That was the first time I saw a self-driving limousine.
Funny, isn’t it? After everything, that’s what I remember most.
Jamie told me to text him when the wheels touched down. “That’s the key to perfect pickup,” he said. “You’ll see us at the curb just as your feet cross the threshold.”
Of course, it never happens that way, and I stood there in the warm wind tunnel of “Arrivals” at LAX, listening to some old Radiohead album, peering into passing cars like an out-of-town creep.
When the limo spotted me, the tires twisted out and rolled laterally as if sliding on ice. I watched my stupid face get bigger and bigger in the window’s reflection until the door kicked open, and Jamie stepped out. His arms were open. His wingspan was wider than I remembered.
My friend Jamie. You know the one. He was the first friend you ever had. The older brother who’s the same age. The one who made you realize your mom had lied, and you weren’t actually the smartest or best-looking kid to ever live. Jamie was always there. Drawing up plans for a treehouse. Catching fly balls. He’d decide if today was Star Wars or secret agents. Smirnoff or a six-pack. He demonstrated what a natural-born leader looked like, so you knew for certain you’d never be one yourself. And sometimes, you think that if you hadn’t met this friend, your whole life might be different.
I still didn’t know why he’d invited me here…or why he’d called me after not calling for almost ten years. But he took my backpack, with my wrinkled T-shirts inside, and threw it in the trunk. In the wash of headlights passing by, his face lit up. The way it did before blowing out birthday candles or when we found his dad’s big box of porn. His hair was slicked back and smooth as if he’d just gone for a swim. Standing there, face-to-face, after not seeing him for so long, I almost forgot I never wanted to see him again. Funny how fast a grudge slips away when a free trip to California is involved.
Jamie pointed inside the limo. “My business partner, Ethan, is inside. He’s joining us on our voyage tonight.”
The night air was hot and dry, but the air conditioning inside the limo was turned up, and it felt like I was stepping into another hemisphere. A couch padded in white leather wrapped around each side. There were wooden side panels so polished they looked like glass. Tiny colored lights swirled around the cabin, bouncing off gold-plated cup holders.
Jamie stepped inside and pointed at me. “Ethan, this is Tim. My best friend from back home.”
Jamie and I grew up in a small town. The one you see in Lifetime movies. Where wealthy sons wrap cars around oak trees and middle-class daughters take too many sleeping pills and wake up dead. When we were kids, Jamie used to talk about the town as if we’d already left.
“We’re going to escape this place one day,” he’d say, staring into an open field or starry night. He was always so confident about the future that it made me anxious, and I wanted to follow him away from there before I knew how to want anything else.
Then, one day before we graduated high school, Jamie’s grandpa, whom he’d never mentioned even once, up and croaked and left Jamie and his family some airline fortune. Not enough money to become a kidnapping target, but enough to never work or worry again. And since work and worry were really all I knew how to do, we drifted apart, and he moved to Los Angeles. Turns out you can spend your whole life just going along and still get left behind.
Me, I’m still stuck in that small town. Still polish silverware and put in requests for vacation days. Still wait for designated breaks to take a crap or cry in my car. That’s why it felt strange when Jamie called. One minute, I’m hosing piss off the restaurant’s bathroom mats; the next, I’m answering a call from an unknown number. It’s Jamie. He asks, no—begs—me to come visit him in L.A. Said he’d buy the plane ticket and everything. Even then, when I think back now, there was something different in his voice, a dull urgency I did not recognize. But who was I to turn down a free trip? I’d never been to California. I even wrote down a list of sights to see once I got there.
Inside the limo, Jamie’s business partner, Ethan, was slouched in the corner of the white leather couch. There were empty green bottles of what looked like some overpriced beer at his feet. His blonde hair stuck out the sides of a backward baseball cap. He wore sweatpants and a crisp white T-shirt that said “Miami” in cursive. He reached into a small refrigerator and extended a green bottle.
“Beer?” he asked.
Jamie got in and stared out the back window as if looking for someone. He typed an address into the GPS screen, and the limo rolled forward.
He opened a fresh beer for himself and looked at me. “We’ve got a special surprise planned for you tonight.”
I sipped my beer slowly, scanning their faces for information.
Ethan let out a long burp and put his dirty shoes up on the white leather. “It’s just a strip club in Mexico, calm down.”
