Licking The Knife

Every few years a North American city captures the imagination of the literati challenging the increasingly circular LA-NY coastal binary. On this particular trip, it was Mexico City.

There was so much excitement from last week’s announcement, that our Editorial Team decided to share two essays this week before we go to our normal one a week pace. So, today is Eddie's piece chronicling his Mexico City Trip, and Thursday you'll be receiving Sean Thor Conroe's rapturous piece about going back to Japan for his Baba's funeral.

For a certain neurotic try-hard segment of society, we are addicted to this conversation about living in New York or LA. By the time you get to the age of 30, it’s exhausting, but you continue to do it anyway and assume that you will simply die doing it.

If you are direct and mean what you say, you aspire to live in New York. If you’d rather not say and smile with a lot of teeth, you aspire to live in Los Angeles. If you grew up in either place, it’s understood you might try living in the other for college just to make sure it’s not for you and return where you belong.

But every once in a while, a third party rises — like Ross Perot — or perhaps Austin, Texas offering an alternative to the American coastal binary. That city is allowed into the conversation by the great gatekeepers of the bi-coastal binary. Around 2021, people seemed to think that it was nice to not pay your taxes and live in a place where you could continue to do creative work and eat brisket if you were canceled in either New York or LA.

I get the appeal.

When I reflect on history, I wonder if Casablanca was Austin, Texas or perhaps even Alexandria. At one point, people used to call Detroit the Paris of the West. Around 2010, a friend of mine from Detroit referred to it as Western Palestine. Then in 2024, Detroit’s median home prices went up 61% so like I said, the more things change the more Detroit is Paris and Austin is Casablanca.

My favorite third-party geographical oasis of the last few decades has to be Mexico City. For a few years, every chronically online person you knew was moving there. The algorithm had decided like the Talking Heads that “This Must Be The Place”, and I’m convinced that Instagram introduced the carousel in 2017 to properly document the Great Exodus.

People were posting full carousels of their beautiful apartments: look at my floor lamp, look at my rug, btw I’m still signed to @wilhelmina, look at my giant terra cotta bowl, look at my new Mexico City man with a saggy beanie who can’t even spell Tame Impala you hos wish you could do it like me baaaabbbbbyyyyyy.

It felt like a Nancy Meyers Coastal Comedy, where people divorced New York or LA and transitioned from W2s to W9s doing creative work remote from beautiful, architecturally significant apartments available for the price of cohabitating in Stuytown.

That was my complete and myopic understanding of Mexico City.

So when the Moran Brothers sent invites for their gallery opening presenting Robert Maplethorpe’s in Mexico City 85% of my friend group immediately accepted. As usual, I was a bit hesitant, but by June of 2021, I was mask off ready to rage in the name of art yó.

This was the itinerary:

Home base will be the Hotel Condesa DF where there will be a passenger van (the 17th, 18th, and 19th) for the larger group daily. The vehicle will be there at around noon and will be available for the entire day (through dinner).

Tuesday, June 15:

• Dinner at Elly's at 7:30pm

Wednesday, June 16

• Lunch at Mi Compa Chava at 12:30pm

• Dinner at Em at 8pm

Thursday, June 17

• Lunch at Rosetta at 1pm

• Dinner at 7pm - **private dinner hosted by the gallery

Friday, June 18

• Lunch at Contramar at 1pm

• Dinner - The Contramar lunch drags for hours and hours so dinner will probably be skipped.

Saturday, June 19

• Lunch at Tetetlán at 11:30am

• Dinner at Maximo at 8pm

I don’t usually adhere to an itinerary and dislike curation, but it felt like my own personal Emily Sundberg wrote it complete with impossible reservations, so I put my prejudices aside and embraced the Feed Me Mexico City Trip.

***

My first impression landing in Mexico City was that it didn’t dumb itself down for outsiders. There was a distinct visual language and dialogue going on, that required if not knowledge of architectural history, then at least curiosity.

Hotel Condesa DF was stunning, and I tried to place where I’d seen certain elements before. When I logged onto the wifi and landed at the home page, there was an explanation that it was a neoclassical French building from 1928 updated by interior designer, India Mahdavi. This happened throughout my trip, as if the entire city was a Shazam for design. You’d see a cute building, look it up, and go down an architectural rabbit hole.

There was also a recognition that everything that sucks about overly placed and curated interior design Internet was perhaps spawned by this place simply by being itself, and that made me feel sad and lonely.

