This is an excerpt from my first book, Love Songs and Suicide: A Travel Memoir, Romance, and Tragic Musical Comedy. The first section is available for free. If you haven’t read a sample from my book yet, I’d recommend starting with chapter one. The book is also available on Amazon.

 

Chapter 3. Heroes, Villains, and Lawyers

 

A tan and handsome young man sat down beside us at the bar. He introduced himself as Robert. We bonded over our shared name and chatted about the AFC Championship Game on TV.

“You don’t go by Rob?” I asked him.

“No, I don’t like it,” he said.

“I don’t mind it. I’d just never use it officially because it sounds too ‘snowboardery’—you know, like I’m someone who hits both the half-pipe and the hash pipe a little too hard.”

Robert laughed and agreed, saying he’d had many encounters with “Stoner Robs” in his life.

The Titans took an early lead over the Chiefs. After a discussion about Chiefs running back Derrick Henry, whom Robert described simply as “a beast,” we switched gears and moved into potentially contentious territory—politics.

Robert supported Andrew Yang for president, a semi-popular nominee at the time among tech-savvy and/or clueless-gamer millennials. If the choice were between Trump and Bernie Sanders, the leader in the crowded Democratic primary race, Robert said he’d vote for team MAGA, all day, every day.

“I’m from Columbia,” he explained. “I don’t think most people who support Bernie really understand what socialism is. I lived it, and I could never vote for him.” Robert was an articulate and charismatic speaker. My father and I wanted to know more about him.

Between sips of his Whiskey Sour, Robert provided us with an abbreviated version of his biography. His family moved from Medellín—the capital of Columbia—to Miami when he was a young child.

“My dad was the second-in-command under Pablo Escobar,” Robert said.

His claim was far-fetched yet specific, and I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it. My father and I were familiar with Pablo Escobar, the most notorious drug lord and richest criminal of all time. When we followed up with additional questions, Robert never stumbled or became flustered in his responses. His story contained detailed plotlines, with no gaping holes in them.

“What brings you to New Orleans?” I asked.

“I’m a lawyer,” Robert said. “I represent poor and other disadvantaged people facing long prison sentences for nonviolent crimes.”

Okay, that’s a plausible and commendable motive, I thought, as my internal bullshit detector simultaneously flashed and rang at a near-deafening level.

“Where do you live now?” my dad asked.

“Huntington Beach, but I do a lot of traveling for work,” Robert said.

My dad graduated from Cal Western Law School in San Diego and practiced family law in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Both of us were suspicious of Robert by now.

Next, as if we were in the courtroom as founding members of Horton and Horton LLP, a family law firm dedicated to upholding truth and justice, we went into full interrogation mode. We wanted to know if “Robert” was real or a fictional character.

“Do you practice law in California too?” my dad asked.

Robert nodded.

“Wow, any other states?”

“Massachusetts and Louisiana.”

He’d told us earlier that he was only twenty-three. “How old were you when you passed the bar exam for the first time?” I asked.

“I was sixteen.”

Wow again, I thought. “And what school did you go to?”

“The University of Louisiana for my undergrad degree and Harvard for law school.”

My father and I looked at each other in a fleeting glance. Of course he went to Harvard. We reached our verdict swiftly with no deliberations needed—guilty. Robert was completely full of shit, and we had no further questions.

Before he left, Robert insisted on buying our next round. “You don’t have to do that,” we told him, but he overruled our objection. A few minutes later, Robert stood up, casually moved toward the bathroom, took a sharp left turn, and then plunged into the stream of bodies that flowed through Decanter Street in both directions.

The next time our bartender checked on us, she noticed Robert was MIA.

“Sorry,” I said. “We’ll pay for the two drinks he ordered.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, removing Robert’s coaster from the bar. “That doesn’t surprise me. I could tell he was full of shit.”

After Robert’s sudden departure, my father and I speculated on his motives. Was he a con man looking to scam us? Did he have a more sinister objective in mind? Or was he just a sad and lonely guy seeking attention? I guess we’ll never know.

I have scattered recollections of our evening, following the fruity cocktails and our encounter with Robert, the Harvard-educated attorney from Columbia. When we got back to the trailer, I must have walked the dogs, picked up their shit in bags, and probably bitched about the cold to myself and to God. My father and I also visited The Lighthouse, our RV park’s bar and grill, for several unnecessary night caps.

Sometime later I converted our dining room table into a bed. Just eight feet away, my intoxicated 69-year-old father snored in his master suite.

I fell asleep quickly but woke up within an hour or two, around 2:30 a.m. My dusty box fan blasted cold air and carcinogens into my face, and our heating system supplied as much warmth as a dying trash-can fire.

In my brief and booze-induced coma, I had twisted my injured shoulder somehow. Electric currents shot from one side of my skull to the other like lasers. I had limited control over my limbs. My brain felt like a bowl of flavorless oatmeal with maggots and thumbtacks on top. I stumbled for the ibuprofen, then toward the bathroom. I didn’t puke. Success!

No, far from it.

I made many bathroom trips after that, adjusted my bedding, turned up the heat, tilted the fan to a different angle, rolled around endlessly as if I were on fire, listened to music, ate two blueberry Nutri-Grain bars, thought about dying, my top ten preferred ways to die, and drank about a gallon of water because I’d consumed nothing but booze and coffee on the previous day.

While lying on my side and facing my filthy fan, I caught a few sharp and flickering winks of sleep just after dawn. Then a vision of hell flashed before me—the extra-pale jazz band played a special concert, just for me, for all eternity. Actually, the boat trip came later. I didn’t visualize hell until the next day, during my next hangover.

 

 

Next → Chapter 4: Current Events