I’m writing this only for posterity and to show you maybe how this thing works. I don’t know the future. I just know there’s something happening and too many coincidences. Just ignore this if you’re not interested. I’m sure the next post will be silly and snarky and entertaining (the last one’s debatable).

So here’s what I knew in 2018 that I only told Mel, my friend from Nogi who is connected, and my parents who are…well, you already know.

It’s June and the migrant crisis is in full gear. Not in Nogales at that point…but in the news and in the minds of Americans. On one side of the border you had Trump. On the other, Peña Nieto, but it was pretty obvious AMLO was taking over. The election would be held on July 1st.

I was at home in Nogales when he won. I watched on TV as the Zocalo in CDMX filled with people to celebrate this “great” populist leader taking the place of a truly incompetent kleptocrat/BFF to Jared Kushner.

And that was when I knew something very bad was going to happen. A crisis would trigger border closings. Martial law imposed. Freedoms taken away. Uncertainty. Scarcity. Disappearances.

It was a pretty bleak thought and even I didn’t want to believe it. But as a subversive/degenerate/incompetent member of the proletariat, I didn’t want to stick around to watch it happen. I know what happens in dictatorships. I have a degree in this. Not just an actual degree but I’ve just known way more about totalitarianism and abuses of power from about the age of seven. Maybe I shouldn’t have been sat in front of CNN at two. Who knows?

Dictatorships don’t all have their beginnings in civil war. Sometimes they start because the masses beg for order in times of uncertainty. The middle classes get out on the street and bang pots to show their solidarity. And someone waltzes in and makes them feel safe. And then the whole place goes to hell.

Subversives get called in for questioning. They get detained. No one misses them. No one asks questions. They get tortured. They get raped. They get murdered and sometimes thrown out of helicopters into the ocean for the sharks to eat. Their children get distributed and are raised by good fascists.

I’m not telling you a fairy tale. I’m telling you the history of Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Chile in the 1960’s and 70’s.

So now it’s July 2018 and I go to therapy every week. I tell him what I’m thinking might happen. He tells me to stop watching the news. I get it. His patients are probably neurotic and emotionally incapable of dealing with present reality. But this isn’t present reality. This is future possibility and no one knows what to do about that.

My plan was to get my Mexican passport and apply for Canadian citizenship from there. Sell what I could and keep it offshore. Become part of the government in exile. Work on brilliant propaganda. Maybe wear a beret like the French Resistance.

The plan got very romantic and idealized, as most of my fantasies are wont to do.

Not even a week into July, I tell FB I need to get to NYC ASAP. Within five minutes, my drama teacher from high school tells me about a former student in search of a roommate for the month of August. In Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. $900.

I don’t ask a single question. I take it. I leave for NYC and have the best month ever! All that worry melts away. I don’t know how many people move to NYC to get away from neurosis. But I’ve never been like everyone else in other ways, so this makes perfect sense.

I stopped worrying about the borders closing. It’s easy to do when you’re engulfed and overwhelmed by all the sex and food and music and fun of a month in NYC.

I make a new plan: move to NYC, socialist paradise of the East Coast.

And I did it! It really was the best thing I could have done. My life changed dramatically and things came into focus.

But now we are up to modern day, March 20, 2020. Almost two years later. With a crisis. With travel restricted and borders closed. With panic in the streets. And I’m in Tucson with a passport about to expire and no way to get it renewed.

Do I think we’re headed for a dystopian future? I don’t think. I don’t know what’s about to happen. I just know that I’ve been waiting for this.

I came to Tucson prepared to some extent. I brought lots of cute dresses. And a beret.

I’m not even kidding the teensiest bit.