Besides the random reminders of how the internet can and will ruin all, there was a quiet confidence to the city and it truly embodied the Lil’ Wayne idiom “real Gs move in silence like lasagna”.

Tuesday was familial, and after dinner, I went to Ticuchi for drinks and ran into Michael K. Williams who was in town shooting so his crew joined ours for the rest of the week.

Wednesday felt a touch touristy, riding to Mi Compa Chava in a Sprinter with a stop at the Barragan Wall before dinner at Em. By Thursday morning we were all well rested and with everyone finally in town for the big dinner at the gallery, we had an urge to celebrate art.

A call was made to a local fixer and within minutes we were presented with a Menu with things like Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Lindsay Lohan, etc. at prices we hadn’t seen since the turn of the millennium. Considering the spirit of the trip was a celebration of friends, family, and art we chose psychedelics and moon rocks as opposed to the Demi Lovato.

The dinner at the gallery was delicious and stunning, as were the Maplethorpe’s on display. I particularly liked Suck Ass, where a man that looks exactly like my bookie eats another man’s ass, so I brought it home where it now holds down the kitchen.

The gallerist gave an emotional speech about family and community that really hit coming out of the Pandemic. He talked about taking a chance and wanting to do something for community after every thing we’d just experienced. It was going to be important to represent Mexican artists to the world and the world to Mexico City. He didn’t say Mexico City was the Paris of the West or that nipples were the eyes of the face, but things were said and felt in that moment.

But something sat oddly with me.

Ever since the pandemic, I tried to hang onto the things I’d learned and felt when I thought the world was over. That I would one day pass to another realm never actually having done real intimacy and all I’d have to bring with me was a stupid fucking sneaker collection.

You’ve heard the story about Inuits and wolves. Inuits dip the blade of a knife in seal’s blood and freeze it, then when the wolf smells the blood, it licks the frozen blood until it eventually gets to the blade of the knife. Over time, the wolf is licking its own blood over and over, cutting itself on the knife until it dies.

There were moments in 2020, where I acknowledged that I was the wolf. I told myself that I would change. What was the point in lying to myself after almost dying?

That was 2020.

Of course in 2021, as a group of 50 horny men and women in CDMX that just experienced something heartfelt and emotional together, we decided to deflect and do drugs. We piled into two buses and rode to a Narco Dance Club.

There were rules at this place. For instance, a fixer had to walk us in and if you wanted to do drugs, you had to do them before you went in. Under no circumstances could you bring drugs into the club. So, we had the bus stop at a gas station, I ran in, got 5 big liters of water, and quickly dosed them all.

With about 20 minutes before we arrived at the club, we power sipped the water bottles.

“Ugh, who dosed this?”

“Eddie.”

“How much is in each one?”

“A gram.”

“Bro, that’s A LOT!”

“I know, just don’t drink so much of it.”

“Fair enough, that makes sense. Everybody drink less!”

At one point, a tall red-haired guy and his brother asked me for a sip of water so I gave it to him figuring he understood what was going on since everyone was yelling that it was “dosed crazy”. It also didn’t seem normal to pass around 5 liters of water throughout the bus unless it was spiked.

Apparently, these two guys were Scientologists. I don’t know much about that Church, but I now know that they can’t do drugs. We go into this club and about 30 minutes later, he finds me at the bar.

“Hey, was there anything in that water bottle?”

“Yeah, Molly.”

“What’s that?”

“Wait, you didn’t know the water was spiked?”

“No, we were just thirsty. I’ve never done a drug in my life.”

“But you saw us all passing it around the bus.”

“Yeah, it just looked fun so we joined in.”

At that point, my head was spinning, I was blowing up, and I didn’t have the ability to lie with the serotonin flying around my body.

“Just go with it, man. It’s too late to turn back. Just try to enjoy it.”

“What happens?”

“Honestly, you just feel really good about yourself and start telling the truth, but make sure to drink a lot of water.”

He looked at me pupils dilated completely unaware what was about to happen, but also very chill considering he had involuntarily violated his science-based religion and was about to be high as fuck.

Soon after that, Michael K started a dance-off. Mike would go off, then the next guy would pop out and so on and so forth. The locals seemed to enjoy seeing Thriller-era moves in real time and eventually everyone got into it. We were hugging, and kissing, and pissing, and screaming about how good it felt to be back outside together again.

It was one of those perfect nights you end up chasing the rest of your life.

