Carnaval en Ensenada: limited debauchery, extended tacos

Even when I, Gram Ponante, am at leisure, I am working hard for you.

This weekend I attended Carnaval in Ensenada with my attorney, Duke Santos, and two juero associates, Karl Kash and Jose Fellatiano. There are several things it is important I not print, but the quote of the weekend was:

“My beer goggles don’t go up to Pacoima.”

Two cruise boats were docked in the harbor and dwarfed the town for several hours each day, disgorging thousands of Americans with fake boobs and dyed blonde hair (the ladies) and goatees and self-conscious “I should get a tattoo – what should I get?” tattoos (the fellas) who proceeded to go to exactly one bar, Papas & Beer, and transform it into Orange County South.

I promise I was not in business mode, but I had a card with me, so I flashed it and entered a wet t-shirt contest staging area. All the cruise ship ladies were, without any encouragement save a whiff of dollar beers and some Koreans with camera phones, nearly naked. The wet t-shirt contest never happened; they all just stood up on a table and tore into each other.

One of the women manages AAA’s car insurance programs for a chapter in Southern California.

“I become a different person when I cross the border,” she breathed.

“A drunk, sweaty person with makeup on your nipples,” I said, wiping Dos Equis condensation off my crystal spectacles.

If you are a man in your fifties with a whistle and would like to feel women up, you have a job waiting for you at this place.

I saw few Americans anywhere else, aside from two drunk 40-ish blondes from Oxnard at a more traditional bar across the street.

“I bet you’re from Oxnard,” I said to one as she fell off her chair.

“How did you know I was from Oxnard?” she asked.

“You remind me a of a field of ripe raisins,” I said. I was drunk.

“She thinks you’re a wizard,” her friend said.

I was happy to get away from the gringo tourists only because I can see this behavior on any weekend here at home. Speaking bad Spanish to taco vendors and bartenders was a lot more fun for me.

A Mexican crack whore accosted me on the street.

“I want to see it,” she kept saying.

“I don’t want to show it to you,” I kept trying to say.

I asked my lawyer the Spanish word for Crack Whore.

“Puta,” he said.

“Just ‘puta’?” I asked.

“It’s the way you say it,” he said. (You have to say it the way people from New Jersey say “hoo-er”.)

So that I could justify a write-off I walked into the adult store “Fantasias Intimatas” (the sign read in Spanish that no students in uniforms were allowed, probably for fear that customers would think the boxcover talent was making an appearance).

There were two rooms full of dusty toys from extinct novelty companies and a lot of VHS tapes from Legend and the like, all priced at about 30 bucks.

“Tienes DVDs?” I asked.

“Oh, si,” the cashier replied, and took out exactly nine DVDs, all compilations.

As Ensenada is a tourist town, there were a lot of Oaxacan vendors with children and gum in tow. It was explained to me that the indigenous beggars are made to look more pathetic, are assigned children to lug around, and are provided with hammocks, beads, and gum to sell. Signs posted around the tourist areas said not to buy things from them, that the people were imported by businessmen and that feeding the business continues the abuse. That these signs were in windows of stores that sold similar tourist crap was confusing.

In any case, I got an idea: Oaxookers. Smaller than regular hookers, Oaxookers would provide the spinner experience even for much shorter men. We could make t-shirts reading “See the underside of NAFTA”.

I ate: nine tacos, six empanadas, three hot dogs wrapped in bacon. I drank: 21 margaritas. I heard “Quieres sexo?”: four times.

On the road through Tijuana, I saw a sign for a different House of “Pies”. Everything is better down there.