Paul asks me what I think, but I wouldn’t know. Paul’s a six-foot-plus Chinese guy with long hair – distinctive, to say the least. "See that black guy up on the stage next to the DJ?" he says, "He just came down and told me to watch out for the girl, it could be a setup."

The girl? Oh, yeah, the tall girl. "She’s cute," I say, "Seems to be all into you. But I haven’t really been watching. I’m busy trying to keep Lee from being dead."

Lee is Asian, too, not as big, but Lee’s suicidally drunk. I was standing behind him when the bald narco told him to back off his friend’s girl. I know the narco is a narco by appearance, how he carries himself. The bald narco is short but easily the most muscular guy in the bar, and he didn’t get those muscles to impress a flock of gym queens. I bumped by the bald narco earlier and noted how he passive-aggressively defended his personal space. It’s a habit I picked up years ago, get a feel for the place, what’s what and who’s who, and this one, he’s not too far from not being nice. And he’s not the only narco in the bar tonight – there’s something thick and ominous in what is normally one of the nicest clubs in town.

The bald narco had wrapped his leg-of-lamb forearm around Lee’s neck and pulled him close to give him some finger-in-face ’splaining. That girl, off-limits, see?

Lee went sideways around the time we entered the bar. He told me about how he got in this mood once before, and my bad luck to be a witness tonight. I know the girl had approached Lee, not the other way around, and I know Lee’s likely to say anything. I wish I was the sort of guy who’d simply walk away, leave Lee to his own deathwish. Instead I’m standing behind him, wondering just exactly what would I do with this empty beer bottle if it came down to it. Wouldn’t be good. Fortunately, Lee took the lecture well and backed away… but I still wasn’t placing bets on his longevity.

And now Paul with this tall girl. Gotta admit, I’ve never had a random person walk over to warn me a girl is a potential setup. This club isn’t normally big on narcos and setups. What a bizarre night. The stabbing didn’t help my mood, either.

"OK," I tell Paul, "I’ll keep an eye out. What’s your gut tell you?"

"Danger. But…"

"Wait, stick with that. So here’s what you don’t do - don’t let your drink out of your direct sight for even a second, don’t drink anything but your own drink, don’t kiss her anywhere except the lips, and don’t go anywhere outside this central bar area with her. Get it?"

He got it.

"Read Comics" - yeah! Downtown Bogota.

The stabbing, a few hours earlier. Several girls and a guy, beginning the night, decided to go back to their hotel before heading back out. One girl stayed behind to chat with some friends for a few minutes, and then went to catch up with her group at the hotel around the corner and two blocks up. My friend Jeff from New Zealand walked the girl back to the hotel, but with all the people and police around, that seemed unnecessary to me. Good thing no one consulted me on that.

As the girl was talking with us, her friends - one beautiful French-Canadian girl, two other girls and one guy - were ambushed on Gringo Alley, the infamous intersection, by eight teenagers with knives. The French-Canadian girl tried to hold on to her bag and got a good stab in the forearm for it. By the time we caught up and noticed the blood on the sidewalk outside the hotel, the girl had already bandaged her arm and seemed in good spirits, but Jeff still tasked me with finding a place to get her stitched up. She gamely refused, but seeing the wound later, she’ll end up with a lovely scar on her forearm.

The next day, a self-nominated delegation of gringo tourists went to the mayor’s office. The French-Canadian was only the most serious in a string of nightly attacks on tourists. The delegation explained to the mayor’s office and the police chief that with all the tourists flooding in and the half-dozen new hostels popping up in the neighborhood, they needed to do something about the crime wave. The tourist boom has only just got rolling, and if this continues, it’ll put Colombia’s reputation right back where it used to be.

The police responded by sending letters of apology to the complainers’ families back home. They didn’t send a letter to the girl who got stabbed. But they did also step up patrols - for a few days, anyway.

Fin and I encountered Wolf Boy, the unofficial homeless mascot from the Platypus heydays, until he got caught trying to steal a fire extinguisher from the hotel. Wolf Boy reported things on the street weren’t good, the police were on a rampage since that girl got stabbed in the arm. Word gets around.

The police caught the kids who did it, but since they’re under 18 and they didn’t, y’know, do anything really bad, there’s not much they can officially do. I started to ponder: maybe right-wing paramilitary death squads aren’t such a lousy idea.

Fin told me a story from five years ago: two European girls vacationing on the Colombian coast who had the nerve to be lesbian in public. Some of the locals took offense at the gayness, so they abducted them, raped them, mutilated them, and murdered them. The area paramilitaries, who appreciate the fruits of tourism, took offense back – they caught and killed not only the men who did it, they killed their families, too.

