PDA

Those of us who come from cultures that are more diffident than demonstrative are surprised when we find that many residents of Mexico City are amorous exhibitionists.

Any public place is fair game -- a square, the metro, a park, a bench. Their backs against a tree, a stone wall, a plate glass window. There may be many reasons for this but I have no doubts that the main motivator for public displays of affection -- the main motivator for so much of Mexican society, really -- is poverty.

These are people who live with their families so they have no privacy at home. They are out in the open because they have nowhere else to go. You may feel like shouting "Get a room," but if you do, it would be advisable to give them a couple of hundred pesos so they can pay for it.

Still, these demonstrations of PDA are one of the elements that make this such a sexy city. El D.F. may not be in-your-face sexy like, for example, Rio de Janeiro, and the citizens may not be as similar to Vogue models as, say, those who live in New York or Milan. But chilangos cannot keep their hands off each other and that can be pretty hot.

I would like to say that I purposely took these pictures out of focus or with the subjects facing away from the lens because I was conscientiously discreet. I am afraid I that would be a lie, though. I'm just a lousy photographer.

Normandie, double dose

Very bad thoughts

I have always been uncomfortable with the term "cultural critic." What is it supposed to mean? What comes to mind is a person of reasonable intelligence who watches too much television and is addicted to the internet and expects we should listen to his opinions, and even more outrageously, that perhaps he should even be paid to express them. About three years ago, a writer from New York named Mark Dery passed through Mexico City, to give a conference at the Festival de México en el Centro Histórico. We met and, aside from being a very bright and likeable guy, he wrote a sympathetic article based on our interview.

Dery is a "cultural critic" por excelencia -- he has written about media, pop culture and technology for a formidable roundup of august publications, such as The New Yorker, Wired, Spin, the Village Voice and Rolling Stone and a book of his about cyberculture was translated into eight languages. So when he sent me the galleys to his new book, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams, I was nervous about whether or not I would get into it.

I need not have doubted. It's a dazzling performance, with Dery compulsively trawling the garbage-strewn shorelines of the U.S. to examine its dark and rancid center: the homosexual panic behind the Super Bowl and George Bush's cowboy pronouncements; the eros of severed heads and facial come shots on the internet; the dubious value of blogging and Facebook; the supposed intelligence of Lady Gaga and -- I am not making this up -- the significance of Madonna's big toe in a Versace ad. He writes in a breathless and witty style, engagingly full of glib word play.

As someone who left the U.S. years ago, at least in part to escape such manifestations of "culture," Dery's book is a special treat. For example, away from my home country, I have been able to completely ignore the ascendance of Lady Gaga (and only by chance realized that she played Mexico City last year because a young friend told me she had tickets). I have never listened to one of her songs or seen a video, never read an article about her, never even looked at her photo. After reading Dery's essay about her -- highly opinionated and absolutely damning -- I am certain I've made the right choice. In this and many other instances, I am grateful to Mark for doing my dirty work.

Border town

My work as a mitigation specialist takes me to many places that I probably would never visit otherwise. In the past year or two I made multiple trips to Brownsville, Texas, right across the bridge from Matamoros, Tamaulipas. More than 90 per cent of the city's citizens are of Mexican origin, so Spanglish is pretty much the first language.

As in many U.S. cities, downtown is sadly deserted. The Hotel El Jardín, whose management was once delighted to see Mexicans cross its portals (those were the days, my friend) is now abandoned.

Likewise the Capitol movie house.

I liked this building downtown, and wondered who was Andrés Pacheco, for whom its bell tolls.

On the inner city freeway I kept passing signs for the Gladys Porter Zoo. I don't know why the name struck me as funny; perhaps it reminded me of a famous finishing school for girls known as Miss Porter's. In any case I finally made it to visit the ancestors. This guy's friends call him Red (or Pinky, behind his back).

Here's Gladys herself.

Unfortunately, Brownsville is among the cities with the lowest levels of literacy in the U.S.