Saints & Roughnecks

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Saints & Roughnecks

A Historical Fiction by Nicholas Richwine

Creative Development: Logan Sack

Dedicated to the people you meet abroad.

www. Saints and Roughnecks . com

Saints & Roughnecks

Anything is possible if you play the part. A person’s success in crime is directly correlated to the self-image they project. The book’s title, “Saints & Roughnecks” is a psychological term coined by professor and sociologist William J. Chambliss. In his study of two different gangs, the Saints and the Roughnecks both gangs engaged in the same level of criminal delinquency, yet one gang, the Roughnecks, received considerable attention while the Saints did not. In time, members of the two gangs lived up to the community's differential predictions about their future. In essence the way people are seen in society is how they present themselves. In this case study, the paths of both gangs turned out to be examples of a self-fulfilling prophecy. What people believe to be real will be real in its consequences. Deviance isn't deviant unless specified by society and people tend to focus on labels rather than themselves. The Saints were a group of good white upper-middle class misfits. They all made good grades and participated in several school activities and sports. Each of them were well dressed, well mannered, and drove nice cars yet, The Saints got much better treatment from their teachers, communities, and police than the Roughnecks. By this projection they made it very unapparent to everyone of how much trouble they actually got into. The Saints were methodical about how they went about engaging in such delinquent behavior. Although the Saints were overtly rebellious, they were labeled as leaders in their community and since they were led to believe they were such good guys, they themselves believed it to be true and continuously committed criminal acts without acknowledging the consequences.

Part 1 DPression

I received a call from Rory, an old friend of mine growing up in Los Angeles and also the first kid who ever sold me weed. Rory’s parents were hippie draft dodgers who moved to California in the early 70s to become clothing designers but failed because well, hippies don’t buy a lot of clothing. Rory is 6’2”, lanky with long blonde hair, double tatted-sleeves, and has no social filter. After somehow getting a 1520 on the SAT’s he headed north to DJ and fuck the University of California, Santa Barbara female body. Rory: “Move out here ASAP! I got a free room available right on the beach.” At the time, my grandmother was yelling at me from across the house to take out the recycling. Unemployed and lost like so many graduates during the recession I tossed everything I possessed into two large duffle bags, threw it all in the back of my car and hit the Pacific Coast Highway. On the way up almost past Malibu I received another text message. Rory: “Don’t bother going to my pad, park your car on Del Playa and come straight to the Tiki House. Everyone knows where it is! I’m DJing. Drop my name, sign the waiver and don’t ask questions.” I arrived to Isla Vista after almost hitting a kid on a bike while not paying attention to the road, staring at all the bikini-clad girls. Parking my car on DP, I see two girls tanning nearby in front of a house with a large painting of Bob Marley’s face in the center of a sun.

“Good afternoon ladies, could you please help me find the Tiki House?” “Ugh gross,” they responded and pointed to their left. At the house, there was a huge line trailing way down the street. I probably could’ve guessed this was it without asking the girls, but the prospect of the first two

women I had seen was too much to pass up. I walked up to the party and was met by a fat kid at the gate in a cut off Jack Daniels tee holding a clipboard in his hands. I dropped Rory’s name and was promptly told to “Back the fuck up! Get to the end of the line!” I repeated to the fat guy that I was there to meet Rory the DJ and once he realized I wasn’t lying he radioed it in to someone on the other side. I waited thinking, “Come on, Rory.” Hearing over the radio “He’s good,” Fatty circled six boxes off the clipboard, handed it to me and demanded I initial it. Before signing, I looked at the top of the release form and noticed the title reading, “www.CollegeFuckFest.com” I should’ve known better, but instead I marked down someone else’s initials and walked in. Standing tall in the driveway, smiling down on everyone was a large Tiki statue, surfboards piled on top of one another, red cups all over the ground and bamboo lining the property. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Right off the bat not six feet through the front door were three naked girls on top of an old ripped plaid couch, eating each other out, surrounded by 50-60 partygoers no older than 21. Following the music, and squeezing through more similarly dirty herds, I make my way past the line for the bathroom, and out onto the central porch perched over the beach. Holy shit, I had no idea the house was on a bluff. Looking around at all the girls I see Rory, fist pumping, and resting one arm on a young girl’s head holding a plastic red cup. Why would girls attend such a party? Did this not offend them? As I got closer, I began to raise my arms to give Rory a high five when I bump into something. I turn lifting my foot to discover a kid shirtless wearing a backwards hat railing an older black girl from behind. Jesus, really? Disgusted and wiping off the invisible jizz germs from my leg, I continued towards Rory who with a headphone over one ear upon seeing me screams, “How fucking sick is this?!” I shake my head, “You are ridiculous!” He fist pump points back to the house, instructing me to go upstairs and mention his name once again, where I would be helped out by a bartender with drinks. I could tell right away that all

the girls having sex were prepaid professionals. Growing up in Los Angeles, I was never surprised what some people will do for money. What truly shocked me though was that all of the guys having sex had to have been local college students. One beer bong, and two shots of tequila later, I somehow found myself getting sandwiched by two girls on the upstairs balcony. I know to never mix and match but that’s what was put in front of me. Over the course of two hours I had been texting Justin, another friend and a student at UCSB to come meet me at the Tiki House. Because of Justin’s height, I thought I would have easily been able to point him out of the crowd. Still dancing with the two girls and trying to decide which one was more interested in me, I spot Justin out of the corner of my eye pinned up against the second floor patio wood railing full on making out with the same brunette chick I had witnessed getting banged upstairs just an hour before. I should have been a good friend and torn the girl away saving him, but I was obviously too late, and I can only handle so much. I asked Rory for his keys so that I can get back to my new place and unwind. Unpacked and sitting on the couch watching a rerun of Entourage, Rory whips open the sliding door with two girls. Rory: “Yo Pierce, this is Mandy and Lauren. Lauren this is Pierce, remember what I told you? You kids have fun.” They all laughed, and Rory and Mandy disappeared into Rory’s room. I was pissed. Rory was about to hand off some drunken girl for me to babysit while he got some ass. Fucking Rory. Suddenly though, Lauren approaches me, clearly intoxicated and gets down on her knees and begins unzipping my pants. I stopped her, pushing her away, “Whoa, what are you doing?” Lauren replies, “It’s ok, just sit back, let me do my thing, or Rory won’t hook me up again.” The next morning, I walked out of my room to find Rory sitting in polka dot boxers with a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch on the same couch. Rory: “Sup dude.”

Pierce: “Sup?” I replied in disbelief, “Who the fuck are you? What the fuck was that last night?” Rory: “I told you I got you. You stay out here long enough and there will be plenty more of that.” I shake my head and grabbed a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and sat down. Pierce: “Please, do tell.” Rory: “Tell what?” Pierce: “Well let’s start with why some girl I don’t even know tried to blow me like it was her final exam.” Rory: “Did you let her?” Pierce: “Fuck no!” Rory: “Are you fucking serious?” Pierce: “Yea, I sent her ass home.” Rory (chewing): “Wow, you’re so lame. I hooked that girl up for nothing. Ugh, well as you know, I’m not a student.” Pierce: “Yeah, no shit.” Rory: “And living in Isla Vista, this house, that room, is ya know close to $5,000 a month. That’s before utilities. I came out here when all the homies left Los Angeles and bounced to college, to capitalize on the one thing that I am good at. Partying.” Pierce: “Go on.” Rory: “Can I finish my Sunday morning cartoons first?” Pierce: “No!” Rory laughing: “Ugh fine, well, it’s pretty simple. College kids are broke. In-state tuition alone is $40,000 a year. Cocaine is $50 a gram. I know you don’t do blow, but 1g is not enough to keep you going all night. You would be amazed at what these girls will do for something that doesn’t even cost me $15 a G at cost.” Pierce: “Wow, alright enough said, thanks, I don’t want to hear anymore. So what’s on the agenda for today?” Rory: “Today, we are getting a puppy.”

Mans Best Friend

I flash back to all those lame guys in their sophomore year of college, moving into shitty run down houses and getting a stupid little puppy that they thought would help them pick up chicks. It’s true that girls are suckers for dogs, and that they will stop to pet them to and from class. They then see you as a responsible and probably unconsciously, picture you as a good father figure. I express my argument to Rory, and tell him how it’s not worth the time and effort, or the cleaning and shit, and how we should focus on DJing, having parties and getting laid. “Just trust me!” he says. We drive to a local breeder in Santa Clarita. I was nagging him to tell me what kind of dog it was, but he refused. Passing through what seemed to be an entirely Hispanic community we get to an old small craftsman house on the outskirts of town with flowerpots lining the stone walkway. It was becoming clear that we were not getting a Pit. After ringing the doorbell an elderly woman answered. Old Lady: “Helloooo, you must be Rory. Would you boys like some apple juice?” Rory: “Why, that sounds splendid thank you!” Pierce muttering: “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Rory: “Just wait I’ve got this. Have I ever let you down?” I thought of all the times Rory let me down replying, “Yes!” Standing at the door I turn to Rory asking, “So, what are you going to call it?” Rory: “Rex.” Before I could comment the old woman walks back out with two kid sized Juicy Juice cartons and a Payless shoebox in-hand. She places the box in front of us, opening it like a prize on a game show. When I looked inside, all hope I had for that canine disappeared. Old lady: “This little sweetie pie is a Pomeranian mixed with a Terrier, and only six weeks of age.” I slump back into my chair, sipping my Juicy Juice carton.

Rory picking up the dog looks it in the face, holding it by the sternum and kissed it on the nose proclaiming, “He is perfect!” On the ride home, he made me hold Rex in the passenger seat and all I could think about was how since Rory is a full time student, part time douchebag at Hot Topic, DJ's, and sells drugs, that I will end up being the one responsible for taking care of this little shit. We park the car, pop the trunk, grab our skateboard decks, throw Rex on the front nose and cruise down to the beach. I have to admit, I was a bit excited to see if his plan would work. What was to come though was complete disbelief. Upon arrival we cracked open a Coors, went down the stairs and on the sand we unleashed the dog, which immediately took off running. We were about to chase after Rex, concerned he would get in a fight with another dog, when we saw him head directly for the towels of several girls sunbathing. “Awww!” they cooed petting Rex and raising him above their heads, “Where did you come from little guy?” We immediately ran up and respond, “Oh! There you are Rex, we were so worried about you”, and sat down next to the girls. “Sorry about our little friend, I hope he isn’t disturbing you. My name is Rory and this is Pierce, who just moved to Santa Barbara.” Two of them were hot, four of them were not, a typical take at the beach. One of the hot girls says, “He should totally become friends with our dog Gucci! We could have play dates!” By the end of the day Rex was the most popular kid on campus, we had each added new numbers to our phones and had set up dates for Friday and Saturday. Oh, and did I to mention that we took the first group of girls home! Maybe all those lame guys in college had it right! Weeks passed where I did nothing but take Rex to the beach, my new best friend, while Rory worked downtown. One night after work Rory asks me to meet him at Freebirds, a local Mexican food joint before getting ready

to go to a party that one of the girls who had fallen for Rex’s trap had invited us to. Standing in line Rory confronted me. “I have a proposition for you. Remember when you once told me about how in college frat guys were paying you to, “Move their money” he said using finger quotes. Pierce: “I like to think of it as investment banking.” What Rory was referring to was that in college, I began DJing for the entire fraternity circuit after mine lost its charter. I was making $400 a night when one of the treasurers came to me. He couldn’t explain in detail, but his fraternity had income pouring in that they could not account for. They knew that I was making a name for myself as a DJ, taking on more gigs and expanding, and now renting PA speaker equipment. By paying me large sums of cash to be a DJ, or renting equipment I could then write them back with legitimate checks for things like setting up, passing out flyers, or building my website, all now legitimate cash. Yes they could have put it all in safety deposit boxes, but then they themselves would not be able to write checks, gain interest or invest the money. It was a very lucrative business as long as I kept track and balanced our books. In the United States, it is illegal to carry or transport unaccounted for money in denominations of $10,000 in cash or more. For instance if you are driving to Las Vegas and a cop pulls you over for speeding, and on the passenger seat is a stack of $40,000, unless you’ve hit the jackpot, have a stable income or someon who can attest to giving you the cash, it will be confiscated becoming property of the State of Nevada. In Santa Barbara I didn’t have any income. I did have some money saved but I wasn’t working, I wasn’t a trust fund baby, and I spoke up before he could say the next word. “I’m in, but we need to be smart about it. I learned a lot from my time in college, and all things I should have done differently.” “Like what?” He asked. “Like I know how much you love flaunting and talking yourself up to girls. That has to stop. If you want

this to work here is what you need to do.” “1st: Do not quit your day job. The biggest mistake most people make is once they start hustling is they quit their job. If you are not paying taxes, the government will investigate.” “2nd: Think white collar. Portray someone who abides the law. Don’t give any excuses for someone to stereotype.” “3rd: Never keep anything at your house. Don’t shit where you eat.” “Ok. Is that it?” he asked. “We will need to open up a Wells Fargo checking account and several safety deposit boxes so that any money trail wouldn’t draw attention. I’m imagining right now, based on your spending habits, and the amount of times your phone rings that you are probably making about $5,000 a week net? You need to invest in capital. Assets to create a front. Why do you think the mob had so many Italian restaurants? In college the only way to make people think that I was making that kind of dough was to buy more equipment and expand. The maximum we can deposit per week comfortably is $3,000. Also, you might want to consider renting an apartment, buying a large digital fingerprint safe, and keeping half of the cash there, preferably not in Del Playa.” “Cool, done deal.” “Also. We will never talk about this, I never want to see any transactions, and as far as we’re concerned I’m just a person renting out your guest room. That’s the story so stick to it.” Week after week, Rory kept bringing me $5,000 and our new apartment in Ventura piled up with speakers. Top of the line stuff that probably did make Rory a better DJ. JBL Pro Series metal cage PA system sets, going for about $10,000 a piece. Life was good, I only had to put in a few hours a week standing in teller lines, at bank manager’s desks and visiting Guitar Center for new ideas. Since we had such a sick audio set up the parties became notorious just like mine had in college. It doesn’t matter how good

you can mix songs, if you don’t have the right equipment, the deep bass, you’re out. We printed flyers and had some freshman hotties on Rory’s jock passing them out around campus to start renting speakers to other events, fraternities, sororities, small bands, house parties, and local DJ’s only accepting checks. We even rented to UCSB for school events including summer graduation. The main reason people get caught hustling is because they get careless or carried away. I knew more money, meant Rory acting lavish, and larger purchases of drugs. The larger the quantities, the sketchier the clientele. Jay-Z said it best, “Mo Money Mo Problems.” Rory was now infamous in Isla Vista and everyone knew what he did, where he lived, and where I now fucking laid to rest. The one thing he did do well was rarely selling out of hand and convincing girls to peddle it for him. It seemed smart. No drugs, no crime, but if even one girl gets caught I knew they would rat us out in a heartbeat. You can keep your eyes shut, but you still see it all. I knew where he was going and what he was picking up, but as if my Ray-Bans took me somewhere else I just pretended nothing was happening. After returning from one run and hearing him pull in the driveway bumping rap music, I sat him down. “Rory we need to talk. If you’re going to be copping serious weight you need a better vehicle. Rent something that doesn’t make you stand out, but portrays you as an outstanding citizen. Please for god’s sakes, don’t wear wife beaters! You need to play the part. Get yourself some nice dress shirts and slacks to cover those sleeves! Pretend I am a police officer and I ask you, ‘What were you doing in San Francisco this afternoon?’” He instantly replies, “Alcatraz.” Pierce: “Oh god, get an alibi!”

Floatopia

It’s a fact. Everyone loves college girls in bikinis. Floatopia, now known as “Deltopia,” was the following weekend and we needed to prepare. Many years ago, California state police banned drinking alcohol on public beaches, piers and sidewalks, but it didn't occur to anyone to also ban drinking in the ocean. Realizing this loophole, thousands of UCSB college students showed up with beer coolers, inflatable rafts, and inner tubes pushing out to sea while DJ’s lined the beach bluffs balconies. Heaven. Over the years through social media, word of mouth and guerilla marketing the crowds have grown into an all-out beach festival. As long as the college students drank their beer and alcohol on their rafts, the police were helpless to intervene. On eBay we found some guy out in Lake Havasu that builds large inflatable rafts. Not just any rafts, but a floating string of islands, one of the party rafts even came with a slot to hold a cooler, built-in beer pong table, and waterproof speakers. It was only a mere $1,700 but we didn’t care. A sound investment. The first thing we had to do was inflate that bad boy, section by section and get it out to sea. One minor problem, we forgot to buy a pump, so we ended up paying this local homeless guy 20 bucks to blow it up. Within an hour after pushing out, girls were appearing out of the water like mermaids. One thing I took away from this was unlike having a BBQ on your front yard, or hosting a party, is that guys will not show up to your raft, maintaining a proper ratio. I was balance beaming to get another brew when I saw this girl floating over to ours in a pink dragon inner tube. I made my way over to help her aboard when her girlfriend flips her over. She was pissed losing her sunglasses to the ocean floor so I leaned down putting out a helping hand. “Are you ok? That was quite the swan dive.” Visiting her friend from Kentucky she just thought it was the coolest thing ever living so close to the beach. I

tried to care about her life and her sunglasses, but really just focusing on her tits every time the raft rocked. We pounded a few shots of Patron, played a round of beer pong, flip cup and after more meaningless convo, with a dirty drunk lip bite Kentucky hinted she would like to get out of the sun and maybe take a nap? Not even saying goodbye to Rory we swam back in, which was also way harder when intoxicated I might add. Back on Del Playa, I put Kentucky on the handlebars of a beach cruiser that I lifted. I told her it was mine but really found it leaning up against a tree. I know that sounds fucked up but in Santa Barbara bike theft was so common people just stopped caring. It was an unwritten rule, a loose bike rental system. Just pick it up, drop it off, no resale. Peddling with Kentucky on the front was way harder than I could have ever imagined. She wasn’t chubby just meatier than the anorexic California girls I was used to. We crashed one time onto the grass while passing onto the sidewalk but no one got hurt, so she thought it was cute and giggled. Ditching the cycle alongside another tree on our block, I spotted a Hispanic male wearing baggy jean shorts, a wife beater and gloves standing next to an open window of our apartment. I am not stereotyping but anyone who wears gloves in 80-degree weather in a college beach town is clearly up to no good. Was this really happening? Were some Mexicans pulling a heist on us during Floatopia? I told Kentucky to wait a minute. She was so wasted she just sat down on the pavement Indian style. I kneeled down alongside one of Rory’s vehicles and sent him a text. Text: “We’re getting robbed!” Allowing them to get away was not an option, but neither was full on confrontation. Shirtless, and my only back up being a belligerent out-of-towner, I had to sit tight. Within minutes Rory skids in on another stolen beach cruiser. Rory: “Hey Beaner! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The one esse runs off full sprint. Rory chases after him and I make it to the window shutting it closed so his partner couldn’t get out. The window locks from the outside. Stupid design we know. Then running around to the front door I held it closed calling 911. I could feel the other thief inside trying to pull it open. The police were lagging as always and distracted checking out drunken girls at Floatopia. Rory returned, getting a gun out of his car while I held the door closed. I really had no clue what our plan was or why I called the cops. Rory: “You called the fucking police? Are you fucking stupid? Do you have any idea how much shit I got stashed in my room?!” We were in a full on argument with one hand still holding the door closed when we heard a window break. The thief still inside, used our fireplace poker to bash out the sliding glass patio doors jumping over the railing, tumbling down the rocks and bushes before hitting the sand. We rushed out, hanging over the side we saw him getting back up and flipping us off while limping away. Go Gauchos! Pierce: “Fuck. I told you this shit would eventually happen, you got plasmas visible from the street!” When the police finally pulled in, the rookie asked if we wanted to make a police report but it was pointless. What would it read? Two Mexicans around 5’6” in their mid-30s? That’s practically all of California! After the police left I realized I had forgotten all about Kentucky out on the sidewalk. When I went back to try and get her she was nowhere to be found. She either forgot about me or stood up and wandered off to be courted by another. To our knowledge, nothing had been stolen but I swayed Rory to buy a small 10X wireless video security system afterwards, realizing now Rex would never be a champion guard dog.

Amphibious

Playing Frisbee Golf on campus after sitting in on a PSYCH 1000 lecture, I get a text from Rory that reads, “Just getting out of work, locked down these two foreign bitches.” Shortly after he sent me another message, “Swedish Tennis Bitches. Boom!” One, a tall blonde who he later introduced me to as “Tennis Girl” cause she was an amateur competitor and mirrored Anna Kournikova when he spotted her near campus in uniform. I messaged him back - “Set it up!” They were both freshman living at the Francisco Towers, formally known as Fuck Towers by students for its reputation of the slutty freshman who lived there. When I picked them up they seemed like good girls, as most girls do in the beginning. They were both still in tennis outfits, small white skirts, sports bras and still wearing small brimmed tennis hats. I did my best not to make any jokes. It was around 9pm when we got to the house. Like most of our visitors they were impressed with the view and I figured we would have to entertain these ladies for at least a couple of hours before things got amatory. First thing out of Kournikova's mouth, “You boys got any E we could drop?” I was shocked by the question looking to Rory for confirmation. Who’s going to say no to two gorgeous Swedish girls in tennis gear? Purple pressed Mercedes Bens and after a round of drinks and dancing, our tennis match started getting frisky. I decided not to drop any, favor being the type to control the situation, and with Rory things can get out of hand, fast. We were dancing in the living room to some Dubstep when the next thing I knew these tennis girls were slingshotting their tops at us skipping down the stairs to skinny dip. We followed, nearly tripping out of our shorts to get undressed. That night the ocean was fucking freezing running in. Automatic shrinkage. Skinny dipping in the ocean is a little weird. The water is so dark that it makes anything and everything floating against your body feel like sea creatures. When I looked at everyone else I knew they were tripping

balls. Rory playing vagina shark with the girls was swimming under water grabbing their asses. Pitch black with nothing but the moon shining off the water’s surface. Kournikova kept expressing how, “My skin turns to silk, cool air into refreshment.” By the pruniness of my fingers we must have been out there for a half an hour laughing contagiously. Tuned in and tripping out. Floating in full foreplay I caught myself gazing at Kournikova twirling around and I kept thinking how dreamy she looked. I was in a trance when something caught my eye 30 yards behind her. It was fin’s circling through the water. It couldn’t be a shark, did they dose me? I did recall on Shark Week that Great Whites breed off of the coast of Catalina Island and that YouTube video of that seal getting eaten mid air. I’m a strong swimmer but it was like midnight, with no one to come to our rescue. Tennis Girls legs wrapped around my waist, “I need you to act calm and not freak out but.” Before I could even finish my sentence she screamed at the top of her lungs, “Shark!” It broke into all out madness. We lost our cool and went into straight high pitch survival mode. Splashing and swimming as fast as we could, we made it to shore collapsing on the cold sand. Trying to catch our breath, we sat there looking out into the ocean. Rory had already lit a cigarette and was repeatedly saying, “Fucking sharks.” One playfully leaped out of the water. Sharks jump? It was a pool of dolphins enjoying the shallow warm water. Kournikova: “How sick would it be if we knew they were dolphins? We could have swam with them on E! Can you imagine a more intense trip?” Rory: “I once went parasailing on mushrooms, but that was hard on the heart!”

Rude Awakening

Enterprise rental receipt on the refrigerator. Rory was now going up to San Francisco almost every other week and I was finally starting to get some time to myself. A little piece and quiet was hard to come by in Isla Vista. When he returned, I didn’t ask what he copped; I still preferred still being blissfully ignorant, excluding me from guilt. We played a few hours of Call of Duty, ordered the 555 deal from Dominos and then called it a night. I had been asleep for maybe six hours when the sun crested the bottom of my windowsill. REM cycling before I even knew that I was done dreaming, I was being pulled across the carpet, zip ties around my wrists. I would’ve screamed, yelled out for Rory, but they had duct tape over my mouth, using gestures to signal towards the back. The next thing I see, down the hallway, were three black figures wearing ski masks, one holding a battering ram, about to punch through Rory’s door right off the hinges. They busted through seizing Rory like a cartel kidnapping. With his hands zip tied behind his back, they dragged him out of the room screaming when one of the men in black brings an elbow down on his head. They tossed Rory beside me on the couch with Rex barking in circles. They were going to kill us. Rory was in deep, possibly with some dealers in Norcal, rivals or another group that were upset over a deal gone bad. The men were calm, too calm, one walking off into the hallway on a walkie-talkie. Moments later a large black man walked into the room in a suit and badge showing his face. It was right then I knew it was a raid. They had finally caught up with Rory. Placing each one of us in separate rooms they began to interrogate us, and cross-examine our stories to see where we would slip up. They told me they had us; that they had bugged the house and had been watching us for weeks to build a case. RoboCop: “Where is the surveillance camera footage?” Pierce: “I don’t know? I just live here!”

I knew to remain quiet having watched enough First 48 on A&E in college. Regardless of evidence you don’t say shit. It’s not what they know, it’s what they can prove. Cops will feed you lies just to break you. My only involvement was taking money from Rory, placing it in safety deposit boxes, and in our Ventura location that nobody even knew the address of. I sat there and kept quiet, only saying, “I want to speak with a lawyer.” Leading up to this I still had the mentality that everything would be “Ok” and that they had nothing on us, that some girl had ratted Rory out after getting caught with a small bag of blow. With my head down, out of the corner of my eye I saw an officer walking towards me with a smirk on his face. He slams down a Ziploc bag filled with several hundred ecstasy pills covered in what looked like Vaseline. RoboCop: “You see this, son? This is ten years. You’re fucked, act dumb. We don’t need a statement.” The SWAT team put us in the back of a black van with caged windows, in front of our neighbors, girls with hands over their mouths as we were dragged out, scraping our knees on the pebble driveway. Four walls, one desk. It wasn’t overly small or dark, more like an empty office. They left me there for a very long time; I thought they had forgotten about me. At some point the well-dressed officer who had spoken to me at the house came in with a leather notepad and sat down. “We know that you were working with Rory. The only thing we don’t know is how much of the business belonged to you and how much belonged to him.” I told them my side. How I had just gotten out of college, and was renting the room for the summer. I had no priors, I had never done X or coke. The only past I had with Rory was that we had gone to Venice High together and I responded to a Facebook post for a room available. I said nothing to their accusations, claims of photos, and statements that Rory had ratted me out. I remained mute and believed squat waiting for my public defender to show up and step in on my behalf. Rory claimed full responsibility. All narcotics were found in his room. I’m sure he considered ratting me out

but if we both went to jail who would take care of the accounts? I was let out later the same day, on the promise that I agree to cooperate with any further investigation. I went back to the apartment to take a shower and gather my things. Our only chance, my only chance, was to make sure that anything incriminating they had yet to find in our Santa Barbara or Ventura apartments got out as fast as possible. Our Del Playa apartment was ransacked. They had punched holes in the walls, broken the doors, tossed everything on the floor and caution-taped the yard. I had to go back downtown to reclaim Rex who I later gave to one of Rory’s girlfriends to adopt. I waited a few days, not caring to say goodbye to anyone. So many friends must have had questions that went unanswered. I gathered all the cash from Ventura, leaving $30,000 worth of DJ equipment behind. I had no choice. It would have taken me days and a crew to remove it all. I was contacted by Rory’s lawyer as a median between the two of us. He hinted that I might be able to “support” Rory’s case. I made two payments of $15,000 cash to pay for court fees, car insurance, rent, bills, etc. Our luck had run out, there were so many more precautions we could have had taken. So many things I would have done differently. But that’s life. I packed everything into my car and moved back once again to Venice Beach, California. My grandmother in Venice had a small shed on the side of her house that my father and I had built as a kid. It was a piece of shit. All snowboarding equipment, family photos and Christmas decorations. Picking through the back was a small snowman that I had paper mache’d in 3rd grade, covered in spider webs and years of dust. I pulled Frosty out, and with a handsaw, cut off his head. I took the cash out of a my JanSport backpack, everything that we had except for what was in one of my security deposit boxes and stuffed it inside Frosty sealing him with Gorilla Glue. I couldn’t make a move until I knew Rory’s sentencing. The verdict: two years in prison, three years of probation, ankle bracelet attached. Two years upstate is

something I’d wish upon no man, but after careful review of the 10X video camera recordings that were transmitted via cloud computing, his lawyer filed a police brutality case cutting a deal with the district attorney to reduce the sentence. I, did not get charged in the case because of a roommate clause in college towns that states one tenant could not be held responsible for another’s actions. Late night in my Santa Monica Huntley Hotel room drowning my sorrows in a handle of Jack Daniels, the TV stopped on a documentary by accident: “180⁰ South.” Since there is nothing ever to watch on late night television I stopped on the channel. It was about a surfer named Jeff Johnson from California. After watching old footage of a 1968 hiking expedition, Jeff drops everything to discover himself on a mission to climb Corcovado Volcano, Patagonia. The cinematography was gorgeous. The mission admirable. Jeff and his companion, both from California, find a wanted ad for a crew deck on a small sailboat headed for Mexico. Storms and close top siding continued and they became shipwrecked on the coast of Easter Island, the famous Polynesian island know for its creepy Moai stone statues. Spending two months repairing the ship, they fall for two local girls one named Makohe, who always surfed the break to catch their eye. The girls speak of life as it belongs to earth. Simplistic and deep, their messages made you just want to spin your compass and go. All four fixed the boat together. Makohe, having never climbed before, decides to sail to Patagonia with them, practicing along the way tactics to make it to the top. The Argentinean government on sight of profiteering is looking to sell the land and use its natural resources such as lakes and rivers to build hydroelectric dams and oil pipelines. These types of international investors rarely make a significant impact on helping the economy. This was often seen with so many of the world crude oil rich countries.

Example: Let’s say Shell is looking to expand its drilling to a new comer like Venezuela only discovering oil a decade ago. Without notifying the public, Shell tells the dictator Hugo Chavez that Shell’s team of experts has located oil within his country. The President could very well take this information and start a national oil company but since Shell already has all the infrastructure, capital, and projected earnings, they agree. Shell sets up millions of dollars’ worth of necessary equipment, pump it out, supply the country with free oil and also pay out millions of dollars under the table to the president himself. What would you do with over $200,000 in cash? I thought about what Jeff from “180° South” had done. I would never be that athletic; I did not have the patience to volunteer but admired those who did. I wanted to do something that nobody had ever done before, whoever I met, whatever their profession was, they couldn’t tell me nothing. I didn’t want bragging rights and at the time I couldn’t have cared less about money. I was given the gift of freedom. Freedom to act, speak or think without restraint and like most liberties it is not appreciated until it is gone. One minute we’re playing video games, and the next Rory’s in trouble with the law and his future down the drain. My life had yet to begin and with Rory behind bars, I needed to move forward. I needed to change and re-evaluate my circumstances. The parallel lives of the Saints and Roughnecks compared to our own, jolted inside of me a realization that this gift of freedom had to be lived fully, and for that I was grateful. I decided to get away, experience something that was my own. That no matter what happened, nobody could take it away from me. There was one quote that night in the documentary “180⁰ South” that will forever resonate with me: “It’s not an adventure until everything goes wrong.”

Part 2 Rum Diaries

My grandfather once said, “People are scared of what they don’t understand.” Whether it’s a person, culture, race, or topic, if they don’t understand it they will avoid it and prevent themselves from embracing it. I, on the other hand also learned from an early age in life the power of networking. It’s everything in life from building rapport in business to having a lot of connections, and I started realizing that the more people I let into my life, the more I learned and grew as a person. I’m not saying just let anyone in, or use and abuse people, but if you meet someone always see it as an opportunity. You never know where it might take you. Venice High School was a fucking melting pot. Segregated yet educated among all races, cultures and cliques it came naturally to me to befriend people from all walks of life. In 10th grade I took a creative writing class that opened my mind to the art of literature. We had this overly enthusiastic teacher named Mrs. Brumsfield who was always on our asses and calling out anyone who wasn’t paying attention. She loved writing and teaching, but was planning to retire as soon as the search engine startup her husband was working on took off, Googley or something like that. Late to the first day of class, Mrs. Brumsfield seated me in the front row, dead center. I hated sitting in the front, mostly because I was always using the first half of my classes to finish the previous night’s homework. Seated next to me and dressed like a low budget 80s movie, was a gigantic foreign exchange student named Damian. Damian was easily 6'4”, black and had what I thought was a thick Jamaican accent. To this day he still makes me feel like a midget whenever we hang out, but anytime someone was messing with me, Damian would walk up instantly shutting them the fuck up. He was really laid back, but obsessed with three things: soccer, rally racing and women. Born on the Caribbean island of Barbados, he moved to LA to

become a model after being scouted tying a fisherman’s boat to a dock at 14 years old. Needless to say the girls at our school were googly eyed for him. “Pierce, who’s your friend? He is so sexy and exotic. Is he single?” I couldn’t complain because Damian always had girls coming up to us. He was still new to Los Angeles, and without the right guidance the kid would fall into a pool of pussy and drugs before football season ended. Angelinos are derailed. Growing up in Los Angeles, there is too much freedom for kids to get into trouble especially when lifestyle and temptation take over. Too many girls and too much money floating around. No dress code meant girls ran around in sandals and bikini tops with short shorts and guys could dress like straight up thugs. Classmates had In-N-Out cater their parties, girls got BMW’s on their birthdays and students sold drugs at lunch like Jolly Ranchers. Shit, the dropout rate was so high they allowed students to miss over 150 classes per year unwarranted. After Santa Barbara and all the drama, I knew I had to get away. Damian once lived with me during my junior year in college, working part time as a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness, banging all his female clients. I wrote a letter to his last known address he left me before returning to Barbados. In the letter I explained my situation stressing how I was planning on doing some traveling and would love to come visit. If he agreed, he should send me all his info, and a bank account number to transfer money into. The kid did not have Facebook, a phone number, or an email. A few weeks passed and I was about to give up on the idea when I got a handwritten letter back. In simple, sloppy penmanship Damian wrote, “I got you 4 life! Stay as long as you like” address/account # below. At the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) I bought the Frommer’s Travel Guide to The Caribbean and another covering all of Latin America. Skimming through I thought to myself, “Man, whoever landed those travel writer gigs had it made in the shade. Traveling the world,

visiting hot spots and then reporting back? Where do I sign up?” Here is what I got from it. In Barbados they make rum, fish, and apparently Rihanna was born there. The island of Barbados is an independent nation situated just east of the Caribbean Sea. Barbados' total land mass is approximately 166 square miles, and about a third of the size of Los Angeles. It’s flat, tropical with a variety of jungle to desert like plains. They refer to themselves as Barbadians or Bajan, after the name of the official language. Historically, Barbadians were descendants of slave laborers on the sugar plantations that the British brought over during the great colonialism. The Cessna from Miami to Barbados only fit 20 people or so, and was constantly losing altitude and experiencing turbulence minute to minute. I didn’t care, leaving the U.S. felt like freedom. Appearing out the cabin window were small tropical islands spread across the sea like broken shards of glass. All the drama, the stress and calls from detectives, became a thing of the past. The pilot, in what must have been his first flight attempt lands the plane bopping off the asphalt three times before evening out. As soon as my feet touched the tarmac the humidity hit me instantly covering me in sweat. At the customs entrance, guards heavily armed with AK47 assault rifles stood in army fatigue. How welcoming. Inside, it was no different. I was just standing there sweating and looking around observing the other North Americans confused like myself with locals pushing through. When I got to the customs window I presented my passport and boarding pass. The woman at the window asked me my reason for travel and residence. All I had was Damian’s name and address and the promise that he would try to meet me at the airport. Since I told her I was planning to visit a friend and was not staying at a hotel she handed me off to security like a missing child. After an hour of being told I couldn’t enter the country without proper verification from Damian, I begged them to take me on one last walk through the airport to find him. To my sheer luck

I was spotted by Damian's mother, Mudra, who was carrying a torn out photo from our yearbook. She looked and sounded exactly like Damian, tall and confident with curly hair carrying a little boy on her shoulders. Outside double-parked was a small red doorless Datsun covered in dents and scratches. You could smell the gasoline as it let off little kicks between shifting. Driving through the harbor I took the time to thank his mother for her hospitality, asking personal questions to learn more about the family I was going to be spending my entire summer with. Pierce: “So what do you do for work?” Mudra: “There are two rules if you are going to stay with us.” Pierce: “Um, ok.” Mudra: “One, you do not sleep with any girls unless Damian says ok,” looking at me for confirmation. I was a bit surprised by this first rule coming from Damian’s mom. Pierce: “Ok.” Mudra: “And 2nd” she continued, “My house, my rules.” Pierce: “Ok, simple enough.” After giving me the evil eye she moved on. Mudra ran a commercial deep-sea fishing company passed down from generation to generation. Kai, her youngest son, was absolutely adorable and fell in love with me immediately holding onto my legs and watching TV with me when it was too hot to go outside. Kai was a bonsai version of Damian and at age 7 was already a heartbreaker. Their house was large, open-air, and aqua green with chipped paint of all different colors in all the rooms, which gave it character. I had the best room in the house overlooking the water, it was originally meant for Kai but they insisted because I was their guest. My living quarters were simple with two windows, one mirror, a porcelain sink, and a carved wooden bed frame draped with a mosquito canopy. The first day I was there, I was unable to see Damian. His brother explained that he was working at the docks greeting tourists. I didn’t want to stay inside, and I

wasn’t about to wander aimlessly, so Kai took me fishing. As we walked down the dirt road I was mesmerized by the light emerald color of the water and its clarity. I hold the beaches in California close to my heart but it was nothing compared to this. The water was so clear that if you dropped a quarter to the bottom you could tell if it was heads or tails. Pearl white sand and palm trees that leaned over the water, fruitful with actual coconuts. Kai and I climbed the palm trees to chop some down, then dove off. He told me that on the island getting hit by a coconut was one of the main causes of death. You could feel the presence of pirates long ago. The dropping of the anchor, the spice trade, the mystery of finding uncharted lands. Off in the distance down by the water’s edge was an old man sitting on a bucket, fishing and chewing sugar cane stalks. The water was stocked with rainbow colored fishe, stingrays and coral reefs. Kai, a professional, dove in with a homemade whittled wood spear to catch supper. I followed but just floated on my back, absorbing where I was and smiling. After lunch I showered, but never dried from the thick Caribbean humidity. Mudra dropped me off in the town center in front of a crowded chicken stand where she promised Damian would meet me. While people watching, I noticed the difference in how dark the locals were and how the pale white tourists stuck out, obviously vacationers. I waited in the shade of the chicken stand, trying to decipher the secrets of how the locals handled the thick heat. Wiping my forehead on my shirt, something swept me off my feet with what felt like an elephant’s arm. “Welcome, mon! How was your journey?” Damian looked exactly the same, only clean cut. Walking through the outdoor market we caught up and he told me about his life in Barbados. “During the weeks, mon, I gots work. Right now I’m gonna take you to a five star hotel and get you fuuuucked up.” Only then I stopped to notice his clothes, and thought to ask him why he was so dressed up. Usually you

think islanders wear nothing but shorts and flip-flops, but Damian was wearing white linen slacks, a dress shirt, and his long curly hair pulled back in a ponytail. The talk of the town, everyone on the island seemed to know Damian. When we got to the hotel, it was the same deal. I asked him how he was so popular and he simply said it was, “A small island, mon.” The hotel lobby opened to a large pool overlooking a marina with the Atlantic sun setting on a large Carnival Cruise line with a smiling shark face painted on the front. There was nobody at the bars yet, just Damian, myself, and a few other well-dressed locals sitting around. Without opening a tab, Damian ordered a round of Mount Gay shots, the national liquor, and tells the bartender to take care of me all night. I was enjoying myself, but in the back of my mind I thought curiously, “Why did he bring me to a classy hotel and not a local joint?” I figured he knew I was interested in women and thought that this was the best place, but it was as dead as a doornail. With the sounding of a loud barge horn, the exit ramps of the Carnival cruise hoisted down with passengers spilling onto the dock. The hotel was filling up quickly. Damian hastily takes his shot. “I have to tell ya something, mon. I really wanted ya to come out here and experience everything that I have to offer, but felt if I told ya, ya wouldn't come out or stop talking to me.” I figured there was an explanation of some sort coming, but couldn’t figure out what he needed to get off his chest. Pierce: “Dude it’s me, we have been friends for a long time, I am not going to judge you, let it out.” Damian: “I’m working tonight.” Pierce: “Yeah I know, I came here to meet you after work.” He sighs, “No, mon, I’m still working, I’m here on business.” I looked at him puzzled, “Like right now? Are you a waiter?” Damian: “I’m here to accompany the tourists.” Pierce: “You’re a host for the hotel?”

