Tijauna is a hell of a town.

I suppose that Tijuana’s famous for a certain amount of immorality. The drinking age is only eighteen; drugs and prostitutes are easy to find. Not a reputable place, by any means, but an easy good time for the young and foolish. We weren’t interested in any of that, honestly. We were just curious and feeling adventurous when we (my brother Matt and our friend Daniel and I) decided to spend an afternoon there once. I think we were teenagers at the time—older than eighteen but younger than twenty-one, if I recall correctly. We were perfect idiots, too; I should mention this to frame this story properly. I think we went because we thought we were cool and had a sort of curiosity—an attraction, if you will—to the wildness of the idea of Tijuana. We’d been to Mexico before. We’d been to Tecate, to Ensenada, and to Rosarito. Not the same thing, it turned out.

We took the trolley to the border because that’s part of the adventure. For some ineffable reason, trolleys are how San Diegans go to TJ. We then crossed a pedestrian bridge into Mexico. I remember being surprised at how little security there was for an international border. We were excited to be in Mexico, and found a block or two of touristy shops to look around. Almost immediately, a street vendor offered to sell us vicodin. We probably giggled like excited schoolgirls then politely declined. A taxi driver offered to drive us to TJ. We were cheap bastards, and we were already in TJ, damnit, so we declined his offer, too. We walked a block and found ourselves in Mexican suburbia. So we walked back to the touristy place, two blocks in the other direction and got hit by suburbia again. The cab driver watched us amusedly the whole time, and then offered again.

“Revolution Avenue,” he said in perfect American. “That’s where you want to go.”

We had never heard of it, but okay. Apparently, we were the only ones who’d never heard of it. It’s very famous. The driver dropped us off in the middle of the street and charged us eight dollars for the ride. We later learned that eight dollars was more than the ride was worth, but we didn’t know, and the cabbie knew that we didn’t know.

There was a party going on, as far as we could see up Revolution Avenue in both directions. The street was lined with bars, hotels, and strip clubs, and the American college kids overflowed into the streets. We didn’t have a plan, didn’t know what we wanted to do. We started walking aimlessly up the road. People who spoke various amounts of English kept trying to sell us things. After a few city blocks of not stopping anywhere, we decided to try to find some tacos. As white as we are, we considered ourselves taco connoisseurs, so with pride we passed many taco carts trying to find the perfect one. In reality, we were all looking for one that reminded us of the one we’d liked that one time in LA. We found a shop we liked, eventually (note the use of the word “shop” instead of “cart”) and sat there. They sold one kind of taco and cans of soda to go with.

When we sat down, the guy running the place looked at Matt and asked, “¿Cuantos tacos quieres?” Now, there are three words in this sentence. One of them is taco. One of them is a form of quiero, as in, “Yo quiero Taco Bell.” And the third is fairly self-explanatory. Also, we were there to buy tacos, so even if one didn’t understand the language, the nature of the question could be deduced fairly easily. But when the nice man asked Matt this simple question, he immediately forgot all the Spanish he’d learned in high school and a wave of panic washed over his face. He looked at us, his eyes pleading for help. I was surprised. I mean, my Spanish was shit, too, but “¿Cuantos tacos quieres?” isn’t really even Spanish.

Most of life is competition with our brothers; that day, I was winning. I translated, and tacos were had by all. Between the three of us, we ate fourteen tacos. The man charged us for eighteen, and my Spanish wasn’t good enough to ever find out why, so we paid it, and were back out into the street.

After some more pointless walking and shallow interactions with various street vendors, we encountered a man in his sixties who insisted on walking with us for a little ways. He kept telling us how great a certain club was and how beautiful the dancing girls there were. We weren’t interested in dancing girls (no, we weren’t gay… we had religious inhibitions…and I really can’t remember why we went to TJ in the first place), so nothing he could say was going to get us in this club. Eventually, he said, “My sister is dancing in there right now! You should come see my sister!”

