Juego Sucio

in most stories of mine, i change the names to protect the innocent.  but in this story, there are no innocents.  there is only…

PETER AND MARGIE.

and fanaia.  one more name you might want to remember.  although that’s merely just the name of some anorexic colombian girl who looks like a horse and tells everyone she is brazilian despite having lived there a mere 3 months…  but i digress.

this story takes place in a house.  a house called “sin casa.”  despite being renamed “casa libre” in an attempt to reframe it´s image, which was tarnished by a swedish woman-beating drug addict that used to live there, sin casa is what it is, what it was, and what it shall forever be

i had lived in this house nearly my entire time spent in colombia.  i discovered it one day while i was out roaming the streets of bogota.  the idea of having a party house, occupied by both locals and foreigners alike, had serious appeal.  we signed the contract, moved in, and eventually had six people living in the three-and-a-half bedroomed house, each occupant from a different country around the world.

the first major crisis in the sin casa house occured when i was out vacationing in venezuela.  during this time, the swedish guy, who had a serious gripe with me–i think due in part to my fist visiting his chin after hearing him disrespecting woman for the hundredth time–decided to vote me out of the house in retaliation.  the vote, taken amongst all of the occupants in the house, had passed.  somehow, majority ruled.  which was befuddling to me, since, well… i had friends in the house?  or so i thought.

squatting in my room during those two weeks, a person i had entrusted the room and all of my belongings to, was a czech boy named peter.  or petr nevole, as you would spell it in his dumb little gypsy language.  peter was a friend.  someone i trusted, despite all of the warning signs otherwise; you know, the fact that he fled his home country because he had stolen money from the russian mafia, or the fact that during the last two years he had been living as an undocumented person in colombia, or the fact the he pushed me for days on end, in a get-rich quick scheme, to smuggle bars of gold in my shoe and in various orfices of my body out of the country and into europe, where i would meet a guy and sell the gold and reap ourselves thousands and thousands of dollars…  had it worked.  OR, had it been a good plan.

but no, it wasn´t.  much like every single bleeding idea that crosses peter´s small undeveloped mind, it was a terrible idea, and it simply never matriculated.  much like all of his ideas to make money, none of which involve the idea of “working”.  much like his idea to vote me out of the house and my own bedroom that i had generously lent to him while i was in venezuela so he could exist one more month in a house and not be out on the streets.  having no moralistic fiber meant that peter could easily vote me out of my own house so he could keep my room and have his new girlfriend move in in my stead.  his new girlfriend that he had met, well, fairly recently.  how recent, you ask?

two weeks.

two weeks.

two weeks was all peter needed to say, “yup, she´s the one!” and betray his good, if not only friend he had managed to make in two years living in colombia.  so who was the girl?  she must be shakira´s little sister, am i right?  FAR FROM IT.  her name was margarita.  or margie, if you wanted to drink the cocktail without getting the image of her horrendous face in your head and ruining the sweet taste of the drink for the rest of your life.  she was a tiny mishapen colombian girl with obnoxious artificially colored red hair and a slew of ugly, nonsensical potawatamee indian tattoos covering her awkward, mishapen body.  picture ariel from the little mermaid if she had developed a crack habit at the age of eleven.  that´s margie.

these two had developed a thing on new years eve at the same party me and my current girlfriend had solidified ourselves as a duo.  peter, at that time, was dating a girl, whom i will not mention by name, but a girl who was like the town bicycle–no–the town BUS, due to the fact that everyone–literally–almost everyone i knew, had taken a ride at some point.  peter didn´t seem to care.  she would come home with peter, leave his room, find a random and willing penis not belonging to peter, insert it into her no-no zone, and then return to peter´s room and sleep with him immediately after, condoms be damned!

and that is the exact same pretense under which peter met margie.  her first night visiting sin casa, she had apparently slept with the swedish guy.  and then he encouraged peter to sleep with her while he was away on vacation to get her off of his back, and peter happily obliged.  and then they fell in love.  from that point on, margie always blatantly denied having any physical enounter with the swede.  although in the back of my mind, i knew, having lived with the swedish guy in bangkok for almost year, that not once in our thai adventures had he ever lied about a single girl he had been with.  there was always evidence to support his claims.  so needless to say, i had my doubts about margie from the get-go.

