The jaguars will visit and greet you; Jesus taps into the spirit

Under the spell of ayahuasca, it’s not uncommon for people to see apex cat predators. One friend told me that during her session, she kept seeing jaguars. As for me, during my last sitting with the Amazonian brew, I was visited by a multi-colored tiger. Somehow, with grace, it walked down my throat before thrashing around my insides. The inevitable purge left me leaking and panting in defeat. The lesson I took away from the hallucinatory experience involved the power to channel and tap into courage. With this new intestinal fortitude, I recently moved back into the thick of the city after a few years of quiet, easy living in East County. And not just in the city, but right off El Cajon Boulevard, where all the shit goes down.

A few fun things I’ve seen over the years on the Boulevard: cackling prostitutes wildly pedaling bicycles at three o’clock in the morning, unhoused folks smoking crack in the unlocked hot water heater rooms of apartment complexes, and a gentleman waving a knife while walking into oncoming traffic. The pothole-infested Boulevard isn’t a zoo, it’s a fuckin’ parade of unrestrained madness.

On a recent Saturday night, I slipped out of the pad and took a walk down to Lou Lou’s Jungle Room in the Lafayette Hotel to catch a show. I’d been hearing a lot about an animal they called Jesus Gonzalez. I was told that he plays cosmic spiritual music. The kind of stuff that makes you want to get weird with friends, or strangers. Gonzalez typically makes a lot of his noise in OB, but on this night, he had come to the ballroom attached to the newly renovated Lafayette to play two separate shows. The cost of admission? Nothing more than bringing your spirit animal. Money was not necessary, unless of course you wanted to snag a fifteen-to-twenty-dollar cocktail.

Going in, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d driven past Lou Lou’s multiple times, trying to sneak a quick peek as I rolled by. From the dress of the crowd in line most nights, I figured I would need to wear something a little more formal than Chucks and a black tee. But Gonzalez’s fanbase hardly even wears shoes. No bullshit: the cosmic musician identifies as a National Forest. I wondered how the mix of bougie and beach bum would intertwine. Could the sweet and sour blend of expensive perfumes and hippie toes coexist in the same room? The jungle admits many possibilities.

The dimly lit bar buzzed with loud chatter. I caught the glow of strangers’ eyes as they looked in my direction then quickly darted away. Every table was taken. Hundreds of heartbeats thumped. The ceiling was low, almost pushing down on us. Then, as I left the bar area, two golden statue jaguars adorned with rosettes lit up and greeted me I entered the ballroom. The big cats stood very still in physically rad matter. I was not hallucinating. The stage sat in front of a glowing clam shell, lighting up every face in the room with the intensity of a roaring campfire.

“I invite you to move your bodies,” Gonzalez said as he opened his set. The four-piece band then began jamming out long, improvised tunes. The bodies began to move as instructed. I leaned up next to a pillar, jammed my hands into my pockets, and played spectator. People were moving differently. It was not ordinary dancing. I would describe it as grooving mixed with glitching. There seemed to be no wrong way to wiggle. There was something else going on inside of these “people.” Gonzalez was able to tap into them with his music and let their spirit animals play unbounded. Swanky and smelly ended up making for an epic collab.

Once the second show shut down, it was time to release everyone back into the wild. Back on the Boully, walking past the bar Live Wire, I heard a woman tell the dude she was with, “I remember this bar. I was here with a couple of guys once. We went back to my place after. Here, you might want to eat this piece of chocolate before I tell you the rest of the story.” The poor fool put the chocolate in his mouth and kept following the tail. Because the nature of this moonstruck street doesn’t give a fuck.