Anti-cemitas

Not the greatest vacation ever, Harlan Scropes thought. Pretty bad, in fact. A nightmare of  the kind that makes you wonder why you wanted to take a vacation in the first place. 

The flight from Newark had been seriously delayed, with no explanation or palliative cocktails. At the Mexican airport, border officials pulled a shakedown due to his near-expired passport. During the taxi ride to the resort, the driver pulled over at several grimy cantinas to offer pimp service. 

When he was finally in the sub-standard hotel room, he changed into his swimsuit and went out for a restorative swim. The resort’s swimming pool was closed for maintenance, although no workers or pool-cleaners were present. The nearby beach resembled postcard scenery, but the travel agency brochures hadn’t mentioned fierce mosquitoes, undertow and sharks. 

Black fins sliced the murky water not twenty yards from the shoreline. Harlan didn’t believe the receptionist who asserted they belonged to friendly dolphins, “Like Fleeeeper.”

The resort’s bar scene was dismal. There were no lonely female tourists around, and the only available prostitute was an unconvincing transexual, who proved unskilled with head or hand. Her switchblade prowess, however, made it clear that a big tip was nonetheless expected. 

Back in his room, badly shaken, Harlan finished himself off with a nudie-horror movie on the hazy TV, and wiped up with a gray, frayed bidet towel. The bidet itself, a potentially amusing novelty, was out of order.

Food at the resort’s restaurant made him long for Taco Bell.

So Harlan felt gourmet ecstasy when he bit into a cemita at a locals-only sandwich stand in Puebla. 

He’d ridden a bus to the historic city a few days ahead of schedule, to escape bogus tropical paradise resort purgatory. Puebla was surprisingly pleasant. Harlan took in a bullfight, and was further impressed by colorful baroque churches and a distant volcano’s eruption. He bought a spaghetti western poncho and pointy-toe, slope-heel vaquero boots, though he knew he’d feel ridiculous if he tried to wear them back home. In the old town, he bought a Tijuana Bible, rabbit-shit cigarettes and a bottle of mezcal with a worm inside. He felt he’d seen the real Mexico.

Then, at a local’s-only lunch stand, he bit into a cemita and was suddenly, truly in Mexico.

Harlan wandered from loncheria to loncheria. He couldn’t get enough cemitas. Best sandwich ever, he thought. A lifelong sandwich enthusiast, he wasn’t yet obese, but his waistline was on the healthy side. Or rather, beyond the healthy side. His enlarged liver was similar to the fly-blown cow offal slopped on mesquite-wood chopping blocks he’d seen at a picturesque food market. No chance for a hot date there, either. Bored Mexican housewives did their meat shopping early, before the flies took over.

Much as he liked Puebla, Harlan didn’t want to miss his flight home. 

Cops pulled over his taxi on the way to the airport. The driver must’ve phoned in an easy target. The cops made Harlan get out of the car and lean against the hood. They slapped his potbelly, brandished pistols, brass knuckles, beavertail blackjacks. “Jew peeess blood for the rest of jew life, mang.” Harlan forked over all the shredded Mexican currency he had left. 

Mexican beer was expensive at the airport, especially if you had to pay with a credit card. “Sewer-charge,” the barmaid said. She’d squeezed her tan pear-shaped tits into a gauzy peasant blouse, but she scoffed at his pick-up gambit.

On board, the Captain announced that the flight to Newark would be delayed, due to a handicapped passenger who needed to be specially boarded.

Harlan looked out the hazy porthole. A severely overweight white woman was being rolled across the tarmac in a wheelchair. 

Thought they stowed fat feebs like her first, he thought. Isn’t that the whole point of pre-boarding?

He watched the king-size paraplegic swat at the ground crew coolies with her leather satchel. A big black rubber dildo spilled from the bag and rolled briefly down the runway. The crippled woman soundlessly screeched, Get it! Get it! 

Her screaming face turned as red as the local beet-and-orange cocktail Harlan had drunk with all those cemitas. 

She snatched back her penis substitute from the jumpsuited man who’d gone to fetch the dildo. the man bowed humbly, cap in hand. She tried to smack his head with it. He politely evaded her vicious swipes.

