The Spice is Right
I’ll have what she’s having!
Tacos before sex. Tacos after sex. Perhaps even sex with a guy named Taco. Sex in a taqueria though? This was the last way I was expecting to spend my Saturday afternoon. In fact, I was planning on spending it watching pirated movies alone in my Mexico City apartment. Then my stomach grumbled.
Down the street from my apartment was a little taqueria that served the best alambre in all of Mexico. The perfect combination of Oaxaca cheese, ham, peppers, and salsa made me question why I ever needed to cook for myself again. Truthfully though, it wasn’t only the food I went for.
On that particular Saturday afternoon I grabbed my wallet and walked around the corner to the taqueria. I found the cook and owner sitting in two of the red plastic chairs that made up the twenty feet by twenty feet dining area. They looked bored out of their minds. A bottle of tequila sat on the table in front of them.
“Hola, que onda?” I asked.
“Aqui, waiting for you!” they responded cheerfully. The cook got up and started my alambre without me even having to order. Happily chopping up the veggies and meat to heat on the grill, he started talking of the joint taqueria he was going to open with me in Oregon one day.
“You and me, we’re going to be rich,” he said confidently. When the alambre was ready he handed me the plate along with a basket of corn tortillas.
I took my usual seat by the counter next to the owner. Already I felt nervous. I’ll admit a part of me was intrigued about the gentle voiced twenty-five-year-old. His black moppy hair. That cheeky smile. A man who expressed a sincere love for tacos, french architecture, and japanese anime. He was unusually charming.
He grabbed the bottle of tequila and opened it.
“Thirsty?” he asked. I shrugged and let him pour me a shot. The three amigos—my future business partner, my Mexican infatuation, and myself—raised our shot glasses.
“Salud!” we said in unison and drank up.
We continued talking until I finished my alambre. Angel asked if I wanted to smoke out back. I nodded and followed him out the door. Surprise! The “back” was really his bedroom. Oh how smooth.
“You sleep in the taqueria?” I asked, peering in. It was exactly what one would imagine a guy like him sleeping in. A king sized bed tucked in the corner. Anime movie posters on the wall. Some odd eiffel tower knickknack sitting on his one chair desk. I hesitated at first to enter, but Angel gave me a reassuring “no problema” smile, and I went in.
“Saves on rent.” He handed me a cigarette, lit it, and I then moved to examine his collection of films lying next to the television. Within seconds I felt his lips on the back of my neck. I shouldn’t have been startled. Should I really be that surprised? I started making small talk about my love for Jack Black, pretending not to notice that a guy with whom my conversations had rarely gone beyond favorite taco toppings, was now moving his hand toward my bra strap. He stopped.
“Is this all right?” he asked kindly.
Is this all right? I wonder. In about 97.4% of situations, no, it probably wouldn’t be. But I guess that particular afternoon the alambre aphrodisiac was too strong and my taqueria man too tempting. My mind screamed “Seize the moment Megan! He’s hot!”
“Si,” I tell him. Yes, vamanos, andale, let’s do this hombre!
He spun around to face me and we started making out. The copy of Nacho Libre dropped to the floor, soon to be covered by our clothes. We wrapped ourselves around each other like a perfectly prepared tortilla. He is the cheese, I am the ham. No wait—I’m the jalapeno pepper and he’s the picante salsa. Actually, it doesn’t matter because by the time I managed to find a decent taco analogy to describe our sexual act, it’s over. A bell is heard from up front. The sound of the chef talking to a customer brought us back to reality and we quickly grabbed our clothes and checked our hair in his bathroom mirror. Slightly less elegant than when I came into the room but convincingly tame enough to fool any suspicious customers. Was it just me or did I smell like chorizo?
I quickly walked through the kitchen, not able to look at the chef in the eye. He was no fool, he knew what happened. Our joint taco shop endeavor had officially been scrapped. “Out the door, out the door, out the door” was all I could think to myself. Jesus Christ. Jesus Cristo. I had sex with the taqueria guy. In his taqueria. Does this mean I don’t have to pay for my alambre? Oh god, I just paid for my tacos with sex. I am officially a taco whore. An alambre slut.
“Let me walk you home please,” Angel said to me. I motioned that I was good on my own and said I’ll talk to him soon. Once back at the apartment, I found my roommates in the kitchen sifting through the box of take out menus. I glanced at the well worn taqueria flyer clutched in my friends left hand.
“Hey Megan. Hungry?”
I shook my head and left them alone to sift. The next hour was spent scrubbing any lingering scent of taco off my body in the bathroom.
Any effort on my part to avoid the taqueria for the next couple weeks was made in vain. Turns out a few days after our little incident the taco shop shut down for unexplained reasons. I never saw my taqueria lover again. Shame really. The alambre was good.
Megan Rice is a half-Oregonian, half-Welsh rock star. She’s been incredibly lucky to have worked in various countries in Latin America and Europe and she’s just getting started. Having recently gone through a quarter life crisis, she now embraces a life of words, art, love, and pure madness.