. One block back from the hotel, one block back from the beach, and it could have been a different country.
Five months later, an earthquake leveled parts of Mexico City. The opera house survived.