“I’m Not Mexican”

  One evening I met up with Matt at C. J. Bond’s when Jay was bartending, I was bragging to him about how I was able to drive his old car, ‘Snout’, down Route 1 along the California coast like he always wanted to do. And then told him how we drove into Mexico.

  “You drove my car into Mexico?!” he exclaimed, really jealous.

  Suddenly this guy sitting near us started yelling to us. “I’m not Mexican.” He said it several times until we realized he was talking to us.

  “Okay…” I said. And then went back to my story about my adventures in Mexico. Now the guy was getting angry.

  “I’m not Mexican. Stop calling me Mexican.” I tried explaining that we weren’t talking about him, but he wasn’t getting it. He was Hispanic, but his English was pretty good, so I don’t know what he was hearing.

   I tried to diffuse the situation by buying him a drink. “Want to do a shot? What do you like? Tequila…?”

  At this, Matt expected him to deck me, but he agreed and the two of us did a shot of tequila together. I wanted tequila, so it didn’t even occur to me the repercussions if he were to take offense. He was amiable and I got a good story out of it. Jay just shook his head.

  I also had Matt explain why the Melman up and moved from New Mexico to Montana so suddenly and Matt told me that it was his way to break up with his girlfriend, Elaine, without having to actually do it. He was hoping moving from Vermont to New Mexico would make her break off the relationship, when she followed him there, he went to Montana. It didn’t work. In the end, Melman would ‘man up’ and break it off with her by telling her. Elaine was a sweet girl and I think he just felt he had no real good reason for breaking off the relationship other than the fact he just generally disliked attachment in general. He was never one to hold onto people, places or things. It was the Melman way.