I guess you could say that I loved Marcela?I mean, I ?loved? her as much as a guy like me could love a girl like her in the middle of all this mess and mayhem.
Marcela was a blonde, 5 ft. 1 spitfire who was the spitting image of Mexican pop star Paulina Rubio with a legitimately brilliant mind and warm heart. Before her world collapsed under the weight of her morphine addiction, she was a nurse. In three month?s time?the worst three months anyone could probably imagine?she went from working at a city hospital to doing 6-hour shifts at a clandestine massage parlor inside a home in a residential neighborhood.
I met her during her hellish three-month transition from healthcare provider to sexoservidora. It?s a ?when we first met? story that I understand sounds absolutely fucking mental every time I tell it, but, shit, nothing about my last few years down here in Mexico sounds sane.
Marcela tried to drug and rob me upon our first meeting. I met her at a party and felt we had a nice chemistry. We spent the whole evening together and, eventually, she asked to come back to my place. As we left, she slipped something in my beer without me noticing and for the whole taxi ride home, I felt woozy as hell and I knew immediately what was going down. She was going to get me back to my place, watch as I passed out, and then rob me blind. But, fortunately for me (in more ways than one), she miscalculated how much of a roofie to give this gigantic gringo and, by the time we were in my living room with the door shut behind us, I was good again. A bit groggy, but okay.
It was an embarrassing moment in a young wannabe lady-thug?s early career and one that, if it had happened to another, more hardened girl, would?ve resulted in her pulling a knife or a gun on me to do the robbery the old-fashioned way. Marcela, though, just started laughing.
?Ni?a, no estas muy bueno hacienda esto (Girl, you?re not very good at this),? I laughed. ?Todavia podemos ser amigos?quieres unos hot cakes? (We can still be friends, though?want some pancakes?)?
And, like that, a friendship?and more?was born. And, despite our odd first meeting, she proved herself to be loyal and trustworthy beyond question. On nights when the nerve injury in my jaw?from a broken jaw that never healed properly a few years back?produced unsupportable pain, she laid my head on her warm lap and stroked my face until I was alright. And when the pain got too intense, she introduced me to her friend, morphine.
Marcela still had connections with doctors and drug company reps from her days as a nurse and, with her beauty and charm, she had no trouble in coaxing whatever she needed from just about any guy. She had been mainlining the drug for a while before I met her, but she had flat-out refused to let me experiment with the needle. However, when the pills she gave me were no longer working and dangerously high doses only cut off the pain for a short time, she reluctantly agreed to shoot me up. And it didn?t take long for me to get hooked.
* * *
During this time, I worked as co-head trainer at a prominent boxing gym owned by a former world champ. My mornings were spent high and painless, training street kids to be disciplined fighters and then paying the bills in the afternoon by working with those who could actually afford to pay me?bored housewives and chubby, bullied rich kids.
And, while training my people, I?d have to fend off the creditors my boss defrauded and the cartel loan sharks he scammed after the legit creditors stopped taking his calls.
One morning, I opened up to find all of the equipment gone?bags, mitts, gloves, even jump ropes. A local ?connected? guy had his people grab the night watchman?s keys and take all the stuff during the night to pay off an outstanding debt. By late afternoon, my boss had arranged for all new equipment to be brought in. A month later, a bunch of thugs moved in to repossess that equipment.
It was a never-ending cycle. But because he was a national hero, there was an endless stream of guys?both good and bad?who wanted to help him out. And, invariably, they would all become enemies when the drinking and general bad habits developed after 20+ years of being a legend with a raging case of entitlement would kick in. I hear things are better for him now, but it still amazes me that he got through all those years without being whacked.
Anyway, I worked under these chaotic conditions as part-trainer, part-defender, part-junkie. As I schooled kids on discipline and living right, my morphine habit had become problematic. The poor-boy lifestyle I was leading had become even more dark and desperate. I was buying one slice of ham and one telera (Mexican bread) at a time for lack of money?and those were on the days when I opted to eat at all. Everything I made went to the drug that, at first took away my chronic pain, but now was keeping me ?normal.?
So, when I got the offer from organizers of an international film festival to bodyguard some big-shot movie producer who, as it would turn out, really only wanted to have hookers wrangled for him, for 1,500 pesos per day, plus expenses, I jumped at the chance.
Word of mouth spread, along with my knowledge of the seedy sex service industry, and, pretty soon business got pretty big. Not only was I getting more and more clients coming down to my neck of the woods, but I was writing to so many clients and curious would-be clients that I started doing a newsletter of sorts about how to whoremonger safely in a Mexico that was in the midst of a bloody narco war.
Spare me the ethics lectures. These guys were coming down anyway. Why not make a buck off them and not have them gutted just for wanting some pay-for-play action in a foreign country?
I did have my personal code of ethics, though. I told them up front that any hint of underage stuff would get them zip-tied by me and laid out in the worst neighborhood I could find, with a big ?child molester? tag stapled to their chests. And, since pimping and pandering is illegal in Mexico, I tried to take clients only to chicas I knew to be working independently. Even a scoundrel has to have some sort of moral compass.