I told Fin – I’m not really sure how to feel about that story. In a country that’s essentially an outsized version of HBO’s Deadwood, a boomtown where the law manages a shaky arthritic grasp only on its best days, it’s sort of reassuring that someone’s watching out for the tourists. And sort of not.

Shaun from Australia nodded at my confusion. He confirmed the story was absolutely true, as he happened to have been staying at the same campground as the girls those five years ago. He said one night they just never came home, and the paramilitaries had caught the killers with the girls’ personal effects in their possession and slaughtered everyone who even lived in the same house. It kicked off a cycle of retribution which eventually took some 80 lives.

One of the three teenagers who later attacked me one night had a knife, but he didn’t use it on me, not even while I was brutalizing one of his friends. I figured them for the same kids who’d stabbed the French-Canadian girl, as they seemed to have been warned not to injure the foreigners – weirdly, I walked away from a prolonged street brawl with nothing worse than sore muscles, and I’m not what you’d call a brawler. At first, I didn’t want to hurt the teenagers, either, but then I did. These kids are free to rob and pillage however they please as long as they don’t kill anybody, and that’s just fucked. I wished the paramilitaries would clean up the town, dispose of all the punks roaming the area lately. And then I felt sick for even thinking it.

The land of contradictions, there’s the fun. Figure it out: how could you be anti-death penalty and at the same time consider the benefits of right-wing death squads? This is the value of a Colombian education. You can’t hide behind easy political or religious platitudes – go ahead and dig in the dirt, boyo, find where you come from.

On the other hand, you can also simply cruise on the good times: I met Lars from Sweden toward the end of his very first hour in Colombia. He was lanky and mop-headed with an easy-going grin, and he was trying to ask in broken Spanish where to go to buy cigarettes. Come with me, I told him, I’ll show you around. He was fearless and game for adventure, doubtless he’d do well with the women, and he didn’t have a firm exit date from Colombia.

"Oh boy," I said, "you are going to have a great time here. A fucking fantastic time."

"Just remember two things," I advised, "first, if it looks like a girl is with her boyfriend, use your judgment, but don’t be surprised if the boyfriend doesn’t mean shit. Second, if a girl tells you she’s pregnant, don’t panic, it’s probably just the drama chromosome kicking in."

Lars went with us to a club on his second night. I introduced him to some of the other Swedes in town, and when I left him in the bar there were a couple of pretty girls giving him the treatment. The next day, he came to me, amazed… he ended up making out with a stunning girl in the back of a taxi while her boyfriend sat on the other side of her and fumed. You were right about the boyfriend thing, he said, I couldn’t believe it.

Later, he slept with the daughter of an army general, which entailed spending a few nights skulking around an army base, and by coincidence met a Colombian girl friend of mine on the coast. She later told him she was pregnant, which turned out to be nothing but a desperate cry for attention.

Two for two. And Lars did indeed have a fucking fantastic time. He had nothing to lose.

Carl, an old friend from Sweden, also spent some time showing Lars the ropes. Carl had just returned to Colombia, partly for the love of madness and partly for a girl. The girl didn’t pan out so well, but Carl had returned to Bogota with ideas for a couple of books, a gorgeous new Thinkpad laptop, a new top-end Nikon digital SLR, and a smattering of other goodies. These magically disappeared from his locked hotel room one afternoon. The owners of the hotel, friends of ours, no less, couldn’t even be bothered to fake an interest in his loss, let alone offer assistance of any kind.

Carl, not having as fine a time as Lars. And he was with us when Sam nearly got into a brawl.

Sam ordered a shot of tequila at the bar and turned his back on it for only a few seconds to say something to a girl. When he turned back around, the shot was gone.

The Colombian guy sitting at the bar next to him had the shot cupped in his hands. Sam frowned and took his shot back with a "gimme that, punk," attitude. The guy gave him the "so what, whaddaya gonna do about it," so Sam squeezed his lime wedge in the guy’s eye. "Yeah?" said Sam, "You wanna take this outside?"

"Yeah!" the guy said.

"Well, I don’t," replied Sam. "I’m gonna stay here and drink my shot and then - go talk to some girls."

End of the night, the guy and four of his friends caught Sam alone right outside the door. Words were exchanged. "Slow down," said Sam at one point, "I can’t understand when you speak so fast."

So the guy switched to perfect American English. Not many Colombians have that level of English, and that’s pretty much an upper-class thing - a sign that the person’s spent some time living abroad.