The ground crew couldn’t get the disabled behemoth up the mobile boarding ladder. They signaled the men in the cockpit to open up the cargo bay, and went to fetch a forklift. 

When he’d boarded, Harlan thought he’d lucked out when a pockmarked skinny señorita stewardess ushered him to a bulkhead seat with leg- and elbow-room galore. Oh shit, he thought, as the cargo bay door thunked closed and the stewardesses shoved the enraged crippled fat lady towards the only vacant seat left on the plane, the one next to his.

His intestines grumbled, and delivered a flashback taste of the scrumptious, slightly soapy herb that lent cemitas their mouthwatering flavor and consistency. Pápalo, the friendly sandwich-griddler had said. Pápalo!

Make the next one heavy on the pápalo, please. And more, please, many more of them delicious, delightfully smoky poblano peppers. Harlan couldn’t get enough, seriously. But it was suddenly obvious that he’d overdone it. 

“What the fuck are you staring at, fatso?”

Harlan mouthed air like a caught bottom-lurker fish, the kind that lazes around tropical coral reefs hoping for easy meals and quick mating action. Since he was momentarily struck dumb because a fat woman in a wheelchair had just called him fatso, his colon spoke for him. A wretched moan escaped, at a frequency pitched for elephants to hear, and fat wheelchair-bound women to smell. 

“Oh Jesus don’t stick me next to this creep. He stinks.”

The ground crew man said, “Would jew pleeeease stand up for a moment, sor? We need to secure the special chair to the bolts under jewer seat. Thank jew, sor.”

Harlan didn’t get a chance to say, no way get this fat crippled dildo-freak the hell away from me. A pápalo fug of gas escaped him as he rose.

The Mexican ground-crew men either didn’t notice, or else they’d been trained in sensitivity towards turistas pasajeros. 

“This old fart hasn’t washed in decades” the wheelchair lady said. “There’s god damn bums on my block who smell better’n him. I refuse to sit next to this stink-ass motherfucker.”

Harlan thought, who’s she calling an old fart? 

A steward-stevedore who resembled Ramón Novarro said, “Señora, pleeeease. Eees only differently abled handicapped seat avail-erble. But…if jew would prefer to wait for tomorrow’s flight, we can accompany jew back to the terminal.” He nervously fumbled a switchblade or rosary in his jumpsuit pocket. 

Harlan thought he was saved. “Can I sit back down?” 

Get her off, he prayed to God. Get her off this fucking plane and let’s get the fuck out of here so I can use the fucking restroom.

Unfortunately for him, the crippled lady was none too thrilled about having to spend an extra 24 hours in Mexico either. “Oh all right,” she said. “But could you, like, tell El Capitán to hurry it up? I mean, like, fly extra fast? ‘Cause I really need to be with my cats again.”

Harlan pictured a cluttered apartment clouded with cat-hair and ammonia-laden cat-piss fumes. His guts meowed.

They got her wheelchair strapped in, and tested its rock-steadiness with their pointy-toe boots. “Pleeeease, Señor, to resume jew sit and fasten jew sit-belt in preparation for takeoff.”

Harlan was worried the paraplegic cat-nut would bite his ass as he shinnied past her. Instead, sizzling chile poblano gas-vapors escaped through the pressure-valve of his anus. She caught his fart right in the teeth. 

“Oh my God, no,” she said. “I hate Mexican food. I hate it.”

The other passengers shook their heads. They’d have to listen to that grating, screeching voice throughout the flight. Their vibrations of hate seemed to drape Harlan in a cloak of unsmellability. His feelings for the overweight cripple shifted, slightly. Oh thank you, God. Thank you.

The cushion touted as an emergency flotation device inflated slightly when Harlan sat down and further relieved the pressure from his large intestine. 

The airplane taxied, took off and blew jet-fuel fumes into the Earth’s non-renewable atmosphere. Poblano peppers and pápalo pulp poisoned the cabin’s pressurized atmosphere.

