Passing Through: Anarchapulco

Mexico

2021

In a dimly lit hotel on the Guerrero coast, a white man's face glows by a thin blue light. Two naked women with brown skin and dark hair stir quietly in a large bed. The man's eyes bulge as he gazes at his screen. His wallet has quadrupled since he last looked. The alt-coin market is doing well. He licks his lips hungrily, looking out the window toward downtown Acapulco, and then toward the bed.

He pauses, sending a few commands from his phone, distributing payment to US cannabis farmers whose crops he's taken on consignment. The farmer gets the least, the businessman gets the lion's share. His corner boys in Atlanta, Birmingham, and Dallas have been doing well. Maybe he'll drop the prices a little. He reconsiders; best not to break the market. Things are fine the way they are.

PART 1

I tie on a decent buzz for my flight and wake up hungover and exhausted in Mexico City. Covid is in full swing and the airport smelled heavily of isopropyl alcohol. Upon entering the main airport, they requested we walk through this large plastic hoop with a handful of mist emitters spraying alcohol over everyone who walked through.

I caught a cab from the airport to the bus station, asking to stop at three different pharmacies along the way. I was looking for any kind of opiate painkiller. The best I got was codeine syrup with another ingredient I'd never heard of. I downed the bottle and had a torta for dessert.

I woke up sweaty and sick to my stomach, stuck to the bus stop bench. I missed the bus to Acapulco. I went to the ticket window and they sold me another ride at half price. I arrived in Acapulco rather late, hiring another cabbie to get me to the villa.

The Mexico City airport requires me to walk through a large plastic hoop that it continuously misting isopropyl alcohol. Mexico's way of dealing with Covid: coat everything with alcohol. I wonder how many folks have been accidentally lit on fire this way. One Mexican port of entry is liable to be wildly different from the next.

I text Jules, let her know I'll arrive in Acapulco sometime at night. She says they'll be up. I text my landlady, Maryann and see where she's at.

Maryann is about fifty years old, a spit-out member from some hippie cult. The weed game afforded her some property, co-owned with an ex. She's really into crypto and keeps suggesting I do her book work or something. I don't know. I just want clear agreements with no strings.

I pay her $700/month rent and sometimes we have dinner together. She has a room upstairs she stays in when she visits from out of town. We flirt in a cordial sort of way.

Maryann and I met after AirBnb glitch-posted a listing that she had. After talking for awhile, I learned he had a rental. Seemed like fate.

We're fans of the same books, Buddhist lineages, and Jerry Garcia. We're both managing heartbreak by using large quantities of anesthetic and analgesic drugs. I mention off-hand that I'm headed to Acapulco to stay with friends in a communal villa for some weeks. They're attending an Anarcho-capitalist conference. I need to get out of town to dry myself out as empty bottles of bourbon line the wall.

I lightly vouch for Maryann. We've known each other a month. Before I purchase airline tickets, I ask Jules,

"This isn't going to be a crazy party house, is it? I'm trying to straighten my shit out after a breakup warper." Getting through winter, I'd been trained to drink and drug my way through heartache.

"I hear ya. We're on a healthy kick and have the cooking staff feeding us well over here. Not trying to party too much. Excited to meet other crypto folks and do some networking."

I pay three weeks Villa rent up front and buy a one-way flight to Acapulco. Maryann books the same flight as me,

"We'll get a hotel for the layover!" She declares. I explain I'm bringing camping gear and plan to sleep at the airport. Standard shoestring procedure. No point spending American hotel money when we're about to be in Mexico.

"That won't work for me." She complains.

"Well, that's how I'm doing it. You're welcome to take care of yourself as you need."

"You can speak Spanish and ride motorcycles, right?"

"A little of each, yes."

"Oh good!"

The fateful day arrives and she misses her flight. Something about her pharmacist and then her ketamine dealer. I ask her to bring me a ball of the K.

I'm thinking about that ketamine as I ride the bus out of Mexico city.

PART 2

The Acapulco cab driver gets my pack out of the trunk and coats it with an alcohol mist. I appreciate the cleaning. Pack hasn't been washed in ages. I tip him and enter the villa to see my friends seated around a table by the pool with a plate of white powder. So much for drying out, not like I was going that road anyway. I bought some tequila, just in case.

"Damn Jay, you got in late! Have a seat. Tell us your tale." Jules gives me a hug and introduces everyone.

I drop my bag, pop a bottle, and spill the beans. By the time I sleep, the sun is on its way. Luckily, I have a room to myself for the first few nights. I crash like a sneaker wave.

I can see this crowd is in for a party so I gather provisions. I visit the Wal-Mart and grab a case of tequila and a case of rum for the house (well, for me but to share), a pack of insulin syringes, a bag of ginseng and multivitamins, green tea, random food items for the cook staff to use.

We put in an order with the cartel delivery service and a slick black BMW pulls up to the house with a manila envelope and hands it off through the passenger window.

