We were making a quick run to the grocery store to get some things for dinner, and because this was Mordo’s ‘party night’, or the one night a week he allows himself to go overboard. This is also Tonya’s first time to see him since last time we were here too. For them, they have a lot of catching up and gossiping to do. Me? I’ll eavesdrop and talk about music and stuff with him. I like him because he is a music freak, as well as an eccentric. That is always a good combination. That, and he is genuinely an affable fellow. Hey, it’s Friday night and Mordo’s just bought a bottle of tequila! Let’s go.
Mordo chose the pasta sauce. Tonya will be denied her fantastic cooking in order to accommodate Mordo. He wanted pasta, as well as some assorted snacks. He is self equipped, even bringing his own tequila glass (just in case Tonya was empty handed). He buys his own hot sauce and tells her, “I will need eggs and beans in the morning for my hangover”. He knows exactly what he wants and he knows how to get it.
As soon as we get home, he’s opened the tequila and is sharing with Tonya. He’s hungry, so he is already snacking on some Mexican version of ciabatta and Manchego cheese. The tales and trivia are flowing freely. He’s non-stop and ready to take on more. For some strange reason, he pulls out his phone and shows me some photos on it. It is a picture of Johnny Winter (playing a Les Paul?!). Then there is a Stones photo, followed by a Hendrix one. He smiles and puts his phone away.
Throughout the night he and Tonya will obviously reminisce about things they have experienced together and their longstanding friendship. Thankfully, Mordo speaks good English, and most of the details are in my mother tongue. I know he doesn’t resent me like he does his Canadian neighbor, John, who’s been here 7 years and never utters a word of Spanish. I promise Mordo I will learn and not to be a bad Canadian.
 |
| The tequila list (*note awesome Paul Weller keychain) |
Mordo is determined to finish off his tequila. He is in for the long haul, and explains why he allows himself one night a week, to indulge. He tells me straight off, “I am going to help you learn about tequilas. I will make you a list of some of the best ones. You can try them as you wish”. He does. He sits down and scrawls on a legal pad starting with his favorite. He goes into detail of why he likes the different ones, what is trendy and why the coloring is different and how they dilute tequilas. It is quite interesting and it seems like he knows his stuff. I am sure I will put his list to use.
The bowls of pasta are laid out and Mordo has a request. He needs a napkin or a towel to hang in front, like a bib. He is particular. He stands and shows his plain, grey t-shirt. This is what he wants to protect, “These shirts are rare here in Mexico” he says while motioning at his plain grey shirt. He looks to Tonya, “You know, it is empty. All of the shirts you buy here have big prints on them” he says while Tonya nods in agreement. He is handed a blue dish towel and he is pleased with the amount of coverage. He can eat now.
As dinner is consumed, there are tales of how he was converted from a ‘progressive guy’ to a frequenter of discos. These were the heady days of Mexico City in the mid 70’s. “The disco guys were into Gloria Gaynor and stuff, I was progressive. I wore plain shirts, bell bottoms and had long hair. I was into Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer…”he rapid fires without a pause. “Tonya changed me of that. I remember the first night I went. She would not let me go out looking like a progressive, I had to dress ‘nice’” and he tells of his conversion form night on. Oh yes, wild times, car wrecks, cop beatings and the general decay of friendships and people due to the ominous white powder which took over the scene.
Mordo went to high school in Kansas. It was there he saw a headlining show of Elton John with the openers Three Dog Night and T.Rex. His cousin was madly in love with Marc Bolan and took him to the show to specifically see Bolan. “She just loved him. He had that blue hair, you know?” he tells a very fascinating story of the time he saw Bolan. He is full of passion and his hands are flying all over the place as he acts like his cousin screaming, groping him, crying at the sight of Marc Bolan. “It was great, very great” he says smiling. It was 1975 and he was a very young man. What a way to see T.Rex…in Kansas!
 |
| Dash suffers for ethnic entertainment. |
Mordo is Jewish, or as the Mexicans call one another of the faith, “paisano”. A Mexican Jew. His tales of being a teen in America and facing the dreaded fears of every white parent in the Midwest that their daughter is dating a Mexican Jew, whew! It is fascinating though, that he went to a Hebrew school and learned the language at a young age. It is very interesting to hear his take and stories on his faith, his heritage and the life in Mexico during the 70’s and the emergence of punk rock. Almost every tale is tied to an album or a certain episode between friends that eh and Tonya share.