A Ukranian girl who knew both Sam and the Colombian guy stepped in between them. "You know this dickhead?" asked Sam. "Yes, and I know, he is a dickhead," said the girl.

"You’re gonna pay!" said the Colombian.

"For what? My own drinks?" said Sam.

"For coming out tonight!" said the Colombian.

Sam walked away. But it’s one example of how douchebaggery isn’t somehow limited to the underclass, and even Colombia’s outrageous economic disparity is no excuse.

Cuentero in El Chorro

So anyway, what about Lee and Paul?

I had mainly gone out with Lee and Paul to meet a girl, one of Lee’s friends. This girl, she’s one of the few around these parts with what we old-timers call the "moxy." After seeing her at the club she owns, we got into a taxi whose door was opened for us by the guy who, in hindsight, I think is the guy who stole Jason’s shoes – and you’ll have to ask me in person for that story – and dammit, that guy deserves a good battering. I desperately want to turn the taxi around and go back to kick all of his teeth out, but I can’t be sure it’s the same guy, and wouldn’t that be an embarrassing boo-boo. So we ended up at this club, where the heaviness in the air is making my head hurt.

Lee shoves a random girl in the back for no apparent reason. Fuck’s fucking sake. The girl’s friends try to calm Lee down, and I maneuver him off to the side where he isn’t a threat to anyone and try to keep him occupied. He tells me I’m one of the few Americans he’s met that are actually cool. I wish no one would ever tell me that again. I try to keep an eye out for Paul and his girl. She is into him, alright – she’s already hanging on him and kissing him.

Lee grabs another one of my friends by the face and asks who he is. I grab Lee by the shoulder and tell him, in that particular way, how he doesn’t want to be aggressive like that. I have to tell him twice, but then he suddenly cools out and I lead him to a barstool.

Paul comes to sit beside me at the bar. As good as it’s going with the girl, he’s still a little wary.

"Where is she now?" I ask.

"Right there," and he nods across the bar. The girl is with two guys.

"Those the friends she’s here with?" Christ. They’re two of the guys I’d picked out earlier as being point sources for the bad vibe in the club. They’re wannabe thugs.

"Yup," says Paul. "I’m really not sure about this girl."

"Yeah, that’s not good," I say. I try to be diplomatic. "At the very least, you’re definitely not taking this one back to your place tonight, OK?"

I sit at the bar and watch Paul go back to the girl. Lee goes off to the bathroom, where he gets the phone number off the girlfriend of the bald narco’s friend and triumphantly flips off the bald narco from across the club. I’m relieved that no one seems to notice.

Then I see a third thug wannabe come out from the sidelines and offer to take a picture of Paul and the girl. I don’t exactly get the picture thing – maybe it’s just a minor trust exercise, or maybe there’s a practical use for Paul’s photo - but that looked all kinds of wrong, and now I have no doubts at all.

Lee says, hey, let’s go to Las Cascades. I laugh. This is a good club, one of the best, and I’m already worried about his survival. Las Cascades… even tough guys get the fear in that joint. It’s exactly the right place for Lee to end his suicide trip, and at this point, I probably wouldn’t stop him. I tell him, you go, you go alone, and can I have your camera? Lee laughs – yes, that was a silly idea.

A few nights earlier, I’d run into Niels in a bar. I don’t know Niels very well, but I know Niels is a genuine madman. "Niels," I’d said, "I don’t understand why we’re not hanging out together more often."

"I know!" said Niels. "You’re the kind of guy that enjoys trouble, and you’ll push it right up to the point before it becomes a real problem and then back off."

Niels meant trouble in the sense of, you like to get stupid and have adventures. This night, however, is nothing but the no-fun kind of trouble.

Paul comes back and sits next to me.

"So," he says, "wanna go to a bachelor party?"

"Excuse me? Is that what they said?"

"Yeah. It’s at a brothel."

I laugh. Goddamn, like that’s not obvious.

Paul tells me the address. It’s not a good address. In fact, if I were to choose a place to do what they’re planning, it’s exactly the address I’d pick – shady enough to do, but not so shady as obviously shady to a foreigner.

"Alright," I say, "let’s just play this off the top. You’re by far the most noticeably foreign-looking person probably in this entire city. And this hot girl is out with her three male thug-wannabe friends and she happens to like you enough to make out with you practically immediately, and then she invites you to a bachelor party at a sleazy brothel. There’s no part of this that doesn’t smell like crime-in-progress. So what do you think would happen if you go?"

"Well, I obviously wouldn’t go without you guys."

"Which would be really interesting, in fact, and I’d love to do it if I wasn’t already really tired and generally sick of nonsense tonight. But… no."

