Two friends discover they have AIDS. One takes his doctors advice. The other one doesn't.
“Que cachondo!”
Those were the first words I heard from the male stripper as he danced close to me just wearing red briefs, and this was the beginning of a five year friendship that was to fill my life with joy and sadness and was to end tragically.
He was very good looking, young, with a very good physique, a handsome Mexican guy, and was the only stripper in the club, which I used to go to, that could dance! The other strippers would just make aerobic movements. His fifteen minute routine consisted of music by Wilfrid Vargas, Jennifer Lopez, and Bon Jovi.
My local club was not far away from where I lived and I used to go there to enjoy a night out and have a few beers. It was called Arizona’s and was in Avenida La Paz, Guadalajara, Mexico. It has since closed.
I used to go there to see the drag show as the artists were very good and looked exactly like the real artists whom they were portraying.
Apart from the female impersonators there were males too, who impersonated Mexican male singers and were identical to the real McCoy!
The artists didn’t just perform their songs in Spanish but also mimicked English singers, especially famous singers from the United States.
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Guadalajara has some good night spots but also has
some dives! Arizona’s didn’t fall into the “dive” category though.
Because there was a cover charge to pay to get in, the local “mayates” as they are called, which means male prostitutes, wouldn’t come to the place. Clients were usually middle-aged professionals.
It had two floors - an upper bar and a downstairs bar with the dance floor - and could hold up to four hundred people.
The show started at 11.00pm and went on until 3.00am. It was open from Wednesday to Sunday.
Once a month it would have a “Noche Caliente” where the strippers would expose everything!! Women weren’t allowed in on that night.
It would start with female impersonators in a dance routine, followed by the host, who was also a drag queen, portraying either a famous female Mexican singer or a female international singer.
In between the drag show were the male strippers. It was an entertaining night out.
Almost all of the nightclubs in Guadalajara have this type of show.
I was never really interested in the male strippers as I
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thought that it was more of an art for a male to convert
into a female, but this male stripper was about to change my life in more ways than one!
I always felt relaxed in this club as I never used to get bothered by anybody who was just looking for a one night stand. It was a local pick up place but I wasn’t into that.
It was a well-known place frequented by gay people of both genders but had lately become a haunt for mixed couples and swingers.
I was friendly with the bar staff and also with all of the drag queens and the conductor of the show would always say: “Ah, here’s David the Englishman who is more Mexican than English!”
The other drag artists were always very friendly and welcoming to me, that’s why I felt safe and relaxed there. When male members of the public, who were looking for a pick-up, could see I was a friend of the artists and bar staff, they wouldn’t bother me.
The bar tenders were male, and straight, and I used to get on well with Alejandro, the owner’s brother, a man of about thirty eight, chubby, and short. His famous catchphrase was always “puta!” Danny was the other barman who was tall and thin with a moustache. These barmen worked in the downstairs bar. The other barmen, who worked in the upstairs bar, were Jorge and Jesus (Chuey). There were five regular drag queens: Claudio, David, Juan, who regularly impersonated Yuri
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and looked exactly like her, Juan who impersonated
Cher and Miguel (known as La Pipa). There were also guest male impersonators usually portraying Alejandro Fernandez and Juan Gabriel.
I’d usually walk there as it was near to where I lived but I always took a taxi home, so I got to know the taxi driver, a man of around fifty, whose name was Santos, pretty well too.
Well, I’d go there on weekends, usually on a Saturday night.
So, I met Bruno the male stripper in February 2007. He found out that I worked at a language school and asked me about English classes, so I gave him my business card and told him to ask for me if he was interested in English classes as I could get him a free scholarship and he wouldn’t have to pay for classes and left it at that.
About three weeks later he phoned my home number and asked if he could come and see me personally to talk about English classes. This was on a Sunday afternoon. I wasn’t doing anything, so I gave him my address and he arrived half an hour later by taxi.
We spoke for about an hour and I said it would be best if
he came to the school the next day so that he could register and start his course. I was very surprised because I thought he wasn’t really serious about taking English classes.
So he came the next day and registered and started his
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classes at 5.00pm. Unfortunately, he only came to the school for two weeks and never showed up again, which came as no surprise.
I personally didn’t think that this type of person would be serious or committed enough to study English as he was a showbiz person.
I went to Arizona’s the following Saturday night but he didn’t appear in the show. I didn’t see him again for about three months.
I had a friend Art, an American, who was also a teacher, and we would often have a coffee together and I suggested that we go to Arizona’s one Friday night for a couple of beers.
He’d never been there and was interested in seeing the drag show, so we made arrangements to meet outside the club at 10.30pm the following Friday night.
Well, it was a very good show and, lo and behold, Bruno
was appearing that very night. Art was very surprised to see how friendly the artists were with me. Anyway, I introduced Bruno to him. After Bruno’s spot had finished he came and sat with us. Art didn’t want to stay to the end and left after the first show, so I stayed with Bruno for company.
“Why don’t we go on to another club?” he suggested, “I prefer to go somewhere else because I work here and want to get away from my work.” I agreed, paid for the
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drinks and we left in a taxi and went to another club called Platino which was very near to my house.
We had a really good time and this is when I started to get to know him. We had a photo taken together and met some other friends of mine, Ana and Javier. I knew this couple from Arizona’s bar. They were in their late thirties. Ana was a schoolteacher and Javier was a taxi driver. She was of medium build and he was slightly taller with a very short moustache.