Damian laughs and says, “Let’s just say I help the older guests have a good time. These women coming off the cruise ships drop top dolla to spend the night with a Bajan.” Pierce: “You’re sleeping with old bitches for money?” He nodded. “Wow. So what kind of cash are we talking about here?” I could tell Damian was becoming uncomfortable, peeling the label off his bottle. Pierce: “Look bro, I don’t care if you make fur coats out of kittens, you’re my boy and I’m staying. You do what you gotta do.” Damian went quiet for a minute, I truly wasn't judging him so to lighten the mood I asked, “Can I help you find the first ‘Joan’?” He then smiled, relieved and said, “De floor is yours.” We joked around, picking one after another, and considering the pros and cons, stopping at a two-set of middle aged women sitting at the bar sipping Bahama Mama's, hardly talking to one another. Pierce: “Yo, that one looks like Mrs. Brumsfield. Let’s see what you got.” Damian stands up, tightens his ponytail and proceeds to walk over. I don't think I have ever been more focused in my life than watching Damian work his magic. Getting plastered on Mount Gay, I sat there trying to contemplate where I was and how Damian could have possibly gotten into this line of work. Did his mom know? The questions were endless. An hour passed before he came up to me and said, “Mudra will be picking you up soon and taking you back to the house. Cool?” I could tell he was itching to say he was sorry, but before he could I stopped him mid-sentence, “Thank you for everything man. I am really happy to be here.”

That first night, I was unable to go to sleep because of the heat, so I just lay in my mosquito net covered bed. Crude reality was sinking in. Where was I? I don’t mean geographically, but as a person. I came to Barbados as a way to escape and start fresh. How do people stoop so low, consciously making bad decisions, going in the wrong direction? As I laid in bed, I realized why. The root of all evil = Money

Chores

I looked like I had full blown psoriasis. Overnight my body had been attacked from head to toe with mosquito bites, and since I am allergic to insect bites, they swelled. Damian, however, was unscathed. Pierce: “What the fuck? How come you don’t have any?” Damian: “People out here adapt, mon. They still get bit but their skin does not get all irritated from the tiny puncture.” I was pissed off. How am I supposed to get girls now? Damian: “I think I have something that will cheer you up, mon. Follow me.” Completely clueless and curious at the same time, I followed him in my boxers through his house, through the backyard, through a small sugarcane field, across a creek, up a tree and over a gate. Damian: “Don’t look!” making noises with branches, “Ok now you can look.” When I removed my hands from my face my heart sank. Before me, standing tall and healthy, were hundreds of marijuana plants, all budding and so sticky that when I touched their trichomes I couldn’t remove my fingertips. I spun around and hugged him. Damian: “You can thank me later.” I was astonished. Pierce: “What? I mean, how? There are so many!” Damian, who I guess had also become a huge fan, had been growing ganja to supply all his friends. Damian: “After speaking with the guys and telling them about ya we thought ya might be able to help. Plus we don’t know the first thing about growing ganja.” I was a little foreign to outdoor. In southern California just about everything is grown indoors hydroponically, mainly to control the atmosphere, humidity fluctuations, feeding schedules, temperatures, fungus, pests, and CO2 levels are most important, then artificial

sunlight comes into play. The goal is higher yields, less maintenance. Growing marijuana, especially outdoors is a long tedious process. For starters you have to make sure all the plants are female or else the male plants will fuck your females, impregnate and leave you with seedy nugs. Not kidding. Second, you have to control pest problems with your precautionary sprays, and always making sure not to over or under water the product. From veg to flower to harvest, it can take three months indoors compared to four to five months, outdoors, including footwork. If you have ever spoken with someone who grows marijuana, the most tedious part is trimming the buds. The part of a marijuana plant that you smoke is what flowers, the seven big leaf symbol is actually what you throw away or repurpose for edibles and concentrates. For every pound of marijuana requires around six to eight hours of proper trimming. Once trimmed you need to hang them upside down for an additional week to dry, then the curing process continues for another week inside mason jars. If you ever came across weed that was brown and bricked, it was because the people did not want to take the time or effort to nurture their harvest. I did not want to be a free loader, but Damian would not accept rent. I never got involved in sales, too risky for a gringo. It was a great feeling seeing the fruits of my labor, but hard work if we wanted High Times quality. Gardening outdoors became very therapeutic for me, working with my hands and forgetting about my problems, even if it was short-lived. For the remainder of my stay I woke up each morning, sparked a joint, and cultivated marijuana in my underwear.

Contracted

Weeks fly by when you’re abroad. We traveled all over the island exploring the different beaches and regions. Barbados operates around a seasonal, business-based tourism. Every day we laid out at the beach, blazing our homegrown and hitting on the foreign girls on vacation. As small as the island was, the roads were underdeveloped and it could take a while to get from point A to point B. On the island, there are really only two methods of transportation:

1) Rally Rockets: Damian and his friends who practice rally racing, even when just going to the market. -Or- 2) ZR’s: The public transit. Privately owned minivans whose drivers’ death wish sends them screeching at 50 mph down the shifty roads only inches away from oncoming traffic with sweaty locals packed to the brim. People inside, outside, on top, it didn’t matter. 50 cents, you’re on.

Barbadians, like everyone else outside the U.S., are obsessed with football. Not touchdown-tackle football. Soccer. But don’t call it that. We’d play twice a week and I sucked. I played growing up on the local California AYSO league. I knew the rules, but I still sucked. They lived for it. Diehard fans. I never would be as passionate, but scrimmaging with these guys, like gardening was therapeutic. For at least two hours twice a week all the drama of the world just seemed to evaporate quickly replaced with the action, laughing, teasing, and camaraderie. It was crucial for me to breathe, expand my lungs. One night I went out with the group solo. Damian had a dinner date with little details and would have to catch up with us later. It was nice to be in a country where nobody dresses up. Being so tropical you couldn’t wear anything more than a tank top. Everyone had been hyping up the “Last weekend of tourist season!” which meant the

white women would soon migrate north. The evening’s entertainment was Damian's friend performing at a huge club with the line out front circling around the building. Mohogo, my closest of Damian’s friends, used to be an Olympic swimmer, but never made it past the A-level qualifying standards to take part in the Beijing Olympic games. Mohogo walked up to the bouncer and shared a secret handshake and led us all in, cutting through the line and leaving everyone behind us hating. His claim to fame made him a star on the island. I mean, really just like Damian, anyone who leaves makes waves. The club itself was both impressive and original. Thick illuminated black light glass pillars lined the walkways filled with surging jellyfish. Behind each bar stood shark tanks that peered out onto the dance floor. All the drinks were on the house, but that didn’t matter. Every time I was finishing my drink, Mohogo was right next to me with a refill. I was sitting at our table between two tall aggressive local girls that had HIV written all over them when Damian finally showed up. “Ladies, hands off my man, we got work to do.” Putting down my glass and squeezing out from under them, Damian takes me up by the DJ booth whispering in my ear, “This is how we do things in Barbados.” We walked out on the stage with Damian spinning a wireless microphone in his hand, which I did not like one bit. The DJ killed the music. Announcing to the whole crowd, with me under his arm, Damian shouted at the top of his lungs with what sounded like a popular Jamaican chant and then said, “Ladies and gentlemen! This is me model agent from Los Angeles and tonight we looking for five girls to sign contracts wit. So don’t be shy. Come play!” and then yelled the same Jamaican chant. I turned my head, “Damian, what the fuck?” He smiled, “Just roll with it! Tonight you are a high- end model agent!" Those might have been the most powerful words I had ever heard. I got down from the stage and was

immediately swarmed like Justin Bieber at Disney World. Damian leaned down and whispered again into my ear, “Remember don’t fuck no girls unless I give you da ok.” I nodded, and took a huge swig cheering on. Back at the table, with a girl sitting on each knee, I felt like such a pimp. The scene was popping and all along the stage were go-go girls’ booty shaking. I didn’t feel too much like dancing anymore and was more than a bit intimidated by all the large black guys. I could hardly see a thing. One second I’m dancing with a girl, the next four grown ass men built like NFL linemen are at my side, white eyes glowing in the black lights. We soon left in four Rally Rockets trailed by girls on their mission for a modeling contract. Damian's friend: "Pierce, we gonna abuse dis all summer." We got to a house, somewhere. I wasn’t paying attention but one thing I can faintly remember is that it was settled on a cliff. Walking behind the group, I came to understand that it belonged to the father of Mahogo’s friend, a politician who worked at the British embassy. Slamming down what could have been my 15th shot of rum, the girl lying next to me passed a joint and I took a rip. I should have asked, thinking it was weed. I found out the hard way, quickly from the taste that I was wrong. It was an herb called Salvia. That shit was no joke. Within seconds I fell into the hardest hallucination of my life, lightheaded like bong ripping a cigar. Trails of light took over my vision every time I turned my head. Flying, everyone kept laughing hysterically even though I couldn’t understand the joke or their Bajan. I'm not sure how I made it to a room or if the man of the house condoned it but laying on my back coming in and out of consciousness I looked down to find two Bajan girls, blowing me, laughing. “Wait condom, wait condom!” I tried to sit up and stop them but the second I saw I was strapped, I passed out. They were hoping to get contracted and I was hoping not to.

Wild Game

A hurricane warning postponed some vessels from setting sail in Miami. Damian now with some time off took me to get away from the shore and stay at his father’s house inland on the other side of the island. Hidden in the tropical wilderness, was a rustic log cabin that his father had built himself. My first night the whole house shook, lighting up the room whenever lightning struck. Damian was used to such tropical storms but I was a scared little bitch. Everything was shaking, howling, and whistling. Like a good friend, he stayed up with me listening to the broadcast of Hurricane Ike. It sounded like it was headed for New Orleans. We came inland for another reason besides the low - pressure centers: hunting. His father sold small, quail-like birds the size of a cell phone to people on the shore. It would be days before the weather cleared so if we were going to stay he would put us to work. Indoors they taught me how to make bird calls, shoot, clean a gun, and the worst part, cleaning the kill. To the sound of the roosters crowing, we woke up every day at 4am. It was customary to first stop off at the local bodega to get supplies for lunch, ammunition, and of course a bottle of Mount Gay to warm ourselves up. The lot of land was 40 acres or so of open space neighboring the same. With the help of some of his buddies, in the hopes of time away from their wives, were able to purchase the hunting grounds. It was their slice of heaven. The land was flat with a few simple ponds and a rickety shooting shack covered in palm branches. The area looked more similar to swamp wetlands than the Caribbean. Peaceful and so quiet you could hear the wind glide through the tall grass. I had never been hunting before, because personally I was always straight on killing innocent animals myself. But, if this was part of their culture, then I wanted to embrace it with a positive and open attitude. I had never shot a gun before, and recoil is no fucking joke. If you don’t have a solid stance a 12-gauge shotgun will send you flying

right onto your ass. On one hunt I was running through the tall grass and trying to nail a duck flying overhead. The recoil was so great it sent my feet right up off the slippery mud landing me on my back and letting off another round just barely missing my kneecap. I decided to take a break and sober up before trying again. I was a rookie but some of the men were becoming so plastered that they wouldn’t even get up from their seats to shoot. You had to give it to them; they were real manly men, no front. I was surprised to find out how much work and preparation goes into hunting. You have to have all the supplies, make all the right noises, have the right aim, be able to fetch the deceased and then clean and prepare the kill, and get it on ice before the meat spoils. They didn’t have a hunting dog so whenever the birds spiraled to their death Damian would have to go retrieve them like a bloodhound. He even went as far as swimming into the ponds, snatching quails out of the water and placing them into a satchel around his back. At first it was really hard for me to make the kill. I felt sick every time a bird got blasted. There was one quail I shot from the sky that went into a bush and only had one of his wings blown off. I called for Damian, “What do I do? He’s still alive!” He picked the bird up and brought it towards the shack. I was thinking to myself I wonder how he is going to heal the little birdy. I walk over, “Dis is how ya dispatch da animal.” Holding the quail by its neck, Damian slammed it against the shacks pavement, breaking its neck upon impact. At the end of one day of hunting, we claimed 256 birds, gutted and cleaned on site before dinner. Straight quail genocide. The rest of the time on our outing we played cards, shoot the shit and cracked jokes on each other. It was strange how I became so conformed to their daily routine, feeling natural and guiltless. It only took three days before I forgot that we were even killing.

My pallet was getting dry. Every afternoon before dinner Damian prepped the birds peeling them open with his fingers like an orange. The edible meat of each bird was no bigger than a walnut. Bite size quail nuggets. It was a great time but when Damian told me, “Tomorrow we go back” I was ready.

Desire

Nothing is certain, nothing is forever. Damian, feeling bad about me having spent so many days alone, planned another retreat. This time he took me to a remote section of the island where we might be able to swim with sharks if the water temperature was right and if we could borrow his cousin’s boat. I had an itch to say I’ve swam with sharks even after Santa Barbara. There is something about being eye to eye with the world’s most vicious predator. At the beach’s tiki hut bar there were seven dimes sitting on bamboo stools by themselves. Full on Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition dimes. These girls were out of place hanging out at such a small cove hardly visited by tourists off the main trail. They kept smiling at us whispering back and forth before getting up and walking over. I couldn’t believe it. I slammed two shots of liquid courage while I gathered my thoughts and came back to reality. Damian playing his charming self quickly entertained them and invited the group to another round. They were actually really nice and had real things to say. Damian saw my amazement and did everything he could to keep the conversation going. After 30 minutes they stood up. “Sorry we have to go, it was very nice to meet you. Thanks for the drinks. It’s a small island maybe we will see you around?” Blowing kisses. “Where are you going? It’s only 5pm.” He spoke too soon. These girls were tired of people talking to them for what they really were. Models. Real on duty fucking models. Trailing behind we swam out into the water during sunset watching them in their Brazilian cut bikinis posing before the cameras and lighting crew. I would have easily married any one of those girls that day if they had asked me. Mesmerized, we never got around to getting his friend’s boat and completely forgot about the sharks. Like I mentioned every driver in Barbados, including Damian, thinks they are a rally racer, hitting turns and pulling e-brake like they were running from the police. The roads were dirt, they knew the dynamics, but their cars

were shit. I was half terrified, half amazed to be in the seat while Damian did 360s through intersections landing back in the same lane. It was out of this world. Damian: “The best time to drift is right after it rains because a thin film of water, oil and grease lifts out the ground and allows for less traction.” The very same warning they told us about in Black Asphalt videos during driving school. Always hanging out at some random parking lot, locals blasted music and revved their rally rocket engines with aftermarket air intakes and indigo lights under the chassis. I prefer classic cars, but it was still cool. Tariffs were so high on goods entering Barbados that a 3 series BMW was in the $100,000 mark. Driving a Subaru or Mitsubishi was considered balling. All year round groomed tracks throughout the plains are built for World Wide Rally Competitions. Circuit racers to rally motorists to mud dogs, all kinds come out to race. During one of the monthly events, Damian and I were walking through the promotional area when we see the models from the secret cove working at the sponsoring Subaru tent. They all looked absolutely stunning with one girl in particular, Desiree. I admit. I am a sucker for super skinny, tan girls. Not the girls who need a sandwich but ones that look healthy, fit, and athletic. Plus, although French, she resembled my first love and high school sweetheart, Kayla, who I had been revenge fucking randoms ever since she broke up with me in college. Damian was his usually self: cocky and confident, controlling the room. I played it shy and laid back. I run this move in small groups with girls who are out of my league.

The angle: Be personal with everyone except for the one you want.

The reaction: The hot girl see’s you making everyone else laugh being really cool, calm, and collected and all a while is unconsciously thinking, “Why is this guy not talking to me?” Don’t ignore her, make eye contact while telling stories, address her but don’t engage.

We all moved to a part of the track that Damian swore had the gnarliest drifting. We stood watching car after car drift around the turn. Zero safety measures for bystanders - the cars were speeding, coming just feet from us before shifting gracefully back into the straightaway. They had this construction orange plastic net barrier that wouldn’t stop a puppy let alone a one-ton car. I somehow got squeezed between Desiree and her friend. I was so stiff, and she smelled like sweet vanilla. Those smooth long legs that don’t touch leaving a gap between her stone washed daisy dukes. Fuck me. The two started telling me about how all the guys on the island always ask their group to come watch them play soccer. I tell them, “soccer is the perfect sport to invite a girl to. It’s the only one where even if you don’t score you still can look like a professional.” The girls laughed and Desiree was about to make a comment when a car coming around the corner loses control coming in hot. I grab her, and as small as I am, somehow pick her up in the air moving her just feet from the spinning back bumper. Everyone cheering, we went silent, with Desiree in my arms. I snap out of it, but still don’t put her down. “Are you ok?” It was as if the car lost traction by fate. We started seeing a lot of each other after that, hanging out in the mornings because most of her shoots were around sunset. We shared our first kiss while sitting on a Jet Ski before snorkeling, rubbing dish soap on her feet to slip on a swim fin. Back on shore we were sitting on the beach kissing when I told her, “To be honest. I didn’t think you liked me. I thought you would have gone for Damian.” She smiled, “He’s cute, but I don’t like guys who are too cocky. Plus, you seemed so mysterious!”

“Mysterious? You’re kidding right?” “No, and well, you saved my life!” I could have sat there all day watching her smile. I knew I was in deep one morning getting up, and in red lipstick on my bathroom mirror wrote, “Je t‘aime” I love you in French. Desiree would not be on the island for long, nor did she know where the next shoot would take her. London, Paris, Milan? We made an agreement to just enjoy the short time we had together and not complicate things. If only it were that easy. Against my will, I learned everything there is to know about models. What it takes, how they get there, the portfolios, the drugs, and the drama. It’s a shocker but models are actually normal people. They are usually educated, well traveled and very cultured. They want to be with someone that treats them like human beings, not objects. Their whole lives men hit on them, whistle, and tell them how beautiful they are. They want a man who is interested in who they are as a person, what they have to say and have real conversations. You want to get laid by a model? Speak to her like one of your good friends.

Kadooment Day

Kadooment Day signaled the end of the yearly sugar cane harvest and my last day in Barbados. The Crop Over festival as in many Caribbean and Latin American countries starts at the beginning of July and ends with a famous colorful costumed parade. Locals dance down the streets to the beat of African drums while cloaked in traditional ceremonial costumes decorated with painted feathers and tights covered with glitter and sequins. The Crop Over festival includes traditional activities like cook offs to local homemade gambling where donkeys spin the wheel. The whole island shuts down, everyone is off work and comes to dance and enjoy the celebration as a whole. The year I was there Mount Gay Barbados’ rum was complimentary and in an unlimited supply. From any point of the island you could smell the thick stench of molasses. For my body, the last night of any trip is always the most punishing. Some people like to rest up before their flight and get a good night’s sleep. Not me. I hate saying goodbye, so drinking them away is a must.

The agenda: Eat, say farewell to Damian’s family, pregame at Mohogo’s house, go drunken drifting in a cornfield, meet up with Desiree at a club.

Not just any club but an 18th century converted plantation house right on the sand. Inside with our arms together in a huddle one model declares a pact. We would drink until we couldn’t walk. I knew few of us would stick to it but when models are asking you to get drunk with them you play along. Besides, Mount Gay was free all night! The plantation had live music and really cool places to lounge, an abandoned furnished shipwreck, a barn dance floor, and a foundation of pillars wrapped in white Christmas lights. The first hour I spent with Damian taking shot after shot, reminiscing. Desiree was with her girlies getting hit on by every guy in the bar, which was fine by me. It really just made me want her more. I did my rounds

giving my regards to everyone saying goodbye. Everyone says, “I will see you soon!” but that’s a lie. I think that there might be some alcoholics in my family tree that I am unaware of because I had the tolerance of a pirate. I only weighed 165 pounds yet 15 shots later I was still dancing with Desiree trying to convince her, “Let’s go skinny dipping in the ocean.” Desiree: “I have a better idea.” Taking my hand, Desiree walked me along the shore to a cove where she said this creepy photographer tried to kiss her. I really didn’t need the intro, but I immediately forgot what she said when she changed the subject by talking my hand and placing it on her breast. Models. I ripped her clothes off throwing them in every direction, which she yelled at me about, but again alcohol = who gives a fuck. We made love there, right there on the beach. Someone might have seen but who cares. I always fantasized about this growing up, seeing it in movies. What they never show in the films though, is how having sex on the beach makes a girl’s vagina feel like you’re fucking a roll of sandpaper. Hand in hand, before returning to the shimmering party lights we said our true goodbyes. I had memorized what I would say all week. I even wrote it on a wadded up piece of paper in my back pocket. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted her to remember me forever. I am usually not the teary type, but watching her leaky faucet it just seemed to pour out. Even though we were going to see each other again in Buenos Aires, it still felt like the end. I would write it for you, it was truly heartfelt and sweet, but those words were for her only. Barbados was paradise. The simplicity of island life and the friendships I made was something I will cherish forever. If this place opened my eyes, how much more could other countries offer? The greatest thing about travel is every street, every turn, every door leads to something fresh and new. No matter where you’ve been or where you are headed, you never know what to expect or the people you

may meet. Adventure is in the unknown. What else was out there for me? Damian was carrying me over his shoulder too drunk to walk when we finally make it back to his house. I guess I won the pact. Spinning if we closed our eyes Damian stayed up with me until my taxi arrived at 7am, eating shish kabobs from a street vendor he persuaded to follow us home where he had cash. When the taxi pulled in the pebble driveway I gave Damian a huge hug and a letter before watching him lethargically walk into his house forgetting to close the front door. On the runway I devoured a smoothie and blazed a joint behind some porta potties watching the planes roll in. It was so early even the patrolling military personnel were sitting playing cards. All was well, until the engine sounded. The hum, the slight rattle of thin sheet metal made my stomach churn. I spent the entire flight in the bathroom: Occupied.

Part 3 Frommer’s

I was moving to Buenos Aires for Desiree. God, just saying that sounds pathetic. I always made fun of my friends who made decisions based on their girlfriends, and now I was one of them. Well kind of, see my situation was different or at least that’s what I would tell myself. Although not waking up next to Desiree’s beautiful face every morning did seem painful, my future was very much still up in the air. She just gave me a destination. Buenos Aires is not a third world country. In fact, it is quite the opposite. “The Paris of Latin America” as it is generally known is a true romantic metropolitan city with beautiful grandiose buildings, world-class art galleries, fine dining, pulsating nightclubs and a thriving fashion industry. I wanted to travel “180⁰ South”, eventually making my way to Patagonia to see those mountains for myself. I booked an apartment on Florida St., the main avenue in Buenos Aires, since my Frommer’s guidebook said it was the best place to be for young people. Desiree would be staying at a hostel with the girls from her agency. I figured she would like to get away from everyone and stay with me a few nights a week. At the airport an old man in an old converted Ford Falcon Taxi pulls up which I thought was odd. Driving into the countries capital at first glance seemed gritty passing through slums of grey weathered buildings. Buenos Aires is neither part of Buenos Aires Province nor the Province's capital; rather, its autonomous district separated by the different Barrios each with its own style and characteristic. Tango in the street, I had arrived. The taxi dropped me off at my apartment on the corner of Lavalle and Florida. Nodding my head at a living still statue of Frida Kahlo, I make my way past the intercom to an old Otis elevator with a latched gate, taking me up to the 8th floor. My landlord, who greeted me at the door, appeared to be a long lost relative of the Addams family. Hunchbacked and

hateful she opens up and yells, “Pierce” pronouncing it wrong then grunting something else in Spanish that had to have been about showing up early. Using her janitor’s keychain and opening two connecting bedrooms, I was faced with a nightmare. My room was old, dusty, lights flickering, smelled like death and the “luxurious French balcony” was maybe the length of a fucking shoe. This place was unfit for carnies. There was no way Desiree would ever come back to this dump. Before paying my first month’s rent I ran down to a street called Avenida Corrientes, finding a small Internet café in front of a building housing knockoff European clothing. I research the hostel Desiree was staying at typing “Milhouse”, hoping to see if they could book me a room. She wouldn’t be in town for three weeks, so I figured I could at least stay there until I lock down a proper bachelor pad. Writing down the address I collected my belongings before the hunchback even noticed I was gone. Fuck the security deposit. Milhouse from the outside looked like an underground nightclub, large stainless steel door, no signage. I pressed the button and heard a mechanical lock turn. An enormous guard opened the door to pulsating music helping me with my baggage. This couldn’t possibly be it? It is 10pm on a Sunday? Inside the lobby, there were models skimming through portfolios seated in art deco chairs. The receptionist sat at a bright red illuminated front desk, and behind her was a packed dance floor. I mean packed, like 200 people, complete with a DJ spinning electronic music and a group of girls standing at the bar screaming before a row of flaming shots. Above the dance floor was a second floor balcony with even more beautiful girls drinking cocktails leaning over the railing, laughing and sitting on couches, and not an accompanying male in sight. Was I in the right place? This could not have been a hostel. I thought back to the hostels in Europe, they were filthy and the people staying at them were all un-groomed. This could not be it.

Staring at two people making out inside an old red phone booth, the receptionist snapped me out of it, “Senor, is you ok? Do you have a reservation?” Pierce: “Um, is this Milhouse?” Receptionist: “Yes, how may I help you?” Pierce: “Sorry, my name…. Pierce. Do you have any rooms available?” Receptionist: “Let me check.” I didn’t even look her in the face, pulling out my credit card. Pierce: “Charge one month, por favor.” I was standing there in awe, smiling faces coming and going. Receptionist: “Excuse me senor, we only have a triple available on the top floor. It’s $30 a night and we will need to fill the room.” Pierce: “That sounds fine.” Taking the elevator up to the 6th floor, another old woman led the way and unlocked the door with an old skeleton key. Three large beds with red sheets and Kama Sutra printed silhouette shower curtains all deco designed. Tipping the old lady waiting in the doorway, I walked out onto the terrace leaning on the cast iron railing. On the balcony next to mine stood a very tall blonde girl by herself smoking a cigarette. In a strong accent she said, “Hello, my name is Ingrid” taking another drag. Norwegian and a model. I explained how I was meeting my girlfriend here who was also a model and her eyes lit up. Keeping the conversation going, I asked her about Milhouse. Ingrid: “I love de food here!” She eats? “And de partying!” She drinks? Ingrid: “They have busses that take us to de clubs, we leave together yes?” I was committed to Desiree, but a little flirting never hurt anyone? Finishing her cigarette, “I am going downstairs to meet some friends at de bar for quiz night. You come, yes?” I told her I would think about it but was already set on going. I took a shower, threw on my finest blazer, and headed down. The place was still packed. I found Ingrid standing at a pool table and she introduced

me to her friends. They were mostly models; some were even brought down by Desiree's agency Elite. Some other sets of girls were doing the whole “World Tour” on their daddy’s credit card but claimed volunteer work. The few guys were all travelers, dirty, hippie backpackers. My competition was slim, and thankfully the hotel’s trivia night was simple enough that I could contribute. In college, I once lost my chance to sleep with a girl late night on her couch after answering every question on Jeopardy incorrectly. Afterwards, everyone was going out, but I passed. Fibbing I said, “Next time, I have a meeting in the morning,” then all the girls seemed even more interested, but really I was just still hungover from my previous night in Barbados. I learned in college that going out tired with strangers doesn’t work. You cannot keep up, it’s better to claim an interesting excuse and regain your strength. The next day I was coming back after sightseeing and walked into my room to find two homeless guys rummaging through my stuff. Pierce: “What the fuck do you two think you’re doing?” “Oh, hello, I am Benjamin. This is Ryan. I hope we did not startle you.” They had. Benjamin: “I know our beards are impressive, we have been growing them for six months and today is the day we cut them off.” Pierce: “Ok, that’s great. But what the fuck are you doing in my room?” Ryan: “We’re your roommates.” Fucking backpackers. Both had graduated from the University of Washington; Benjamin with a degree in Journalism, Ryan in Sociology. Benjamin told me that having lost his job at a local newspaper due to the recession, he took out one last student loan and although never having rid a motorcycle bought a shitty 250 Kawasaki and two spare tires. Ryan after tossing his cap and gown

was ready to live his life, and game for anything that didn’t mean moving back in with his parents in Texas.

Their mission: Ride from Washington to Argentina or until their bikes break down, whichever comes first.

Pierce: “What are you, Che Guevarra?” Unpacking Benjamin told me a few of their stories. About the people they had met that took them in, about Ryan having to escape a pueblo after fucking a farmer’s daughter. Routinely paying off cops, which happened between just about every two stories. The pictures he had taken could have won spots on National Geographic. He was that talented. Ryan: “The hardest part was not the journey, not the weather, the cops nor the thieves, our hardships were at night after building a fire, wild dogs would sniff out our campground and attack for food. In total, we’ve claimed 13 feral dogs over a 9-month period.” He pulled out an enormous Crocodile Dundee blade out of a satchel. “So far,” Benjamin added as Ryan returned the knife to his pack. They were glad it was over. Grimy as fuck, they had only $640 to their names, saved to last them for the duration of their stay in Argentina. I offered to take them to dinner if they agreed to tell me more, and also on the condition that first they had to shave and bathe. I lent them my beard trimmer because no razor currently in existence could hack it all down. All in all they were solid guys. Ryan was a little rusty on the edges, and possessed few manners, but was genuine and charismatic. Benjamin was well- rounded, artsy, raised in Chicago he has that Midwest realness and was passionate about everything he said and did. That night during dinner we all became better acquainted and after they had cut their bird’s nests, the girls ate up their story forming groups everywhere we went. Their journey piqued my interest. They certainly weren’t living an ordinary life. They took a risk and went on a crazy

adventure just as Jeff did in “180⁰ South”. They had this great energy about them that I fed off of and it was quite contagious. Since they were both strapped for cash, I agreed to pay their room and board for one month as I saw them as an excellent opportunity. Weeks later leaving early from one of Desiree’s runway shows, I met up with Benjamin to grab a late night steak. Taking my suit jacket off so as not to stain it, I began telling Benjamin how I could not take any more listening to model’s opinions and Desiree’s sleazy agent Cristobal. If I had to hear once more how “sexy” and “one of a kind” he thought Desiree was, one more anorexia story, how one girl used to be ugly, or any more mindless political opinions whatsoever, I would walk into oncoming traffic on Avenida 9 de Julio. Pierce: “So, where is Ryan?” Benjamin: “Oh, he went out to some bar with kids from the hostel,” he said as the waitress arrived to take our order. Benjamin picked up his SLR that took up most of the table and took of photo of the women. Waitress: “Are you a reporter?” I almost said no, but Benjamin quickly replies in Spanish, “No we work for Frommer’s, and are considering featuring your restaurant in our newest travel guide.” Waitress: “Oh! Let me get our manager” and runs away. Pierce: “Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Benjamin: “Just roll with it. Ryan and I did this a few times on the way down and they ate it up.” The manager comes rubbing his hands together, thrilled. “Hello, good evening? My name is Roberto. Is everything to your liking?” Benjamin: “Yes everything is great! My name is Benjamin and I am a writer and photographer and this is Pierce my project director.” I stick my hand out. Manager: “What a firm handshake.” Benjamin: “Have you ever heard of Frommer’s?” He continued, effortlessly bullshitting a Frommer’s pitch asking to see the kitchen, take some pictures and possibly

conduct a short interview. I listened, nodded and kept quiet. The overjoyed manager rushed back to the kitchen placing additional orders before pulling up a chair. What the hell? I played along asking questions of my own. Oh the power of wearing a suit! We sat there for two hours talking to the owner about his business and our imaginary write-up. He gave us a small tour with Benjamin taking photos of everything. After the dinner, and many, many drinks we thanked him for the opportunity and time to speak with him. Manager: “Of course! You are very welcome, and tonight, the food and drinks is on me, friends!” We wrote down his personal information, and shook his hand saying, “We will be in touch.” We walked out the door and turning the corner, I stopped, “Holy fucking shit! I cannot believe that fucking worked, you are a genius!” Benjamin: “I told you, everyone knows about Frommer’s.” I shook my head, and as we began to walk back to the hostel, I froze. “That’s it!”