If I didn’t have such a headache, I think about how fun it would be to talk with the tall girl and explain to her how she and her friends blew the deal.

"So what would happen?" asks Paul.

"Probably – and this is important to qualify, because there’s always something new and amazing in Bogotá, and you really never know – but probably, you’d get scopolamined."

Alice stencil

"What’s that? Drugged?"

"Yeah. Scopolamine is a drug that sounds like urban legend, but I’d wager you’re about a half-hour away from seeing it true first-hand. They’ll usually slip it into your drink, or maybe apply it on her nipple for you to lick off. I’ve heard it can also be blown in your face, but that seems risky to me. It’s somewhere between a knockout drug and a truth serum – it makes you semi-conscious and susceptible to suggestion. So they’ll slip it into your drink and take your wallet and ask for your PIN number, which you’ll probably be happy to provide. You’ll wake up tomorrow god-knows-where and if you still have so much as your shoes, you can count yourself lucky. And that’s assuming they get the dosage right –they fuck it up too badly, you’re gonna be in bad shape for awhile. Well, if you live. You know, after all this time here, this is actually the first time I’ve ever knowingly seen this scam in action. Pretty fascinating."

"But why the brothel?"

"Well, obviously they can’t take you back to their place in case you remember where that is later. You wouldn’t let her back to your place with three of her guy friends. They can’t spike your drink and haul your semi-conscious body out of a good club like this – questions might get asked, and besides, your friends are here. Better to get you drunk first and then convince you to go off to a shady place – and hey, bachelor party! Brothel! Whee! - where people can be paid very little to not notice a half-dead foreigner being carried out. Not to mention, if all goes well, the next day when you go to the cops to report, ’I got really really drunk at this sleazy brothel and I woke up and all my money was gone,’ yeah, they’re gonna get right on that."

 "I asked the guy if I could bring my friends along to the bachelor party, and he made an unhappy face for a second, but then he said sure."

"There you go. Much safer and easier for them if you go off alone, but he doesn’t want to say no. And notice how it was the guy who invited you? Here’s a handy rule of thumb – and most Colombian guys are decent people like anywhere, but the rule is, never trust a Colombian guy for anything. I wouldn’t trust a Colombian guy to walk my dog. Even if he didn’t try to steal it or fuck it, he probably isn’t competent enough to walk it anyway."

"Um – that’s a bit harsh, don’tcha think."

"Yeah. That’s harsh. Hey, you know what I did last night? I was working at this Colombian guy’s office, and I asked if he had wireless internet. He said yeah, but it wasn’t working. Turns out, this guy had paid a Colombian technician, some kind of friend of friend deal, a known guy, to come to his office not once, not twice, but three times to set up his wireless router. Literally, literally, days were spent. Money changed hands. And it still didn’t work. I asked the guy, how much did you pay for this service, and he refused to answer. So I said, fuck it, I want wireless internet, I’ll just do it. I had it set up and running in about ten minutes, and most of that time was spent waiting on reboots. It was pretty much plug and play. I told this guy, look, there’s only two possibilities here – either that guy you paid the first three times is functionally retarded, or he flagrantly ripped you off and rubbed it in your face. Incompetent, criminal, maybe both – as far as I know, the technician didn’t try to fuck the guy’s girlfriend, so he missed the trifecta. But what’s the guy’s response? He just shrugs and says, eh, Colombia. So, yeah - harsh.

Or here’s a story I just heard this afternoon. Buddy of mine from England, opening up a sandwich shop, he hires this homeless guy we’ve all seen around for years. Pays him very generously for a few hours work, just hauling stuff around. End of the day, guy asks if he can sleep inside the unfinished restaurant. My buddy figures sure, what’s the harm, it’s practically nothing but bare walls anyway. Next morning, anything of any marginal value whatsoever is gone from the restaurant. Gone. Dude stole my buddy’s tools, building supplies, he stole the fucking gas meter off the wall. The gas meter. And the best part? Homeless guy turns up later in the afternoon asking if there’s any more work to be done. Now that’s some glorious fucking chutzpah, my friend. I could go on for hours like this with just the stories I remember. Hours, man. Harsh ain’t nothing but reality.

Now, I know plenty of Colombian guys who are great, so don’t take it too literally - but the many exceptions to the no-trust rule are probably not going to be random guys you meet in a bar or on the street who suddenly want to be your best friend. I know Colombia has something magical about it, and part of what makes it great is how cool and friendly and fun the people are, and somehow it all makes sense in the moment – especially with a little bit of alcohol mixed in, and there’s always a little bit of alcohol mixed in. But hopefully, next time you’re soused, you’ll remember that not even in Colombia do guys go to bars to invite complete strangers to fuck their hot female friends and go to their bachelor parties. Well… OK, come to think, that is actually possible here, but probably not."

