Ego-trip, first class, to a beach at Cannes with a fascist dressed as a trans. With designer clothes and a branded identity, he sits next to me checking both nostrils after a quick fix in the bathroom, even when I thought we wouldn’t make it pass security without getting arrested. Our routine before departing to France has always been the same: An all-nighter practicing our pitch for the jury, along with as many bottles and creative ignition our minds and bodies could take. This ‘til the morning birds whispered the arrival of the big day, calling a cap and fixing two sleeping pills each, to ease the rush of our moonage daydream, followed by a well-deserved rest on the plane. But not this time. This time, Marcus® and I have extra luggage to worry about.
Advertising brought us together and these last days, especially this feverous night would forge us forever as partners in crime. We’ve sold Paris® as the modern Ethiopia, juvenile suicide® as a hot-line opportunity, but nothing could compare for what we’re about to pull off, our magnum opus, our prestige, the greatest trick the devil never pulled off. The original idea was to bless the community with the first-ever intimate soap for trans, if you think this is nothing, well, you should’ve seen our clients drill over the potential of being awarded at the most privileged festival in advertising. Just think about the stock numbers we’ll get, the awareness for our agency, the top of mind, the headlines, the golden lion on our hands. But if glory is what we wanted, we needed an extra piece on the puzzle, a certain je ne sais quoi to tickle the jury’s palate. Spice.
You see, the pitch wasn’t enough, it never really is, we needed a face, a voice to hit the jackpot, and that’s where Juana® came into picture. She was a fragile boy from Brazil, raised on the most violent environment of a fabella, being forced to hide herself on the body of a man for over 15 years. She made her transformation after earning enough money through nightclubs and other kinds of hardcore entertainment, morphing Juan Ferreira into the goddess, the Mirrorball-phenom, Venus herself: Juana®, an acid queen that treated men as voodoo and girls as cannon-flesh. A pimped butterfly that Marcus® meet in one of his agency-forced vacations, exploring Rio’s underbelly. They clicked in an instant, or so he told me, and after two nights under her spell he knew that this was the face we needed, the key to heaven, the final piece of our Gran Prix puzzle. He brought her back to New York, and with a simple glance I knew she was the real deal. Her arrival was followed by a week-long banter, blinded by Broadway lines, exposed to Manhattan glamour, abusing everything the island had to offer. We were her puppies, and she was our secret Midas. After everything that went through in that transcendent week-things, people, and experiences I rather not think about-we managed to get her the proper documents and secure her place with us at Shangri-La. Everything was going according to plan, and nothing could take us down. Nothing but ourselves.
There’s a part of our previous night I haven’t talked about, so here it is: Around 2 in the morning, as Marcus® and I were enjoying our sacred ritual before departing, Juana® came to the office and joined our carnival.
She had already loaded herself with a generous amount of fuel, evidenced by the purple marks on her arms, ready to take down anything or anyone who dared to stop her hardcore, and boy, did she stick to her guns. Around three a.m. she and Marcus® went for a private spiritual session, looking to recreate their South American fever, leaving me alone in the creative wing, as they parade their depravity across the HR department. Death Grips’ The Money Store was blasting through the speakers across the entire floor, as moans, screams, and snorts filled the silence between songs. I wasn’t bothered by any of it—I’d known Marcus® long enough and judging him would be the last thing I’d do, ‘cause I know he would never do it to me. We’ve been thru thick and thin, and today wasn’t gonna be the night that I started to guide my life with a compass that’s been long lost. As I enjoyed my favorite chemical cocktail of vodka, LSD, and a tinny addition of cinnamon for my palate, their sounds started to overshadow MC Ride’s industrial wisdom. Bitch Please began to play, and as Zach Hill’s drumming pulverized my brain, tearing it apart in a noise-rap blender, I felt ready to fight God Himself, and win with just an uppercut to his omnipresent chin.
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“Bitch please You must be crazy” said MC, and hell if I was beyond any sanity. My body lost its weight, my crippling muscles replaced with nuclear ballistics, and I found myself in the corner of a wrestling ring, with the Creator Himself on the opposite corner. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for your main event. As I looked at the Omega in the eye, I tore off my clothes, except for my underwear off course, we may be crazy, but decency is crucial for a healthy work environment. We began with a classic hold, testing our forces, and getting to know each other before delighting our red-neck audience with a 5-stars encounter. The almighty began with beautiful Arm Lock, which I reversed into a Headlock, but my opponent was ready for this, scaping with a dry cut to the ribs, giving me enough space to answer with a smooth Pele Kick direct to the kisser, plummeting him to the mat. The pop went off the roof as the audience witnessed something never seen before: the Alpha and the Omega colliding ‘til one devoured the other. “You going down, brother. I’m sending your jabroni ass on a one-way tour straight to hell!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, before my pro-wrestling career was cut short.
