Go to Mexico with Your Ex & Don’t Make It Weird
“If you didn’t feel the need to be so far away from me you wouldn’t be fighting for the covers,” I growl silently as I feel him tug at the only thing we have in common right now. It’s 7AM on Sunday morning in Rosarito, our third day in a row waking up next to each other. Two twin beds have been pushed together and there’s an ocean of sheets between us. I realize there are three days left on this trip and begin to spiral into a full blown panic attack.
When you tell friends you’re going to Mexico with your ex, they’ll raise an eyebrow. But when I told friends I was leaving the country with this particular ghost, I’m pretty sure they wanted to check me into a mental institution.
It starts simple enough — two people match on a dating app, they have one friend in common, they go on a first date — then it stops being simple. Because that date is five hours long, because the kiss at the top of the subway steps makes the city go silent, because less than a week later he’s at your door in Brooklyn at 3AM because he can’t go to sleep without seeing you. Later he’d tell me it ended because we weren’t patient with it, we both wanted it too badly, we didn’t give it a chance. But when I stormed out of his apartment in the middle of the night four weeks after we met, I knew the truth: we just weren’t right for each other.
Now it’s Friday morning and I’m driving us through San Diego on our way to cross the border. In the past two and a half years, he’s come in and out of my life repeatedly. The truth is, I’ve never friended and unfriended and refriended someone this many times. In the weeks leading up to the trip I spoke at length to anyone who would listen about the idea of someone being a soulmate even if your stories don’t end together. Is that what this was? What was I doing here?
He stayed over at my apartment in Los Angeles last night, and it was the first time we’ve ever shared a bed without having sex. When I woke up, I stared at the constellations on his back and wondered what the next five days held for us. It was still hard to believe this trip was actually happening.
“It would be insane for us to not talk about this. You disappeared for eight months.” Instead of responding, he carefully chooses our soundtrack. We both care a lot about music, but seem to hate everything the other person likes. Music taste is something we both see as a point of pride, so we’ve always competed, desperately sharing songs that might get the other person to sway to our side on the best album and the greatest lyrics for this exact moment.
We check into our Airbnb, a small windowless room on the top floor of a brand new apartment building with three pools, three jacuzzis, and private beach access. $49 a night. Our host recently moved to Baja from San Diego, is already drunk when we arrive, and speaks of a lucrative career selling koi pond equipment. We’ve both lived in New York for too long to trust him.
I drive into town, getting extremely lost along the way, misguided by my own GPS plus construction detours written in Spanish. As we navigate toward the chaotic center, with lingering promises of tequila and al pastor, he tells me stories I’ve never heard before. We’re just two strangers who happen to know each other very well.
That evening we sit on the beach and watch the sunset, well on our way toward consuming eleven tacos in five hours. I watch myself run my toes through the cold sand. My brain is tired from the long drive, but I’m filled with nervous energy. I’ve always liked being near him, even though we rarely touch. He is comfortable in a way I don’t feel with most people, but distant in a way I’m unfamiliar with.
“Why are you so cold to me?” I feel how sharp my tongue is but some idiotic part of me thinks this will work. It’s three days later in Ensenada and I have a mild case of food poisoning, probably from the raw oysters we ate on a street corner the day before. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replies flatly, and I see his worst illustration of me reflected in his eyes. I fight myself for a few minutes — he never fights back, just asks me why I have any expectations of him at all, why I care about how my actions affect him — and I recede because I remember. A fight with him might never be productive because I’ll always want what he can’t give me.
We barely speak on our drive up the coast, but he lets me play my music. When we get to the beach I say, “You know you’re incredibly important to me. You’ve taught me so much about myself.” He pretends he doesn’t hear me, or maybe he thinks silence is an acceptable response.
Later that day, we head to La Bufadora, the largest marine geyser in North America. I was nervous he’d hate it. Maybe he’s right, and I do care too much about his reactions. I internalize them and mirror them onto myself. I make assumptions about what he thinks of me and decide they’re facts.
My eyes widen at the road ahead. Driving around rough mountainsides toward an unknown, possible tourist trap, I take in colors at every turn. I’m brought to tears by the way the sun glitters across the ocean. I exclaim how beautiful everything is over and over in the most poetic way I can summon, and he stares ahead. I laugh to myself; we are so different.
On Tuesday morning, we pack our bags and drive to Tijuana for one more taco meal before we hit the road. We’ve been talking about getting matching tattoos, just a little banger to represent the trip and our undeniable connection that neither one of us has ever been able to shake. We go from shop to shop but no one has room for a walk-in, so we head back to America with no new ink to show for our journey.
“Did you think we’d sleep together on this trip?” It took ninety minutes to cross the border, which isn’t bad by most standards. We still have hours ahead of us before we’re back in Los Angeles and the silence is killing me, as it often does. I’ve been waiting to ask him this question since I realized how silly it had been to stash condoms in my suitcase before we left. “I hadn’t thought about it,” his voice is stable and straightforward like a small pebble hitting a big pile of soft dirt. If he plays another Styx song I’m going to fucking throttle him.
“How was Mexico?” they’ll ask when you get back to the office. Try not to look so surprised when your boss hugs you. It’s been almost a week since you’ve been touched in an affectionate way, but it’s like riding a bike. And the truth is, Mexico was amazing.
It’s beautiful, it’s easy, it’s cheap. In five days, we shared 38 tacos, one lobster, a whole bunch of clams and sea urchin, an incredible torta on the side of the road, a pile of Coca-Colas, and some very special handmade tamales. We spent more time together than we ever had before, walked everywhere, and completely avoided seeing each other naked. I can’t speak for him, but the trip did exactly what I hoped it would — we pressed the reset button on our relationship, and began to be friends.
Letting go of everything I wanted him to be, I can appreciate him for exactly who he is. I know he’ll always have the answer to an off-the-cuff question about produce, he’ll often meet me late at night to eat any kind of Asian food, and he’ll usually have a music suggestion I’ll probably hate… but maybe I’ll like it. In certain ways, he grounds me, and makes me take everything, especially myself, less seriously. I like having him around.
So go to Mexico with your ex, but only if you both like to eat adventurous food on street corners, you don’t mind hours of silence, you won’t get angry if he’s texting a girl from Tinder, and you have some recollection of elementary school Spanish. Change your relationship, if you want to, and find a new way to be in each other’s lives. It doesn’t need to be weird, but it certainly can be.