"OK, so what do we do? You wanna walk out right now? The girl and her friends aren’t looking. Let’s do it. I don’t want them to follow us or anything."

I look at Lee. He’s ready. We break for the exit. I’ve never been so relieved to get into a taxi.

On the ride home, Paul feels a little embarrassed that he didn’t see the scam from the get-go.

"Hey," I tell him, "doesn’t matter how smart you are, fact is, this place is all about getting caught up in the moment, not thinking it through. And it’s not like I showed up in this country with this miserable prick attitude. You know how I learned it? First the Colombians tried to teach me, and then I still had to learn it over and over and over again through experience, and shit, I still get suckered sometimes – I got a fake 20 just a few weeks ago, and I knew better. It happens, shake it off. Hopefully you get an amusing anecdote out of it. Now, you notice the cool thing that happened tonight?"

"Something cool happened?"

"I know, but stop and think - there’s a beautiful exception to the dogfucker rule - the black guy who warned you the girl was a setup. He wasn’t trying to be your bestest pal ever, but he was a decent guy who genuinely went out on a limb for you for no reason at all, and then walked away expecting nothing in return. Fuck, that guy’s the definition of a hero. Shoulda bought him a drink. If I’m harsh, if I exaggerate, if I hyperbolize, it’s because the people are so nice and it’s such a party culture, it’s easy to get suckered – and when it happens, not if, but when it happens, the Colombians will shrug and politely explain how you’re an idiot for giving papaya. See, it’s not really the fault of the bad guy for doing something bad here – doing bad is simply natural. It’s your responsibility to always be on your guard, always looking over your shoulder, always looking for the angle… and if you slip up and something gets by you, bang, there’s nobody to blame but you. All I’m saying with the dogfucker thing is, keep your eye out for the douchebag, don’t be a sucker, and appreciate the good guy when he comes along."

The taxi stops. The ride should cost 8,000, maybe 9,000 pesos, tops. The meter, one of the newer, high-tech jobs, shows 12,900. Jesus, talk about making my point for me. This never happens when I’m alone. Looks like the driver figures the Asians for easy marks. Paul looks at me – what do we do?

"Who cares?" I say, "we throw him 10,000, we get out and walk away and if he says anything, ignore him. No reason to communicate with this dildo at all."

Nice theory, but none of us has exactly 10,000 pesos. We’re going to have to ask the cabbie for change. Paul shows him a 20 and asks if he has a 10.

"No, no, no," the cabbie says, pointing to his snazzy new meter. "Look here, it’s 12,900. 12,900!" He even says it like a prick.

Another night, I’d be nicer about it. I lean forward so I’m in the cabbie’s ear, stone sober, icy and irritated.

"Yeah? You know what, I’ve lived here for three years, I’ve made this exact trip a hundred times, and this taxi is not special. Twelve thousand nine hundred - is pure bullshit."

Swearing is still delightfully offensive in Colombia. The cabbie tries to talk back - "No no no, twelve…"

"It doesn’t cost more than eight, nine thousand, maximum. I know it. You know it. But I’m going to give you a twenty and you’re going to give me back a ten – very simple and more than fair."

The cabbie starts arguing as if I’m the asshole in the car. "What, you think the meter lies? How could the meter lie? What’s your problem, look at the meter, blah de blah…" In my head, his voice trails off until it sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher. I’ve seen this before – it’s not hard to set the meter to go a little faster, and fine, fair enough setting it 50% faster for what look like rich drunk foreigners at 6AM… but once you’re called out, you’re called out, and I’m already offering this douche a generous tip that he doesn’t deserve. How hard is it – you tried a scam, you failed, shut the fuck up and be glad what you get. The more he jabbers at me like a moron, the more I feel perfectly justified in pulling out my pocketknife, opening the blade, and using it to smash in his pretty new meter. Oh, I’ll say quietly, no, I don’t think your meter is lying, I think your meter is broken. You should have someone look at that. For the record, this would be a remarkably poor course of action.

Right before I actually go to pull my pocketknife out, the cabbie is waving his hand in front of me in resignation and saying, OK, OK, OK, ten thousand, ten thousand.

Well, there you go, see, we can come to a reasonable agreement like adults.

We get out of the cab and the driver whines something like, it’s nothing compared to what you guys make.

Ah, that explains it.