Adventures Part 2

We had a beach day on March 2. We went to Greg’s favorite beach, a place called Blue Chairs. It’s definitely a gay hotspot. 

There are traveling masseuses who walk up and down the beach wearing white. It’s more expensive than Almendras, but it’s really nice to get a massage right there on the beach. So we paid for it, and all three of us got massages, mostly legs and feet. 

One of the reasons Greg loved Blue Chairs, and I did too, was that you could leave your stuff safely at the chairs. It was part of an establishment, so you didn’t have to worry about getting robbed like you might on a more open beach.

Greg and I spent a lot of time in the water. Derek isn’t as much of a water person, but Greg and I absolutely are. We love the ocean, the waves, just being in it.

That evening, we were still in the water, enjoying the sunset from the ocean. We stayed there all afternoon, all the way until the sun went down.

And of course, I don’t have any photos or videos of how special that was, because I was in the ocean with him.

When Greg and I were out there playing in the water, I saw something on the horizon. It was far out, just a flash of red, and something in me told me I should go see what it was.

It meant swimming well past my comfort zone. It took me about five minutes to get out there. I was a bit nervous, of course. Any time you’re in the ocean over your head, it’s a little scary. You can’t help but think about sharks or whatever else might be underneath you. At least, I can’t.

But I went anyway.

We were in Banderas Bay, so I wasn’t too worried about riptides or anything like that. I’m a strong swimmer, and I figured I’d be fine. And I was.

When I finally reached it, I was shocked. It was a perfect red rose.

Not damaged. Not waterlogged. Just intact, floating there in the middle of the ocean.

We joked later about how it could have gotten there. Maybe someone had thrown a bouquet off a yacht. Who knows.

So I brought it back.

It was just me and Greg in the water. I swam back holding this rose, and the two of us just stood there, holding each other, talking about how strange and perfect the moment felt.

It didn’t feel random.

It felt like something we were meant to find.

We stood there in the waves, the sun starting to go down, talking about how much we loved this place and this life. That was one of the moments where we really talked seriously about the future.

Greg wanted to move his assets to Mexico. We were talking about how he might do that. We talked about buying property there, about how different things are compared to Canada. How you can buy property with cash.

We made a plan, right there in the water, that I would really double down on learning Spanish. If we were going to spend more time there, and maybe buy property together, at least one of us needed to be fluent.

I had also been thinking about my business, and whether there was a way to expand into Puerto Vallarta. There’s so much tourism, so many events, retreats, weddings, resorts. It felt like there could be opportunities there. 

So there we were, standing in the ocean, the waves coming in, the sun setting, holding each other, with this perfect red rose between us, making plans for the future.

It was a moment we didn’t question while we were in it, but we’d both remember for the rest of our lives.

The sunsets there were incredible. Every single night. Watching the sun go down over the water, how the colors would shift and change, how the sky would evolve into something new every few minutes. I would take pictures constantly, trying to capture it, but it never quite translated.

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This was the night that Greg opened his own restaurant!

Greg was the chef. He was also the waiter. He was also the bartender. He was also the magician, the professional wrestler, the bouncer, and the singer. This restaurant was called El Poontangaritos, and featured in the middle of the table was the red rose that I had found in the ocean.

Greg was very excited about this restaurant.

It was the only restaurant I’ve ever been to where nudity was not only allowed, it was encouraged. I had never been naked in a restaurant before. But honestly, from the moment we got there on this trip, it was kind of just… tits out.

The boys were the same. They were constantly half-undressed. Derek would often just have a scarf loosely wrapped around his waist, which didn’t really hide anything, and Greg was more than happy to be naked, regularly just whipping his clothes off without a second thought.

There wasn’t anything sexual about it.

It actually made me feel like a kid again. The last time I remember feeling something like that was when I was about eight years old, living in a hot environment, and wanting to be topless but not being allowed to because I was a girl. I remember feeling like that was unfair.

