The Tale of Two Pipes

Sai Baba

12/03/2001

I pulled into parking lot next to the border crossing and paid $7 to the attendant when my cell phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Sai!!! Are you in Tijuana yet?"

"Just about… whachu need, dear?"

"Listen... we need opium pipe!"

"What?"

"I just scored us a buttload of opium from the DJ... real cheap, real goooood. You gotta score an opium pipe in Tijuana, Sai. I'm sure you'll find one among pot pipes they're selling out there, I remember I just saw one a few weeks ago when I was in Cabo, but I didn't figure I'd need it... it's real easy to recognize, looks very similar to crack pipe, only..."

"And how would I know how a crack pipe looks like? You know I don't smoke that garbage, Ariel".

"Man, you really need to get out more… listen, grab a pen and paper, and I'll help you draw a sketch. Show the drawing around and hopefully you'll score the real deal..."

Five minutes later, with opium pipe sketch in my back pocket, I was crossing the border. That was the only map I ever needed in that town.

I have been to TJ almost 10 years ago, and kind of remembered the trek from the border to Avenida Revolucion or Constitucion or whatever the name of those 2 main tourist drags are. I also knew I'd see zillion street vendors selling mostly rugs and pipes on my way there, so I turned right after the turnstile, waved "No!" to the cabbie hustler and proceeded past the first 100 stands & 5 million people milling around and found myself in a smallish plaza with fewer tourists wandering around. I spotted a table full of pipes, zoomed in, and showed The Sketch to the great-great-great-grandson of proud king of Inka standing behind a stand full of pipes of all shapes and sizes.

"Que?"

"Opium pipe?"

"This?" He motioned to a very obvious pot pipe. El dumbasso.

"No, see, the opium pipe is like, like..."

I didn't even get to finish the thought, and two of his cousins came over to see what's up. They took me to their table nearby, looked at the sketch and started roomaging through the pile of pipes in a bag underneath the stand.

"Here, amigo! Muy bueno opium pipe! For you, only $20..."

"Well, yeah, it's close but see this one is made of glass, and..."

I didn't even get to finish when I saw the first vendor dragging the forth guy across the plaza towards us. "Amigo, here! Pedro has opium pipes!"

So I went to Pedro's shop, a real pipes & whatnot shop which was around the corner away from the Plaza. "Amigo, you need...?" and then he cupped his palms and placed his lips close to thumbs like as if trying to inhale a shmoke.

"No! No drogas! No drogas! Pipe por favor!"

"Si, si...". He did not believe me, but was trying to scam me into buying an elaborate pot pipe with a water cooling system. I started making faces when all of a sudden another grand-grand-grand-grandson of proud Inka king entered the shop.

"Amigo! Come with me! I have an opium pipe for you". Hoboy. The whole plaza knew there was a Gringo looking to score an opium pipe, and each and every one of them was ready to sell me whatever they could con me into believing I was getting. This hustler wanted to chit-chat about… soccer while we were walking to his stand.

"You like soccer, amigo?"

"Yeah, I do..."

"You heard of... Hugo Sanchez?" he asked while trying to figure out my age and touch the nerve with mentioning the right player.

"Yeah Hugo Sanchez, Real Madrid, missed a penalty kick against Germany in 1986 world cup in Mexico...Hugo-tarugo. HUGO-TARUGO! Listen, I need an opium pipe, amigo. I don't need a soccer ball with Hugo's autograph."

"Hugo-tarugo? You heard about Hugo-tarugo? Hahahahaha!!!! Amigo, I like you, you funny. I sell you great opium pipe, super cheap... for you, only $30!"

Of course he couldn't tell an opium pipe from Batman, but he introduced me to Chico, who took me to Carlos, who didn't have what I needed but took me to… the first stand I stumbled upon to see if his buen amigo has some. That's when I finally gave up, and decided to head back toward the border. After all this, I owed myself some more genuine Tijuana experience... a bus ride to downtown. "Okay no opium pipe… bus downtown? Overthere? Gracias, amigo". Getting to the bus station was easy. Getting to the right bus required waving hands and yelling "Avenida Revolucion? AVENIDA REVOLUCION???" at indifferent bus drivers smoking & waiting for their scheduled departure next to their busses. Finally, Pancho Villa's grand-grandson nodded his head and pointed to the right bus. I smiled, said my gracias, boarded the marvel of 1960's technology and took a seat among tired elderly women coming home after a hard day work in Estados Unidos. One dollar and 10 minutes later, I was on Avenida Revolucion downtown, bargaining for cheesy souvenirs and keeping an eye for that ever elusive opium pipe.

