Cock tales, jean pools

Dear Mexican:

I worked a summer job during college in southern Arizona during the late 1960s, where most of my co-workers were Mexicans from the state of Sonora. Their favorite expression when something was broken was no vale verga, literally “not worth dick,” but actually meaning “totally fucked up.” What happened with this expression? Forty years later, when I use it around Mexicans living in Southern California, or in Mexico, they look at me like I am a gabacho tonto. Pregunta: Was this expression limited to a northern Mexico dialect, or simply a colloquialism that went away with the hula hoop?

—Gabacho Confundido

Dear Confused Gabacho:

No, vale verga is still very much around, and you forgot to mention its noun use to denote someone who is a valeverga—who doesn’t give a shit about anything. I’ll admit that vale verga isn’t as popular as you might remember it, but only because it’s in a curious realm of the Mexican Spanish vulgarity galaxy. Por one, vale verga’s interjectional meaning is overshadowed by its synonym, vale madre (“worth mother”), because Mexicans have an Oedipal complex that would’ve made Freud forsake cocaine in favor of mescal. And the use of the penis as the object of ridicule in Mexican Spanish slang is very rare; la verga is more commonly the object used by the insulter to harass the insultee—witness “Chupa verga” (“Go suck dick”), mamón (“cocksucker,” and not the delicious Filipino sponge cake) or “[object of derision] pela” ([object of derision] peels back the foreskin of a penis so he can chupar verga). Contrast the status of penis in Mexican Spanish cussing, for instance, with that of the boys below—huevón (“big-balled”) signifies a lazy mamón. And, since we’re on the topic of cussing and you mentioned Arizona, I’d be derelict in my duties if I didn’t urge all of ustedes to repeat after me: ¡A la chingada con Apayaso!

For a summer, I lived with a half-Mexican, half-Irish kid whose mom (the Mexican side) went lesbian after his birth. This family taught me to drink tequila and got me laid for the first time by white women. I am part Native American and Jewish. Am I officially Mexican for this? If so, am I the most oppressed person in America?

—Looking for My Place in Line

Dear Injun Heeb:

No for the first part; if by “oppressed,” you meant “pendejo,” then yes on the latter!

Why do Mexicans swim in the ocean with their clothes on? I mean, denim?!

—Vicente Fox’s Mustache

Dear Pochos:

This is by far the most asked question in ¡Ask a Mexican! history. So, to todos ustedes, I have my own question: Are you all brown-and-chubby chasers? Like gabachos, an alarming number of Mexicans are out of shape. According to a 2003 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 24 percent of Mexico’s population is overweight. That’s the second-highest obesity rate in the world, following—wait for it—¡los Estados Unidos! (The Mexican’s present-day note: A 2008 study found the same results. I’d cite the exact survey, but here comes la migra—gotta run!) Unlike gabachos, Mexicans respect the public when it comes to flashing our flabby chichis, pompis and cerveza guts—so when we’re out near the pool or by the beach, we cover up. It ain’t Catholicism, machismo or an homage to our swim across the Rio Grande: It’s just good manners.