Jamie kicked him from across the limo. “Not just any strip club. This is a legendary gentlemen’s club in Tijuana.”
“Don’t they have strip clubs here?” I asked, thinking about the six-hour flight I just took.
“Not like this one,” Ethan said, pulling at the front of his sweatpants. “Girls down there will do anything. Give you a boner that’ll make your stomach hurt.” He snapped his fingers and looked at Jamie. “Hey…you think I can get a surra bunda down there?”
“What’s a surra bunda?” I asked.
Jamie shook his head. “No, man. It’s not that kind of place.”
And before I could say no—or even ask anything else—Jamie started selling me. The same way he explained that if we pushed my dad’s truck out of the driveway in neutral in the middle of the night, he wouldn’t hear it start up down the street.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s totally safe. Besides, the club is only half the surprise.”
I heard the same unease in his voice then. Like when he’d lie to his mom about where we were or when he made up that story about fingering Missy Reynolds at summer camp.
“Plus,” he said. “We’re taking the HyperLoop. Gets you from LA to Mexico in twenty minutes!”
The HyperLoop was a big story back then, even in my hometown. An underground train that travels through low-pressure tunnels via electric propulsion. Fast as a fighter jet.
“Gets you from Venice to downtown in seven minutes,” Jamie said. “Silverlake to Santa Monica in ten!”
He looked satisfied as he explained things to me as if he were working an old muscle again. The names of the neighborhoods were written on my L.A. wish list, but the distances between them meant nothing.
“Just last week,” he said, pointing at Ethan, “we took it from Malibu to Dodger Stadium in twelve minutes flat.”
Ethan opened the mini fridge and grabbed another beer. “Don’t forget the two hours we had to wait in line just to board.”
“Well, sure.” Jamie shrugged. “Some things never change.”
“So, we’re taking an underground tunnel to Mexico?” I asked.
Ethan opened the beer and started chugging. “Don’t worry,” he said between sips. “The irony isn’t lost on us either.”
Jamie went on to explain how when California began digging the HyperLoop tunnels, they discovered a whole network of migrant tunnels zigzagging across the border in every direction.
“Yeah,” Ethan added. “Now, instead of fentanyl and families in search of a better life, the tunnels traffic in pods of drunk white people at 700 miles an hour.”
Jamie kept turning around to watch the road from the back window, tracking other cars. Ethan looked at him. “Dude, relax. Everything is going to work out. Just wait until we get over the border.”
“What’s going to work out?” I asked.
Jamie handed me another beer. “You know I’d never do anything to put you in danger, right?”
We were silent for then, and I ran my fingers across the leather stitching of the couch, pretending it was mine. A cloud of resentment for the whole situation set in over me.
“You know,” I said. “This limo might be the nicest place I’ve ever been. Looks like you’re putting Grandpa’s money to good use.”
Jamie tapped his foot. “The money was a nice surprise.”
“Must have been a real shocker,” I said.
Ethan was holding his head halfway out the window, catching air on his face like a dog. “What was a surprise?”
Jamie sighed and stared down into his beer bottle. “I already told you. My grandfather. He was a pilot who started an airline. He died and left me some money.”
“Some money…” I added.
Jamie slouched on the couch, avoiding eye contact.
Ethan pulled his head back inside. “God, are you talking about that again? So, you have a rich grandpa. Big deal. Who doesn’t?”
“Dead grandpa. And I didn’t bring it up.”
“You say he was a pilot?” Ethan opened the fridge and grabbed what must have been his sixth beer. “That reminds me of a joke.” He leaned toward us. “Okay, okay. Get this… What do you call a black man who flies a plane?”
Jamie shook his head. “Ethan, please do not finish that joke.” He had that queasy look on his face. Like the time he heard my dad use that word for homosexuals at a family BBQ.
“Jesus, can you stop being a little bitch for just one minute?” Ethan put his hand up to Jamie and then turned his body toward me, putting his face right up to mine. “Okay, Tim. You tell me… What do you call a black man who flies a plane?”
“What?”
“A pilot! What else would you call him, you fucking racist!?” Ethan slapped his leg and howled. Then, he looked at our faces and shook his head. “You know, my dad used to tell that joke and get laughs. But whenever I start to tell it, people just beg me to stop.”
