Read Down and Delirious in Mexico City for Free Online

fit in. But the signals the city gives me in response are not computing. I go to work, commute back and forth between Centro and Iztacalco, then head out and meet people and make friends, locals and foreigners. Some of those I meet understand me as a fellow Mexican subject, like them. Others do not.
    â€œBut you’re so Mexican,” a friend remarks to me one night, as we party our way to the Estadio Azteca with a pack of friends to see Lenny Kravitz in concert. By looking at me, and listening to me speak, he seems unable to conceptualize me as an American. The dissonance in his logic is internal: I’m an incidental fan of Lenny Kravitz just as he is—what other confirmation of my Mexicanness would you need?
    But for every moment like this, another arrives, reminding me that in Mexico I can be perceived as American almost at first glance. One weekday night, at a dinner party at a friend’s, I go out to get fresh beers with one of the guests, a native guy with an aristocratic air. Handing me a pack of Bud Light dismissively, he huffs, “Here. Because I know this is what you guys drink.” I stammer and laugh, assuming he is joking. Then I realize he is not. He is mocking stereotypes of the United States at my expense.
    I am determined to adapt. I fall in with a company of young American and British expats who had done more or less just what I have: moved to Mexico City on escapade. We venture to the relatively safe central neighborhoods where most foreigners orcosmopolitan-leaning Mexicans congregate, the Roma, the Zona Rosa, the Centro, and to the ground zero of cool in Mexico City, the Condesa. Night after night, my varying crew of expats and Mexicans, dedicated to delirium, teach me the ways of the D.F. underground. We hit house parties for those in the know, DJ parties in old cantinas, make excursions to places packed with kitsch and tourists but are made categorically “cool” by our periodic presence. We are foreigners, Mexicans who love hanging out with foreigners, and Mexicans who otherwise don’t prefer foreigners’ company but also don’t mind it.
    â€œWe are
chilangos
! Who cares?!” the Mexicans holler above the noise in the bars and parties.
    I take note. A
chilango
is not strictly a native Mexico City resident—that’s a
capitalino,
those born and raised—but a sort of native intruder, a Mexican from “the provinces” who has made the D.F. his home and adopts all the most disagreeable characteristics of those caught in the city’s frenzy. It is a slur that is morphing into a badge of honor. I wonder if the term is flexible enough to include me, too.
    Results remain inconclusive. I party on. My friends take me to observe the decadent rituals of the most committed
fresas,
the slang term for middle- and upper-class children of privilege, the “strawberries.” More parties, more drinking. The Uruzquietas regard my adventures with guarded empathy. “If you stay out past ten p.m.,” Doña Sabina warns one evening over dinner, before I’m heading out the door, “don’t come home. Find somewhere to stay where you are at.” The metro shuts down at midnight and cabs off the street are not to be trusted.
    We gather at El Jacalito and Bullpen, bars on Medellín Street in the Roma district, the sort of places that are sprinkled with addicts and the people who work as their suppliers. Brawls are a threat asconstant and banal as a backed-up toilet in the dingy restrooms. Raggedy salsa bands play till dawn. The walls in the Bullpen are covered with murals depicting rastas, hippies, cholos, transvestites, vaqueros, and a red-skinned devil. The subjects of the murals are drinking, fighting, fucking, and shooting up. Each night brings its risks and rewards. Once, a barkeep at Jacalito known as La Chimuela slips and falls on the beer-sticky floor while serving. La Chimuela—the nickname indicates disfigured