I wrote about Karl because he is the human form of Medellín. It’s interesting how some guys are Colombia guys, some are Brazil guys, and some are Argentina guys. Each attracts a distinct personality. I’m a Brazil guy, a place that isn’t even on Karl’s radar. Karl is Medellín, Medellín is Karl. The city is made for guys like him.

A few people commented that he is a “loser” or “pathetic,” but I never thought that of him. Though he had his drug issues, I enjoyed his company and was truly saddened when he left. At risk of sounding gay, I looked forward to when he would come in my room to regale me with crazy stories from his past. Sometimes I even left my door halfway open to encourage him.

I can see how Karl could be considered a loser by most hyper-educated American office workers. He doesn’t have a car, a condominium, disposable income for fancy restaurant dining, and he certainly doesn’t have health insurance or a retirement savings. He’s not well-read. He goes against everything us Westerners are trained to become, but if I had a choice between spending a night with Karl or with educated Chad, the dutiful government contractor with pleasant features, I’m going with Karl every time. One is interesting and exciting while the other is safe and boring. A night out with Karl was a trip into the unknown, with a level of uncertainty that I had trouble handling at times.

I’m not trying to justify Karl’s lifestyle, but it works perfectly for him. He’s with the beautiful girl he wants, back in Colombia in the apartment that they share, doing his booze and drugs, barely working, hatching his next scam. He’s living his dream and I respect him for that. There’s not a lot of people I can say that for. Fact is most do what they’re told, not what they desire.

If I ever run out of things to write about, all I have to do is hit up Karl and tell him to start from the top. I think his life would be a very successful book. I’d definitely include his business plan on how to run a successful trans-Atlantic cocaine empire. It’s all about having a GPS system worked out, he said. What you have to do is…

PREVIOUSLY: Part 4

A few weeks went by when Karl booked a ticket back to Sweden. He wanted a good-paying job for a few months so that he could return and properly marry his girlfriend. He told me it would be “easy” for him to get a job on an oil rig in Norway, but I had my doubts since he had no oil rig experience. In fact he had no professional experience at all, unless you counted his internet scamming and operation of a bar that got shut down by the Greek authorities.

“Did you call Miguel for the weed?” I asked.

“Oh yeah I forgot. How many bags do you want?”

“Two. That should last me for the rest of my time here.”

“You still have a shitload from the first bag. Are you sure you need two?”

“It’s only $5 a bag. I might as well.” It crossed my mind that I’d have a lot of excess to get rid by the time I was ready to leave the country.

“Hey have you been to a casino yet?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“You know I forgot to tell you that casinos are pretty good for meeting girls. There was this American guy I knew that would only pick up girls in the casinos. I mean you go there and there’s a dozen beautiful girls just standing around, and if you’re a gringo who isn’t disgusting you’ll do well. All the other people who go there are deadbeats.”

“I’m kind of off gambling though. I always lose.”

“You really don’t need to gamble. Just play some slots and drink and talk to them. He got a lot of girls from that, and you have to think about why those girls are hired—for their looks. Let’s go now, you’re not doing anything.”

“Okay but I still have to cook dinner. That’s going to take about an hour.”

“Fuck you I’ll get you an empanada. But first let me do a pick-me-up.”

He was already pretty drunk from drinking beer and rum all day, but after he inhaled half a gram of coke he livened up real fast. He was swaying but surprisingly lucid.

We walked into the casino and there were a dozen girls in their tight outfits staring at us, looking bored out of their minds. There was more staff than gamblers.

We sat down at a $2.50 blackjack table with three other Colombians and cashed in $30 each. The blackjack action was far from world-class. A gentleman sitting next to Karl split everything, including 6′s when the dealer was showing a face card. The girl sitting next to him would stay on 12 when the dealer showed an ace. The third person would wait for the dealer to announce her count total before making a move. They kept losing and cashing in more money, at a rate of over $50 an hour. I wondered how people so stupid could have so much money to blow.

Karl and I were the only ones at the table who understood English. I was able to safely mouth off.

Let’s see what this idiot is going to do now.

What the fuck he’s messing up the deck!

Karl lost his $30 immediately, not winning a single hand. It was especially ironic since his job is to game online casinos. I hung in there and kept the drinks coming so he wouldn’t leave. We had some laughs in between moments when I refused to take his advice on how much to increase my bets, even though in the end it would have won me more money. Sometimes Karl annoyed me with his constant inebriation and potential to get my killed, but he was an addicting guy to have around and I knew I was going to miss him when he left.

When it was time to go home (I broke even), he told me he wanted to do some more coke. “You won’t be able to sleep if you do more,” I said.

“Oh it’s okay I have some Ambien.”

The next night was his second-to-last in Colombia. He invited his girlfriend and her family to the gringo mansion for a goodbye dinner. I came back from an impulsive visit to the casino after losing $50 at both blackjack and poker, the latter of which was especially embarrassing since I played in a table tournament and busted out on the first hand dealt. Inside the house I saw balloons and streamers decorating the living room. I took a meek peek inside. A large, half-eaten chocolate cake was on the coffee table with dirty plates surrounding it, and Daddy Yankee was playing at low volume on the portable stereo. Everyone stopped talking to look at me. I introduced myself to Karl’s girlfriend, her parents, her sister, her uncle, her two cousins, her sister’s boyfriend, her sister’s boyfriend’s sister, and a little 2-year-old who was chasing a balloon on the floor. They were friendly but stiff, as if something was wrong. Karl was not in the room.

I walked towards the kitchen to put away some avocados I bought on the street and saw Karl slumping against the wall in the hallway with his head gyrating back and forth. A bottle of beer was in his hand and he was mumbling something I couldn’t understand. True to form, Karl got completely trashed in front of his girlfriend’s parents.

The mother approached me in the kitchen and in a soft voice asked that I take care of him, but there was really nothing I could do. When some guys get drunk they simply can’t hear anything remotely connected to reason or logic, and Karl was way past that stage. The girlfriend’s family gradually left, whispering things to each other with concerned looks on their faces, and no one but the little toddler wore a smile. I felt bad for Karl’s girlfriend, who I doubt has ever been more ashamed in her life.