“I cannot listen to certain albums, because they are too sentimental to me” he confesses. He smiles and asks Tonya of a specific time they sat with friends and listened to Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” album, over and over. ‘Tonya…you loved that record. Do you remember that night?” They both smile and recall the evening. It must be nice for them. I get all warm seeing them smile, and their eyes light up when they recall all their escapades and catch up on the latest happening with their friends. So and so is making very good money now. So and so died. She is on her fifth husband. He is so fat now.
Facebook comes up again and again during these talks. Mordo seems to be very fascinated by this hellish invention.
It should be a given, that he would ask what I thought about Obama. “I don’t know why, but I like him” he admits. Of course, he says, he leans right in his own country and in most concerns, “…but it is odd, when it comes to America, I am very liberal!” he laughs. He immigration issue is discussed, and much to my surprise Mordo shakes his head and says, “Americans. They don’t get it. They should do something about the immigration problem, because it is a problem!” He laughs at how people turn it into a ‘race’ issue “It is not racist. It is a real problem. It has nothing to with race. It is your country! You have your borders, you must protect them. There are laws!” I could not agree more, and more shocking is when almost in unison he chimes in when I start to say how truly racist Mexicans are. He laughs, shakes his head, “I know. We are so racist! Mexicans are horrible.” If only people could see what goes on on this side of border. He and Tonya talk of times out when even their friends were denied entry to bars and clubs because they were too ‘dark’, or from the wrong part of Latin America. La Raza, que bueno! Oh land of ‘hope and change’, you have no clue.
“Keith Richards has a fantastic philosophy”, Mordo says. “He is great. You should really watch his interviews on YouTube”. Tonya starts to laugh and tells a story of how as teens, Mordo had loads of pics of Mick Jagger, “he would always show me these photos and ask ‘Tonya, don’t you like him? Isn’t he good looking…” she says laughing. Mordo laughs too, and holds his hand out as if he is showing a photo. “I loved these photos. They were great. He looked great, no?” he asks without shame “It was around the Beggar’s Banquet period. He looked so great…”
I don’t quite get the combo Mordo is consuming. Loads of tequila, coffee and water. It is almost as if he is shuffling the cups with the hidden peanut beneath. He can’t understand why at midnight, we are not all doing the same. “You should have some coffee too, it is great!”
This guy is truly a night out. He is very well versed in so many things. He loves music. He can speak Hebrew and talk of the Russian girl he met while in Israel in the early 90s. Books, poets, drug riddled towns in Mexico, real estate, The Cure, the war, the revolution, the oil spill…it goes on and on. He really tells a great story of Ocotlan, the family’s maid. She could make the most amazing quesadillas. “People would come to my mother all the time, and ask to get Ocotlan’s food. They would offer to pay her higher wages and have them cook for them” he says. “But my mother, she would tell them to get lost. She works for me, I pay her”. Her name was Sarah, but when she was first hired, she told them to call her Ocotlan, because that is the village she was from. “Yes, there are several Ocotlans in Mexico. We never knew where she was from and where she went. We do not even know what her real name was” Tonya asks why she vanished so quickly. “We don’t know. Her husband killed someone” Mordo says, “…but it was in self defense” he adds while raising his eyebrows. “In Mexico self-defense is not self-defense, it is just what you say when you kill someone. We don’t know what happened; she just went back to whatever Ocotlan she came from”.
Tonya wants recipes, and asks Mordo to ask her mom how she made certain dishes. He laughs “No one knows! It is bad. Even my mother taught her dishes from Turkey and Ocotlan would make them better than my mother. Everything she touched was fantastic” he says. They both laugh as they discuss a bean dish she was ‘famous’ for. Mordo rolls his eyes as if in ecstasy.
