I forget whose house I told my mom I was spending the night at the first time I went to Porky’s. Someone whose family my mom trusted, I’m sure. I’m also sure that I did not sleep at said friend’s house. We all met and slept at Gabe’s house. Gabe, my friend who always smelled like patchouli and had better hair than any girl I knew. He had a nice home and a loving family who did not mind if loud and obnoxious teenagers came over to throw up in their backyard and pass out on their couch. Or so I think they didn’t mind. Then again, I never asked them.
We piled into a few cars. Too many bodies and not enough vehicles meant sitting on laps, with no seatbelts. I squeezed into the back of a pick-up owned by an older kid known as “The Dude.” Not sure if the nickname had to do with the film, The Big Lebowski, or his generous use of the term. Again, I never asked.
If there was small talk happening in The Dude’s pick-up, I was unaware. I sat in silence, engulfed by the melancholic riffs and spacious textures of Interpol’s “Turn on the Bright Lights.” I will surprise you sometime, I’ll come around, I will surprise you sometime, I’ll come around, when you’re down. Paul Banks’ hypnotic vocals soothed any anxiety I had about my mom finding out that I would soon be crossing the Tijuana-San Diego border.
I grew up in Chula Vista, a suburb of San Diego that was about a 15-minute drive from the border. Until that evening, I had been unaware of the fluidity of the border; seeing all the other cars in la línea, coming and going. I realized there was no space between the two places, only a wide iron fence. My knowledge of Tijuana at the time was limited to whatever second-hand news I had heard from the adults around me, about crooked cops, drug smuggling, and the sewage runoff that polluted San Diego beaches.
Porky’s was a refuge for all of us who loved the likes of The Smiths and New Order, who felt we were born a few decades too late.
All of which registered as irrelevant to me. I was overcome by a yearning to be a part of something—a community, a tribe that understood me and my wannabe-Molly-Ringwald-aesthetics. Porky’s was a refuge for all of us who loved the likes of The Smiths and New Order, and who felt we were born a few decades too late.
From outside Porky’s, I could already hear the ‘80s music blaring. Send me an angel, send me an angel, right now, right now. I was still a minor, even under Mexican law, so I waited until my friends found our insider, Paola, to let me up the back stairs. She was the cool older girl everyone had a crush on. The girl I was secretly jealous of because of my teenage insecurities. The girl who did, in fact, deliver on her promise to sneak me in. Did I even say thank you? Thank you, Paola.
Joining my friends at the bar, I ordered a “motherfucker,” as suggested by Paola. It was a blue drink. That’s all I remember…
We squeezed onto the tiny dance-floor, which was nothing more than a square platform sectioned off by walls. In unison with the entire crowd, we sang at the top of our lungs, I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear, not caring that our shoes were getting scuffed and that we had now acquired someone else’s sweat on our bodies.
I let my body surrender to the music by way of numerous motherfuckers. In that moment, I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I felt total freedom and abandonment as my limbs flailed about. Rock lobster, down, down. As if possessed, I literally went down to the ground and played dead.
At some point, I got pretty sick and spent a lot of time stumbling in and out of the bathroom. On one of these trips, a girl pointed out the David Bowie pin on my dress, to which I responded (in my best Bowie voice), I’m an alligator, I’m a mama-papa coming for you. Eventually, the bathroom attendant had enough of my drunken ways; she opened the stall door while I was puking and kicked me out, yelling Spanish obscenities that I am thankful I could barely translate.
If I told you I knew exactly how the night ended, I’d be lying to you. But I can tell you that we made it back to Gabe’s without any problems, that my mom never found out about our excursion, and that this was just one of my many pilgrimages to Porky’s.
Correction: An earlier version of this piece misstated Paola’s affiliation with Porky’s. She did not work there as a bartender.