Dossier

The best liar is one who believes he is telling the truth. He pretends and believes to the point where he can validate his story with such ease that there is no room for doubt. In his mind, his lies are the truth. In Los Angeles, I had a friend named Shine who was a serious ladies man. I would go out with this guy, and night after night he would leave with a different beautiful woman. He was average looking, well dressed but unemployed and still lived with his parents. What was he doing differently? What did he have that I did not? I began getting down on myself wishing I had an adventurous sex life like Shine’s, and eventually started asking questions. Speaking to me as a friend he explained, “There are thousands of paths to success with women. You just have to follow a certain procedure,” Shine would say. “Men and women play a very elaborate game.” One theory he read about that applies to all professionals is the idea of “Modeling.” It didn’t mean trying to look like a model, but the contrary. If you wanted to become good at sports you should pay attention to the type of training and equipment athlete’s use. If you wanted to get women, start paying attention to people who are successful seducers. He stressed, “Be yourself, but pay attention to details. It’s all about the details. Try to act like those who are getting all the attention while keeping your own personality. Watch how they dress, how they behave, their gestures, what they say. Modeling someone else’s traits, their positive traits, when applied to your own will eventually lead you to success. And you’ll get laid.” The same idea applies to a scam. In order to make someone believe you are who you say you are, you have to play the part. You can find it in movies, where agents go undercover as narcotic dealers wearing baggy pants selling drugs, to Cold War spies learning Russian to infiltrate the KGB. We were not going to take advantage of poor people. This was not going to be about how we survived. We

wanted to go after the big players, the big venues, the large hotels, and tours. We were just a group of guys fed up with not being at the top of the food chain. The upper epsilon. If we were going to pretend to be Frommer’s Travel Writers, then we would need to become Frommer’s Travel Writers. Real industry professionals. We researched Frommer’s. I mean everything, by cold calling every number we could get our hands on to emailing the writers themselves making sure they were not already on location. I even paid a friend to go see Arthur Frommer speak at an international travel trade show in the U.S. so we knew the direction he was planning to take the company. We did consider choosing a lesser well known publication like “Lonely Planet” or “Time Out” but Latin America is all about brand names. People wear fake shirts with Armani Exchange across their chests just because they know others will recognize it. Frommer’s was the largest company in the game. They had so many people on the ground, books on every country, each with yearly editions. Contacting Frommer’s corporate office directly, their PR Specialist informed Benjamin that, “Frommer’s has over 300 guide books with a worldwide team of over 700 writers keeping an up-to-date guide of hot spots in their respective regions.” As young as we looked I did not think our age would be a problem. The people hired to work on travel guides would be young, right? Otherwise, how would they have any good club and nightlife recommendations? Plus a great majority of hostels have an age limit. The three of us sat upstairs at Millhouse with a notepad brainstorming and began to make a list of everything we needed to look professional. We compiled a pricing list of all our costs, not including daily expenses. I had the savings with nothing to invest it in. Plus, how much could we save if we did it right? The possibilities were limitless. This was not going to be an everyday “Just the hot spots.” Before we could start we had to get a real apartment that could function as an office.

Being that close to Desiree and having her constantly on my ass about talking to girls was only going to lead to an inevitable breakup. Having lived at Milhouse for over a month we became friends with all the staff, and one in particular Prat found an amazing villa overlooking Palermo Square. Once we found out Frommer’s had made an addition just one year earlier, we bought the guidebooks and assumed the identities of the writers responsible. For whatever reason their photos were not printed on the guides or company website. Clutch. We had to research each person to the point where we became them. After a few nights of quizzing each other with flashcards about personal information and industry questions, we had it down. We would need fake passports, emails, business cards, cell phones, questionnaires - clubs, hotels, restaurants, cafes, museums, etc. “For information services or technical support please contact our customer care department- (Vonage Number).”Major logistical support. We needed portfolios and informational packets, fake flight itineraries to send to each location ahead of time to make it seem more legit and avoid them doing background checks. One person doing all the work is suspicious but if others were working under me nobody would question. Allocate resources, power in numbers. Ryan went out to a copy shop and had our business cards and blank survey forms printed. One version for us to fill out and another for the owners. The idea was to make them feel like a formal meeting with us gave them a real shot at being listed, a review that was never going to be written. The cards turned out ok, but being very cautious we were worried that the cardstock came out a little thin. Benjamin was a wiz with Adobe Suite so he took care of our identities. Obviously making fake passports is close to impossible so we came up with a better idea. Most Embassy’s, hostels and Frommer’s recommend tourists do not travel with their passports but instead, photocopies. Benjamin would photo copy our passports in black and

white, place the real Travel writer’s identities over our own, their names, their ages, etc. Then when it looked mint enough to fool us we scanned the black and white photocopies again and vuala!, we now had copies to send to people and keep in our wallets. Since I was funding the project, fluent in Spanish, looked clean cut and had strong verbal and written skills, I took the role of Project Director. I would be responsible for making all the necessary arrangements, and more importantly, detecting trouble. Benjamin, because he looked like a typical Manhattan barista, had strong attention to details, a degree in journalism and owned a camera granted him the role of travel writer slash photographer. And Ryan would be our personal assistant slash bitch. He was too loud, and in your face. He had such a strong personality that it would make most people feel uncomfortable, and uncomfortable was the exact opposite of what we wanted. Scams are like startup businesses – if they don’t exist, you stand a fighting chance. Our plan needed some fine-tuning but we were off to a good start. We would learn things along the way. Make adjustments. Start small. We expected variable change, close calls and without a doubt, some doubt. It was officially on. We were not trying to exploit or taking advantage of hardworking people. We wanted to splurge, and live lavishly.

Asada

Why are some people so persuasive? So good at arguing? The truth is anything can be accomplished with the right set of words. The key is to say something that triggers a response, an emotional attention grabber internalizing a personal connection. In sales, one of the keys to cold calling is research. Consultative sales. The difference between calling a company to explain your product and calling a company to explain why their business is best suited for your product is the difference between reaching a quota or a dial tone. From getting out of a speeding ticket to convincing a college professor to give you a letter grade higher all depends on the right set of words. Finding the right ones though is the trick. During my time in Millhouse, the receptionist Vicky kept raving about a small place in Palermo famous for its steaks, wines and tapas. Argentina is the beef capital of the world so I felt it was only right to start there. One night, at our new flat sitting around the dining room table, it was time to make the call. Wiping my sweaty palms on my stone washed True Religion jeans, Benjamin dialed the number. I sat shaking, Ryan and Benjamin both with their ears to their phone. “Hello, is this *****? May I please speak to (manager)? Thank you.” I turned to the guys, “She is getting the manager!” I whispered excitedly. “Hello?” “Hello Mr. (Manager), My name is Pierce and I am with Frommer’s Travel Guides. My associates and I will be flying into Buenos Aires next week visiting ten parrillas to showcase. Your parrilla is under review for a possible recommendation in our new upcoming edition. Would it be possible to set up an interview and private dinner with you sometime next week?” You could hear the tone of the man’s voice change in excitement as if he was already ordering people around with his fingers.

Manager: “That sounds just fine we will take care of everything. How does 11pm next Friday sound?” Culturally dinner in Argentina starts around 11pm. When I first arrived to Buenos Aires, one of the most unusual cultural differences was when my Argentinian friend asked me to contact his relatives because they wanted to prepare a traditional home cooked meal for me. Comfort food. When I called his grandmother I thought I misheard her when she said the braised beef wouldn’t be ready till about midnight. We jotted down the info to send our first informational packet to the manager. “Perfect, see you then.” Licking the envelope and dropping it at the post office we had another errand to run: Find a reputable tailor in Buenos Aires. Three cab rides, two let downs and way too much walking in dress shoes we were now in front of mirrors getting chalked to measure.

For myself: one handmade triple button, double breasted, slim fit 140s grade jet black, navy blue cutaway collar, double windsor skinny tie. Pulling down my onyx stone cufflinks, I felt like James Bond. Dapper.

On the big night all three of us slammed a shot of Patron, “One. Two. Three. Frommer’s!” It was fucking on! Was this going to work? Was I going to get the highbrow the second they looked at me? I was again sweating bullets trying to calm myself down and took three anxiety shits before I even left the flat. I decided to have Benjamin walk in first with the SLR around his neck and ask for the manager as I pretended to be talking on my cell phone. When he came to greet us, he had a big smile on his face. I put out a firm handshake and passed him my business card. All I could think about was how the card stock was not thick enough but I don’t think he was paying any attention, just as excited as we were. The steakhouse was an adorable quaint corner restaurant with a nice front patio right off the Palermo

Italian square. Sitting down outside under the patio heaters, it was the three of us on one side, the owner and his wife on the other. We started with the customary 21 questions, dinner banter as did they. Where we were from? How are you enjoying Argentina? Our backgrounds and professions. It was surreal listening to Benjamin and Ryan as they presented and improvised, but they spoke with such conviction that even I bought into it. Benjamin went into details of how his parrilla would be displayed and the meanings of the different star ratings icons and abbreviations. Then suddenly the owner with the snap of his fingers had a few bottles of wine brought out to our table for us to try, his favorites of course. While the waiters brought our wine glasses and the first course, they slowly poured gently tipping the challis. Ryan had never seen such large wine glasses before and was inspecting his like an alien. I had to think of something that would silence everyone. What would a travel writer say? How could food critics write bad reviews after being treated so well? Looking deep into the owners eyes I stated, “Your hospitality will not go unnoticed but we are professionals and as professionals we will be honest about every aspect of the night. I am confident that your restaurant is your passion and it shows, from both the sounds to silverware. But, the reason, the reputation, and the trust Frommer’s readers have in our reviews are due to its accurate, concise evaluations. I hope you understand.” Everyone paused. Picking up a glass he asked me to write whatever I felt was true. Glasses raised, “Salud! To honesty!”

C’est la vie

One of the hardest parts of growing up is realizing that not everyone thinks and feels the same way you do. Ingrid, the Norwegian model and I had been texting back and forth for weeks, mostly just making fun of the cultural idiosyncrasies we would encounter in our day-to-day lives. Excessive honking, street performers, counterfeit money and all the time consuming inefficiencies. We both had so many people in our lives that wanted things from us that it was nice to just chat. I also think that because I was with Desiree, I could speak to Ingrid without the undertone of looking to have sex. It was nice to have a friend even though she was borderline imaginary because Desiree would go nuts if she ever found out. I had not seen Desiree the whole week and was planning to take her to El Zanjon de Granados an ancient maze of underground Spanish tunnels in San Telmo that I read were very romantic when she sends me a text:

“Hey babe! I miss you so much and can’t wait to see you but I have to stay in tonight to help my roomie with her audition :( Lunch tomorrow?” I pressed but she didn’t give in. Ryan was set to go to Pacha again, now his go to for crazy one-night stands. I was over the club scene because well going out when you’re in a relationship feels like cheating. I was trying to get out of going by saying, “I am kinda burnt out. I’m think I am just going to take it easy tonight, do research for our next trip.” Ryan reading right through me, “You never come and rage with me! Don’t let that fucking bitch ruin our night. You’re coming!” Standing out in front of our place another Ford Falcon taxi rolls up. “What is the deal with these Ford Falcons? I keep seeing them everywhere.” We get in and I immediately ask the driver why Portenos are so obsessed with this classic car. His response was shocking. Like most Latin American countries Argentina’s history was dark and

bloody. During the Dirty War between 1976 and 1983 military dictatorship would send out the federal police and military death squads in Green Ford Falcons to kidnap dissidents and subversives off the street. Many of those kidnapped were drugged, interrogated, tortured, and killed, and historians believed these people were either sent to secret concentration camps, single murdered, or most famously thrown out of planes. Once called the “People’s Car” in the United States, these death cars are now a painful reminder of the tens of thousands of people that disappeared off the cobblestone streets. One of the most recent and shocking additions, the taxi driver added was the United States' involvement with the Dirty War. Classified documents revealed that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger might have turned a blind eye to the actions of the military in 1970s to avoid getting involved with additional conflicts after the Vietnam War. Glowing red, Pacha was packed wall to wall validating its reputation as the best nightclub chain in the world. We hit the bar and Ryan high on life is grinning explaining to me the importance of always smiling and all the nasty things he plans to do to a girl tonight when we are immediately spotted by some of Desiree’s model friends whom I knew were now off duty private investigators. Too crowded for conversation, Ryan and I made our way upstairs out of the chaotic main floor and found the VIP lounge. Not two steps inside and I lose my breath. Ryan putting his hands on my shoulders as if to hold me from fainting. At one of the booths is Desiree rocking back and forth, mounted, straddling, and full on making out with her agent Cristobal. Motherfucker! Normally I would march right on over there and beat the living shit out of any guy trying to swoop on my girl but I was crushed. Everything around me froze. I felt like my lungs collapsed, every muscle went numb. It was how she had been avoiding me, lying to me just to see him. Deep inside all along I knew she was fucking that scumbag. Shit, he basically controlled her life, her career. All the texts, the late night shoots.

Ryan takes me outside to cool off. I’m smoking a spliff on the side patio debating to send a mean, hateful text to Desiree when I get a text from Ingrid, “Come dance with me!” Ryan being a terrible friend in this situation knows whom it is and steals my phone away. “It’s Ingrid! Let’s go meet her! Fuck Desiree, and fuck Ingrid. The two of you are making me sick with all this “we’re just friends bullshit.” No guy in history has ever had a friend of the opposite sex and not considered what she would be like in bed. You have the hot’s for each other. Everyone knows it.” Shaking my head. “Face it. The best way to get over Desiree is to go balls deep in something new. Plus you have never hooked me up with any of her friends!” With a huge smile on his face he texts, “I want you.” I didn’t put up a fight. She was where beautiful people go to drink champagne. Club Jet. We were close by so we cabbed it over. I texted her out front: “The line is strong and there is no way we are pushing through.” Ingrid replies, “No leave, I come get you!” Ryan who hates waiting in lines more than holding babies is getting antsy when he hears Ingrid yell out. At the door sweet talking the bouncers were four tall Barbie Dolls all pointing at us. We walk up with Ryan glowing with excitement to go inside. They take us to their booth, which stabs my memory. The club is narrow with large windows on one side opening out onto a marina boat yard. Ingrid is clearly drunk and flirty. Smiling, she eagerly pulls me off the couch to come dance. I leave Ryan behind to chat up the dimes. Ingrid on heels is now a solid foot taller than me and everyone is staring. I mean I couldn’t even twirl this girl. We danced a few songs, all Michael Jackson remixes after his having passed that year. Dancing close to me, Ingrid was singing along to a house version of “Beat It” when one really handsome Argentinian approaches. He leans in and whispers something in her ear. I am standing there nodding my head looking around when she pushes him.

“My boyfriend,” she says pulling me close to her chest. I am pretty stoked until he just stands there, smiling, thinking it is a joke. Calling her bluff in disbelief he gestures for us to kiss to prove it. I am embarrassed at this point getting pissed and ready to fight when Ingrid grabs my head and kisses me. We kissed for a solid two minutes both of us having wanted it for too long. When we stopped I turned to give the Argentinian a “Fuck You!” face but he had retreated, replaced by everyone else. We go to the bar silently looking at each other smiling, giggling, shaking our heads then smiling more. I order an Old Fashion for myself and Shirley Temple for Ingrid. I do everything I can to hold it back but I spill the beans about Desiree and me. Ingrid having never given a shit and jealous of Desiree says, “Follow me!” Pierce: “Where are we going?” Ingrid: “It’s a secret!” She takes me outside and with her wingspan reaches over to unlatch the gate onto the marina. Out on the walkway the boats are all rocking, brushing up against the docks bumpers. Looking around to see if anyone is in sight, she then lifts her dress and steps onto one of the boats properly named, “Alta Vida.” On board we stand around for a second, look around and then the second our eyes catch, it was on. Our sexual tension was so high we start going at it struggling to keep our balance. The boat had an outdoor seating area with a see through plastic tarp around it. Ingrid is now horny, scratching at my back to take off my shirt. Hot and bothered she pulls her thong to the side holding it with her index finger, her knees eye level in the air, heels kissing the sky.

All In

After high school everyone changes. Nerds become cool, cool kids become losers; hot girls get beat, ugly girls blossom. I was always in the middle, not the jock that everyone gave high fives to or the kid who thinks he lives in the Matrix, but just right in the middle. Everyone knew me but I didn’t fit in with a particular clique. I made an effort to be friends with everyone in my classes. Nerds were always the most humorous and they helped me with my studies. I was in concert band, debate, and after school clubs. I knew going to college was important if I ever wanted to make something of myself. Knowledge is power. Facebook, although disgustingly consuming allowed me to stay in touch with everyone living abroad. One morning while it was pouring rain outside, I was sitting on my couch reading Dale Carnegies, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” when I got a message from Petey. He was always a jokester but had headgear freshman year that ruined his reputation. “Hola Amigo! Word on the street is you’re living in B.A.? Me too! Dopeness! Cannot wait to pound some Latin buttocks!” Just typing the word buttocks implied that he was still struggling with the opposite sex. I reply, “Hey, yea sure hit me up, would be great to hang out,” leaving my prepaid number. I probably would have never responded to his message if we were both in L.A. but living abroad it’s always refreshing to see a familiar face. A week goes by and I am getting ready for another Frommer’s mission: Hop on a bus from El Calafate to Glacier Perito Moreno on the southern tip of Argentina. Before taking a boat to a floating glacier, buy a bottle of fine whiskey, three glasses, an ice pick, then sit ourselves near the edge while enjoying the breathtaking view on the rocks. The phone rings. I pick up, “Hey, it’s me Petey!” I pause, “Umm?” Petey: “From Venice High!”

Pierce: “Oh hey how’s it going? You finally made it.” Petey: “Yea man, I got an apartment and am living with Maxwell!” “Oh cool,” pretending to know who the fuck that is. “I am about to have dinner but I am free after. Send me your address and I will come on by.” Petey: “Okie dokie, talk to ya later playa!” Immediately regret having made the connection. I tell Ingrid my situation and she agrees to tag along to help me make an excuse to leave early. Ingrid: “Pierce, you’re too nice. Why do you always let people make you do things you don want do?” She was right. My whole life I had a problem saying no to people. Petey’s boulevard was a nice, apartment complex posh and modern. I press the intercom and the guard lets us in the lobby. A minute later I see Petey run out the elevator shoeless saluting his doorman in a nerdy way. I introduce the two of them and Petey looks at Ingrid and then back at me smirking because of her height. Taking the elevator up: “So, what is it exactly that you’re doing in Argentina?” Petey: “I think it’s better if I show you.” He opened the door to his place and led me down a hallway. In a room on my left were three desks forming a triangle, each with three computers. Take a minute, what do you think he was doing with nine computers? The first thing that came into my mind was hacking. He smiled at the puzzled look on our faces. Petey: “We are international online poker players!” Ingrid: “I don get it.” I remembered in the states how poker took off, how much money my friends lost, their trips to Vegas, Indian casinos and all the competitions that ran on Sports Center. One of the guys in the room waved without looking at us, too focused to get up which offended me yet piqued my interest. Here is what he told me. Petey: “You have been down here too long, out of the loop. In the past two years the popularity of Texas Hold' Em has skyrocketed creating hundreds of online gambling

websites in the U.S. mostly based out of other countries. Since the U.S. government was unable to tax these websites they will be shutting them down over the next year. But more importantly is how popular Texas Hold' Em has now become abroad but unlike you and I who have been playing with our grandparents since we could walk, people in such places like Argentina are still emptying their pockets with little to no experience.” Ingrid: “So you guys are dat good, you can just beat da competition?” Petey: “Not exactly, you see the nine computers; it’s a numbers game. At any given moment in the U.S. on a website like Poker.net there could easily be a million people playing at once. By comparison, B.A. only has 10,000 max. Still following?” Pierce: “Yes.” Ingrid: “No.” Petey: “There is really only a few ways to cheat at online poker. So let’s say these computers represent nine people, if all nine people create four accounts they can essentially play 36 games at once. Because of the small amount of players it’s just a matter of time until two or more of the accounts are at the same table. If that happens it does not matter how good you are we control the deck. The rest of the tables we place minimum bets and wait or play a strong hand when it comes out. Online poker rooms also check players' IP addresses in order to prevent players at the same household or at open proxy servers from playing on the same tables like you see here. An IP address or Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each computer connection. It’s just how it sounds an address that allows the sites to recognize where the poker is being played from and who is using it. Taking comprehensive measures to prevent multi-accounting many rooms have a security feature, preventing the same IP address to register for the same tournament cash game more than once. Unfortunately for them our coders can bypass these blockades. Maxwell and I were just in Colombia until things heated up.”

He went on to explain how he had this amazing set up in Medellin, with a maid, chef, and a jacuzzi on the roof but one night during a hot streak there was a city wide blackout with $15,000 on the table. Lost by default. The drawback: Similar to my situation in Santa Barbara, local governments eventually catch on after placing substantial amounts of dinero into a bank account without any reported income or paying taxes. Petey: “We really have no clue how long this will last but for now we average close to 50 grand a month. But, if a poker site gets suspicious they will freeze your account so it’s important to know when to stop.” Pierce: “What about offshore accounts?” Petey: “Yea we have pushed most of our earnings to St. Bart’s and through Bitcoin. We try to spread it around as much as possible.” They had beat the system, found loopholes, played the part and placed all bets in their favor.

Chiquita Banana

Buenos Aires is the #1 party city in Latin America. Unlike the United States, clubs typically open at peak hours around midnight with a second phase opening at 6am for the party goers trying to keep it going into the wee hours. Planning our first club as a team, Ryan’s job was to chat up girls over the course of the week to find out where the hottest scenes were. Most of them had been consistent across the board. Pacha, Crobar, Club One, Kika, Museum, and Barain. But we needed one that was not on everyone’s list. One that Frommer’s might have missed, on purpose. Out to dinner one night before Desiree and I had broken up, she told me about a “super sexy club” that would be like nothing I had ever experienced before and it was scheduled to be the location of our next scam. If I hadn’t caught her making out with her agent, that fucking slut, I probably would have invited her to come with us. I called the underground club, “My name is Pierce, and I was hoping to get in contact with the owner?” Manager: “What is this regarding?” Pierce: “I do marketing for a travel company called Frommer’s and we are interested in a few Buenos Aires nightclubs to be featured in a new section called ‘Sexy Time’,” covering the receiver, laughing. “One second please.” After making all the necessary arrangements I was sitting with Benjamin and Ryan smoking a joint looking at Google images of the super sexy Argentinian female President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, when I received a Facebook message:

“Hi Pierce!

My name is Via. I don’t know if you remember me in high school, but I was a grade below you. Kasey told me you were living in Buenos Aires! Sooooooooooo Cool! Right now I am on tour as Princess Jasmine with Disney On Ice and we will be in Buenos Aires performing at Luna Park in two weeks. Any chance you could show me and the other princesses a night out on the town?

Besos, -Via”

Word for word, it really read that. I called the club back to inform them that because of extenuating circumstances we would be forced to postpone for another week. I arranged for the girls to meet us for dinner and cocktails at Asia de Cuba, an upscale sushi restaurant/club on the harbor in front of the Puente de la Mujer bridge. Sitting at our table, were four Disney Princesses, all from different countries. Princess Jasmine was from Italy, Tinkerbell from Sweden, Snow White from Denmark, and Mulan from Thailand. These girls’ life stories were moving. They had all separately grown up into very different backgrounds. Watching Disney movies as children, they had all dreamt of growing up and being princesses. Their fathers either forced or pushed them towards figure skating, and in their mid-teens they were recruited to go on tour with Disney On Ice. Via, who reminded me of Desiree was beeping on my radar: total revenge fuck. Mulan was quiet and coy, leaving Benjamin and Ryan to fight over Snow White and Tinkerbell. Don’t get me wrong, they were as beautiful as could be but these girls were 5’5” with the bodies of gymnasts. Princess Jasmine asked me what I do and I look to Ryan who without hesitation begins his Frommer’s bit. I thought about her telling Casey back home but I didn’t give a shit and probably would never see her again anyway. They were so interested in our story, fascinated to hear about all of the places we all had been

and people we had met. After a few rounds of drinks getting to know each other and all their princess personas, even Mulan started to loosen up. We grabbed a cab, but not before Tinkerbell did a vertical pushup at Benjamin’s request, totally grossing Ryan out. On the drive over, all three of us were shaking like we were trying to quit cigarettes. We had set up everything as we normally do, but no matter how secure or sound it feels, you’re a complete mess until you get past the door. We let the ladies lead first, remind you that Ryan and I are both in suits with Benjamin wearing black frame glasses and his SLR around his neck. I pass the bouncer our business cards, which he radios in to a microphone inside his jacket. The girls were drunk, all the while paying no attention and chatting about the number of falls on the ice they had in Chile. I felt like the gorilla of a bouncer was about to hit me on the top of my head like a game of "Whack a Mole." Finally, I hear the magic word, “Listo” and he open’s the rope. Desiree had told me that this place would be like nothing I had ever experienced before, but she failed to mention one major detail. It was a drag club. The whole club sat in front of a main stage, filled with break dancers and dancing drag queens. Our guests, who were performers themselves, absolutely ate it up and immediately broke into a dance. Ryan leaned into me asking, “What kind of fag shit is this?” Two bouncers came up to us addressing us by our Frommer’s aliases, “Please come with me.” Via looks at me raising her eye brows and I shrug as if also confused. We go upstairs to the balcony overseeing the dance floor where we are greeted by the owner and our personal bottle service girls. We had done this before, but this one mixed with these princesses took us over the top. We sat down, introducing ourselves and job titles while the girls were lost in their own little wonderland. Ryan takes the floor as Benjamin adjusts the settings on his camera. They are about to start asking the owner the standard questions on our form, when he has the server bring over a bottle

insisting after the show. He approves of the girls we brought, creepily adding how “I luvs tight little pussies.” The owner, clearly not gay, explains how he got into the business and how although there is a strong gay community who comes to the club regularly, most of the club is heterosexual and that everyone is very free spirited. The owner then gets up and tells us to enjoy ourselves, and that he will be back after the main attraction with a special treat. Hinting at Benjamin to follow I nudge him to get up and take some photos, while we work on the princesses. Via is blown away by the events of the night and forcefully kisses me almost knocking me over the railing. I cannot stop thinking about how she looks identical to Princess Jasmine. If I had a genie in a lamp, my three wishes would be:

1) Fuck Via dressed up like Princess Jasmine 2) Leave on the tights and skates 3) Three more wishes

The music dies down, and the spotlights move to center stage. We all stand up walking to the balcony to see the main attraction. All three of us go up and stand behind the princesses, except Mulan who doesn’t like being alone one bit. A thunderous bass rumbled through the speakers as an electronic version of Pointer Sisters – “I’m so excited” came over the sound system. The main starlet was an obese Spanish queen with a beard and wearing a wardrobe of Chiquita Banana. The best part of the show though, was the expression on Ryan’s face, horrified as if he would’ve thrown a live hand grenade out on stage. When the performance ended we all sat down, the princesses couldn’t quit using words like “Wow!” and “Oh my gosh!” Soon after the owner came back, this time with Chiquita Banana and her handmaid in company. We thanked the owner for his generosity when he snaps his finger and Chiquita pulls out a huge vial of cocaine from her cleavage. Twisting off the top of the vial she dumps out what was probably an entire eight ball onto a silver tray.

The princesses looked at it like a women’s rights group watching a Bukkake film. We all hesitated, standing stiff waiting for the other to react, when the princesses suddenly all went down to their knees to assume the position like some kind of coke hungry synchronized swimming team. Raising their eyebrows, the owner and Chiquita Banana smirked clapping their hands. Let us recap. We have not one but four Disney princesses, three guys who are pretending to work for Frommer’s, a drag club owner, and his main starlet, a very unshaven man dressed like Chiquita Banana. Cocaine was practically invented for nights like these. Till this day I had not touched the drug, but if there was ever a moment to give in, this was it. When I first inhaled, I stood back waiting for something to happen. This blow must have been bunk because I didn’t feel anything alter. Wanting to get Jasmine back on the dance floor ASAP so she would want to come home with us later I stood up, and suddenly everything rushed to my head. It wasn’t adrenaline, it wasn’t excitement. It was as if six more pints of blood had been pumped into my veins. I had to start moving, even standing there for six more seconds felt too long. Ryan noticing that I was leaving and scared to be left alone with Chiquita Banana stands up and grabs Snow White saying, “We’re coming with you guys, don’t leave me alone here.” We ran downstairs, giving dap to every bouncer and random person along the way. The dance floor was packed, blasting deep house, which only served to intensify my high. Jasmine was dancing circles around me, which normally I could keep up with, but could now only focus on how hard my chest was pounding. I kept laughing at Ryan who while practically grinding his dick against Snow White’s ass, couldn’t stop looking around fearfully of being bum-rushed by one of the many gay men floating around the dance floor. One effect of cocaine that nobody ever talks about is that it makes you horny, ridiculously horny. I mean like Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit suspect horny. I

literally was humping Jasmine on the floor, and luckily because she was so high, she was all about it too. I look to Ryan and he gives the hitchhiker’s thumb out signaling, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” Princess Jasmine is very drunk, and I know that I have less than two hours to get past her chastity belt. “It’s 4am, let’s take this party back to my place.” She was definitely in, and was grabbing my ass on the way back to the table. Benjamin with Tinkerbell on his lap is making out while blatantly rubbing her clit on the white leather sofa back at the table. Mulan is across from them in what I’m sure was a very intellectually stimulating conversation with Chiquita Banana. We approach the four of them, Mulan standing immediately, and I clap my hands together saying, “Let’s get this show on the road.” I give Chiquita Banana a huge hug and take one last line of coke, while Benjamin tells the owner thank you for such a great night and promises his club a “must see spectacle” write up in the new edition of Frommer’s. Out front Ryan says, “You girls are coming back to our place for drinks. The night is still young!” Snow White immediately replies, “I’m not even tired! Let’s do it!” Mulan: “I don’t know you guys, we have practice tomorrow at 4 o’clock and I’m kinda pooped. Let’s call it a night and then we can meet up with them after the show tomorrow,” magically brandishing three VIP tickets to the following night’s performance. Ryan stares at the tickets for a second “Wow VIP’s to Disney On Ice presents - Treasures of a Princess? Real baller.” Benjamin without blinking, “Aww come on, we’re definitely going to meet up at the show, but tonight is your last free night in Buenos Aires. Let’s grab a night cap at our place.” We all knew that Mulan wasn’t having it. Even with the royal persuasion of the three princesses she was quick to stick to the one thing that girl code requires. Mulan: “If you guys are going to leave, I’m going to take a cab home, by myself.”

At that point, we knew it was over. In any situation, at any age, girls unlike guys cannot leave a man behind. There is never a point where one of your guy friends will say “Hey man, don’t go home with her, I want you to walk me home.” We were gentlemen, or at least pretended to be, and took a ride back with them to buy us more persuasion time. The second they said goodbye and had gotten out of the car, Ryan slapped me, then the cab driver on the shoulder. “Comida! Vamos!” The taxi driver sputtered off a bunch of shit and Ryan followed with “Whatever, vamos” and we quickly arrived at a parilla stand where neither Benjamin nor I could identify the cuts. The place was not fancy and would more than likely not agree with our stomachs but we burned so many calories I would have devoured anything put in front of me. Making a mess, Ryan kept insisting that I pay our meager tab saying: “Hey Aladdin, thanks for trying to hook us up with girls who would only put out for Prince Charming.” I didn’t have any small bills having given the cab driver a little extra for putting up with our rowdiness and the owner was becoming impatient. Ryan turned to him saying, “Hijas? Daughters?” The parilla owner nodded. Ryan then slammed the VIP tickets on the counter, and walked away.

Iguazu

In Frommer’s, they spend the majority of their time on recommendations for hotels. I mean really it’s the most crucial part to lock down on any trip. Once you’re at your destination, finding an attraction, bar or a restaurant isn’t as difficult if you have a home base. Argentina is the second largest country in South America behind Brazil, its attractions that most people visit are for its great outdoors. We had definitely planned on scamming Patagonia, but had to wait a few weeks, as the owner of the hotel told us there would be more powder. We thought about going into the countryside again to hustle the vineyards, but often visiting places like that, the meetings and tours you get are too intimate. This could leave room for error for one of us to fall out of character or spend too much time with the owner or at the resort. According to Frommer’s the must see of Argentina and the place with the highest star rating is Iguazu. “The world’s most magnificent set of waterfalls.” The name of the falls, like that of the river, is derived from a Guarani word meaning “great water.” Strings of massive waterfalls as far as the eyes could see, connected borders to Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. Several rocky islands on the edge which the Iguazu River plunges divide the falls into about 275 separate waterfalls. The falls resemble that of a lengthened horseshoe that extends for 2 miles, nearly three times wider than Niagara Falls. The Legend goes that the Guarani god M’Boi wanted to marry a beautiful indigenous woman named Naipí, who rejected him and ran away with her lover Tarobá in a canoe. In a fit of rage and jealousy, M’Boi sliced open the river, creating the waterfalls and condemning the lovers to an eternal fall. The falls form along a wide stretch where the Iguazu River tumbles over the edge of the Paraná Plateau before continuing its course into a canyon. A major portion of the river falls into a narrow, gap called the Garganta do Diabo aka Devil’s Throat.