We divvy up the powders and I head to my sub-floor room for the next day and a half for some quality time with me, myself, Waylon Jennings, tequila, cocaine, and my journal. There's a nice shower and I've got all the time in the world.

At some point, Jules comes down to check on me,

"Hey ma man, you alright? We're a little worried about you being isolated down here..."

"Oh, me? I'm having a good old time. Want a shot? Banana? Bump? I'm making use of the lightning while it's in my hands. Gotta write hot sometimes, y'know?" I grin. Jules has low-key been on my mental-health team for awhile now.

She's mid-height, athletic build, always tan from laying around naked in the sun. A proper adventurer and skate-critter, she's generally bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Reminds me of a cute little bush-baby (see: cuter version of a lemur). We met in Hawaii while squatting state land in the jungle, eating lots of goats and pigs and banana and taro. We bonded over renegade life, spliffs, poetry, and her love of Burning Man.

This whole villa plan was hatched by her partner, Akasha, a goofy-slick kind-hearted psychopath obesessed with black-market big-money baller culture. He came to the right place.

After chatting with some locals, one of them showcasing his scars from a run-in with an AK-47, I learn that Acapulco was a war-zone in the 90's. The state military went head-on against the local cartels and lost. There are now three police forces in Acapulco: the tourist police, the cartel police, and the police police. They all enforce different crimes and all drive the same trucks, usually carrying some goon-lookin' guy in a flak vest, wearing a helmet and medical mask, toting a large rifle or shotgun.

The "cash rules" ethos of the area has attracted the interest of numerous newly-minted crypto million & billionaires who call themselves anarcho-capitalists, starting multiple enclaves of participating members. A lot has happened around this scene, including suspicious suicides with foul play suspected and outright homicides from opposing eco-political forces. A hit in Mexico is cheaper than a hit in the states.

Add on many layers of corrupt law enforcement and a conflicting set of hierarchies, and you have a nice batch of modern fuedalists wearing Che Guevara t-shirts trying to get along with hardened narco Mafia organizations.

Every year, when the An-Caps hold their global conference, the cartels make mucho dinero off the drug-hungry gringos. The event is called Anarchapulco and it's happening right now.

Somehow in the midst of all this, the "police" have posted extra ski-mask wearin' shotgun-wieding guerilla-lookin' personnel at the Little Ceasars and Oxxo market front doors, not letting anyone without a mask inside. Covid times are fuckin' weird.

Akasha takes a carload of us on a sunset drive through downtown Acapulco in a suped-up rented Jetta.

"Shit, we're going to miss the sunset." He grimaces as he drops a gear and punches us through a red light, swerving to dodge traffic.

He's off like a getaway driver, cutting every turn and running every light, redlining the engine and whipping us against our seatbelts, topping 90mph through downtown Acapulco. Luckily, there isn't much traffic. The three of us in the back seat look at each other. I just met this guy, haven't had enough time to determine whether or not I want him to let me out of the car. I hold on and slug some tequila to loosen me up in case of an impact.

"I love Mexico. Break laws and just pay for it on the spot. No court, no paperwork. Very accesible corruption." Akasha shares his many brushes with the law and general bribery tactics.

Three friends on a motorcycle were pulled over by a rent-a-cop-looking federale wearing some home-made uniform. He's holding a calculator, tallying up offenses: no helmet, no license plate, too many passengers, multiple traffic violations. Akasha offers him half the number on the calculator. The cop argues but Akasha won't budge. The cop feigns crumbling, takes the money.

This particular getaway ride gets us to the sunset with no trouble. We enjoy some copper-aqua hues and saline breezes while watching cliff divers flex their skills. Acapulco is a sight to behold. Named after all the reeds in the bay, this place has been written about and sung about for ages. Its very name carried on the wind, mentioned with vigor in corridos.

On the way home, we stop off at a party with the Agorapulco crew, an artsy bunch of misfits and hackers putting on a parallel event that's much more affordable &/or free. (Read: Anarchapulco is expensive). They're renting a house from an expat friend in a quiet little beach town outside of Acapulco. They're collaborating with local and foreign artists to generate fundraisers for things like repopulating sea turtles. I like the gang right away.

The tequila is in me so I accept a complimentary line of cocaine.

"This one's called 'butterfly wings'." She tells me. The cartels have different grades and prices of powder.

"For heart palpitations?" I ask her. She looks thoughfully toward the sky.

"Metamorphosis."

Suddenly, the cocaine is on top of me. Fuck. I throw some tequila down the hatch and thus begins my metamorphosis from a well-to-do man about the town into a ranging, lurking goblin. I can't seem to get the mix right. Another line? Sure. More tequila? I guess so. Back & forth I go on this turbid, watery see-saw.

I don't black out but I don't have a single meaningful conversation. I waste away in the corner wishing I was back in my room with Waylon and a pad and a pen. Cliche writer aura, I guess.