Every five minutes after that I heard a big crash when Karl fell on the floor in his bedroom. He’d howl my name and tell me to get dressed so we could go to a strip club. “Come on fucker I’ll buy you an empanada,” he repeatedly yelled. “I just need to do a pick-me-up and I’ll be fine. I’m fucking calling Miguel right now.” I closed my door and ignored him. It didn’t take very long for everything to become quiet.

The next day he came into my room groaning in pain. He looked old and beaten.

“I think you have a drinking problem,” I said. “The only time you should not get drunk is in front of your girlfriend’s parents, but you got the drunkest I’ve ever seen you.”

“No it’s these new pills I’m taking. They make me drunk really fast. I’m not used to them.”

“You’re blaming one addiction on the other! It’s just an excuse! Look I don’t care, but your girl has to have a heart of fucking gold after what you did last night.”

“Hah yeah she’s great.”

“Though honestly I’m getting used to your drug problems. Hey speaking of drugs did you call Miguel? I still would like those two bags of weed.”

“Look at you, you drug addict!”

“Please, once or three times a week is not an addiction.”

That night I was on my way out for a date with a cute girl I met at a local university. Karl walked me to the front door where his girlfriend was already waiting behind the gate. She was going to spend one last night with him before he left the country. It was only one day after the dinner party debacle and she was visibly angry, greeting him with the word borracho (drunkard).

“Well at least he’s not drunk right now,” I said, with a cheesy smile.

“Yes but he needs to change,” she said.

“Well maybe a little, but who doesn’t? He’s a great man and I’m lucky to know him.” I squeezed his shoulder like he was my best friend in the world (at that moment he was), and said goodbye. It was the last time I saw him.

The next day a 53-year-old American man with bad arthritis took Karl’s room after the maid decontaminated it with potent chemicals. He immediately asked me how to score some weed and pussy.

PREVIOUSLY: Part 3

Karl came into my room while I was working on my laptop. “Hey I’m about to call my drug dealer. You want anything?”

“Yeah a joint, a small one though,” I said. “What are you getting?”

“Some benzos. I have anxiety lately.”

“The shakes?”

“I don’t know what it is, but I’m trying to get off my Ambien addiction and it’s harder than I thought.”

“You can be addicted to Ambien?”

“Ooph yeah. Just one pill and it gives you a better high than cocaine—you feel light and happy. I started taking one a day to help me sleep, but after a month I was taking seven a day. The girl at the pharmacy knew me and had my Ambien ready when I came in because here you don’t need a recipe.”

“You mean prescription?”

“Yeah prescription. I got the Dutch guy hooked on it too.” He gave one of his deep laughs and then took a swig of beer. “I asked him if he wanted one to help him sleep and a month later he’s taking five a day. That’s why you’re only supposed to use it for a couple weeks, because more than that and you get addicted. I’m trying to wean myself off it and I’m down to two a day, but I was sitting in bed with the shakes and knew I needed something else.”

“So to fight your addiction to one drug, you use another drug?”

“Yeah it’s like using methadone to quit heroin. Soon you’ll be off both.”

“Yeah I’m sure this will work.” I let out a snort.

“It was getting so bad with the Ambien that I was using it during the day as an upper after a night of partying. I’d get up feeling miserable from alcohol and coke and just pop one. It’s great for hangovers.”

“It didn’t put you to sleep?”

“No not when I’m hungover. It makes me feel… normal.”

I wondered how many people Karl has gotten hooked on drugs. Possibly dozens. He’s convincing without being pushy, along the lines of “Just try it once and if you don’t like it then you don’t have to try it again, no worries.” But of course you’ll like it. I swore never to take any pills or coke from him.

One hour later we were in front of the patio waiting for his dealer.

“He’s a taxi driver but doesn’t make shit so he sells drugs on the side,” Karl said.

“How much does he make a day driving the taxi?”

“About 20,000 pesos.”

“That’s nothing!” It was about $300 a month, which would barely cover my food and coffee shop expenses.

“Yeah because he doesn’t own the car. If you don’t own your taxi it’s hard to make a lot of money.”

The taxi came and Karl went to the window to get his benzos. He then told me to pay 10,000 for the weed. I asked the taxi driver for his name to get on a friendly basis with him just in case. The driver slipped me something half the size of a cigarette pack and I immediately put it in my jean pocket. Back in the room I took it out and placed it on the table.

“Ooph look how much weed that is!” Karl said, laughing. It was a lot of weed, packed tightly inside a baggie wider than it was long.

“There’s at least fifteen joints of weed in there,” I said. “I just wanted one joint! What am I going to do with all this shit?!”

“Smoke it! Do some right now and make sure it’s good.”

Karl gave me a cigarette and showed me how to take out the filter, empty the tobacco, insert a roach on the filter end with a rolled up piece of business card, and then stuff the weed through the other end with a thin pen cartridge. The final step had to be done slowly to not tear the cigarette paper, which became very fragile after removing the tobacco. It was a laborious process that I’d repeat quite a few times because I couldn’t find a goddamn place that sold rolling paper anywhere in the city.

“Why is it so sticky? I don’t remember weed being like this,” I said.

Karl rubbed a clump between his fingers. “I’m not sure. Maybe because it’s organic, not like that hydro stuff you have in America.”

The joint was ready and I smoked it while Karl was hitting a high on his happy pills. I collapsed on the bed with a big grin on my face while Karl sat at my desk drinking a beer.

“Look at you, you’re high!” he yelled.

“Huh?”

“Huh?” Karl mimicked me. “Your mouth is about to fall off. Feels good?”

“Yeah it’s pretty good. I haven’t smoked in a while.”

“And look at the bag it’s like you barely touched it.”

“Huh?”

“Hey did I tell you about when I owned a bar on an island in Greece?”

“Nope.”

“We had a closet that we’d rent for sex, fifteen minutes at a time. It was on the menu, right underneath the martini drinks.”

“Did people use it?”

“Every night. Hey you mind if I roll a joint for myself?”

“Go ‘head.”