The first Spanish explorer to visit Iguazu was Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541 but the power of the falls was not fully used until the construction of the enormous Itaipu hydroelectric power plant. Completed in 1991 and after many deaths the dam opened and now provides enough kilowatts of power to fulfill a large portion of Brazil and Argentine power needs. In 1897 Edmundo de Barros, a Brazilian army officer, visualized the area of a national park at Iguazu Falls. After redefining the boundaries between Brazil and Argentina, two separate national parks were established, one by each country - Iguaçu National Park in Brazil and Iguazú National Park in Argentina. Both parks were created to preserve the vegetation, wildlife, and scenic beauty. After hours of searching for a hotel not yet listed in Frommer’s, we finally locked down a new mid range hotel that was just remodeled. This would be smarter being that they would want publicity, it would have hot water, and we wouldn’t have to dress up as much. It was going to be nice to get away from the city and transition from suits to sandals. Frommer’s states that the best times to see the falls is early in the morning, so we used this as a way to make sure that the time we spent with the owner was limited to the afternoons, when the hostel would be full of travelers. We messaged them our flight itinerary, after first considering the bus, but seeing that a plane ticket was only $150 we decided it would look more professional to provide our LAN jet email verification. Benjamin licking the envelope sent along copies of our passport, company profile, and description of what we hoped to see from their establishment, including amenities, activities, assistance, and transportation. We were getting better. Reading a response to the email Ryan yells, “No fucking way! They are sending a guide to the airport to meet us!” 20 windows on a plane slowly entered the small hangar 120 minutes out of town, we were welcomed by our guide and choffer Agustin holding a cardboard sign at the terminal with our fake Frommer’s names. After a brief

introduction Benjamin asked Agustin what the game plan was. He replied, “Gentleman, Mr. (owner) has a very exciting day planned for all of you, followed by an outdoor barbeque under the stars. If you have all your belongings we will go to the falls. Please follow me.” Leading the way to his SUV. Smashing through dirt roads we arrived at the National Park, and Agustin parks and takes us inside hanging ten the women at the window without paying an entrance fee. He immediately changes character into our tour guide, telling us the history of the indigenous Guarani tribe that inhabited the area surrounding the falls. We get on a small train that would have been better suited to an amusement park due to its size and cheap plastic appearance. On the track Agustin explained that we have several options. We could take a tour on foot, visiting all of the waterfalls, a boat ride through the jungle, seeing alligators and other wild animals along the way, and finally, we could take a raft that goes beneath the waterfalls themselves, where just last year someone had died from falling out of the raft and was sent downriver. Benjamin wasn’t too thrilled about this option knowing that as the cameraman he would be in charge of leaning around the boat to get the best shots. The tour on foot was an hour, and comprised of a steel caged walkway, which lead to different points around the falls. Ryan, even though I had insisted it was a bad idea, decided to ask Agustin about where to score marijuana. Agustin looked at us briefly, paused, then told us to wait for a moment and hopped the steel railing to venture into the jungle. Ryan: “Where the fuck did that lil’ guy go?” Benjamin: “Way to go Ryan, he is probably going to get some fucking Guarani Bushmen to come shrink our heads now.” Minutes later Agustin comes out of nowhere, and opens his hands to reveal a handful of weed and two cigarettes. “Sorry I don’t have any papers, can you use these?” We hollowed out the cigarettes, filled them with the

grinded weed, tore off the filters and the four of us climbed on the railing perched over the falls. It really was breathtaking and Agustin told us that we had come at the perfect time because a rainbow had formed over the falls. Blazing the jay, he narrates his life story. He was born and raised in the area, his parents lived off the land growing and harvesting soybeans. He eventually grew up and became a guide for the hostel where we were staying, happy to be around such beauty everyday. The boat tour through the jungle was dope, especially with Agustin pissing off the alligators with a branch so that we could see their teeth. We were exhausted and about to bail on the raft ride, but after seeing three cute girls in life vests standing in line, Ryan and Benjamin quickly scurried to get behind them and save our spot. All three girls were British and had just finished attending Cambridge Law, and would have denied us any attention if Benjamin hadn’t put his best foot forward first, bringing out his recorder and asking them to answer some bullshit interview questions for Frommer’s. The ugly duckling said it was her last night and that she had spent all of her money and was returning to London the following week. The other two would be traveling to Rio de Janeiro and just happened to be staying at the same fucking hostel as us in Iguazu. The girls thought our jobs were the coolest thing ever and were very playful on the raft. Splashing, coyly posing, and pretending to push Benjamin off after we had told them how scared he was. After going under the waterfall and getting completely soaked we offered the three girls a ride back to the hostel, Ryan making humping gestures the whole way which Agustin found hilarious in the rear view mirror. Met by the owner at the front desk we split up at the hostel where we were met by the owner telling the Brits to go shower and rest and we would reconvene after dinner. The owner expressed his gratitude for our interest in his hotel and tells us about the nights festivities. There would be a large Hawaiian style BBQ and dancers for entertainment at dinner. The rooms in the hostel had bunk

style beds. We were in a four person room and the girls were in a sixer. They had planned for rain, putting the dining area under the large cabanas next to the pool. The pool seemed so out of place, having a waterfall and a bar like something from Cancun. The owner asked us about our day, making sure that Agustin had shown us a good time and taken us under the falls, which was his favorite part of Iguazu. He told us that the hotel was his baby, that sales had been down, and that he was excited for our reviews to help jump- start his business after the remodel. He had built the hostel with his wife, inheriting the land from his Guarani ancestors. He had lived there his whole life and hoped that his children would continue to run it after he passed. Knot in my stomach, we all felt like pieces of shit. Benjamin was beginning to regret his role as cameraman, hating that he had to leave the table to take photos. He walked around the entertainment area and hotel snapping photos of everything to “report back to Frommer’s” and making sure to document everything needed for a thorough review of the place. I asked the owner questions about different pricing during high and low seasons, if we should mention that people ask directly for him, and whether or not to put his name in the guidebook. We could not lose focus on our roles, even for one minute. Each of us had to play our strengths and execute our roles believably. The photos, as we often explained would be for our website and that we would email them copies. Frommer’s doesn’t typically display a lot of photos in the guide books but places such as important as Iguazu have their own page. Remembering our new British friends, I looked over and saw them making faces at us while we are conducting our interview, which prompts me to ask, “Where is the best place in town for drinks?” Owner:“There are a few small discotecas near the bus station that have salsa music and local girls, but you shouldn’t waste your time with them,” he says, that because of the rainy season, he had hired a DJ who was would later

set up to play under the cabana. When he added that drinks would be on the house, Ryan almost broke character. After a few more questions to wrap up the interview, the owner thanked us, “Enjoy the night’s festivities.” Ryan almost immediately makes a beeline straight to the bar. I met up with Benjamin to discuss the status of the British girls. We walk over to Ryan and line up for our victory shots when he suddenly covers them. Ryan: “These aren’t for you. Barkeeper! Get these faggots some drinks!” The barman nods. Pierce: “Dude, take it easy. Do I need to get you a sharpie so you can keep a tally on your arm? We need to play it cool, remember we’re on the job. We’ll all take these shots and then just give the rest to the girls.” Ryan: “Yea right” The Brits approaching, “What girls? Cheating on us already? You gents starting without us?” Ryan: “Well that depends, you’re not going to be like most British girls and have us babysitting you all night and challenging us to a game of footy?” British Girl: “Piss off, the last American boys were nothing but sissies.” Ryan: “Well then, please approach the bench.” The hottest girl immediately takes an interest in Benjamin. Blue Ribbon: “You know I’m also a photographer right?” Benjamin: “So you’re the master of Instagram in your group?” I took this as my cue to make an effort to not get stuck with 3rd place. Ryan on other hand didn’t seem to mind. His theory: Ugly girls are more giving. Not only were these girl’s proper British chicks, but they were also the worst dancers on the planet. It was as if they were trying to hit every offbeat that they could find. By 10pm it was pouring rain all around us. The sounds, tastes and smells made you feel like you were far away from home, out of reach, hidden away in a different land. The flipside of this was that you had to run 10 yards across the

slippery pool deck to reach the bar, under a separate cabana. To minimize the time spent attempting to dance, we made trip after trip to the bar making sure that during the rainstorm, there was never a dry moment. Sitting on a hand carved bench, talking to Miss Mediocre, I noticed Ryan being hauled off back to the hostel like an injured soldier. One man down, but I wasn’t about to abandon Benjamin in his rare opportunity to score with the hot girl. I’m not paying attention to anything my girl is saying at all, but rather wondering what Benjamin was saying to Blue Ribbon to make her laugh so much. They wave to the bartender and stood up, beginning their retreat back towards us in the adjacent cabana. Remember when your mom scolded you for running along the pool deck? What I had before me was one of those moments, like when a bicyclist is about to run into a tree. You have the opportunity to yell something out and possibly prevent it but you don’t. The hot girl wearing a pair of flats suddenly slips, taking Benjamin down with her right into the pool. I wait to see if Benjamin is going to be pissed and yell at the girl, when Blue Ribbon comes up laughing and screams, “Skinny Dipping!” Miss Mediocre turns to me, “Come on, you only live once!” taking off her top and diving in tits first after our friends. Obviously, I got in. Each of us on different ends, we swim around freely with the cold rain coming down and bouncing off the pool’s surface. I tried tugging at my girl’s panties, but she stopped me saying, “Not here.” We all run back to the room under an umbrella of clothes exaggerating being cold and closed the door behind us to find 3rd place sleeping comfortably in Ryan’s bunk, Ryan beside her sprawled out on the floor naked with his hands tucked between his thighs. With the lights turned off and trying not to laugh, we tippy toed our way up the bunks ladders. They were squeaky and we were sure that they would wake up the sleeping lovebirds below. We start making out and hooking up when Blue Ribbon says, “Can you guys see us?”

Pierce: “No I can’t see a thing, can’t see you at all.” which was ridiculous because the bunk beds were only a few feet apart. Blue Ribbon, “Ok, well no peeking.” One of the greatest things about best friends is that without saying a word and both know exactly what’s on the others mind. Putting my right hand up in the air, Benjamin yells out, “High Five!” (hands clap). Blue Ribbon: “I said no peeking!”

True North: Patagonia

Patagonia. Just saying it sounds exotic. It’s one of those places that you’ve always heard about, the iceberg of the Andes. Besides being the name of a popular outdoors adventure gear brand, I had first heard about Patagonia after contacting my college roommate Chase, who after college had decided to retreat to become a ski bum in Breckenridge, CO. Some people looked down on him for not getting a real job after college, doing nothing but spending his seasons grooming the mountains, living in a cabin and drinking daily at the local microbrews. I, on the other hand, always envied him. Boarding every day and meeting people under warm roofs. He LinkedIn now doing what he loves working for an extreme travel agency. On the phone he told me about Patagonia backcountry skiing, the hut to hut touring between granite spires and steep powdered chutes. I thought back to that documentary “180⁰ South”, and wondered if those guys might still be living up in those mountains helping the ranchers protect the Andes. Patagonia was still desolate, untouched, but for how long? All three of us had been through a lot over the last few months. We were brothers. A team. If you had asked me, I would have given my life for either one of them. We were on a journey to find our internal compass that was pointing to a solid fixed point. A point where our happiness and self-discovery lay bare. This would be our lifelong secret and we were committed. We wanted to become leaders of our own existence, our own purpose. If this were truly going to be our last trip, we would need to surpass the others. Both Ryan and Benjamin would have to head back to the real world within the next few weeks. We were all lifelong boarders, I had done every outdoor adventure imaginable and Ryan and Benjamin had fucking missioned it from Washington to Argentina on a motorcycle for God’s sake. We didn’t want to stay in lush hotels; we wanted to find the most desolate, rugged place we possibly could go.

Chase once said, “Patagonia is not like the Colorado Rockies. They’re not overrun with ski resorts, you will not find patrols on the mountains. And there aren’t even lifts to most of the key peaks. Fresh powder, no lines. Once you’re out there, you’re on your own. One with nature.” A local guide would teach us how to navigate through Patagonia, but if we decided to travel alone proper backcountry protocols would have to be followed. It is one thing to pretend to be good at something but always be over prepared. We would have to get the right equipment: Splitboards, compasses, wristwatch altimeters, bastion tents, hatchet, beacons, shovels, hand flares, headlights, waterproof flint, small non-perishable rations, synthetic clothing and a first aid kit.

The Adventure: All-inclusive Heli-ride backcountry excursion

The Destination: Bariloche, Rio Negro Province, Patagonia, Argentina

We made all of the necessary arrangements taking our time to make sure we hit everything on our checklist and then some. Benjamin had our hotel locked down for the first night. Cerro Cathedral, an ancient church with gothic spires pointing up towards the sky with devastating views looking out over the Nahuel Huapi Lake. We thought about scamming the old hotel, but it was way too famous and there aren’t many other hotels in Patagonia that Frommer’s hadn’t already checked off. We were set to meet our adventure tour company at a local pub that had a famous stout that our guide insisted we try. Our travel itinerary was a weeklong. We would fly out from Nahuel Huapi Lake making our way over the next few days to a remote location deep into the Andes. At the pub, our guide Christian expressed concerns about how if we didn’t have the necessary experience, things could get rough. “Patagonia is a very complex ridge terrain with isothermal snow. In the afternoons, there are

often high headwinds and an inexperienced mountaineer could easily get spun around and be moving in the wrong direction.” He continued to tell us, “There would be no cell phone service. No towns, no souls for miles.” We explained to him that “because people are finding it easier to navigate through countries on their own that Frommer’s had begun a new section called, Extreme. We do not want to see a single person up there, and if your travel agency is going to stand out, then they will have to offer something that thrill seekers would pay up for.” He understood but insisted that we would be safe with him guiding us on our trip. We told him that we understood his concerns, joking that we knew his travel agency would look bad if they lost three Frommer’s reps, adding that at least if we died then we couldn’t write anything bad about them. He had in front of him our false manila informational packet that we had sent him prior, which he began to review. All of us met each other’s stares, immediately feeling sick to our stomachs and knowing that we were a little over our heads, and in this particular case extremely dangerous. We lied to his face, saying that “We are experienced climbers and have done everything from cross country skiing in Switzerland to spelunking in Africa, you have nothing to worry about because Ryan our cartographer would be charting the maps along the way.” He read aloud from Ben’s bio that he had put down he was a poet. He was a fan of the arts and asked Benjamin if would be so kind as to recite some poetry for him. Benjamin looked around nervously for help, but there was no way out of it. It went a little something like this. Benjamin coughing and an “It’s been a while” statement: “I take photos to capture time, someday this world will be mine, the sun will shine, tree needles pine, feeling fine, one of a kind. Never ending travels, pitchfork in gravel, winter solace, milking cattle.” Watching Benjamin freestyle rap was one of the most painful things I’ve ever witnessed. Luckily for us Christians second language was English.

DAY 1: Take Off

None of us had ever been on a helicopter before. With a cockpit the size of a smart car, squeezing four people into the glass bubble was a feat all on its own. They attached our gear to the bottom, our splitboards to the racks on the runners. Huddled inside around a waterproof topography map, we could hardly hear the guide explaining the details of the trip muffled by the rotor and the high head winds against the glass. The guide yelled over the roaring rotor, “You have check-in points every afternoon at different huts circled in red on the map! This map will tell you where things are and how to get to them! Make sure to arrive by sundown before the winds pick up and the temperature drops 30 below.” The guide looking to Ryan, “I would like to take a moment to go over the topography! You see these contours? These imaginary lines follow the ground surface at a constant elevation! They are shown here in brown with two thicknesses! The heavier line index contours are height marked with feet in meters. The skinnier line contours interval marks a difference in elevation, that’s basically a drop! The closer the contour lines are together the steeper the slope! Make sure to keep a good eye on this because these mountains change all the time! Forest areas are in green, water in blue, roads are solid or dashed black lines depending on size and surface! For all other information look to your map legend! If you split up, or lose your map, stay true north on your compass!” Ryan nods. Looking out the window you could see the terrain, the patterns of trees, the snow, the clouds, a never-ending flow of white tipped mountaintops that looked like layers of ripped construction paper. I watched Ryan's eyes become wide as an owl’s as the guide explained to us that “the nib of my finger represents two miles on the map. If you do not make it to camp and radio in, it will be 24 hours before anyone sends out a rescue team for you.” After hearing what sounded like a foreign language, we all sat in silence, realizing the gravity. Our next pickup

date would be by helicopter five days from now. If we died nobody would ever know we were here. We wore our real passport around our necks like dog tags. The cockpit doors opened, and we jumped out onto a small clearing at the top of a peak. We quickly unloaded our gear, and getting a thumbs-up from our guide and the pilot lifting away. We watched as the helicopter leaned forward and broke sideways accelerating away from us as it left to return safely back to Nahuel Huapi Lake. Benjamin pulls out his camera to take a group photo. Benjamin: “This is it guys. All that shit we did before was child’s play, today is the day we become men.” Ryan, taken by his panoramic surroundings was shaking his head, “We are so fucked.” The shutter clicks. Strapping on our boards and distributing all of our gear, we agree that I will lead since I'm the strongest boarder of the group. It was more of me stepping up to the plate really, since no one else wanted to do so. In front of us wasn’t a run per se, but a clearing all the way down. From the looks of the map, we couldn’t do a straight shoot. We had to keep right and head to another mountain that opened up. In backcountry skiing, you cover more ground at a peak than at bases. The last thing you want is to get caught up in the moment and then have to stop to backtrack. The powder was untouched, knee high and kept our speed at bay. In the beginning, we would stop every 5-10 minutes checking the map and compass to make sure we were going the right direction. The mountain can play tricks on you. Everything begins to look the same. Every move that we made was uncertain. Every time I would say, “This way” I found myself thinking, “God, I hope this is right.” We came to a ridge where we had to make the decision to ride along it, or to start going down. We took our bags off, each consuming our first PowerBar. While Benjamin was taking more photos, I helped Ryan practice how the split board worked, making sure he knew that the most important part was if you had to take the board apart,

you had to tie each ski around yourself with carabineers so as not to lose them. It was only noon, and we still had four hours to get to our first checkpoint but we wanted to minimize any chance getting caught outdoors after sundown so we cut through the forest. We made our way through the dense trees, all of us feeling the effects of a long morning of cross- country skiing. We were all healthy young men, but were beginning to ache since none of us had done any real physical activity since we got to Argentina. Around 3:30pm the winds started to scream. Benjamin: “It says on the map that we are only one click away from our location!” Turning with the compass, we knew we needed to go north, looking for a snake-shaped clearing. The wind was beginning to redistribute the snow and obscure the trail. Eventually we had to descend, but it seemed like our only option was to go up. Arguing in a situation like this feels good. It gives you a sense that there are other options when there really aren’t. Your best bet is to let one person, the best candidate, decide. Optimistic, we headed toward the smallest hill in hopes that once we got to the top, we would see our checkpoint nestled in the bottom of the crater below on the other side. Split boards and one foot tipping over the other, we make our way up the hill, with our bags weighing down on our every step. Approaching the top we can begin to make out something in the distance. Ryan, pushing his goggles up and squinting to see through the falling snow. “It’s a cabin!” Relieved, we hurry to connect our split boards with Ryan yelling, “Last person there has to cook dinner!” Crouching we race down, Ryan in the lead but quickly catches an edge and bites the dust right as he reaches the bottom of the hill, with Benjamin passing him. I am not going to lie finding the first check point made us feel like professionals. The one room log cabin was not much warmer inside than out, but provided shelter nonetheless. Insulated walls, a stove, a few cots and a small dented radio that looked like someone had hit it out of

frustration. Our first priority was to make contact. The old three-knob radio was attached to a car battery with instructions in Spanish and when turned on had no power signal. Benjamin removed the wool woven blanket, which prevented it from freezing, and when he turned it on there was a hum. I pushed Benjamin aside, dialing in the numbers they gave us until I found a frequency. Speaking into the microphone in Spanglish, I get a response from a dispatcher clearing our coordinates. Just as we had been told, the wind picked up immediately after sundown, howling and whistling through the cracks. There were only a couple logs of wood, so Ryan broke off a piece of stale roofing to use as tinder. All of us were thrilled to be indoors and sitting around the fire. We made jokes about how we were all spooked starting off and how Ryan is probably the worst cartographer on earth.

Tonight’s dinner: one bowl of chili and granola. Benjamin and I had just filled our canteens with snow to let it melt around the fire, when Ryan opens his backpack.

Pierce: “What? No way! How many of those do you have?” Ryan pulling out two bottles of Argentine wine: “I picked them up while you fuck heads were flirting with the girl at the grocery store. At first I didn’t think it was such a good idea because of the additional weight.” Benjamin: “Let me see that. What, you couldn’t get anything better than a nine dollar bottle of wine?” Ryan: “Actually it’s 60 dollars, swapped price tags while the clerk was getting you a tube of Chapstick!” High fives all around that Mendoza Malbec tasted like a $1000 bottle. Passing it, Benjamin makes a toast, “To the tour guide who thought we didn’t stand a chance.”

DAY 2: Orienting Arrow

Never overestimate your strength. The frigid cold did not help rejuvenate our sore muscles from the day before. Getting out of bed, I could hardly feel my thighs. All those muscles that you never use were stiff all the way down to my Achilles. Today would consist of mostly trekking and then more snaking through the mountains. Ryan thought we should just lounge all day and get some sleep. “I know making the next checkpoint is important, but what’s the harm in taking an extra day?” Benjamin, always the mother of the group, pushed on, stripping us of our blankets saying how he was getting ready to leave without us. “We shouldn’t take any chances and need to fucking remember what we have put ourselves up against!” We set out after eating a small ration for breakfast. Powdered milk, dried pears, sunflower seeds and small pieces of Wagyu jerky, a type of marbled beef common to the region. Clear skies, and the sun was out. The sun can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. If you took your jacket off it was too cold, but if you left it on it would absorb all of the heat. Albedo in the flesh. The sun allows higher visibility but if you stared at the snow too long or took of your goggles the sunlight’s reflection can burn your eyes. We had to reach the top of the northwest cliff by noon, which meant there was very little time to stop or take breaks. Ryan, as always, complained the whole time, especially about his eyes hurting from the glare, not wearing his goggles after they were constantly fogging up. We pushed forward leaving him 30 yards back to damper his whining. Examining the map and the compass’ orienting arrow to determine the direction and bearing from one point to another, Benjamin thought that there would be a potential shortcut over the backside of the next mountain, meaning that we wouldn’t have to do any more cross country. As long as we were following true north, we knew we would be able to spend more time snowboarding downhill, cover more ground and not get lost. Ryan: “I don’t care if it takes three more hours, no

more fucking cross country.” Catching speed and launching off of the natural kickers, we were all at the height of our Patagonian experience. Superlatives such as “ridiculous” and “incredible” hardly described the day’s runs. Finally, getting to the essence of snowboarding and carving, leaving jet streams over one another’s path. We were on top of the world, literally and figuratively. It was as if we had inherited Patagonia just for ourselves. It had only been two days since we had seen another human being or any signs of civilization, but it had felt like a month. After lunch Benjamin was ahead of us, about 30 yards when he came to a quick stop. Both Ryan and I were pushing each other, trying to make the other fall over when we saw Benjamin stopped, waving his hands in the air. Coming to him we power slide slightly past him close lining each other to stop only a few feet from the steep edge of a huge cliff blended into whiteness. We almost shoot off, Ryan smacking my chest as hard as he could to make us both fall backwards. “Holy Fuck!” Ryan says out of breath. “Don’t fucking move,” I tell Ryan. Our hands were behind our back. Taking a second we begin to slowly etch ourselves backwards, but with each step the pressure of the splitboards packs the snow down and we slide with it, closer and closer towards the edge. Ryan begins to have a panic attack. Pierce: “Ryan I need you to listen to me. Look at me Ryan, look at me in the fucking eyes! Do not stand up, I need you with your right hand only, to lean forward, and undo your straps. Can you do that for me?” If both of us tried to push back any further on our boards, the loose powder is going to take us right off the cliff. Pierce: “Taking off each strap one at a time, you’re going to hold the buckling with your finger and move back very, very slowly. I’m going to do it first so you can follow, but I need you to stay calm.” Ryan was petrified. All his tough macho exterior was shedding. The snow was soft and not condensed on top of

the rocks. We were sitting on a built up ice shelf just barely hanging on the tip of the fucking cliff. With the removal of each strap we could feel ourselves inching our way towards a fatal fall. We began moving our way back, step-by-step, inch- by-inch. Pierce: “You’re almost there, Ryan. You’re doing great! Just a little more.” Ryan looks at me, taking off his goggles and putting his left hand back behind him into the snow, the shelf begins to give away. Ryan lets go of the board. We didn’t have time to think, both of us letting go and rushing back as the sheet slipped out from under us cracking off and taking the split boards with it. Laying on our backs with Benjamin pulling us by our hoodies, our boards had easily fallen 200 feet and continued down the mountain, out of sight. It was three hours until sundown, a solid seven miles from our checkpoint in rough terrain, on foot. Benjamin steps forward: “I still have my board, I should keep going and radio in for help.” Ryan: “Are you fucking stupid? We don’t even know where we are, we don’t know what coordinates we’re at, and if you don’t make it you’ll be by yourself, lost and us with the tent. Pierce: “Fuck, he is right.” Ryan: “They aren’t even going to send out a rescue team for another 24 hours, after we don’t check in.” Pierce: “Ryan, shut the fuck up! You’re not helping. We need to stick together, stay calm and keep moving.” We get back to the map. Ryan: “Fuck I lost my goggles!” Pierce: “It looks like if we make our way down like we had planned, by sometime tonight we could make it to the next checkpoint.” Benjamin: “There is no moving at night, we will have to set up camp in a couple of hours, set three fires in a triangle (a common mountain distress signal) and find an place deep in the trees to protect us from the wind.” Ryan: “Are you fucking kidding me? We won’t be

able to start a fire!” he yelled. “Look around us, all the trees are fucking wet. There is little to eat, we haven’t seen any animals and nothing to kill and cook them with. We’re not Survivor Man. What are you planning to do? Skin something alive? I am not going to fucking eat you guys like that one Rugby team here back in the 70’s.” Known as the “1972 Andes Flight Disaster” a plane carrying an entire Rugby team crashed in the area and faced with starvation they began eating their deceased frozen teammates for a solid two months. We had food, thankfully but the tension was creating arguments with no end. Benjamin and I laid out the map and begin strategizing options. Ryan: “You’re not even a real fucking guide! Our best bet is to stay in the open so when a helicopter comes they will be able to see us.” After about 30 minutes of arguing and almost getting into a fist fight with Benjamin, Ryan stands up and walks away. Benjamin remembering some survival tips that he learned about when his parents sent him to an Outward Bound retreat said, “The number one rule the counselors taught me about trying to survive in the wild was “All river’s lead to civilization.” During North American colonization lost settlers would look to find a river as they knew staying alongside it would lead to a town or village.” I don’t think that any of us thought this to be true necessarily, but we were out of ideas. Ryan gathering sticks spelled out HELP in Spanish on a flat surface close to the tent. I dug a huge hole to base our tent in for insulation and so that if winds did pick up they would not pick up under the tent. We ate small bites of food only what we thought was necessary, just enough to keep our bellies from aching.

The sun was setting and the dark clouds meant winds would come soon. None of us had even taken a look at the tent prior. It was only meant for one to two people but we would have to make it work. We squeezed in and nestled together for body warmth. We didn’t say much to each other that night, and anything we did was bitter and pointless. We couldn’t do anything before sunrise but wait, a whiteout all around us.

DAY 3: Magnetic North

In navigation, it turns out to reach the North Pole or true north, following the compass needle will not work. True north is a geographical direction that is shown on maps by lines of longitude leading directly to the North Pole. Compasses however, take you to magnetic north, a point in the arctic regions of Canada that is constantly shifting location due to the activity of the Earth’s magnetic field. A magnetic compass almost never shows true north. In fact, over the course of millions of years, magnetic north wandered considerably so that the magnetic north was once near the geographic South Pole. In the arctic region, a magnetic compass is not very useful. The Earth’s magnet is not perfectly aligned with the geographic poles, therefore, there is a small yet detrimental difference between true north and the magnetic north shown in the compass. This difference is called the magnetic declination. In layman’s terms: we’ve been reading the compass all wrong. We mistakenly saw the “north” on our compass as the true north, when it really was the magnetic north. Although it is only a few deviations east or west, on a map this can convert to miles leading us completely in the wrong direction. Christian had warned us. We thought we were experts at this, pretending to be seasoned professionals at something we were anything but. Unzipping the tent the next morning, Ryan’s HELP sign was gone, covered in at least a foot of snow. High up in the Andes, it snows all year. If you were to die, they would never find your body, you’d be catacombed beneath the snow’s surface until a scavenger came to nibble your carrion. Eighteen hours until any rescue team would be sent out. Our situation was looking grim. Even though we were heading in what seemed like the right way, we couldn’t find any of the landmarks on our map. We stopped to take a break and unzipped our bags and began counting what we had left for our survival. We still had our compasses, tent, 3 hand flares, headlights, a first aid kit, and two days food

rations. I move down away from the group while they were eating a bag of peanuts to go take a dump in the woods. Pulling my pants down and leaning against a tree so I didn’t shit in my trousers, I see something sparkling in the distance. I push out and pull up, making my way closer and closer towards the glimmer. My lips were chapped, skin windburned and cracking with any strong facial expression. I moved faster and faster, was this a mirage? Taking off my goggles, there was a lagoon no more than 50 feet in diameter. I tried screaming, but my throat was coarse. Throwing some ice in my mouth, I got one last scream out at the top of my lungs. The lagoon was extremely green, and most likely volcanic. My nose was so crusted with snot that I could only make out a very faint smell of sulfur. I looked around and saw that the placid water was moving into a stream that the lagoon had created when it overfilled sometime in the past. Ryan and Benjamin hurried down to me. Pierce: “Guys, look, look, look!” There was a branch laying next to me. I bent down picked it up and tore off a handful of pine needles tossing them into the river, the needles spun floating above water and began to move in the same direction. The water was running! It wasn’t fast but did lead somewhere. Walking in knee high snow is the wackest shit ever. All throughout the day and night we followed that river, until we could walk no more and all of our energy was depleted. They say you can go over a week without food but you will not make it a few days without water. I don’t believe this to be true. You might be able to survive in a shelter huddled waiting for help but any physical activity demands proper nutrients. Tomorrow would be our last day; we would have to get saved. I tried to keep all morale alive, but Ryan had already given up. He kept insisting that we leave him behind. His eyes were stinging, unable to see 10 feet in front of him, snowblind. We weren’t sure if he was just bitching or whether he was serious. At this point in the

game we had no idea where our checkpoint was. Not even sure whether it was in our general vicinity or if we were completely out of range. Shoulder slumped and walking slowly, we heard a humming sound. Benjamin: “Wait here” getting down to his knees and attaching himself to his board. He rushes down the mountain to an invisible snow blanketed road with a large 18-wheeler coming his way. He crouches to gain speed but before he can get there, the truck passes without a clue. Ryan unable to see, asks me: “Did the truck stop? Did the truck stop for Ben? Is it over?” I wanted to tell him that the tractor-trailer had stopped, that everything was fine, that we were saved. But I couldn’t. Hearing the news about the trucks passing, Ryan went weak buckling at the knees and crying. This was the strongest guy in the group. Someone I had seen getting in bar fights over someone else spilling his beer. But Mother Nature had brought him down to his knees. We reached Benjamin and he was also crying saying to himself, “Why didn’t it stop?” It was already getting dark and we needed to set up our tent, once again. Human roadblock. I was against the idea at first, but Benjamin insisted that it was the only way we would be found. He wanted to set up the tent in the middle of the road. His theory was that if an ice road trucker was driving in the snow, the only place he would be paying attention to was the road and would see us before he would ever hit us. With large mountains on either side and everything glazed over with snow our tent looked like a construction cone. Benjamin and I stayed up the whole night, taking turns getting up periodically to shake the snow off the tent, making sure its neon orange exterior was visible at all times throughout the night. Ryan’s vision was worsening, to the point that his eyelids had crusted shut with yellow puss hardening at the corners. To him everything sounded like a big rig. Huddled together shivering in the cold of the night, I began to fully realize how truly fucked we really were.

DAY 4: Declination

Essentially, it was still night when we heard the 18 chains scraping down the road. I jump up abruptly, struggling to keep my balance as a jagged pain shoots through my legs, fatigued from the days spent crossing the icy mountains and shouldering Ryan’s weight. Benjamin immediately pulled an emergency hand flare out of his backpack, removing the plastic cap and striking the button igniting a bright pink flare. He rushed to my side flailing his arms wildly and yelling hoarsely. As the trucker began to slow his rig, we both collapse on the road, our camp illuminated in his yellow headlights. The driver hops out and comes to our side. His Spanish was rough but our eyes said it all. The cargo space was empty, a dead head. Up front there was one seat open where we put Ryan to warm him up in the cabin with the driver. Benjamin and I sat together in the cargo bin thrilled, but were out of ways to express it. The driver brought us three hours down the road to the only local hospital nearby. When the doors opened the morning light was blinding. I felt like an immigrant crossing over the border. The trucker must have called the hospital prior, because upon our arrival, paramedics came out with stretchers for all of us. Speaking with the doctor, he told me that the hospital had notified the Patagonia rescue patrol to alert them of our rescue and that we would all have to stay in the Intensive Care Unit over night before they could release any of us. He then gave me our three passports we had around our necks and told me that Christian, our adventure tour guide was on his way to ensure our safe return. I had barely had a chance to register the possible consequences of the doctor getting ahold of our true identities when he continued, “The severity of your friend’s photokeratitis has reached a stage where there is a chance he may never see again.” I sat there in my lime green patient’s gown, staring blankly through the hospital corridor windows long after the doctor had left me. There was an old television playing

cartoons in Spanish down the hall, and I could hear the funny voices coming from the old cracked speakers. How did this happen? What if Ryan loses his vision? Were we paying for our sins? Karma is a bitch. Was this where all of our lies and scams were always leading us to? It was all rushing to me at once when Christian walked in. As I was about to tell him how we should have listened to him, he sits down with a metal briefcase beside my hospital bed and stops me. Christian: “After contacting the rescue patrol to send out a team to find you, local authorities reported to us that no one under the information on your passports had entered Argentina in the past three to six months. I made the choice to contact Frommer’s. What I learned was you are somehow currently in Vietnam. How is this possible, Pierce?” I froze. He had used my real name. Christian: “I don’t know who you think you are, or why you are pretending to be someone you are not, but I do know that our company will not stand for this. You have 24 hours to gather your things, your sick friend, and leave Argentina. In 24 hours we will press charges to (listing real names and showing copies of our real passports the hospital had sent him). I cannot speak on behalf of Frommer’s. But, I can say however that you will never be allowed back into Argentina.”

Part 4 Down for the Count

I had to leave soon. We all did. The only flights available were out of Bariloche and customs could be waiting for us. As a group we decided to split up. Benjamin, caretaking for Ryan, took the first overnight bus out to Santiago, Chile. I had Ingrid meet me in Montevideo, Uruguay booking a hostel under her name just to be safe. Pretending to work for Frommer’s had its perks. All the girls, free food, and luxuries we didn’t deserve. But like all great things, it had to come to an end. Nothing is for certain, nothing is forever. Where would I go next? Where would you go next? Petey was racing from Croatia to Greece for Yacht Week. My friends in Los Angeles were all on their own shit and moving back in with my grandparents was not an option. I had no attachments, still very portable. If I chose, I could close my eyes spin a globe and go to the first place my fingertip landed. In Buenos Aires I had met a retired couple at a tango show that had on their 30th wedding anniversary gone to an airport and got on the first available international flight. I admired them for their spontaneity. I needed to get my head back on straight and get healthy. After Patagonia, Ingrid and I wasted away together on a beach for a month outside of Piriapolis, Uruguay but I knew she would leave me soon. She could sense I had become cold and was fucking something out of me while inside of her. Both Benjamin and Ryan managed to return safely back to the United States with minimal problems. While in Uruguay, I had a chance to speak with Ryan on Skype, bandages still covering his left eye. He would permanently lose all vision in his left eye but fully recover his right. We both cried touching the computer screen, the magnitude of it all hitting us at once and knowing that only we knew the truth. Drawn to it my whole life, I knew I had to be close to the beach. Somewhere tropical, where people could just live

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and not think about the past or future. Carefree. A few friends of mine, mostly die hard surfers, after college withdrew their life savings and bought a one-way ticket to South East Asia. They said in their own right, “What’s the point of living if you don’t love it?” In the outskirts of Thailand you could get a hut on the beach, food, and clean water for $15 per day. I even recalled one photo where my friend was riding an elephant into town with his longboard on the side, and a girl on the back. But when writing him about linking up, he told me, “Shit is crazy over here bro, straight revolution!” Well, it was more of an uprising. In Thailand, an anti-government group called, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, the Red Shirts (and thus they wore red shirts), supported the overthrow of a corrupt Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. They were anti-government because the country was corrupt and run by a king who was known to abuse his divine right. He was charged with concealing his wealth, tax evasion, and selling assets of Thai companies to international investors. He became extremely wealthy while in office leading the Thai government to freeze over 70 billion Bahts of assets which was equivalent to nearly 2 billion USD. Partying, gambling and sleeping around, the older generations in Thailand were brainwashed to believe that their king was powerful and respected all over the world. When Newsweek came out with a list of the 100 richest kings denouncing his rule, he had all copies banned in Thailand and the revolt began. After reading this I decided to wait, plus I needed to gain something scholastic from my time down south. During high school and college I competed in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, partly because I hated high school P.E. and partly because growing up in Los Angeles you inevitably get into a lot of fights. Two days after emailing my old college Jiu-Jitsu instructor from a piece of shit computer at an internet cafe, he replied putting me in contact with one of the main Gracie institutes in Rio de Janeiro.

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Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, also known as The Gentle Art, has been around for many centuries. During the Feudalism period in Japan, warriors were taught Jiu-Jitsu as a form of battle tactics. Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, began his career studying Jiu-Jitsu. Kano felt the traditional Jiu-Jitsu had many flaws, one being that it was an impractical training technique where students learned by memorizing planned movements called kata. Judo, however, allowed students to train using full force and their opponents momentum in their technique. In his pursuit to spread the art of Judo, Kano sent representatives to the United States in hopes of Judo becoming an Olympic sport. In the early 1920s, one of the representatives, named Mitsuyo Maeda, traveled to Brazil to start a settlement in the North. It was here where Maeda met Gastao Gracie who was involved with politics. Gracie used his political contacts to assist Maeda in his settlement, and in return, Maeda taught Jiu- Jitsu to Gastao's sons. Carlos Gracie, the oldest son, learned from Maeda for approximately two to four years. They eliminated the uselessness of the classical Jiu-Jitsu and added effective techniques. Today, the Gracie family has owned the sport and created what is known to be the most effective form of unarmed combat. Depositing the first week’s dues, I was locked down for a six-week intensive training camp with three-a-day workouts. I wanted to get healthy and work out my anger. I had so much built up aggression it would only be a matter of time before I cracked. I went to the embassy and in less than a week, stamped in my passport was a 90-day visa.

Fun fact: The only reason why foreign countries require U.S. citizens to get a visa and pay dues is because the U.S. requires their citizens to do the same.

