Chantal - Have Laptop Will Travel

Bo was the manager of the tequila bar at Café No Sé – almost an exclusive area, given how often I’d take people there who knew the Café but not the tequila bar. When the juice bar – Y Tu Piña Tambien – opened across the road, they paid someone to slap flyers on every card, with about eight key points about Café No Sé. The only ones I still remember are Bad Advice, and Bo. One day I was there, and noticed a sign on the door to the tequila bar, listing the bar’s ground rules; I’m sure one of them said ‘No Ugly Women.’

Café No Sé is away from the centre of Antigua (Guatemala), so rarely attracts tourists except by word of mouth. Past flyers have advertised it with "Uncomfortable Chairs, Two Dogs, Great Coffee, Deranged Staff and Deviant Behaviour". An on-off regular, LaVon, is an artist, so his paintings fill the high walls. There’s an electoral map of the States on the wall, with ‘Dumbfuckinstan’ written over the Republican areas. A guitar hangs from the wall, with a small chalkboard underneath listing the songs which are banned from being played. A large sign on the wall says “For all your copyright infringement needs, please go to Mono Loco, because that is where we rip off all our music". The table nearest the door has a chessboard built into it. On the door which leads into the garden/seated area/tequila bar, there’s a random bizarre t-shirt hanging up for sale. According to my mother, they only started stocking dark rum after learning that that’s all she’d drink.

Bo’s story is a bit hazy to me – maybe as I’ve avoided thinking about Guatemala since I’ve been away from there. Apparently he met John, the owner of the place, in Belize, and was offered the job of managing the bar (John goes to Mexico frequently, and just so happens to stock up on tequilas while he’s there) – though that may have been more to give Bo a sense of purpose and groundedness than any likely candidacy for the role. And in doing so, he became a key feature of the whole place – maybe the great-uncle we never had, friendly and caring and almost always way over the limit, almost always wearing his red patchwork jacket. Apart from Cristina, he was the only person I’d always greet with a huge hug – then again, Cristina was usually behind the bar, and he rarely was. He’d always ask after my mother with genuine interest, and he always gave you the sense – maybe because of his age and the fact that he was in Guatemala – that he’d led a full life, however tired of it he was, although he always seemed happy and positive (and again, very drunk).

He was found this morning. Given Guatemalan rules, he’ll be buried today or tomorrow. No time to find out what got him in the end, although my mother said that from what she’s heard, it sounded like he knew he was dying, and didn’t have much longer left.

I want to end this by asking myself how I’ll remember best, although it’s not a happy memory, however appropriate it might be. It was only a few weeks after my grandfather’s death, and my mother’s first time out since then. Bo wasn’t aware, and made a number of cold statements about death, his views on it, and that loved ones dying was simply a process of life. His wife died from a simple accident in Portugal – slipping down some stairs or tripping on something – and has drifted for the several decades since. His comments were making my mother cry, and even when I told him about my grandfather, he ackowledged her grief, but did not change his stance. I felt closer to him after that night – the three of us were sat at the end of a long table; I don’t remember if I actually got a chance to say goodbye.

Bo was a fixture, and I can’t imagine Café No Sé without him. It’ll be something to experience when I return.