I take handfuls of taco meat to the patio and gorge myself until I feel sort of normal. I wait outside until the gang is ready to go. Apparently, there's a fancy Anarchapulco party tomorrow night. The door fee is $200. Some of the friends are going to sneak in. Conspicuously, there's no room in any of the cars for me to join. It's hard out here for a goblin, I'll tell ya. Better off staying home anyway. I've got a sea of tequila to practice parting.

PART 3

"Can you help me?" It's Maryann, a few days late.

"Sure, whatsup?"

"I'm past Mexican customs and I... can't get the bag out from inside of me." She whispers.

I pause to consider.

"How much is in there?"

"I don't know! I just want to get it out!"

A bag of drugs in my landlady's vagina. What a puzzle.

"Try to remember. If it's enough to cause an overdose and there's any possibility of the slug failing--"

"Slug?" She chirps.

"Bag. I mean, the bag fails, no bueno. I'll call some friends and see what I can learn."

I get on the encrypted horn to collect advice: Jump and squat. Reverse keigels. Use a medical plunger and do a water flush. Long fingers. Medical forceps. And finally, a preventative suggestion,

"NEVER COOCH A SLUG WITHOUT FASTENING A STRING TO IT. Y'KNOW, LIKE A TAMPON." My friend Neicha cautions me.

I send Ana the intel. She arrives late morning, ornery as hell, fumbling with her heavy bags and yelling english at the Mexican cab driver and then Akasha. She's mad because her room won't be ready until tomorrow. She bitches him out excessively. I do my best to diffuse this shitstorm and offer to share my room. I've about used it up, anyhow.

She hands me her bag and I help her downstairs. I listen to her squawk for awhile before we get down to brass tacks.

"You got that ball of K?" I ask. She hands it over. I guess she didn't cooch the K. I bust down a line. Oh, Ketamine. You tricky fucker. Some days you help me become smooth and shiny and reveal celestial resplendence, other days you send me through hell and making me coarse and jittery. Mostly, you take the edge off the stimulants and fortify the booze, induce some spectacular visions and buff the edge off of tenacious depression.

I settle calmly into my chair, riding a comfortable high. She's tearing into her luggage.

"So, what's all in there?" I ask.

"A few cute dresses, a sun hat..." She shows me.

"Great. And the bag of drugs that's still in your yoni?"

"Morphine. Valium. Xanax. Percocet. Soma."

"Enough to kill you?"

"I don't fucking remember honey, let's just get it out."

I consider that this could be a bucket-list moment. Fuck a bag of drugs out of your hot landlady? Looks good on paper. I ruminate in that fantasy awhile, yet something smells off.

"Alright, how would you prefer me to get this package out?" I ask her.

"Could we try your fingers?"

"Sure. Let me grab a few things."

I get some olive oil from the kitchen and wash my hands. Can't just use spit. This is my landlady afterall, and today, I'm a doctor.

"Alright ma'am, sounds like you have an intusion in your vulva and we're going to need to extricate the package with eh... my fingers."

She slides her underwear down and lifts her black skirt. I gently, slowly, professionally ease into my landlady with my middle and fore fingers.

"Ooh, that feels good..." She says.

Is this a kinky rouse? Do I play along? Something seems off to me. Smells off. My coyote nose is detecting some pheremonal warnings.

"I'm not... finding it..." I mutter, bracing myself to go deeper.

"Your fingers are small," She frowns, "But I have a large uterus."

Weird.

I spend another few moments searching for this potentially non-existant bag of drugs. Ah the drugs, my only horse in this game. Nothing comes up.

I hand her a water filter back-flush syringe and direct her to the shower while I go for more ketamine.

She spends the next twelve hours talking at me about her twenty-something ex-boyfriend who sounds suspiciously like the cabana boy & bag-handler she's trying to superimpose over me. Next, she yaps about her cult-leader ex-husband and her chronic illnesses. This would be immediately exhausting if I wasn't so loaded on tequila, cocaine, and ketamine. Instead, I just play the unpaid therapist, going in on four months of counseling in one night. How the fuck did I get here?

We pass out in the massive California King-sized bed, not even cuddling. I can't handle the smell of her; she smells like the dying and the dead, with a hint of vanilla and plumeria.

The whole night I am tormented by vampire dreams. Haunting spectres bleeding me dry. I wake feeling hazy and woozy, depleted. I transfer the things from my old room into my new room. I move up to the bunk-room with the boys to save some money. Enough with these crazy bitches.

To decompress, I load up some intramuscular shots of ketamine and stave off my hangover by floating in the bathtub. Drying off, I try an IV shot of the cocaine. Not bad.