Small golden lights flickered over waves of mountains flying into Rio. Once off the plane, I needed to find an airport taxi stand, taking a street cab was not an option knowing full well that cheaper is never better abroad. You have all your belongings in one place, don’t

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risk it. During the drive I could not see my surroundings or even know if we were even going in the right direction. I pretended to know where I was pointing at places and talking into my iPhone. My hostel “Stone of a Beach” was two blocks off Copacabana beach. At the gate, standing with my luggage and the taxi driver awaiting his pay, I booked a cot. A six-person room crammed with bunks and hammocks and old tourism posters under flickering lamps they had recycled. One read “Favela Tours” and pictured a small child holding a rifle. Comforting. Luckily, the place was dead. Everyone must have been out partying. Training would begin at dawn so I unpacked, took a cold shower and cried as the unsettling reality of my loneliness and the unknown sunk in. Rise and shine. The importance of being early when meeting a new martial arts instructor is crucial. The dojo was at full capacity, Brazilians of every shape and size below swaying ceiling fans, fighting and body slamming each other on the blue mats. Maybe signing up was not such a good idea? Nobody seemed to even notice when I entered. I stood there, looking around to see if I could identify an instructor or possibly a famous fighter, when a whistle blew and everyone stopped. They were finishing a 10 min session where each opponent was trying to either choke or submit the other without the use of kicks or punches. An older man with large shrugged shoulder blades and cauliflower ear came up and shook my hand speaking Portuguese. I do not speak Portuguese, but after saying my name he grunted something, and brought me into a door less office pointing at a seat. A small boy no older than ten entered, handing me a Gi, the official uniform and a blue belt to try on. The old man leans in stating in broken English, “You fight now.” Pierce: “Now”? I had not ran or even done a sit up in more than two months and by the look of everyone out there I was going to get crushed. He walked me out to the mat and made an announcement that had my name in it most likely an introduction followed by a question. My translation from

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everyone’s reactions was, “Who wants to fight our newest North American student?” A handful of Brazilians stood up which was not comforting. So many wished to prove themselves over me on my first day. I was nervous. Fuck, was I scared, but ready. I had trained off and on for six years, I knew if I were ever going to give it a real shot it would be in the Motherland. The teacher picked a student with his index finger and grunted again. Everyone cleared a circle. Really? It was going to be in front of the whole school? The only thing missing was an octagon and a ring girl. I was unclear what the rules would be, were we allowed to punch now or just takedowns? Would we go hard or feel it out? I was already in full sweat. The Gi's are made of heavy cotton, a thick weave that does not breathe. Little ventilation. In the center of the circle we bowed and slapped hands. He dove for my legs and I quickly jump back into a sturdy stance, my arms around his neck falling back into my guard (between my legs). I squeezed up as hard as I could. I knew this would do nothing, but it showed my skill level and gave him time to lose his energy and deplete his airflow. Jiu-Jitsu without punches is a turtle vs. hare scenario. You can go hard, but in the end patience and endurance take home the win. I could tell he was going harder than he should, anxious of losing to the foreigner on his first day. He got out, throwing my legs over his head getting into side control. This, is exactly where you do not want to be. For the most part you’re fucked in side control. They can hold you down and this is where the famous arm bars come from. Don’t let them get your arm free, wait for an opening. Best thing to do is keep your fists to your chin, elbows to your sternum, and thrust your hips like you’re being raped. I had last learned a sick flip where you turn your hip and hold his waist band, bringing him close, and then toss him over on his back upside down, placing him now into side control. I braced myself and used my opponent’s momentum to pull. Everyone gasped. It was a move mostly meant for strong people, but since he was fidgeting around

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so much and not using his weight, I caught his momentum and pulled it off. I was now in side control, and using his confusion, I jolted into an arm bar. Again, unless you are really fast most professionals can get out of arm bars. He grabbed his wrist, I pushed on it with my heel but he was curling. It began to get difficult so I used a small pressure point that a friend taught me, twisting his wrist and pressing my thumbs into the veins, stopping his circulation and sending a piercing sensation through his muscles. I could see the veins growing on his bicep as he held on shortly, but soon fell back tapping out. Everyone was yelling, but not in a “Congrats you hit a home run,” but more of a “Holy fuck you lost to a gringo!” I might never be considered equal but at least now I had their respect. I trained for ten days straight and lost 15 lbs. Running the beach in the morning, no Gi training in the afternoons, boxing, and then back into the Gi at 9pm. All the fat you can pinch disappeared. The first week every muscle on my body ached, so bruised, I looked like a Dalmatian. As the weeks progressed through, so did my overall strength and endurance. My nights free, I hung around Stone of a Beach icing my joints and trying to meet some girls who could help with some needed relaxation. I was too tired to go out dancing so the home base was my only option. One night, boiling away in the Jacuzzi with my eyes closed I heard, “Hey Sexy, you have room for two more?” Opening my eyes. No fucking way! It was Molly and Kim, the same two British girls from Iguazu! They hopped in one on each side of me and when the hostel bartender came out and saw me his face was priceless. We talked about our travels exchanging stores since last seeing each other. When they asked about Ryan and Benjamin I left out Patagonia, still unable to talk about it. It was like seeing an old childhood friend. Any familiar face abroad is comforting and warm. I was however sad to hear that their fortune had also taken a turn for the worst. Just two days after our fling in Iguazu, they had taken a bus to Florianopolis, a string of surfer islands in the

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Southern region of Brazil. Making several stops throughout the night, a thief had stolen their luggage from the cargo area below. They lost their passports, computers, iPhone’s, wallets, and two top of the line professional grade cameras. They were about to call their parents for a return flight home canceling the remainder of their trip, when they heard back from their insurance company and got some good news. According to their plan, each of the girls had traveler insurance coverage. They had to file a claim of stolen goods for a total of $4,000 a piece. They had been smart and kept the police reports, customs declarations and the receipts for all items that had been stolen. They were currently expecting to get a check that would now let them extend their vacation for another two months. With my body covered with bruises from head to toe, they each took turns giving me massages until I pruned.

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Territorial

On my day off, two friends from the dojo, Renato and Angel, stopped by Stone of a Beach to tell me they had snagged an extra surfboard and were going to Ipanema beach and asked if I wanted to tag along. Ipanema is famous for surfing and from anywhere on the sand you can see the famous Christ The Redeemer statue in the background looking over the city. Growing up in Dogtown Venice, I knew that California surfers were territorial. A benny only gets once chance to rip. If you fail, be on your way. I expressed my concern, “A gringo stealing waves is not a good look.” Angel: “All the serious surfers catch the early morning breaks, you got nothing to worry about.” If this were any one of my normal friends I would have made more excuses, but Angel looked like a UFC fighter because he essentially was, and Renato was 6’3”, cut, and had hands that could palm a beach ball. These were the type of guys that if they rear ended your car, you would get out pissed, and then tell them everything was fine, and apologize for stopping short. I threw on some board shorts, scarfed down a banana and ran out the door. Before we could surf, we had to stop off first at Renato’s girl Bambi’s house to pick up some surf wax. Bambi lived in the Vidigal favela, which I refrained from sounding concerned about to avoid being disrespectful. Walking through narrow pathways we came to a small concrete house with no door. When we walked in Bambi was by herself in the kitchen, samba dancing in a bikini and Havaianas flip flops, slicing a mango. Renato signals us to be quiet as if to scare her. I usually do not have a problem with staring, but something about this girl’s simplicity phased me. Before I could shake it off, he grabbed the wax and we set out, openly expressing my jealousy of Renato’s life. The coolest thing about the beaches in Rio are the streets. Nobody ever mentions the streets? Black and white mosaic tiles no thicker than an inch form waves and spirals everywhere you walk. I mean, the fucking man hours that

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must have gone into creating these Portuguese pavements is mind boggling. Ipanema is always shoulder-to-shoulder, umbrella- to-umbrella packed. The wrong place for peace and quiet. We laid our boards down applying extra wax to mine so I could at least stand up. I was getting fucking anxious. There were normal swells that day but there had to have been over 100 surfers near the rocky peninsula. I pushed out behind Angel shaking, thinking in the back of my head, “Just act cool. You got this.” I stayed far out observing, taking note of everything around me, how people took their turns, the etiquette, hand gestures, and the timing of waves coming in. I pulled myself together and turned my head to get ready. As I started paddling to catch my first A-frame wave in Rio, a red helicopter flies by overhead. My line of sight was clear, I popped up and rode it out all the way to the shore. I could see some surfers giving me the three- finger surfer wave, yelling in Portuguese. I paddled back out stopping next to Renato. He congratulated me and we both paddled out together further. I waited for another quarter hour before trying again, still coming down off the high of my first time success. It’s like the first time you score a goal and your parents are so proud that you almost consider taking it easy the rest of the game so that they remember that moment and not the missed shots in the second half. For anyone who has not surfed before, the hard part isn’t standing up or riding the wave, it’s how tired you get, how swallowing salt water makes you dehydrated, and how hard the waves crash down. Sitting on my board looking in, the large Christ statue seemed to be looking over the city with his arms out as if he was protecting it. Head turned, I waited again for the coming water’s rising and popped up, turning with the wave. I had ridden it only two seconds when this huge tatted surfer comes out of nowhere on my left going straight and I smack right into him, the nose of my board cutting into his calf. My board still going with the wave pulls me right into the barrel with my ripcord attached. Beat down, I spin around having no

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idea which way was up. It dies down and I come up gasping for air. I spit up some salt water and wipe off my eyes just in time to see the tatted guy’s face and his fist connect into mine. The water was still deep and unlike California, in Rio, when you’re 30 yards its 30 feet of water below. Dazed, I could not stand or break away from him holding me under. Thank God I just shaved or he would have gripped my hair, leaving no gasps for air. Somehow, either the water or his lack of stance caused him to not knock me out with his punches. The cerebral tension from going too long without oxygen was pounding and I almost drowned when through the shaky bubbly water, Renato put the guy in a rear naked choke dog paddling backwards. I pushed off the two of them. Still attached to my board I climbed on and caught my breath. The guy wailing like a fish with a hook in its mouth was strong but no match for a thoroughbred fighter like Renato. I laid there choking and coughing up salt water. I needed fresh water bad, not concerned if I was returning to a fight, I paddled towards the sand. The current took me 50 yards from where we began away from the surfers. Without asking the beach vendor I grabbed a bottle of water, twisted off the cap and chugged laying on my back chest heaving. As another large red helicopter flew over, I closed my eyes.

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Lapa

Shaking my head in the mirror I grabbed my things and headed to practice with a huge fucking bump on my forehead. I got into my Gi and started doing warm up laps of fishtailing across the floor when Renato enters. Renato: “Bro, What the fucked happened to you yesterday? We thought you drowned and we were going to have to go dig you out the sand at low tide.” Pierce: “Nah, I passed out on the beach. You seriously saved my life, I owe you one. Did everything turn out ok?” Renato: “Yea no prob, when I body slammed that motherfucker on the sand and he sat up and saw Angel and me, his attitude changed. We made him sit there like a little kid and wait for you to say sorry but you never showed up. I took a picture of him with my phone and swore to him that if we found out you died his life would end as well. But you’re not! So tonight, we’re going out to celebrate!” It was Thursday, and that meant Lapa. A large crowded block party with clubs splintering the street alongside an aqueduct leading up to a massive arc that strongly resembled the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Old men drinking in plastic chairs on Cobblestones sidewalks, vendors selling bottles of Skol beer and shots before groups of local musicians. I loved the sound of those Swing cavaquinhos, the tiny guitars that give samba music its characteristic tink sound. I met my team at Renato’s house, bringing the British girls with me at his request. Our group: five humongous Brazilian martial artists, two British girls and myself being the only ones not blatantly Portuguese and half a foot shorter. We hopped in Renato’s friend’s Ford Expedition and parked up for some more pre-gaming. Lapa was packed. All the hustlers in the street, girls in next to nothing flaunting at the entrances to clubs, steaming food stands smelling of fatty beef, and little kids running around waist high trying to pickpocket tourists. We walked through the crowds, everyone making way because in Rio, Jiu-Jitsu

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fighters are like gods. After stopping at a few clubs and bars, we posted up at a very dark club right before the main arch. We had girls all around flocking my group and the guys kept telling them I was the new Gracie secret weapon to help me get laid. The scene kind of reminded me of Barbados and I was still intimidated, all the tall black girls rubbing all over me in dark rooms still scared the shit out of me. I’d like to explain something to you for a quick second. You know when people are talking about the most beautiful girls in the world and some guy brings up Brazil. I mean most of the Victoria Secret models, including Alessandra Ambrosio and Adriana Lima, are Brazilian. Rightfully so. All over the country you see girls there that you would drop everything for to live in a tree house with. Bambi was a perfect example. That guy is right, but what he failed to mention is that just like everywhere else in the world the general population is fugly. Fucking Ugly. It’s a complete hit or miss. For every dime piece Brazilian girl there are a herd of what I would like to call jungle beasts. Huge, Amazonian women that could rip you in half. It’s not like in the states where hot girls roll with some grenades to look better. In Brazil the girls get beastly. I don’t know if it’s something in the water or their genetics, but damn. Now back to the story. Denying a few girls to dance I moved to the bar solo taking shot after shot, well-oiled by this point, and turned around stretching both my arms out on the counter. This club was so fucking hot the five ceiling fans above were just making it worse circulating must. In the corner waiting for the bathroom with her back turned was a tall milk chocolate skinned girl with long blonde hair and a skin- tight lime green backless dress with matching high heels. Like most men I am a sucker for women in tight fluorescent colored clothes. I guess something happened to me at all those 80’s theme parties in college. Sipping a Caipirinha, I waited for her to come back out. When she did we connected eyes, never breaking as she made a left to go upstairs. I paid for the shots and followed. Up above she

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was talking with some other girls when I approached and she smiled. No words, just eye contact and body language we started to dance. She was so much taller than me when face-to-face, but what I learned in Argentina was that girls prefer masculinity over height. In hopes of one of my boys spotting me I kept turning my head and looking for them. I was sweating profusely, tank top now drenched and sagging. I pointed to the balcony overlooking the plaza, and we make our way through the crowd with everyone staring at us. I smiled, feeling like a boss. We sat down on the windowsill and looked out at the masses. People were yelling, fights breaking out, and the best, all the foreign white girls turning down locals, which is always amusing. One great thing about Latin America is the service. People can sell things anywhere at any time without a permit. A guy comes up to us with a tray holding plastic shots and bottles. One dollar/per shot. I buy four, slamming two, each one right after another then giving the cups back. Almost 10 drinks deep I turned back to look at her, but before I could even get something out in broken Portuguese, she kissed me. It was a long, strong, sloppy kiss tasting of fruity lip gloss and cigarettes. It was kind of a weird kiss I must say. Maybe because she was so much taller than me or maybe I was just comparing it to how gentler and softer Desiree was. We did not say anything after turning back to look at the street again, taking it all in. Pierce: Gesturing, “Let’s get out of here.” She stands up without hesitation and we walked out. I was going to check up on the British girls but when I saw them freaking Angel and another friend we came here with hands to toes, I decided they were ok. They might get ran through like some valley porn stars but they would be as safe as I could guarantee. Pushing with her through Lapa, feeling like such a pimp, we make it past the crowds and wait for a cab. Was I pulling a one-night stand? Everyone was still staring at us, some people were even pointing at us laughing. She was a good sport though, pretending not to care holding my hand even tighter. I just shrugged it off

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recalling how people treated me in Buenos Aires. I loved the way they stared as Desiree and Ingrid kissed me. It made me feel special, and empowered. Finally a cab stopped and opening the door for her we hopped in. Seated, she stepped up and spoke to the driver so I assumed we were heading to her place, or a motel. I tried to make small talk in Portuguese, anything I could remember when she interrupts and said a word that sounded familiar in English. Here is your little Portuguese lesson for the day. Portuguese just like Spanish and English are sister languages descending from Latin. Many root words, prefixes, suffixes, medical or scientific terms are often either the same or sound the same. She was trying to ask me a question when I hear “trans” something. I gave her a confused eyebrow. She sighs and then takes my hand and places it on her crotch. It felt like a smoothed over avocado in a bathing suit. There and behold I was in the back of a taxi with my hand around a very large tucked away schlong. I stiffen, shoulders up, head forward like someone poked me in the lower back with a stick. I grabbed the shoulder of the cab driver, yelling stop in Portuguese trying not to barf. She said something, but I was done listening. Weak with trauma. I got out confused and stumbling. I could not think, I did not know where I was or where I was going but I ran. I found a park, sat on a bench head in hands and thought for a millisecond about us kissing and all the people laughing at us, and I puked. I told my boys the next day, which they all had a riot over. Why would you tell them, you may ask? Well I learned after researching for three hours when I got back to the hostel infuriated, Rio apparently has one of the largest transvestite populations in the world and I wanted my boys to watch out for me next time, because I seriously to this day thought that thing was smoking hot.

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Basketcase

The next week I laid low, training Jiu-Jitsu everyday, fighting the Lapa out of me. Grabbing brunch after class, I ran into the Brits on the hostel patio and they invited me to come to Copacabana Beach. I was about to make up an excuse and catch a snooze but they insisted and in the back of my mind I thought I might be able to fuck one of them, rectifying the tranny. We found a spot, laid out the towels, applied sun block, and then watched as the peddlers strolled by trying to sell us anything under the sun. One peddler in particular, a guy in the past that I had bought sunglasses from decided to sit down beside me to flirt with the British girls. Letting him spit game, I smiled as the Brits pretended to be nice. Off in the distance to my left was another girl in a baby blue bikini, sitting beside what seemed to be her mom. Checking out the mom is usually a good indication of how the girl will mature. That being said, always meet a girl’s mother before asking for her hand in marriage. She was 40 yards out but I could still tell that she would rather be any place in the world than on the beach with her mom. The Brits became fascinated in my liking of her and made all kinds of jealous commentary. “What do you like about her? Is she even 18? I bet she’s a total bitch. Any girl that wears a thong to the beach has no self-respect.” We were all staring as she began to turn over untying her top to prevent tan lines. The beach was beginning to clear as the sun began to set. I wanted to hit on her but how do you pick up on a girl tanning face down? Minutes later she sits back up looking out at the water and turns her head right, facing me. I waved, and she gave me a snooty look and turned away. Her mom also looking in our direction saw me signal. Angered by her daughter’s response she slapped her on the head, and yelling. Then grabbing her by the arm and lifting her off of the sand, they headed our way. The girls were all laughing as her mom, arm in hand dragged her daughter over. I stood up wiping sand off my ass, not sure what was

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happening as her mom starts babbling in Portuguese, when the sunglasses peddler spoke up. “She is apologizing for her daughter’s behavior and is introducing you two formally.” We shake hands catching that the girl’s name was Mila. “I’m Pierce,” pointing to my chest. Peddler: “She thinks you are a rich handsome American and would like to offer you a date with her daughter tomorrow night if you accept?” The whole thing was extremely uncomfortable like an arranged marriage. Plus Mila had her head down which didn’t help. I accepted, like I had a choice. Our street peddler made the arrangements and told her where to meet me. When they walked off, the mom was still yelling at the daughter all the way to the street. Peddler smiling, “These young Favela girls are a sure thing, take her out and you got it brother.” The Brits, “Can we come to the wedding? So, how much is the dowry? Can you even imagine, Kim? Ugh.” I had to admit I thought it was pretty cool. I had never had women thrown at me for my wealth and nationality before. The Brits get up, adjust their swimsuits and skip towards the water. Saying goodbye to the peddler and thanking him for his mediation I followed them. We swim out past the break floating on our backs. I was thinking about where I would take her, how we would communicate, and could I take her back to the hostel? Was she even 18? I doubt she was using contraception. Was she a virgin? Maybe I should just try and get a blowjob. Would she give a blowjob? Man, so many judgment calls. The sky was dark when we came to realize what had happened. Unaware, the undertow within a matter of minutes had drifted us all out to sea. Normally this would not be concerning, just a minor swim back in but we had been out there for an extended period of time. The undertow was now too strong. Every attempt just pushed us out further. The Brits were beginning to panic and beginning to fade, I could see it in their pale faces. I tried to

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explain that you don’t swim straight in, but go sideways, take breaths and go underwater to avoid currents. It was too late, Kim was already holding up Molly, signaling anyone on the beach for help. Looking at the shore there was a group forming, pointing back and waving. We would now have to wait it out, but even strong swimmers have their limits. I put Molly's arm over my shoulder, but she kept pushing me under. I was about to let her go to save my own life when I heard what sounded like thunder. Molly was now passed out and did not seem to be breathing, Kim heaving up water. I looked up, to see a red helicopter with a metal cage swaying beneath. The cage lowered into the water. I placed both of them inside, signaling to take them up. I was going to climb in myself but there wasn’t enough room. Dripping, they lifted away flying towards shore at top speed with the cage swaying behind. That was it for my legs. I could no longer doggy paddle, so I put my head back moving my hands ever so softly closing my eyes, and I was out. I woke up to a man in red wetsuit yelling at me, I could see his lips moving, but no sound. I could feel the helicopter’s vibrations and the cold air on my wet skin, going in and out of consciousness. They say you have visions or see the light before you leave this earth. I didn’t see a fucking thing. The helicopter dropped us off on the shore. Pumping on my chest and giving me CPR, I came to regurgitating salt water onto the sand. Sitting up there was a crowd of people around us cheering, I smiled for a second, laid back down and that was the last thing I remembered. Both Molly and Kim survived. I slept for 20 hours straight at the hostel and completely forgot about my date with Mila. Whenever I would retell the story every Brazilian said the same thing: “Stupid foreigners, you should have known better.”

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Favela Funk Party

In Rio I’ve constantly heard three words over and over: Favela, Funk, Party. The Favelas are the overcrowded shantytowns nestled in the hillsides of Brazil. The devide is clear. Tourists and the rich live in the first two blocks back from the beach and the rest take the hillsides. In the late 18th century, the first settlements were called barrios, and they were where former slaves with no land ownership and no options for work lived. Like most of Latin America the countries languages and people were forced there. After Christopher Columbus fucked up and anchored in the West Indies in 1492, never having landed in North America he then returned back to Spain announcing his discoveries of gold to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. It was then that large settlements began setting sail to the New World. Portugal included, brought African slaves over to Brazil conquering and creating what today is the race and language of the general public. Before the first settlement called "Favela" came into being, poor black citizens were pushed away from the beaches and centers into the far suburbs on the hillsides, often with the best oceanic views. Most modern favelas appeared in the 1970s, due to rural exodus, when many people left rural areas of Brazil and moved to the cities to find work. Red skulls patched to their uniforms, each year gruesome shoot-outs between traffickers and The Esquadrão da Morte (police death squads) take place because once they go in there is no negotiating. The cocaine trade has plagued the favelas controlled by drug lords creating a community around it. These guarded areas protected by the people that live in them are a separate entity from Rio. Ungoverned. If police are forced to go in they are not always expected to come out. Local gangs ensure that individual residents can guarantee their own safety through their actions and political connections to them. They do this by maintaining order in the favela and giving and receiving reciprocity and respect, thus creating an environment in which critical segments of the local

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population feel safe despite continuing high levels of violence and drug trafficking. Favelas, which are off limits to foreigners, hold a large dance party once a month properly named Favela Funk Party. Funk Carioca, Rio’s Funk, is a type of music derived from Miami Bass. "Baile funk", in Brazil, refers not to the music, but to the actual parties or Favela Parties where it is played. I had made plans with the Brits before morning’s training. As a tourist attraction Stone of the Beach arranged a shuttle van to take us to and from the Favela Funk Party. On the way up we passed people in the streets leaning on cars with guns none of whom were able to see us through the tint. The event was being held at a large warehouse made out of sheet metal. Our guide was nervously herding us in a separate entrance upstairs to a private box that was clearly designated for tourists. The whole place smelled like piss and sweat with large ceiling fans circulating the stench, an all too familiar feel. The British girls came for buff Brazilian locals, not wasting any time slamming shots and taking place on the railing waving at the men below. As always the music was distorted and too loud, hype man center stage announcing raspy shout- outs. Security moving into the crowd picked out girls to go on stage lining them up and turning them around to display their booties as the crowds judged, prepping for some sort of contest. I could not believe the size of these girl’s asses except for a few out of place white girls whose fathers would have been so proud. Close to 30 girls lined the stage, one by one getting eliminated leaving only ten final contestants.

The Final Challenge: Compete giving men from the crowd the most sexual lap dances.

The Prize: A fifth of Cachaca Rio rum.

On the one hand I did not want to be in some segregated observation deck and on the other I knew going into any large crowd with pretty foreign girls is a recipe for disaster. Taking my hands Kim and Molly pulled me down

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the stairs to dance with the rest of the locals, making our way to the center.Everyone was getting down and dirty, hands on heels shaking their asses like low budget rap video. I don’t think I saw a single person dance face to face that night. When you’re the only guy in a group of girls you usually end up feeling like a bodyguard. They were grinding on each other, kissing and being provocative. I was getting sandwiched by the two when I see this light skinned girl smiling at me. She was really hot, like once in a lifetime hot. Like the type of hot you would put in your head during sex with your wife of 20 years kind of hot. Now I was not drunk, but needed to be cautious. I did not have my Brazilian friends with me to make sure I did not repeat my miscalculation at Lapa. Dancing half the beat, spacious around her like an invite, I walked over and introduced myself with what little Portuguese I knew. She smiled with a little giggle and put her arms on my shoulders. We were dancing so close I could feel her firm body locked against my own. I love dancing in foreign countries! Both parties rarely speak and it always becomes so physical. Just smile, nod, laugh, and leave the rest to chemistry. Turning around backwards pressing my hand down the side of her neck, past her breast, over her waist to the dresses cut. No Adam’s apple? Check. Actual tits? Check. Curvy ass? Check. I decided to give it another shot. Focusing all of my attention on her body language I had completely forgot about Molly and Kim. On my tippy toes to look around I spot the Brits back to back dancing with two Brazilians. I kept an eye on the girls until they eventually started making out, which was when I knew I could not protect them any longer. If you’re a girl, you’re probably thinking, “Oh my god, this is exactly when you should be helping them!” Wrong. I see your reasoning, but it’s Latin America. If you walk up to a Brazilian guy trying to take away the girl he is kissing, best friends or not, you might as well have challenged him to a duel. My little hard-bodied Brasilania was dancing up a sweat and wanted something to drink. I let her move

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through the line to order handing her 10 Real, equivalent to about $18 USD. My back turned towards the bar, I watched as the hungry hyenas feed on my limeys’ flesh. I must have been fully inebriated because it was not until then that I really noticed these amazing glowing blue spoke balls hanging from the ceiling. They looked like boulder-sized black light blue glowing sea urchins. Hard Body returned handing me my drink. Pierce: “What is it?” Hard Body: “Muy special! Indigenous alcohol made from local fruits.” We cheers.

Vrrmmmmmm. Head pounding I woke up in my boxers, in a concrete cinderblock room on a concrete floor. I looked around and could hear children’s voices through a crack in the wall and a faint rooster in the background. A door less entrance shed light into the room. Sluggishly getting to my feet, I stuck my head out and peaked around the corner. “Whaaat the fuuuuck? Where the fuck am I? Where are Molly and Kim?” There weren’t any connecting rooms, nobody around, just more concrete cinderblocks. Wiping my eyes, collecting my thoughts I tried to retrace my steps. I knew I was in Rio. I knew I went to the Favela Funk Party. But that was it. I went back outside and everything was rubble. My heart stopped at the first turn I made. It sunk in. Panoramic view as far as the eye could see there was nothing but shacks and a blue sea in the distance. I was, at the top of a fucking favela! How was I going to get to the bottom? I was truly fucked. I couldn’t breathe, hyperventilating going back inside the concrete room to sit down. Crying. What the fuck! Should I wait? Is someone coming back for me? Transient global amnesia. For five minutes, that felt more like forty, back against the wall I sat there trying to figure shit out. I had to go so I cautiously walked out through the windy streets hiding around each corner before taking the next step. This was going to take me all day, if I made it. Kids on top of roofs were laughing

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holding kites, women standing in doorways pointing at the nearly naked gringo. I asked one for help but she shooed me away and went back inside. Every time I stopped to ask for help they just closed their doors or stared silent. I did not care about the embarrassment I just wanted to get out of there in one piece. I had seen the movie Touristas and did not want my kidneys sold on the black market. I came to a fork in the road. I chose the one that went downhill, but it only led to a dead end. Walking back up I was confronted by a group of teens, the oldest of whom was loosely carrying a pistol and another with a large metal pole. They were laughing, tapping each other, and getting closer. I put my head down and tried to pass but they formed a barricade. The second I lifted my head they pushed me to the ground. “Help me!” I cried, but they just laughed harder. The scariest people are those who have nothing to lose. I had lost all strength, endurance and could not think clearly. One of the teens used his pistol to nudge me in the shoulder, saying something in a very nasty delinquent tone. Through a series of hand gestures I tried to explain that I clearly did not have anything to give, pointing at my underwear, but they just kept laughing becoming more violent, forming a circle and pushing me back and forth. I was so weak that I didn’t think I had any more adrenaline left. I was standing there with my hands up when the oldest of the group steps up and pressed the tip of his pistol to my temple. I knew I had to make a decision. I promised myself that I would never die point blank. Inside my head I thought to myself: “You’re going to die, in the back ally of a fucking Favela and no one will ever know!” I had been training Jiu-Jitsu for the last six weeks. The time was now. I swipe at the oldest in mid-sentence, my right hand pushing the gun away, letting off a shot before knocking it down to the ground behind me. I leaned down and picked it up. Pointing and screaming, “Back the fuck up!” they all took two steps back furious. I think I was more in shock than they were that it actually worked.

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“Back the fuck up! Back the fuck up!” I slowly moved away then turned and started running. In full sprint I could hear their bare feet against gravel chasing me. I could not stop running using every last bit of endorphins my synapses could trigger. Ahead was a cinderblock wall, I set my foot hopped up and over onto a roof slicing my thigh on the tip of a metal rod poking out. I did not feel a thing through the pounding adrenaline rush. I ran zigzagging across the tops of houses before lying down to hide. I sat down in a small arch behind a chimney surround by hanging laundry. I had lost them for now, but I was sure they would be looking for me, and the gun. The pistol in my hand was a lot heavier than expected, a small 9mm with the serial number scratched off. I could not stay up there for long. Throbbing, now feeling the pain, blood was gushing down my thigh, my feet scraped with small pebbles imbedded in the soles. It was bad. Real bad. I needed to wrap something around my wound fast before I bled out too much so I took a shirt drying off the string. In the window, another older women who saw me immediately waddled out of her shack. She was about to shout at me when she saw the blood trail. I climbed down, feet unable to touch the ground. She seemed to know exactly what had happened to me, without a word she ushered me inside. We were from different cultures, but my scared face of disparity crossed all boundaries. She brought me to the kitchen, yelling at me not to drip on her floor. In the adjacent room an old man sat in a rocking chair chewing something and watching a game show without even turning around. Pushing me down into a chair she yelled out for someone. Her house was warm and smelled of spaghetti sauce. Pots stacked on the concrete kitchen counters while a cat walked back and forth on the windowsill. Faint, I couldn’t get myself to stop looking at the gash. I was close to passing out. My head was slung when someone pulled it up by my forehead. A young girl stood at my feet with a stack of folded clothes and a metal bucket full of water. Lifting my arms and helping me put on a shirt, she asked in broken English, “What’s your name?”

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Parched, I replied, “Agua, Agua.” It had been easily 18 hours since I consumed anything. She fetched me a glass as the older women sat down aside the kitchen table and took out a box of sewing supplies. “Aw, Fuck.” My worst nightmare was coming true. I began to weep again while sipping the water dripping it on myself, and then full on crying. Not even religious I started asking God for forgiveness. The young girl walked up to me mixing a pitcher. I took a fork from the table and bit down on the wood handle with all my might. She closed her eyes and poured it onto my leg. I would have screamed but I didn’t want to give out my location. She then lit a match to a candles wick, placing the needlepoint under changing from red to blue. After watching her string a long black thread through the hole, she told the girl to hold down my legs. Closing the wound hurt more than opening it. After sewing me back together, the young girl took me to a room and laid me down on a bed, which I suspected was her brothers by the soccer sheets. I had similar baseball covers as a child, which comforted me, falling asleep in seconds. Groggy, I sat up again confused as to where I was. It was night now, and the house was illuminated by dozens of small candles on the windowsills. I tried to get up, putting my feet on the ground. I remember the concrete being so cold on my soles. Standing up, the pain shot up my body and I went lightheaded and passed out again. In the morning, trying again, limping through the hall I found the family in the living room arguing. They all turned to me. It was clear they had heard in the community about the incident and how the kids in the favelas were looking for me. The father was yelling at my seamstress and pointing at me with the gun in his hand. There was another man in the room now, taking orders he came up and pulled me out the house. I struggled but when I looked at the mother and she nodded, I stopped. He opened the latch to his truck bed instructing me to lie down, placing a blanket over to cover me. Where were they taking me? The ride

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took 40 minutes, all turns. Coming to a halt, I hear the driver’s side door unlatch and then slam closed. Yanking the blanket off me the guy pointed to a subway sign. Closing the truck bed, he put a small bill in my hand, and then angrily yelled something before getting back in his truck and speeding off. Taking the subway, I got back to the hostel, gathered my belongings, changed clothes and slid a note under Molly and Kim’s door. I needed a real hospital, I needed my country and I needed to get the hell out of Rio. At the airport I bought an, “I heart Rio” tee shirt and wrapped it around my leg falling asleep the second the fasten seat belt sign came on. I didn’t even remember Hard Body until days later. Moving back home was way harder than moving abroad. When you move to a foreign country you expect everything to be different, when you return you expect everything to be the same. Friends, family, lifestyle, hometown. But upon my return, I saw that nothing is ever as it once was. Life goes on with or without you. Physically I had healed, but my time in Rio took a toll on me. I would miss my friends. As much as I appreciated the beauty and the people of Brazil, I would not have survived another month. I needed to cut it off. Time to reflect, get my head straight, and gain some normality. Rory was still in prison, his money still in my possession. Large standstill stashes divided among safety deposit boxes, Frosty the Snowman, and an account in Barbados that I left for Damian. I wrote to Rory, staying away from the subject. Hanging out with stoners in high school and watching too much Gangland, I knew that the government reads all incoming inmate mail. I signed off, “Hope all is well, I will take care of you upon your return.” It was still a recession, and unemployment was at 12% with Occupy movement forming at all major cities. I had dough to blow, but first needed to find a job before I could touch it. If I am bored and unemployed I will splurge. Remember, if you are not a trust fund baby or a lottery winner, the

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government will never believe your spending without an alibi.

After a week recovering in a suite at the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Blvd, I read online the following headline. Two British Law students arrested in Rio for insurance fraud. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My two British companions, as sweet as they were had faked their robbery after Iguazu to get more money to travel. How did they get caught? Apparently, they checked into “Stone of a Beach” with the same fucking passports that were supposedly stolen. The judge, despite the girls’ parent’s best efforts, made an example out of them. Five years in a Brazilian prison.

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Part 5 Tossing Teddy

Growing up my grandmother was obsessed with gardening, especially her deep red roses which outlined her white picket fence. Throughout the years I would hear her sighing after discovering her precious roses had been yanked from their bushes, until I got to the bottom of it and found out who the culprits were. It turns out my very own friends were snatching them up at night for their girlfriends. Cheap asses. Up until my junior year I was part of the Venice High Debate Club which took trips to Washington, D.C. twice a year to compete. In our delegation there was this girl, Kayla. Oh Kayla. It was love at first sight. I was obsessed, but never could muster up the confidence to talk to her at our delegation’s meetings. Kayla was so cool and hip, skinny and tan, and had a perfect complexion with a smile that made me melt. But really the hottest thing about her: She could debate! Man, could this girl debate. Even if she were wrong she’d still win the crowd. During school I was always too scared to say “Hi” to her. I would literally turn the opposite direction in the hall when she walked my way. That’s how bad it was. She didn’t even know I existed but I was determined to change all that. With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, it would be the perfect opportunity to make my move. Valentine’s Day to most people revolves around flowers, candies and cute stuffed animals. It’s a day of expressing love and romance. Traditionally the real story begins with the Roman Priest: St. Valentine. At the time of Valentine, Rome was under the rule of Emperor Claudius, who persecuted the church and forbade the marriage of soldiers as he felt unmarried soldiers fought better than those with family commitments. Valentine a believer of love and the sanctity of marriage led star-crossed lovers, deep into the woods, in the dead of night to get married in secrecy. Valentine was eventually caught, tortured and martyred for performing the marriage ceremonies against

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the command of Emperor Claudius. One of the men who were to judge him in line with the Romans was a man called Asterius, whose daughter was blind. Valentine was believed to have prayed for and healed this young girl with such amazing effect that Asterius himself became Christian. The story continues on that the last words he wrote were in a note to Asterius' daughter on her wedding day inspiring today's romantic message by signing it, "from your Valentine.” Valentine has since come to be known as the patron saint of lovers. 5th period I had a class with Kayla’s best friend Melanie, who was lazy, ditsy and always asked to copy my study guides. She knew I liked Kayla, so I made her pinky swear she would keep my plan a secret. A friend of mine who worked at the Santa Monica Farmers Market had a wholesale license to buy flowers in bulk at the downtown Los Angeles Flower Market on Wall Street between 7th and 8th street, off skid row.

The Plan: 1) Write a love letter 2) The morning of Valentine’s Day go down to the Los Angeles flower market at 5am and by 500 long stem ruby red roses. 3) Sign off “Saint Valentine”

500 roses is a bitch to haul so I set it up with my buddy who was the JV assistant soccer coach to force the freshman newbie’s to carry the bushels to Kayla’s homeroom. Before school I instructed the newbies to scatter the roses all over her desk to the point where it was hardly recognizable. Standing down the hall I waited, watching kid after kid pile into the class including Toni and Autumn, the two bitchiest girls in school. Melanie thought it was pure genius and told me the two girls hated Kayla for no reason at all and she loved the idea of her taking away their attention. With her locker number I slipped my love letter inside the vents singing off, Saint Valentine.

