I came to in the morning with no money, half a bag of BBQ potato chips, and a lovely 19-year-old girl. How do these things happen – first, I thought I had an over-25 rule, and then, where did I find a bag of BBQ chips at some stupid-o-clock hour?

The 19-year-old turned out to be all of the good adjectives and not really any of the bad, save the “too young” thing. As the hangover lifted I remembered thin slices of the previous night, including one point where she’d surprised me by being smart and goofy and cool. So much for the age guideline. The potato chip mystery never got resolved, but the girl, she stuck around.

A few weeks later, Sam and Vlad and I were waiting at the Bogota Beer Company for three girls Vlad knew when the 19-year-old called. I told her to come by for a beer with us. Vlad said, hey, there’s already a girl coming for you, and I said, nonsense, you can never have too many women around. Besides, it’d be entertaining and educational. I predicted Vlad’s upper-class women would instantly hate my spunky punk-rock lower-class 19-year-old, and would give her only the courtesy strictly demanded. My girl would hold her own, despite the fact she’d never been to the Bogota Beer Company before and didn’t know from the upper class.

Which was how it went. But when I met my girl outside the bar, she’d shown up with some male friend. I shook the guy’s hand and told her she was welcome to join me and my friends, but her friend would have to fuck off.

Which is, where I come from, a dick move. In Bogota, it’s self-defense. If it’s male and not already a known quantity, not at least vouched for, get rid of it. Too many ways to go sideways and not enough ways to go good.

I’m in the tienda bar late one Sunday afternoon, the tienda bar where the phrase “wretched hive of scum and villainy” crosses my lips every time I cross the threshold. It’s a horrible place but more importantly it’s rarely boring, and my friend and I are only stopping in for one beer.

I tell my friend about a project I’d been working on, these Colombians who’d written a role-playing game in English and wanted me to edit it to American English perfection, until I started editing. They wrote very well for a second language, but aside from the expected twists of grammar and punctuation, many things were garbled, nonsensical, and idiomatically wrong. Some parts were plain bad writing, or repetitive and dramatically overblown in that flowery Latin way that doesn’t translate well. They patiently explained how every one of my edits, without exception, was completely wrong and they were writing at a level of English clearly beyond my comprehension, like Shakespeare, and as upper-class Colombians, they were accustomed to a certain level of service and maybe I didn’t really want the gig. All things considered, plus having seen their hilariously idiotic and badly backfired attempts at viral marketing online, they had a point. But I saluted their superior condescension, classism and general retarded fuckbagishness, and vowed to improve mine – when in Rome, or Stratford-upon-Avon, after all. I’m laughing about it to my friend, but I’m grateful I read "Catch-22" when I did.

My friend, he’s upset with his Colombian girlfriend. They were at a club the previous night with a group of people including a guy she works with. The guy was calling his girlfriend “mi amor” and touching her face, aggressively and blatantly trying to pick her up. My friend is still pissed off about it.

"I don't even mind all the flirting if it's on the job," he says, "I know how it is at work. He just shouldn't be doing it at the bar, right in front of me. And she shouldn't let him.”

"Can’t argue with that," I say. "But look at 'em. It’s a basic cultural difference. Guy right here, for example." I nod at a nearby drunk douchebag. The douche looks like he’s near the pissing-his-pants drunk stage, and he’s slurringly grab-assing any woman that gets within grabbing range. It’s obnoxious as hell, grounds for a pepper-spraying where I come from, but in this bar it’s good-naturedly blown off by the women and tacitly encouraged by the men.

"Pathetic by our standards, but whaddaya gonna do. I knew a guy, hell, he couldn't help but harass anything he saw with tits - ever try to have a conversation, guy stops every thirty seconds to tell a passing twelve-year-old he wants to put his thumb in her ass? I've seen it, man. And I don’t think the women here are going to rise up and commit gendercide anytime soon, so ya deal with it. But look at the bright side: this is one reason why their women prefer us. Really, the douchier they are, the better. This drunk, your girlfriend’s co-worker… most of 'em are only doing us a favor."

