LUXURY BUILT ON A MOUNTAIN OF TEETH

All roads lead to Cabo San Lucas

I catch myself speaking past the point where my sentences should end. My mind is a cannonball. The momentum of my thoughts carries me back to Cabo San Lucas, landing where the ocean takes its last breath. It’s the one place where I’ve uprooted and replanted my spirit. It’s a personal crossroads where my past and present come together.

To pay my respects, I find I must say the name in full to honor its significance. I do this because gaps often appear in my language; I am grateful for my native tongue, but it still falls short. Through the ocean’s rhythmic pulse and graceful movements, I can interact with God. Cabo San Lucas bridges my linguistic gaps. It mends my language one wave at a time. Every time I visit, I understand how my own rigid speech is at odds with nature’s fluid dialect. Every layer, every inch, and every surge of the Pacific Ocean reveals raw, primal beauty. This landscape is like my personal creation account. It feels as if the water wrote my whole history. Rather than offering scientific truths about material origins, it offers only amor fati. The ocean shows me my reality. It urges me to accept my fate and deeper truths about how my history has shaped me.

I’m lulled by the endless ocean at the edge of the world, staring into the unknown magic and vastness. Like the land, I am destroyed and rebuilt, but unlike Rome, I do not need an eternity; I rebuild in a day and a night. The sea remains unseen, untouched, and elusive. I have no secrets before the ocean; it knows exactly who I am the moment my toes reach the sand—a minority in size and color. As a human, I’m a minority on a planet that’s 70% water. I am a creature of the dry land, an outlier in a world dominated by the deep. Sometimes, my black skin makes me feel invisible. It’s like land disappearing as sea levels rise. Death is no different from sinking into the depths of the ocean. I look for vulnerability in the shimmering, glass-like surface of the waves. The tide holds the self-awareness I cannot reveal on my own. I am returning to Cabo San Lucas for the fourth time. I will confront the memories of my fourteen-, sixteen-, and eighteen-year-old selves. At twenty-six, the tide pulls me toward change once more. I aim to reevaluate my masculinity in the face of the ocean’s serene presence.

At fourteen, I began high school. I joined the basketball team and navigated the awkward journey to manhood. I had no theory of self whatsoever. Each experience gave me new hope of discovering my true identity. Later, I would come to understand the ego. I didn’t realize that the rap music I was listening to was crafting my image of what a man should be. I lost my virginity because I thought it was the boy thing to do. I thought the act of sex meant that I was a man now. By the end of my first year, I looked back and felt a profound sense of ignorance. I discovered my love for writing during the Texas STAAR writing assessment at the end of that first year. Seeing what could come out of the wellspring of my heart, I kept a little journal with me for the next year. This newfound voice led me back to the water, as no one is anything without the sea.

I visited Cabo San Lucas the summer before my junior year, when I was sixteen. Early into the school year, the coach cut me from the basketball team. Then, my dear uncle Ace passed away from stage 4 liver cancer. I have no poetic way to say it other than that he was a great man. I remember spending a Fourth of July with him when I was young. In the early 2000s, we played my cousin’s Nintendo 64. We also shared meals of ramen noodles with Louisiana hot sauce and egg sandwiches. In those simple moments, he showed me what a fatherless son should learn. He taught me to be a stand-up guy and to open the door for my lady. I still haven’t processed losing him. My uncle was the only father figure I ever had of my own blood. I carry his memory within me, so he remains eternal.

I will be the one who makes his spirit beautiful. I honor him by adopting the disciplined, spiritual ways of Pueblo War Captains. I write about my uncle through my own rituals. I pray and make offerings, sending silent messages through heavenly messengers.

Cabo San Lucas mentored me in ways I could not put into words until eight years later. Everything changed when my mom called and told me we would be going again at twenty-six. This return trip will finally allow me to reconnect with my eighteen-year-old self. Now I know why the waters were so quiet on my last visit. They’ve been waiting to see how my masculinity would form after I took my needed time away. When I was eighteen, well, I went off to college. I went for two years, changing my major six times. I went from studying film and production to graphic design, back to film and production, and so on. Lost and alone in Phoenix, Arizona, I started to struggle mentally.

I started to lose my sense of self. I thought it was best to give Arizona all I got because I wouldn’t be coming back. I connected with DJs, skateboarders, fashion kids, and anyone else I found cool. When COVID-19 hit, I got put on academic probation. I left school and went back to Arlington, Texas, where my mom’s soon-to-be ex-husband deemed me a “dropout.” I found work at a fashion store called Allsaints and supported myself. Always remembering to care for both my shadow and me. Eight years later, I’m in retail, aiming to make writing my everything. I will see the ocean on June 4th, and I ask it to make my dreams come true.