on the day i arrived back home from venezuela, i confronted peter about my room.  why was there girl´s clothing and cigarette butts all over the floor?  why had he voted to kick me out of the house??  peter claimed that the swede had manipulated him, and forced him to vote against me.  i bought his story.  i didn´t want to believe that one of my best friends here was a massive hypocritcal backstabber.  eventually, we got rid of the cowardly swede who had tried to stage a mutiny against me while i was in another country, and me and peter made ammends.  although this time, my guard was up.  i was ready for him to stab me in the back at any single moment.

surprise!  it happened.

may 31st: peters birthday.

it was midnight.  it was raucous in the old sin casa.  i figured i would keep my mouth shut, that i would endure the screaming, the mayhem, the drunken stupor that was occuring on the other side of the small set of windows seperating myself and the next bedroom over.  peter had just turned 22.  a milestone of a birthday.  one that you would be propelled to celebrate on a thursday night, in your bedroom with all of your best friends.  or when you don´t have any friends, your girlfriend and your roommate´s grimy, freeloading friends.

as it goes, peter was passed out, stone-cold drunk, on the floor of his bedroom, with his equally beligerant girlfriend.  the party, which peter promised to contain in his room, had spilled out into the neighboring bedroom of fanaia.  no longer was it peter’s party, it was fanaia´s.  and despite her bedroom being the size of a shoebox, she managed to fit eleven people in there.  all drinking, all blowing lines of coke, all noisy, all happening right next to my room.

at 1 pm, i decided enough was enough.  it wasn´t so much the fact that i had to work in a few short hours, as much as it was that peter promised to have people over no later than 11.  i stormed into his room and demanded he take responsiblity.  but through incomprehensibly slurred speech, he waved me off.  he had the aptitude of a small chipmunk.  and that´s before he gets drunk.  now?  it was like talking to a wet mop.

i kept screaming at him to get the fuck up and do something.  he didn´t budge.  but his girlfriend suddently sprang to life and got in my face.  and then my girlfriend came out of nowhere and gets in her´s.  i warned peter that if he didn´t throw everyone out, i would.  and that´s just what i did.  i walked into fanaia´s room, which looked like a chinese opium den, with lethargic and mindless bodies sprawled all over the floor, and told everyone that it was time to leave.  fanaia pushed me out, flustered, and began screaming at me.  now it´s me and my lady vs. the other three shitty  roommates.

fanaia was already on the shit list, as it stood.  she had lost her priveledge to have people in the house.  the last time she did, the previous weekend, her friends tried to start shit with all of my roommates for–you guessed it–not leaving when they were asked to leave.  a giant skirmish ensued, which included my girlfriend almost beating another girl´s ass, a guy nearly crying when i snatched my own wine bottle out of his hands (mid-sip), chaos in the stairwell, death threats out front of the house, and one of fanaia´s so-called “friends” stealing a pair of shoes from our house.  thus, fanaia had lost her guest priveledges.

and now, here she was, yelling with me about how she had the right to keep me awake on a thursday night.

the confrontation with my roommates continued until finally, merlin, the local welsh guy, and the only one in sin casa with any sort of legal ties to the house (his name on the contract) came out and told everyone to go home.  merlin is a huge pacifist, and only gets involved when he absolutely has to.  so him walking out and dismissing everyone was a godsend.

so yeah, nobody left.

merlin had to ask everyone two more times to leave.  and then it seemed like people were finally ready to comply.  it was around 130 AM at this point.

from my bed i sat listening to everyone shamefully drag their worthless, soulless bodies out of my house.  and then i hear someone in the doorway address me with a final farewell: “darby, suck my dick, motherfucker,” in english so broken it took me ten seconds to realize that he wasn´t speaking spanish.

i spring to my feet, ready to confront the wannabe tough guy, but my girlfriend stopped me in progress.  “it´s not worth it.”  she was right.  i laid back down.

a few minutes later, still heated, i got up and headed to the bathroom for a quick piss.

i flushed the toilet, left the bathroom, and upon returning to my bedroom, i hear the front door open.

a silhouette is walking towards me.  i stand motionless, wondering who this stranger is.  he tries to walk around me, but i block his path.

