Our Mexican companion giggled happily like a toddler let loose in a toy store, entirely engrossed in the effects of smoking a joint roughly the size of Texas. He seemed blissfully unaware that the three of us were seconds away from being either gunned down on the spot or beaten to death by an enthusiastic troop of drug enforcement agents—and, believe it or not, those were the good options.
Somewhere near Tulum, Mexico, 1995.
As usual in my tumultuous life, an otherwise mundane chain of events had somehow snowballed into a scene straight out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. I now found myself staring down the barrel of an unlocked and loaded Uzi machine gun wielded by a grinning, trigger-happy operator. For a moment, I tried to console myself with the knowledge that the Uzi is notoriously unreliable and requires an expert marksman to hit anything smaller than a barn door at more than five feet. Unfortunately, we were much closer than five feet and, unlike barn doors, entirely incapable of moving at the moment. Our rental car was so ridiculously tiny that squeezing into a coffin with an NBA team would have felt downright spacious.
How did I end up here, you ask? Barely 24 hours earlier, I’d been enjoying a peaceful and undemanding day on the beach in Playa del Carmen. My biggest concerns had been avoiding a nasty sunburn and ensuring a steady flow of cocktails. Then, as if scripted by fate—or bad luck—someone had stepped between me and my sunshine.
“Marcelino!”
Angelo, my self-appointed companion and professional small-time mafioso from Italy, loomed over me. His face bore the kind of urgency I instinctively knew to avoid.
“Angelo, for Christ’s sake, you’re blocking the sun. What do you want?”
“I need your help,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial tone that somehow made everything worse.
“Angelo, you always need help. Why is this my problem?”
“Marcelino, listen! We have to go to San Cristóbal!”
“San Cristóbal? Who is that? And why?”
“It’s not a who, it’s a where. A town near the Guatemalan border.”
“Great. What’s it got to do with me? That sounds dangerously far away, and I’m busy.”
“Busy doing what?! Burning yourself alive on this beach?”
“Exactly. And I happen to enjoy it.”
“Dios mío, Marcelino, we leave tomorrow! I need you!”
“For what, exactly?”
“I’ll give you $1,000 upfront. All you have to do is watch my back—be my bodyguard.”
The words “bodyguard” and “me” were about as compatible as tequila and a toddlers birthday , but I was intrigued. A thousand bucks was a tempting offer, and Angelo wasn’t exactly brimming with options. Sadly, curiosity has always been my Achilles' heel. Besides, the money would bankroll another four months on this beach, complete with an endless supply of drinks decorated with those ridiculous little straw hats.
“Fine,” I sighed. “But if I get shot, I’m sending you the bill.”
An opening excerpt from What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Chronicles of Chaos and Courage remains available here. The full book can be ordered here.
Juan ( on the left) still no clue what was going on and Angelo, to the right trying to prepare dinner by the fire. Me? Hidden behind the lens...
💀 STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES — THE TULUM EDITION 💀
“Juan (left), blissfully unaware of the Uzi-wielding chaos ahead, and Angelo (right), preparing fish with all the calm of a man who just bribed a Mexican officer with 10,000 vanished pesos. This was our last peaceful moment before the army turned our car into confetti and our future into a prison probability chart. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? You already know.”