So there was something very vindicating about being able to be topless again. I was topless most of the time while we were there. None of us were particularly concerned about covering up. It was hot, and Greg, while he had money, was actually quite frugal. He didn’t like running the air conditioning and never used it when he was by himself. Sometimes, when I got too hot, he would let me turn it on, even though he disliked how expensive it was.

When I tell you he became a restaurateur and opened El Poontangaritos, I really want to convey how pumped he was about it.

Of course, the restaurant existed entirely within the confines of his home, but through the power of imagination, it was a fully realized place. It had a menu. It had performances. It had things that real restaurants don’t have.

It was incredibly entertaining.

There were multiple “characters” happening at once. Derek and I and also Greg were the only customers, the first and the last customers of El Poontangaritos. It opened several times during our stay, much like the Cantina, which we understood to be the bar next door. There was also a nail salon, but more about that in a bit.

At one point, Greg was also acting as a disgruntled boyfriend on the phone, and then moments later, he would come through the front door and join us at the restaurant. And then, when it was time to sit down and eat, he would become a patron himself, enjoying the meal he had just prepared.

It was the best restaurant I’ve ever been to in my life. 

So let me tell you about El Poontangaritos, because I got some amazing videos of this.

They’re very, very special videos, and they really showcase something that Greg was a master of, which was adding theatre to moments.

He wanted to do something nice for us, which was to make a meal, but he didn’t just cook. He turned it into an experience. He added layers of performance and imagination, and that perfectly captures who he was.

By this point in the trip, with all the videos and footage I was taking, he was starting to lean into it. He was hamming it up a bit for the camera, but it was still very natural. It didn’t feel forced. It was just an extension of his personality.

And this was all happening during that first stretch of the trip where everything felt just exactly right.

We had been dreaming about being there together for so long. We had talked about it all year. And then suddenly, we were living it. Every moment in Puerto Vallarta felt like it was meeting or even exceeding what we had imagined.

From finding the red rose in the ocean, to the massages, to the excursions, to spending time with his dad, to eating all the food we had talked about for months… everything just lined up.

And this restaurant, this ridiculous, imaginative, perfect little moment, was part of that.

I was so proud of him. And he was genuinely pleased that I had taken these videos.

I’m really grateful to have them, and to be able to share them with the people who loved him.

As much as Greg was learning Spanish, he still had a very anglicized accent, and there were certain things he just couldn’t quite get past, even at a basic level. For example, he would always say “comedia” for food, instead of “comida.”

You can really see that in this video. The Spanish has him a bit stumped.

We had actually prepped this a little bit before I started filming. This was his second attempt. The first time, his Spanish was actually better, but as soon as the camera was on, you can tell he got a bit flustered. He was trying to remember what he wanted to say while also staying in character as a Mexican camarero.

And his Spanish… well, it was right up there with his singing.

God love him, he really tried.

It was at about this point that Derek actually got kicked out of El Poontangaritos briefly.

Well… it wasn’t Derek.

It was Chriiis.

And I don’t mean “Chris.” I mean Chriiis.

Chriiis is Derek’s alter ego that shows up when he gets a little too drunk. And that night, Chriiis started being a bit of a dick. Greg came over and kicked him out of the restaurant.

But he did let him back in.

This moment ended up being important, because from that point on, Chriiis was on my radar. As the night went on, I was a little bit on edge, watching how things were unfolding. It was a pretty wild night, and while there are a lot of wonderful memories and videos from it, there was also an undercurrent running through it.

We were all drinking heavily, but both Greg and I were aware that Derek was getting too drunk. That concern is there, just beneath the surface, in a lot of what happens next.

And in a strange way, some of these videos feel almost prophetic.

He’s messing around on the balcony. He’s kissing us goodbye. He’s saying things like he’ll be watching over us.

It’s… intense.

Oh my God.

One thing about Greg is that he was a lifelong fan of WWE and theatrical wrestling. He also loved being dramatic, especially when he was drinking.