“whats your name?” i ask him, seeking to match his voice with the one that taunted me.  he ignores me and tries to walk around me again, but i don´t let him.  “whats your name?” i ask again.

when he starts talking, i realize that it’s not the guy.  but this guy is being an asshole.  he keeps trying to push me out of the way, to go back to fanaia´s room to get the backpack he had left behind.  no way.  fuck this guy.  this guy ain´t coming into my house.

as this guy is trying to force his way past me, another guy comes strolling in with a short ugly blonde girl.  they seem like a good match for each other, as he´s equally ugly.  he has a gap between his two front teeth the size of the hoover dam.  in fact, he has a gap between all of his teeth at least 13 centimeters wide.  it looks like someone threw a handful of teeth collected from a variety of geriatric farm animals at a wad of play-doh.  how the fuck are his teeth being held up, i wonder?  i pose the same question to him that i did the first guy.  and this time, we have a match.  it´s definitely the voice i heard talking shit.

me and this guy start yelling at each other.  he’s acting real tough, but he is hiding behind his pet walrus.  i mean, his girlfriend.  finally the guy gives me a shove.  fuck it.  i have had enough.

i let one fly, and the next thing you know, all fucking hell breaks loose.  i have two guys swinging wildly trying to punch my head off.  i pop the shittalker in the face a couple times, and blood is drawn.  the dwarf-girl is trying to jump over everyone to lunge her nails into my throat.  everyone is moving forward and i am being backed into a wall.  i grab the backpack guy and get his head in a tight lock between my wrists.  off-balance and falling backwards, i utilize what little balance i had to deliver a series of muay thai knees to his head.  eventually i fall, with one guy on top of me and the other two rushing forward.  things do not look good for me.

then, at that very moment, i feel a pair of hulking arms come from behind, wrap around my shoulders, scoop me up, and drag me into the room behind me.

merlin to the rescue!

merlin had dragged me into his room to protect me.  as i sit on the floor of his room trying to take it all in, i hear a stream of explicatives being launched outside in the hallway.  merlin tries to send everyone home, but the three agressors refuse to leave.  when they don´t, i walk back outside, back to the corridor of death, and immediately get greeted with a weapon.  i feel a belt sting me with a burning sensation to the face.  the short troll woman has a belt, and she is swinging it OVER merlin and whipping me in the face.  i smile, showing her that i am unaffected, as i eat another 5 solid belt shots to the head.

suddenly, the door to our house is open, and the doorman to our building is standing there.  he is signaling for all of the outsiders to leave, while simultaneously telling us residents that we have all just been evicted from our apartment.

final insults are traded before fanaia and her unruly crew are on their way out.  fanaia takes a full can of beer and whips it at my girlfriend before cowardly running out.

it should have ended there, right?  but hold on… there´s more!

me and my girlfriend go back to the bedroom and lay down.  i attempt to sleep.  i try as best as i could, but my sleep cycle gets interupted when the door opens back up and in walks–you guessed it–la policia.

my girlfriend tells me to stay in the room, no matter what.  she gets up and walks to the doorway to greet the two police officers, fanaia, fanaia´s teenybopper posse, and peter and margie, who find now a good time to regain consciousness and get involved.

i peered around the corner and saw the guy who had told me to suck his dick, standing behind the police, trying to bait me into coming out.  he went as quiet as a mouse after i had popped him upside the head.  but now that the police were there, he was back to being mr. machisimo.  he stood in the doorway, flailing both of his arms–and this is an important detail–demanding that i come out and get me a piece.  as bad as i wanted to, i had to listen to my lady.  this was her country, not mine.

the police kept pressing my girlfriend to tell them where i was, telling her to present her documents.  she told the police this was HER house, her rules, and that she didn´t have to show them shit.  amongst this, she suffered a barrage of insults from the six antagonists, who pelted her with obsecene and childish names.  peter´s girlfriend, with her ugly bug-eyes and crooked vulture nose, jumped in and started lobbing insults.  all it took was for my girlfriend to turn, face margie, and tell her in front of the police that the boyfriend standing right behind her is an illegal alien in the country of colombia.  margie promptly shut the fuck up.

at one point, fanaia stormed past my girlfriend and walked into my bedroom, where i was “hiding” under a blanket in the corner, conspicuous as fuck.  fanaia was so drugged out that she started shouting AT THE EMPTY BED as if i were there, somehow able to sleep throughout the ensuing madness.

