I met Carrie at the men’s room of “La Sixtina” on a particularly crowded Friday while passing burning hot pee next to a comatose drunk. She stomped into the place wearing a distraught expression and a bell-cut dress that was more notable for the parts it didn’t cover than for the ones it did.

— “Edgar! Edgar! Are you here?”

Without missing a beat, five very drunk guys turned round towards her, their dicks hanging out.

— “I’ve got Edgar right here, baby”
— “Con ese cuerpecito, puedes llamarme como quieras, mija!”
— “Yeah, that’s his name, and he’s in my pants!”

Since I was already leaving the loo, and she was in the way, I figured I might as well take her out of there to more hospitable environments. So I did.

— “What the fuck was that? You’re going to get gang-raped doing that, woman!”
— “I… I was looking for Edgar. He’s my cousin. He’s from Monterrey, and I’m afraid he’s, well, he’s a bit drunk, and I haven’t seen him for a long while”

I looked down. She had freakishly long legs, topped by a picture perfect butt.

I’m a sucker for legs.

— “How’s he look?”

After getting a cursory description of the guy, and with no intention of finding him at all, I went back into the bathroom, where I lit up a smoke and stared at the ceiling while she waited outside. When a suitably plausible amount of time had passed, I came out.

— “Nope. No Edgar. Sorry”
— “You sure?”
— “Completely. Checked everywhere. We should go round the place a bit, though. See if we find him”—I’m so smooth…

As luck would have it, we bumped into Edgar in a matter of minutes. He looked awfully underage and was trying to pick a fight with the bartender. Carrie took him by the arm and introduced me as “a friend”. Edgar went ballistic, started trash-talking about how they wouldn’t take his money and waved a few large bills around. I told him I’d fix him something to drink, nicked his money, grabbed a drink off a nearby table and gave it to him. He seemed quite pleased.

— “Carrie! How are you? Long time no see!
— “Oh, hi, Jerry! It’s been so long! This is…”
— “Sergio. And we’ve met”
— “Yeah, I know him, actually. We study together”

There goes my plausible deniability.

— “Yeah, we’re journalists. Will be, anyway. Future of the country and all that crap, right here, girl” — I had been drinking since noon, and the buzz had turned into a nice little ringing at the back of my head by that point. Like my own private orchestra of crickets.

The bartender kept eyeing Edgar suspiciously, and I feared we might get Security sicced on our asses at any moment, so I made a good case for a strategic retreat. Out we went. Carrie, her girl friend, Jerry, Edgar (drunk as fuck) and me (too).

While Carrie wasn’t looking Edgar tried to pick up a fight with the valet parking. I let the valet rough him up a little before stepping in and excusing “my friend”. The sawed-off little runt was already getting on my nerves big time, but Carrie’s legs were working their magic and the night was still young.

We hit two more nightclubs that night. In a moment of struggle, cousin Edgar inadvertently elbowed my head and made me lose a contact lense (this was before I had my eyes lasered). That earned the little fucker drink-spit and “involuntary” bumps into every-single-corner of the place each time I had to carry him around.

He honestly thought I was just being careless.

Eventually we took Carrie’s girl friend back to her place. We left Edgar at the club with some baby boomers we ran into who claimed to know him. Carrie was too plastered to care and I was actually hoping they’d anally rape him. Edgar had lost most motor functions and couldn’t articulate coherent speech, so he didn’t get any say in it.

When we got there, Jerry accompanied token girl friend to her door while Carrie and me locked ourselves in the car and went at it like neurotic monkeys on acid. The windows were completely fogged and she was straddling me —An amazon surrounded by a preternatural halo of light due to my impaired visual condition— when we heard earnest harrumping from outside the car. We rearranged our clothes, repositioned ourselves, checked for damages and let Jerry back into his car.

The next day Jerry would tell me to take care of Carrie, ‘cause she was a really nice girl, which promptly made me wonder about the ethics of banging Jerry’s high school sweetheart on the backseat of his car. Then he got a wistful look on his face and talked about how “he had been after her for years, but in the end, they were just friends”.

Right then I knew I was going to hell.

— Don’t worry, Jer. She’s uh… a fine girl… fine girl. I’ll make sure I take care of —Connie? Wendy? Jenny? Rhonda? Ashley?— uh… her.

When we went back to the bar, we found cousin Edgar sitting on the steps to the dance floor with a terrified look on his face. He’d been crying (Score!).

— “They gave me cocaine, cousin. They GAVE ME COCAINE!”

We stared at him quizzically, mutedly wondering if this was a good or a bad thing.

— “I have never snorted cocaine! I am a DRUG-ADDICT now!! Oh, my GOD, What am I gonna DO??”

I excused myself and went to the bathroom to laugh my ass off while Edgar bawled on the dance floor and Carrie sat by the side, staring at her cousin in disbelief, undoubtedly wondering what she’d tell his mother when she saw him like that. He was still yelling when I got back (“I was going to go to the University!! Now my life will go TO WASTE!!”).

It was day already when we went out of the club. Edgar was still deeply set into the worst paranoic trip I’ve ever witnessed (Frankly, I don’t think what they gave him was cocaine, at all). As we neared my place, I told him, matter-of-factly, that the addiction could be handled… with work.

As I got out of the car, I said “Don’t worry, mate. You’ll be alright”, then leaned closer and whispered into his ear “As long as you don’t fall asleep”. I slammed the door shut and saw his horrified face staring back at me as they sped off. I waved at him, smiling, and went into my apartment, cheerfully picturing Edgar in a talcum-powder/PCP induced caffeinated paranoid frenzy for the next two days…

— sergio on March 05, 2005