“But yeah the closet was so small you could only do doggy style. Me and my friends would target the out-of-town girls by giving them free drinks all night and then inviting them to the closet. I fucked a lot of girls like that. It was so great.”

I laughed for what seemed like forever.

CONTINUED: Part 5

PREVIOUSLY: Part 2

The following weekend we went to a party hosted by the rich guy with the Mercedes. All you can drink for 50,000 pesos. Supposedly all the hottest girls in Medellín were coming and only fat gringos would be the competition. One month in Colombia and still no sex, I was hoping the party might turn things around, but when Karl began hyping it to the moon I knew it was going to be bad. Turns out there were more fat gringos than girls, and only two were cute.

Karl was trashed and mostly incoherent by midnight. I ended up meeting an Australian guy named Dan who was going on six months in Medellín.

“Other gringos keep telling me how friendly the girls are here,” I said, “but I’m not seeing that yet. I’m having some trouble.”

“It’s because the girls here are idiots, “he said. “They don’t work or have education. Talking to them is a nightmare and after six months I can’t even fake a conversation. Here you ask a girl what she’s up to and she just says she’s hanging out at home, or how she went to get her nails done, or how she went to the mall. You won’t have anything in common with them, but since they’re pretty they expect you to buy them dinners and shit. They’re spoiled from all the drug guys they have dated who take them out and pay for everything. When they meet a gringo they expect the same.”

“Have you been to Argentina or Brazil?” I asked.

“Yeah, both. Brazil is the best I think for girls.”

“So why are you here?”

“I’m a teacher here.”

“So your Spanish is fluent?”

“Yeah it’s decent,” he said.

“Is it helping you?”

“Of course but I’m at the point where I’m just tired of the girls. They’re all the same, all boring and fake.”

Could Argentina be better than this? I know the girls there are a lot crazier, but it was easier to talk to them in clubs. They don’t hang in these massive groups of guys.

Another Aussie guy overheard me talking about Brazil. “Brazil is good for sluts?” he asked.

“I mean, better than here. It’s easier to pick up in Brazil.”

“Where do I go in Brazil for sluts then?”

“Do you mean prostitutes?”

“No, just sluts.” He was getting impatient.

“Well I’ve only been to two cities in Brazil, but you can’t go wrong with Rio and points north. If you go south then it gets harder. But Argentina has the hottest girls I think.”

“But are they easier than Brazilian girls?”

“No, definitely not.”

“So for sluts I should go to Brazil?”

“Uh yeah, but Peru is easy too if you’re a gringo.”

“Just tell me where to go for the fucking sluts man, fuck.” He squeezed his lips tightly and leaned his body
closer. For a second I thought he was going to punch me in the face.

I looked at Dan and said, “Your friend is creeping me out.”

“And the funny thing is he teaches English to little kids.”

“What the fuck, I just want sluts. What’s the big deal?”

“Okay then go to Cuzco, Peru. Definitely. You’ll love the girls there—they are surprisingly pretty. Not indigenous-looking at all like in other parts of Peru.” Truth is Cuzco had some of the ugliest girls I’ve ever seen in my life.

After trying our hand on a couple of girls with fake tits, we decided to head to Parque Lleras, the most popular nightlife zone in the city. Dan suggested we all go to Blue, a rock club.

“I hear there are a lot of gringos there,” I said.

“Yeah but there’s a reason for that—the girls there like gringos,” Dan replied.

“It’s the only place where you can pick up a slut in this town,” said the creepy Aussie.

Karl was talking to a part-time gringo prostitute that both Aussie guys had already fucked. Her going rate was 150,000 pesos but supposedly you can bargain her down to 70,000 towards the end of the night. We convinced Karl to meet us at Blue, but in his stupor I had doubts he would make it. It’s a miracle that he’s still alive with the way that he gets shitfaced every single time he goes out.

Blue was a dingy Colombian club with American rock music. The middle of the club was full of tables and there were two dance floors, a large one in the back and a smaller one in front. I saw a Colombian girl sitting at the bar watching her two friends dance. I slowly made my way over, leaned towards her ear a bit and said, “Let me guess… you’re from Colombia.” She laughed and asked me where I was from. She spoke English and even though she wasn’t particularly cute, I decided to stick around because there weren’t many other options. It appeared that every single hostel in Medellín had unloaded their predominately male clientele in the club, and though I didn’t count I’m pretty sure there were more gringos than Colombians.

The Aussie guys were talking to other girls until they disappeared, which was a shame because I wanted to exchange numbers with Dan. Then Karl arrived with his whore, who eased him into a chair at the bar because of the trouble he had standing up. He gave me a slight smile of recognition. I winked back at him.

I knew I was lowering my standards in order to get my Colombian flag. This awareness wasn’t helping my cause so I kept ordering more drinks for myself, until my inner monologue quieted down. I sat on a stool next to the girl and we chatted on and off, in both English and Spanish, until almost an hour in when I asked her to come to the dance floor with me. I wanted to get the kiss out of the way. She shook her head no. Ten minutes later I asked her if she wanted to go right outside to get some fresh air. She shook her head no again. Frustrated, I went outside alone and sat on a stool meant for smokers. I didn’t believe I wasn’t getting anywhere with a girl that I didn’t even like.

A random American gringo sat next to me and I told him the story of the girl. He said, “Well the club is closing in 15 minutes. You might as well just hang in there and see what happens.” He had a good point. I went back inside and when the girl saw me her eyes lit up. She did a 180, grabbing me and bringing me close. I kissed her right then. It’s like she wanted to give me enough love so that I wouldn’t leave her again.

Karl asked me if I had any money. My guess is that he wanted to fuck the prostitute, who was looking pretty decent as the night went on. His decent fashion sense made it seem like he was rather wealthy, but I’d seen him go stretches of three or four days surviving on nothing but his beer tab, a bag of white rice, a cheap package of hot dogs that smelled like cat food, and assorted foodstuffs left over by guys who had checked out, until casino robot monies finally got wired into his account (in the meantime he’d stay home all day and flirt with girls on the internet). Then he’d blow it all on drugs, rum, and women, only to repeat the process a week later. I don’t know if I loved hanging out with Karl because he was an interesting guy or because I wanted to be there at the exact moment his life imploded. He was the type of guy I thought only existed in Hunter S. Thompson novels.

