Vulgarity, Paranoia and Mexican Drug Cartels

The sun, the heat, and coming out from everywhere, a myriad of tourists, drinking and shouting, turning Brighton into a simulacrum of vulgarity. Em and myself passed a couple of rough looking types who shouted something about 'your legs aint broke yet' as we passed them by. We run into Anwen on the sea front. The news that one of her friends is travelling to Mexico leads me to start describing the intricacies and atrocities of the Mexican drug war, the various cartels and what places she should avoid, (this knowledge was all gained from one book I read a couple of years ago and didn't actually finish). Walking back from Em's tonight a man stinking of beer and business shouts into his mobile phone, stood in the middle of the pavement. Down at the beach, barbecue smoke obscures the sea, and there is laughter everywhere, but the laughter is not kind and has a cruel, edgy quality to it. A man walks too close behind me in a dark street and I cross the road, and to avoid skulking shadows at the top of one road, I am forced to 'go the other way'. I do not like their silence, the way they seem to be waiting for something.