The arena was empty. Just the second-string sound engineers hanging around their systems. We went up to the ring at the same time. Each one took his position at his corner. Behind the turntables.
It wasn’t a fun or dramatic match. My opponent wiped the floor with me. He was his father’s son. His collection of European vinyl was his advantage. It was huge. Broad. More than 2,500 records ready to go and fill a whole night of raving.
I did my best to get the most out of what I had, but no matter what kind of juxtapositions or genre acrobatics I played or sampled, no matter my programming or effects, the dwarf and his skills totally outdid me. All his equipment was first-rate. The needles, the earphones: Everything was imported.
The sacrilege I’d committed two hours earlier of breaking dozens of records proved irrelevant. The Cowboy Bible didn’t respond either. I tore at it, implored it, cursed it, and still failed.
I didn’t wait for word from the authorities to take off my mask; I failed and did it myself in front of the cameras. I said my name, declared my profession as a sociologist, and handed the trophy over to the winner.
On my way to the rudo dressing room, I placed the Cowboy Bible on the third seat of the front row and walked away with the idea that I might challenge Santo’s Son in about a month, mask versus hairpiece, in my hometown, in San Pedro, Bahía.
* a.k.a. The Country Bible.
Cooler Burritos
La Cuauhnáuac was the most famous bar in the district for three reasons: The first was the house’s special brew, the second was the name, and the third was the burritos they sold outside.
1 The special brew was sotol cured with tarbush, mint, peppermint, guava, and pumpkin seeds.
2 Its name came from the mythical sunken city.
3 And the burritos were made from machaca. A basic diet.
Of all the bars downtown, La Cuauhnáuac had the distinction of having among its clientele a drunkard who had established the record for imbibing the most cups of sotol in a single sitting: eighteen. Double shots. The indisputable ace, who had held the championship belt for two consecutive years, was The Cowboy Bible, a burrito vendor.
What made the brew so good was that it lost all its coarseness after it was cured. The guava gave it a killer taste. When people tried it they immediately loved the flavor. It went down smoothly. Three minutes later they asked for a second round, and six shots later they left on their hands and knees.
The brew became a big hit. A reporter for El Norte, while investigating an article about public transportation, became curious when she saw so many people congregating around the joint. Her reportorial instinct suggested scandal, yellow journalism, but when she went in she suffered the disappointment of finding personable treatment and a friendly environment.
The bartender served her a single shot. She drank it cautiously, but the guava flavor eased her fear. She ordered another and another and another. After the fourth, she fell asleep at the bar. It was only five in the afternoon. When she awakened, her watch read twelve midnight. It took her a moment to come to and she decided her watch was broken. But no. Outside, the night confirmed that she was the broken one. The bar was still bubbling with activity. She was relieved to discover she had not been raped. And it wasn’t as if the others there didn’t want to: The place was jammed with exactly the kind of sexually repressed perverts typical of a place that sold five-peso drinks, but they were all afraid of the bartender. Though not exactly the bartender, but the machete he had behind the bar. The guy in charge of the brothel hated it when they bothered his clients and, besides, he was a ladies’ man, always ready to defend the femmes, whether they were fatales or not. The reporter ordered another sotol, pulled a notebook out of her purse and began taking notes.
The next day, there was an article in El Norte’s center spread. La Cuauhnáuac took up an entire page. The article attracted a new clientele. Among these were drinking aficionados, aspiring intellectuals, alcoholic college students, and an infinite number of weird and lazy self-taught trumpet players.
When all the other bars in the area that sold sotol saw this new popularity, they imitated La Cuauhnáuac’s style of curing it, but not one was able to copy the recipe precisely. The ingredients were the same, but as in all things gourmet, the ultimate success was attributed to the bartender’s masturbating hand.
All that rock and roll didn’t last long. In less than six months, La Cuauhnáuac had stopped placing on the fashion lists. There was still a considerable crowd, but gone were the characters who had shown up during the apogee of its popularity and given the bar that trendy touch. A place free of prejudice. Showbizzy.
In order to keep the bar’s popularity from fading, the bartender reached out to the girl reporter and asked a favor: to save the bar from anonymity by creating the first La Cuauhnáuac contest. It was a competition to see who could drink the most cups of sotol in a single sitting. They established three prizes. The first was five thousand pesos, the second three thousand, and the third two thousand.
The announcement attracted the attention of everyone that could still be seduced by that kind of folklore. Twenty-three contestants signed up, but the competition didn’t last more than a half-hour. With a total of eighteen double shots, and without vomiting, The Cowboy Bible took first place.
The following year, during the second annual contest, The Cowboy Bible won again. He didn’t need to repeat the record, because his closest rival had lost consciousness at the thirteenth cup. On the fourteenth, The Cowboy Bible paused and toasted with a beer.
In its third year, the contest got a little darker. The bars in the area had suffered a downturn, and some had closed. The more stubborn ones had used the contest as a betting game. At the beginning, in the second year of the competition, the bets had been between five and ten thousand pesos, but things got out of control when the local mafia got involved in the business. Bored with boxing, underground dogfights, and roulette, they found out about this peculiar contest and moved a certain percentage of their winnings to target sotol, their new blood.
For the third edition of the contest, the cash awards increased. First place was now ten thousand pesos, second was five, and third was three. Expectations also grew. The enthusiastic reporter promoted the spectacle, and they now anticipated about two thousand curiosity seekers. Three months ahead of time, they had to draw up a VIP list. The bar only had a capacity of sixty.
Plans began to spring up with the spontaneity that money allows. San Pedro, a capo and the biggest and heaviest of the drug barons on the scene, planned to take over the bar in order to manage the bets. It wouldn’t take much effort to take over the place. He had the money to buy it, and if the owner refused to sell it, he could kill him, make him disappear. Later, he decided against it. He preferred the actual competition.
The fight for the money was set. Don Lucha Libre was the cash cow. He was the cocaine monster on the east side of the city. He controlled part of downtown, managed the bets, and kept the balance in his favor. The Cowboy Bible was part of his cartel. He was his pet.
Everybody knew The Cowboy Bible was unbeatable in any duel that involved swigging the special brew, but that did not affect the contest’s immense popularity. A skillful mouth-to-mouth campaign had it that San Pedro would provide a worthy rival, a steely trueblood.
But that was a lie. He was simply feeling them out. San Pedro wanted to top Don Lucha Libre, but he knew that fighting in the bar was out of the question. The moment he went after any of the event’s central figures, everything would fall apart. The bettors would disappear, and there would be no profits that year, no luck. Thus the bluff, the distraction.