I decide I need to wind my way out of the villa to see what this convention is all about. I attend conferences and make friends with the other villa-mates. One of them is a fine painter who calls himself Johnny Dollar. He came into this place bitter and shut off with a thesis: "fuck community". Johnny was misanthropic and anti-civ to the max. A solid session with the DMT vape pen in the villa living room cut right through that. He soon developed a warm-connective fuzziness to his harsh sandpapery edge.

Johnny saw me swimming through murky waters and took me out with the more clear-headed members of the group. He brought me back to reality, helped me re-attune to the wholesome, at least temporarily.

He proposed a bet:

"You're a writer who hardly writes, huh? You got $200?"

"Yeah."

"Ok, if you don't bring me a short story, an essay, and a poem every week for the next month, I'm gonna take that $200 and donate it to... who do you hate?"

"Cops."

"Do you like Trump?"

"I hate all presidents."

"Ok. If you fail I'm giving your $200 to the Trump campaign."

At that, we shook. With that shake, Johnny Dollar and his art-school anarcho-crypto machismo helped shake me out of a productivity blockage.

He was busy making money off NFT's and provocative art displays that comment on the inherent faultiness of end-to-end encryption services.

"You guys all doing illegal business thinking these encrypted apps keep you safe. It's a facade. We trust too much in the things that consume us."

You drink off the bottle for long, and the bottle drinks off you.

The Acapulco days continue slowly, full of liquor, weed, powders & pills, lounging naked by the pool, constant electronica blaring, with Maryann gawking & remarking at nudity like she's never been in a cult before. There's an undercurrent of social competition here. The whole thing feels like a technocratic drug-soaked episode of Survivor.

Each night is a blur of sampling each other's nasal spray concoctions and cocktails. One third cocaine, one third ketamine, one third mdma. Discreetly consumed at the bar,

"Mi sinus es infiermo."

I bring my own cocktails into bars. Five fingers of rum, one finger of lime, a healthy splash of cardamom bitters, and some ice.

Pick your mix, the name of the game is stay sharp to hobknob with An-Cap crypto elite; they're starting a bunch of farms and IPOs down here. My MO is to obliterate my senses while digging to find the heart of town, or else hit some mythic bedrock, or maybe rock bottom. A friend tells me I look like a sweaty coyote wearing a dress-shirt.

The Anarchapulco events are expensive and boring. I'd had more fun eating fake acid in a Montreal poolhall.

I gaze into the distance and wonder if PCP and GHB are in fashion down here. Turn this rave up, Quebecois style. I pull Akasha aside and ask about the cartel connect.

"What else do you want? You can get girls, you can get someone's ass whooped, you can get..." Akasha goes over the cartel menu.

"Valium, GHB, PCP, vials of ketamine instead of whatever brown-lookin' powder garbage they're selling as ketamine. Fuck, I thought these guys were professionals."

Akasha shows me the menu via an encrypted chat app.

PART 4

Our Agorapulco friends, the free-party & cheap-party guys, throw some down-home kickbacks with good food and music at the Turtle Sanctuary in Bonfil, a chill beach town outside Acapulco. It's all campfires, tapas, and cozy conversation, with the odd party favor of releasing recently hatched turtles into the ocean while techno DJ's blare, the hatchlings held in the palms of high gringos who fawn and whisper drunken prayers and lullabies before releasing them to the tides, welcoming them into the anthropocene with strobelights, house music, and a sticky contact high.

The next morning, unsatisfied with the cartel offerings, my roommate Chachi & I stop at every pharmacy and agro-veterinary clinic in a ten mile radius. Systematically, we discover that the cartel controls the pharmaceutical and veterinary market, at least for tourists. We can't get anything that'll get us high unless you count combining blood pressure medication and antihistamines a good buzz. Chachi gets viagra as a consolation prize, using the box to pull pranks on poor women in grocery stores,

"Oops. I dropped my viagra and my wad of hundreds." As he picks up his bankroll and box of boner pills. A bizarre flex that never fails to get an awkward chuckle and a fiery glare.

Back at the house, the air is growing tense. A thick haze forms over Acapulco bay and there are agitated whispers on the wind.

PART 5

"We don't want you to get evicted or anything. I know she's your landlady but..." Jules trails off.

"She's got to go." Akasha finishes.

I'm still coming down from another cocaine and ketamine warper, but I could've seen this one coming. I'm not sure how long I've been in this bunk room, but I've definitely pushed the edges of my sanity.

Last night, I was convinced everyone in the house intended to publicly execute me with knifes and blunt objects. I waited for them to raid my room and drag me bloody into the streets, thinking I'd been invited into some technophilic blood orgy. I can see the whole thing in graphic detail. The Mayan ruins, waterfalls of blood running down the steps, clumps of flesh and hair and the sound of scraping fingernails against concrete, hopeless haunting shrieks while chips of bone and teeth flow down rivers like leaves; all of this happening in modern-day Acapulco, asphalt glistening with sacrficial blood.

