Tex[t]-MeXX adults only Galleryblog Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America An online supplement to the new University of Texas Press book William Anthony Nericcio Professor | SDSU

December 21, 2006 Special Adult Entry addition of the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog. One of the things I wanted to grapple with in Tex[t]-Mex but didn't have the time or the inclination (actually, I didn't want my parents to read it, pobrecitos!) has to do with the synecdochefication of "Mexicans" with sexuality--in particular, nasty, gnarly, dirty sexuality embodied in the phenomena of the Dirty Sanchez. While the Touch of Evil, Lupe Vélez and Speedy Gonzales chapters of the book touch on this curious fusion of sexuality and "filth", my Freud-fueled hygiene neuroses, hypochondria, and recovering Catholic hangover stopped me from going to far. Luckily one of my scholarly colleagues at a thriving Southern East coast university (hint: uniforms!) has elected to send in a dispatch that is one part scholarship and one part confessional.  I will quote it here verbatim, only the names have been changed to protect the guilty! At 8:06 AM -0800 12/6/06, [ScholarX] wrote: I'm not sure exactly what you wanted here, but....the thing about the dirty sanchez is that it is a graphic and powerful metonym for depravity.  In case you forgot, the dirty sanchez describes the practice of smearing feces on the upper lip of someone [with whom you have just shared anal sex]*.  When I imagine it, I am torn between disgust of the moment of the smear and horror at scooping [the feces]* off my member.  (Notice how ScholarX only imagines himself giving--not receiving.)  It's a metonym because it's a useful figurative smear.  Let me give you an example. A few years ago, ScholarX's wife and I set up my friend FriendX--whom you've met--with a friend of ScholarX's wife.  Knowing how my friend has spoken of women and related to women, I half jokingly said to him as I handed him the phone number of my wife's friend: "Listen, I'm giving you this number on the assumption that you are at least hoping to find a serious match.  Don't embarass me.  Don't attempt a dirty sanchez on the first date."  The point that I tried to convey (without, I confess, thinking very much of the racial slur implied) was: please behave and think of this young woman as a human being. If you check out the Wikipedia entry on the "dirty sanchez," you'll notice that the term functions, differently but similarly, in this figurative capacity within the entry itself.  The mention of the ultimate has-been "Screech" performing this act in the sex tape that was his desperate attempt at a comeback suggests that the "dirty sanchez" is a figure for the ultimate lowpoint. Oh, and keep my name out of GalleryBLOG, you pervert.  [ScholarX] * [brackets here denote vulgar street English used by correspondent that I have "cleaned up" a tad.] That "Mexican" sexuality should enter popular and vulgar discourse as the negative acme of depravity and/or absent "human-ness"makes studies like the ones begun in Tex[t]-Mex important in these first odd decades of the 21st century.