I knocked my cappuccino onto my computer and started googling one-way flights out of Mexico
Bethany Platanella is a travel planner and Michelin Guidebook writer based in Mexico City. She lives for the dopamine hit that comes directly after booking a plane ticket, exploring local markets, practicing yoga and munching on fresh tortillas. Sign up to receive her Sunday Love Letters to your inbox, peruse her blog, or follow her on Instagram.
I did the unthinkable. Especially for a writer. While clack-clack-clacking away at my keyboard over breakfast (a meal I never indulge in unless I’m invited to stay at a fancy hotel with a sunny terrace and tropical fruit on the menu, as I am now), I knocked my freshly-brewed almond-milk cappuccino all over my fucking computer.
It’s my fault. But in my defense, it wouldn’t have transpired if the lovely waiter hadn’t come up to me for the 15th time in 15 minutes to “make sure everything is okay”. Everything was okay, every time you asked, but now, it’s very much not okay.
I know how I sound, but you need to understand that there comes a point at which none of this doting feels authentic, but rather, uncomfortable. I can only say “todo bien, gracias” about my pineapple 1-2 times max before things become grating.
Anyway, he rushes to apprehend a cloth napkin that had been crafted specifically for show, not for absorption, while I used another equally non-absorbing cloth swath to dab the lake of liquid quickly seeping into my almost-brand-new laptop’s keyboard. My eyes are burning, I’m fighting back tears. Everything — and I mean everything — has been going wrong lately. By lately, I mean the last two years. The downward just hasn’t stopped pulling me downward with it.
The GM appears. “Give it to me, I’ll have the IT guy clean it”.
And here starts the rollercoaster. Just when Mexico starts to get on my nerves, I’m swooped back into its loving arms, crooning softly. Don’t worry, mija, I’ll take care of you, I’ll make everything better.
I scribble “Gracias!” on a piece of paper, wrap it around two crisp 50 peso notes, and slip it between the screen and keyboard. I slam it shut (figuratively, of course) and think of how generous I am to think to do that. I give the laptop to the GM, the GM gives the laptop to a guy who doesn’t look quite as nerdy as I’d prefer an IT guy to look, but whatever, and he disappears to his world of cables and coding and, I assumed at the time, keyboard cleaning devices.
The next hours I spend in a whirlwind of cobblestone alleyways and Neo-Gothic church facades made of pink sandstone. The sun beats down on my golden-tinged shoulders as I snap photos of bright bougainvillea, starbursts of magenta cascading over mustard-colored walls.
Businessmen stroll by, awkwardly clutching miniature popsicles in varying neon colors, melting rapidly in the warm air. It’s a beautiful city, a stylish one, and I nearly forget about my laptop as I peer at the price tag of a hand-woven and hand-dyed pink poncho with shimmery — yet elegant — fringe at the edges. Price tag: 15,000 pesos. 500 pesos less than my rent.
That’s all to say, I’m sunkissed and upbeat upon my return to the hotel hours later, when I ask the fate of my laptop. The GM runs to a nondisclosed office and returns with my baby, the only tangible piece of machinery I can honestly say I love (my blender a close second) and I take it to my room. Something stops me from checking right then. I don’t know why. Distracted, perhaps? Uneasy, maybe?
A text from a friend — can you check Ticketmaster for tickets to this play on Thursday night?
I should mention now that I have nearly 45,000 photos (and an expired subscription to iCloud) on my phone, which leaves me with less than a gigabyte of space. The Ticketmaster app won’t download. So I reach for my laptop. Slip it out of its purple case. Lift the lid.
The tip. The note. A whiff of coffee.
He didn’t even open it.
Nothing.
NOTHING!
THERE’S NOTHING TO DO!
Because we live in a land of non-confrontation. A land where I can’t say “Hey GM, this asshole never even looked at my computer and now it’s probably worse than it would have been had I just laid it as flat as possible, keyboard face down, in an air-conditioned room for the past ten hours.” Why not, you wonder? Because it would make NO DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER. The expectation is that I accept the situation as is. The IT guy knows I know, I know he knows I know, and that’s the fucking message.
‘I didn’t have time to do it, so I didn’t, and if you say anything, I’m just going to make up a roundabout excuse that never addresses the problem, and what will ultimately happen is YOU will have a nervous breakdown and I’ll just go back to my office, convinced it’s your fault anyway, because actually it is, you’re the gringa who shouldn’t even be here in the first place, living here and making more money and speaking english and asking that things no-pica; it’s your fault Mexico is so expensive now.’
And so it’s around this time I start looking at one-way flights to anywhere that works — or at least works better than this — Lisbon. Barcelona. Tokyo. Oslo.
But then I remember my friends. My apartment. My cat. The ease of my life here. And I know I’m not quite done with Mexico, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be.
And the rollercoaster keeps fucking rolling. I wait for the peak.