It's here

The first printing of my book Las llaves de la ciudad (The Keys to the City) sold out after it was published in 2009. So my editor at Sexto Piso asked if I would write some more material for a new edition. It's a series of pieces I wrote about people in Mexico City-- from a 13-year-old girl who lives on the street, to guys who sell Nazi paraphernalia at the Lagunilla flea market, to a deafmute transvestite who works as a waitress at a beer joint in Tepepan.

Among the new chronicles are one about a woman who sells earphones on the metro despite being chased away by the police, a cop who patrols the canals of Xochimilco in a motorboat, and a gringo who got a license to be a taxi driver in the city as a means to complete an art project.

On Thursday, November 13, at 7:30 pm, at a marvelous new cantina called El Laberinto, on the corner of Sinaloa and Cozumel in the Colonia Roma Norte, I will be presenting the book, which is in Spanish, with my friends Francisco Goldman (author of the recently published The Interior Circuit), and Mariana Hernandez of Radio Imagen. There will be a mezcal cocktail on the house. Please come to get a signed copy or just to say hello.

Those hilarious "cut-ups" at the TSA

On a recent trip to the U.S., a friend gave me a book that I had ordered on Amazon and had delivered to her apartment. (Amazon sends books to Mexico but shipping charges are whoppingly expensive. So when I'm in the States I try to have books sent to people I know and then pick them up.)

I suppose it was a bad idea to leave the book in its shipping box unopened. I never do that, but this was an art book, and I wanted it to arrive undamaged. In any case, the TSA thought something fishy was going on, and before my flight home, examined my luggage top to bottom. They burrowed around my suitcase, finally opening the package to find nothing more life-threatening than printed matter. They included a circular that made it clear they had been through my belongings.

TSA 2

The officer who did the inspection must have had other things on his mind that day, because when he finished giving the once-over to my boxer shorts, dirty laundry, dental floss and so forth, he left his Master Mechanic box cutter inside the suitcase. I now possess a powerful weapon. Did he even notice it was missing? Are there plenty more where it came from? People in the U.S.: these are your tax dollars at work.

If you happen to be in the Bay Area

I will be speaking to students of the Creative Writing Program at California College of the Arts this coming Friday, October 24, at 4:30 pm, as well as reading them a chapter from the novel on which I am putting the finishing touches. The event, free and open to the public, will be at the Writers' Studio of the San Francisco Campus, 195 De Haro at 15th Street. After, I will take questions from the audience, and try to reassure them they are not wasting their parents' money on their tuition.

A word to Tezcatlipoca

I have been spending a lot of time in a town called Malinalco, finally finishing a book that I have been working on for what seems like a century. The closest other place of note is a town called Chalma, which has a sanctuary that is the second-most visited religious institution in Mexico, after the Shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The other day, after dropping off someone in the Chalma bus station, I stuck around, because as many times as I'd passed through to get to Malinalco, I had never visited the church. I thought it might be a good opportunity to put in a word to Tezcatlipoca (often known as the "black Christ" of Chalma), and ask for a safe passage for the book into the world at large. But it was a Sunday. The lines to get inside were dizzyingly long in the blazing sun and I didn't have a hat. I thought it prudent to plan a return in the middle of the week.

A very little bit of sex

Perhaps the most difficult chapter to write in my book First Stop in the New World was the one about sex in Mexico City. How do you define the sexuality of 20 million people? No doubt it was folly on my part to even try. Let's just say that some of the research was unforgettable.

When I heard there was an exhibition called Taco de ojo: El erotismo popular at El Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares in Coyoacán, I was eager to take a look. In Mexican slang, a taco de ojo is eye candy-- the designation of someone really hot. El erotismo popular is popular erotica.

By my standards, there is nothing in this show that would seriously scandalize anyone even mildly cosmopolitan. On a scale of one to ten, I'd give it a sexy quotient of perhaps three. Still, there are several amusing pieces, like the small section of deliciously sleazy ex-votos.

I have known many a gringa that has had a crude morning after realizing a form of this fantasy. Customarily it takes them much, much longer to extricate themselves than to get it started. But maybe that's true for gringos, too, with their Malinches.

My favorite pieces in the show were some photographs by Maya Goded, who, among other specialties, has taken many pictures of sex workers. Sadly, there are only a few of her works in the show.

At a reasonable pace, you can get through all three galleries of the Taco de ojo show in about a half hour. It may not be earth-shattering or even particularly surprising, but I enjoyed the visit. I wouldn't say it's worth a separate trip, but if  you have anything else to do in Coyoacán, well then, hey Joe, give it a go. The museum is at Avenida Hidalgo 289, Colonia del Carmen, around the corner from the mercado de antojitos on Calle Higuera.