On The Road

the main character and his friends are in Mexico

"Presently Victor's tall brother came ambling along with some weed piled on a page of newspaper. he dumped it on Victor's lap and leaned casually on the door of the car to nod and smile at us and say, "Hallo." Dean nodded and smiled pleasantly at him. Nobody talked; it was fine. Victor proceeded to roll the biggest bomber anybody ever saw. He rolled (using brown bag paper) what amounted to a tremendous Corona cigar of tea. It was huge. Dean stared at it, popeyed. Victor casually lit it and passed it around. To drag on this thing was like leaning over a chimney and inhaling. It blew into your throat in one great blast of heat. We held our breaths and all let out just about simultaneously. Instantly we were all high. The sweat froze on our foreheads and it was suddenly like the beach at Acapulco. I looked out the back window of the car, and another and the strangest of Victor's brothers--a tall Peruvian of an Indian with a sash over his shoulder--leaned grinning on a post, too bashful to come up and shake hands. It seemed the car was surrounded by brothers, for another one appeared on Dean's side. Then the strangest thing happened. Everybody became so high that usual formalities were dispensed with and the things of immediate interest were concentrated on, and now it was the strangeness of americans and Mexicans blasting togetheron the desert and, more than that, the strangeness of seeing in close proximity the faces and pores of skins and calluses of fingers and general abashed cheekbones of another world. So the Indian brothers began talking about us in low voices and commenting; you saw them look, and size, and compare mutualities of impression, or correct and modify," Yeh, yeh" while Dean and Stan and I commented on them in English.
"Will you d-i-g that weird brother in the back that hasn't moved from that post and hasn't by one cut hair diminished the intensity of the glad funny bashfulness of his smile? And the one to my left here, older, more sure of himself but sad, like hung-up, like a bum even maybe, in town, while Victor is respectably married--he's like a gawddam Egyptian king, that you see. These guys are real cats. Ain's never seen anything like it. And they're talking and wondering about us, like see? Just like we are but with a difference of their own, their interest probably resolving around how we're dressed--same as ours, really-- but the strangeness of the things we have in the car and the strange ways that we laugh so different from them, and maybe even the way we smell compared to them. Nevertheless I'd give my eye-teeth to know what they're saying about us." And Dean tried. "Hey Victor, man--what you brother say just then?"

It is interesting that no matter where you go, how far you are from home, you will always find a hipster. Everywhere on earth there are those who wish for nothing more than a good time. These east coast educated beatniks are in mexico and event though there is a language barrier they still manage to make friends and have fun. As the great Doctor Evil once said, "We are not so different, you and I." This phrase, mantra, motto, whatever you want to call it, perfectly captures the mindset behind the entire book. Even though they come from social, political, and economic polar opposites there is still common thread among hipsters; their search for a laugh and a good time. Is it just me or does this passage make you want to Mexico and eat Nachos; deliciously warm melty, nacho cheese imbued with warm ground beef, fresh and direct from the local butcher, and crisp and juicy, but oh so spicy handpicked, thin sliced, homegrown jalapeno peppers, all drizzled over warm, freshly baked tortilla chips straight from a real Mexican brick oven.... MMMmmmmmm! But I digress. This is a great book about discovering oneself and I recommend it to anyone who likes a good page turner; or delectibly hot’n’spicy nachos!

Keepin' it real,
Lex