She could have said, “Some of my friends are going to shove bottle rockets in our asses and then light them and shoot them at a police station—you should come,” and I would have said yes.
I told her I needed fifteen minutes to pack my stuff and strutted as calmly as I could out of her house. Then I dashed through the dark to my car, where, with beads of sweat forming at my temples I pressed my foot all the way down on the accelerator. Unfortunately the top speed of my 1986 Oldsmobile Brougham was around fifty-seven miles an hour, so it took me longer than I hoped to get home. I nervously tossed a few shirts, a pair of swim trunks, and every single condom I could find—which was about thirty—in my backpack. I drove back to Stacy’s house and she, her three best girlfriends, who had arrived in my absence, and I hopped in her friend’s Chevy Blazer and took off for Mexico.
A small Mexican beach town right next to Tijuana, Rosarito is a lot like the bleachers in Fenway Park during a Yankees–Red Sox game: crowded, dirty, and filled with thousands of loud, drunk Americans who haphazardly throw their garbage on the ground. Yet somehow it’s still kind of charming. Rosarito’s biggest draws are that the drinking age is eighteen, and everything is dirt cheap. The five of us spent the ride down the Pacific Coast Highway drinking Tecates and talking excitedly about how drunk we were going to get as soon as we arrived in Mexico.
“I’m gonna get so fucking wasted,” Stacy’s friend in the passenger seat said. “Justin, are you going to get fucking wasted, or are you gonna be a fag?” she asked, turning to me.
I wasn’t sure how she decided those were the only two paths to go down this weekend, but I clearly saw the direction she was hoping I would lean toward.
“I’m getting fucking wasted!” I screamed, trying to match her intensity.
Apparently I did, because everyone cheered, and then Stacy grabbed my crotch. It was a pretty unsexy move—and sort of hurt—but any interaction my crotch had with Stacy’s hand was welcome.
A couple hours later, we pulled up to our hotel in Rosarito and checked into our dingy room, which contained only one bed, a bathroom, and three different paintings of a large-breasted Mexican woman being carried off by a Spanish conquistador. We immediately started taking shots of tequila from the bottle we had purchased at the hotel’s gift shop. I went into the bathroom and put one condom in my sock and one in my baseball hat, just in case Stacy and I didn’t make it back to the hotel room. I threw some water on my face, patted my hair into place, and brushed my teeth.
When I came out of the bathroom, all three of Stacy’s friends were crowded around her, and she was curled up in a ball on the floor, crying hysterically.
“I miss Peter! I can’t believe we’re fucking broken up!” Stacy sobbed as her friends tried to calm her down.
Then Stacy got up, ran past me to the bathroom, and vomited in the toilet. For the next day and a half, Stacy sat in the hotel room with her friends, bawling and rehashing every detail of the breakup. A couple times I went out to a bar by myself, stood around for an hour, talked to no one, then went back to our room, which still reeked of vomit.
On Saturday afternoon, we piled into the Blazer and drove silently back up the coast to the U.S.–Mexico border. Stacy sat next to me the entire time, sleeping. As we crossed the border, I turned my cell phone back on, since I hadn’t had reception in Mexico. It began buzzing to indicate that I had new messages. As I punched in my voice mail access code, it dawned on me that I had forgotten to help my dad with the garden.
“You have four new messages,” the robotic voice declared. I was half expecting it to add, “You are so fucked.”
The first message played. “Son, it’s Dad, I need you to pick up something from the Home Depot before you come over. Call me back.”
“Next message,” the robotic voice mail alerted me as I began to feel nauseous.
“Son, where the fuck are you? I said to be over at four, right? It’s four-ten. Call me.”
The next message contained just a few moments of silence, and then the sound of hanging up. I felt a little relieved. Maybe he was over it by now.
“Next message, received today at three-thirty P.M,” said the robot.
“WHAT IN THE FUCK IS GOING ON? I stopped by your place and your roommate said you’re in Mexico! Are you in fucking Mexico?! CALL ME!”
I started sweating and couldn’t keep my legs still, which was unfortunate, seeing as we were just about to drive through the border patrol inspection. The officer waved us through even though I’m pretty sure I looked like I was sitting on about two thousand pounds of cocaine and hiding a half dozen illegal aliens in our trunk.
Once we were across the border, Stacy’s friend pulled over at the first exit.
“I am totally fiending for some Jack in the Box,” she said.
“No. I need to go home right now,” I snapped, my voice ascending to a note I hope no woman ever hears out of my mouth again.
