Nurse the Hate: Hate Vacations

Here's why Mexico is a great place. I was in Cabo San Lucas at the Riu a couple weeks ago on business. The first night there, the company hosted a client dinner on the patio of the casual steakhouse restaurant at the resort. A single long table sat about 24 people, mostly middle aged to older couples that had just met each other and were engaged in "get to know ya" light conversation. After the entrees were served, a young woman quickly stalked into the room, walked up and down the back end of the table, and suddenly shoved one of the seated men in the back. It was very bizarre to see a woman in her early twenties, dressed in a nice sundress, shove a stranger and then stomp off without any apparent provocation. It was as if the resort had hired a surreal dinner theater troupe to add a little spice to the evening meal.

Everyone seated at the table became abuzz about trying to figure out exactly what the hell had happened when suddenly, in the main dining area, a crash resounded. This woman had stomped away from our area, and decided she was going to make a statement of some kind (which she did) by knocking an entire pastry tray to the ground. The odd thing was she didn't seem upset or angry, but rather pleased with her actions. Just as suddenly she left the dining area, walked out of the restaurant, and jumped into the nearby pool.

Who amongst us hasn't been on vacation and overdone it on the complimentary tequila? And who amongst us hasn't jumped into a resort pool fully dressed, and then shucked off our clothes to continue our night in our underwear?

Now the scene picks up a couple notches...The girl is now in her thong and bra, soaking wet, and has stepped back into the restaurant behind the grill area. The Mexican cooks don't know what to make of this, and they sure as hell are not going to wrestle some gringo chick fueled up on ecstasy, LSD, and too much well tequila to the ground as long as she keeps twirling that big spatula she took off the wall. The cooks literally do nothing but stare at her blankly. They don't call security. They don't try to get her out of "their" area. They don't even talk to her at all. They just stare straight ahead while the patrons of the restaurant start to chant "Jerry! Jerry!" in homage to the similarity the scene has to an episode of the Jerry Springer Show.

The woman is now posing for tourist photos (see above) and starts breaking plates. Tiring of this, she stomps out of the restaurant again with the entire restaurant population following her at a respectful pace to see what will happen next. After a quick walk around the pool, she decides she's heading back to the restaurant for more action. The problem is that now the diners have blocked her way as they are standing on the sidewalk in front of the entrance. Focused on the prize like a world class athlete (albeit soaking wet in a thong), she heads straight into the crowd, shoving men and women alike out of the way. It was then that she shoved a 60 year old woman down onto the tile. It was almost as if you could visibly see the years turn back, as her 60 year old husband shoved her in retribution into a nearby cactus. It was a real "bang-bang" play. Wife knocked down/girl chucked into cactus and sand...Bang! Bang!

Complete chaos then ensues as people tend to the fallen woman, another group took the underwear girl forcibly to a lounge chair, and the speculation about what had just happened and what would happen began. Two men held the out of control woman down to the chair, and her friend tried desperately to get her back under control.

Friend: "If you don't settle down, you're going to go to jail!"

Underwear girl: "I don't care! I don't care! Hahahahaha!"

The crowd begins to disperse, disappointed the real action has ended, and I notice a Mexican kid in a red t shirt standing around the edges of the crowd saying to no one in particular, "She was drinking all day. She was drinking all day." An intrepid fella like myself noted the girl had no loss of motor skills, spoke clearly and if I didn't know any better seemed a little cranked up. Hmmmm....Perhaps this young man sold her and her friend a little something and it might have been a little out of their league? No matter now, the cat is out of the bag, and the authorities have arrived.

At last, two security men show up after noticing a mob of people attending to a 60 year old woman with a busted head, and another group of men holding a young girl in her underwear down in a chair. One would think that might draw some attention, but it is Mexico, and weird shit happens all the time. It was then I noticed The Man With The Bag.

Look, if this had happened in a US resort town, she would have been wisked off and that's the last we would have heard of her. (In Vegas they might have chopped her hand off and left her to fend off buzzards in the desert with her bloody stump.) Everyone in the restaurant would have gotten a comp dessert, and a shot of some cordial like Bailey's. A couple minutes later, it would have been like it had never happened. Mexico is a little more forgiving of tourists (and their full wallets), so they let some things slide. Still, they have to try and get this clearly out of control woman in her underwear through the lobby and into some private room somewhere on the complex where she'll eventually get these cheap street drugs out of her system (and get back to the job of spending some dough on overpriced tropical drinks and souvenier sombreros).

The Man With The Bag had a leather satchel like a villain from a Sean Connery era Bond film. I don't know if he was a doctor, or had any medical training at all for that matter. All I know is that when most of the guests had drifted off to speculate amongst themselves the cause of such wild unrestained behavior, he very quietly produced a syringe full of something and shot it into our favorite little party girl. After about 10 minutes, the security team had poured her in a wheelchair, and she was very relaxed laughingly saying "Vamanos! Vamanos! Hahahaha!" as they wheeled her discreetly to a side exit.

Two days later, I saw the same girl walking by the pool like the whole thing had never happened. The woman she knocked over even had a pleasant little talk with her. All was forgiven, and it was all out in thr past. No litigation. No crazy threats of civil action. Everybody just went back to what they were doing.

Isn't Mexico great?