Within an hour of checking into our hotel in Ensenada, my brother Bob and sister Diane, eight and five years my senior, respectively, were strolling down the bar-flanked Miramar Street.
Already blitzed, beer-bellied gringos, wearing Corona tank tops, shorts and sandals weaved down the sidewalk. We popped into bars, drinking a beer or a shot of tequila then moved on to the next. After the fifth or so bar, the dimly lit, gringo-packed barrooms all began to blend into one another. I knew, though, the second we entered El Pescador that it was a different kind of place. Or the bare-breasted woman writhing against a pole on a catwalk in the center of the room.
Bob held up three fingers to the bartender and mouthed cerveza over a thumping bass line while Diane headed for the bathroom. Have fun. I was an acne-spotted guitar-playing teenager living in suburban Los Angeles at the time. When my older brother came home on a two-week leave from the Navy, he said he had something in store for me. We were never very close.
In fact, I grew up terrified of him. Bob would often pressure me to ride into the hills with him, shotguns loaded in the back seat, so that we could shoot birds and other small animals. Plus, with our dad at work all the time, I think he figured he was the only one who could give me the education in manliness I supposedly needed. And so one day during his visit home from an aircraft carrier in Japan, I encountered him in the garage.
I was parking my BMX bike and he, as was his wont, was tinkering with a car part. I sighed when I saw him, thinking a trip into the hills to kill innocent animals was in my not-so-distant future. All I wanted in life was 1 to be a rockstar and 2 have a lot of sex. And preferably 3 to be a rockstar who has a lot of sex.
