Gay Acapulco

Or perhaps not so much... 

In the Summer of 2013, I went to Acapulco with someone and we stayed at a gay resort called Casa Condesa. It was nice enough, even if a little too gay (the sight of a naked guy sprawled next to the pool as you go in kind of caught me off guard). Still, that was not the thing that I found the most disturbing, or the fact that the receptionist guy kept hinting at it 'being okay for us to bring other people into the room', but that we were advised to go to a specific place when going to the beach so we would have 'no problems'.

As it turns out, or at least according to what the people at this resort said, gay men holding hands, kissing or showing 'gay' affection (lol) are arrested and taken away - I doubt it gets serious at all, the 'police' are most likely just looking for some extra cash.

So we went to this place on the coast called "Beto's" and we were told to look for a specific waiter... It felt like we were doing work for the mafia or something! It was a nice enough place, there was a big, tacky family there (which was rather annoying) but eventually we were surrounded by gay people, which made me feel safer.

It's odd how one gets so used to being free and loses sight of how other parts of the world -hell, my own country!- work. Here in Mexico City I am very open about my being gay... I actually don't even think about it anymore. I hold hands with my lover, kiss and hold them as much as I want (of course, within the level of reason and decency); sure, some people stare but I have learned to ignore them.

In the end, in Acapulco, I was a bit careful and decided to play by the rules... While I would normally not let people tell me where I can or cannot show affection to the person I'm with, there was another factor to consider: the insecurity.

Many people think that Mexico City is dangerous and you can get killed, kidnapped or whatever in every corner. This is NOT true. And when I was told that Acapulco was also a dangerous city I took it with a grain of salt... Until Sunday.

So, we took the (uncannily slow) bus to the terminal to get our tickets to come back to the city. As we were going along the coast, we saw a LOT of people standing outside a mall, along with some police cars and many officers. The driver's companion (sometimes random guys hang out with the drivers... It's all very weird) got off to check out what was happening, when he got back on he said "oh, it's just a bomb, but it didn't go off" and they just kept going along as if it were the most common thing in the world. 

I was, of course, shocked. On our way back, we took a taxi and I asked him if he knew what had happened. He said it could've been that they were shooting a soap or something, or perhaps a bomb, which was unlikely since he didn't hear an explosion or anything.

The way this people seemed so use to such an event left me baffled. And it also made me think twice about finding out whether they really were as closed to sexual diversity as they said.