He absolutely loved getting hurt.

And I mean that in multiple ways. He loved the theatrics of making it look like he was getting hurt, but he also genuinely didn’t mind actually getting hurt. He liked being thrown around. He loved wrestling.

Between Greg and me, I had a strict rule: he was not to suplex me or really even touch me if he was drinking. He tended to get very physical when having beverages, and I didn’t want any part of that. I’m in my mid forties, and run a manufacturing business, so I can’t be getting injured, and it already feels like my body is made out of brittle glass and pain. I’ve always had very strong boundaries around Greg horsing around with me when drinking. 

He also wasn’t really supposed to be doing that with Derek either, because Derek has a serious back condition. On our previous trip, I actually lost my voice from yelling at them because they were doing way too much wrestling, hitting each other with empty water jugs and generally going too far. Derek did get hurt that time. His back really shouldn’t be subjected to that kind of thing.

But on this trip, I was also drinking plenty.

So I relaxed a bit. I stopped policing it as much. They were having so much fun, and I kind of let it go.

We also slipped into this dynamic where Greg became very aware that I was filming a lot. He got into it. He wanted to perform for the camera and make videos, and those videos ended up being really special.

Yes, we were all obviously intoxicated.

But there are so many funny elements to this.

Number one, Greg loved climbing on this console table in the master bedroom, even though it was absolutely not meant for that. It wasn’t a sturdy platform. It was just a weird piece of furniture. But he treated it like a launching pad. I can’t count how many times he jumped off it. 

Number two, the bed.

This king-size bed was actually very hard. The mattress was firm. But because I had brought the BedJet, and because I had made the sheet for it, and because I hadn’t had time to sew the air channels into the sheet, when I turned it on, it filled the sheet up with air.

There was no blanket on top, because it was so hot in Mexico.

So the sheet would inflate, like a giant air pocket, about four feet high.

This meant that when Greg jumped from the console table onto the bed, it looked like he was landing on this big, soft, cushioned surface.

But he wasn’t.

It was just air.

Underneath, the mattress was still rock hard.

So these videos are really funny, because Greg wanted to make wrestling-style videos, and it looks like he’s launching himself onto something soft, when in reality, it’s not soft at all.

In this first video: earlier that day at the beach, Derek had done some bartering with a guy who was trying to sell him costume jewelry. The guy started at around 2,500 pesos, trying to convince Derek that the ring had a real ruby in it.

It definitely did not.

But Derek haggled him all the way down to about 20 Canadian dollars, a couple hundred pesos. It took him a lot of negotiating, but he got the ring.

So now he has this fake ruby ring, and he’s fully leaning into his wrestling persona. He calls this move “The Ruby Slam.”

And apologies in advance, because this clip originally included a very brief glimpse of my boyfriend’s penis, on account of the aforementioned nudity at El Poontangaritos, which I have tastefully blurred.

So what happened next was… 

Derek had already been kicked out of El Poontangaritos briefly, as I mentioned. There was some concern from both Greg and I that he was perhaps getting way too drunk.

Right after that video where Greg did the nut slap to himself, Chriiis started fighting with Greg!

This was unprecedented. I’m used to Chriiis fighting with me on occasion. (Not Derek. Derek and I almost never fight).  I’ve learned how to deal with it. Basically, you don’t fight with a drunk person. There’s no point. So I knew I wouldn’t have a problem with Chriiis personally. But I was really thrown off when he started antagonizing Greg. He was saying mean things, and they were yelling at each other.

That made me pretty anxious.

The whole night had been this mix of having a ton of fun, making wrestling videos, laughing… and then suddenly this tension underneath. Chriiis was being a dick to Greg! I was thinking, this is not good. Greg is hosting us. We love Greg. We’re having such a good time. It didn’t make sense that Derek would be acting that way toward him, Chriiis or not.

So I went outside, where Derek was.