Perfect until the girl I was talking to vomited on a pile of jackets at our table. Being the gentleman that I am, I called the sprinter and walked her out of the club. When I got outside, I saw one of my friends on the curb.

“Bro, you dosed that shit crazy!”

“I told you to drink less of it.”

“I did drink less!”

“Well next time drink less than you did this time.”

He burped and got into the sprinter with us.

We all went up to my room at which point I laid on the bed and started chewing ice. Shordy took a cold shower and felt better, so she hit me with the Theragun which felt like the Creation of Adam aka finger of God touching me. My homie cracked a cold one, sat in the corner, and just kept talking to me despite my not having pants on which was great since he usually isn’t the biggest talker.

After about 2 hours, our highs evened out and everyone stopped puking. We got a text from the rest of the homies who said there was an after party at an Airbnb. It felt insane to vomit, go home, and pop back out, but it’s exactly what we did in Hotel Condesa bath robes.

We got to the after party around 3am. When you walked into the Airbnb, there was a line of shoes and random jackets hung up. To the right was a salon type set-up with old heads on psychedelics tackling mature themes. We said hello, paid our respects, and kept it moving to the kitchen where all the freaks were.

There was no music playing just random couplings of people with pupils popping out of their face talking quietly, but with a lot of intensity.

“Oh my god Eddie’s back from the dead!”

“I thought you threw the damn towel bro?”

“I defeated the Molly!” I screamed.

There were no cups in this Airbnb, so fools were pouring tequila into pots and water into pans in an effort to keep everyone hydrated. At one point, the Jewish homies started cosmically blessing a pan of water in Hebrew and I felt like I would never have this much fun again in my life.

The next morning, I ran into the two Scientologists at a Covid Testing Room. I was definitely apprehensive after drugging them, but to my delight they were GRATEFUL for what happened.

“That was amazing. Never would have expected it, but one of the greatest nights of our lives.”

“Yo, that is such a relief. I thought you guys were gonna kill me.”

“I mean, we were a little scared at first, but it was so much fun we just went with it.”

“Is it always that good?”

“No. You guys caught one for the ages. Don’t do drugs.”

***

A few days later, the group chat went dry and the trip was officially over. I laid back and looked at the ceiling fan like the beginning of Apocalypse Now with no serotonin left in my body.

I was completely empty, and memories started to fill the void.

Images of the glow-in-the-dark mushrooms on my ceiling and the Wu-Tang blacklight poster that hung in my high school bedroom appeared. The piece-of-shit lava lamp from Spencer’s. Under the sink there was green LA Looks hair gel and a box of my first Trojans. In the drawer were various pipes and a bbq torch to smoke hash out the window.

This was where it usually started.

I’d lay on the floor and call my friends from my Dad’s old office phone that was now the floor phone in my bedroom. We’d plan all week to pull off a night like the one we’d just had in Mexico City.

We had to create a story, then lie to all our parents simultaneously, coordinate, cover our steps, and return in one piece. Usually somebody went to jail or the hospital. The good nights were when we sold more drugs than we did and went home with a couple hundred bucks.

Most nights we just got caught by our parents.

But for some reason, we kept doing it.

As an adult, I could do it again tonight if I wanted to, but the idea repulsed me. I wanted to puke thinking about taking Molly again. I figured there would be another day and time where I had the urge but in that moment I couldn’t feel it.

This had happened before at different phases of my life, but I’d blocked it out and kept saying “yes” to the next party.

It was an incredible trip and another night for the ages, but the feeling of emptiness was all too familiar. I don’t know what I’d been chasing all these years on the road eating all this food, going to all these parties, meeting all these people. I had all this rage toward carousels of furniture, but it was actually my life that was a bullshit carousel.

I hadn’t changed in any real fundamental way since the first time I did ecstasy as a 17-year-old. The drug liberated me from my angst as a teenager, and each time I took it I’d make myself this promise that I’d say the things that needed to be said and stay true to myself.

But in between the peak moments when I was high and honest, I kept it tucked. I constantly dated the hot girl that was gonna throw up on the jackets and never said what needed to be said when I met someone that actually challenged me.

Through my travels on Huang’s World, I was able to stay anywhere I could imagine, get any reservation I wanted, do all the drugs, but the one thing I never revealed was how completely empty and lonely I was.

I still don’t think I’ve been to Mexico City. I could have done what I did in Mexico City and died anywhere.

Luckily, I stopped licking the knife.