ANOTHER STARTUP CONFERENCE, except the genius organizers decided to hold this one on Cozumel in Mexico during Spring Break. There were booths of tech companies hawking apps but also street vendors selling rice and beans and cervezas. I was searching for the men’s toilet, but this was hard to come by. There were toilets for women and transmen, but none for just men. The women’s toilet showed a figure in a dress, the transmen’s toilet showed a figure in pants, but also wearing high heels. But wasn’t there a toilet for people who wore trousers and shoes? What to do? My father was there, but he was younger, from the 1980s, wearing a beige suit and tie, from those days when he would slink away while we were on vacation because he “just had to make a few phone calls” (he was in sales). I said, “Dad, I can’t find the men’s bathroom.” “Keep looking, son,” he said. “There must be one somewhere.” I came around to the bay side of the island’s peninsula, where the water was calmer, and saw there was an underground tunnel with a line leading into it. I thought it must be the men’s room, but then I saw the figure with the pants and high heels. At last, I decided to relieve myself in the ocean. Sometime after that, we were supposed to leave. Atlacamani, the pretty Azteca goddess of storms, was there seated in the back of an old Model T car, and my father, still clad in his beige suit, was in the driver’s seat. For whatever reason, Zorro had decided to come along and was in the back next to Atlacamani. It was time to leave the startup conference. I loaded up the Model T with casks of good Mexican wine. I had on my old jacket, the one that still has blood stains on it from when I cut my hand while sawing down a Christmas tree way back in ’13. I also had on my rubber boots. Finally, it was time to go. I got into the Model T and my father started the engine. I looked back to Atlacamani and Zorro and they nodded and smiled to me. Thus we sped away into the forever sunset.
north! 