He was still just wrapped in that scarf, barely covering anything, no shoes on, acting like he was so mad he was going to walk away from the casa into the city like that.

I was like, “Dude, I’m so sorry. Whatever Greg did, I’m sorry it upset you. Just don’t leave. Definitely don’t leave without pants on. Just have a cigarette and come back inside. Nobody’s mad. We’re still going to have a good night.”

Then I went back inside.

Greg immediately said, “Caroline, let’s make another wrestling video. I’ve got a great idea.”

And I said, “Okay, but let’s make it quick. We need to keep an eye on Chriiis.”

So this is what happened next.

At the time, I genuinely thought they were fighting.

I had no idea the whole thing was a setup!

When Derek came back in and went after Greg, I thought he was hitting him with a piece of wood. I didn’t realize it was actually styrofoam.

In that moment, I believed that Chriiis had come back in, still drunk and angry, and was now physically attacking Greg.

It wasn’t until the object broke over Greg’s back that I realized it wasn’t real.

The entire thing had been staged.

They had been pretending to fight, whispering to each other behind my back, planning to prank me. The idea was that Derek would act like he was still too drunk, come back in, and scare me with wrestling violence.

So when you hear me scream in the video, that fear is completely real.

I truly believed that Greg was being assaulted by Chriiis. I was not acting.

 truly believed that Greg was being assaulted by Chriiis. I was not acting.

Another very funny part of this whole situation was the fact that Greg had “rented” a 72-inch TV from Costco. Greg loved to “rent” things. For example, at his Halloween party the year before, he had “rented” a bunch of accessories from Amazon, which really just meant buying them and then returning them afterward. It was kind of a hobby of his.

I once watched him “rent” a $3,000 patio set from Costco for about 200 days and then return it after using it extensively.

So for this trip, he had “rented” this enormous television to play video games and watch Survivo onr. The plan was to return it after his time in Mexico.

But even before things ended the way they did, that was never going to happen.

Because he completely destroyed the styrofoam and the box doing all these wrestling stunts.

Greg’s dad later told me that when he was younger, he used to love building fake furniture out of boxes just so he could wrestle on them and break them. It was something he had done his whole life.

The next day, we woke up in pretty rough shape.

So naturally, we had some espresso martinis, which was instantly better. Apparently, according to Greg, you can do that 35 days in a row before it catches up with you. That was also the day we had planned to go to the waterpark, the Mexican waterpark.

What can I say about the Mexican waterpark?

It is not like the one at West Edmonton Mall, or any waterpark I’ve ever been to in North America. Those slides are savage. They are steep. There is a very real possibility that you’re going to get hurt, and honestly, you are going to get hurt.

Especially if you go with Greg.

And Greg was also getting hurt, just, not that badly. One of the things about those two weeks is that I watched this man’s head bounce off concrete multiple times, for fun. I watched him do things that absolutely would have broken my leg or ankle.

He was like Gumby.

If you knew him, especially if you ever drank with him, you know exactly what I mean. He loved it. He was wrestling, drinking heavily, throwing himself into things. He was basically a professional stunt man.

I didn’t get a lot of footage that day because we were at a waterpark, but I did get a bit. And I’m really glad I took the time to go back to the locker, get my phone, and climb all the way up the waterpark stairs to film Greg and Derek.

One of our favorite slides was this big toilet bowl slide. There’s a version of it in Canada, but it is not the same. The one at this waterpark was way steeper and faster. If you didn’t come out of it properly, you were definitely getting banged up.

But we loved it.

Another one we loved was the ramp slides. But if you didn’t hold on tight, you were getting thrown around, losing your tube, hitting things. There was even one slide that was permanently closed because people had been seriously injured on it. I’m glad it was closed, because we absolutely would have gone on it.

Greg also loved the twisting, corkscrew slides, but those made me feel sick, especially with all the drinking.

At one point, Greg and Derek were wrestling, and Greg had Derek push him into a stack of about 40 inner tubes. They all went flying, and Greg fell as well, hitting his head on the concrete pretty hard.