I pretended I didn’t hear him and then he got leaned in closer and asked for money again. I lied to him and said I only had 10,000 pesos for the cab ride home when I actually had close to ten times that. The prostitute left, angry at Karl for wasting her time on a weekend night. I’m sure I did Karl a favor because she would’ve robbed him of his money without putting out. My girl’s friends eventually ditched, leaving her with me and Karl. I looked at her and said, “The roof at our mansion has a great view. Why don’t you come for a little bit and then I’ll take you home afterwards?” She agreed to come back with us.

It was pretty routine after that. I had to act like I was interested in her as a human being when I just wanted to stuff my dick inside her hole. I fucked her two times and then in the morning escorted her to the front of the house after telling her to write down her number on a piece of paper. On the way out she swiped a promotional flyer of the gringo mansion that contained its address and phone number. That worried me terribly so when I went back into the room I grabbed my used condoms from the trash can to make sure my sperm was still inside. Then I flushed them down the toilet so the maid wouldn’t see. She thought I was a nice gringo unlike the other prostitute fuckers and I didn’t want her to know that I was sexually active. I saw her as a motherly figure.

Karl came into my room with his hands on his head, complaining about his hangover. “So how was it?” he asked.

“Have you ever fucked a corpse before?” I said.

“No. Wait. Yeah no.”

“Yeah well I have. It was awful—she didn’t do anything. Just laid there and the only noise she made was grunts of pain, which actually kind of was a turn on, but the mere act of sex hurt her, in every position. It was the worst sex I’ve ever had.”

“Ooph. That sucks. Hey how much money did you spend last night?”

TO BE CONTINUED

PREVIOUSLY: Part 1

Karl’s room was small and only had a twin size bed. I had a table with chairs in mine, so I’d leave my door open as an invitation for him to stop by. He usually would, always with a bottle of beer in his hand. We had a cleaning service but because of his crushing hangovers he’d keep telling the maid “mañana.” It wouldn’t take long for the pizza boxes, dirty clothes, beer bottles, and trash bags with used condoms inside them to pile up next to his bed. His room smelled like anus.

Downstairs was a fridge of booze with a log sheet to mark each bottle we took. Karl’s box was completely full of hash marks. Every other day he jokingly accused me of charging beers to his account. We did some backwards analysis and calculated that he drank about eight bottles a day, which was less than another gringo staying down the hall who killed a 12-pack every day of the cheapest beer that was sold in the supermarket.

“Did you see the American guy bring another girl?” I asked.

“No I didn’t see her. How many girls is that now?”

“I think that’s four in as many days. They’re pretty beastly though—I mean I know you’d bang them but I got standards.” I paused for a second to allow him to react to my insult, but he didn’t. “I asked him how he was meeting them and he told me they were from a previous trip. I dug some more and he told me his strategy: meet girls during the day.”

“At the mall?”

“No on the street. He says he simply goes up to girls and asks them if they want to have lunch with him. He said, ‘None of these poor girls turn down a free meal. And it only costs you a few dollars. Then you bring them back to your place and they open their legs.’ But he says the girls are so poor that he has to give them taxi fare back home.”

“Oh yeah the barrio girls don’t have any money. Most didn’t finish secondary school and now they just walk around centro, or they get their nails done.”

“Where did you meet your girlfriend?”

“On the internet. I’m shy I don’t like walking up to girls.”

“Your girl is cute though. Today I was on that site you told me about for an hour and only found five girls who weren’t monsters.”

“Yeah it takes time, but that’s the same site I met her on. We’ve been going out for a year now. You know I was married to a Colombian before right?”

“No you didn’t tell me.”

“A few years ago I got married but it didn’t work out. We married right here in Medellín but divorced in Sweden. It lasted two years.”

“You think you’re going to marry this girl?”

“Oh I don’t know. I want to start a business here with her. Or maybe take her back to Sweden. She’s a good
girl.”

“What are you doing now for money?” I asked.

“Online gambling.”

“Poker?”

“No, robots.”

“Robots?”

“I have these robots which know how to beat the house long enough to get the sign-up bonus, so I find people to run the robots for me. I pay them a cut of the winnings. Business used to be good but it has slowed down.”

“How much were you making?”

“Oh back then when it was good—$300 a day.”

“Damn!” I did the mental calculation in my head—almost ten grand a month.

“Ooph it was crazy. Me and my partner would fly around to Mexico, Las Vegas, Barcelona, just blowing money. I had a penthouse here in Poblado on the top floor of a building. It was huge with a bar and a hot tub. I was paying 2.5 million pesos and month for it and then I was going out and spending another 200,000 pesos a night. I would buy bottles and pour it into people’s cups. Girls would notice and ask me to dance and we’d do pick-me-ups.”

“Pick-me-ups?”

“Cocaine. For the penthouse I bought a grocery bag of cocaine and dumped it on the bar. It was a huge mountain of coke.” He rested his hands on the table shoulder-width apart and moved them up to shape an imaginary pile. “It was like in the movie Scarface and I’d have people over and they’d put their nose in the pile and start sniffing. But I don’t have that kind of money now.”

“What happened to all the money?”

“I blew it all. I haven’t saved anything. Never in my life have I saved.”

“Sounds kind of romantic,” I said. “I’m too reasonable to do something like that.”

“Do you do coke?”

“No I’ve never done it.”

“Oh I got to get you to do it. It really picks you up.”

“Once in while I smoke weed.”

“Dude the weed here is so cheap. You can get a joint for maybe 9,000 pesos, the size of a thick cigar. It will last you for days and it’s the strong shit, but I don’t like weed it makes me sick. Next time I call my drug dealer I’ll get you one. I haven’t talked to him in a while.”

I asked him if he was trying to go out later and he said he’d think about it. A club called Babylon was having ladies night. Girls get in free and guys pay 30,000 pesos for all they can drink. Another one of my gringo friends went the week before and picked up a cutie, saying when he walked in he was approached almost immediately and didn’t have to do any work for the rest of the night.

