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Quatorce : A trip to Mexico City

By Christopher Stern

 

A couple of weeks ago I somehow ended up in Mexico City.  The world's largest city, over 25 million people, I'd been thinking about going for quite a while.  I had some free time and access to a cheap ticket, so, with no planning I made a decision to go, and the next morning I was on the plane with no idea of what lay ahead.  By day I definitely saw some of the best of this thriving metropolis has to offer, museums, parks, plazas, cathedrals, etc. 

 

And at night, well ..

 

Quatorce - it means fourteen.  We were told this was the 'worst' club in Mexico City.  That is, the skankiest, the sleaziest, the most intrepid, as they would say in Spanish, place to go in the world's largest city.  Miguel was our guide, and we got there just in time for drinks and dancing before the four a.m. show.

 

We'd met Miguel at El Taller (Florencia 37, Zona Rosa), the oldest gay bar in Mexico City.  El Taller is something of your standard leather bar, a mix between the Detour and Hole in the Wall, Mexican style.  The decor is steel, cage-like contraptions, old industrial cogs and gears.  Upstairs is bar only, featuring art with lots of dismembered and rearranged body parts. Not many people, a few old time leather daddies, I think.  Downstairs, is a bar and disco. Good loud music, standard Norte Americano dance club, but the mix is a little darker; the Olympics and hard-core porn played alternately on the video screen.  Strippers here remove everything, and leave the stage just before climax.  The crowd downstairs is a little less imposing, a little younger and less leathery than upstairs.  My personal favorite was the pair of middle aged guys in full Mexican regalia, cowboy hats, big belt buckles, boots, heavy-duty mustaches, making out with their hats on.  Most were younger, ranging from tweaky to macho stud.  However, this is not the place for the meek, the drama queens, twinkies, or aristocrats. 

 

That would be El Numerito - El Numerito ('the little number') is one place Miguel refused to go.  We ended up there after a convoluted evening with some guys who wanted to take us on a side trip to Cuernavaca.  This snazzy little locale is the upscale haven for all the wealthy chilangos who want to get out and air their noses.  The music's not great, the Evita drag show was really stupid, and depending on how you're dressed no one may talk to you, but I had a good time anyhow.  I don't know how the hell I got here, or where it is, but if this is your style, you should also check out Anyway, on Calle Monterey, also in Zona Rosa.

 

Miguel told me he'd been living all over Mexico, six months in one city, two months in another.  He was evasive about his occupation he translates, he paints etc.  He was cuter than most guys at El Taller, a little less rough and edgy, but still somehow inscrutable.  He said himself he was some kind of shadow or phantom.

 

We went from El Taller  to Kaos, a cheesy mixed crowd club on some side street in a high school gym sort of space, decorated with purple balloons and a disco ball.  Straight, gay and lesbian couples of all ages grooved to house and cha cha'd to the latest Latin beat con gusto.  This was an enthusiastic crowd, and they whooped it up even more when all the contestants for the Mr. Extra Special show started parading on stage, first in daytime attire, then swimsuits, then evening wear.  Miguel was having a good time with this, screaming comparisons of each to some famous American actress or super model, and shouting out 'ella' (she, literally - girl, more or less) at every sashay.

 

We got into the cab, and, where next?  OK, I'll take you to the worst club in Mexico City, you can see people fucking 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quatorce is located beyond some vast plaza where at 3:30 a.m. on a Thursday, you can find all kinds of food, delicious and dubious, families, couples, drug dealers, drug users, and way too many mariachis.  Beyond a half-closed market and down an alley is some doorway with lots of people milling around outside, gangsters maybe some, and a sign that doesn't say Quatorce.  Seedy.  Seven pesos gets you a beer at the door, which someone else seems to be checking to make sure you have as you go in.  This place looks kind of like a bus station waiting room with no exit.  Too much white paint, low ceilings, ultraviolet lights, no adornment.  We have a cross-section of Mexican society here: young, tough looking guys around the door, middle aged businessmen in groups, with their wives or girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever, transvestite vampire drag queens, black latex, and their alter egos in white lace, vaqualleros much like my favorite mustache couple, beautiful young women in sleazy little vinyl garments, gyrating,  small elderly indigenous women selling red roses, young couples out for some fun, sketchy tweakers, belligerent drunks, upstanding citizens.  We stood in the middle in the back, near the dressing room door.  The big guy with the thick curly black hair at the table in front of us was yelling at the little squirly guy.

 

When the show started these two fags, total flaming poofs, came out doing an endearingly fabulous, well-practiced but thoroughly mediocre dance, wearing these even more fabulous, billowy Liberace-esque sleeved type outfits.  I suppose it was kind of Baroque.  They were, thankfully, soon joined by the most magnificent drag queens to be seen ever.  The guy with the curly black hair was grabbing the squirly guy by the hair and yanking him up from the table. He'd slap him around a few times and then let go.  They sank back in their chairs and argued some more.  This happened two or three times before they left, or one of them did, or something.  Across the club, two other fights were going on.  The first drag queen came out, she actually sang, not just lip-synching.  Apparently she's well known throughout Mexico, or at least in certain circles.  When she started, the fights stopped.  There didn't seem to be too much more bad commotion after that. 

 

Miguel told me the owner of the club had been killed a few weeks before, that it had been closed for a while.  What's that thing you use to make holes in the wall? He asked me. A  drill?  Yeah, the guy's boyfriend drilled a hole in the top of his head while he was drinking at the bar.  Was it a battery  powered drill, or one with a cord?  Miguel didn't know.  The next drag queen looked like Mariah Carey, but better.  After that came another stripper (decidedly male).  He took off all his clothes and got a hard on before he finished up and went back to the dressing room.  Now for the finale - live sex!  Three chunky chicks, in their thirties, and three skinny guys, silver lame mini-skirts and pants.  The guys took off their pants and lay down on the dance platforms, hard, and the women just slapped condoms on them, pushed up their skirts and wiggled down on top of them.  After that there was a surprising lack of showmanship involved, considering what the show had offered so far.  They just fucked.  When the guys had finished the women kept gyrating, and someone got on the mike saying 'Necessitomos tres mas caballeros.' (We need three more men).   It wasn't long before a bunch of guys were up on stage, pulling their pants down and stroking themselves hard.  I was astonished.  I think those women took two or three more each. Then the music started up again and we went back to the hotel. 

 

If you want to get to Quatorce, sorry, but I couldnt give you an address.  Its in the Central, near the Zocalo, across a plaza that's famous for mariachis.  All the other clubs mentioned are in the Zona Rosa, near Insurgentes subway stop.