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I was so nervous, my heart felt like it was beating out of my ribcage. She was going to get what every high school girl wanted, for every girl at school to be jealous with envy. When I saw Kayla coming down the hall I hid behind a row of lockers. I waited for a yelp of joy, nothing. Her homeroom teacher Ms. Fox arrived seconds later and by the tone of her voice she was not pleased. I stood with my left ear pressed against the door listening to them argue when Kayla runs out in tears almost knocking me over. Fuck! By 3rd period word spread throughout campus that Kayla had been sent to the principal’s office, and gotten Saturday school because my gift was so disruptive that students could hardly get to their seats and focus. I felt terrible. My intention was not to get her in trouble. I fucking ruined it! At lunch I saw Kayla sitting with Melanie at their usual spot in the quad. I walked up, “I am really sorry about today. I just wanted you to know I think you’re great and I’m so sorry I got you in trouble. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” She began yelling at me so I turned and walked away completely crushed. The next day at lunch while I was playing catch with my friends on the baseball field I see Kayla walking in my direction. Oh fuck, I really thought she was about to throw her soda in my face. Kayla: “Hey Pierce, can we talk?” Leaving we walked towards the bleachers and sat down. To my surprise she began to apologize saying Melanie had told her everything and how it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done and the best part, both Toni and Autumn did not get a single rose that day. We bought pizza and sat on the lawn watching the track team. She began to open up and admitted one summer having a crush on me at a Big Bear Lake summer camp. From then on we were inseparable. Well, at least until our terrible break during our first year in college at different schools. She was my first true love and I knew from the bottom of my heart that someday we would be together again.

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Coming back home for summer after completing my sophomore year, my parents were always on my ass about getting a job. I had money from DJing and money laundering for the fraternities and really could just have chilled surfing everyday but both grandparents having MBA’s considered anything relaxing counterproductive. I really wanted something that required minimal work and would give me enough free time to spend with Kayla, once I won her back. Riding my long board on Wilshire Boulevard on my way to get a Godmother sandwich from Bay Cities Deli, I passed by a florist with a window sign “Delivery Boy Wanted”. I stopped in. What the hell, right? As I mentioned Kayla and I had a horrible breakup trying to do the whole long-distance thing. It killed me that even though we were over we couldn’t be friends. Not only were we lovers, she was also my best friend and really the only person at the time I could confide in. Kayla: “It’s too hard, we’re just going to be right back where we left off, fighting again before school starts. I do care and love you so much, but I cannot go through that again.” She then said something that changed me forever. “You cannot date someone you cannot see.” She was right as girls usually are in this scenario. Looking at bouquets inside the store’s refrigerators, trying to pick out one to send her, a tall, skinny Persian man walks out with a thick accent. “Hello, hello! How may I help you?” Sounding like Apu from the Simpson’s. Pierce: “Hi, my name is Pierce. I saw the sign out front and am interested in the delivery boy position.” Apu: “Do you have a valid driver’s license?” pointing to the street at a black and white Dodge caravan that looked like Shamu from SeaWorld. Pierce: “Yes I do.” Apu: “You start tomorrow? 9am, yes?” One thing that I later learned about job interviews is to research the details of the position first. Switch it up and

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be the interviewer. I thought floral delivery was mostly just dropping flowers off to someone’s significant other. What Apu failed to mention was that I would be delivering bouquets to hospitals all around Los Angeles. In the mornings, I would go to the downtown L.A. Flower Market, pick up the order on each form, then return the flowers to the shop. After dropping them off, I would pick up his morning arrangements and take them to the selected hospitals on a list, which Apu had provided. My first drop on my first day was to Cedar Sinai hospital, three deliveries. I took the elevator up and then asked the receptionist where the room was and went to place them inside. In the first room was a guy in his 20’s, who had been hit by a car while riding his bicycle late at night on San Vicente Blvd in Brentwood. I know this because for some reason he wanted to tell me all about it. My second delivery was to an injured hottie, not much older than I having had her appendix removed. She was sitting with a nurse at her side and was ecstatic to see more flowers arriving. Jerry Springer was in the background. I sat them down below the television telling her to get well soon and to have a good day. I briefly considered stealing another bouquet just so I could come back to see her again. The final was to an old woman sitting by herself. I walked in and said hello, placing a large potted purple Orchid on her bedside table. She picked out the letter lying in the orchid’s vase. On my way out she asks smiling, “Young man, do you mind reading this for me? In my old age I can barely see a thing.”

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The letter read:

“Dear Mom,

I’m so sorry that Jeffery and I couldn’t make it out to visit you this month. It tears us apart to learn about your stomach cancer. We pray every day and hold you close to our hearts. Get well soon, Lily sends kisses.

Love, The Robertson family”

Day after day, this went on for several weeks. But the one good part about the job was that for each hospital, I was given an hour per delivery. Because the Iphone had just been invented, it only took 20 minutes per delivery, so I spent the rest of the time parked somewhere bumping hip hop and visiting my friends at their work in Shamu. It was my last week of work before returning to college and I was making a delivery to a children’s hospital in Southern California driving past the Third Street Promenade, in hopes of seeing some touristas out sightseeing with their parents, when I came to a stop at 4th and Colorado heading west. The light turned red. Turn signal blinking I make a left when a huge fat woman in a small 90s two door BMW convertible ran the red light, not paying any attention because she was on her cell phone. She t-boned Shamu going 45 mph, connecting right in line with my gas cap spinning the back end of Shamu around. She hit me with such velocity that the impact swung my trunk open, sending several hundred dollar’s worth of teddy bears and bouquets into the intersection. It was a stuffed animal massacre. Corduroy limbs, button eyes, and stitched hearts littered the streets. It was as if someone had been there and was inspired to go and make a Happy Tree Friends video. I was about to start yelling, but the woman had beaten me to it, claiming that I had turned in front of her. A large crowd was beginning to form, picking teddy

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limbs off the pavement. I was glad that there were witnesses, especially the parking enforcement officer on the southwest corner, who claimed to have seen the whole thing. Shamu had a large chunk bitten out of her, and would have to be towed away. I called Apu, and broke down the bad news. When he showed up, his hands were on the back of his head, looking at the ground and then the sky and babbling something in Farsi. I was about to say I was sorry when he walked up to me shaking his long crooked index finger in my face, “You’re fired! You little shit! You never work in flower business again!”

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Debriefing

Apu was right. I would never be a delivery boy again but I did land a job on Craigslist after Brazil working the graveyard shift at the Downtown L.A. Flower Market. 11pm-9am. With so much of the shift in silence I was able to get deep in my head and try to fight my own demons. Sleeping during the days and commuting at night was the perfect gig, completely detaching myself from society. The flower markets comes alive in the dead of night. At 2am lines of temperature controlled freight trucks drop off flowers coming from all over the world while workers prepped the stems to be sold by the 6am rush. I even saw Apu one morning and we played a little hide-n-go-seek trying to get me fired. It’s a mad house with everyone running around, yelling, pushing crates, filling white plastic buckets with a mixture of water and flower food sachets to house each variety for sale. It’s quite the sight to be seen. By 5am all three square blocks of wholesale houses are packed with florists bustling to get the fresh morning’s catch. Hard work, little shut eye, running around filling orders for each florist van that pulls up. I was always complaining about how tired and fed up I was when we would see the sun lighting up the sidewalks, but I shut my trap when my co- workers set me straight, “Everyone here are mostly illegal immigrants, family men, and working construction during the day.” Although it was tedious and the hours were exhausting, it gave me the raw perspective I needed to understand the Wholesale Flower Industry and what hard work really means. While working in fresh cut flowers I noticed that the Downtown Flower market had expanded a great deal since high school. 10 years ago in what was once a small warehouse was now several blocks of small shops selling everything from bouquets to ceremonial funeral crowns. Although these niche flowers shops are in demand, among them were endless stores with Asian owners selling really crappy old withered flowers. How could they stay in business? Knowing the industry and how conditioned our

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wholesale house was it made no sense how these small wholesalers could even pay rent or attract customers. I began to do some research and found out regardless of what people might say, I was right all along. They were in fact fronts. A visage that hid a simple yet familiar truth. Fronts for Asian Triad gangs’ money laundering. The gangs would give the storeowners money, claiming to have bought shipments of flowers, which the money is then deposited into an account becoming legitimate. Seeing the flower industry from the corporate perspective to the hands of the consumers was a journey all on its own. Anyone who thinks it’s all smiles and smells would be in for a rude awakening. It’s an industry full of high demand, instability, and politics. After four months of being a vampire the manager of the wholesale house came up to me on my breakfast break sitting on wooden shipping crates with a proposition. Boss: “Pierce, I was contacted by a good friend of mine in Ecuador. The government is losing its free trade agreement in 2013 and The Ministry of Agriculture is looking for U.S. nationals to move to Quito to help with market entry strategies and exportation efforts for rose farms. I think you are just the man for the job. You’re a smart kid, very presentable, you know all the varieties, and you’re a hard worker. If this is something you would be interested in, please let me know ASAP. They are looking to fill the position by the end of the month.” My boss had given me two weeks to make my decision. I caught word that Rory has just gotten out and was looking for me, still living in Santa Barbara because he was on parole. I immediately reached out to him on Facebook thinking it was better than avoiding him, and after some minor back and forth we set up a time to meet. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him. But I was really messed up mentally and worried he might be as well. Plus, I owed him a solid 80k. I was able to get 55k in cash, which I duck taped to the inside of my car’s spare tire. Just driving around Isla Vista looking at all the students having the time of their lives made me want to go back to school. How

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simple life is as a student, when everyone is in the same boat. So simple, so innocent. Rory insisted that we rendezvous at a restaurant called Sharkeez downtown because the girl he was living with did not want any strangers coming over. It kind of felt like a trap but he layered it well. We met, hugging it out then silent at the table as we waited to order. I knew he didn’t want to talk about prison so I didn’t ask. Especially about, well you know. We finished our food, tapping my foot nervously thinking how I would explain being 25k short with no real job. Standing outside of his car smoking a cigarette, I let it out.

Pierce: “Yo, so I got most of your cut.” Rory sighs. “I don’t want anything to do with that dirty dough. The only reason I got clipped was because of that money.” Pierce: “Wait, so you don’t want your cut?” Rory: “Naw man, that money is cursed. I do appreciate you helping me pay for my attorney though and getting those videotapes to him. To be honest, when you stopped sending me mail I hated you. I felt so alone. But I get it. It’s hard to confront and relive the pain every time your pen touches the paper. As far as I’m concerned, were good. I’m starting fresh. I have a stable job and a girl who loves me. I need to get my life together. The money is yours. Use it to do the same.” We hugged it out and said our goodbyes. That would be the last time I’d ever see Rory. Whatever path he took I hope he found happiness. It’s weird how many people in life you meet and the experiences you share, but in the end sometimes that’s all they are. Memories.

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Part 5 Why Roses Have Thorns

People are drawn to the beauty of a rose, falling in love with its vibrant colors and scent becoming infatuated with its symbolism. We humans often times fall in love with the people that we’d least expect. It seems unfair that the people we fall in love with are not always the right ones and rarely do you ever see them coming. In the beginning, love is beautiful, awe-inspiring, fun and exciting. It glows with such bright beauty in the first few moments that it appears to be strong and immortal but there are so many elements of love that can be deceiving and afflictive. Roses like humans have no real predators, other than pests. They have thorns which many people falsely believe are there to prevent herbivores such as cattle and rabbits from eating their pedals. Shakespeare once said, “A rose by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet”. As with love, people perceive roses based on its beautiful exterior when it really is just a mask to cover the pain one feels when pricked by it. After tying it up with Rory and re-evaluating my list of the pros and cons, the pros won. It was time for a new chapter, a new beginning. I took the job offer abroad and would be moving to Ecuador at first of the month. I hated living this day-to-day bullshit not being able to tell anyone what had happened to me. Keeping it all tucked away inside. The world as I remembered it had changed. Unrecognizable. Abroad you can start fresh. Changing whatever you don’t like about yourself is as easy as buying a ticket and getting on the plane. Cheesy, but the hardships I had encountered, though scarring as they were, molded me into the man I am today. I was lucky to have made it out alive from both Argentina and Brazil, and now yet again, it felt like Latin America was pulling me back in. The Wednesday that I landed in Quito, Ecuador the President was kidnapped. Not by some cartel for a huge chunk of ransom money, but by his own fucking police.

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Ecuadorian Army Special Forces had to eventually storm the hospital where President Rafael Correa was being held and rescue him after a long standoff that left two policemen dead, and dozens of others seriously injured. From the moment I stepped out of the airport in Quito, I could hear people protesting in the streets. A defiant Correa condemned the police rebellion as an attempted coup. He was kidnapped after a nation wide police strike to protest a new law that eliminated a bonus of 25k USD they would receive after 25 years of service. Tear gas was thrown through protesting factions and Correa was blaming supporters of Lucio Gutierrez, the former president of Ecuador for the attempted coup. After dozens of robberies and lootings were reported during the strike, new police units were deployed on the following day and claimed immediately to have made several arrests, but the security on Friday was far from stable. Schools and universities remained closed and many Ecuadorians stayed home, fearful of the lawless environment. Tourists were highly advised to consider postponing all future visits. Everything everywhere was on lockdown. Ecuador was already a politically unstable country with seven presidents in the past 13 years, three of them overthrown in coups. The current President is considered a dictator by close friends and a business partner to Venezuela's Left-wing President Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's President Evo Morales. With his back against the wall and rapidly losing support, the only real support the President had was from the lower class who he had mind warped to believe he represented their best interests. The educated elite and other opponents began accusing him of trying to suppress freedom of expression with aggressive takeovers of TV stations and newspapers, as well as new legislation to place controls on media coverage. In a nation where the vast majority of people live below the poverty line, the two- faced Correa was making millions in personal business deals on the side each year.

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ATPDEA

Ecuador meaning “equator” produces 1/4th of the world’s roses. It is also one of the only countries in the world with every microclimate allowing it to grow all breeds, shapes, sizes and color varieties. Its rich fertile soils, diverse climate, high altitude, and sunlight that lasts up to 12 hours each day make it the epicenter of agriculture. In Ecuador there are roughly 500 rose farms located primarily in Cayambe and Cotopaxi the highest active volcano all whom sit comfortably around 10,000 ft. Rose farms are a vital industry for the Ecuadorian economy. Columbia and Ecuador’s roses combined account for 80% of the roses sold in the United States. The revenues gained by taxes paid by rose growers have allowed the country to improve its infrastructure. Tens of thousands of jobs, hundreds of million dollars in sales, plus the taxes from rose growers have helped build schools, roads, modern irrigation systems, and proper worker practices. Airports and transportation have been developed just so that a rose that is picked today in Ecuador can be in the air ready for delivery within 72 hours. One of the most surprising facts about roses is that they’re all grown indoors. Driving out to the farms, I expected to see fields of roses but they were all grown in buildings called hothouses. Like growing marijuana indoors farms build these to control the humidity, temperature, sunlight, pollination, crossbreeding, and pests. The difference between greenhouse and hothouse is glass. Large metal pole structures covered in white translucent plastic tarps lined the entire hillside. It looked like a science contamination zone. The rose industry is a perfect example of how the benefits of free trade, globalization and low trade barriers have allowed Ecuador to exploit its comparative advantage in the growing of roses and enabled the country to emerge as one of the world's largest rose exporters. Ecuador’s private sector have only just begun putting pressure on President Rafael Correa to make a

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concerted effort to improve trade relations with the U.S., for fear that his decision to grant diplomatic asylum to Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, will have negative repercussions. Specifically, the private sector is worried that the US will terminate Ecuador’s trade privileges under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA). Most Ecuadorian exports also enter the United States duty-free under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, which was designed to encourage economic alternatives to drug trafficking. Ecuador has been taking advantage of ATPDEA while it can, as both Colombia and Peru now have adopted Free Trade Agreements. Remember the scandal when Obama’s secret service agents got in trouble for not paying Colombian prostitutes? They were there for Obama’s free trade agreement offer. The ATPDEA preferences are due to expire in 2013 and there is absolutely no chance, to renew it unless Correa somehow loses elections, which he never does because they are rigged. Ecuadors GDP heavily relies on exports. Its main industries include roses and other cut flowers, shrimp, fish, gold, bananas, plantains, coffee and recently oil. This sudden price hike would drastically affect the economy and its ability to compete in the global market place. In the past, Correa has repeatedly stressed that he has no desire to strengthen relations with the U.S. for an extension of ATPDEA. The dictator feels that ATPDEA is not a gift from the U.S.; instead it is something they were forced into in the fight against the narco trafficking in their territories. U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges was asked to leave Ecuador for commenting on a cablegate leak detailing alleged corruption in President Rafael Correa's government. It detailed how the U.S. Embassy reports indicate he used his position of power within Ecuador to extort bribes, facilitate human trafficking, pocket public funds, control investigations, persecutions of corrupt colleagues, and engage in other corrupt acts for personal enrichment.

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Chiva

Being an expatriate often means a higher standard of living, but at a price. Part of the employment incentive for moving to Ecuador was that the hiring executive was going to set me up in the most amazing apartment I have ever lived in. A brand new 14-story apartment complex called Metropolitan Park in the ritzy part of northern Quito built by the real estate monopoly Uribe & Schwarzkopf. This real estate group was taking on dozens of projects after catching word that the old Mariscal Sucre airport would be moved to Tababela parish, a valley east of Quito, allowing them to build skyscrapers which were once restricted. Uribe & Schwarzkopf had an interesting forward approach. Let’s say you are a company that manufactures windows. Your company would then in exchange for supplying the glass get two units in each complex worth approximately $150,000. This internal industry coercion allowed Uribe & Schwarzkopf to move projects along, without waiting for investor’s checks to appear and clear. My office was also in a prime location in Northern Quito, right on Amazonas. My boss’s wife, a native Ecuadorian, ran the bakery below. The office was shaped very much like a boutique advertising agency with sales & marketing, creative, secretaries, and the ringleaders, my boss and I overlooking everything. I was hardly qualified but acted as such. After beefing up our marketing team, our company hired a chef to cook breakfast and lunch for everyone. Fresh fruit that I had never seen before with coffee and warm pastries from the bakery were served daily. The cook, Andrea, always gave me the death stare because I never would eat the intestines, stomach and other organs. The bakery staff was small with about 10 workers, all of whom were women. On my very first day of work my boss’ wife sat me down to lay out some ground rules. Like most marriages the wives wear the pants in the household. Beyond what applied to my job description the number one rule was: Do not sleep with any girls working in the bakery.

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She explained how having a handsome foreigner on the premises would be distracting to such vulnerable young, single women. Her pep talk only made things worse. Having someone tell me what not to do only makes me want to do it more. I probably never would have even made a pass at any of them but I am a sucker for vulnerable women that are “off limits.” That’s like telling a stock broker, “Hey, I just wanted to point out that insider trading is very easy, you can make millions and everyone here can help you, but if you do it and get caught, you’ll get fired.” When I was not at meetings at the farms I would be sitting at my desk feeding the pipeline, tradeshows, wholesalers and strategizing. It was so tedious and tense that I would stand up after every ten calls and stretch. My desk was adjacent to a window that looked into the production room and I would constantly peek in to watch the girls prep the food dressed like surgeons. None of the production girls were hot but one was so adorably timid that I couldn’t help but bother her. Whenever passing by at work she would just walk by with her head down and wouldn’t respond even when I said, “Hello.” During lunchtime I would always try to spark a conversation just because I knew it made her uncomfortable. I later found out she was obsessed with punk rock music by sneakily listening to her iPod when she went to the bathroom. Surprisingly the genre is very popular in Latin America. Since I had friends that were into metal I used that as my opener. Her name was Catalina. After a few weeks against Catalina’s will we became friends and found out she also had an 8-year-old daughter taking English in grade school. She was a poor, hardworking single mother. One day at lunch while complaining about the gross quinoa pea soup Andrea made, I offered to give her daughter English lessons in exchange for a promise to practice Spanish with me. She smiled, at first turning me down but when her daughter failed an exam she complied. Two times a week she would come to the office before work and I would sit there with her daughter reviewing her homework. My boss’ wife, would

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walk by giving us dirty looks. One day Catalina comes up to me when I am leaving the office, “Senior Pierce, I am very sorry but we no continue, thank you for your time.” She said abruptly. She explained how, “My job is my only source of income and if I lost it, my daughter and I would be forced out onto the street.” Since I lived close and had no set schedule, I agreed to continue to tutor her daughter an hour before work two times a week. One morning, lying in bed the room started shaking violently. Ecuador is built on a geographical fault, which lies on the seismically active area known as the Pacific Ring Of Fire. These jumps of seismic activity trigger earthquakes and volcanoes to form. Mix that with a new apartment building, all the fresh paint splintered with one good tremor. Being the perfectionist that I am when it comes to my abode, I called the landlord and ordered to get the entire place repainted. My office had a few guestrooms attached to the back for visiting clients, so the week of the painting, I crashed there. That Friday night after getting back from a farm, I hit the office lights on to find a small letter tucked into the seam of my door. “Chiva Manana?” it wrote. Fiestas de Quito is a weeklong celebration commemorating the foundation of the city. Bullfights, parades, flamenco dancing, concerts, and “Chivas.” Chivas are hollowed out party busses with open bars and blasting music. I had seen these all over town but surprisingly had never been on one. I made the call to Catalina. I could tell she was already liquored up yelling over the line, “Basillica Cathedral 10pm” over and over. When I got to the ancient gothic church that looked like something out of a horror movie I could see a half a dozen Chivas lined up out front. I spotted Catalina and her friends sitting on a curb. I walked up and she must have just been telling her friends all about me because they all jumped up introducing themselves with the girls whispering in each other’s ears back and forth. We took some swigs out of a mystery jug that could have only

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been dragon’s piss, paid our five dollars, and hopped on board. On the Chiva, they were serving another native drink famous in Ecuador called Canelaso. Made from sugar cane moonshine, with lemon and cinnamon, that shit packs a surprising punch but leaves you with a horrible hangover. When I first got to Quito nobody even told me it was alcoholic. Vendors sold it all over in large vats on the corners. I was never a big coffee drinker, so I starting drinking Canelaso as a pick-me-up until a coworker told me about its proof. What made our Chiva stand apart from the others was that you could dance on the god dam roof! Whoever the owner was had ghetto rigged it with 4/4’s, nailed to the sides creating something of a railing. Catalina pulling my hand takes me around back. To make things even better there was no ladder to get up to the roof, but a thick hemp rope with knots tied every three feet to pull yourself up. I was about to suggest staying below noting the several hazards when four Latinas climbed up wearing stilettos. Gotta love women not being too dainty. The whole ride along Quito’s main streets took about two hours, stopping at the city’s historical monuments, dodging tree branches, and at each stoplight yelling at the top of our lungs in unison “Viva Quito!” Downing more and more swigs of Canelaso, Catalinas’ girlfriends were really starting to get on my nerves. Saying how cute we looked together, how it’s customary to kiss! “Be-si-to! Be-si-to!” We pecked, but I was not about to start making out even as hammered and attracted as I was to her. Back in the production room her clothes were always covered in honey but tonight she was dressed up in a tiny black skirt that could fit her daughter. Dancing on the way back to Cathedral Basillica, myself facing the back waving at cars with Catalina facing the front and the rest of the group, we were quiet towards each other the whole time. She just kept smiling and staring into my eyes. Catalina was mysterious compared to the girls from the U.S. who tell you their life story the first 20 minutes you meet them. It was time to make my move.

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Drunkenly, I leaned in for a kiss when Catalina’s face suddenly went bug-eyed grabbing my shoulders like a UFC fighter and throwing me to the ground. I heard a loud crack and saw the wood railing to my left splinter off, everyone screaming. On all fours on the roof, only a few feet above was a cement ceiling moving past quickly. The Chiva going at 30 mph had gone under a concrete over pass, and not everyone had ducked. The guy behind me died instantly splattering his brain upon impact. He was dancing just like myself looking off the back of the bus and never saw it coming, another two lay nearby comatosed. Hysterical and in shock, the rest of the group after moving out of the underpass tried to pick their friends up but it was too late. Chunks of brain matter spread over the bloody metal roof. Remembering my CPR/First Aid course from Big Bear summer camp, I pushed everyone off and yelled, “Get the fuck away!” knowing that anyone with a serious head injury should not be moved. The Chiva playing music so loud it never even stopped. We banged on the roof eventually pulling over to call the police and an ambulance. Sirens came flaring minutes later declaring one of Catalina’s friends dead at the scene while the others were rushed off on stretchers. Holding and comforting Catalina, I could feel her shaking in my arms. I couldn’t believe what had happened. I was sad for those who had died but at the same time, I felt alive. Not knowing what to do we grabbed a taxi back to the office. After convincing the buildings guards that she was cleared to come up to the office after hours I unlocked the front door and she took me to the production area. Opening the swaying saloon style doors we both were still high on the adrenaline. Taking one look at each other she pounced ripping my shirt off. I pushed her away and was about to tell her to think but I was so drunk and alive that I went for it. I holstered her up by her ass onto the table, pushing away honey jars. She picked one up and poured it on my chest licking it off. It was wild. I am usually more careful but it was so intense I forgot to put on a condom railing her on the table, her legs

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around my back, arms above her head silencing the hanging pots and pans. I was getting close to finishing but even as drunk as I was I knew better than to bust in a foreign girl in a foreign country. Hastily looking around the room I picked up an empty honey jar backed away and blew my load inside closing the airtight rubber seal. Out of breath, she got off the counter sticky, having made a huge mess. Silent and in shock, I left to go wash off, honey jar in hand looking at my desk buck-naked, then at Catalina in the window cleaning up. I knew I had made a mistake having broken the cardinal rule. Snapping out of it I returned to the production area still wiping honey residue off my chest, “So you want to go grab a shawarma?” Catalina was gone. Typically, I would have been offended but knew she was overwhelmed and had to get back to her daughter.

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Tripod

“Gringo” a foreigner or white man mostly in a derogatory sense but not always. Derived from the English words "green" and "go", the term has a long rooted history. The word refers to the foreigners that went to the Amazon Rainforest and exploited the nature for profit, taking all the "green" away. In other parts of Latin America, some people believe that the word "gringo" originated from the U.S. military’s presence who wore green army fatigue uniforms. The locals upset by their control told them to leave the land by yelling, "Green, Go!” That being said, mixed with homophobia can sometimes make it difficult to make friends of the same sex. I didn’t know a single soul when I moved to Ecuador. I didn’t even know what my boss looked like until my first day at work. In the United States I would have felt embarrassed, ashamed even, just standing alone at a bar. But staying home and watching pirated DVD’s every night was not an option. My first two months I took salsa and bachata classes, and went out to clubs by myself. Anything that kept me busy and help me meet new people.

Quito nightlife is split between three sectors: 1) The North: Large-scale clubs scattered around the city. 2) Old Town: Small hole in the walls off old colonial cobblestone streets. 3) Mariscal Foch: Grimy lawless Ecuadorian version of Bourbon Street.

Every single Wednesday I went to the same place, Bungalow. Wednesdays was ladies night, known to the locals as Gringo Night. Girls from all around the city would line up out front for the chance to meet foreign men and take advantage of “Ladies Drink Free before 11pm.” It was packed to the brim, hot and sweaty bumping to a constant mix of mainstream Top 40.

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Three Floors: Dancing on the first, lounges and patio on the second, pool tables and booths on the third. After attending week after week and befriending the owners, I was given a VIP access card. You’re probably thinking, “Wow, real baller man. VIP in Ecuador on a fucking Wednesday. Big deal, right?” This place’s popularity had built a queue of 200 people every fucking Wednesday, and that’s after it has already reached its 500 person capacity inside. This VIP card allowed me one friend and as many girls as I wished to skip the line, free of charge. Once inside we were then allowed to get two free drinks at any bar and a monthly tab without needing to put your credit card down every night. If there were a fire, everyone would die. Bungalow would often get so overcrowded that sometimes I would have to go out front just to get away. I didn’t smoke cigarettes, but for some reason in Ecuador I would often find myself buying single stoag’s and Chiclets from the child vendors out of sympathy. Whenever I saw a child on the streets, I felt the urge to help out and buy something from them but everyone told me not to give the children any money. That I was just fueling the fire by doing so. It turns out that these children were often the product of organized crime. Some were missing limbs from landmines left behind after the Ecuador Peruvian boarder war of 1941 while others say that were cut off by their rulers so foreigners would sympathize with them and give more money. Standing outside observing people haggling with the bouncers to let them in, I spotted two really cute girls in line huddling for warmth. I approached them and introduced myself, “Why are two girls as pretty as yourselves standing out in the cold?” Pouting they said, “They said no more girls allowed.” Pierce: “No more girls allowed? How sexist!” Natasha had almond colored hair, and was half Italian whose grandparents had moved here after World War II. The other, Mimi said she grew up in the countryside

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but had no interest in working at her uncle’s banana farm. I told them that I might be able to get them inside, but that they would “owe me one.” They thought I was just another gringo bullshitting them. Natasha: “Well they’re at capacity, let’s see what you got!” Pierce: “Follow me.” I give the bouncer a nod, he pauses some people in line that just showed him their ID’s, opens the red velvet rope and lets us through. Even though I knew it was going to work, I still couldn’t help but think, ”Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I lead them upstairs, giving hi-fives to everyone to exaggerate my importance. We get to the bar where I promptly order a round of tequila shots and a round of drinks without paying, they looked surprised and I knew I was in. We take it to the dance floor with all three of us linked hand in hand. Even if I didn’t get some from the two of them, the attention I was getting from other girls standing nearby would be enough to seal the deal otherwise. I danced between them, all of us singing the American songs out loud and asking me questions about some of the lyrics. They were both really into Lady Gaga, which made me want to ditch them, but when you’re abroad even the shittiest music seems to be acceptable. Thinking it was time to get these girls more liquored up to the point of there being a possibility of a trio, I signaled for another round and headed back upstairs. Having spilled half the drinks on people I was passing and almost getting in two separate fights with dudes wearing entirely overly ambitious V-necks, I finally make it back to the girls. Glasses above my head and dancing through the crowd I see Natasha and Mimi full on making out. WTF? Pierce: “You couldn’t wait until I returned?” Going in for a kiss they push me away. Mimi: “We’re so sorry, you’re very cute and sweet, but we knew that there was no way you would bring us in.” Confused, I take a step back, and looked at the two beautiful women who any man would kill to be between on a dance floor. “No entiendo”

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Natasha: “Somos Lesbianas” Normally, I absolutely despised girls who just act interested in men to get free drinks, but these girls had taken it to a whole other level of running game. I never knew any lesbians before. These girls weren’t into men at all. They felt bad, offering to buy the next round. I had to respect them. They got me, and as it turned out they were also really awesome. They told me that unlike Europe and the United States, homosexuality isn’t as well accepted in Latin America because of cultural differences and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. There was a definite negative stereotype about being gay. Sometimes even dangerous. Natasha confessed that for the last four years, she had been pretending to be in a relationship with a gay male friend of hers just so their families didn’t find out. When there is minimal sexual tension, you can really let loose and be yourself. To all, if you don’t have gay friends, get some. We ended up partying all night, and I was happy to occasionally pretend to be their boyfriends in exchange for the insane amount attention from other women in the club. From then on we referred to ourselves as the, “Tripod.”

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Ano Viejo

A toast. Unlike in the United States where people toast to champagne and count down the New Year with friends, Ecuadorians typically spend New Year’s with their family. Typically. Native traditions highlight the festivities, the most wild of which is “Viudas” which means, “Widow.” Men all over the country dress up in drag, parading through the streets and dancing in front of, and sometimes on top of, cars for money. It had been over a week when Natasha called me and insisted that I go with them to Montañita, the wildest beach town in Ecuador for New Year’s. Natasha: “A girlfriend of mine just backed out, so we have a bed and a ticket for you, but we leave tonight at ten.” Pierce: “I’m so down.” Mimi in the background yelling, “Tell him to bring white clothes that he can ruin!” I get to the bus station and see both of them, in sweatpants sharing headphones and they are ecstatic taking me by the arms. “Tripod! You promise to keep us safe, right?” The bus was actually surprisingly nice. Unlike a lot of the buses in Ecuador, it was missing a distinct “scrunched together” feeling. The bus had a TV’s, personally assigned reclining seats, blankets, air conditioning, working windows all very optional features for a bus in Latin America. Unfortunately, my ticket was not for a reclined seat, but a bag of rice nestled snugly up front next to the bus driver. Pierce: “Perdon Senor! How long to Guayaquil?” Driver: “10 hours.” Fuck. After 13 long hours on the rice bag, we get to the crowded Guayaquil bus station where we were met by tons of holiday travelers who had the exact same agenda as us. In Guayaquil, you cannot make reservations in advance. It’s first come, first serve. Ticket window woman: “All of the buses for the next six hours are full, how many tickets?”

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I was losing hope and patience, when Natasha assured me that we could squeeze into a local’s van with several others and for a fee they will take us to Montañita. In the parking lot lines of vans with their doors open sat waiting, each with their own hustler trying to convince you to choose them. Mimi stops at one that dropped its price to $12. With a now seemingly ridiculous lack of apprehension, I extended my arm towards the complete stranger’s van, gesturing, “Ladies first.” I followed them in and found a seat, underneath a surfboard another patron had slid in over the headrests. “Great, just great,” I exhaled to the Tripod’s giggling. Everywhere we stopped there were crazy hot promotional girls passing out flyers, and samples for one spot to another. Everyone on the van was very cool, all pitching in immediately, sharing their excitement about the weekend and passing bowls and bottles around the van communally. We were stopped twice at separate military checkpoints each time having to cough up some cash to the soldiers to let us by without inspection. The landscape changed quickly from humid, to tropical scenery, to arid desert. Montañita, which means “little hill”, is a small fisherman’s town located on a string of beaches along the Ecuadorian coastline Ruta del Sol. It previously didn’t appear on maps until it gained popularity from the fishing and surfing industries during the 80’s and the inevitably trailing tourism. Our hotel was small and colorful. We had a “Doble”, a two-bedroom room, with a balcony overlooking the beach in the town’s center. It was New Year’s Eve and there was not a single room left. At the time Montañita itself was an eight square block beach town with nothing but hostels, restaurants, clubs and bars. That’s it. We ate a quick dinner with fish, rice and patacones (fried plantain) and then headed back to our room to get ready. During the nearly two hours it took for the girls to get ready, applying makeup, doing their hair, changing outfit after outfit, they finally decided to wear close to nothing at all. White bikini tops and tight white yoga shorts with flats. I wore white dress shirt, light kakis and sandals.

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We hit the streets and went throughout the town, looking for good places to get the night started. Perpendicular to the beach are long narrow streets lined with dozens of bamboo huts, all serving the same drinks and fighting for your business by shouting out personalized deals, “One dollar mojitos pour till you shout!” “Buy two for your lady friends and yours is free!” Drinking in public is legal in Ecuador, so I walked around all night with a bottle of Bacardi securely attached to my hand, taking swigs and water-falling girls everywhere we went. The two legs of my Tri-pod wanted to dance so we stopped at our first location, an open-air club on the main drag. Out front a viuda, in white dress and flaming red-hair comes up to me, hinting we should dance together. I look to Mimi, “Please get me out of here” I pleaded putting my arms around them. But my lezzies were getting such a kick out of it that they began egging him on. Natasha: “He is French, single and super gay!” Mimi: “You two look so cute together!” After dancing a few songs and taking too many photos we left dogging the viuda still out front. Holding hands and skipping along with the fervor of drunken 21st century explorers, we made our way down to the beach for the count down, where thousands of joyful people stood in white around bonfires, igniting Ano Viejos (piñatas stuffed with fireworks) before finally jumping over the burning bodies. The legend goes that by jumping over the burning bodies, you will rid yourself of last year’s troubles. Mimi had just done it then Natasha. I had finished off half my second Bacardi bottle when I decide to take the leap. I swig and hand the bottle to Natasha, “Get a running start and leap!” Right when I do, my last step stops short catching the sand and I go feet first straight into the coals. Jumping up and down rubbing my feet everyone is dying of laughter. I burned my soles pretty bad but being drunk and using abandoned cups with ice to cool down I soon forgot all about it. At the stroke of midnight the crowd went wild. Everyone kissing everyone around them. I looked around

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when Natasha pulls me into a three way. I made out with another girl and even came close to a guy on accident who in the moment thought I was game. Surfers ran out into the sea, boards above their heads to catch the first wave of the New Year. I shed a tear watching fireworks shoot into the sky joining the stars in all their clarity. For the first time in a long time, I felt at peace. Ecuadorians did not have time to be fake or put on fronts. They really couldn’t care less. That’s the problem with growing up in the United States, you expect too much out of life so instead of just enjoying it you compare yourself to others. Everyone in Ecuador waves, shakes hands, and shines sincere smiles. I felt at home and realized there wasn’t a better place to start a new life other than here. The food, the people, the culture, the customs and the connections I felt made me want to stay forever. Life here wasn’t spent on materialistic values, but focused on family and the community. Rich or poor, law-abiding citizen or criminal, I could finally be me and be free. No extradition. While feeling the entire world celebrating and looking out at the serene water, I imagined settling down here. It was a new year and a new start. No last call. It was Hola Ola time. The towns gem. $20 all you can drink wristbands. Fire dancers, booty shaking, and girls standing on the bars pouring head shots was the first sight I saw upon entering Hola Ola. My kid in a candy store syndrome was kicking in again. I always do this, hitting on girl after girl within close vicinity forgetting about the one before. They see me, flirting with another, canceling each other out one by one and by the end of the night I leave alone empty handed. I thought to myself, “Calm down Pierce, have a drink, dance with the Tripod, be selective.” I tried to add a helping leg to the tilting Tripod but they are already in full make out mode. Natasha is so drunk that she pulls out one of her tits so Mimi can lick it. I just stand there as a human shield with my arms, giving all the guys around us the evil eye. Patiently leaning against the girls bathroom door waiting for the two to do whatever it is girls do in

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bathrooms, I spot this smoking hot jezebel all by herself at the bar sipping a drink through a straw with a look of boredom. Didn’t surprise me. It’s not uncommon that the hottest girl in a club is often alone because everyone automatically thinks she is stuck up and going to turn them down. In the U.S., she would’ve been out of my league but it’s New Year’s in Ecuador and nobody wants to be alone on New Year’s. Flip the script. In a culture where all the guys are aggressive and machismo being the safe gentleman prevails. She saw me coming from a mile away and turned her head, ready to deny. I said, “Hello! My name is Pierce” sticking out my hand. She looked at it like I was asking for money. I moved in as if it was too loud to hear. Whispering in her ear, “Como estas? Eres Columbiana?”

