One of these kookie characters was MaryAnn Day from Ketchikan, Alaska. MaryAnn was really an easterner with a heavy accent and strong opinions. She was a beautiful buxom blonde that didn't take shit from anybody. She worked on a ship as a burser and came to Mexico to relax every winter. MaryAnn had a younger boyfriend with curly hair and he was part of the pubheads consisting of me, him, and my sister Cris. Cris is a Canadian of Italian descent and had been travelling with a girlfriend Catherine all around Mexico. She was 10 years younger than me, but we hit it off at once and have been friends for life. We pretended we were sisters with the same father and that we coincidentally found each other in Yelapa. We had quite a story about our heritage. Since we both had dark curly hair and I could pass for Italian it didn't seem that far-fetched.
Cris was quite the little actress and over the years we pretended we were exotic dancers, French girls, hookers, and many other fantasy characters. Once in Victoria, we went to a bar where her husband was meeting with his running team for a round of drinks. We dressed very provacatively and sat at a table near them. He pretended not to know us whle we flirted and sent him drinks and notes to make the other guys jealous!. His mates never found out that was really his wife.
When we were the French girls we ordered pie at a restaurant. They asked what pieces we wanted and in our fake French accents we said we wanted ze whole blueberrry pie! The waitress finally believed us and brought us a pie and Cris dug right into the middle of it as if that were the most natural thing in the world. Another time we pretended we were hookers on the street in Gas Town in Vancouver, but we realized people were taking us a little too seriously and we were afraid we were going to get arrested and hauled down to jail. We cut that ruse short. I still think of her as my other little sister even though she's a grown woman with a family of her own now.
I met two guys that also met each other on the same day. They became lovers and are still together 30 years later! You might know them as Lalo and John, but when I first met them the dark handsome one was called Lawanda. He had long beautiful hair and a beard and was so dramatic and very creative and fun. His new boyfriend, John was blond and more athletic and a great swimmer. We spent many hours on the beach perfecting our tans and ogling all the new guys that came to the beach. The 3 of us were inseparable and spent many years in close harmony in Santa Cruz. Now they live in Mexico full time and John still swims across the Bay daily when he's in Yelapa. The stories we could tell!