It was silent then. And I don’t know why. Maybe the need to fall back into some familiar groove. Or maybe because it’s easier to go through the motions of things. But I held my beer bottle up in the air. “Here’s to a great night,” I said. “I just got here and already feel like I’m living in the future.”
“Forget the future,” Jamie said. “Tonight, we’re going to another dimension.”
***
We took what felt like a mile-long escalator down into the HyperLoop tunnel. Inside, we sat side by side and pulled harnesses over our chests. Our pod picked up speed, and I closed my eyes, imagining all of Los Angeles, the city I’d never seen, fly by over my head. All the destinations on my wish list lined up in a neat little row. Hollywood Walk of Fame, Griffith Observatory, the Santa Monica Pier.
Deep underground, 700 miles an hour. My eyes shut so tight, I could see it all. Long legs in rollerblades, spreading like blankets on the beach. The smell of Coppertone. The Pacific Coast Highway morphing into the 405. Gridlocked and barbed wire. Gang signs spray-painted over airbrushed faces.
We flew like demons beneath the city of angels. Land of dreamers, land of lost souls. Under sports cars fighting rush hour, seeking happy hour, inching toward that endless summer of billable hours. Adopted highways, abandoned intersections. Potholes etched into the pavement like cigarette burns. Gifts from a dying sun. Notes from an absent father. Covered by a blanket of smog, the overprotective mother.
Seven hundred miles per hour. I could see it all. Walls of pavement becoming golden coastline and naval bases. White picket fences, red adobe homes. The last few miles of California. Cars on the road aged ten years a second. Faster than the fault lines on my face. It all flew by so fast that for a split second, you could still pretend like everything was going to be alright.
***
Off the Hyperloop, we walked up the stairs and into the city of Tijuana. The warm air smelled of cinnamon and street corn. The city was clean with fresh pavement. Holographic advertisements and neon signs floated in the air, selling dinner specials and pharmaceuticals. There were rusted Cadillacs on the corner with flowers growing out of the hoods, set up like art installations.
Jamie and Ethan walked at a fast, American pace toward an old cathedral. The pillars were covered in soft yellow light and red bougainvillea. Spray-painted on the side wall was a mural of a Mexican girl sticking her head into the mouth of a lion. At the front doors of the Cathedral, two security guards waved metal detectors over our chests and waists. We walked down a dark hallway toward a door with a neon sign that glowed red: Paraíso Secreto.
Inside were bright lights and long red carpets covered the floors. The air was humid with perfume and cigar smoke. Dancers dressed as nuns sang Karaoke while dad-shaped men in Hawaiian shirts played roulette and looked at their phones. Everything inside revolved around a long, rectangular main stage in the center of the room. We sat down at a table in front.
A short girl with fuzzy zebra boots appeared and swung a bucket of beer back and forth until it gained enough momentum to land on the table. Ethan eyed her up and down. “Do you or any of your colleagues happen to surra bunda?” he asked.
“What’s a surra bunda?” I asked again.
Jamie’s phone went off then and he walked away toward a back bar. There was a tall, slender man wearing a red flannel and black fingerless gloves. He was hunched over, waiting. Jamie handed the man an envelope, and in return, the man gave him a brown paper bag. Now, I’d seen enough bad movies to know what a random man in a strip club handing over a bag to some nervous rich kid with slicked-back hair meant. Whether it was drugs, guns, or a human kidney, I did not know. But a feeling of suspense rose up in me then, and I felt as if someone had just given me some horrible news.
On the main stage, two topless dancers rode unicycles, wearing knight’s helmets, and jousted toward each other with Styrofoam swords.
Ethan opened two beers, handed me one, and I drank it down fast. Jamie came back to the table. He opened the bag and showed us a sealed plastic Ziploc with dozens of white capsules. He took three out. “This is a specialized blend,” he said. “Feels like you took molly and mushrooms at the same time. That’s the first course. It then blasts off into a full-blown DMT trip. There’s also some time-released ketamine and CBD in there to help settle the stomach, like a digestif. It’s basically a multi-course Michelin-star meal of designer drugs.” He moved his open palm with the pills toward me. “We call it Heaven’s Gate,” he said.
“Wasn’t that the name of a religious death cult?” I asked.
“What? No. It’s called that because when you take it, you have a chance to meet God.”