A few hours later Karl came in my room dressed up in dark jeans, an ironed collared shirt and a fitted blue blazer. Every Scandinavian guy I’ve met has had style. We hopped in a cab soon after and on the way there he saw a Mercedes S-series ahead of us on the right.

“Rapido, rapido, quiero hablar con ese carro,” he told the taxi driver.

In the car was a portly man with three girls. Karl said some things in Spanish that I couldn’t understand.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“He owns the Poblado apartment I rented. He’s the biggest player in Medellín. Always has half a dozen girlfriends.”

“So he has money?”

“Of course dummy. Didn’t you see his car? Girls are lining up to get fucked by him. His father is rich, owns land throughout the country. He was thinking of importing a Ferrari here, but thought that may make him a kidnapping target. He could afford it though. I remember one time he gave me his business card and sent me into the grocery store to give it to this beautiful barrio girl. You know those girls who give out samples in the stores? They make shit, maybe 10,000 pesos a day. Her parents wet their pants that the richest guy in Medellín wanted to take out their daughter. It’s like winning the lottery.”

“What happened?”

“He took her out on a date, but he said she had a scar on her chin that he didn’t like. When she was little she had a cat that scratched her.”

We got to the club and sat down on cheap wooden chairs next to the bar, which was so wide you had to yell at the top of your lungs for the bartender to hear you.

“I’m so tired I shouldn’t have taken those sleeping pills earlier. I need a pick-me-up.” He was drunk. He drank five beers before we left and a quarter of bottle of rum. The bartender had just handed us another bottle, the same brand that caused us to puke the other night.

After a drink I followed Karl outside to watch him smoke a cigarette. While he was on the phone trying to convince the guy with the Mercedes to come to Babylon, a guy approached me selling chicle (gum). There’s a million guys selling chicle on the streets in Colombia because Colombians chew the most gum per capita in the world, or so I’m told. I declined and then he said, “Que tal cocaina?”

“No pero tal vez mi amigo quiera.”

He wanted patiently for Karl to get off the phone and then started his pitch. Karl was interested. While leaning back against an old Datsun he bargained the chicle guy down to 15,000 pesos for a big hit.

“Where are you going to do it?” I asked.

“In the bathroom.”

“But the counter is dirty.”

“I’ll just use my keys.”

He went into the bathroom to do his drugs and when he didn’t come out ten minutes later I thought maybe he had passed out. I walked in to see if everything was okay and heard him talking on the phone in Spanish, probably to his girlfriend. He stayed in that stall for almost an hour.

I couldn’t do better than an ugly girl who approached me when we initially walked in. Girls wouldn’t even give me a chance to say my line. To get their attention I’d tap them on the shoulder as they were walking by, but they kept going. It turns out they’re not as easy as American girls to stop. I’d have to walk up to them. With Karl camping out in the bathroom it felt like I was at the club alone. There was another girl who liked me but she was morbidly obese, stuffing her mouth with birthday cake.

Karl eventually came out of the bathroom and I noticed the coke didn’t pick him up at all—he was worse off and his eyes were half closed. Then he did the thing where he started approaching guys. I told him I was leaving but he ignored me. I tried again ten minutes later with the same result. I left him there and took a cab back to the house.

The next afternoon I was worried that he didn’t make it home and that I’d be partially responsible for his death. I imagined having to make an official statement to the Embassy of Sweden, but he eventually strolled into my room with a beer in his hand. He asked me how much money I had spent the night before.

“30,000 pesos for the cover and 15,000 for taxis,” I said.

“So how the fuck did I spend 100,000 pesos?”

“I thought you only paid 15,000 pesos for the pick-me-up.”

“Ah it was the chicle guy! He tricked me and took my money!”

“That probably explains why he disappeared after you bought the coke.”

“That fucker tricked me. What happened later in the night?”

“Not much, but you started talking to guys at the end.”

He laughed. “Yeah that’s a bad habit of mine.”

CONTINUED: Part 3

(Download the PDF file for all five parts by clicking here.)

Karl said it was the Americans who ruined it for all gringos. “In the past two years there have been boatloads of Americans coming to Colombia to have sex with prostitutes. You can go on the internet and see it—sites devoted just to fucking them like which brothel to go to and who will let you do it in their butt without a condom. The families here know what’s going on and now they’re very hesitant to let their daughters date a gringo, because they think we’re all like the Americans. Are American girls that hard to fuck?”

“No actually I think they’re pretty easy,” I said.

“So why are millions of American men fucking prostitutes here and pretty much anywhere that’s poor?”

“Well you need game to have sex with American girls. It’s like a special key, and once you have it it’s somewhat automatic. Lots of guys never learn it or they’re old and fat and don’t care anymore.”

I had been in Colombia for only two weeks. The first ten days was in Bogotá and now I moved into a sort of gringo boarding house in Medellín. Most of the residents were single guys who were in Colombia either for sex or drugs. There were a few older men in their 40′s who would tell me about the prostitutes they were banging with such excitement that I think they expected me to give them a high five or a pat on the back.

Karl, who was Swedish, was staying in the room next to me. He was approaching a year in Medellín, well past the date on his entry stamp. “I’ll just pay a stupid fine,” he told me. He had blonde hair and baby blue eyes, a deadly combination in South America that would get his foot in the door more often than not. It didn’t matter that he was short and had to balance on his tippy toes to reach the top cabinet in the kitchen—girls were drawn to something their country could not produce. Unfortunately my complexion is the perfect shade of brown that allows me to fit in just about anywhere on the American side of the world, and unless I open my mouth girls think I’m a local. I’ll only stand out in Africa, Asia, or Iceland. Even Sweden, Karl told me, is stocked full of Turkish immigrants who work in döner kebab restaurants and look just like me.

My fifth night in Medellín was a Sunday. I finally got over a case of laryngitis and was ready to go out and flirt. I didn’t get much action in Bogotá so the pressure was building to get my Colombian flag out of the way before it became a big deal.

