Tales of iniquity from Columbia's underbelly
Published April 15, 2008
In the tradition of great American author/liars (the philosopher/kings of our time) such as James Frey, CNN reports that a travel guide author by the name of Thomas Kohnstamm plagiarized information for a travel book he wrote about Colombia. It turns out he never even went to Colombia; he just lifted material from elsewhere and instead opted to sell drugs to supplement his sub-standard income. Now Kohnstamm has written a tell-all book entitled “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism.”
Kohnstamm’s story immediately struck a chord with me. I too am an underpaid writer, and I often write complete bullshit about Columbia. But what most people don’t know is that, just like Kohnstamm, I too am a drug dealing plagiarizer with an insatiable appetite for deceit, methamphetamines and firearms. Kohnstamm’s courage to come forth and detail his exploits in a book has inspired me to do the same.
What follows is an excerpt from my upcoming book “Do Journalism Students Go to Hell?: A High Octane Tale of Sadomasochistic Blood Orgies, Platypus Disembowelment and Monkey Knife Fights.”
I pulled up beside the run-down, ramshackle edifice I’d been told would accept the delivery. I wasn’t at all wary of barging into the most notorious opium den in town. Indeed, I am no stranger to opium dens: I was born in one.
One quick glance at myself in my truck’s rear-view mirror and I would be ready to make my delivery. I adjusted my very cool looking sunglasses that made me look like a badass. Probably the baddest ass in town. Now I was ready. I took my clipboard and pen and approached the dreaded den of debauchery that stood in near-shambles before me.
When a young man opened the door I told him I was making a delivery. He nodded and granted me admission into the hedonistic madhouse.
Everywhere I looked, I saw sin and depravity in their fullest forms: immediately to the left of the door a young woman was passed out with 15 needles stuck into her arm. A dozen free-range chickens trampled carelessly over her body without deliberation. And no wonder — the chickens were strung out on speedballs, a potent mixture of heroin and cocaine.
The young man directed me to the back room, where a half-dozen Portuguese strippers were doing lines of cocaine and adderall with an adult Archaeopteryx — a species long believed to be extinct for millions of years.
“I’m here to make a delivery,” I said authoritatively, and I made sure to draw attention to my sick shades. “Who will sign for it?”
“I am the owner of this establishment,” said a wispy, eerie voice from the smoke-shrouded back of the room.
As the figure emerged from her hazy veil, it became clear to me that I was dealing with a professional unparalleled by any other human being I had ever laid eyes on. She wore a necklace of shrunken human heads and was draped in garments composed entirely of one-hundred-dollar bills and Spanish doubloons excavated from the murky depths of the Caribbean. She told me her name was Polina Yamshchikov.
“Now tell me, what are you delivering?” she asked.
“Three tons of opium, two tons of marijuana and a complementary subscription to High Times magazine,” I said. Like a badass.
“OK, cool,” she said. Within seconds she had signed the delivery sheet and I was on my way.