The sun was coming down and tourists were heading toward the border and bar barkers were out in full force, waiting for hordes of college kids from across the border. "Drink all you want for only $10 at casa de Pedro, amigo!!!" Tired of flashing out my opium pipe sketch and getting "No, but..." for an answer, I walked into a huge, trendy bar right on the main drag and asked for a biggest badest margarita they had. What I got was the biggest joke of a margarita I have had a misfortune to sip on, but it didn't matter much at that point. I was quite content to nurse my drink for a while and spend some time sitting by the window just people watching, waiting for drunk & horny coeds to descend upon this fair town. And I waited. And waited. And my margarita got warmer and I was getting pissed off that this whole Tijuana trip is shaping up to be one the biggest busts in my life when the light bulb went off in my head. Zona Norte! It's been a while since I read about it, but I still remembered the name of the club Bob Smytho lost his Tijuana cherry at. I got out of the bar and hailed a cab.

"Chicago club"

Three dollars and 2 minutes later, I was in front of Chicago club. Once in there, I encountered Chicago Club version of Berlin wall; entertainers (ahem) sitting at the bar, effectively shielding off the barkeep from the rest of the bar. Seeing how I can't get a drink myself, I found an empty table right at the edge of dance floor where a comely Latina was dancing to some nondescript Norte Americano dance music. Waiters with numbers on their shirts were circling between tables and I flagged down Numero Tres , ordered Corona and settled down to watch floor show. The show wasn't much when it comes to taking the clothes off in gracious & artistic way, but the strippers were young, slender and pretty and to my surprise, quite few of them had seen a plastic surgeon or two. The whole place had pretty subdued atmosphere; there wasn't much laughter or loud talk between patrons or hooting and hollering at strippers, and even the DJ refrained from encouraging heee-haaaw atmosphere. A deejay content to just announce a dancer who is about to shake it for sailors on the dance floor? Ay caramba...

Some of the ladies were circling the room, trying to get men's attention; some would get up to dance, but most were just sitting at the bar like shooting ducks at the county fair, waiting for men to approach them. A few approached me asking me to "go next door" with them, but what's a Gringo in a strange town without GPS to do? Lord knows where that "next door" may be, I watched 20/20 special when Barbara Walters warned Middle America of pretty women in Tijuana who make their living offering candy "next door" to unsuspecting strangers and next thing you know, you're stranded in Guadalajara and selling pot pipes just to get a bus ticket to United States. No fool I. "No senorita, gracias". Sai downs his cerveza, Sai gets out and immediately sees a neon sign across the street reading "Adelita's" at approximately 10 o' clock relative to the center of Universe. Which, of course, is his dick.

Adelita's. What a place. Sticky, stale air mixed with sweat emanating from the locals and mostly zaftig entertainers proudly wearing loud pattern skirts they outgrew twenty pounds ago. Eardrum piercing salsa music. Locals dancing salsa on the dance floor with working girls. A 'ho pinching my butt in passing, smiling broadly & blowing a kiss in my general direction. Me mustering a smile back while shuddering & hoping her dentists sees some of the money she's making tonight. Couples leaving the bar to "go next door". Me leaving the bar to eat Tacos from street vendor in front of the bar. Me watching the couples as they go in & out of the hotel next door while eating tacos and listening to mariachi band playing in front of Adelitas. Me chuckling when I timed one couple return to Adelita from "next door" in less than 15 minutes. Me burping merrily after the second taco, pondering what to do next when I remembered…

Hong Kong Club!

I asked senor taco about the club, and after a bit of waving hands in all possible directions and getting help of few locals who spoke more English than he did, I finally understood that I should walk around the corner to an alley behind Adelitas. "Bandidos?", I asked them thinking being a solo turista in an alley at night in Zona Norte may not be the wisest choice I made in my life. "No! senor! No bandidos! Mucho senoritas!" I thanked them with a puzzled look on my face, turned a corner, walked half a block, then turned another corner and stopped right in my tracks for a second when I looked down the alley. On sidewalk on my left standing against the wall for as far down as I could were street hos. While working girls at Adelita's were unintentionally funny wearing outfits that did not complement their plumpish looks, they were full of energy and looked like they were enjoying working the crowd in the bar. These women, standing shoulder to shoulder in this stinking and dirty alley were standing still and quiet, mostly avoiding eye contact with men walking down the street. When one of them finally glanced my way as I was passing by her, I saw a look of sheer desperation in her eyes before she managed to grimace half smile my way. Luckily, lights of Hong Kong club weren't too far down the alley, so soon enough I bid the ho train adieu and opened the door to another classy Tijuana establishment of ill repute.

