A Paylapa in Yelapa
Or
In the Defense of Joan


The water taxi bobbed next to a rickety pier waiting to take us to Yelapa. I looked at the brochure in my hand. In a font called Blackadder, that may as well be called “Pirate,” this slogan was written: A Paylapa in Yelapa is better than a condo in Redando. It was the kind of slogan, and the kind of font, that could ruin an entire vacation.

Three fat Mexican men sat on the boat staring at my girlfriend Joan and me. Mostly at Joan. The fattest of the leering boatmen seemed a bit closer to sober than the other two. I knew this distinction was as close to something like a “captain” as we were likely to get. I handed him a few pesos. His smile told me he was drunker than I originally thought. Joan was smiling too. Oblivious to the many dangers. Oblivious to everything.

The motor coughed to start and the boat lunged away from the pier. “Hey, hey, hey!” yelled a nervous American who was me. “Lifejackets?” I asked. The captain gave a reassuring nod. He slowly stood up, opened his captain’s chair, which was a big plastic cooler, took out two Coronas and handed them to us. In other words: no lifejackets. After living in Mexico for three months I realized that this water taxi company operated in much the same way as the country did. In the faint, vague, hope, that nothing goes wrong. If something does, rest assured, no one has a plan. Emergency exits, evacuation routes, fire extinguishers, helmets, a phone number you can dial if you accidentally drink poison, extra batteries in a drawer? Gringo stuff. South of the border when things go wrong, “in charge” just means whoever is closest to their rosary beads.

Yelapa is a small tourist daytrip destination née fishing village just south of Puerto Vallarta. It’s only accessible by boat. There are no roads in or out. No electricity. No automobiles. No police. It was described to us, and accepted sight unseen by Joan, as a romantic tropical paradise. To me it sounded like the perfect place for bail jumpers and guys ducking subpoenas to hide out. The Captain, now Cinco De Mayo level drunk, pointed at a small cove off in the distance. “Yelapa.” He slurred. Joan grabbed my hand in excitement. It was going to be amazing, she declared. The best time of our lives. I was already regretting leaving my gun back at the hotel. It was an orange water pistol I bought off some Chicklet peddling nuisance on the beach the day before. But still, I’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

Joan sat on a beach chair happily sipping a mai tai. She didn’t know what was happening. My eyes darted from threat to threat. I saw everything. Three American bikers sat under a giant umbrella passing around a bottle of white rum. They stared menacingly at Joan. When I’m feeling paranoid I can read lips. They discussed killing her and raping me, or something a lot like it. “Pelican!” Joan shouted repeatedly, drawing unwanted attention. Our waiter was a local. He had that easy rapist manner. Other rapists milled about. As the sun set Joan and everyone else on the beach stood at the water’s edge and watched the sky melt into a molten red canvass over the bay. Together they held their breath, transfixed by its grandeur. It was some sort of rapist ritual. I stood with my back to the celestial what-have-you and stared at the tiny paylapa in which Joan and I were to spend the night.

The paylpa had no walls. A bamboo parapet served as the only exterior defense. It could have been stepped over in a single stride by a rapist anywhere over four feet tall. There was a bed in the center of the room with a mosquito net draped over it. While this net was the closest thing to precaution I had seen since arriving in Mexico, mosquitos weren’t what worried me. The roof’s supporting beams were also bamboo. The roof itself was thatched straw and palm. We’d be the first little pigs in need of saving when the Big Bad Wolf that is Latin America came huffing and puffing. Kerosene lamps were scattered throughout the room as a reminder of the distance between us and 20th century innovation. There was a footlocker with a heavy pad lock at the foot of the bed. Our possessions would be safe, but I don’t consider my possessions to be unique in that they are nothing without me. The picturesque view of the lagoon was spectacular but irrelevant. Its sole value to me was that it kept Joan enraptured and quiet while I devised a plan to keep her safe throughout the night.

I bought a case of Corona at the chicken coop that also sold beer just up the dirt and weeds from our paylapa. The first step to protecting Joan was to drink all of the beers and line the empty bottles along the top of the parapet. I found three steak knives in a drawer in the kitchenette and slipped them, handles out, in between the mattress and box spring. I put one of the kerosene lamps and a lighter under the bed. When an unsuspecting rapist tried to climb in to rape Joan or me, he would knock over the bottles. Upon hearing this, I would stab him repeatedly in the face with the steak knives before using the kerosene lamp as a Molotov cocktail and setting him on fire. At about that time he would know for sure; he had picked the wrong paylapa.

As Joan and I slept, bodies entwined, a thin layer of mesh separating us from the night, a warm breeze eased in off the lagoon and tripped my alarm. The bottles started shattering and clanging off of the floor. I shot up, shouting “I told you so,” and immediately got tangled up in the mosquito net. I fought loose and got to my knives. Double-fisted I started slashing at the darkness. “Honey, relax. It’s the wind! It’s just the wind!” I heard Joan pleading. I knew then that escape might mean having to leave Joan behind. A person has to want to be saved. I went back to swinging my knives in a manner Joan later described as, “very close to her face.” She ran to the parapet and tried to stop more bottles from falling. I prepared the firebomb.

People started yelling things from the other paylapas. “Knock it off idiot!” I heard clearly. “We’re trying to sleep moron! Enough of your nonsense!” It was mostly negative stuff. “They’re gone.” Joan said. “You scared them off.” I caught my breath and put the firebomb down. “Are you sure?” She pulled me down onto the bed. I was still breathing heavy. She put her hand on my heaving chest in way that let me know that everything was alright and that she was going to break up with me the first chance she got once we were back in America. I was trying to protect you, I told her. I know you were, she said. We laid in darkness listening to the waves paw at the beach for what seemed like a long time. I was almost asleep when I heard her thank me.