Nayarit

In Nayarit Hell looks like Heaven, God cowers, the Devil sweats, and life is a quenchless fever-dream. At dawn drunken tourists stagger home along coral-white beaches, green-faced and burping, their sweat sickly sweet, carrying sandals in their hands. Cleaners come, the nightclubs stink of bleach. Old ladies comb for bottles in the sand. Sinewy fishermen with tobacco-coloured skin push their boats to the water. The surfer boys paddle out into the sea.

The sun rises, the day simmers. Ladies cook tortillas over open grills, flipping them with bare fingers. Men hose the sidewalks to keep the dust out of the air. The street smells of fried liver and sugar, hot sauce, citrus, and filth. Fans with ribbons swat flies away from raw meat. Lizards rustle in the tinder beneath cacti, snakes slither, scorpions hiss, rats scuttle in the alleys. Vultures peck at fish bones, frigate birds circle in the blazing cobalt sky. There is not a cloud, not a breeze. A blind man plays the accordion in the shade beneath a bougainvillea. His face is beaded with sweat. The frangipanis are almost budding; soon it will be time for mangoes. Merciless summer scars the ground. It has not rained in half a year.

The sun glories. His blood boils, in a fever he flies up the burning day. He wears eye-shadow and make-up, dresses in women’s clothes and wears jewellery. He loves to toy with the pearls around his neck and feel the cool silk against his skin; from time to time he runs his hands up his thighs, pushes his panties to the side, and grabs his dick. He dances to his own throbbing music, pumping his fists and thrusting his hips, biting his painted lips so hard that blood stains his teeth. He is capricious, spiteful and cruel; he demands unreasonable sacrifices and delights to see them given. He is roused higher and higher by the havoc he wreaks. He shrieks with glee as the world burns up beneath him.

At noon a shadow crosses his eyes. He looks down, and measures the height of his own loneliness. His face saddens, the venom fades from his bite. He falls into gloom. He repents for the pain he has caused, but knows he doesn’t mean it. He begs for forgiveness, but knows he has no faith. He cries until his make-up runs – he wails, sobs, and tears at his hair – but all along he feels like an actor putting on a show. He doesn’t even know if his loneliness is real. He is a sickling, a psychopath, a freak: a numb and hollow shell. He is revolted by himself. In the afternoon he plummets, despairing, to drown himself in the sea.

Dark descends. Tourists emerge from hotels, scrubbed-up, moisturised and shining, and make their way to dinner. The streetlights come on, red ribbons twirl in the night. Music like black honey oozes from speakers. Brightly-dressed extroverts coordinate pub crawls. Buck’s parties in Hawaiian shirts march singing through the streets. The girls have dressed to exhibit their suntans. They wear low-cut tops to accentuate their breasts. They dance in nightclubs, looking sultry, holding their hands above their heads. Their hair shines, they smell of flowers and vanilla. The boys stand thick and sturdy around them, talking loudly to be heard above the music, puffing out their chests. Beer by tequila, beer by tequila, they abandon themselves to the night. Something ancient wakes up in the dark. Monsters circle and lurk. The party pounds until dawn.

Two brothers were born in Nayarit, and grew up there. Their father was a fishermen, their mother sold tamales. They lived in a low-ceilinged house with a concrete floor, concrete walls, and a concrete roof. At noon the heat was so thick inside the house you could cut it with a butter knife. In each wall there was one window, with steel bars but no glass. Rain poured in during the winter storms, and flooded the floor. Mosquitoes swarmed over the mud. Chickens pecked through piles of junk. Their father shinned up coconut trees and opened the coconuts with a machete. In the evening their mother cooked fish over coals. The family slept together on the floor. The brothers slept under one mosquito net, close to each other, rolling and tossing in the breathless night.