Hong Kong Club. Now, this was my kind of place. It wasn't quite obvious this was a working girl bar where occasional nude show happens just to keep patrons amused while drinking beer. Some dancers could pass as San Diego coeds and actually knew how to dance. Music wasn't sickeningly loud. The hustle level was low, and it wasn't obvious that gals who weren't dancing were hooking. As a matter of fact, most gals were partying it up with guys who were mostly 20-somethings who looked like they were out to have fun, not score with pros. Young Latinos in the audience were flirting shamelessly and playing drinking games with strippers who were enjoying every second of it... yup, pretty much like a night shift in a club I know all too well in Denver. I stayed at this club for a couple of hours, downed several cold cervezas, just being happy to enjoy the non-stop floor show, tip a few bucks here and there and get a few boob facials in return.

Eventually, I got out of the club and decided it's time to flag down a cab and get back to the border. My life flashed before my eyes 3 times in 5 minutes. The biggest mistake was that I let on with my body language that I am white knuckle rider. That irritated Senor Ayrton Sena wannabie and from then on he was on a mission to prove to me that he can drive that cab even faster, and if a few pedestrians get killed in the process… so be it. I doubt there was a drop of blood left in my cheeks by the time he dropped me off at La Frontera. I got out an let my wobbly legs carry me to the border via overpass pedestrian bridge, stopping briefly by the last pipe vendor just to make sure that, indeed, this wasn't particularly good night for opium pipe shopping in Tijuana. By the time I got back to my hotel in La Jolla, hordes of young, nubile coeds were pouring out of the hotel bar and into the parking lot, drunk off their asses. I saw a guy I knew who was staying at the same hotel, walking with a hottie blonde hand in hand toward the elevators. What the...? This bar in my hotel was dead, dead, dead three nights in a row, and now, on the night when I go to Tijuana it was jumping with horny Southern Californian pussy? I went upstairs to my room and cursed myself to sleep.

Next day, I flew to San Francisco to visit Maz and Dara. It wasn't before we went out to eat that night that I realized that I hadn't eaten the whole day. Didn't catch anything nasty eating those Tacos the night before, but it sure felt like I was digesting stones when I woke up, and I lost my appetite for almost 24 hours as well. I told Maz and Dara about my Tijuana trip and Dara almost fell on the floor laughing when I told her how my day ended in La Jolla. "Sai, Thursday night has always been the Hayatt in La Jolla night when I used to live in San Diego. You should have gone to Tijuana on Wednesday, and stayed at the bar in your hotel on Thursday if you wanted to score some strange down there". Now she's telling me. After the din-din, we first stopped at a head shop nearby. Of course, since I was in the Land of the Free now the clerk on duty was free to toss me out if I uttered words like "opium pipe", so I was pretty limited in describing what I am really looking for. Instead of trying to speak in PC terms, I just handed him my sketch, and asked him if he had anything similar. He did not. Oh well.

Onward to a party Tallguy was throwing at his place that night. Those were still the golden days of dot coms in the Bay Area, so the crowd was pretty much a yuppish 20-something optimistic dot com crowd yakking about tech gizmos and stock options and next big IPOs, and Maz, Dara and I felt at home with this crowd about as much as nuns would at a no-holes-bared orgy. After a while, the stiffness of the atmosphere started getting to us, so I figured I'd throw a monkey wrench just to liven the things up. "... and how's your porn site coming up Dara?", I asked in a loud enough voice to get attention in geekland, much to Tallguy's horror. Dara, quick on her feet just blurted "Just fine Sai, we are about to break even with month… have you seen my pictorial in a new edition of the local leather fetish magazine?""No! Tell me about it!!!" Tallguy hastily jumped in between the two of us and started steering the convo in less compromising direction, just to stop us from talking smut in front of his uptight friends from work. Maz was watching the carnage from the corner, giggling. Eventually, we split, cuz Dara, the ambitious Spectator employee that she was at the time, felt it was her duty to drop off copies of the new issue in person at few porn shops on Market Street and at...

...Crazy Horse! Smooth talker that she is, she got the three of us in for free. Yey!