Maybe it was the constant electronic music blaring through the villa. Maybe my brain was compensating for the vibe not being metal enough. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was Mayan ghosts and Landlady Vampires. Maybe it was some fundamental, underlying insecurities or some overarching social chaos looming. Probably a cocktail of spiraling psyche vomit. This wasn't my first psychosis.

My brother Kalvin says having a psychosis is like being knocked out in a fight. The more it happens to you, the easier it is to have happen.

I still blame the electronic music.

During my peak fight-or-flight moment Jules instinctively entered the sliding door to check in on me. I was expecting to see her wearing ceremonial garb, courting a sacramental dagger. I consider vanishing, or else accept my fate as the household's sacrifical lamb. She is unarmed and sweet as Tennesse whiskey. Logic and reason are tearing at the frays of my nightmare.

I confide in her, telling her I feel like a pile of earthworms before a great and unmerciful tilling.

"Sometimes ya gotta be a pile of worms. I've been worms before... fertility for the soil?" Jules muses, "Nah, we don't want to kill you, man. We want to hug you and love you." We spend awhile chatting before a few more friends come down. Beautiful people in my room, hugging me. High on molly, not murdering me. I can't tell if it's a trap. As the drugs wear off, so does the paranoia. If I wasn't so tense, maybe we'd all cuddle. If I hadn't ruined myself on MDMA ten years ago, maybe the drug would be therapeutic.

Instead, let's everyone cuddle the too-high paranoid skeleton guy 'til his etch-a-sketch scatterbrain shakes the rapture off of him.

Here we are, the next day, I've sworn off ketamine and cocaine for the hundredth time and the gang has decided to vote Maryann off the island.

"For the record, I am not voting her off." I state, covering my ass.

"You're outnumbered. We want to make sure this isn't going to affect your living situation back in Oregon, though."

"Well, I referred her. I don't mind breaking the news to her and accepting the consequences. I thought she could hang, being an old deadhead. One of Jerry's kids and all."

"She's fuckin' up our party. Since she got here she's been bitchy, rude, and hella needy, and uncomfortably weird. Nobody wants her here."

"Can't be havin' that. We're not a Motel 6. I can help break the news."

"No worries, man. You take it easy on your head over there. I got this." Akasha is taking a liking to me. He's the temporary hospitality manager of this estate, and he loves kicking shitty people out.

"You got somewhere good for her to go? She sucks at Spanish and at traveling."

"Yeah, man. We're gonna get her a refund and a cab tomorrow morning. I've got a few good options for places she can stay. I'll let her decide." He strokes his beard.

Jules mentions, "Didn't you notice the way she was hovering over you? She would interrupt you doing something creative, say weird condescending shit, and you would bounce. She was doing it to all of us. We're all here tripping our nuts off trying to have a good time and her energy made the place uncomfortable."

"I dunno, guess I didn't really notice. I did have some awful vampire dreams after sharing the room with her for a night..." I recall.

They break it to Maryann in private. Afterward, the gang heads out to a fancy dinner party. I stay home to drink off my comedown. Maryann confronts me on the steps by the pool at night.

"You need to do something. Take my side. Stand up for me." She pleads.

"This is a shitty situation. I referred you and they don't like you. None of 'em want you here. This isn't Rainbow Family rules. It's not up to me."

"Are you kidding me? Be a fucking man and stand up for something." She glares.

I grin,

"I'm a critter, honey. No sides here. I stand for autonomy. The gang votes you off, that's between you and them. I spoke my piece and they wouldn't budge."

"Then let's get out of here, you and me. Where should we go?"

"I'm staying."

"Do you want me gone, too?"

"I don't care if you stay or go. You are your own free country. As am I." I take a deep breath, "I gotta say, after our night together I realize I over-extended my support to you. I felt exhausted afterwards and that's on me. I'm already catching red flags for bad chemistry, so I want to be crystal clear moving forward: I cannot be your therapist, doctor, hero, or bag handler. I can go on daytrips and adventures but otherwise, we are on our own trips." I pause, "Did you ever see a doctor to get that bag out of ya?"

"Well, I went to see him and... so you don't like me? But you... wanted to kiss me the other night!"

"What? When?"

"In your room, in bed."

"Now you're just making shit up." I eye her knowingly.

"Maybe I dreamt it... so you're abandoning me?"

"No. I am staying. You are moving because the gang and you don't have chemistry. I invited you to join, independently. You represented yourself and it didn't work out."

"But I like it here. I wanna stay here!" She whines, "I hate Akasha! He's the worst. Isn't he terrible?"

"I don't have any beef with him."

She becomes angry,

"Well... I want you to move out of the barn! I can't have someone living on my property that I don't trust!"

"You're going to evict me?"

"Yes. You won't stand up for me. I want you to move out."

I pause to pour a drink, taking a deep breath.

"To be clear: you're evicting me in Oregon because I won't take your side on a conflict in Acapulco."

"Yes."

"A conflict you caused, not me."

"They're your friends."