The stewardesses put on truncated serapes and prepared to serve the in-flight meal. They slid chile rellenos and cheese enchilada dinner trays into on-board microwave ovens as a flavorful farewell to Old Mexico for the gringos. 

Harlan caught a whiff of beans, minus exotic peppers and mystical pápalo. He tried to imagine what a pápalo plant might look like, and passed another toxic cloud.

One of the stewardess’ heads popped up, like the first wildebeest in the herd to catch lion tang in the air. She quickly quadrant-scanned the cabin for flames, smoke. 

She knew that humans strapped into their seats in a metal ship much heavier than the surrounding air are highly sensitive to signs of alarm in trained professionals who’ve gained airborne-emergency instinct through flight-miles logged. 

Panic was to be avoided.

The stewardess edged aft, sniffed around nervously. 

Harlan was sure she’d stop by his seat and say, “Are jew feeling all right, señor? Do jew require ass-eeee-stance in going to the toyyyy-let?” 

No matter what the mirror said, Harlan didn’t consider himself an old fart who’d shit his pants. Not like the lady next to him, who needed help with all of life’s humiliating details and wasn’t even polite when she got the help she needed. The wheelchair lady was inspecting her fingernails, for some reason. 

Harlan saw his chance, caught the stewardess’ eye and hooked his thumb at the she-cripple. Hand-jive for, it was her.

The stewardess gave him a conspiratorial O sign with her pretty little mouth.  Glossy lipstick flashed erotic between the olive skin of her chin and slight, sexy fe-moustache. Oh man, he thought, what a kisser. Maybe that’s why he’d wanted to go to Mexico in the first place. Only he’d failed to realize the dreams he’d never realized having dreamt. 

The stewardess spun on her heels and sashayed back towards the cramped galley. Harlan scoped her swaying hips. Maybe there was hope he could score with a swinging stewardess. The Mexico trip wouldn’t have been a total washout. Aside from cemitas.

What did an overweight handicapped woman in a wheelchair want in Mexico, especially if she hated Mexican food? Oiled low-rent gigolos? It would’ve been easy enough to find out, but Harlan didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t want her to know that he spoke English and was not, in fact, mute. He was sure she’d talk his ear off on some inane, annoying subject, given half a chance. 

Didn’t seem likely she spoke Spanish. The only words Harlan had learned on his vacation had to do with sandwiches and beer. Oh yeah, and chinga. But he could do a passable Speedy Gonzales impersonation. 

The captain still hadn’t turned off the ‘Keep Seatbelts Fastened’ sign. Industrial-strength nylon webbing cut painfully into Harlan’s distended beergut, though he’d loosened the strap to the last possible degree. Intestinal gas has an anti-Newtonian tendency to expand under pressure. 

Her goddamn wheelchair’s going to make it awful hard to get up and go to the toilet when the pilot finally deigns to let us rise and wander about the cabin, he thought.

He’d seen crippled beggars aplenty in Puebla, including a blind guy with a sandwich-board sign—not a hand-lettered lunch-counter ad, but a highly effective slogan for handouts. A steady stream of heavy silver Mexican coins went into his cup. Grácias, grácias, the blind man said, in a plaintive voice that might’ve been put on for effect. 

The other thing the beggar said was, por favor. 

Harlan hadn’t given the blind man anything, but he’d imitated his voice, repeated his words, every time he went into a cantina to ask for more beer and sandwiches.  

The pain in his abdomen felt like punishment for his lack of charity. 

The crucified Jesuses in the baroque churches had human hair, looked and smelled as though the Savior had been smeared with real blood, maybe from the bullfights. 

“Por favor,” Harlan said. The captain had finally extinguished the Fasten Seatbelts sign, and he wanted to be in pole position for the airplane toilet. Man oh man, whoever comes in after me’s gonna die, he thought, as he unbuckled and half-rose from his seat.

“What do you want me to do, you moron? I can’t get up.”

“Por favor,” he pleaded meekly. “Por favor.” His gas-bladder was about to explode, in a repetition of the Hindenburg disaster. He swung his leg up and over the fat lady’s lap and lurched towards the aisle. 