The beach was their playground. As toddlers they fooled about in the shallows and went on treasure hunts among the rocks. Their father taught them to fish with a spool and string. When they were seven, a charity donated boogie boards to their school. The brothers joined a gang of boys who borrowed the boards each afternoon. At first they lingered close to the shore and caught the wash, but with time they grew bolder, and ventured out to the surf. Soon they swamped the break, chattering and giggling, a hive of primary schoolers swarming among the men. One boy’s father shaped a skimboard from plywood. The boys took turns with it, charging down the beach and skipping like pebbles up the shore break. When they were ten, a tourist left them his surfboard. One at a time, the boys learned to stand up on the waves.

For two months the gang was gripped by a material frenzy. They worked several jobs, did chores at the surf shop, swept restaurant floors, helped their fathers clean fish. They sold cigarettes and lollipops, set up roadside stalls to sell mojitos, and walked about the market with a plastic bowl, collecting coins for the blind accordionist, and keeping a cut for themselves. For a week they swiped money from purses on the beach, until a hotel owner caught them and beat them with a stick. All the same, their savings mounted. Soon they had enough to buy their own surfboards. After that they lost interest in commerce, and returned full-time to the sea.

At nineteen the boys are brown and limber, virile and energetic, with streaks of caramel in their chocolate hair. They are strong and fearless, and surf big waves over the shallow reef. Each time a swell rolls in, professional surfers come from out of town. The boys paddle out with them, surf with them, take on the biggest waves, and prove themselves man enough to take a beating. The out-of-towners admire their pluck, include them in their videos, and buy them cans of beer. But none of the boys is ever offered a sponsorship by Red Bull.

Life drips by. In the day the brothers surf. At night they hang out at a bar, drinking beer and devouring honey-coloured beauties with hungry eyes. They take odd jobs to earn their keep, give surf lessons in embarrassed English, set up mojito stands, work occasionally in construction, take shifts in the lifeguard tower, repair dinged-up surfboards, buy crates of wax wholesale and sell it on. They make enough to eat and drink and carry on living, but they never save; they never build their careers. None of the gang has finished school. The brothers still sleep on their parents’ floor.

Ah! Ah! But is it fair? Here they sit, young and strong and handsome, full of spunk and fight and ginger, straight-backed and well-muscled, watching on, powerless, as crowds of busty blondes walk past, hanging off the spindly arms of geeky Dutchmen with thinning hair, pot-bellies and sparrow chests, pale legs and pink faces, button-down shirts tucked in to cargo shorts, who carry their money in fannypacks over their floppy dicks! It’s not natural, it’s not fair! In a world of natural justice the boys would stride up to these Flemish accountants, smack them, take the cash from their purses, and make off with their broads. But this is not a natural world! This is a world that protects the weak. There is money, there is police, cybersecurity, investment banking, and all sorts of rorts designed to keep the young and virile outside, while the pale and flabby lap it up in velvet.

The brothers carried cement, sold mojitos, and hollered at tourists not to swim in the rip. They patched up boards, waited for swells, and ate dinner with their mum. They slept on the floor beneath a mosquito net and shat over a stinking hole in the yard. They owned a few T-shirts and rode rusty bikes. They weren’t even allowed to enter the fancy nightclubs at night. Meanwhile men no better than them rode about in shining Jeeps, ate at fancy restaurants, and fucked chicks with waxed pussies on king-sized beds. And ah, ah! It just was not fair!

Late at night the brothers discussed what they would do. They knew they could not be fishermen like their father, and thought it humiliating to dress in shiny white clothes and grovel for tips. They refused to be cooped up in taxis, and they would not embarrass themselves by begging tourists to join dolphin tours. They would never leave the coast, nor did they have enough education to secure office jobs. They shrank from the training required to become policemen, and working full-time in construction was out of the question entirely.

That left just one thing.

They went one night to the house of a friend, and asked him for an eightball of cocaine. They took it out to a bar, snorted some themselves for confidence, and sold the rest to a pair of Australians they knew from the surf. With the profits they bought more coke, and sold it the night after. They did this every night for a week, and soon had more cash than their friend could sell them cocaine. So they asked to meet his dealer.

