After my match with Rudo Anaranjado I went back into a little dressing room area under the arena where the rodeo people put on their chaps or whatever they do to get ready to ride bulls. I took a seat on a folding chair, I needed to take a minute. I was a little shaken up by what had just happened, the crowd going nuts and getting knocked around and most of all by the idea of ending up in a Mexican jail. Which is racist maybe, but it’s still a frightening idea. I don’t get shaken too easy but this caught me just right to rattle me.
There was no one else in the changing room but me. I became convinced that the group I had come across the border with had bolted when the crowd turned ugly and left me there. Like I said in my last post I never saw the SoCal Val knock-off again after she disappeared from the ring. But she hadn’t come down in the van with us anyway. I was more concerned about the two women who had been in the van and were nowhere around. I just about had enough of my courage back to leave the dressing room to look for anyone that spoke English when a Mexican man walked in wearing a suit and sunglasses.
He tossed me a set of car keys and told me in heavily accented English to give Obaluaiye a ride. To this day I have I have no clue why this happened. Did he think that I was someone else? How could he have mistaken a blonde white girl in boxing trunks for anyone he knew? But why would he give his car keys to someone at random and ask them to give someone else a ride? I would pay a lot of money to know what happened there. I would if I had a lot of money anyway. Which I do not.
Before I could ask him what the hell he was talking about, he was gone. Adding confusion to my anxiety I came up with the great plan of just sitting there and seeing if anyone else came in that could tell me what the fuck was happening. A few minutes later another Mexican man came in carrying a gym bag wearing sweatpants and a windbreaker – and a mask. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, some of the guys down here wear their masks all the time. Well probably not all the time really, probably not at home, but otherwise all the time. It’s a thing.
I had seen him in a match earlier in the show. It’s hard to say with the mask and because wrestling tears people up but I think he was older, maybe in his late 40s or 50s. In the ring he looked good, outside the ring he walked like someone with fucked up knees – every step very careful and deliberate. He had some thick arms and was solid through the body but with skinny girl legs – it’s a classic luchadore look, barrel-chested you’d call it maybe. We looked at each other and he asked me in a very quiet voice if I was his driver.
He explained that his vision was very poor and his son drives him to the matches, but his also a wrestler son was having a match later. He needed to go somewhere right now and so that’s why he needed a driver. I said that I was his driver. I don’t know why. Maybe just because it was a task that made some sense – drive someone somewhere. Easy. This was very stupid for many reasons, foremost of which if I hadn’t already been left behind in Mexico by the people I came down with, leaving and driving a dude around was a good way to end up left behind. Maybe destiny was guiding me to do it and I was chosen to learn about magic. Probably not.
We walked out of the arena and the car in question was a 2002 Lincoln Continental. Aside from being dusty it looked to be in great shape for how old it was – which was awful since it was super old. Still wearing my ring gear I got in and drove an old luchadore down a bunch of dirt roads. He talked so quietly half the time I didn’t hear his directions and he had to repeat them. Other than that neither one of us said anything. When he told me to pull off I thought it was because he was going to take a leak but we were there. “There” was a pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere.
Obaluaiye got out of the car and stood by those rocks for a long time, close to half an hour probably. I stayed in the car since it occurred to me (racistly?) that you hear about women disappearing all the time in Mexico and driving out into the country in a strange place with a man I don’t know was maybe not the best idea. Eventually he got back in the car and I drove him back to the rodeo arena.
I didn’t ask, and if he hadn’t said anything I never would have thought anything other than he was a crazy old man, but he told me that he was making a spell – he never said casting a spell, he always said making a spell – to protect himself from another magician who was trying to hurt him. For some reason I believed him. I didn’t see him do anything, he didn’t levitate into the air or predict the future or anything “magic” but I knew that he was telling the truth.
The good news is that when we got back, my crew from the US was still there waiting for me – I think the guy in the suit had told them I was running an errand for him and they had to wait if they wanted to get paid. The less good news is when I went to get in the driver had his dick out and asked me how badly I wanted a ride home. That’s why I always drive myself now.