when the police failed at finding any sense of purpose, or being more effective than an asshole on your elbow, they left, with the rest of the goons right behind them.  finally it was time for bed.  i went to sleep.  and that was it.

or was it!??

a couple of weeks later, when i was returning to the house i was now kicked out of, collecting my final goods, merlin from wales informed me that señor “suck my cock” had apparently suffered greatly from the facial shots, and that he even had to get plastic surgery on his face to address the wounds.  that night, there was blood oozing from his forehead, sure; but i have been in enough fights to know that at most, the guy needed a couple stitches and that was it.  the plastic surgery, IF it had actually occured, was due in part to his face being so humiliatingly ugly he was ready to step out into society without little children throwing rocks at his big stupid face each and every time he emerged into the public domain–not because i destroyed his face with my chuck norris dragonball z fists.

he´s just a little sissy boy.  he´ll get over it, i thought.

but he didn´t.  nobody did.  they wanted to pursue this thing even farther.

peter, who had never once in his life stood up to me, even as i humiliated and belittled his girlfriend right in front of his face, started asking one of my coworkers if i still worked where i do.  oddly enough, i work where peter used to work, before he got fired after a single month due to his inability to make it to work on time, four consecutive saturday mornings.  wow!  somehow, the need to blow lines holed up in your house, while talking like a big dog about how to make money in unscrupulous ways, was greater than his desire to actually MAKE money.  my coworker didn’t answer his messages, and in turn, peter replied

“i see how it is.  you´re one of darby´s boys.  fine.  i don’t need you in my life.  fuck off and have a good life.”

ruh roh!  peter doesn’t need me in his life!  WHO AM I GOING TO RELATE TO IN BEING A BROKE, COWARDLY CHILD NOW??  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

a few days after that, the secretary at my workplace comes to me, telling me, “darby?  there are two policemen here looking for you”

shit just got real.

apparently, the guy from before, the plastic surgery guy?  he filed a formal complaint.  and the story had changed.  now, he had a broken arm!

they had some type of legal summons form requesting that i appear in the fiscalia office the following morning.  i had to sign it and appear in front of some lawyer or legal person and explain my side of the story.  but i wasn´t signing shit until i had some more information just what the fuck was going on here.

the second time they summoned me, i showed up.  the guy filing the complaint, named oscar, sat next to me and told the legal secretary lady that he was looking to seek 4 million pesos in reparations (2000 USD).  the story was that i had destroyed his face, and that he almost went blind.  and although he never could link me to the broken arm (which he actually broke skateboarding a week after the fight), he was trying to pin that on me too, and said that he needed months of therapy, and that two of his fingers hardly work, and blah blah blah shut the fuck up.  who is this guy, mr. glass from unbreakable?  drink more milk, motherfucker.  and don’t expect to get a single peso from me.  i know you have never worked a day in your life, but it’s time to get out there in the real world and try.  you can’t take advantage of the sly, wise gringo.  i’ve been in this situation before guys.  i’m not a fucking tard.

to me, this whole thing is clearly nothing more than a form of exploitation.  extortion.  team peter, margie, horseface, and this guy, are just a group of sad little junkies trying to make money by any means possible.  a few days before the sin casa finale, peter and margie sat in the living room with a notepad, listing off all the ways they could make money.  these were their best ideas:

rob someone on the street

sell drugs

GIVE drugs, via means of burundaga, aka the zombie drug (a colombian specialty), which actually lets you rob someone of their free will and manipulate them as you please.  manipulate them to go into their house and bring out all of their valuables, to go to the cash machine and withdraw all of their money, to let them rape you, and so forth.

peter had been a victim of the burundaga treatment his first week in colombia.  it sounded terrifying, and i had once sympathized with him over it, for giving away a precious golden watch belonging to his dead grandfather while he was under the influence of the drug.  and NOW, he was talking about using it on someone else.

this is peter and margie in a nutshell.  the “brains” behind this operation.  this is them trying to one-up me.  they lost the battle, but think they can win the war.  by any means necessary.  they are sad, lonesome, pathetic, hopeless people who don´t have enough smarts to live or function as members of society.  any society.  except, maybe a petting zoo, where they are the exhibit.  they are estafadores of the lowest order.  two colossal mega dipshits who don’t know who they just fucked with.

and don’t worry, this story isn’t over yet.  this will be continued.  and it will have a happy ending.

you can believe in that.