Synopsis: Cokehead - Volume 5: The Thing About Sardines. A real-life adventure spanning two continents, 'Cokehead' is a semi-regular pulp series chronicling one man’s journey to and from the depths of cocaine addiction including entanglements with Mexican drug police and a trio of knife-wielding pimps in Amsterdam, and life as a second-rate model in Milan, a bartender in Toronto and philanderer everywhere. (You may also be interested in reading Cokehead - Volume 4: Chariots of Higher.)
Daniel strutted past me on the beach wearing nothing but a red g-string bathing suit and a straw cowboy hat.
It was early afternoon in Cabo San Lucas and, as I lay semi-conscious in the sand – paralyzed by my body’s sluggish exorcism of the previous night’s potables – he glanced over and thoroughly checked me out. I assumed he was gay and probably wouldn't even have noticed him had his wandering ass not caused an unfortunate solar eclipse.
Temporarily blinded by the proximity of his moon’s orbit, I summoned every available ounce of energy and used it to force my booze-logged body into an emergency barrel roll. Exhausted from the evasive maneuver, I slipped into a coma for the rest of the afternoon.
I woke up several hours later on my sweat-soaked towel with excruciating sunburn on my back, a desert in my mouth and a galaxy of sand down my shorts.
After an extended cold shower, subsequent lacquering of leathery skin with a Costco-sized tub of moisturizer and several rough hairs of the dog, I was feeling slightly more enthusiastic about things by the time Daniel found me in a bar called Squid Row later that night.
Mercifully, he’d covered up somewhat since our earlier encounter.
“I saw you on the beach today,” he said, smiling. “Cowboy hat.”
“I remember,” I said.
“Are you a model?” he asked, leaning in close, boozy breath hot on my face.
“No,” I replied, mentally dry heaving.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked. "There’s someone I want you to meet.”
(Anecdotally, the last time a gay man had buttered me up with that pitch was when I was visiting Hawaii in 1988. I was only 17 but my parents had let me go to Waikiki for two weeks with a trio of friends from high school as a graduation present. The man, whose snug white Levi’s should have been an obvious tipoff, approached me on the street and, after some small talk, offered to buy me a beer before telling me that he had a really hot, really shy sister back at the hotel itching to get laid. Being somewhat impressionable, I agreed to go with him to what turned out to be a sketchy motel way off the main strip. He soon had me cornered in a stairwell and, producing a condom from his pocket, instructed me to put it on. That’s when I finally realized there was no hot and horny sister. Feeling duped (and, let’s be honest, really disappointed), I shoved him, called him a fag and fled out the stairwell’s door to the relative safety of the street.)
“Sure,” I said, never one to turn down a free drink.
Daniel was a photographer … from Hawaii.
His friend, Michael, was a modeling agent. Both were based in Los Angeles and claimed to be in town for a modeling convention. I was dubious, but politely listened to their pitch, which included shooting some “test” photos before jetting to New York where I’d most certainly become a “star.”
I was more interested in getting laid. So I tucked the not-so-ambiguously gay duo’s details into my jeans and reconnected with Erich and the group of guys I’d been drinking with earlier that night.
After the bars closed, I headed to a hotel on the outskirts of town with a group of American girls and woke up in their room alone late the next morning with a pounding headache. I borrowed a bottled water from their mini-bar, tucked my long hair into a ponytail using an elastic band and slipped out the front door.
Suspecting Erich and the boys had already left our hotel for the day, I stumbled down to the beach, scouring it for about an hour, asking every familiar face if they’d seen the gang.
Nobody had. But everybody was acting aloof, as if I’d done something to embarrass myself the night before. I had no recollection of such an event, but history had proven that, while improbable, it was still fairly fucking far from impossible.
Undeterred, I asked a group of local vendors. They too played strange.
I finally found my amigos having breakfast on a patio. “Man, I’ve been looking for you guys for over an hour,” I said, somewhat relieved.
“What’s that in your hair?” Erich asked.
I reached back into my ponytail, felt a piece of plastic sticking out from the elastic band and slowly pulled it out.
It was an opened condom wrapper.
As usual, we spent the day marinating in the previous night’s olio of expunged toxins. Later, at dinner, I asked a Canadian ex-pat who played piano at one of the local joints (because piano players always know shit) if there was a modeling convention in town.
“Yeah, there’s a really big one here right now,” he said.
Case closed. Daniel and Michael were legit. So when I ran into Daniel and Michael again at Squid Row that night, I agreed to meet them at their hotel the next afternoon.
I almost didn’t make it.
“You reek of booze,” said Daniel as I brushed past him into the spacious suite.
“Yeah, well, I’m on vacation,” I said, somewhat perturbed that Erich and the boys would surely be settling in for an early afternoon sand siesta.
Daniel led me over to a barstool and sat me down. He grabbed a pair of tweezers and, without a word, yanked a rogue hair from my nose.
“Fuck!” I yelped.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s called male grooming. You want a beer?”
“Okay.”
Several beers and plucked hairs later, I threw on a pair of jeans, a Hawaiian-print shit, slipped a silver peace medallion over my head and followed them to the hotel pool. I’ve always been somewhat self-conscious, but, surprisingly, wasn’t too bothered by the poolside attention paid to me after they asked me to lie down fully clothed in the very shallow end. Michael held the bounce (a foldable, circular object that reflects sunlight) as Daniel took a Polaroid, waited for it to develop then made a little design on it with a sharpie before showing it to Michael, who seemed pleased with the results.
Then Daniel showed it to me. I couldn’t believe how cool I looked. (In hindsight, the cheesy long hair, unbuttoned shirt and glinting medallion made me look like Gerardo’s better-looking brother, but, in my defense, it was 1994 and I didn’t know any better.)
Daniel shot a roll of film by the pool and then we retreated back to the room twice to change. The outfits became progressively more ludicrous and, several hours and rolls of film later, I wore a grotesque red-and-yellow flower-print shirt, a raging-red jacket and a pair of beige, tube-legged genie pants that flared out just above my ankles.
I looked like an idiot. Which, unfortunately, didn’t stop me from wearing the outfit to dinner.
And, later, to the club.
(continued on next page ...)