I asked Karl if there was a good place to go out on Sunday night. Two hours later we were in a cab on our way to a small hip-hop club called Karma. Sunday was their busiest night.

“I don’t want to spend a lot of money tonight,” Karl said as we got in line.

“Yeah neither do I.”

“You want to go in on a bottle of rum? It’ll be cheaper that way.”

“How much is it?

“48 thousand.” $24 dollars.

“Yeah sure.” I figured my half of the bottle would last me the entire night. We went inside and made our way to the bar. The club was packed.

From the few nights that I went out in Bogotá, it was clear that girls hang out in big groups of guys, and according to Karl it’s because they can’t afford their own drinks. They need to go out with someone who can buy them liquor.

“A lot of these guys are drug dealers so you have to be careful,” Karl said.

“What does that mean?”

“Just don’t talk to any girls with guys who look mean.”

“But all the girls here are with mean-looking guys.”

“Yeah that’s a problem in this place.”

In Colombian clubs there’d be several girls who would stare at me, but when I’d walk up to say hi a random guy would pop in from nowhere to listen to the conversation or butt in. Isolation was difficult. The guys were very protective of the girls and the only option I saw was to approach the guys first. Maybe compliment their ubiquitous graphic t-shirt or something.

The rum was sweet and the hip-hop music made it go down my throat easier. Even when the ice cubes in my glass melted I drank the rum straight, warm. It didn’t take long to finish my half of the bottle. I lost Karl at some point and later found him outside smoking a cigarette while texting on his phone. “Bro the girls are hot, but it’s hard to pick up here,” I said.

“Yeah you don’t pick up in the clubs—you pick them up on the internet and then you invite them with you to the club. Buy a bottle and have a good time.”

“Plus the guys… I don’t think they like me.”

“Yeah because you’re making them jealous. When a guy looks at you twice it’s because he caught his girl checking you out.”

“What happens if he looks at you three times?”

“That could be serious. Be careful because I almost got killed one time.”

“Killed?”

“It was one night that I was so drunk.”

“Isn’t that every night?”

“No shutup.” He looked up from his phone and took a drag from his cigarette. “I talked to this girl who was with a big guy and even when he got in my face I kept talking to her. He wouldn’t go away and I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ He said he was going to take me outside and stab me in the neck. I said, ‘Let’s go bitch.’”

“Smart move.”

“I was really drunk.” He laughed and took another drag. “The bouncer saw what was going on though and pulled me out while the guy was yelling and pointing at me with his hand shaped like a gun. I waited outside 45 minutes for him to come out but he never did. I got into a cab and went home. What they do is call the sicarios—assassins—who live in the hills. They ride to the club in their cheap motorbikes and wait for you to get into a taxi. Then they follow you and when you stop at a red light they pull alongside the taxi and start shooting. And you’re done. Sometimes they give money to the taxi driver to help pay for the damage.”

Thing is Karl didn’t learn his lesson. When we went back inside the club he kept trying to talk to guys who obviously didn’t want to talk to him, and I had to keep pulling him away. The bouncer kept his eyes on us. I realized that Karl was the type of guy that could get me killed, without doing it on purpose of course.

I went to the bathroom and when I came back Karl had a fresh bottle of rum and was drinking straight from it. He could barely stand. The bouncer eventually had enough when he started talking shit to another guy and kicked us both out. Karl’s bottle had disappeared by then and I think someone stole it, since he told me never to leave bottles of booze laying around in a club.

On the cab ride back to the house my head started to spin. Both of us ended up puking.

CONTINUED: Part 2

Four and a half years ago, after visiting Venezuela, I got the idea of doing a travel pickup guide. Hints of it were seen in my Real Man Travel Guides blog along with my book A Dead Bat In Paraguay, but I never commited myself to writing a complete guide for one country. In the past year I realized that my free time and background made me very qualified to work on such a project, and that it’d be fun to try. At the start of my fifth month in Colombia I buckled down and began work on Bang Colombia, finishing it about nine months later. Here’s the synopsis:

Bang Colombia is a strategy guide designed to help you sleep with Colombian women in Colombia without paying for it. It contains dozens of moves, lines, and tips learned after six months of research in Medellin, where I dedicated my existence to cracking the code of Colombian women, who are more challenging than their Western counterparts. In addition to teaching you the differences between Colombian and Western culture, it details the logistics of traveling through Colombia, tips on studying Spanish, a packing guide, and recommended nightlife for the country’s three largest cities. You’ll learn three effective methods of meeting Colombian women, how to combat their flakey nature, how to ask them out via email and phone, how to date them, how to seal the deal quickly using non-obvious shortcuts (even if you’re staying at a hostel), and much more. With lines shared in both English and Spanish, Bang Colombia aims to be a must-read for every Western man visiting the country.

You can get your copy at BangColombia.com. It’s available in paperback or Kindle editions from Amazon, and a “pay what you want” eBook in PDF format that is free to download with no strings attached. If you choose to donate, you’ll get a little bonus as an extra thanks for supporting the book. On the website I also share notes of the mindset it took to write the book and specific details of exactly what’s inside.

May every man who reads the guide get their Colombian flag.

My master plan was to live in Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina for six months each, and then evaluate which was best to live in for extended periods of time. Here are the total lengths of time I stayed in each country during my last trip:

Colombia: Six months
Brazil: Five and a half months
Argentina: One and a half months

I left Brazil a little early because of when my monthly lease in Rio ended (I didn’t have the will to mill around in hostels for two weeks).

Argentina was a different story. You know those medical experiments that end early because one condition far outperformed another? If I remember correctly they did this with an HIV study in Africa where they tested if circumcision led to lower infection rates. It proved to be such a strong benefit that they ended the experiment early to tell the uncut guys to immediately get cut. Well that’s why I left Argentina so soon—the little data I had in my hands told me that it wasn’t a place that would have brought me more happiness than Colombia or Brazil.

That said, here is my evaluation of what it’s like to live in all three countries, along with my declaration of the best.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Colombia: While there is a police presence, you can go all day without seeing a single squad car. Sometimes you only see cops on dinky motorcycles that look like dirt bikes. There is no heavy hand of the law here.

