Nicole Cirone

When you are lost in the mountains of Northern Mexico in the middle of a violent drug war, all of your principles go out the window.  One minute, you and your current boyfriend are eating burritos and drinking Tecate out of cans, walking hand-in-hand and buying local crafts from the Tarahumara Indians in a little town called Creel, and then, suddenly, you find yourself parked in a clearing on a mountain after having driven for six hours through a maze of dirt roads, and you are having sex in the backseat of a tiny Mexican car you’ve nicknamed “Speedy.”

Emotions are running high, of course, because you are lost in the mountains, and as this is the summer of 2008, and the violence in Mexico has already claimed so many lives and caused so many casualties that even the hospitals in El Paso, where you embarked on this adventure, cannot keep up with the flow of bodies to the emergency rooms. Also worth noting is that you’ve already seen two people die as you drove through the Chihuahua desert: one was shot in cold blood right in front of your car as you drove through a ramshackle desert town, and one died tragically as his tractor trailer veered off a mountainside road and tumbled into a ditch.  In both cases, you just kept driving as the police and townspeople gathered around the dead bodies. They are the first two deaths you’ve ever witnessed, and as you are frantically winding through the deserted mountain roads, after your boyfriend took the wrong turn where the highway divided—completely isolated from society, as there are no lights and no houses for miles—you desperately hope the third death you experience isn’t your own.

And this is particularly worrisome because the only car you have seen for hours was a beat-up white pickup truck parked along the side of the road, its occupants’ rowdy voices—and the crack of a gunshot—rising with the smoke of their bonfire in the wooded area behind where they had parked.  Carlos, Chuey, and Juan, you called them when you drove by— and you and your boyfriend made up stories about their carryings-on.  But this was hours ago, before you realized you were truly lost and still had hopes that the map you’ve been reading was correct and the next town was only a few miles up the road. By now, at 2 a.m., every twist and turn of the mountain road looks familiar, and this is a problem because you haven’t found an exit yet; you’ve been traveling in circles for hours.  You suddenly realize that the CD of traditional music your boyfriend brought along has been on repeat for the past several hours, and you think “Madreselva,” which used to evoke romantic memories of the night you and your boyfriend danced to the old song in his candle-lit living room, might now be burning a hole in your brain.  Carlos, Chuey, and Juan are your only link to civilization because, of course, your mobile phones won’t work here. You and your boyfriend are all alone.

At this point, your boyfriend says, “Why don’t we just camp out for the night and try to find our way when it’s light out.” He knows how you feel about camping and adds, “We can sleep in the car.”

So you climb into Speedy’s backseat, which, as Speedy is a tiny hatchback, barely accommodates the two of you—even though you are only 5’6” tall, and your boyfriend is an inch shorter and built more slightly than you.  You try wedging yourselves together on the seat—first, with him spooning you and then you spooning him, but to no avail: one of you could suffocate at any moment, or, just as bad, roll onto the sticky rental car carpet. So your boyfriend sits up, and you lay your head in his lap. This works for a few minutes, and you notice a silver crescent moon—which has always reminded you of him since the night you slept together under such a moon on a rooftop in Turkey—and think it is a good omen. You are feeling so sure of its fortuitous aspect that you want to forget that you are lost in the primitive darkness of the mountains in the middle of a drug war in Mexico, that you’ve already seen two people die, and that the only people you’ve seen for hours are the three shady characters building a fire by their pickup truck.  So, when you realize that your boyfriend is excited by your head resting in his lap, desire spreads through your body.