When he stood up, he was bleeding.

All the lifeguards rushed over, but Greg had this incredibly charming way of handling things. He popped up  laughing, brushing it off, acting like it was nothing. And somehow, that was enough. They didn’t even get close enough to do a proper physical check, and they let him go right back to riding the slides. He was singing, loudly, and badly, “everyone looooves a poontang”! 

Another time, he and Derek were messing around near the pool. A woman was filming her son, and Greg had Derek high-kick him into the water in this dramatic, theatrical way. He made such a show of it that the woman was completely shocked. Somewhere in Mexico, there’s a video of her just trying to film her kid, and in the background, Greg and Derek are being massive tangs.

At one point, I filmed a video about the “right way” to go down a waterslide versus the “wrong way.” It was really funny, and Greg leaned into it hard. He got a bit banged up doing it, and we were laughing about how I’m usually the one telling him not to hurt himself.

But this time, I was encouraging it, because I wanted to make a funny video. And he delivered.

It didn’t hurt him too badly, but some of the stuff he was doing with Derek was rough. At one point, I thought he had something stuck in his teeth, like a piece of red pepper or something, but it was actually blood from his gums after hitting his head.

Anyway, here’s the video I made.

This next video I took that night is interesting because it’s just the house below Greg’s casa, which we were all pretty obsessed with.

It was basically a hovel.

One of the striking things about that area is how these ramshackle homes exist right next to really glamorous Airbnbs and nice hotels. It’s a stark contrast. I ended up doing some research about why, if you owned one of these places on the mountainside in Cinco de Diciembre, in such a desirable neighborhood, you wouldn’t just sell it.

The reason is complicated.

Many of these dwellings were established before the 1970s, back when Puerto Vallarta was still a small fishing village. Because of that, ownership of the land is often unclear. If the people living there tried to sell, they could actually risk losing everything, because they might not even have formal ownership of the land. The land these homes are on have just been passed down through families for decades.

So the people living there are often very poor, and they stay, because it’s the only place they have.

There was one of these hovels directly below Greg’s balcony, and we had a clear view into their daily life. We would watch them pretty often. There were two small children, and their mom seemed to be doing laundry out of the house, likely for money. They didn’t have a dryer, just a washing machine, and you could see how the whole place was put together.

It wasn’t built the way houses are built here.

It was constructed out of whatever materials they could use. It didn’t look particularly stable or weatherproof. It really was just… a hovel.

And that detail ended up becoming more significant later, in how Greg’s Mexico trip ended.

Next, we have a video that I probably spent about three hours editing while I was still on vacation with Greg and Derek.

I did that because I wanted to, and also because Greg really liked it. He appreciated the effort, and we were getting a lot of positive feedback on the videos we were making, which encouraged us to keep going.

So we made this wrestling video.

Now, I knew absolutely nothing about WWE, even though it was a big passion of Greg’s. It just wasn’t my thing. But that night, I had to actually look into it so I could understand what they were doing and how to edit the video properly.

What they were referencing was Greg’s fascination with a wrestler named Chris Benoit, a French Canadian WWE wrestler who had a very dark and tragic story. He had used steroids, suffered repeated head trauma, and ultimately killed his wife and child before taking his own life.

There was also another wrestler, The Undertaker, who had a very theatrical persona, like many of them do.

In the video, Greg was playing Chris Benoit, and Derek was playing The Undertaker. They were loosely reenacting elements of WWE-style performances, and I edited the video based on what I learned about how those characters presented themselves.

Looking back, the video is a bit disturbing.

Greg’s favorite part was when I superimposed a skeleton over his face. He was kind of fixated on the story of Chris Benoit, and that came through in the tone of the video.

So in hindsight, it’s definitely a little dark. 

But at the time, it was about the theatre of it, the performance, the creativity. Greg really loved it, and he loved that I had taken the time to make the edit.