I feel like I should pause here and let you consider the heavy implications of his statement so I don’t have to explain them. His sister (he’s sixty-ish, remember). Is dancing (naked, we presume). And he’s okay with it (promoting it and probably profiting off of it, in fact). At best, she’s in her fifties, we’re imagining, or if she is young…think of the family dynamic. Not that we were interested before, but our desire to walk through those doors actually registered at absolute zero.

We continued on. We reached the end of party town and continued on a little farther after that. We were still in a fairly busy place. Eventually, we were the only white people in the street. We saw a pickup truck drive by with a bed full of standing policemen. It seemed silly at the time. I suppose it reminded us of the Keystone Cops or something like it. We also noted their assault rifles with three foot long magazines (guns are illegal in Mexico, FYI, but the police carry some pretty heavy artillery).

There were a couple of brothers, Americans about our age, who worked to gain our attention from across the street, so we went over to them and gave a friendly hello. They seemed excited to find fellow English-speakers (we were honestly a five minute walk from an entire colony of American college students, but somehow these guys were still excited), and they were carrying puppies. Arm loads of puppies.

“I’m saving these puppies!” I remember him saying, adding that he’d traded his cell phone for them. He had puppies poking out from his inside his sweatshirt, in his pockets, and in his hood, and so did his brother. There must have been at least a dozen little white dogs riding on these kids. “Do you guys know how to get back to the border from here?”

We did not, unfortunately. We had lost our sense of direction a long time ago, but we pointed north anyway because we are explorers and America is north, damnit. The guys thanked us and headed that way.

We turned around and headed back toward Avenida Revolucion. Somewhere we found a churro stand and I asked the woman how much they cost. One dollar, she indicated. I could see that her churros were about the size of my littlest finger, so I was disappointed that a whole dollar would only get me two bites. But we were in Mexico, so I shelled out. “Three,” I requested. “Tres,” I probably held up three fingers because I assumed she wouldn’t understand. I expected her to reach in there and pull out single finger-sized pieces, but instead she produced three brown paper lunch bags and filled them completely with cinnamon deliciousness. I was ecstatic.

One of the shops we stopped in had a wool poncho with an Aztec design on it, and the shopkeeper asked me if I liked it, and I said that I did. “Eighty dollars,” she said. I was disappointed and started to walk away. “Wait!” she said. “Seventy-five dollars.” I kept walking. I’d never bargained for merchandise before, and I didn’t want to try. “Hold on, where are you going? We can make a deal for you!”

She was an imposing woman, and strong-willed, so I stopped.

“Now,” she continued. “What is the most amount of money you would pay for that?”

I shrugged. “Twenty bucks.”

She freaked out. “I’m trying to make a living! How do you expect me to feed my kids?” or something like that.

I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking, “Then don’t sell it to me. Seems pretty simple,” and started to walk away again.

“Okay!” she agreed. “Twenty bucks.” So I bought it, though I hadn’t really intended to. I didn’t feel good about the bargaining experience, though. Somehow she’d made me feel guilt or something worse. She also informed me that it’s not a poncho, it’s a gaban. I wore it around for the rest of the day, and for weeks after.

We talked about getting a beer but never did. I’d never had beer before and thought it would be fun. I can’t remember why it didn’t happen. The sun set, eventually, and we took a cab back to the border crossing. Oh, and there’s a gentlemanly conduct that most drivers in America adhere to (taking turns and staying in lanes and obeying traffic lights and keeping safe distances from fellow drivers) that Mexican cabbies haven’t been introduced to yet. Someone should get on that.

There’s a line to get into America, apparently, a line that takes hours to get through. We took turns holding our place in line and exploring the area around. A drunken American saw me in my gaban, called me “Father,” and asked me what time Christmas mass was. We also saw the puppy guy again, somewhere ahead of us in line, and he still had his puppies. I wonder if customs let him bring them across the border.