Brazil: Maybe only a decade behind the U.S. in terms of the Big Brother factor. The police are heavily armed, well financed (from an equipment standpoint), and make frequent stops. There are speed cameras and sobriety checkpoints. You don’t go long without seeing a cop car on the street. While the laws are more lax than in the U.S., Brazil is not a good place to openly fuck around. Even though Western media loves to portray favelas as lawless, police are generally on top of their shit outside of them.

Argentina: Police are positioned in street corners within rich areas of big cities. They don’t seem particularly well-trained or competent, probably because the country has been spared from narco-wars. It’s unlikely you’ll be bothered here.

Advantage: Argentina

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

Colombia: Local buses are run by private companies. While cheap, the lines are confusing and the buses old and very uncomfortable. The routes are not always logical and transfers are commonly needed. Medellin’s metro line though is clean, safe, and very reliable, but often crowded. The one good thing about the buses is that they come very frequently and you can flag them down anywhere along the route.

Brazil: Buses here are slow, lumbering beasts, the big versions you see in American cities. They come often and are reliable but you generally have to walk to a designated stop instead of being able to stick your hand out wherever you please. They aren’t that cheap, starting at about 2.20 R$ for a single trip.

Argentina: They have big buses like in Brazil but are almost impossible to use without insider knowledge because of nondescript signage. In Argentina you’ll only see something like “H7,” while in the other countries they’ll be a placard detailing a dozen or so stops.

Advantage: Colombia

SUPERMARKET FOOD

Colombia: It’s hard to find lemons or lunch meats in the bird family. Most sell peanut butter at inflated rates. Boneless chicken breast is usually frozen.

Brazil: Doubly hard to find lemons, and even common vegetables like broccoli and zucchini can be MIA. Peanut butter is astronomically priced. Great selection of fruits, cheeses, and lunch meats. Boneless chicken breast is usually frozen.

Argentina: Lemons are everywhere! But limes are incredibly hard to find, as is peanut butter. Poor selection of cheese, lunch meat, and fruits, but excellent choice of wines. Boneless chicken breast is refrigerated and of good quality, though much more expensive than their famed red meat.

Advantage: Brazil

RESTAURANT FOOD

Colombia: Not much selection in local fare except for dirty diners, but you’ll find many decent fusion restaurants in tourist centers, usually run by expats. I still don’t know what typifies Colombian cuisine besides stews, arepas, and fried snacks.

Brazil: Beans, rice, and meat seem to be the Brazilian staple. Local restaurants have fixed plates that will serve bland but filling meals of rice, beans, potatoes, and meat. There is more of a food tradition with dishes like feijoada and moqueca, but convenience foods like pizza and fried bread snacks are beginning to fatten the population. Upmarket restaurants put interesting spins on typical foods.

Argentina: Great value for breakfast and lunch, especially the latter where for $5 or $6 you get a tasty three-course meal with beverage. While restaurant service here is the worst, you’ll find far more creative fare with more European influence than in Brazil and Colombia. Argentina is also a better pick for the foodie who is impressed by plate presentation.

Advantage: Argentina

WOMEN

Colombia: The hardest part of getting laid in Colombia is dealing with the language barrier (you won’t meet too many girls who speak English), but if you’re conversational in Spanish and approach during the day you shouldn’t have too many issues banging cute girls. Flakiness will be your main problem.

Brazil: Brazil has proven to be a country of streaks for me and my gringo friends. You’ll bang three girls in a couple weeks then get nothing for a while. Otherwise the country is very gringo friendly and you’ll find tons of girls who speak English. The okay girls are quite easy to get in bed, but the cuter ones take more work. Towards the end of my time in Brazil I was getting sick of all the mediocre girls throwing themselves on me and having to seemingly rely on luck and the numbers game to get anywhere with the quality ones.

Argentina: These girls have a reputation for being difficult and I find that to be the case. Not only will you work your ass off to get laid, it won’t be with one of the hotties that you went there for in the first place. My second trip to Argentina I gave up on the women and found myself a Brazilian girl.

Advantage: Brazil

NIGHTLIFE

Colombia: Tables and chairs. People prefer to sit down everywhere, even in clubs, but on the plus side nightlife is concentrated in the cities so it’s easy to stumble on a variety of places that have electronic, rock, pop, or local music. Bars are a total bust in meeting people. Clubs have decent value in terms of cover charges and drinks.

Brazil: Much more Western in that people mingle. While typical bars offer tables for socializing among friends, you can find bars where there is standing and movement. Some cities have nightlife centered in specific areas, but others like Rio can be quite spread out and hard to get around. Cover charges for the high-end clubs can be astronomical.

Argentina: It has the typical bars with tables, which people start going to around midnight, and then a progressive club scene with rotating DJs develops after 2am. The nightlife is agreeable for younger kids with energy to stay up all night and dance, but for older guys over 30 it can be quite annoying to go out so late to deal with girls who aren’t even drinking anyway. A positive is that the value is very good, and you won’t pay much for cover charges and drinks.

Advantage: Brazil

COFFEE SHOPS

Colombia: There is a cafe culture with the Juan Valdez shops where you can sit with your latte and laptop for an hour or two. Ironically one of the best cafes I’ve been to in Medellin was the McCafe.

Brazil: Brazilians love their cafezinho (espresso shot), but they don’t linger. Since all coffee shops have waiters, they don’t expect you to sit down and write the next greatest American novel. For that you need to go to the mall and find a Starbucks, which is prohibitively expensive (10 R$ for a caramel frapp).

Argentina: Hands down the best coffee shop scene. Big cities have tons of pleasant cafes with wireless internet and delicious sweets. There is a lingering culture here so feel free to camp out for a couple hours.

Advantage: Argentina

SAFETY

Colombia: Safer than I was led to believe. I never had issues walking around at night even in shady areas. It’s a shame that the stereotype of the country being a warzone persists, but in a way this is good because it keeps out a lot of gringos who visit Costa Rica or Panama instead.

