Mary Luna Robledo

I was high out of my mind, and she put me to bed. I said “te quiero” over and over. I asked her to make sure I wasn’t dying. I became convinced I would die that night and dialed 911. She told me to relax and to breathe, and I told her I couldn’t breathe.  

“What are you going to tell them?” she asked. 

“That I ate a bad edible,” I replied. 

We met a month before. She lived two apartments down from the Airbnb I was staying at in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. I came back to Mexico, to my hometown to find something in myself I thought I'd lost through the years of growing up in the United States; lost in the fear of being undocumented and lost in forgetting my mother tongue. Yet, all I found in the first weeks was loneliness and a disposition towards alcoholism. 

It was a Wednesday afternoon, and I was already drunk with a plan to drink more that night. I felt alone in the way that you don’t allow yourself to think about to get out of bed the next morning. She was sitting at the small table in the courtyard garden we all shared. She had a bottle of gin next to her. She was older than me; her calmness made me feel younger than I was. At midnight I asked her if she wanted to go out and dance.  

The mariachi bands were still in the Jardín playing to newlyweds; some couples were singing and dancing along. The street corn and gordita carts were wrapping up for the night. The Parroquia shimmered in the dark, and I was still new enough to San Miguel to believe there was magic in the air; I was still under its spell. We listened to bad rock music at Mama mia’s. Our bodies began to get closer and closer. She touched my hand, and I touched her face. 

By 2am, we decided to go to the Cucaracha— a dive-bar famous for entertaining the likes of Jack Kerouac and drunken fights in the wee hours of the morning. I was desperate to have fun; I was desperate to connect with bodies, and I was desperate to get drunk. We danced and kissed surrounded by mostly men and cigarette smoke. I smoked my fifth cigarette. I ordered banderitas de tequila. At 3am we took a taxi back. I felt her put her hand inside my jeans. 

I blacked out and came to naked on top of her. The sun was rising. She asked me to fuck her again and again. I said I was trying my best.

The next day we woke up at noon. I told her I needed to go home and grabbed a cigarette from her nightstand. 

By the end of April, I found an apartment in the center of town. We were both unemployed and broke. 

By May, I felt stressed about money. I felt stressed I had spent all my savings on alcohol and restaurants, and even more stressed about how like my father I was acting. I begged my parents for a hundred dollars. By now we were grabbing for time knowing my green card only allowed me to be out of the country for so long. 

I suggested she look for a job in expensive restaurants that cater to wealthy Americans and chilangos; this made her cry. We were drunk. I told her “tranquila” over and over, and held her until the tears stopped. She told me in English she loved me. I buried my head in her neck and didn’t say it back. I felt older than I was.

The same night we went to see her friends at a restaurant she used to work at. I drank one shot of mezcal after the other. We ate a marijuana cake and walked back to her apartment. 

“I don’t believe there was anything in that cake,” I said and convinced her to go out again. 

On the street by a church, I began to laugh uncontrollably. I laughed so hard I began to cry and then began to hyperventilate. We sat by a fountain until I could form a sentence again; I stared at the church where my grandparent’s ashes are kept. She laughed at the cockroach on the ground, and I asked if she was laughing at me. She told me I was being paranoid. I told her that the lights looked so bright and stared at the images carved into the church. I said something about colonialism and wondered if there was something more than pot in that cake. 

Somehow we made it back to my apartment. I sat on the step outside the door and cried because I was unable to open the door. She pleaded with me to give her the keys. She led me through the garden and up the stairs. She helped me undress. 

In bed I asked her to hold me. I was floating and dying. She told me to calm down. I told her I loved her. I began to wonder if I was having a stroke and threatened to call 911. I asked her to hold me as tight as she could. We stayed like that until I fell asleep; until I stopped asking if she or I were alive; until I made my peace with death by cake. 

The next day I woke up at 7pm. I told her I was still too high to speak in Spanish. On my nightstand was a bar of beverages she had compiled for me: coffee, tea, water, and Gatorade. I told her thank you and closed my eyes again. 

The day after I could stand up. We walked to get tamales down the street, and I looked at her and said “te amo.” I cried because I still felt high and hungover from sleep. I told her I’ve been alone for so long.