FEAR AND KISMET IN CANCUN
This was the last ditch post I put out from the Cancun airport roughly five hours ago:
"Ok so I haven't heard from anyone and I'm still at the airport. I will wait another 45 minutes and hope someone takes mercy on me. I'll then take a cab to where the party is supposed to be tomorrow. It's the only address I have sine I don't know what hotel I'm booked into.
From there I'm hoping someone will know how to get ahold of you so I can get to the hotel.
Roaming is costing about $25/min but I don't dare turn it off.
Rob says hi because he's the only person who I got through to. He claims I got punked and you're getting married in New York.
Wish me luck.....
-Kevin"
And that's indeed what I set out to do. I was just getting into my very pricey taxi to go to the wrong destination when Kelly called with the actual hotel. Not as nervous a ride as the one I had in Kampala, but regardless I was still unsure as we hit the dark back streets.
Then Cancun sort of blossomed out of liquor stores and I found myself in front of the the swank Hotel Kinbe. You can tell it's swank because swanky hotels always put "Hotel" before their name.
I had just missed Andrea and Carrie, but they told me which restaurant they had gone to. The streets of Cancun were more tasteful than I had imagined though still catering to their American set, for which sobriety seems to evade every age group.
They were still nowhere to be found. I wandered on a few blocks, looked at a couple of restaurants and wondered where I would buy my one and only pair of flip flops. I hit a side street and picked a restaurant at random and sat down to order. Then I heard a laugh. I knew that laugh. It was the same one I heard for the first time nearly 20 years ago.
Of COURSE they had picked the same restaurant. Of course they had sent a shuttle for me and forgot to mention it. Of course...because by some kind of Grace, a special kind of magic seems to visit upon us at times of seemingly random necessity. A week ago I was wondering how I was going to make rent, and now I find myself in some 4 star hotel on the shores of Cancun with people I love more than life. There. It happened.
And tonight was the first night. There are four more of these. Kelly gets married Saturday, completing the circle of me having shot all of their marriages. Carrie and Cory, then Andrea and Matt. Now Kelly and Steve.
So as we wandered down 10th Avenue with it's slurring, thinning crowds, separated by nothing new other than the 50 years that will eventually eat into everyone who lives, I was haunted by the thought that we all think that everything we do has never been done by anyone else in all of history.
Perhaps....but as we said goodnight and I took to the roof top in my stubbornly nocturnal ways and contemplated the seemingly miraculous ways of the last 6 hours, I realized that it didn't matter. It was still our story. And if for some reason, a week from now, I go back to wondering about rent or if anyone is going to buy my art, I will know that I had THIS. I think I take photos to prove that magic still exists in this world...