Out of the blue, the music stopped, jolting my stimulated self back to reality under the harsh LED lights and the unbearable weight of white noise. Marcus® was at the door, naked, underwear and all. Can you believe the audacity? For a moment I thought he had poured over him the entire load of powder we had, just to later realize the reason of his lack of pigment.
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“There’s no pulse” he said, shaking on his feet, with cold sweat running over him.
“I wasn’t gonna kill him, man, it’s just part of the show” I said. Clearly, I wasn’t completely back on our ethereal plane, and if I’m being honest, was trying my best not to. How dare him to stop such a spectacle, what would the promotion think of my unfinished performance?
“You didn’t kill him” Said Marcus with a fearful tone on his voice “But… I think I did”
“You got Him too?” I asked, thrilled by the thought of a handicap match against The Creator.
“Is… Juana®” he said with moon craters in his eyes.
“A three on one! The bastard has no chance!” I said as I held him by his shoulders. I swear I could smell the toxicity pouring out of him. A cocktail of desperation and excess, ideal for any other night, but this.
“C-come with me” he said looking straight as a Moai. Jumping as a little kid on a Christmas morning I followed him, shaking his shoulders and punching his back, ready to go back on the ring with my entire faction.
The HR department was a mess, tables and chairs pushed to the walls, clothes spread around the floor, and fluids of all kinds mixed with a collection of wasted varieties. The room held a layer of decay and a scent of brutalist intimacy, abruptly interrupted by what I was about to witness.
At the core of this immoral scene was Juana®, lying on her back looking at the ceiling with her piercing eyes wide-open. At first, I thought she was on a higher trance than the tow of us together, maybe she already had The Father on an angle lock, ready to tap out, just to quickly realize that it was The Lord who pulled the final blow on their encounter. There it was: our golden goose over-cooked, stuffed with who knows how many narcotics, and yellow matter custard coming out of her delicious mouth.
Suddenly I was out of the void, no more wrestling, no more entertainment, no more games, just two junkies and a dead body in front of them.
“Gold” I said, getting on my knees and letting the first tear drop fall. “We had gold.”
Marcus® stood next to me, shaking and smelling heavier than before. “I thought she could handle it, I thought she was one of us, I thought…”
“So much thinking for a junkie” I said under my breath.
“I though… I thought…” he mumbled as I slowly turned my face to look at him.
“What, ah? C’mon Marcus®, tell me”
“I just thought that- “
“Shut up!” I howled at him, spitting at his face with each word “You’ve never thought that much in your entire, miserable, pathetic life! We had gold on our hands, you junkie! And you blew it!”
A thousand things came rushing to my mind, pools of sorrow, waves of anger, possessing and caressing me. I’ll even admit, between us, that the idea of killing this idiot next to me came as a pleasant option. We’re both screwed so why not take it to the extreme? But the next minutes saved him from meeting Juana® again, and me from going out on the road as a solo act.
I’m not sure how much time passed after I unleashed my wrath over my partner, it could have been seconds, but time tends to be capricious on moments of anguish.
In deafening silence, Marcus®, interrupted with what would transform into our biggest idea yet “She was electric you know? I tried my best, man. But she refused to listen, she kept going and going. Electric, I tell you, magnificent, she-“
“She’s dead you cunt!”
“You think I don’t know that?! She kept screaming magnificent ideas for the pitch, I have them all written down. She’s what we’ve been waiting for, this is it, Henrry®! This is our moment; this is our gold!”
“I’m sure it is Marcus®, but you keep forgetting a little detail… you killed her!” The chemicals kept pushing my brain to all kind of places, exiting reality for a second as I tried my best to fight back.
“I know… but who else does?” he said with a strange calmness on his voice. I recognized that tone, usually it comes in a moment of brilliance and not in front of a possible assault. But I knew he had something cooking.
“What’d you mean?” I asked looking at him from the corner of my eye.
“Only we know that Juana® is a has been. Only we know that there’s no such thing as our golden goose anymore, but only we knew the real Juana®, only we knew what she looked like.” Ground control, we’ve made contact.
With that little speech, a bit of ingenious makeup, and a cheap wig bought at 4 a.m. in a sex shop in SoHo, Marcus® felt under the weather at the last minute, leaving only Juana® by my side on our way to Cannes. We could have done the right thing and come clean to the authorities instead of disposing of a corpse in the Hudson at 5 a.m. and rushing to the airport. But this is advertising—there’s no place for honesty or mercy. Eat or be eaten, buy or be bought. Divide and rule.
Don’t you dare judge us. After all, You're Not You When You're Hungry®.