“Oh my God! Get your stinking greaser ass out of my face.”

Get your ugly face out of my ass, he thought, and let a really juicy one. 

She’d just opened up to emit another anti-Mexican epithet. She choked, screamed, “Oh my God! Oh my freakin’ God!”

Another stewardess shuffled down the aisle to quell the ruckus. She was short, on the chubby side, and exuded homey friendliness. “Qué pasó?”

Harlan waved air in front of his face. The crippled obese woman, who was desperately trying to suck oxygen into her lungs, missed the gesture. 

The stewardess understood, reached into her serape, quick-drew a can of air-freshener and sweetened the cabin’s airspace. Harlan made a break for the toilets at the back.

Luckily for him, no line had formed. 

The skinny pockmarked stewardess was in the galley next door to the toilet, arming the coffee-brewing apparatus. Harlan’s mind drifted back to high school, when he invited Jolene Odom, the crosseyed polio girl, to the Senior Prom. She turned him down. The stewardess was Jolene Odom’s Mexican twin sister, only walleyed instead of crosseyed, and no stainless steel braces on her spindly legs. 

She noticed him staring at her.

“Ay-yi-yieee,” she whispered. “Es terrible, la vieja. Siempre nos molesta mucho.”

  That was too much Spanish, for Harlan. “Por favor,” he said. “English, por favor,”

“She eees ‘orrible.” The stewardess pulled a face. “Always bother us. Always make troble.”

“What, you mean she’s a frequent flyer with you guys? She said she hates Mexico. And she…she’s in a wheelchair, for cryin’ out loud.” Harlan’s gut was primed to explode. He strained to contain his bowels. 

“Ay sí, señor,” the stewardess said. “She hate México. She hate us Méxicanos. But she love…how you say? burros.”

“Donkeys?”

“Sí. She looooove donkeys.”

Though intrigued, Harlan had more pressing concerns. The buzzer on the coffee unit frazzed. The machine spritzed high-octane brew into the stainless steel receptacle. Coffee aroma triggered his colon. “Por favor,” he said. “Grácias.”

The friendly stewardess helped him get the toilet’s accordion-door fully closed, then discreetly vamoosed to pour coffee. 

“Thank you,” Harlan whispered to the ‘No Smoking’ sign. “Thank you, Lord. Thank you.” Then he filled the toilet with tangible proof that there is no God. 

Harlan felt sure the smoke alarm would blow. The stewardess would be waiting for him outside, her wacky eyeballs hidden by a green rubber gas-mask. She’d foam him down with air-freshener while the other passengers laughed, pointed fingers and held their noses. 

Jet-engine turbo-flush took care of the evidence. Harlan kept the built-in air-freshener button pressed for a count of 20 before he dared emerge. 

The coast was clear. The cute stewardess was serving coffee in First Class. Toilet miracles happened, if you prayed hard enough. 

The white-haired whale in a wheelchair gulped coffee like it was the cure for polio, or whatever blight had taken her legs. Maybe she was simply too heavy to walk on her own.

Harlan hadn’t gotten any coffee, but maybe it wouldn’t have been such a good idea, just then. 

“Por favor,” he said. The fat crippled lady had positioned herself to take up as much aisle-space and leg-room as possible while she noisily slurped. Harlan sign-languaged that he wanted to resume his seat. 

“Oh Jesus,” she said, and slumped back minimally. 

Harlan tried to fart in her face again, but was unable. All systems clear? Didn’t seem possible. 

The disabled behemoth sucked coffee dregs as forcefully as the airplane toilet sucked human waste. “Hey!” she yelled. “More coffee, here. I want more coffee!”

The stewardess signaled that she’d be back as soon as the other passengers had been served.

“Oh Jesus,” the fat woman muttered. “Slow as motherfucking snails, the whole greasy bunch of ‘em.”

The fat lady hated Mexicans but loved donkeys, the other stewardess had said. Some guys Harlan knew in college took a trip South of the Border and had sworn they’d seen a donkey show. Maybe such spectacles were the only sexual thrill available to a fat rude racist creep who lived in a handicapped-access apartment packed with cats. Or else she was some sort of holier-than-thou animal rights activist. 

