'stache #41 - the lemon moustache

Worn like a stag-horn, the inverted lemon wedge moustache was popularized in 1970s Mexico City. It was originally worn as an olfactory refreshment and nose guard when air pollution in the capital city began its rise to fame. It was particularly popular among the dissident, artistically uncompromising Infrarealist poets. Robert Bolaño, in the Savage Detectives, writes:

According to Arturo Belano, the visceral realists vanished in the Sonora desert. Then Belano and Lima mentioned somebody called Cesarea Tinajero or Tinaja, I can't remember which (I think it was when I was shouting to the waiter to bring us some cervezas con limón), and they talked about the Comte de Lautreamont's Poems, something in the Poems that had to do with this Tinajero woman, and then Lima made a mysterious claim. According to him, the present-day visceral realists walked backward. What do you mean, backward? I asked.

"Backward, gazing at a point in the distance, but moving away from it, walking straight toward the unknown."

I said I thought this sounded like the perfect way to walk. The truth was I had no idea what he was talking about. If you stop and think about it, it's no way to walk at all.

Other poets showed up later on. Some were visceral realists, others weren't. Some wore oranges, others limes. It was total pandemonium. ... then we sang a ranchera. That was all. The song was about the lost towns of the north, citrus moustaches, and a woman's eyes. Before I went outside to throw up, I asked them whether the eyes were Cesárea Tinajero's. Belano and Lima looked at me and said that I was clearly a visceral realist already and that together we would change Latin American poetry. At six in the morning I 'stached a lemon wedge, took another pesero, this time by myself, which brought me to Colonia Lindavista, where I live. Today I didn't go to class. I spent the whole day in my room sniffing lemon scent and writing poems.

This moustache can be worn in cities with heavy air pollution, such as Los Angeles, Beijing, Tehran, and Calcutta. The lemon 'stache is also popular with heavy smokers.