January and May

Greg sez:


No, it's not January now. Neither is it May. I'm thinking, rather, of the cross-age relationships that may spring up in Mexico between gringos and natives.

Just as in Chaucer, where the old miller marries the sweet young Alysoun, so today the old seek the young ... and may be sought by them.

Rolando and Jessi in the back seat. 

I'm thinking in particular of our friend Randall, an old NC hippie in his 60s, who retired to these parts several years ago and is renting a house in Tlaquepaque, an artsy town adjacent to Guadalajarda (not on the lake). Randall, or Sr. Rolando as he's called sometimes, has had a succession of novias, or girlfriends, here, as he's a mover and shaker of sorts. The most recent is a young gal of 30 named Jessi (say "Yessy"). She accompanied us the other day to Mazamitla, a good looking gal who could almost be a teen, what with the armament of braces on her teeth (Rolando's gift?), her ready giggle, and her youthful shape.

Jessi wasn't feeling so hot and tired toward the end of the trip. She reluctantly accompanied Rolando and Jen up the stone-paved road toward the cascada but stopped short, with them, of going the whole way. On the way back, she leaned sleepily into Rolando, and he himself was conked out. (Was anyone but Jen and me wearing seatbelts? Pepe and Omar weren't. Jessi wasn't. Ah, the invulnerability of youth!)

Jessi told Rolando, evidently, when they first met that if the difference in age bothered him he could vamoose. He hasn't, whether he is bothered or not. (I know he is hot and  bothered: wouldn't you be? Besides the comforts and elations of the flesh, Rolando has a great new project started up, I believe, that I may help him on. It's called the Horizontal Language Learning System, you see, for those who learn a language through the intimacies of the couch. You will see, and hear, here words and phrases you won't encounter in any polite tourist phrase book.)

Just a day or two after our trip, then, while I was walking up on the carratera, or highway, I espied walking hand in hand another January-May couple -- this time, a withered gringita in her 70s and her 30-something Mexican boyfriend. No, I didn't take their photo. I didn't interview them at all. Rather, I stepped back, staggered, and admired their chutzpah.

(Who says things have to end as in Chaucer, where Alysoun betrays her ancient husband with two students, one of whom tells her he longs for her as the lambkin hungers for the teat? A highly comical story, to be sure, and reflective of reality. But reality is various, mysterious, perhaps inexplicable. And so, for now, I rest my case.)