The Donkey Show (one of the worst nights of my life)

You don’t do things like this except when you’re on your own for the first time, at least I hope you don’t.  I was a freshman in college in Austin and for some reason I decided to go to Nuevo Laredo with my roommate and his fraternity for the night.  Only now, nearly twenty years later, am I coming to terms with what went down that night. I never talk about it.

After the long drive straight down I-35 we hit the border. We park the car and walk across. The frat and I go straight for the bar, the first one we can find.  I don’t drink, I’m still scoping out the scene.  I’ve heard too many horror stories of fucked up Americans getting robbed and/or abducted by Mexican policemen, never to be heard from again.

The boys make a decision to meet back at the van at 4am.  I’m proud of them for coming up with a plan, that’s a good sign.  We leave the bar and enter the shabby village of Boys’ Town.  The dirt road, the only road, goes down for as far as I can see, which isn’t very far, I’m looking up a hill.  It’s very well-lit and very dusty.  There are crumbled shacks lining both sides; they are all bars or rooms for the whores.

Everywhere you look you see white boys, 95% of the people are men and sure as hell the other 5% are whores.  At every bar, you’d be hanging out listening to popular American music and a near nude chick would come up to you.  She’d immediately start rubbing your junk and showing her tits.  I guess that’s suppose to turn us on to such a degree that we’ll be so driven by animal lust, we’d follow her anywhere.

I tell her No and she moves down the bar to the next guy.  He wants to go, I know he does, but he doesn’t want to be the first brother to give in.  They try to act as if they don’t need to get laid, like they get so much at home.  This is just for a goof; they know who they are and why they’re there.

One of the guys tells the brother he had her last year and she was amazing.  That makes him feel better as he’s escorted out of the bar to her room next door.  A couple of other guys are drafted for venereal duty as the rest of us go to another bar.  You never forget the look on a guy’s face when he is being led out by a hooker.  It’s a mixture of fear, smugness, and embarrassment.  It’s hard to look too cool when you’re being led around by a fat whore.

The next place we go has a donkey out front tied to a post.  I ask the guy standing next to it if I can take its picture.  He says I can do whatever I want to with the donkey.  I think I’ll just capture its likeness on film for now thanks.  He threatens to slit my throat if I get him in a picture; apparently he’s wanted in America.  So you’re a killer, I’m impressed.

We go in and see a nude girl dancing around.  She takes a banana, peels it, and sticks it half way up her vagina.  Then the host/announcer guy asks if anyone wants to eat the other half out of her.  One of the lowly frat geeks dives down and does the deed.  He had to ward off a couple of his brothers.  What a sad sad sight.

Then the announcer requests money for a special show.  If we all chip in, the lady will pick up a full two liter bottle of Coke with her vaginal muscles.  Yeah yeah, big deal, of course everyone pays and cheers and gives high fives.  I look at the poor girl’s face; she’s a million miles away.

After the second act the host asks for more money; he’ll bring out the donkey if he sees cash.  This is what the place is famous for.  In my naivety I didn’t even make the connection between the donkey outside and the show inside.  Everyone puts in and they lead the donkey inside.  I should have taken the money out of the offering plate so that there wouldn’t be enough to make it happen. Didn’t think of that though.

Two guys lay the poor creature down on its back and hold its legs, one standing near the head and the other by the tail.  The donkey barely struggles; it must have been drugged.  The girl plays with its penis for a few minutes and it gets hard.  She then sucks on it for effect.  The crowd is on the edge of their seats.  One side of the room is junior high school gym style bleachers and we’re filling them up.

I’m looking at the scene, wishing it wasn’t happening.  The brothers know I have a camera and try to make me take pictures.  I pass, but give them the camera.  Poor donkey, poor girl.  She probably doesn’t get any of this money.  She mechanically sits on its erect mule cock and starts bouncing.  The crowd goes wild.  I walk outside and watch the street.  A guy is selling tacos from cart, I notice there aren’t any dogs or cats around and know it’s not a coincidence. I feel like I’m at an all-time low.

The boys stumble out, raving about the show.  We hit another bar; I need another drink after that.  That must have worked them up; they all sit at the bar, face the room, and wait for the girls.  One by one all the guys leave the building with these apathetic/pathetic girls.  I bet those girls fuck about fifteen guys a night.  I turn to my buddy Owen, my savior on this excursion, but there he goes too, with a real ugly one.  I think he was trying to sneak out without me noticing.  I don’t blame him, Jesus she was rancid!

I knew he wasn’t getting laid in Austin, but I didn’t know the situation was that dire.  I knew of a few sluts I could have hooked him up with if he’d only communicated his problem a little better.  I sit and drink alone, constantly telling the cycle of girls to leave me alone.  After awhile they all get the message and quit bothering me.

At 4am I head for the van and meet half the guys, the other half are still out.  By 5am we’re only missing one.  Two other guys leave to find him.  Shortly after the original straggler shows up.  It’s now 6am and the sky is getting lighter.  One of the missing pair has the keys so we’re forced to sit in the parking lot, staring at the trickle of shit brown water known as the Rio Grande.

Another guy volunteers to go find them, but nobody lets him leave.  At 7:10am they show up.  Apparently they found a good pharmacia that opened at 7am, so they waited for it to open.  Waited, I should say, with two more whores.

Since I was the most sober, stone cold sober I might add, I drove the deviants home.  They tried to give me directions, but I know how to drive in a fucking straight line, thank you very much brothers.  I had half a mind to bypass the frat house and take them straight to the clinic for testing.  I think the humor of that would be lost of them though.

We finally get home and I sleep for days. I still have that roll of film documenting everything.  I’ve had it for 18 years, unprocessed. I just know that I’m going to forget I have it and sometime in the future my son or grandson will come across it, take it to a antique place to get developed, and promptly get arrested.