Authentic Experience Had
February 8th, 2010

Mérida -- Nick had an authentic experience Saturday, according to the hangover he had Sunday morning and the generalized sense of joy.

An event whose name translates roughly into “The Crowning of the Queen of the Fairs” was the specific event seen to have catalyzed this experience, but the experience was more broad and primarily tangential to the event.

The Crowning was held in the Plaza de Toros, normally used for bullfights, but on this the first night of the Fairs, used for a pop-music concert and beauty pageant, the winner of which was Crowned said Queen of said Fairs.

Salsa music, meringue music, and forms of popular music largely understood as issuing from salsa and meringue music, were played.

Additionally were seen the drinking of beer and plastic bottles of sangria, the throwing of the plastic bottles, fights, and an impromptu breakdancing session atop a dangerous internal roof.

The breakdancing culminated in a young man somersaulting off of the dangerous roof and landing on the ground where he was then immobile.

Rings of people then surrounded him, paramedics at the center, police around them, and concerned citizens and rubberneckers around them. 

Chants of ‘idiota’ briefly replaced those of other things to do with musicians and beauty pageant contestants as the young man lay motionless.

The young man was then carried on a stretcher towards an exit, through the center of the plaza.

Reaching the center of the plaza the young man sprang up and careened dizzily towards the crowd with his arms raised to signal his victory over head trauma.

Dirt glazing his white polo shirt, he stumbled to the roar of the crowd.

The scene was reminiscent of a professional wrestling match, with the exception that it was seemingly not fake, the roar being seemingly not vacuous contrived fantasy bloodlust, and therefore seemingly a beautiful expression of the mad maturity around death and danger that primarily distinguishes most cultures from that of the United States and its allies in Western infantilism.

The scene was loved and feared and recorded in the heart. Later, a preventative Advil was taken before going to sleep at a reasonable hour.