As we got in, Dara and I immediately took a beeline for stage, while Maz decided to camp in back row theatre chairs. The dancer on stage was busy molesting a few touristy looking Asian coeds sitting at the opposite end of stage from us, much to delight of their male chaperons. The gals were giggling and blushing, but never protested or tried to stop the naked stripper from touching their bodies. You couldn't tell if they were too timid to say 'no' or if they were truly enjoying the attention they were getting from a naked stranger stageside. Luckily, there were no such dilemmas when the dancer came to our end of the stage, for 'shy' is not exactly how I would describe Dara to a complete stranger. After the two women recognized each other from Dara's stripper past, the dancer pulled her up on stage right in front of me. Dara didn't get naked much past taking off her blouse, but did some pretty serious nipple nibbling and quality muff diving, capped with a nice drowned out French kiss. The crowd was hooting and hollering as Dara slid back into her seat all red in her face grinning wildly. The dude sitting on the opposite side from us got up, wiped his glasses with his shirt and headed toward the restroom. I adjusted my... my... myself, and tipped the dancer 5 bux. In the meantime Dara had her eyes set on a pretty blonde with "vacancy upstairs" stare in her eyes lounging in the first row of theatre seats. "Should I get a dance from her?". "Go girl go!". Off to the nearest lap dance room they went, and I moved toward the rear part of the theatre, and set close to Maz who was busy babbling with some stripper. She soon left, and Maz asked me if I thought he should get a dance from the stripper who just left. What am I all of a sudden now, a strip club Dear Abbie? "Go Maz, go!". Well, it's never that simple when it's Maz and some Crazy Horse stripper dilemma at hand... it's got to have a story of ex-MsMaz Numero Dos in there for sure, and this time was no exception. While Maz was weighing in pros and cons of getting a lap, Dara stormed out of the lap room after just one song and sat near us, fuming. "I got an air dance. A fucking air dance! Chick giving an air dance to another chick should be illegal in this town!!!" Muahahahaaaaa. I guess Dara's dykedar was off that night, so she stumbled upon the Eight World wonder – a straight San Francisco lap dancer. I have no joke here.

Next on the agenda was dropping of Spectator at some porn shop. Of course we ended up checking the place out, and Dara picked up the fetish magazine she was featured in, and started browsing it with me. "So, what do you think?", she asked just as I was admiring big black dildo stuck halfway up her cervix. How do you even answer that question when her boyfriend is only 3 feet away checking leather whips out? "Very tastefully done, superb photography, yeah", is what I think I blurted with a straight face. Last I heard, Academy Award is considering that performance for "Best Comedy Cameo" award. Dara was pleased with the answer and Maz neither died laughing nor asked me to find alternative accommodation arrangements at once, so I think I passed "what do you think of me riding a big black dildo in fetish magazine" test. We got back to their place, shmoked some with the current resident Chez Maz stripper who just got home from work at MSC and called it a night. Next morning Maz dropped me off at the airport and I flew back to Denver.

"So, Sai, how did you like Tijuana?", Ariel asked while making a tube out of aluminum foil, using a pen to make it nice and even on both ends.

"It's noisy, smelly and chaotic. I loved it."

"Have you checked hookers or titty bars out?"

"Yeah Ariel I have... the ones we saw in Montreal were better. Way better. You didn't miss much, dear. Sorry for not scoring us the pipe."

"No worries Sai, I think we have one now...". She bended one end of the tube and shaped it like a small hook. The hook still had an opening facing upward, just like a pipe, and she put some opium into it, which fell at the bottom of the hook. Then she lit a lighter and started warming the underneath of the hook where the opium was. When the opium started melting and smoking, we both took a hit. She just made a crude opium pipe using just aluminum foil and pen and...it worked! Um, Ariel, why did I have to go opium pipe hunting all over the place when you could do the job in 2 minutes? "It's not the thrill of a kill Sai, it's the chase...". Whatever, smartass. It didn't matter now anyway, the aroma of the drug tasted awesome, and the mood it was setting was relaxing. Much like pot, only we didn't get paranoid and it took a whole lot more shmoking before we got pleasantly stupid.

Ariel and I spent the rest of the summer shmoking opium & getting stupid, and the stash was not getting much smaller. It's the kind of dope with a lot of mileage, I guess. At the end of the summer she moved into my house. It seemed like a damn good idea at the time. Her makeshift pipe was doing a good job but we eventually got tired of it all and consequently misplaced whatever remained of that really cheap and good stash we scored from the DJ. We were never able to locate a real honest to God opium pipe, however.