"And you're my landlady. Also a friend, I thought, but my friends don't try to manipulate me and threaten eviction when I don't bend to their will."

This is why leases are nice, I recall.

"I want you out."

"Fine. I think you're foolish for throwing out a tenant with the financial means and integrity to pay rent on time. As a Deadhead, I think you're shitty for leveraging landlord power against me. Not very family, bruh."

"Well, I don't care. I want you out whenever you get back."

I throw my hands up,

"Fine, Maryann. I don't give a flying fuck about being houseless. I thrive without a home. You have no power over me, got it? Nunca, nada!"

"You're crazy!" She shouts before storming off.

"Probly." I smile and sigh, glad to play our hands out. My trump card and my ace is always a riverside bed with stars for a roof and the open road.

The next morning, Maryann is packed out. The proverbial scapegoat, sent into the wilds of social ostracization in a nice air-conditoned hotel room. The unwitting ritual seems to work; the gang is at ease. We're all connecting and bonding famously. One of the gals tells me in the kitchen,

"You know Jay, I thought you were some crass wook who was gonna do all my drugs but you're just a sweetheart with good manners. I love having you around."

My eyes wander to inspect her apron for ornate knives and sacrifical daggers.

PART 6

"We need a proper sound system for the party." Akasha sits in his morning chair at the long banquet table on the patio, stroking his beard and smoking weed from a throwaway silicone sherlock-style pipe. The view of Acapulco Bay is like a post card, cast in early-morning sepia tones, the contrast dial turned up as sherbert hues of orange and blue melt directly into our mouths.

The cook & clean staff brings out breakfast: chilaquiles. They're wonderfully tolerant of our antics. They have a look about them that says they're seen worse. Far worse. We refer to them as our parents, maybe if our parents worked full-time hospitality and moonlit for the narcos. They keep a professional level of distance.

As it turns out, the villa is owned by one of the local narco families. Akasha wired them money to pay for the villa but the money was held up by some agency surveilling the family. The family tried to reneg on the villa but Akasha didn't budge and the payment eventually was accepted.

A delightful and unexpected surprise interrupts our breakfast. My friend Galaktica from the northwest arrives at our villa and is somehow connected to this group. The odds of this happening are astronomical.

Back home, she's an active conspiracy-heavy passively sober-shaming DJ and organizer of community. See: conspirituality. I've always liked her, specifically because she's a crazy witch. They used to enforce sobriety culture at their events. I rarely abided and they never kicked me out. We don't agree on most things, but we do agree on being friends and generally stable community members, which goes a long way.

She's here to get wild with us during Covid times while it's assumed that covid does not exist and the world's leading political syndicates are about to solidify into a globalist hegemony due to some "plandemic". Party on, Anarchapulco 2021. The conference has been lit.

I got a cool lanyard and keychain at last night's conference discussion about decentralized automated autocratic efficient AI blockchain chatbots designed to tokenize centralized web development to de-center the central market of the internet of things (held together by chain blocks, blocks made from upcycled chains) in order to build bamboo platforms for agrarian riparian redevelopment in sustainable hierarchal post-industrial pre-collapse survivalist egalitarian holotropic breathwork communities who are utilizing New-Age slave labor called "work-trade" to farm famine-resistant strains of cabbage & install kimchi fermentation vessels in every nation to disrupt colonial gut biomes and affect gut-brain repatterning to subversively redistribute planetary wealth to the fifteen highest IQ apolitical entrepreneurs. The IPO was coming up soon and I think I could mortgage my tinyhome and get at least 10x returns.

Then there was something about David Ike and Anunaki alchemists baking philospher's stones into a post-discussion potluck but I didn't stick around because the bar was out of booze and only had non-alcoholic kombucha for .0023 ETH. I only had XMR and didn't feel like logging into an exchange because my phone battery was low from snorting powders off the screen all afternoon. Naturally.

Galaktica sits down at the table for some leftover breakfast. She's on the party committee and begins scheming our catering.

"Who wants to go to Wal-Mart?" Akasha begins the great herding, post-breakfast. He's constantly grumbling to himself about how much he hates "herding cats".

They ask if I want to work the door for the party. Sure. I figure I'll buy more booze for the house, as well. The gang knocked my choices intitally because the price tag was too low. One of them "used to work as a mixologist" and evaluated my selections and approved. I'd only been swimming in the stuff, having sampled all the cheap tequila and rum that wasn't cut with rice liquor or flavoring agents. Don't trust a mixologist to find cheap clean booze in a foreign country. Trust an alcoholic who likes to read.

"You really like this stuff, huh?" Akasha looks in my cart.

"It's a hobby." I mutter, heading toward checkout. More of a relationship. One day we'll have to break up. But not today, tequila. Not today.

