This article was originally published in Domus México 04, December 2012 / January 2013

If your lips can touch the eyelids of the night, you are in Eje Central: the spine of the Mexican night. Anyone who hasn't been down Niño Perdido in the wee hours hasn't been in Mexico, hasn't pierced the centre of its heart of amorous stone and cracked hate between sips of aguardiente. Here, you can't separate or break down the enormity of the night. Every corner fits into it, from Cuba to Peru, from Bolívar to the Callejón del 57, from Santísima to the cobbles of Madero — everything is part of an indestructible fabric. Here, you can feel your existence in your hands, knock back your first mescal or your last.

The night in Plaza Garibaldi exudes a perfume that is at once beautiful, rotten, overpowering and docile. Almost a decade ago I stopped on this corner - Eje Central–Ecuador - and saw a pair of lovers fighting with a knife, wrestling with each other and then kiss. I thought about the fragility of love. I prefer nights of partying, the love of a single night, in which you promise absolutely everything.

So as not to break with the tradition of the square, I swore I would forget him, singing "Ya no me interesas" ("I don't care about you anymore") like Lucha Villa, while the hungry lone dog of memory ran behind our nights in another city, following our trail, sniffing out our kisses, our words, our promises.

What city am I in? This is a question I can't avoid asking as I go around Eje Central, stepping over the cracks in the Old Quarter. All my loves are around Garibaldi, they offer me a drink, a song, oblivion. The other night I wanted to take a taxi along the Eje Central, but it was impossible. Now there is an annoying lane that lets cars turn down streets where the direction has been changed, and the corners where once you could stick out a finger to get a ride home have had a horrible white line painted across them. I couldn't stop thinking about the uselessness of the "rescue" of the Centre. They call it revitalisation but — what or whom has it been rescued from?

They have rescued it from the nostalgics, the pig-headed, from residents who refused to leave it even when the buildings started to crack after the earthquake. They have rescued it from the children of memories. Stone upon stone, place upon non-place, trendy restaurant upon scummy bar, luxury loft upon traditional neighbourhood homes. It's not new. It's painful, but not new: church upon pyramid, monks preaching to those who once plucked out hearts.

What is interesting here are the untouchable places, the places where time stands still, like the corner of the movement on Amargura. The Centre was never dead. Here you can still find the mariachi bands, despite the terrible pastiche in the Tequila Museum. I don't smoke, but I light a cigarette for luck, and start myself up with a drink. I walk across the square, I go around the charred building on the corner, I stop at a stand selling crunchy beef tacos: the night starts to make sense.

I go on. The Hotel Ecuador looks older to me. A couple of night girls are outside, reminding me that the flesh is everything, or nearly everything. I carry on walking, a bottle of beer in any old dive. I am ready to go back to the past and never return. I go into the Bombay — it's unrecognisable. I ask for a drink, reconstructing in my mind's eye the silvery blue, the dance floor, the tables with lights and white tablecloths, the sign on the bathroom that said "Damas/Caballeros", the girls thronging the tables. I remember the Bombay in better days, a den of prostitutes and cheap rum. Tonight its cultural centre claim really stinks. You can't dance hip hop on a dance floor where voluptuous sirens once cheated sailors, politicians and bricklayers to the rhythm of the danzón. I try to speak to the boss of the brothel, who is too young (youth gives that air of over-eagerness to appear interesting all the time), and I learn that he charges an obscene amount to use his "cultural" space. You can't call this travesty of bad poetry a cultural space. A girl who doesn't even understand the heels she's wearing can't be called a cabaret entertainer (heels are for goddesses of the night, not for little girls who've never even lived). To add insult to injury, the drinks are warm.

I leave in search of consolation. I take refuge in a café that I've been going to since I was a girl. Forgive me for not revealing its name, but every time I write about a place in the Centre it seems to disappear shortly afterwards (I'm writing this in the hope that the Bombay will reopen its doors to the voluptuous 20-peso dancing sirens of the night, possibly under its former name: Shanghai). The night breathes its intangible scent of doom and happiness. I order a café con leche, I bump into an old group of waiters from the Tenampa, and we recall how the head waiter once threw me out of there as I sang "No volveré" ("I'm not coming back"). I have often wanted to separate my body and my thoughts from the Plaza Garibaldi night, spitting loathing at 8:36 a.m. Soused in vodka, promising more than 10 mariachis that I won't come back, requesting "Las golondrinas". I don't wear a watch — it's too dangerous here on the Eje Central. From here I would walk to the Run-Run, a cabaret club in La Tabacalera that no longer exists. Day never breaks in the 33, in the Ego I can fall asleep on a sofa as Valeska or Soraya entwine their legs around the pole, or spin, head downwards, to the strains of Cartel de Santa. When I wake up, my bag will be there waiting for me. I feel inside my coat pocket — a coat I haven't worn for years, and which I decided to take as my companion tonight. I find something — the matches they used to give away at the Hotel Bamer, when it still existed. I can't light those matches, not tonight. I hope the pianist and the bamerettes forgive me. I no longer go down Juárez, I don't dance danzón in that avenue. It's impossible not to think of everything that once was.

I collapse on the bench in Eje Central. I've got 200 pesos left. I decide to spend them on some norteño songs. Unintentionally, as always, I have charmed some rich kids who stare, amazed, at the hat that a mariachi has put on me. To me it is a tired and vulgar scene. For them it's something new, a free tourist attraction. We carry on singing to each other until we get to the Tenampa, and order a bottle of tequila. It's finished in less than an hour. We pile out into the square, one hour of mariachi music, another of boleros. There's still the Tapanco. There, to the strains of "Luces de Nueva York" we dance to the health of San Juan de Letrán. Day breaks. "Where shall we go?" I ask. "Didn't you want to go to Acapulco?" blurts out the posh boy with a beautiful smile. I thought about nights of long ago. I suggest going for another vodka, he seals the request with a kiss. His friends get up, I get up, we all get up. There's a sliver of the night left — and I leap in. Susana Iglesias (@vodkaybarracuda), writer