I met Romeo last year when I went to Chiapas for the first time. I was in San Cristobal de Las Casas, one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever visited. I remembered I was walking around the city. I pass by this gallery on my way to the Mercado and see a young man putting out a sign that obviously was from a restaurant. Instead of the menu of the day though, he had listed what was on sale. Shirts, postcards, etc. I liked his approach and decided to stop by after the Mercado. “I thought you weren’t stopping by”, he said as I walked into the gallery. Then I saw it – the gay art all over the walls and all over the articles he had for sale. The common themes here were religion and sexuality.
I ended up hanging out with Romeo quite a bit during that trip. We’ve become good friends since then and I proposed that we work together for this trip. We exchanged some ideas through email. I packed images, photocopies and blank shirts for my trip to Chiapas. When I get to San Cristobal, I text him while having some tacos by the mercado. “Let’s meet at the usual place”, he says. So I head off to meet him at the same place where he once read my chocolate cup after I was finished with it.
