The Book of Drugs_ A Memoir - Mike Doughty [88]
There was a Bob Marley poster. Something about the presence of a Bob Marley poster made me certain I was being scammed. But I wanted to be polite. I ordered a Coke.
A lab-coated waitress brought a bill on a silver plate: 453 Ethiopian birr. That’s $50. My overpriced dinner at the hotel cost 50 birr. I stood up, making a show of outrage. I wasn’t angry, but I thought it was the only thing that would get me out of there. I pulled a 10-birr note out and threw it on the silver plate. That’s for my Coke. I’m leaving.
A stout, older guy with a mean look came in. “Is there a problem here?” The problem is I’m not paying you 453 birr.
“Don’t worry, that’s Ethiopian, not U.S. dollars!” one of the girls chirped. “Don’t worry!”
I strode out. One of the girls followed me, looking genuinely baffled. The lab-coated waitress followed, too, pointing to the figure on the bill and holding up the 10-birr note like she didn’t understand.
I realized I’d left my umbrella on the white couch; I turned, probably quite foolishly, and walked back in. One of the girls handed me the umbrella, her left hand supporting her right elbow as she handed it to me—the polite way to hand something to somebody in Ethiopia.
(453 birr, $50, I thought, days later. I’ve spent more money on a shirt I ended up never wearing; what difference would it have made if I had just cheerfully let them bilk me?)
An Ethiopian band and dancers played in the hotel restaurant: a drummer, a guy playing a one-stringed fiddle, and two guys playing these lute-looking, guitar-sounding instruments called krars. The tone of the bass krar sounded for all the world like the bass on the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.”
They were out of tune; after every song there was a long, only partially successful tuning pause. Then they played. Fantastic. Potent, fevered jams, the energy intensifying. They switched between waltz time and four-on-the-floor in the middle of tunes, suddenly switching the beat’s accent. The transitions felt like loop-the-loops.
Two white tourists picked tentatively at their shiro and injera; stoic waitresses in bow ties, with nameplates reading “TRAINEE No. 35” or “TRAINEE No. 8” solemnly took their empty glasses away.
I wanted to hear more. I got into a taxi and told the guy I was looking to hear some Ethiopian music; he took me to a dim bar where a guy in a suit crooned into a wireless mic in front of a guy playing a Yamaha keyboard, with drum machine and automated bass line.
I told the cab driver that I wanted to hear some more traditional music: he took me to a place called the Concorde Hotel. I walked into the bar—the uniformed security guards saluted me formally—to see a band and dancers, finishing up a tune to much applause.
I went the bathroom. When I returned, the band was gone, the dancers were gone, R. Kelly’s “Step in the Name of Love” was playing, and the bar was filled with whores.
One of the whores cornered me on a bar stool and asked me to buy her a drink. Yeah, OK, why not. Mistake. She stood guard over me for the next half hour, giving churlish looks to the other whores, lest they intrude.
I think I was drugged. I was drinking a bottled water. My heartbeat accelerated; I started to feel shaky. I recognized the feeling: the Donald. The Donald is a feeling you get when you take Ecstasy, when the drug is coming on, but before the euphoric effects : an anxious, panicky feeling.
Once, at a Dutch festival, a tech named Steak Sauce (an English guy nicknamed for his condiment of choice) had these E’s with imprints of Donald Duck’s face on them. I downed a pill, waited a while, started feeling agitated.
Swaz called, and I described my state of being. She said, “Is it the Donald?” Yes, the Donald! Describes this feeling exactly. But she just meant Steak Sauce’s E’s with the Donald Ducks on them.
So I was freaking out. I hadn’t been on any drug for just