“Por favor, señora,” he said. “Ees true jew loooooove burros?”

She looked at him as if he’d just puked. “I don’t speak to Mexicans,” she said. Her thick eyeglasses were smeared with human grease, speckled with eyebrow-dandruff. Maybe she couldn’t see that the cartoon Mexican accent issued from a caricature of an average American gringo turista. 

Harlan hadn’t spoken much to Mexicans either, but when he’d asked them for cerveza and cemitas, they’d been polite and forthcoming. He was about to let the fat crippled lady know he thought she’d just said something incredibly ignorant when a painful abdominal spasm lifted him slightly from his padded seat. 

The wheelchair woman had witnessed the blast. The smell hit a second later. “Oh my God,” she said. “That’s horrible. You awful, awful man.” She punched the stewardess alarm button.  A bell bonged. A tiny orange lightbulb lit up.

The stewardesses approached cautiously. The wheelchair woman was struggling for breath, with drowning pachyderm sound-effects. Harlan fanned the air in front of his face. In calm, unaccented USA English, he said, “I think she needs the toilet.”

The woman in the wheelchair slapped at the stewardesses’ hands as she struggled to undo the safety straps that held her near the toxic cloud’s source. “Get your bean-grubbing, taco-bending hands offa me!” A man in a dingy short-sleeve shirt appeared; the co-pilot, or maybe the navigator, but certainly an expert at undoing wheelchair safety straps. Together, the crew-members trundled the disabled passenger to the restroom under heavy protest. 

Didn’t seem equipped for handicapped persons, Harlan thought. But that was their problem. He let fly freely, to relieve the pressure. Didn’t smell too bad, or not to him.

“Oh sweet Jesus.” The man in 29A covered his nose and gagged. 

The airplane hit a shock-wave of turbulence. Dinner trays and stowage compartmets clanked and rattled ominously. The plane rolled violently to a near 40-degree angle. They’d entered the Southern USA’s infamous hurricane zone. Anvil-shaped clouds farted lightning. The captain saw monster jellyfish gliding in a dark, roiling toxic sea. Their electric tentacles sparkled with the promise of pain. 

The passengers couldn’t see what lay ahead, could only smell the enemy within. They heard their captain’s not terribly reassuring voice. “Señoras y…Lay-deeees an’ gen’lemen, we will be experience a leetle tor-bulence. Kindly resume jew sits and fasten sit-belts tightly.”

Invisible demons buffeted the aircraft. Passengers shrieked and moaned. A dinner cart slammed into a bulkhead. The stewardesses and the co-pilot, or whoever he was, hustled the distressed handicapped passenger back to her spot. “We will assist jew weeth the toilet as soon as it is again safe,” the man said. “Now, we must ask that jew kindly remain calm, please.”

They high-tailed it fore, to strap themselves in. The plane flew sideways, then was brutally smacked back to horizontal. Yellow plastic oxygen masks dropped like the fruit of the damned. The captain yelled the emergency checklist while he struggled to regain control of the helm. “Kindly do not panic. Place jew own oxygen mask over your face before as-see-sting those next to jew, especially small cheeeldren.”

Harlan put on his mask and felt instantly calm. He watched, amused, as the crippled woman tried to snatch her mask. The plane’s lurches and jolts made the banana-colored piñata dance before her eyes and playfully evade her grasp. 

“Help me, you greaser!” she shrieked. “You’re supposed to help me, God damn you!”

Harlan pulled his oxygen mask slightly away from his snout. “First, señora, jew must sing Viva México!”

“What? Fuck you, you fucking wetback!”

Harlan grabbed the dangling cup of life-support and farted as hard as he could. “Sing with feeling and sincerity, por favor. Or no air.” 

“Viva Mexico,” she gasped. “Viva fucking Mexico.”

Harlan handed her the mask, but left it to her to strap it on her own face. She sucked oxygen greedily.

The Mexican pilot kept his nerve and came in for a textbook emergency landing in Tulsa, OK.