On my way out of Wal-Mart, I stop at the ATM to pull out some cash. I push all the right buttons, I think. The machine swallows my card anyway. I try calling the number on the ATM. Nothing. I go to customer service and explain my dilemma, with the help of a Spanish translation app. They send me to the Mexican version of Radioshack in the plaza.

I explain my problem to the Mexican Radioshack technicians. Palms up, they send me back to Wal-Mart. I stare down the ATM. I push buttons. I inspect inside the slot. I look for more clues. I bother customer service again.

It was my only card. I'm fuckin' beat.

I tell my friends to leave me at Wal-Mart while I sort this shit out. I cancel the card and call in a favor. I left a wad of cash back in Oregon.

"Hey Kanaa. Can you grab some guap from my dresser and run it to the Grants Pass Wal-Mart, wire to Acapulco for me? I'll pay gas and time and buy ya lunch."

"Sure thing, player."

I love my team.

I wait awhile 'til I can secure the cashout. It takes all afternoon, Western Union always fucks around. I call my brother in Vermont to tell him how I just got evicted.

"If you'd've just fucked your landlady, you wouldn't be getting evicted right now."

"Nah man, she wasn't after dick, she wanted a cabana boy slave. That pussy was a venus fly trap. I've stuck my dick in enough crazy to smell it when it comes near. I ain't fuckin' around with no doom-smellin' vampires."

We both have a good laugh.

"So when ya gotta move out?"

"Whenever I get back to Oregon. We'll see."

Eventually, the wire comes through. I get my grip, Akasha and gets his sound system, which he intends to return for a full refund before leaving.

PART 7

"Wake up! Let's go have an adventure!" Chachi is ready. A solid roommate, we've been co-counseling each other thru some of our parallel dilemmas. Broken heart, substance use disorder, etc. He's an aspiring musician. I'm an aspiring writer. We're a couple of goons.

The crew rallies and we catch a boat, take some acid, and cruise toward an island. My daybag contains beer, tequila, leftover pizza, a headlamp, a water filter, band-aids, a journal, and some cocaine. Enough for a day-hike.

We hike winding trails through palmy meadows and jagged shoreline, peeking out toward the mainland for spectacular views. We end on sheer cliffs, all of us shimmying toward the ocean. Galaktica is smashing urchins open and eating their slimy insides with a wicked grin, bubbling with witchy childlike laughter. We all partake. Slimy. Decent. Salty.

Roquetta Island. Home of the cody's; little muscular red-panda lookin' raccoons. Lots of wildlife. Gorgeous place to spend an acid trip. We begin referring to the place as Acid Island.

Chachi is the hero of the day for reasons I can't recall but we're all chanting his name periodically through the adventure. At some point Akasha & Jules left off to help Red look for his phone. He's a crypto-broker with lots of money on there.

They spend their time stalking through the island hills eyeing vultures, dead cacti, and rock golems. Murray is exuding fearlessness and confidence, acid bravado. He dives headlong into the choppy seas to swim with the urchins. A few daring souls swim into an entire cave full of urchins. The two of them disappear behind the surf, crabwalking low and high over rocks. Murray arrives ashore, seemingly unscathed.

Upon closer inspection, he's covered in urchin spines. Jules and Red watch eagerly. Red's nervous disposition has him smearing reef-safe sunblock all over his body and face, layer after layer of white cakes him, pupils wide and high.

Red is panicking, wondering about his phone. He accosts a local fisherman, who only responds,

"Pescado." Gesturing toward his fishing tackle. No phone.

Jules eventually recover Red's phone, spying it on the ground where he was sitting earlier. The gang catches a sunset ride out, and a local boatman is offering help for some of the urchins on Red's foot. Seems that the whole gang is bringing home spines. Except for Jules, who is holding the entire group's bankroll of pesos.

The boatmman begins smacking Red's urchin-injected foot with the underside of his flip-flop, assuring Red that this is a good way to deal with the problem. Red shrieks in pain, a large and muscular man, confused with wounded pride at how or why a middle-aged Mexican father would pull a stunt like this on such a hunk of a hero. Everyone giggles, except Red.

Back on the other side of the island, Chachi and I share some some deep conversation on one of the ledges, watching the sun drop into the horizon. Chachi is reflecting,

"You know, man. I got a massage on the beach the other day. She was really good. Loosened my back right up. Toward the end, she told me to roll over, and starts working my chest and her hands slowly go down to my groin.

"And, well, I didn't communicate that I wanted this, and I didn't expect it but she gave me a handjob and finished me off, underneath the towel, right there on the beach with everybody and their families around, people walking around trying to sell candy and jewelry. I just came in a rag and she caught it all, real professional.

"And y'know, this whole time, I've been trying to get over this breakup from some vampire queen... and this random massage lady just clears me out, cleans me out. I feel like a new man. I think she was a witch. Like, a really good one." He scratches a head of black Italian hair.

"Did you tip her well?" I ask.

"Damn right I did." We both grin.