They were swingers but I’d been told by Alejandro, the barman at Arizona’s that Javier was into young men and Ana was aware of this.
“Is it okay if I stay at your place tonight?” Bruno asked, to which I agreed.
So at 6.00am when the club closed we came back to my place. He slept at my house and left that afternoon at 5.00pm.
He told me that his mother lived in Los Cabos with his brother and sister and he also apologised for not being able to continue with his English classes as he hadn’t had the time.
He told me that his work as a stripper meant that he travelled a lot and didn’t really know when he would be out of the city at certain times. He said that he shared a house with some other strippers out of town but would like to know if I’d let him come live with me as it was near to Arizona’s. I said I would think about it and let
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him know the following week.
He also told me that he had been living in Guadalajara for nine years as he had had the chance to leave Los Cabos and study to become an actor and dancer with Televisa in Mexico City. He preferred Guadalajara and said that he had worked at Televisa here as a choreographer and that he was a member of ANDA (the association for actors). He also said that he had worked as a model, which was easy to believe because he had the looks.
On the Wednesday of that week he made a surprise visit
to the school to tell me it was his birthday and he was 27 years old. We went to a seafood restaurant in Zapopan’s Mercado del Mar to celebrate.
Now, our friendship was growing and I was getting to know more about him. He had a very nice personality, very bubbly and very outgoing. He was slightly smaller than me, about five feet seven with very dark coffee coloured eyes and almost black hair which was cut short. He weighed around 170 pounds, and always wore sunglasses - on and off stage!!
But unfortunately, he had a split personality, took cocaine and was a blatant liar which I was going to discover much later on in our friendship.
“Let’s go to the zoo on Sunday!” he said like an excited teenager, “then to the movies because I’d like to see Transformers.”
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“Ok,” I replied, “Come to my house at 1.00pm on Sunday.”
The following Sunday he came to my house and we took a taxi to the zoo which was only half an hour away. We stayed there all afternoon and had a really great time. We must have walked for miles as the zoo is very big and we saw all the animals.
He was mainly interested in the white tigers and the newly born lion cubs which were on show and we went inside a place where we could feed the monkeys and he bought a packet of peanuts and a monkey came close to him so that he could give it some.
To remember the day we asked a member of the public to take a photo of us together with my cell phone. It was a nice photo with the Barranca as a backdrop.
After our visit to the zoo we took another cab and went to the movies in the Centro Magno shopping mall, to see the movie that he had so much wanted to see: Transformers.
It had been a wonderful day, one I will always remember. After the movies we went to Arizona’s for a couple of beers.
Sunday nights were quiet there but he met up with another stripper and the day that had been so perfect, was shattered by an unpleasant surprise for me.
The stripper friend had spoken to him about an event in
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Puerto Vallarta and wanted Bruno to go along as part of a show there in one of the hotels which was to last three months.
I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him again and going out, as we always enjoyed going out together and he was great fun to be with.
He made me feel younger than my fifty odd years. It was good to go out with a younger person and enjoy the clubs and the other attractions that Guadalajara has to offer. It was much better than going out alone. Company is much more fun.
He told me what his plans were but promised to keep in touch by phone.
That night I returned home alone feeling very depressed. It had been such an unforgettable day and this news had ruined everything.
I went to school the next day still feeling miserable and didn’t have the heart to do any work but I said to myself “David, you must pull yourself together. It’s not the end of the world and you have only just got to know him and after all he is a free agent.”
All day long I kept thinking about the marvellous day we’d spent at the zoo and the movies and recalling every minute of the day.
He had my phone number, both at home and my cell phone number, but I didn’t have a number where I could
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contact him. He said he’d phone as soon as he arrived in Puerto Vallarta and I waited all day for the call which never materialised.
I worked as the director of studies of the English department at a language centre. I had worked there as an English teacher for two years before being given the position director of studies, so I was always busy at work, which was good in some way because it kept my mind off wondering about Bruno.
The days turned into weeks and I continued to be busy at work so Bruno went to the back of my mind. I still kept going to Arizona’s at the weekend and life went on as normal.
I also had another friend Juan Carlos. He lives in San Martin de Hidalgo, a small town about forty miles away from Guadalajara.
I’ve known Juan now for twelve years and we are very good friends. He is the complete opposite of Bruno. He is very reliable and trustworthy and lives with his mother. She never married but he knows who is father is but doesn’t have any contact with him.
Juan has a brother and sister who are married. His family are very humble and with very little money but have always been like a family to me. He is the same height as myself, five feet ten and is thirty nine years old. He has very dark brown hair, brown eyes, and is now quite chubby, around 190 pounds, although he was much slimmer when I first got to know him.
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The difference between Juan and Bruno is that Bruno was the party type whereas Juan takes life more seriously. Having said that, Juan also liked to party a lot when I first knew him, and would stay out all hours, but when he was diagnosed with HIV some nine years ago, his lifestyle changed dramatically. He became closer to God and went to mass regularly. He cut right down on his drinking habits. He occasionally has a beer or a glass of wine now, but nothing compared to the years before he found out he was infected.
I met Juan in December 2000 and we became very close friends. I know everything about him and he knows everything about me. I don’t have many real friends in Guadalajara, in fact I can count them on one hand. Apart from Juan and Bruno, I have another good friend, Mario.
I also had a very dear friend Jorge, who also died from an AIDS related illness at the age of thirty four some ten years ago.
When I first came to live in Mexico 12 years ago, I came looking for a life of adventure not realizing that the adventure would be filled with tragedy!
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“Que cachondo!”