A: I knew she was not Colombian but in South America Colombians and Argentinian’s are top shelf, so if you don’t know where the girl is from, it’s a great place to start.

B: Girls love a foreign guy with poor Spanish. People always think the more Spanish they know the better. Wrong. Who would you rather sleep with? A Latin girl who cannot speak a single lick screaming “Papi!” or a Latin girl who’s English makes her sound mentally retarded?

“Soy Gaudy” “Soy Pierce”

I had to ask this angel to dance. I might not have mentioned this before but I am a pretty decent dancer having been forced to take ballroom classes as a child, DJing in college, salsa lessons, all mixed with low gringo expectations. Done deal. We danced a few songs when Mimi came up to me concerned. Mimi: “Natasha is super fucked up, she cannot walk. Can you take us back to the hotel?” I turn to Gaudy, “I’m so sorry, I have to help my

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girlfriends get home safely. You understand right? Can you wait 20 minutes?” Gaudy smiled, leaned in and whispered, “You are the chosen one.” I jetted, carrying Natasha in my arms like a baby as she complained about random bullshit over Mimi’s dying laughter. I make it back to the hotel, helping them into bed and get undressed. Checking myself out in our rooms chipped mirror I come back out to see the silhouette of the two of them slowly hooking up underneath the mosquito net. It was dark, but Natasha’s back was arched and Mimi’s kissing the inside of her thighs.

Dissipated I debated:

A: I have two hot lesbians that are fucked up enough I might be able to squeeze in and have a threesome on New Year’s with the likely possibility ruining our friendship.

B: Return back to Hola Ola and potentially fuck Gaudy? Decisions, decisions.

I sat on my bed in silence still debating while watching Mimi go down on Natasha, then with all my might, I left. I made a compromise. If I don’t seal the deal with Gaudy I will run back, rip my clothes off and donk those girls down. In full sprint back to Hola Ola I turn the corner running into the same red headed viuda from earlier. Chest to chest, “Aaaah” I yelped in fear when He- She grinned. Shaking off disgust and regaining focus at Hola Ola’s entrance I quickly convinced the bouncer that “I had just left and forgot to close out my tab.” Clutch. Inside, I must have looked like I was trying to kick someone’s ass the way I was searching the perimeter for Gaudy. She was nowhere to be found. I was too late. “Fuck!” She had left with someone else, likeminded and determined to get it in on New Year’s. Moping back with my head down, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I must have seemed so desperate by the way I spun around.

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Gaudy: “Pierce, I thought you left me.” Smiling, she took me by the hand dragging me and walked us up to her friend who was shockingly even hotter than herself. “Rosalita, Pierce, Pierce, Rosalita.” Standing next to this bombshell was Stefano, an older gentleman who did not shake my hand. Upper class in a striped tank top and red Baywatch shorts Stephano thought he was the shit. He was mumbling something to Rosalita that seemed like an insult against me. It was obvious he did not want to be there in the first place and was trying to leave. Gaudy in my ear whispered, “We are going to go hang out at Stefano’s casa, is that cool with you? It’s a little far away but will be worth the trip!” We split up from the others walking to Gaudy’s car to drive to Stephano’s house. I hopped in thinking to myself: I fed this girl a solid three drinks and I met her at 2am is she ok to drive? I knew better than to ask such silly questions because everyone drinks and drives in Ecuador plus this girl already had an attitude and saying something like that could only hurt my chances of getting laid, so I kept my mouth shut. Once in her car she closes her eyes, stretches out her arm and turns the stereo on full blast. The music building up was Akon’s “Sexy Bitch”, and I turned and said “You’re a sexy bitch.” She smiles opens her eyes, and turns to me, and rips open her shirt, shoving my face into her breasts. After I submerge, I hear a rumbling. I looked up and pulling up were two large Iguana off-road vehicles. Caged ATV’s on steroids. Stephano yells out “Vamanos!” Gaudy quickly gets out. I panic, should I bolt? Was I about to get kidnapped? I slowly stepped out of the car with the intention of running at the first signs of capture. I had heard tall tale horror stories about beautiful women acting as bait for kidnappings. I watched as Rosalita hopped out of the other Iguana and got into Stephano’s. Gaudy taking my hand again said, “Come on, tonight will be unforgettable!” and gets in the empty driver seat.

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Cruising down the windy beach parallel roads, there was nothing but the headlamps and moonlight to show our path. We were 20 minutes out of Montañita when up ahead we see a set of parked military vehicles. It was a checkpoint barricade. I knew that both designated drivers were anything but. Great, we’re going to jail and now I am not going to get any, or maybe I will be saved from this possible kidnapping? Stephano pulls off the shoulder and without turning off the engine gets out arguing with the soldiers and using lots of hand gestures in the dusty headlights. The soldiers were acting very calm and seconds later Stephano shook hands with the commanding officer and jumps back in. The soldiers then moved the barricade and Stephano revving his engine peels off just short of crashing through a military motorcycle. Gaudy turns to me raises her eyebrows smiling, grabs my crotch and pops the Iguana into first gear. Five minutes later we made a quick right about one mile down the road onto another dirt path with nothing but brick walls lining both sides. Up ahead I could see a large wood medieval looking gate with two guards on either side holding machine guns. They moved aside and signaled to a small guard tower and proceeded to open the entrance. From the interior, although still very dark I could tell that it was a house and not a compound. I slowly unbuckled and got out with Gaudy walking ahead with a model strut. The ground was no longer dirt but paths of mosaic tiles winding through finely cut lawns. There were royal palm trees everywhere which was a good indicator that I actually was at someone’s house because they were not found at the beach, and growing up in California I know its pricy to have this many palms. Stefano raised his hands again like before with the soldiers turned around and said, “Welcome to mi casa. Please, please come this way.” Then smacking the ass of Rosalita he turned and moved ahead to lead along the path. Gaudy in arm, I needed to plan my escape route if anything were to go down but there were large stone walls surrounding the premises. I could see a large candle lit wood table ahead, female servants placing trays and

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lighting large metal torches. We all sat down. On the tray were all kinds of fruits, tostado (grilled seasoned corn cornels) glass decanters each a different color and an Ano Viejo Spiderman who also looked nervous. As I was going over everything in my head, I was interrupted when Stefano said, “Would you like some Locro?” a typical yellow potato soup that is a staple in Ecuador. I wanted to refuse, I was planning on having sex with Gaudy and didn’t want the sharts or bad breathe, but in Latin America denying food or not finishing is impolite. It was the four of us at the table but I could still see more armed guards patrolling in the distance. Stephano could sense my tension, probably because I was constantly looking over my shoulders at the guards. Stephano: “Do they make you uncomfortable?” Pierce: “Um, yea kinda” Stephano: “Don’t worry, they are here to protect us.” Inside my head: “Oh great, that makes me feel much better.” I was curious to find out exactly what Stefano did to afford such a palace. I mean fuck this dude had it made. When he asked me of my profession, I told him I was in the flower business. He said, “Yo tambien” to which the girls giggled. It was at that point that I was sure he was a narco trafficker. I have noticed in Ecuador that when meeting someone, the first questions are meant to determine who you know. It is all about trying to figure out if there are any connections. This was more important than what you do or where you went to school. Ecuador is a very small country and everyone always knows someone in common. I did not want to ask his surname, not because I wasn’t curious but because I thought it would be safer if I didn’t know it at all. He asked me if I knew five or six names of people in the flower industry. The only one I recognized was a big time player that runs a freight forwarding company out of Guayaquil. Figures. Seconds later Rosalita poured me a glass of whiskey and Stephano snapped his fingers once again and an older

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lady brought over another silver tray with a metal box with a mirror on top. He nodded his head and Gaudy opened the lid. Inside was what looked like short of a kilo of cocaine. I had seen a kilo in movies but never in person. It was smaller than I expected for some reason, no bigger than this book. Pulling out a small compartment, Rosalita takes out four shiny silver straws. I was in shock but before I could even say anything Gaudy was racking up lines while Stefano was rubbing his hands together like he was about to open a gift. Gaudy passed the box to Stephano but he insisted that since I was his guest I should be the first in line. I wasn’t really into cocaine. The only other time I tried it was in Buenos Aires under Chiquita Banana’s royal reign. As I mentioned earlier under these circumstances though, saying no could be worse for my health than saying yes. I took the straw from Gaudy and could feel how cold the silver was. I took one final look at them head down before I took the hit. This was no ordinary coke. Normally people told me they feel a burn and can taste a chemical drip before the cocaine even hits you. But this must have been some pretty high-grade personals. It was so clean and hit me instantly forcing me to close my eyes and lean back into my seat. Rubbing residue off my nose and sniffling everyone was laughing and I could hear Gaudy say, “Good boy” rubbing me on the back. Stefano: “You like Latin pussy? You ever touch tits like these before? Rosalita, show him your tits” and on call she whipped out her titties from her silk shirt. They really were amazing like a plastic surgeon showing off his work. So perky and positioned. After locro, which I ate with no appetite, and about 30 minutes of listening to Stefano bragging about himself he stood up, put his hands together and in Spanish said, “Pierce, we will never meet again. Happy Fucking New Year! Gaudy will take you home in the morning. I am going to go pound Rosalita's little pussy until I cannot feel my dick,” actually aiming his hands to his dick like the “Suck it” move from my childhood wrestling hero DX. I shook his hand and

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thanked him for his hospitality and he went into the house. The box of blow was still out on the table and Gaudy tuned to me, gave me the fuck me eyes, and took off her shirt. It was at this point I came to the conclusion that they were professionals. All signs lead to it. Was I going to have to pay up? I didn’t have any real cash. Was I just getting lucky since it was New Years? She then threw her hair back, took a knife and placed some coke between her breasts. She looked at me again, with a stare this time implying that I was to snort it off her tits. God, really? She was giggling like I was some boy toy she playing with. Slowly kissing me on the lips she takes both of my hands, stands up, turns around and takes me inside. Man she was really into leading me around. I was happy to follow though, but I had such a huge erection that there was no way I could hide it or tuck it under my belt. The front door was grand and made out of old repurposed wood. The interior design was definitely what I would have called “Drug Lord” white on white, deco furniture, hanging light pendants and a Buddha statue whose belly button was face height. Gaudy kept turning her head around to view my approval as if it was her house that she just finished decorating. Pierce: “Gaudy, where is the bathroom?” She points. Closing the bathroom door behind me I look in the mirror breathing deeply. I turned the faucet on as if to be doing something and started talking to myself aloud. “Is this bitch a prostitute?” I put my hands in my pocket looking for money. “34 dollars. Fuck! You got this, you are a handsome gringo. It’s New Year’s and she just wants to fuck. She is not going to charge you! You are a handsome gringo.” I took two locro anxiety shits in under two minutes, threw some cold water on my face and left before it became suspicious. Continuing the tour we trailed out back to the pool area surrounded in white cabanas. This motherfucker had candles in sizes that I don’t even know existed. Arms crossed standing at the pool, I had no idea what to do. I was silent, waiting for her to say something. Looking around, I

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hear something like strong wind, I squint out past the pool and I cannot believe my fucking eyes. The ocean. We walked around the pool to the cabana closest to the sand. I could now see the beach was private with a long dock and banana boat tied to the end. We sat down. Gaudy called out to one of the guards to bring us something snapping her fingers. I was sitting low, pretty fucked up staring at the stars. When I looked back Gaudy was fixing her bra and adjusting herself like most girls do, on her knees on the chaise lounge playing with her hair saying, “Do you think I am sexy Pierce? Do you want to fuck me? Do you want me to suck your little cock?” All this in English! I didn’t let the “little” part get to me. It was both humorous and fucked up that with all the English she could have learned; these were the phrases that stuck. She takes her right thumbs and starts swaying her hips side to side gently pulling down her skirt and panties. Shaven, nice. She started dancing and I literally thought for a moment I was dreaming. There was not any music playing but the sound of the waves crashing was music to my ears. She got on top of me and starts unbuttoning my white dress shirt. I couldn’t believe this was happening. She began kissing my chest then my stomach down to my pelvic muscles that form a V, all a while my fingertips gliding up and down her spine. Her skin was like silk and warm in the night air. I never really liked the whole gently touching a girl’s skin foreplay bullshit but I found myself hoping that I could do this to every inch of her body. I could tell she was getting ready to go down on me. Once she did I could not believe how talented she was. It was like something out of a porno. Not gently kissing the tip or starting slow like most girls’ think is sexy. Gaudy was sucking my dick really fast in all directions using her hands to not neglect my balls. I was a little nervous she was going to try and stick a finger in my ass but at this point anything goes. Concentrating, I had my eyes closed for a second when I heard, "Monsieur, aqui esta bien." It was a server asking me if it was ok to put a tray down. I didn’t say

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anything but gave him a go away hand like you would give a roommate who walked in on you. It was fucking uncomfortable especially after I saw other guards in the background watching, talking, machine guns in hand. Gaudy stops momentarily, wiping off her mouth and picking up the box of coke. Taking out a small spoonful, “Have you ever done this before?” Then with the spoon she slowly sprinkles the cocaine on my erection. “I love how I cannot feel it in my throat.” Proceeding to deep throat, and practically gagging herself on my cock. She had the hugest firm ass and was sucking my dick like it was her life’s mission, like a bomb would detonate in her family’s house if she did not satisfy me to the fullest. After about 15 minutes with no stopping except to jerk me off and look into my eyes and say, “Que Rico, you like it papi?” I finally came and she swallowed it like a champ continuing to suck afterwards as if to make sure she got every last drop so that I wouldn’t get any crusting on the inside of my boxer briefs. How considerate. She clearly was into the whole thing and thinking that I was some rich good-looking gringo had spawned it all. We laid back both just kind of laughing while trying to catch our breath; the cold air whisking over our naked bodies, over my balls and cooling me down was a feeling I will never forget. Right when I thought it couldn’t get any better she leaned over into her purse and pulled out a joint. “Yierba?” After getting blazed and resting for a while we took a dip in the pool to rinse off. I could sense the guards were jealous and bitter from probably seeing such acts on the regular. We got dressed, raided the kitchen a little bit and Gaudy started searching the house for her Rosalita. I was trying to stop her because cock blocking was the last thing I wanted to do at this point but she insisted that Rosalita had the keys to the Iguana and that since her three year old son would be waking up in a couple hours she needed to get back. M.I.L.F! Grabbing the keys we hopped into the Iguana and cruised back to Montañita’s town center where she would be dropping me off. Hung over and hurting I

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really did want to smoke some more weed and asked Gaudy if I could possible score some. She said, “If you promise to call me?” holding the joint back. I had every intention of calling her but when I got out of the car and began walking to make sure I had the digits my phone was dead and the charger was back in Quito. I could not imagine how she would feel after such a night of pleasuring someone to not get a call back. It was 6:30am and people were still out dancing in the streets taking shots at the bamboo bar huts. Those scoring last minute bites to eat, stumbling drunkards, locals picking bottles to recycle and my favorite, girls taking the New Year’s walk of shame. One of the strangest traditions Ecuadorians have is eating Ceviche to cure a hangover. Cold uncooked shellfish in the AM? No thanks. On the beach there were people everywhere. The tide was coming in and I walked along the water folding up my pant legs. The sun rose, and there were people sitting around bon fires, 1st of the year morning swims, and chilling in makeshift tents. There were so many people who came with nowhere to stay sleeping on the beach clueless that the water was just inches away. Moving down the beach one after another I began helping others pull people by their arms and legs before they got swept out to sea. I could not stop laughing because even after dragging them 15 yards inland they wouldn’t wake up. “Ok time to go home” I was now only three blocks length from my hotel when I saw the red-haired Viuda sitting on a rock wall staring at me. “Oh god really, no eye contact, no eye contact. Please don’t remember me! Please! Just keep walking and she won’t bother you.” I could feel her eyes just planning some gross pass. Right then and there not even 10 feet away another transvestite runs out and yankes He-She by the ankles down onto the sand. With the wind knocked out of her, the other transvestite climbs on top and begins whaling on He-She in the face, sparking an all-out tranny brawl. This was no catfight, these were grown men in bright colored homemade dresses. Wigs

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flying, voices changing all over the place I had to dodge them to get by. It was quite the spectacle with many of the locals cheering them on. Finally making it back, I laid wide- awake in our hammock puffing on Gaudy's joint. “Oh, Montanita. I’m stoned, sexed, and content.”

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All Terrain

Ger-ma-ni-co. The G is silent. He was the most entrepreneurial Ecuadorian I had ever met. Six months into the job, he was hired to be my translator. You could literally see money signs in the guys eyes. He was always trying to turn a profit. Besides working with me he had one company in the local malls, which sold customized gifts. Pictures of your girlfriend on coffee mugs, t-shirts, engraving names into rings, shit like that. And another that was a study abroad startup he launched in hopes of fucking foreign girls. Germanico: “Bro, it’s happening. I just confirmed with the school in Canada! We have 40 University of British Columbia students coming for the summer!” The study abroad program he launched was a three-month, six credit course where they would take classes at the local University PUCE and excursions on weekends. One early Friday morning while I was out running up at Parque Metropolitano training for an upcoming Nike Runs Quito 10k my iPhone rings. Germanico: “Hey, so what’s your plan for tonight? Come to Baños! We are on the bus right now! I sent you an email of the agenda with something special!” Pierce: “What? You asshole, how come you didn’t tell me before the students are in town?” In case you were wondering, Baños is not in reference to a bathroom. Baños is a small town nestled in the Amazon Basin at the base of Tungurahua Volcano meaning Black Giant. The city is adorable, easy to navigate, safe from thieves and has every adventurous activity you can think of plus an active nightlife. It was a holiday weekend so I had Friday off; I ran home, packed a duffel bag and caught a taxi to the southern bus station in Quitumbe. Sitting on the bus next to an old woman carrying a large bag of quinoa that kept spilling on me I loaded the trips manifest on my iPhone. Reading down the names of all 40 students, 28 of whom were female was my name in bold below as their “Adventure Tour Guide”.

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I know what you’re thinking, Adventure Tour Guide? What the fuck? And you’re right, I most certainly was not. I did not have any certifications, no real experience or expertise but I was down to roll with it.

Baños Excursion Itinerary

Date: **/**/**** All activities are (Optional) if you do not choose to participate you can remain on the bus or at the hostel.

Friday, Day 1 7:00am - Meet at Quitumbre Bus Station 10:00am - Arrive in Baños 11:00am -Tour of Town- eat Cuy (Guinea Pig) 12:30pm - Lunch 1:30pm - Rafting 5:00pm - Free Time 7:30pm -Dinner 8:30pm - Canelazo drink at View Point 9:00pm – Dancing

Saturday, Day 2 9:00am - Breakfast 10:00am - Puenting (Bungee Jumping) 11:00am - Free Time 1:00pm – Lunch (fishing) 2:00pm - Choose 1 activity: Canyoning waterfalls/ ATV’s/Hiking 5:00pm - Free Time/Spa 7:30pm - Dinner 8:30pm - Live music Traditional Dance 9:00pm- Leprechaun Bar/ Bob Marley Flaming Shot

Sunday, Day 3 6:00am- Hot Springs 9:00am- Breakfast 10:00am- Bicycle Tour 11:00am- First Waterfall 12:00am- Zip Lining 1:00pm- Lunch (fishing) 2:00pm- Famous waterfall (Pailon de Diablo) 4:00pm- Bus Ride Back to Quito

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Arriving at night I missed Day 1 where the students went rafting, took a small tour of the city, and tried Guinea pig. Germanico and Intercambio Quito were staying at a great hostel with no vacancies. I was shit out of luck. I walked around the Main Square looking for a cot, nothing. It was a holiday weekend; everything that you consider decent had already been taken. Asking each front desk for a recommendation I eventually found a small bedroom in a local’s house with no warm water and what seemed to be black mold bubbling in one corner. This would have to do. I put my belongings down, called Germanico and met everyone for dinner. I won’t bore you with the details of every student but one fact remains true to all backpackers and students studying abroad. Hot girls rarely do volunteer work or backpack through South America. They go to Europe. Latin America is where ugly girls go to be appreciated. I cannot tell you the attention white girls get in Latin America. All standards go out the door. These aggressive Latin men, Germanico included, are suckers for blondes, treating foreign women like princesses saying all the cheesy lines that hot girls would shrug off. The table was full so I grabbed a chair from another pulling it up at the end next to some cute girls. Fashionably late, I apologized for taking so long and introduced myself. I was going to tell them my title when Germanico stands up tapping his glass with a plastic fork. “Ladies and gentlemen,” putting his drink above his head. “Please raise your glasses. This handsome man at the end of the table is Pierce.” All the girls turned looking at me, with the, Who is this guy? look on their faces. Germanico: “He will be your adventure guide for the trip; your life is in his hands!” I took a bow and waved as everyone’s eyes opened with interest. The two girls closest to me were Jessica and Samiya. Samiya: “What a cool job!” It was apparent the two had become good friends during the days leading up. Samiya’s father who was Canadian, moved to the Philippines to start a telemarketing company where he met her mother. Fluent in Tagalog,

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English, and Spanish, she wanted to translate for multi- national companies or non-profit organizations. She was cute, not over the top but became the center of my attention. Converse, ripped jeans, sleeveless Ramones vintage tee. A hipster look that I thought was attractive until I returned to the U.S. and found out what hipsters were. Jessica, was the polar opposite of Samiya. Loud, opinionated, brand name, in your face, I’m the shit, here to party, not to study. Direct quote: “Majoring in psychology, minoring in men.” She was dirty blonde with a large humming bird tattoo on her left shoulder blade. We immediately hit it off when she took one of my shots without even asking. Normally if an unattractive girl did this I would be pissed and steal whatever they bought next, but she reminded me of the girls from Santa Barbara and brownie points with her meant brownie points with Samiya. After dinner we all took their bus up to a viewpoint for Canelaso the same cinnamon drink from my Chiva disaster. Tungurahua volcano was erupting for the first time in years, not the lava but a clear billow of smoke. I met everyone, hearing their stories and answering questions to how I got to become a tour guide and found a job in the flower business. They were all fascinated. Unfortunately, Samiya was in her own world sitting on the stonewalls edge alone connecting constellations with her finger. Germanico walks over to me saying, “My friend, a local said there is a party at an abandoned mansion close by? It could be a one-time thing and although the police might show up, we should still go.” Pierce: “Dude really? Look around I highly doubt there is any mansion in 30 square miles.” Germanico: “Have faith Pierce, have faith!” I stood talking to some guys in the group about hockey when Germanico signals to follow. We take the bus to a rim of the city and walk down the street making three rights that I felt should have made a circle but didn’t. With the rain pouring, and helping everyone down a small dirt hill we arrive at a gate where dozens of people are standing

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out front. Eager to get out of the rain Germanico hustled a group rate. It really wasn’t a mansion per say but rather a rundown exoskeleton of a mansion, with vines and plants that had overgrown the property. The owner a foreigner was run out of town mid build after he laid plans to construct two large hotels hurting local establishments, similar to the Wal-Mart dilemma. Inside were four circular copper chandeliers hung 20 feet from the ceiling. The place was without electricity so they had bought hundreds of pillar candles lining all the walls and windowsills. It really was something, and the girls were in awe taking off their windbreakers. Standing next to Germanico at the bar: “I’m glad you made it Bro!” Pierce: “Yeah you’re fucking loving this aren’t you?” He laughed. “So, which one is yours?” We turned around and he pointed to a chubby blonde looking exactly how you are imagining, and someone who clearly did not drink often. A sure thing in his eyes and plus Latin men love a little extra meat on the bones. Samiya was across the room with a circle of Ecuadorians all taking turns salsa dancing with her. Pierce: “Yo, what’s her deal?” Germanico: “Jeje Good luck! Muy sexy but too smart for you.” Pierce: “What is that supposed to mean?” Germanico: “She is not here to fuck,” giving the pounding gesture with his palm and fist. I was in a trance watching her, the way she smiled as she twirled and the fact that she was having such a good time made her all the more desirable to be around. I was nervous for the first time in months and never did gathere the confidence to go ask her to dance. For me looks are not what’s causes me to pussy out. It’s when a girl is clearly more intelligent than I will ever be. That’s my weakness. Later that night I wandered up the thick wooden staircase to explore the upstairs and look for a balcony to piss off of. I like to always maximize my urinating experience. Bathrooms are so boring. Find a view.

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I walked from balcony to balcony all of which were occupied with people making out when I see one balcony with a girl all alone. Holy fucking shit its Samiya! I turn my back to the wall. Talking to myself, “What are you so scared of? She’s just a girl. Go talk to her you fucking pussy. You only live once, remember? In the last year you have banged more hotties than you count and you can’t even gather up the courage to talk to one girl who’s adventure your in charge of?” One. Two. Three. I turn, she stands, I bolt, she leaves, retreating down the stairs before she could see me. Such a fucking pussy. Day 2: Germanico stopped by my room. “Dude, this place is fucking not ok. Seriously, come sleep on my floor.” Looking around shaking his head, “Hurry up I have to take a kid to the pharmacy to get calamine lotion because he was stupid enough to wear cologne last night in the jungle. After we’ll go to breakfast and then I need your help because everyone wants to do different activities.” Meeting the rest of the group I pulled up a chair next to Jessica. Pierce: “Good morning.” Jessica: “Good morning to you, did you sleep okay?” Pierce: “Like a baby. Where is your friend? What’s her name?” Looking confused trying not to act obvious. Jessica: “Samiya? She woke up before everyone else and trekked up to the volcano.” Pierce: “And you? What’s good? You think you have what it takes to go canyoning waterfalls?” Jessica: “I want to go fast!” After breakfast we went bungee jumping, I know I mentioned this like it was the same as visiting a fruit market but the truth is bungee jumping was not a highlight of the trip. Walking around Baños town square every storefront had some rep trying to bring you inside to take their tour. One of the biggest problems with South America’s small merchant economy is that everyone sells the same stuff, which in return causes more competition, lowering prices. Basic economics. What we did not think

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about was how going for the cheapest deal on an adventure tour could definitely be the wrong choice of action. Germanico, Jessica and eight others including myself all stopped at one classed Discount ATV’s at $15 per day. As if the name alone was not a red flag the price should have been. They gave us helmets, some cracked and did not ask for a signature, credit card, or ID just $15 each and go. They were complete crap, stalling, with squeaky brakes, and jumping gears. Jessica did not want to drive but instead asked if she could join me and sit behind. She was really sexy in her yellow helmet, shorts, sports bra and sandals waving and blowing kisses at all the locals as we rode by. We had a map moving in a caravan, Germanico leading us to the top of the volcano. It was a beautiful day. The sun was out, no clouds, green lush hills passing three waterfalls on the way up. I kept asking Jessica if she wanted to drive but she refused saying, “I want to take pictures and soak it in! Plus I don’t feel comfortable driving manual.” Covering ground, we stopped at a large red cable car crossing a canyon to a set of waterfalls. Run by a 10 year old with a swapped Nissan Maxima engine shifting the gears to power the cables we took a ride across for a one dollar fair. Once on the other side, we hiked for about 30 minutes to a small cabin camouflaged in the hillside. There was a large wooden sign outside carved with the word “Trucha” meaning Trout. I would never forget this word after my boss set me up on a really fancy blind date with his wife’s niece. I was sitting at the table with a violinist circling around when the waiter came to take our order. Ladies first, I then ordered stating, “Quiero la chucha, es caliente?” At the time I was oblivious to what I had said, when the room went silent and my date almost jumped across the table to cover my mouth. I did not think it was such a big deal to order hot pussy for dinner? Standing around the pond, a small little women came up and asked us, “Fish? Dos minutos, por favor.” She returned with bamboo sticks attached to long strings with worms on the end. We would fish for our own trout? How cool was that! After lunch and few too many Pilsners the

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others in the group wanted to head back, but we had not yet made it to the top of the volcano and Jessica was determined. Jessica: “You’re up for it, right? Mr. Adventure Guide? Don’t pussy out on me now!” I could tell Jessica was feeling me; we had a connection but I still didn’t want to jeopardize my chances with Samiya. Squeezing me tight we weave through the mountain and thick jungle. At the top we were the only ones there, the volcanoes crater was not bubbling with molten lava but it was still alive. It was cold at the top so I put my arms around Jessica. The two of us looking out over the mountains everything slowed down. It was nice but I couldn’t help but wished it were Samiya. It was 4pm and time to turn back if we were going to escape the afternoon rain showers. An hour into the decent I started pressing Jessica, “You have to try driving. It’s really easy I will show you how!” I am not sure why I was so insistent partly because I thought she wanted me to and partly because I am a firm believer in trying everything once. Pulling over to the side I put my hands on top of hers showing her how to brake, accelerate and shift gears with her feet. We started slow never getting past second gear. She did great, and was having fun with it. The turns were tight and a few cars did honk but that’s normal. Half way down we started gaining speed. Pierce: “Um, Jessica, you might want to slow down a little bit. I think a turn is coming up.” Jessica: “I’m trying but it’s not working.” Pierce: “What do you mean? Pull the brake!” No luck. Pierce: “Press on the emergency foot breaks!” Nothing. Really is this happening? By that time we were seriously moving. I stood up pushing her aside trying to downshift with the foot pedal, nothing. The road was narrowing. One side a rock wall and the other a huge cliff. Moving realistically now close to 40 mph, I yelled, “Jessica the fucking brakes are shot, we have two options fly off that cliff and die, or turn into the rock wall! I need you to make

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us crash!” Jessica: “No, I can’t do it!” Pierce: “You have to! Hurry before it’s too late!” I would have done it myself but thought if I did it from behind I would not be able to bail. We were coming into a turn hot, “Do it! Come on! Now!” She turned and everything went black. When I opened my eyes, it was pouring rain and there was an older man in a panama hat standing above me. I came to, still lying on the ground. "Where is Jessica?" I asked. First responder: “Senor no entiendo, no te mueves no te mueves.” I tried to get up but fell down dizzy, my helmet cracked right down the side, my legs and arms black shredded with road rash. I could not see Jessica or the ATV. Adrenaline pumping I stood up and saw legs laying on the side of the cliff. Limping over, looking around I see pieces of the ATV littered all over the road. I knew Liz was messed up bad, half her body hanging off the side covered in blood. The thong of her right sandal had ripped through her toes like an apple cutter. For a split second I thought Jessica was dead. When I reached down to touch her she didn’t move but has a puls. More cars had now stopped to help. We picked her up and placed her in the back of a truck bed. The ATV had flipped somehow without us beneath it smashing into a million pieces. While winding down the road Jessica laying lifeless scared the living shit out of me, but I could tell her spirit had not yet left her body. It was gruesome. He road rash was so severe that it had removed her humming bird tattoo leaving only the head and beak. In the truck I repeatedly told the driver, "Hospital privada, no hospital publico." I knew a bad situation when I see one and that we needed a secure private hospital if it was going to be in an Amazonian pueblo that was literally pronounced bathroom. Jessica was coming in and out when we pulled up. We rushed her inside, and placed her limp body on the stretcher and into a different room. Nurses began cleaning

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my road rash with the same rough sponge that you clean dishes with. I could feel the small rocks being rubbed out and the stinging of the dark disinfectant alcohol. My broken helmet by my side I owed everything to, I asked the nurse “Can I see Jessica? Is she ok?” The doctor stepped in, “She is fine but will need to get stitches on all her major wounds.” I insisted on seeing her after hearing the doctor tell the nurses to prep. Now conscious and moaning in the other room I head her say, “Pierce where are you? I’m so scared, come hold my hand.” She squeezed the color out of me as they pieced her back together. It was hard for me to watch, taking me back to Brazil. Finally asleep the doctor turned to me and said, “She will be fine, but she needs to get her rest.” I woke up early the next morning barely able to move, completely sore, I turned my head to see Jessica was in the next room covered in bandages. Pierce: “Hey baby girl, how you feeling?” Jessica: “Alive, thanks to you.” Pierce: “Me?” Jessica: “Yea I would have never turned into the wall on my own. I have never felt more alive in my life and if you did not tell me to crash we wouldn’t be here.” The following afternoon on crutches, in high spirits, clean bandages, and the doctor’s orders to not drink on antibiotics we were released. Jessica and I found the rest of the group at a bar called the “Leprechaun” with one intention: Get shit-faced drunk. Tomorrow we would heal, but tonight we celebrate. Baños is known for a special cane sugar moonshine called "Puntos." No Joke: four months later the government declared a “semana seca” a national dry week after several Ecuadorians on the coast died from bad batches of Puntos impurity levels. It tastes like fire water and is so harsh that you lose your voice following each shot. After three of these, Jessica and I were so drunk that we forgot all about the pain, rubbing against our bandages with every step. Crippled I was sitting next to a large fire pit on the

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back patio of Leprechaun telling my story to the students when Samiya sits down next to me and asks, “Can you meet me up stairs in 10?” I finish the story and excuse my self to go find her on the balcony overlooking the street. Samiya: “Jessica told me about what you did, how she thinks you saved her life. How you held her hand in the hospital? Is all that true?” I was so drunk, I could barely keep up with her line of questioning. "I did what I had to do, I’m no hero.” Breathing deeply Samiya says, “I think the bandages make you look really sexy. Does that hurt?” she said, touching my arm. “Ouch!” I screamed. She smiled covering her mouth. “Ohh, I’m so sorry” Pierce: “It’s ok, I’m just really sore and still raw.” Samiya: “Aww, poor baby I’ll take care of you! I will to be your nurse!” Pierce: “Sure, but can we sit down now? I can hardly stand.” The bar was closing when I asked if I could escort her home. She wanted to walk me home but I insisted that “I will not be able to sleep unless I know you got back safe.” At the entrance of her hotel we said goodbye and she kissed me goodnight. Samiya: “See you tomorrow?” Pierce: “If I survive the night.” I was getting close to my filthy room when I got a text from her: “Hey, you far away? Come back, I forgot to mend your wounds.” If it were not for the fact that I was inebriated and battered I would have run. I met Samiya at the hotel gate, limping and milking my injuries for my nurse. Samiya took me by the arm and led me to her room. Her roommate asleep she laid me down, “Is there anything I can do for you?” Pierce: “A glass of water would be nice thanks.” I was light-headed and almost falling asleep when she returned and helped me sit up to drink out of the glass.

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She took my dress shirt off, button by button revealing my tattoos, arms, chest, and legs covered in gauze. When she saw the bloody bandages she gasped. Samiya: “Oh my god, is anything broken? Poor baby, you just relax and I will make everything better.” Closing the blinds and blowing out a candle she came back and laid next to me. I had no idea until I felt her skin touch mine that she had undressed. Pierce: “Thank you for taking care of me.” Samiya: “You’re were so brave. How could I not.” She reaches around and undoes her bra while edging toward my feet, her nipples touching my chest as she moved her way down. She unzips my pants with her teeth and starts kissing the head of my penis with the gentlest care ever. I finished in her mouth, and quickly fell right asleep, exhausted. I would have stayed asleep but she kept poking me. “Are you dead? Please tell me the story again.” My eyes closed, half-conscious I told her the story. Before I could even get to the crash she climbed on top of placing me inside her. I was still so drunk and weak I couldn’t even tell her to stop, plus her vagina was so fucking warm. She rode me like a champ but the friction against my bandages made me bleed out all over her sheets, blood seeping through the gauze. The whole room had a metallic mineral smell from the blood that you could taste in your mouth. The blood was getting everywhere. On her body, on my on the sheets and on the wall. She wiped the blood off my chest, licking her fingers then rubbing it on her naked body while she swayed back and forth. I was fading in and out and at some point passed out, not sure if I ever finished or not. I woke up early unable to sleep in from the pain. I didn’t want to ruin a perfect night with morning breath and chit chat so I wrote a small note on a piece of paper: “All better.”