Back home, when I’m not rolling silverware into napkins or wondering how I’m going to pay my rent, I take any drugs I’m offered. All distractions are good distractions when you resent the present moment. But there was something off about Jamie then, a look in his eyes. There was a neediness for me to follow along with whatever he said as if the whole night depended on it. Somehow, without laughing at my own lie, I said, “No, thanks. I don’t need drugs to have a good time.”
Ethan leaned over and snatched up a capsule right out of Jamie’s hand. “I don’t need drugs either,” he said. “I just need more.”
My friend Jamie. You know the one. The older brother who’s the same age. He put his arm around me as if he were about to explain the facts of life. The same way as when we were kids, and he’d say, “The floor is lava,” and then it would be. But in that moment, his confidence seemed so desperate, and a surge of power I didn’t recognize in myself swelled up.
“Listen, Tim,” he said. “It’s not just about having a good time. It’s about finding out who you really are. Don’t you want to know?”
Strange question, I thought, considering the main reason I ever take drugs is to forget who I really am. “Why would I ever want to know that?” I said.
“Because if you can detach from your current definition of self, you can find another part. A part you never knew existed.”
I told him then how I didn’t want an external substance influencing my internal experience of the world, but he still kept going. He yammered on and on about how some omnipresent, expanding realm was hidden inside our minds. And how biochemical formulations of consciousness can’t be unlocked without external substances. And then, even after I told him how the universe or consciousness or whatever was far vaster than my tiny brain could ever comprehend, he still pushed the pill in his hand toward me.
“I’m not interested in escaping this version of reality,” I said finally, reaching into the bucket for another beer. “I believe it’s in our natural state of being that true happiness resides.” I was surprised at how reasonable this sounded.
Finally, Jamie shook his head and began to pout in his chair. I had him where I wanted him now and didn’t let up. “And why don’t you tell me the truth, Jamie? Why the hell do you have a whole bag of this stuff?” I demanded, fearful of getting a real answer. “What kind of business are you actually in?”
Ethan looked at Jamie and then started to laugh. “Jesus,” he said. “You still haven’t told him why he’s here, have you?”
Across the room, a small group of men told stories in loud voices. Their laughter reminded me that you could be where everything is happening and still feel left out.
Jamie didn’t answer. He just sighed and watched the dancers on stage. “Forget it, man. I just thought this might help you overcome that negative energy that’s always blocked you.”
“Please,” I rolled my eyes. “What do you know about negative energy? You’re just a trust fund kid who used to play dress-up in my middle-class neighborhood. The only thing you’ve ever done right in your whole life was be born into the right family. You have no idea how the rest of us live.” These words didn’t come out the way I’d rehearsed in my mind over the years, but they still tasted good.
Jamie’s handsome yearbook smile melted into a look of shock and regret. The same way it did when we were ten years old, shooting at birds with bee-bee guns until one actually fell down dead.
Ethan put his feet up on the table and yawned. “I can’t believe it. After all these years, you shitheads still have your periods synced.” His eyes scanned the room until he locked eyes with a dancer. “You,” he pointed, then followed her across the room through a door marked Private.
On the main stage, a dozen dancers sat in chairs while another, in a pink dress, delivered the final courtroom monologue from Legally Blonde.
Jamie slumped in his chair. His skin looked old and pale under the lights from the stage, like masking tape or an anti-smoking ad. He held his beer bottle up to the light to see how much was left, then used the last sip to swallow one of the pills. We sat in silence for the length of a lap dance happening across the room. “You spend your life waiting for something to change,” he said. “And the rest of it wishing it could be the way it was.”
It must not have taken long for the pill to hit him because that’s around when Jamie really started to open up. He confessed that all his friends in L.A. were fake. How they used him and burnt through all of his inheritance. He told me how he met Ethan. How the two of them made money selling these pills to ravers in Venice Beach. But now, rival drug dealers back in Los Angeles were looking for them. And right now, right at that exact moment, they needed someone who wouldn’t be recognized to take the drugs in this bag back over the border.
“That’s why I needed you here,” he said. “You’re the only person I can trust.”
It felt strange to hear the word needed directed at me. To know that, without me, his entire future might crumble. Watching him so sad and pathetic there, his elbows resting on the sticky table, his head in his hands, was so unbecoming of who he’d been in my mind that it made me uncomfortable. My friend Jamie. The natural-born leader. So far from home. Suddenly, I felt the need to fall back in place with him now. That the only way out of here was to put us both back in our familiar systems of life. And maybe because of loyalty or because it felt more comfortable to just go along, I picked up the last white pill from the table and swallowed it.
