Thousand of Dollars, Hundreds of Friends

If you're wondering, Brother/Sister, why your favorite Internet Personality has served up nothing but radio silence in almost a week — well, that's because he's been hard at work earning THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS and HUNDREDS OF FRIENDS.

A man of true ambition finds his way in the world, B/S. I might have been down-spirited when I last wrote, but life is about picking yourself off the mat, shaking off the hangover, stopping down by the hotel lobby for the continental breakfast, and going once more into the breach.

I could give you a blow-by-blow of the last few days, but there was a lot of driving, waiting, loading, driving, unloading, and driving again — and that part was boring as hell. So I'll keep it brief and snappy for you, B/S:

We've been smuggling illegals.

Now don't get all moralistic and start quoting to me from the U.S. immigration laws. If you were jobless and stranded in a Texas border town with a compadre eating his way through your savings, and said compadre — as many of them are — were a native Spanish speaker . . . well, it might occur to you that there are certain obvious ways to turn your frown upside-down. And if, in the process of inverting that frown, you just so happened to incur the enduring gratitude of some forty score hopeful and able-bodied Mexican workers . . . well, now you're thinking you might have the rudiments of an army, if at some later date you might need one.

What bright-eyed Internet Personality with World Domination aims wouldn't act as I did? The legal stuff we can clear up later — if we even have to. That's what lawyers are for.

PePe and I have made fourteen runs (that's over the border and back) in four nights. The work is so easy it's like money falling out the sky. The hardest part was getting the Ryder truck — they pretty much staff the rental joints with federal agents down here. You can't rent a simple cargo truck without fielding twenty or more probing questions from the guy at the counter. And when you're finished navigating those treacherous waters, you're asked to pay cash up front. So we had to go around the corner to the pawn shop and hock all our belongings — rings, watches, black wheelie bag, iPod, EVERYTHING. PePe had a hard time parting with his pipes, even temporarily. But we swallowed hard, pooled the money together and got us a truck.

From there it was smooth sailing. We made all the money back in our first two runs and bought back all our worldly goods just as the pawn shop opened the next morning (though I had to wrest my iPod from the grasp of some early-bird grandmother who thought she'd just landed Junior's dream Christmas gift on the cheap). PePe had all the contacts, made the calls, talked in Spanish, arranged the pickups. I was the licensed driver. We had a secret route over the River. There's an old abandoned bridge —

I'm saying too much.

Suffice to say, we netted $500 per haul — not counting the homemade Mexican delicacies our generous passengers gave us over and above the charged fare for the transfer. We had only one incident — last night — when we happened upon some Minutemen. You may have heard of them, B/S: they're these nutbag border-watch volunteers who call in suspicious activity along the Rio Grande. It took five minutes' cajoling before PePe would put down his empanada and pipe me up some redneck-thrashing music, but once he did, I was able to get to the bastards and lay them out before they could dime us to the Border Patrol. There were three of them parked in a jeep. They had night-vision goggles and satellite phones. Real Delta Force wanna-bes, these jerks — I gave them a big, thick dose of AVVLAIDF, had them all knocked out and piled into the truck in thirty seconds flat.

Just for kicks we took them over into Mexico on our next run, left them for the Policia. See how they like it.

Anyway, we're sitting on seven grand right now, and rather than push our luck, we're going to pocket the money, settle up at the Motel 6, and ditch Del Rio, Texas ASAP. Some 800+ newly arrived Mexican-Americans have my business card, and I have their contact information entered on this computer (these people may own next to nothing, but you wouldn't believe how many of them cross the border with mobile phone accounts). Some people might worry that I'm leaving a trail of evidence behind, but not me. You get ahead in life by making connections. I got these people safely and comfortably placed in the Land of Opportunity at a reasonable price. I want them to know they can call on me for help — for work, for mentorship, for a favor. I don't demand reciprocity down the road, but I won't refuse it either.

Not everyone can make more than seven Gs and 800 close friends in four nights. It's a sweet deal, if you can swing it.