Brazil: Most dangerous of the three. While I’ve never been robbed in Brazil, I keep hearing stories that tell me my Brazilian-like appearance probably helped keep me safe (though don’t think Brazilians don’t get robbed). Brazil is very unforgiving for gringos who don’t have a lot of travel experience, though the most common “robbery” is getting severely overcharged by a taxi driver. I have to dedicate more energy here to staying safe than I would like.

Argentina: I’ve never heard a gringo getting mugged here—only petty theft in bus stations. Many times in Cordoba it didn’t feel like I was in South America at all.

Advantage: Argentina

FRIENDLINESS OF THE LOCALS

Colombia: Very friendly. They are much more intrigued that you’re a gringo and will always ask about where you’re from and why you’re in their country. They’re almost thankful that you’re visiting Colombia.

Brazil: It depends. I’ve met some incredibly rude and cold Brazilians, and I’ve met some who welcomed me into their home without even wondering if I could be a ax murderer or not. I would say Brazilian people are friendlier than Americans, but their friendliness is overhyped by quite a bit. A better term to describe them is warm—within a short time you’ll feel quite at ease, like you’ve known them forever.

Argentina: Outside of clubs Argentines are friendlier than Brazil, believe it or not. Even though Brazil has a more open culture to gringos, it seemed easier to make superficial friendships in Argentina with random people. I accumulated more phone numbers of both guys and girls one month in Argentina than six months in Brazil. A lot of guys though initially mistake the friendliness of Argentine women to be that they’re easy. They learn eventually.

Advantage: Undecided

TAXIS

Colombia: Taxi drivers are usually honest, and are great to practice Spanish with. All I had to do is ask “How are you today/tonight?” and we’d get into a long conversation. Towards the end of my time here I had pretty tight taxicab game, rarely getting ripped off.

Brazil: Taxis here are the worst. It’s very rare that a taxi driver, no matter how nice to me on the surface, will not try to scam me. I’ve had to argue with so many that I dreaded taking a Brazilian cab—I began taking buses everywhere instead, even late at night. While getting ripped off rarely means more than a $5 difference, it was the principality of it.

Argentina: Mostly honest, though less friendly than the Colombians.

Advantage: Colombia

MUSIC

Colombia: You got three main choices here: salsa, reggaeton, and vallenato, all of which are danceable, in addition to your normal house clubs. Plus you got Juanes, Colombia’s Michael Jackson, and Shakira, Colombia’s Shania Twain. Rock is also popular.

Brazil: Brazil has a very rich musical culture. Each state has their own flavor of music and you can live here for years until you know them all. From traditional samba to pagode and forro (I need more triangle!) to the newfangled tecno brega, music is an important part of how Brazilians connect with each other and pass the time, but most of the music is hard to dance to for the average gringo. Expensive clubs usually have Western music (fun fact: the song “Forever Young” is huge in Brazil).

Argentina: Reggaeton is slowly making its way here in addition to mainstays like cuarteto, cumbia, rock, and house. Argentines are pretty crazy about house music, but unfortunately they have very little idea how to dance to it.

Advantage: Colombia

CELL PHONE SERVICE

Colombia: Expensive and mostly reliable, though some text messages remain in the ether for hours until delivered. You have a lot of options on the street to make cheap calls from minuto celular vendors.

Brazil: Crazy expensive at more than 50 cents a minute if calling another cell phone from your own. Your only other option is Skype as they don’t have phone vendors on the street like in Colombia. Text messages sometimes get temporarily lost here too.

Argentina: About the same as Colombia, but no minuto celular vendors.

Advantage: Colombia

LANGUAGE CLASSES

Colombia: Group classes can be found at reasonable prices, from $5-10 an hour.

Brazil: Expensive as balls. Prices starts at $20 an hour for group classes if you include “enrollment” and “material” fees. I eventually found a private tutor for $35 an hour that I used for two hours a week, but I couldn’t help but feel raped. Everyone I met reminded me that I was indeed getting raped. Unfortunately Portuguese is harder to learn on your own because of a dearth of self-study materials.

Argentina: The cheapest, which is why so many gringos come here to study Spanish. You can find freelance private tutors starting at $6 an hour.

Advantage: Argentina

VALUE

Colombia: Great value that is slowly diminishing as both the economy (and peso) get stronger.

Brazil: While I was in Brazil I felt like I was paying American prices. Besides grocery store food there is very little value to be found. It was rare that I felt like I was getting a good deal on something.

Argentina: Super great value that will only get better as the peso crashes and burns due to continued government incompetence. They say the Argentine government is so corrupt because their ancestors are Italian.

Advantage: Argentina

VIBE

Colombia: Colombia is full of good-natured, curious people who want to learn about foreigners while showing the best of what their culture has to offer. While Colombians don’t go nuts like Brazilians, they’re a sensual people who are fun to pass the time with. Edgy city life keeps you engaged and interested.

Brazil: Brazilians are constantly in celebratory moods, and it seems like there is always some type of street party or event that makes for a good excuse to start drinking early in the day. There are lots of nightlife choices and daytime activities, and the locals are always ready to party and meet others. The sexual atmosphere is very favorable to visitors of both sexes.

Argentina: You’re not going to have much fun here unless you get into a social circle or have some sort of university class or job where you can make easy friends. Argentines are diehard conformists and always worried about what other people think of them, so there is not much in way of personal flair or spontaneous excitement. But once you get to know some cool people, you’ll have a good time and maybe bang a cutie or two.

Advantage: Brazil

There is no debate in my mind that the overall winner is Brazil. While it doesn’t outperform Colombia and Argentina in all categories, and is also frighteningly expensive, it’s the one place in South America that I must return to. It’s also the best option for the single man. While Colombia is a fine choice as well, I think it’s worth saving up your money for a Brazilian adventure that I guarantee will be the first of many.

While I’ve tried my best to explain Brazil’s charm in previous writings, it’s something you have to experience yourself to understand why fans like me love it so much. I remember something a man told me many years ago: “There are two types of men—those who haven’t been to Brazil, and those who are trying to go back.” Not a week goes by that I don’t fantasize about what my third visit to the country will be like.