The dealer brought a big order. The boys split it up with the gang, and sold it all inside a week. The brothers took a cut from their friends’ profits, and used it to buy more. They took to hanging out at hostels, offering surf classes during the day and hanging back for the parties at night. Soon everyone knew who to ask for coke. The tourists liked the boys: they were fresh-faced and energetic, and never felt like sleazy powder-pushers. They were just friends who’d brought a little something to share. They never cut their coke with anything nasty, asked crazy prices, or sold anything bad.

The brothers liked the tourists, too. Because they sold drugs, they felt they had something to offer. They achieved something easily which otherwise would have been complex. They entered the room on equal footing, at the very least! They didn’t have to lay all their cards on the table at once; they could afford to be mysterious, hold something back. They had qualities which the tourists did not share – that made them interesting. They never had to grovel for attention.

They made friends with the tourists, and showed them secret beaches. They introduced them to local spots, took them to the best taquerías and bars. They had no problems getting in to nightclubs now; the owners even shouted their drinks. They lived a good life of sun and fun and party. And they sold a little powder on the side.

Soon the brothers were flush with cash. They bought expensive T-shirts and Hurley sunglasses. They split the cost of a Yamaha motorbike, and had a surfboard rack fixed to the side. They got all the gang to chip in a little money, and rented an apartment in town. There they went to party. The apartment had two bedrooms for anyone who brought home a girl. Often both rooms were occupied at the same time: then the other boys used the couch. They screwed girls from every nation: caramel-skinned Americans, Swedes with blonde hair, big-busted Israelis, proud Germans, slutty Brits, and sensuous French darlings who could do magical things with their lips. The apartment became an oasis for teenaged fevers. They arranged for a cleaning lady to come once a week.

One night the gang was sitting outside a bar. There were bottles of beer on the table, fish tacos, fried pork, and meatballs. The brothers were sitting at the entrance, so they could call to the owner for more. They were talking loud and laughing, wearing their Hurley sunglasses on top of their heads. A group of Canadian girls was lapping them up with smitten eyes.

A car pulls up. The window rolls down. A man in a ski mask leans out, raises a gun, and shoots. One-two: the brothers fall from their seats. Three-four-five-six, the man with the ski mask continues shooting them. Seven-eight-nine-ten, the boys lie bleeding on the ground. Eleven-twelve, the man shoots them each once more, then sits again inside the car, rolls up the window, and drives quickly away.

Now there is chaos: screaming and shouting, smashing plates, crashing tables and panic, wails of horror, screams of shock, the shrieks of a girl spattered with blood; onlookers fleeing, friends calling friends’ names, business owners slamming their shutters, the squeal of tires, pounding feet, people desperately searching for any place safe. In the midst of it all the brothers lie motionless, in a crimson pool slowly spreading, their bodies touching ever so gently, just as they did when they were little boys sleeping under the same mosquito net at night.

An hour later the police arrived, took photos, asked questions, set up a perimeter, and taped it off with yellow tape. Nothing came of it. The mayor insisted that everything be hushed up. A squad of cleaners came before dawn to wash the blood from the streets. The story never made it to the papers; no one even posted the pictures online.

Naturally there was a funeral. For various reasons the caskets remained closed. Two graves were dug in the cemetery. A gang of boys stand sheepishly, dreadful tears dampening their cheeks. The mother wails. The father stands drunk and swaying, bleary-eyed in the heat. A band plays old-fashioned music. Afterwards the young people gather at the waterside, and scatter flower petals in the sea.

The earth dries in the graveyard. Dust gathers on the graves. Flowers wilt, people forget. The gang grow up, take the same jobs as their fathers, live in the same houses, raise the same kids. They get tired and fat. The boys’ mother dies. Their father turns to drink. Waves roll in, waves roll out. The sun rises and sets. Music at night, and in the morning women collect bottles from the beach. Fishing boats drive out and drive back again. Frigate birds circle. Wet season follows dry. They just wanted Hurley sunglasses and blue-eyed blondes with big tits. New actors play Hamlet, but it is all the same Shakespeare. The party continues. All of us were once nineteen.