While I'm glad to not be breathing in their pathogens, I totally miss my friends in the capital. My weekends in Xalapa are pretty low-key compared to those D.F., and while this has been great for my work ethic, my freaked-out solitary self was not happy about it last night.
I stayed in, taking a break from the Orwellian online updates with a novel. Between pages I tried to convince myself that, by moving to sleepy Xalapa two months ago, I should be grateful that I can now just hole up and wait for this thing to blow over. But dang it, I'm missing out on all the action! I want to go downtown and have a soldier give me a face mask! Chucking my novel aside, I fell into a funk. I realized that I've probably got a good deal of boredom and paranoia ahead of me, and only my houseplants to share it with.
At 10 o'clock I ventured out to a payphone to call my old roommate in the capital. Xalapa's streets were deserted, which is normal. I called her twice and she didn't pick up. Walking back to my empty apartment, I imagined all the small-scale rooftop parties that were probably springing up all over in Mexico City as an alternative to the closed theaters and clubs. Scared as they may be, no doubt people were excited on on some level— high-fiving over the obligatory two-week vacation, and cracking pig jokes from behind their matching cubrebocas.