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The One That Got Away Part 1

Roses are a symbol of love and symbol of pain. This homonym comes in many colors, shapes, sizes, and scents but its beauty and meanings remain true to everyone. Roses have been represented in countless works of art, from classical paintings and poetry to modern day music. They have appeared throughout history and across many cultures as romantic and religious symbols. The mystique of the red rose has been a source of immeasurable inspiration for many throughout the ages, but it is the symbol for love that the rose is most commonly recognized. The modern red rose we are now familiar with was introduced to Europe from China in the 1800's. However, the meanings associated with it can be traced back many centuries, even to some of the earliest societies. In Greek and Roman mythology the red rose was closely tied to the goddess of love often seen showered in their blooms. Many early cultures used red roses to decorate marriage ceremonies and they were often a part of traditional wedding attire. Through this practice, the red rose became known as a symbol for love and fidelity. In Roman mythology, Apollo turns Rhodanthe into a rose and her attendants into its thorns when she unsuccessfully tries to unseat his sister, Diana, as the goddess of the hunt and protectress of women. Throughout ancient Christendom, the red rose is often used to symbolize the blood and agony of the crucifixion of Jesus with the five petals representing his five wounds. In England, the rosarian prunes red roses carefully for if the petals fall from a red rose as it is being cut, bad luck will follow. In Italy, fully open roses are not given as a gift because death will befall a relative of the recipient. Also from 11th century Sufi poetry, the rose became the symbol of life, its beauty a metaphorical representation of perfection, and the thorns a representation of the difficulties one must overcome to reach that perfection. As the tradition of exchanging roses and other flowers as gifts of affection came into prevalence,

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the red rose naturally became the flower of choice for sending the strongest message. Back in Quito I had been going to Mariscal Foch way, way too often. It’s never good when both the club promoters and the homeless know you on a first name basis. Although I would take a girl home 6/10 times, they were of lower caliber as the bars were run down and small, no cover, cheap drinks, cheap chicks. Product placement. Stumbling out of a club one night I got a flyer from a girl in the street hyping a new club close to where I was living in Northern Quito. It was not new, just remodeled; now called Club Lush I recognized the address because it’s behind the main bus station, they just changed the name or owners every few years to keep it fresh. This place was dope, really dope, it could house a few thousand people, only open one night a week. Dress to impress with security profiles to pass. The line though, really sucked. Even if I went with one guy friend there was no guarantee we could get in. One time I even waited two hours in the rain and still never got in. Remember I am talking about a club in a third world country, not a swanky Manhattan joint. It was pathetic, but the girls were posh. The reason I went week after week was in hopes of seeing “The One”. They had this VIP section wrapping above everyone so the upper class could look down on the lower class. Within VIP was another red roped VIP for superstars by Ecuadorian standards. The One I am speaking of was something of a Geisha. Always smiling with the fairest most delicate skin, she was the type of girl that just by being around would make everything seem in place. Plus for some reason I always associated Asians with being smart, timid and obedient. I did everything I could to get past the bouncers but nothing worked. I even once stole a tray with champagne and pretended to be a waiter. No luck. I waited and waited hoping she would come down to my level. I would wait outside hoping to catch a glance up close. Nothing. Natasha calls me. “Tell me I am the greatest, tell me I am the greatest!”

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“Ok, Natasha you are the greatest.” “You’re in!” Natasha’s friend who just got engaged was having a bachelorette party and locked down a VIP table. I know bachelorette parties are not supposed to have guys tag along but Natasha told me that some of the girls had seen a picture of us on Facebook and still had no date to the wedding. I don’t think I have ever had girls so much on my jock. What is it about bridesmaids? Something about helping their friend prepare for a wedding just makes them so horny and desperate. I entertained the ladies at the bachelorette party for a while and even agreed to go with one to the wedding. But the reality was, my mind was somewhere else. I couldn’t even enjoy all the bridesmaids. I just wanted to see my Asian angel. I get up to go to the bathroom when boom!, there she is. I get so close I can smell her but didn’t say a word. Pissing in the urinal, “You fucking pussy, go be a man and take what’s yours.” I slapped my dick, “Man up!” I leave the bathroom walking right past the girl that I promised to go to the wedding with. I was on a mission. I walked up to the Geisha who was sitting at a table with four other girls and an older man. In Spanish, “Hello my name is Pierce.” She looks up at me like I was lost, then back at her friends. Geisha: “Can I help you?” Pierce: “Let’s go dance,” putting out my hand. Geisha: “No gracias” turning back to her friends ignoring me and laughing. I stood there for three seconds, imploding. Even the big shot between them felt bad for me giving a shrug. I did not return for a month after that, shattered from her denial and lack of self-esteem. I went out to lunch a few times with the Tripod ventilating on them about my broken heart. They were really easy to talk to and told me that from every girl they knew, “Confidence and determination were the sexiest traits in a man. Be persistent and she will fall for you. The people you really

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fall for whether man or women are the ones that become part of your life by the forces of nature.” Pierce: “What?” Mimi: “Find out where she works. What she likes without asking her. If you become part of her world she will be drawn to you and feel empty without you. But don’t be a creeper!” Natasha: “So True! To make a girl fall in love, is to fill her thoughts.” Later that week my boss called me upstairs for tea. He was really impressed by how strong my marketing skills were becoming and all the wholesale accounts we closed that quarter. Boss: “Today we are going to visit a new rose farm. They really don’t need our help with sales, so you need to charm the pants off them.” After first blowing out a tire getting off the highway, we get to the farm. 100 acres of roses, a staff of 600, this place was a model production facility. Sitting down after a tour with the owner my boss who loves to gossip mentions how I go out all the time and just two weeks ago the girl of my dreams completely shut me down at a club. I go on to tell my story when he asks, “What is the name of this club?” “Lush.” He puts his head down laughing. Reaching into his back pocket he pulls out a business card. “I own that club,” he says smiling. “My oldest son Rafael manages it. Next time, you give him a call, he will take care of everything.” My jaw dropped. The rest of the week I could help but day dream of the Geishas’ face as she watched me pop bottles of champagne in the VIP section. Like Mimi with her families banana farm, what happens a lot of times is that the younger generations are not always interested in taking on the family business. They grow up become educated and move away from rural areas and into the metropolitan cities. The following Friday I am sitting in my office turning the card over and over growing impatient. I am

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waiting for the clock to turn five so I can leave and call the number on the back. I cannot wait. I make the call. Speaking with the farm owner’s son Rafael, he tells me that he himself will be attending and will personally show me a good time. Germanico and I arrive, both of us in suits. I reiterate on the way over that “we will not be pretending to be model agents and that if you even think of using that line I will cut you off from all future endeavors.” It was itching me all day if the Geisha would be there but I tried to move on. I mean I knew the owner. I could now have any girl I wanted. We make our way to the front of the line to meet Rafael. When he comes down he formally introduces us to the bouncer placing his arms around me saying that I could skip the line whenever I felt like it. I introduce Germanico and express our gratitude. As we walk he tells me how his father had told him about our meeting and how I was a fan of Lush and my unfortunate encounter with a girl in the VIP section. Rafael: “Don’t worry it happens to the best of us, Latin women always play hard to get. It’s a no means yes country, remember that!” At his table were two of his friends who stood up to greet us. He commandeered another and we all sat down to be become better acquainted. We talked some business, I mentioned how I was once a DJ and he offered me a set time, which I respectfully turned down. He seemed like a cool guy, well off, educated and sincere. The type of person I’d like to be hanging out with. “The girls” he said, “are all available.” “But be careful” he continued, “Some, are professionals and are only out to get your dinero.” Rubbing his fingers. Germanico, tuned in, was so pumped to start mingling. He immediately lost any intention of conducting business and began surveying the female market instead. Rafael ensures me that he has a group of girls on the way to join us for the night. Ordering some bottles of assorted liquors, he points to a dozen girls standing at the

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VIP entrance where a bouncer was holding the velvet line in front of them. Rafael signals to the bouncer to let them through and the girls walk over, all of them wanting to be the first to meet us. These girls were all hot and in their 20’s, high heels, dressed to impress. I had imagined that there were people in the world who had it going for them like this, things I had only heard about living in LA. I stood up and shook each of their hands, smiling and impressed more with each one. Looking past one of the girls leaning into kiss me on the cheek, I see the Geisha standing behind her. When she realized who I was and that it was now her duty to be entertaining to me, she leaned in and gave me a kiss on the cheek. We all sat down, Geisha at the end, which I was happy about because if she started off next to me I wouldn’t know what to say. Germanico with his arms around both girls sitting next to him immediately began chatting up all of girls at the table, in an attempt to hook up with all of them simultaneously. Five of the girls got up, pulling Germanico, Rafael and his guests to go to the dance floor, leaving me by myself at the table ignoring the girl next to me babbling into my ear in Spanish. Geisha is now two body lengths away sitting cross-legged across the table from me. Without excusing myself from the conversation, I stand up and move over towards where she is sitting and stick her with, “Excuse me, I don’t believe we’ve ever met, you look so familiar?” Sticking my hand out, “I’m Pierce.” She closes her eyes and laughs making the connection. Geisha: “Rosa.” Pierce: “Rosa? Like the flower?” Knowing this was fate, I asked her to dance. It was not crowded in the VIP yet our bodies were pushed up against each other as we danced. She was wearing red lipstick and there was something about the way she talked so slow and seductive. She confesses to remembering me and apologizes for her rudeness, and says, “I get hit on by so many men that you shouldn’t take offense to it.” We were inseparable all evening, the other girls confused by why I was showing her so much attention. At the end of the night I ask Rose for her number telling her

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I’d love to take her on a date and show her one of the rose farms. Touching my face with her hand she says, “How do you say in English? If meant to be, it will be?” then kissed me on the cheek and vanished.

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Secuestro Express

After living in Ecuador for a year and a half I was just starting to learn how business was conducted. Mainly, punctuality does not exist. If someone tells you to be somewhere at 1:00pm, expect them at 1:30pm. I’m with my boss heading to a new farm in Tabacundo a flatter more desert like area of Ecuador known mostly for Avocados. The fincas sales department was interested in being a part of a flower tradeshow in Miami in one month but they had no marketing material or digital catalogue of their rose varieties. The car that we drove out in had no air-condition. Ever since I was a child, I had what I would call the “back seat syndrome”, the heat and rumble of the road trip put me asleep in minutes. Normally bosses would be upset with this behavior, but having driven out to the region twice a week to the same ending, I was off the hook. Pulling up to the gate the farms security guard came out holding what looked like a Crown Royal bag in hand. He asks our driver Gabriel to put his hand in the bag and pick out a marble. If the marble was red that meant our car was subject to search, if it was blue it meant we just had to give up our ID’s. While we were searched, the whole time I thought how funny it would have been if we had brought our intern Andrea, and put her in the trunk as a joke. Driving down a dirt road, the farms entrance was lined with eucalyptus trees shading the hot houses in the distance on either side. This was going to be one of the smaller farms in Ecuador that I had worked with. 30 hectares, roughly seventy acres. When we got to the main office, women in traditional Ecuadorian dresses welcomed us with a ceremonial dance. Behind them were four hanging planks of wood inscribed with our names on them and with the use of rose petals, they had made a large American flag laid at their feet. This farm was hoping to take roses to the next level, creating a new line of what they called “tinted roses,” a colorful rose created by injecting the stems or roots with food coloring and other treatments

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eventually dying the petals whatever color they liked. Their most unique color was their “Pitch Black” rose. It would be the worlds first all black rose and I wanted the rights. Most of my farm meetings started off with lunch at the owners hacienda. Unlike lunch in the United States where you scarf it down the average lunch meeting in Ecuador is around two to two and a half hours long. Three courses starting with soup, salad, then in this instance a locally raised trout fish from the farm’s ponds, which helped filter the water used on the roses, and finally desert. I never understood why they always started with lunch first because afterwards I was so full the last thing I wanted to do was take a long tour on foot or horseback. Imagine millions of roses blooming simultaneously, indoors. I will never forget that smell. The little droplets on each pedal that stand still all day waiting for someone or something to shake them off. The owner and his son gave us a tour of the farm on horseback, galloping through each individual plot. When we approached a soccer field where the workers were playing, they all stopped and stared as we trotted by. They gazed at us not impressed, but with disgust. They believed us to be Americans who’s only interest was to buy roses at a cheap price. The owner explained that one of the hardest parts was an unexpected amount of worker turnover. The workers were upset because the land, which didn’t have a title, had been sold to the government and taken away from their families, and we reminded them more of that progress. This farm, through international investors, was self sustained and 100% organic. They didn’t have dead leaves everywhere but instead composted them in rows to nourish the soil for the roses, which helps the heads grow slower to stop Botrytis, and to prevent the roses from fraying. The roses like marijuana in California are grown hydroponically in pots hanging above ground. This helps to control the PH level of the soil and moisture in the potting soil independently. To keep the hot houses warm during the night, because of high altitudes, they build bonfires with wet wood to create a nightly smoke cloud. Giant fans hung

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from metal pipes to distribute the hot air. They spoke to us about how expensive it was to become Fair Trade Certified, how even though they could receive 10 cents more per rose, the cost of certification would take years to make net. I presented the owners with our ideas for sales scripts, banners, stands, handouts, shipping boxes, commercial videos, social media, media buying in target areas in the U.S., and other ways to get their name out to businesses exporting to the United States. Aside from lunch, we had been at the farm for four hours. Most workers at rose farms are paid just above the minimum wage (200/month USD) but they also to my surprise got better benefits then I did. Full medical, breakfast and lunch, holiday vacations, overtime, transportation to and from, and schooling. While the owner and my boss talked #’s the farm owner’s oldest son walked me up to a mirador, a perched outlook overlooking more land that he hoped to eventually aquire. His English was very good having studied at Princeton for his MBA. When he finished his closing spiel, he shook my hand very strongly, excited by the idea of working with an American one on one and sharing our thoughts and ideas at no additional cost. I assured him that our company was exactly what they needed, that we would take care of them and grow their business into a household name. We wanted him to be just as confident in us as we were with their product. Our driver Gabriel took all of our things and packed them into the car. Driving back, I began to doze off again. These days were so long, being on your feet and in dress shoes, in a black suit absorbing the Ecuadorian sun at over 10 thousand feet. I had been daydreaming about Rose when the car slams on its brakes, “What the fuck, Gabriel?!” I yelled at our driver. Looking through the front window, a white RAV 4 pulled in front of us with men jumping out armed with pistols, and wearing Mexican wrestler masks to cover their faces. I tried to hide like there was somewhere to go. They ran up to the car, pistol whipped Gabriel and then opening the back door of our car they yanked me out

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and threw me on the ground. Both my boss and I knew what was happening before the doors even opened. Secuestro Express. We had heard this story before, like many others, but it had never seemed real until now as they stepped out of the car in front of us. Putting canvas sacks over our heads they separated my boss and I into two different vehicles and left Gabriel unconscious. Just two months ago I had lectured my boss how stupid it was for us to wear suits to these meetings. How it places us on a pedestal and not as equals. It certainly didn’t make us appear inconspicuous. I tried to concentrate, memorizing the turns they were taking, in case I would have to find my way back to a main road. I could hear us enter a small area with kids playing outside. The car came to a stop, the brakes hissing. They spoke very quickly in Spanish. I was only able to make out “hurry up, no time.” I couldn’t see anything, but based on the length of the trip, it was now around 7 or 8pm. They picked me up under my arms with my toes dragging on the ground behind me, my feet hitting every stair in the staircase until they threw me onto a sofa. I was not in a dungeon like you see in movies. I heard a refrigerator door slam shut, a television and a woman yelling. It must have been an angry wife upset that they had brought me to her home. I was hoping to hear the comfort of my boss’ voice knowing that we stood more of a fighting chance if we were together. I said, “Excuse me” in a very soft voice and was immediately punched in the sternum. They asked me questions in simple Spanish; I pretended to know very little, playing dumb. They asked me to confirm my name and my employer. It became very apparent that this was organized, methodical. They had planned it. Someone at the farm had most likely tipped them off upon our departure. The owner? Could it have been the guys playing soccer? There were people in the staff room who we hadn’t introduced ourselves too. Was it the waiters who filled our drinks? I should have been paying more attention to what they were saying instead of evaluating the situation because I quickly received another punch to the sternum. They

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asked for my all my personal information, legal name, social security, account #’s, routing #’s, my pin code to debit cards. They hadn’t beaten me too badly which meant that whoever was in charge told them to keep me alive. They fed me, gave me water, and asked me jokingly what I thought about Ecuadorian women. They told me that if I cooperated they would let me go and had no intention of killing me. 10 hours of listening to soccer. The next morning, they woke me up, my shoulders numb from sitting in the same spot all night with my hands behind my back. Still blindfolded, I was scared that they might be dumping me off in the middle of fucking nowhere. Unsure my emotions kicked in, in tears I told them that I didn’t want to die. I told them that I wasn’t going to go to the police, that I hadn’t seen their faces. They told me to shut up, hitting me in the chest again and again. They put me in a car and held my head, chin to chest, so that I wouldn’t be seen from the outside or know the area I was leaving. After a while, I knew that we had gotten out of town by the sound of tires against the road. Going fast again we had moved from the cobblestone streets of the villages to the paved road of the local highways. The car stopped, doors on both sides opening up. They pulled me out so fast that I didn’t have time to get to my feet, and fell on my right shoulder face hitting the ground. They threatened they had my Censo (Visa Identification Card). They knew where I would be and that if I went to the police, they would kill me. Untying my wrists while leaving on the canvas sack they gave me back my belongings, and twenty dollars to get a ride home. Taking the bag off my head there was nothing in sight. It took me two hours of walking barefoot before I even saw a single soul. When I got back to Quito I went directly to my boss’ house. His wife opened the door and knew what had happened. He too had become stranded taking an additional day to find his way back, spending the night in a small pueblo. My total loss was $6,000 from a checking account, $20,000 transferred from an online corporate

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account that I used to buy purchase flowers in bulk and the worst part, my sense of security. Even though we never found out who was responsible, we terminated our account with that farm for good. Everyone always asked me, “Are you kidding? Why didn’t you leave?” The thought had crossed my mind but I had a career, a work visa, people relied on me, and more than anything else I was tired of running away. I didn’t want to hide and live in fear. After my abduction, I promised myself to live fearless of death and embrace all that life threw at me. I had overcome everything I went through and built up my inner strength. That week I promised myself I wouldn’t ever be put in a situation where I couldn’t protect myself. I found a hardware store where I bought a pocket knife with a retractable stainless steel curved blade and had “You Only Live Once” engraved on its edge at Germanico’s gift store at the mall.

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The One That Got Away Part 2

They say scars tell a story, a constant reminder of where we have been, how fragile life can be and the mistakes we have made. My ATV accident in Baños had left me scarred on the right side of my body. Girls dig scars but not ones like these. I tried every suggestion known to man but nothing worked. One weekend getting groceries from a local street market, I bought a cream from a medicine man who promised me they’d disappear. It was supposedly made of snails and human fat from salvaged corpses. I was that desperate. I searched online for scar treatment therapies and found out that there were many laser treatments similar to tattoo removal that break up the cells below the skins surface regenerating new ones above. In the United States these treatments costs as much as $500 per session and although I was against any type of surgery in Latin America, I still thought I should see a physician. I had Germanico schedule an appointment with a dermatologist at the main Hospital Metropolitano in Quito. A week later after making sure the guy’s certifications were legitimate, I began treatment. The results were immediate. It hurt like crazy, but pain is all mental and a small price to pay for beauty. After my third session I was leaving the prescription pick up window when I spotted Rose from Club Lush! She was speaking to an older gentleman, clipboard in hand wearing green scrubs. No fucking way! I remembered she had mentioned she studied medicine, but I figured she was like everyone else who told me they wanted to be a doctor. I make my way over, wrapping gauze around my chest, mummifying myself as fast as I could. She waves goodbye to the older gentleman, and after writing down some notes on the clipboard she looks up. Pierce: “Excuse me Doctor, I am in serious pain. (Pain face). This girl I met broke my heart.” She smiles.

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Rose: “I think you just need some rest and a good meal.” Pierce: “I agree, so where are we going for dinner?” Rose: “I have to get back to work.” Pierce: “Ok, let’s go.” Rose: “You can’t come with me. I have to go to the emergency room.” Pierce: “Well then how am I supposed to save anyone?” Rose: “Goodbye Pierce!” Pierce: “So you remember my name!” She turns and gives a little wave. I went to my weekly treatments, asking around to find out which floor she worked on. We began talking casually mostly because she had no choice but after telling Rose my heroic story about the ATV crash and my efforts to help the rose workers get proper benefits, she agreed to go out with me. It’s a fact; bitches love chopsticks. Sushi is the best first date dinner you could possibly take a girl on. Yes, there are other exceptions such as cooking for her, taking her to a special secluded place, their favorite restaurant, but without exception, sushi rules. It’s not a cheap date, and the restaurants are always fun. Even if you eat sushi a lot you never really know what the food will look like. Sake is a must, and the most important advice I learned about taking girls on first dates is that they do not want a heavy meal or something messy. Keep it light, because you want her to still feel sexy afterwards. No girl is going to want to make out with you or get naked if she feels her stomach is sticking out or has curly fries breath. I make a reservation at NOE, really the only legit sushi bar in Quito and get to the restaurant 15 minutes early. Of course she is late, girls always are and Latinas are the worst. She was so late the waitress after ordering three drinks asked me, “Would you mind moving to the bar so we can use the table for other patrons?” Rose finally shows up, no apology, but looks so good I forgot all about her tardiness. Guys no matter what, if it’s

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the first or fifth date, you never complain about the girl, until she becomes your girl. I am liquored up, and insist she gets on my level. She refuses. Fuck! Rose starts asking about my wounds examining them, which is cute and touchy feely. We talk about the normal stuff, which soccer team she roots for, her plans for the upcoming vacation and work. All dates go sour if the conversation is not random. This was not the case. Rose goes on to tell me about being a nurse at Metropolitano in her 3rd year of med school. Rose: “Yesterday, I had to dissect a human at the morgue. Most of the cadavers are car crash victims so they come in all messed up. But the worst part is that during the decay they fill up like balloons and let out gasses when you make an incision.” Fucking gross. Luckily the server had not brought our sashimi out or else I would have lost my appetite. I knew that it was a test though and thought if this girl is bringing this up on a first date we will get along just fine. I couldn’t get over how much different she was now than at Club Lush. All her snobby woo-girl, “I’m hot” front, was gone. She told me how her father was from China, and had moved to Ecuador in the late 70’s when Hong Kong reverted back to Chinese control from the British. He opened the only Chinese restaurant in town and fell in love with his Spanish tutor, who later became Rose’s mother. Passing away just three years ago from a heart attack his last wish was for her to become a doctor and that’s what she was set to do. Her family was dirt poor, no electricity, no television, nada. She needed a way out. It’s always raining in Quito so I untied my umbrella and put my arms around her as we waited for a taxi. She apologized for being so open, but my genuine empathetic interest in how real she was peeling back those layers created a moment when our eyes met, sharing our first kiss in the rain. Rubbing her shoulders holding the umbrella above her head a taxi pulls up, and getting the door for her, she

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asks, “You are going to come see me next week for a checkup, right?” Every great relationship starts with a great story. I get an invite from a friend of mine who was a club promoter to a party going down in an old 16th century church in the mountains that was hosting a bullfight. From what I was told there would be an all you can drink, all you can eat catered party inside the bull ring before the matadors and the bulls took to the floor. The best part of all, the Matadors were midgets. Rose always asked to meet at my apartment which was fine because it meant I did not have to pick her up in the ghetto, plus we could pregame and then take a cab together. Rose showed up looking like a high-class hooker in a red mini skirt, layered black tank top and a leather bomber jacket with a fur hood that was so short it cut off below her breasts. No complaints on my behalf, but people were going to stare. Smiling, I walked out onto the 15th floor terrace with two glasses of wine. Rose leaning on the railing was looking out at her city’s El Panecillo. “I rarely see the face” she says in Spanish. The apocalyptic Virgen de Quito standing 45 meters tall in the cities colonial center. Made by the Spanish artist, Agustin de la Herran in 1976, this monument of Madonna was made of thousands of aluminum pieces. The statue depicts Virgin Mary with angel wings and a crown of seven stars. She stands on top of a moon and a serpent. The moon is meant to symbolize pagan religion and the serpent is Satan tempting her to sin. Below the serpent, whose head is being crushed by the Virgin Mary, is the world which she protects. Her wings are less traditional, and she is claimed to be the only one in the world with wings resembling that of an angel. She can be seen 360 degrees from everywhere in the city and now signifies the separation of the north and the south. The southern part of the city like so many others in the world consists of the lower class while the rich occupy and develop the north. The beautiful virgin turns her back to the

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poor, the part of the city that Rose and the majority of Quito’s population lives. Saying goodbye to my security guard Julio, we got into a cab that he had previously called ahead. Passing the driver a piece of paper with the directions written on it he shook his head saying it was too far in the out skirts of town and would take 45 minutes. Rose negotiating the price sounded hostile yelling back and forth in light speed Spanish so I took out a twenty from my money clip and threw it up to the front seat. The ride was quiet. I watched along the way as Rose looked out at the city lights in a deep train of thought. I knew she had something on her mind but I didn’t want to ask what’s wrong. Taking an unmarked dirt road, we found a line of cars headed in what had to be our destination. The cathedral was lit up sectioning off across the mountain. Planning ahead I had arranged with the promoter I knew to meet us out front and hook us up with the upgraded wrists bands, $50 a person, expensive by Ecuadorian standards but a small price to pay when you are with such a girl and you drink a lot. After texting the promoter he met us out front giving me the “lucky motherfucker” head shake, two gold wristbands and escorted us around the back to skip the line. Rose was concerned that her skirt was too short and that sitting on the stands would reveal her “cuca.” Luckily our wristbands put us in a top level above the stands in what would have been box seats. The cathedral for the night had been transformed into separate open air dance floors and lounges decorated with stained glassed windows and cast iron chandeliers. It was really quite beautiful. Giant archways lead into a grand formal ball setting, and then the bullfight. Ready to start partying I held Rose’s hand as she stepped down from each row to the main dirt stadium. I could tell she did not like how crowded it was, carefully watching her step as her heels moved over the dirt, but she was a good sport. I knew it would take a while to get another round, so we threw back two shots each and double fisted drinks to go. As we danced to Ecuador’s top forty singing all the

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songs in sync face to face, she told me how she always wanted to be with a gringo, kissing me. Sitting in our seats waiting for the show to begin Rose asks me about my financial status. Questions concerning what my parents did, what kind of money I was making and if I spoiled my ex- girlfriends? In the U.S. asking someone how much they make or if their parents are rich is classless. But it wasn’t the same abroad. It concerned me a little, but I thought if it might get me laid, then so be it. I was several drinks deep when the bullfight was about to begin. I could see the bulls behind red stadium walls kicking, huffing smoke out their nostrils. The cute little midget matadors and clowns were running around waving at everyone doing tricks and cartwheels when a voice came over the loud speaker. From what Rose could translate the police were shutting it down due to noise violations and lack of a permit. Before the officer could even finish his announcement everybody went fucking crazy! It started off slow first just yelling but then all of a sudden people rushed the bar ransacking whatever they could get their hands on and the place went into a full force riot. I acted fast guiding Rose through the mayhem upwards towards the Cathedral. We made it back inside, staying close to the walls as people ran by yelling holding stolen goods. We could hear windows breaking, crashes, lanterns from before were now ripped from the ceiling, some still dangling. Some people had started a fire with broken fold out tables. Throughout the halls everyone could hear the raspy police on the loudspeaker, “Riot control is coming! Leave now! Leave now!” Pierce: “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Rose: “We cannot, it’s a trap! They are going to throw tear gas and arrest us!” Getting out would be harder than we thought. I see a door, open it, and we ran in locking the latch behind us, people banging on the door to let them in. Rose was quivering taking off her heels. Turning around we were inside the bell tower staircase. We headed up the winding stone spiral stairwell to the belfry. The bell tower had a

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large octagonal opening with stain glass windows and a large copper bell in the middle. We were both still in shock, fatigued from all the excitement and energy finding safety. Leaning over the cold stone windowsill and looking down, you could see people running in all directions fighting over goods and fires burning from all corners. What if they let the bulls loose? Silence again had taken over, but this time we both knew exactly what the other was feeling. In the heat of the moment I moved in and with my finger gently pushed the hair from her face over her ear and kissed her with all my might. Pressed up against the bell, both of us no longer in control of our bodies or our minds, moved slowly downwards to the cold stone floor. The only source of heat coming from our skin, we made love for the first time that night in the bell tower. I’m not sure if it was all the emotions or the built up sexual tension or feeling safe in each other's arms but it was magical. She was the one. In the morning the warm sun in blues, greens, and reds shined through the stained glass spilling onto our naked bodies. It’s warmth woke us, only slightly covered by each other’s jackets. Rising, and getting dressed unsure what was ahead of us we looked out the window of the cathedral and its surroundings were now cleared out, but ransacked. Cautiously we made it down to the entrance and passed some people picking up trash and collecting bottles. It was a very sad sight, as if someone had poured water on a priceless painting. Back out on the dirt road, there was no movement. Rose barefoot holding her heels walked for around one mile until we found a small house with a pickup truck parked out front. Rose: “Lets try knocking on the door, and offering to pay for a ride into the city.” There were three goats leashed to a poll by their feet in the walkway and a small boy in the doorway. Rose was asking him whom the truck belonged to when an older woman came up behind him placing her hands on the boy’s head. She told us her oldest son would be back in an hour

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but we were welcome to wait inside, offering us something to eat. The house was small but homey. It had seen plenty of use and was decorated with Catholic décor, gory crucifixes, prayer candles and family pictures everywhere on the walls. The old woman served us what could be described as cheese on plantain, and unprocessed milk that was yellow from the high fat content. We drank up downing the milk with a closed nose when she left the room. Rose laughed at my facial expressions. When her oldest son returned he said he was already headed to the city to sell a goat and was more than happy to give us a ride, but we would have to sit in the truck bed with the goat and crates of tree tomatoes. Still barefoot Rose jumped in the back of the pickup truck. I was very impressed by how little she complained. If this were the states an American girl would have bitched and moaned the whole trip. An hour later dropping Rose off at her house in the southside we said goodbye looking at each other shaking our heads. Every good relationship starts with a good story, right? After all the girls and troubles in my life I was now ready for a serious relationship. I wanted something stable, something permanent, something pure. Germanico would have to chase girls on his own. He didn’t need my help. Meaningless sex quickly becomes even more meaningless when the girls are only after you for what you can do for them, and not for who you really are. After visiting flower farm after flower farm in Cayambe meeting with owners to find new channels to promote their flowers in the United States I was going home frustrated stuck in the back of a taxi in fucking traffic because of “pico placa” a new law where the government only allows certain license plate numbers to be driven on specific days. I decided to give Rose a call. She was working at the obstetrics department the whole week and was sneaking away to a coco de leche cart to talk to me for a moment. I told her that I wanted her to accompany me the following evening to the opening night of a new club called Penthouse that a client of mine was giving me free tickets

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and bottle service as an apology for a payment on late FOB charges at the airport. She arrived at my apartment and we quickly stirred an Old Fashioned for me and a water for her before leaving. I had a surprise. There was a reggaeton artist named Omega that night performing. Rose went ape shit. Apparently this guy is the Rico Suave of reggaeton. We partied all night and around 2am after killing a bottle of Zumir and vodka I whispered in her ear, “Let’s go back to my place.” She put her hand on my cheek kissing me. “Are you sure you’re ready? Let me just go to the ladies room first.” I tipped the bottle service and when she returned she said, “I have good news, my friends are just leaving a bar nearby and they can give us a ride back to your place.” It wasn’t until I was walking around that I realized how hammered I really was. “Pull it together or else you will not be able to perform tonight.” Her friends pulled up in a brown sedan with two guys in front and one in the back I opened the door for her following after. The car took off. Everyone was real quiet and Rose sitting with her head down looking sad. At a stoplight trying to be friendly to the passengers up front, “Hey, what’s up fellas my name is Pierce. How was your night?” Nothing. I sat there for a second and then heard Rose weeping. Pierce: “Are you ok? What’s wrong?” putting my arm around her. The car stopped and Rose turned to me crying, “Lo siento!” and taking my arm off her she got out of the vehicle. Pierce: “What? Where are you going?” The guy in shotgun turned around holding a small revolver and started yelling in Spanish. “Manos arriba puto!” Putting my hands up the guy sitting next to me pulled out a knife and put in a headlock. They were all yelling in Colombian accents telling the driver where to go and then explaining to me that they knew who I was, and “If you want to live, you will do everything we say.” Deja vu all over again. In shock I could not believe this was

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happening. How could rose do this to me? I touched my ankles together, just then feeling the presence of my blade. There were two of them, one leaning into the back seat holding me down while the other shaking a canister maced my eyes rendering me blind. They patted me down taking my money clip, my cell phone, my belt, a cyber shot digital camera, breaking the memory card, and a counterfeit watch I bought at the beach. We stopped somewhere parking in what I could see was not a main street. “What’s the information to all your credit cards?” elbowing me in the face. “Pin number! Call your boss! Your parents!” I decided a long time ago that I would never bring my family into this. I could have spoken my best Spanish. It would have helped prevent further punches but I purposefully refrained, making them feel in control and allowing them to speak freely thinking I couldn’t understand could have its advantages. They drove on stopping briefly at another location to hand the debit cards out the window to an accomplice. As long as they never bound and tied my arms I might stand a fighting chance. I was not going to die today. My eyes fucking burning, crying but not broken I asked if I could explain to them my situation. Lying how I did not export roses, how it was all a show to get women. To get Rose. I had no friends or family living in Quito nor had I spoken or lived with my family in the United States since I was 18. “I am nobody please don’t kill me.” They kept hitting me “You’re lying, call your parents! Call your boss!” In history, interrogators have found that torturing someone will get you answers but they will say whatever they feel you want to hear to make it stop. They had done this before and the conviction in my voice was making them turn. When their accomplice came back giving them $1,200 from my two accounts maxing out each card limit. I could hear their partner out the window. “He only had a little over 10,000 in each,” passing the driver a stack of twenties. Their cut. They were furious, and

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it was sinking in that their mission was misinformed. One got out, the other still in the back with his knife to my ribs. We sped off again quickly putting on my seat belt while they were arguing. The driver kept hitting the steering wheel and headrest in anger calling Rose a fucking slut in Spanish. I began listening closely. It was so fast I could not catch it all but one thing stuck, “Tenemos que deshacerle” - we need to get rid of him. I had seen their faces. I knew right then and there that what would happen next would decide if I would live or die. The fucker next to me in the back seat was holding my head down between my knees so I couldn’t see. The car was moving faster. With my right arm furthest away, I carefully raised my pant leg and felt the cold metal handle with my thumb on the switch. I took a few deep breaths. We came to another light. Throwing my head back I swung and stuck the blade as hard as I could into the thief’s chest next to me three times with the curved blade pulling out muscles, spraying blood all over the vehicle. The driver ducks, and with my left arm on the headrest, I reached forward stabbing him in the right side of his neck clipping his collarbone. He gasped gurgling between squirts letting go of the wheel. Seat belt still clicked, the car swerved to the left hopping over the curb. I put my head down, bracing for impact when everything went black. Coming into consciousness I could see cash registers. Everything was sparking. The vehicle had veered into the front window of a fucking Pollo Gus chicken restaurant. The right door was jammed shut, and I reeled sideways kicking it open. I looked back in, glancing at the condition of both passengers, they were gone. Stumbling out, holding my ribs, sirens howling in the distance, “Fuck! My ID!” I could not be tied to the scene nor if they did survive, I couldn’t be properly identified. I went back picking the pockets of both, then found my ID between the center console and the seat and a stack of bloody bills they stole from me. The sun was coming up when people began gathering in the street. With all my might I limped away crossing in the opposite direction through a back alley

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waving down anything on four wheels. One car stops, sees me coughing up blood and in tears the driver speeds off. I could hear sirens getting closer when a taxi finally stops. I pleaded that I had been robbed and beaten. Throwing out a couple of crumpled bloody twenty dollar bills in the front seat he nodded. Holding my broken ribs I whimpered out, “No Hospital, mi casa, mi casa, Shyris y Portugal, Vamanos!” Not even religious I whisper, “God, if you help me make it through this, I promise I am going to change!” At the heavenly gates of Cosmopolitan Park Julio and another guard help me out the taxi and up to my apartment. I was in deep. I wanted to tell my parents I was sorry for never being who they wanted me to be. I wanted to go to the hospital. I wanted to go to the police. Have someone tell me everything would be all right. But I had to tuck it away deep inside and pretend like it never happened. I could never, ever, tell anyone of this, until now.

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