I then grabbed the bag with the rest of the pills and stuffed it in my jacket pocket, claiming them as my own.
Jamie raised his head up out of his hands. His face regained some color. “You know,” he said, “you really shouldn’t have taken that if you didn’t want to. That’s how people end up having a bad trip.”
Ethan wobbled back to our table, his tongue flicking back and forth over his teeth like windshield wipers. His shirt was wet, and his face glistened. “Man,” he said, “I haven’t seen that much squirting and wiping since I visited my grandma during Covid.”
On the main stage, dancers with Gordon Ramsay wigs wore aprons and sharpened knives.
Two dancers in blue paisley pajamas approached the table. One sat on my lap and put her arms around me. She smelled like night-blooming jasmine from the backyard of the house I grew up in. The other dancer pushed herself up onto the table, her short legs dangling. “Which one of you guapos keeps asking for a surra de bunda?”
Ethan pointed his thumb into his chest. “That’d be me, beautiful.”
“Will someone, please, for the love of God, tell me what a surra bunda is?” I said, slamming my beer onto the table.
The dancer on my lap spoke softly to us all. “The surra de bunda is a dance move that involves one person sitting in a chair while a dancer, female traditionally, hooks her feet on the other person’s shoulders and then pounds her ass into their face, over and over, with as much force as possible, traditionally.”
“Sounds painful,” I said.
“That’s correct,” she said. “Surra de bunda means ‘punishment by ass’ in Brazilian Portuguese.” She ran her fingers through my hair.
“Your English is fantastic,” I told her.
She leaned away and narrowed her eyes. “And why wouldn’t it be?”
“Don’t mind him,” Jamie said. “He’s just visiting.”
Ethan’s eyes were saucers now. His forehead was covered in sweat. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You sound like a smart little cookie. But let me ask you this…” He raised his index finger up in the air. “What do you call a black man who flies a plane?”
The dancer scoffed. “A pilot. Duh! What else would you call him, you fucking racist?”
Ethan leaned back in his chair and grinned at her. “How would you like to come back to America with me?”
The dancers looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Then, stood up, took Ethan’s hands, and led him toward the stage.
Jamie shook his head. “Sometimes I feel like if I hadn’t met that guy, my whole life might be different.”
More lap dances came and went at the tables nearby, and I began to feel a strong sense of warmth spread through me, as if sunlight was being poured over my heart.
On the main stage, there was just an empty chair. A string quartet played what sounded like execution music. A theme song to something gone wrong. Fog from a machine dusted the ceiling, and dancers suspended by golden ribbons glided across the room, flying in and out of white light like angels in a storm. The two dancers brought Ethan on stage in a blindfold and put him in the chair.
I felt the sun on my face, though I knew that was impossible. My feet stuck to the carpet and held me in a state of comfort and ease I cannot explain. And the smell of jasmine still lingered on my neck, sending me further into the secret garden of my mind.
One of the flying dancers suspended herself lower and lower over Ethan’s head until she hovered right above him. She carefully placed her hands on his knees and the tops of her feet on his shoulders. Another dancer removed his blindfold. The music was getting louder. My chest was pounding.
The dancer gripped the back of Ethan’s neck with her heels and thrusted her bare ass into his face, over and over, with all her might. His mouth was open. His eyes welled up. Tears of joy rolled down his face, changing color in the lights and fog. He looked like he’d just met God.
My friend Jamie. You know the one. The first friend you ever had. The dumbest smart person you know. He’s trying to run, but it’s too late. The man in the red flannel was back with his friends, pointing at us and yelling in Spanish. They threw a burlap sack over his perfect head of hair and dragged him away.
That’s about when my own vision went dark. They lifted me up next, and it felt good and familiar to just go along. I can still hear the dancers scream. My eyes shut so tight I could still see the flashing colors from the mainstage. The sound of the roulette table passing by. The smell of sweet jasmine from twenty years ago. They carried us out beneath the neon lights into the cold night air. “The floor is lava,” I thought I heard Jamie say. I could hear his voice. The sound of birthday candles blowing out. A screen door slamming behind us.
And even though this was just the beginning of all our troubles, time slowed down. So slow that, for a moment, you could still pretend things might turn out alright.