Soon enough, the drunk douche notices us gringos. He cantilevers over our table and yells at us, flecking spit - "WELCOME COLOMBIA! Eh? WELCOME COLOMBIA!"

Yeah, that's great, thanks. Maybe this reads like a friendly gesture but I’m already guessing where it’s going, and in this bar, it hardly ever ends happy. I’m hoping the douche gets distracted by some unattainable skirt and goes the hell away.

But douche won't stop. He's yelling at my friend over too-loud Judas Priest, leaning in, breathing heavy. My friend asks me to translate.

"He's saying, '18 percent THC' and something about Colombia's the only place in the world to get it - y'know, the usual 'wooo Colombia number one wooo' bullshit. Remember, every day is September 12 for them. Just roll with it. And if he says anything about the food, agree with him no matter what."

Douche realizes my friend doesn't speak much Spanish. He switches gears. He tries to speak in English, and for fuck's sake, here it comes: "COME BACK," he says, "COME BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY."

"You mean, 'GO BACK,'" I tell him.

"COME BACK!"

"It's GO BACK, jackass. GO BACK. GO. GO. GO BACK. Christ, at least learn to insult us competently."

He thinks we're German. I imagine this is because we speak English. He switches back to Spanish and leans into my friend, tells him he'll kill him. He doesn't care if we're German or whatever, he says we made a big mistake coming to his country and we should leave, because he'll kill us all. He's waggling his middle finger off to the side as he speaks, the passive-aggressive thing, and he makes a throat-slitting gesture. I've seen this before – it’s grandstanding, bullying, playing on a badass international reputation. I imagine it mostly works because gringos are easily spooked. My friend doesn't spook. He doesn’t understand what the douche is ranting about, but I can tell from his face he's struggling with an internal debate whether or not to throw the douche off the balcony, just on principle.

But me, I’m in hysterics. I grab the douche by the shoulder and excitedly tell him, "you know what I love about your country? It's that the people are so friendly!"

This is what the newbie foreigners always go on about - oh, the locals are so gosh-darn friendly! I’m laughing at my own funny, but the douche gives me a confused look, like I don’t understand his point. He goes on about how Colombia is for Colombians. They don't need us here. The ground is stained with Colombian blood, it's their country, not ours, he’ll kill us, blah fucking etcetera. I listen with an amused grin and wait for him to pause.

"Yeah, man, that's exactly right!” I say. “All the wars, all the guerrillas and paramilitaries and narcos and constant killing, nothing but death death death, that's been working out great for you people so far, stick with it! The ground stained with Colombian blood, man, fuck yes, I support you in that one hundred percent! You guys don't need us, and no other country in the world wants you either, so you stay here alone and kill each other off. The more dead, the better! You should be proud to be Colombian, in your own little isolated pocket of killing! More death, man, more death! Go go go!"

My friend gets up to leave. He's had enough. Douche doesn't know what to make of my rant - his attempt at being threatening has backfired badly, and he's left holding nothing. He sits on the railing as I pass and I lean in close to him. "But you know what else? I'm not leaving your country, pal, until I'm done fucking all your women. ALL OF THEM." Smile. Wink. Slap on shoulder.

His head slumps to his chest and he gives me a desultory finger. I walk down the stairs and wave over a pretty girl I know to tell her I'm leaving. She comes over and kisses me. I tell her to walk outside with me for a moment and she puts her arm around me. I look back over my shoulder and the douche is watching us leave. I give him a little nod and a smirk - there he was, grab-assing any female he could and failing miserably, and there I am - snap my fingers and I walk out with the cutest girl in the bar.

It’s a moment of high blatant arrogant dickery. It helps no one and hurts everyone, and it makes me laugh and laugh and laugh.