I want to live somewhere where it still rains. In Puerto Vallarta, it rains a lot, except in winter. From November to April, barely a drop (except for those rare rainy days in February, which the locals call febrero loco, crazy February). I fantasize about living in Puerto Vallarta, and not just because the men there are beautiful and seem to like me, but because I feel alive and at peace when I’m there.
“That’s because you’re always on vacation when you’re here,” my friend Erick says. “You should try living here for a few months to really get a sense of what it’s like.”
“And then I wouldn’t like it so much?” I ask him.
“Not at all!” he says, “Then you’ll know you really love it.”
“PV es tu casa,” my friend Oscar always says (Puerto Vallarta is your home). “Don’t cry when you leave this time,” he told me a few years ago. I always cried on the airplane, or in the taxi on the way to the airport. I never wanted to leave. “You’ll be back,” Oscar said. “You’re going to live here someday.”
I went back in June for my first time in two years. Before the pandemic, I visited at least once a year, usually twice. I led writing retreats there for six years, had two different lovers there, lost one of them to cancer; the other one still writes me and sends me shirtless pictures occasionally. He was only twenty-five when we met fourteen years ago. “I’m old now,” he wrote the last time. “I’m too fat for you now.” But his dad bod realness only made him hotter. “No,” I wrote back, “Tu eres un hombre ahora,” (No, you’re a man now).
PV has changed a lot since I first visited in 2007. Modern high rise condos now populate the hillsides, and the Malecón (the boardwalk) is crowded on one end with loud, huge discos. But the city hasn’t lost its charm: the cobblestone streets, the restaurant patios strung with tiny amber lights, the mosaics in the central square. I was relieved to know that most of my favorite restaurants and bakeries had survived the pandemic (including the exquisite French bakery, which is just a refrigerated case in a tiny doorway filled with gorgeous pastries). The sidewalks and the sewer systems have been upgraded.
“You’ll be back,” my favorite vendor at the airport told me, as she wrapped my gifts: beautifully decorated matchboxes and journals made by local artists. “You belong here.”
The taxis are all air-conditioned now, and new. I miss the old ones, with their worn vinyl seats and manual transmissions. It was always a hot, windy ride to the airport in those old taxis. It was the perfect place for a good cry.
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The prompt that inspired this piece was the five word free write, and the five words were: Foxes, Pomegranates, Orange, Rain, and Breathing. You can read a detailed description of that prompt here.
The Catalyst 