My car whined the whole way there. Lately when I turn the steering wheel to the right a rattling noise will sometimes appear and plus coming home late one night recently something flew up out of the road and sent a crack across the windshield. But we can only stand to have one car in the shop at a time and I had to get to the Poconos.

It was late when I arrived, all the beds and rooms with doors had already been claimed, but when I shuffled through the front door I heard the sound of male revelry erupting from the basement. An exciting moment in foosball, I later learned. You'd recognize the sound, kind of a deep-throated yoooooooo or ohhhhhhhh that underlines a moment of someone really throwing down. Someone scored the final point of the game with a resounding shot into the hollow thunk of the goal? Yoooooooooo.

For a moment I was fearful. Despite having played in bands, I can never recall being particularly comfortable in traditionally male settings. Never once have I been at ease during team sports. Nothing makes me feel like less of a man - and perhaps, less valuable as a person? - than being around a bunch of dudes. I surely benefit from male privilege often and tremendously and I do have visible facial hair and what could perhaps be mistaken for a former football player's doughy build, but in any kind of macho setting I feel a little ridiculous, like I'm wearing an ill fitting rubber mask.

This, however, did not turn out to be a particularly macho setting, despite being a bachelor party weekend. I relaxed into it easily. Our time was filled with video calls from people's partners and children, recommendations of different types of herbal remedies, people jamming in the living room on whatever gear they brought by, early bedtimes, and fresh corn cakes griddled in the morning. We did a big hike, some people took mushrooms, and that's probably the most exciting thing that happened, although the lemon pasta Dave whipped up comes close. I somehow managed to never get in the hot tub. The one bro-y thing we did was watch sports, women's NCAA basketball. Later, our friend the bachelor said that, near the peak of both our hike and his psilocybin journey, he felt comforted by this novel gathering of his dear friends' voices - when would he ever be surrounded by these pals chatting again? He is so obviously the kind of man I want to be if must I be a man.

I kept trying to think of the typical things you do at a bachelor party - I did not want my friend to enter into a legal bond of marriage with ill preparation. If there was a rite to be performed, I hoped to do it justice. But none of us really knew what a bachelor party is supposed to be and every depiction of one in popular media just shows people being total assholes. There would be no strippers, no property destruction, yes many beers crushed. But a dozen or so of the most wonderfully non-toxic men I've ever hung out with convened in his honor, so I hope the ritual is complete.

Within forty-eight hours of arriving home from the Delaware Water Gap I was already driving to Newark International Airport. I'm 35 years old and remain in the phase of life where the majority of your weekends are dedicated to the weddings or wedding-related activities of your friends and wider community. I will attend at least 8 this year, I believe, and I'm working many of them, whether I'm getting paid to do so or just performing a solid. This is one wedding I'm decidedly not working, however - we are simply taking the beautiful excuse to visit Mexico City. The trip has taken some strange turns: lots of buddies had to bail on getting here for the wedding and our other friend we wanted to come here to see was drawn out of the country at the last minute. Plus my day job got really weird all of a sudden and I can't ignore my emails in quite the way I'd like to. But all this has lead to being pretty delightfully untethered in a city I've never had the chance to visit before and when I say that the mango juice that ran down my chin this afternoon tasted sweet, brother you can believe that it tasted sweet.

I'm writing to you from Quetzalcoatl's Nest. This is not a metaphor, that is the name of the place where we're staying tonight. You should absolutely look it up. I don't say this lightly: it is insane. Have you ever had the feeling of stepping into someone else's dream? Or have you ever played the video game Myst? It's kind of like that. How to put it simply: the building is in the shape of an enormous snake slithering through an otherwise pristine hillside in the higher elevations to the West of CDMX proper. There are no right angles and there are thousands upon thousands of iridescent mosaic tiles covering the entire exterior. I am in awe and could say much more but as I look back on the photos I took this afternoon they simply don't make sense. I crawled inside a snake's head, his belly was a cave, it had two toilets and the most beautiful sink I've ever seen, do those words even mean anything?

In the morning we will be awoken by birds and, hopefully, the bubbling hiss of the coffeepot already set to boiling by our friends staying one floor above us. Soon I will see my friend married at a wedding in Valle de Bravo which requires that your outfit affirms your gender. Can the cheap Dickies suit, dangly earring, and seafoam bolo tie I brought with me live up to such an existential demand? I'm not a man, I just play one on TV.