There is quite a bit of time spent talking about food and maids who cook. Mordo tells of another amazing story of one of his aunts from the ‘home land’ of Turkey. She was one of 8 sisters brought here and her name was Fortuna. She had brought amazing and unheard of recipes from home. The Mexicans went nuts for her, the transplanted Turks even more so. Her specialty was a whipped and crystallized sweet made from sugar, lemons and water. “It was crunchy and hard, but when you bit into it, it was so lovely and floral. It would just dissolve and melt into this wonderful thing” Mordo says. He tells of one night after she had passed, that his uncle announced at a family function ‘If anyone can make Fortuna’s famous dish the way she did, I will pay you $1000!’ “Man, we were all at home in the kitchen trying our hardest. We all wanted the money!” he laughs “But no one could do it! No one knew the recipe and no one could reproduce it” He moves his hands as if stirring, and insists that the secret was how high the flame was and exactly how many times and at what rate you stirred the sugary mixture. “Many people would ask her for her recipes, but she would refuse. Even in our family, people would ask and she would say that what she cooked was hers, and she would take it all to the grave with her…and she did! She died and told no one how to cook anything that she had made” He says to this day, everyone who knew Fortuna talks about her food and how they would pay enormous sums of money just to have one of her dishes again.
“Don’t you think Tonya has powerful hands? Look at them, they are wonderful” he says all of a sudden, while taking a short break from story telling. “You can tell a lot about a person form their hands” he says and grabs Tonya’s hands. They laugh and compare hands. He is fascinated by her hands, and tells her that that was one of the first things he noticed when he had met her. Tonya is a bit shy about the compliment. He looks at me and asks, “Really. What if you met a beautiful woman and she had short, stubby fingers. Would you go out with her? Would you talk to her?” and he shakes his head and wrinkles his nose. “No. You wouldn’t, because she has ugly hands” he answers for me. We laugh at the odd observation, but it is true. Short, fat stubby hands and weird feet are a sure turn off. (Hand freaks take note)
 |
| That is a giant tortilla |
It’s very late and raining. It has been raining almost all day. There is a noise in the kitchen and the conversation stops as we all turn to look. It is Maria Antonia. She has retuned from a trip back to her home in Vera Cruz. She is giggling, and there is another giggle too. She is dripping with rain and wrestling with her luggage and what looks like a huge pizza, wrapped in towels. Her sister is with her; she is younger and is quite shy. She has a little pot belly poking out from underneath her ill fitting t-shirt. Maria Antonio his ribbing her about her weight and tells Tonya, “She ate three tortas on the way here. Three…”. They giggle and take their luggage to her room. We hear them a few minutes later giggling in the kitchen as they cook a midnight snack. Mordo asks who she is and gets the rundown from Tonya. “She is cute” he says. A few minutes later the sisters walk to Maria’s room holding hands and giggling, with the younger sister hiding behind the other, ‘Buenos noches senora’ they say as they shyly duck out to her room.
We carry on and Mordo carries on his juggling coffee, tequila and water. Tonya cannot believe that Mordo has drunk as much as he has. He is not a bad drunk, but Tonya had warned how he may get very inquisitive and philosophical. Not really. Thankfully, he does not want hugs and sheds no tears and doesn’t get macho. He just keeps going and keeps talking. As his bottle empties, Tonya’s eyelids sink lower and lower. Mine get redder and redder. We are not marathon boozers, and although we are completely enjoying his company (especially Tonya); we are running out of gas. He looks at Tonya and tells her it is because she is not taking the magical tequila/coffee mixture. “It is not late!” he says as he notices us hunching over under the burden of oncoming sleep, “get used to it. We are just starting. The night starts after 1 am here in Mexico City” and he looks at his watch, “It is only after 1:30. We just started!” We only make it about 45 minutes more and finally have to quit. It is bedtime. Mordo says he will stay up and watch some TV, and will finish his bottle.
 |
| Mordo's much cherished tequila bottle (not empty) |
“My blanket. Will it smell like Dash?” he asks, referring to the dogs lying on the bed. We laugh and tell him no. “I put new sheets on your bed, and a fresh blanket” Tonya re-affirms to him. We exchange our night wishes and go off to bed. Mordo didn’t last too long. It hadn’t been an hour later before I hear him walk up the stairs and into his room. Sweet dreams.
No comments:
Post a Comment