Hittin´ the road with Jack Kerouac and them

So last night I went to the world famous "La Cucaracha" bar here in San Miguel Allende. Supposedly Jack Kerouac stopped here with his Mexican fellaheen and Neal Cassady od´d and died here. It´s truly a dump. For my South Carolinians - it reminds me of a dirtier, less attractive Group Therapy. For the rest of you- picture a big empty room with a rough bar in the middle. Ugly Ugly Art made by psychiatric patients along the wall and big piles of crushed beer cans in the corner. Ugly "college couch on a porch" furniture and bathroom doors that do not shut allowing you to truly smell the filth that is the bathroom. They sell a tee shirt there that says "I survived La Cucaracha´s bathrooms".

I went with a woman named Alix who is at my guesthouse. She is also a blonde. We truly felt like Marilyn Monroe when we entered this god forsaken bar. I swear to god that they were playing "American Woman" when we walked in. We were the only women in there at first and it was like a stampede to come over and talk to us.

I made a terrible discovery. I am too old to enjoy bars like that anymore. Alix is about 10 years younger than me and wanted to buy pot and smoke it in the bathroom with the bartender. I just wanted to go home. Instead I had to talk to: a drunken Indian guy with giant buckteeth who kept stroking my arm and telling me how bonita I was, a Navaho guitarist who was about 60 or so who kept talking to me about love and how terrible it is, a 17 year old American kid who had a fake mexican ID saying he was 29 and named Jose Donohue, another young American kid who told me he was a hustler on the run from the law for very vague reasons, and finally, a cute mexican guy who I met when i walked in on him in the bathroom. He danced with me until his girlfriend came to the bar and slapped him in the face. What a night. I have suffered all morning long - starting with my early morning dissertation on the merits of retiring in Panama over Mexico to the chilaquiles I ate to cure my hangover which promptly came back up again. Its the end of the day and I think I am going to drag my tired old self back to the casa and go to bed early. Sad Sad Sad.