We wander around for awhile longer, enjoying the balmy dusk air. Me, Chachi, and Galaktica take our time getting off the island. Maybe we'll camp here for the night, I ponder. I have an emergency blanket in my bag somewhere. The three of us can wrap up like an old gringo burrito.

We make it to the docks to see all the tourist boats gone. None 'til morning. Chachi negotiates with some workers to get the three of us on their boat home for a couple hundred pesos. It's a little John boat with an outboard motor, absolutely overloaded and just an inch above sealevel. The motor sounds bogged down, spewing hazy emissions. We hold very still so we don't take on water, which happens anyway when we go through another boat's wake.

"Ay, rasta!" One of the workers says to me, making the universal gesture for smoking weed. I throw my hands up. If I had some, I'd roll some for them. Something tells me old pizza and acid isn't going to appease this crowd. The cocaine's long gone.

"How do you do that?" Galaktica asks me.

"Do what?"

"Acid, tequila, pizza, and cocaine on an all-day hike?"

"It's probably my worst talent." I admit. "But, how does the saying go? When in Acapulco gringos roam? When gringos roam in Acapulco?"

"When in Rome--" She starts.

"Do republican drugs." Chachi cuts in.

I take the opportunity to deliver a sermon,

"You know, it's funny you mention that 'cus these drugs we all like, the ones that don't come from pharmaceutical sources enter the US through Latin and Asian mafias, who are in coordination with each other, fighting a subtle proxy war using substances to eliminate would-be rebellious populace to fund their operations, much like the CIA has done many times, and when you consider how the British used opium centeries back to control Chinese markets, now the Chinese use the same tactic to flood the Canadian commonwealth with fentanyl analogues; everyone has nuclear armaments so we have to fight trade wars and kill civillians by a different means: commerce..."

Everyone groans. They don't like to hear how their favorite drugs are political tools. This starts a debate which I open.

The new age ideal of revolution is basically one long party. It's born of a rootless culture that lacks inherent reverence or inherent ritual, thanks mostly to the clergy. One camp holds a hyper-fixation on intentional community, cultural appropriation, rules out the usage of some drugs while calling others medicine, and consuming them, by-and-large, just as recklessly. It amounts to a lot of toxic-positivity and subtle exile for members who are outside the paradigm. Their means for revolution is largely based in passive means, though their camp has its merits. They help some find healing, and help folks find their light side.

The other camp practices hedonism and some white-washed half-baked exercise of Bachannalian rites, totally disconnected from lineage or tradition, reclaimed and appropriated through historic texts and used as a means to revolution. Unfortunately, the raves and festivals are co-opted by the prison-industrial complex which fall into the plans of the state. Sorry 'bout it. Why? See: drug culture & drug laws. Their camp also has its merits. They help folks express their animal parts and integrate their shadow aspects.

I blame the cults. All cults, really. Take anything and institutionalize it, and you have ecoside and anthropocene. We are all guilty. Burners. Deadheads. Lot kids. Dirty kids. Rainbow Family. Ravers. Catholics. Buddhists. Yankees fans. Patriots fans. All of it, fixated on avoidance in some form. Drug & alcohol culture, vertical metaphysics, transcendant metaphysics. Everything taking us away from the pain. We love getting high, but why? It's entirely natural to seek relief from pain and suffering. I love getting high, whether it's on opium or the opiate of the masses.

So, Getting high is not the problem. It's the lack of clarity in understanding, the blind leading the blind toward excessive kool-aid consumption and then dogma & doctrine, socio-political enforcement. Everyone grows reliant upon external conditioning, never taking a moment to unplug and understand the ground state. Think back: when was the last time you went a week without seeing another human, without taking a drug or drink, scrolling on a media feed, or being subject to some kind of programming rooted in the anthropocene?

Now consider, it takes roughly sixteen to twenty-one days of repitition to hardwire in a new habit. See: three week rehab programs.

Now, when was the last time you spent sixteen to twenty-one days away from any influence other than fire, water, food, air, and self-investigation? There's a saying:

Get the cotton outta your ears and put it in your mouth. Just sayin'. I'm no better, a hypocrite like all of us but I can't keep quiet about what I see as I work on a better way.

We're all quiet for awhile. The boat kisses the other shore. We load in the car and get on to our next engagement, a cookout and mixer at the Turtle Sanctuary.

I notice Maryann is there. I guess she wasn't sacrificed on the steps of a local pyramid. We check in.

"Going well?" I inquire.

"Yeah. Not bad, making friends." She nods to a group over yonder.

"I'm glad." I smile. Awkward silence. We drift apart.

So it goes.

Jon D Rapp is an aspiring novelist and professional freeloader.

This section is from an upcoming book, soon to be released and distributed by the Rogue Writers Guild's sattelite publishing house: soon to be named

You can find him behind a typewriter at your local farmer's market, collecting patronage and composting anthropocenic egregores one poem at a time.

IG@typewritertramp