After our night at Boystown, we encountered shackled elephants

During the 2001/02 year, I had a cushy job at a downtown law firm helping lawyers do their jobs smoothly. This consisted of many mundane tasks, with a lot of down time to do homework and concoct crazy schemes, such as this one on a boring Friday afternoon on Friday.

Me and my fellow "office bitch" (as I came to call this job), Casey, were lounging around and Karl, this guy that worked there too and was a couple years older, comes up and asks if we wanted to go to Mexico with his buddies. Who were we to say no?

After quitting time and gas was put in the trusty old Saturn, we headed out to Karl's house, where we were to meet with three other guys and another one I would swear is Lou Diamond Phillip's twin, with the destination of Boystown, Nuevo Laredo's red light district.

We headed out there at around 7pm in a two-car convoy. We got to Laredo at around 11pm and got a room at the Howard Johnson overlooking the smelly Rio Grande. A circus had set up shop at the enclosed parking lot that evening.

We crossed the bridge into Mexico and the fun commenced: after hailing a cab, we were determined to fit all seven of us in there, so two rode shotgun with the cabbie, four in the backseat and I was forced to lay down across these four guys' lap. The cabbie wasn't too happy, but it's amazing how far an extra buck or two will go in Mexico.

When we got to Boystown, we were trolling around trying to find some whorehouses to go make fun of whores and drink cheap beer. Among our tomfoolery was: a whore agreeing to sit on Karl's lap for a cigarette, Casey going to a room with two girls and coming out empty-handed because he was unable to negotiate a good deal and me trying to console a hooker that was crying, who insisted she really wasn't a prostitute. And LDP's twin puking outside a whorehouse and getting a verbal lashing from the bouncer. Luckily for these gringos, I am fluent in Spanish, so I was able to get them out of some hot waters, including LDP's puking escapade and Karl's discussion with a taco stand owner about which country's better: the U.S. or Mexico.

Finally, on our last go around, a swarm of Mexican army armored cars descended upon one of the nicer looking joints right as we were to go in. For reasons undefined, we still decided to go in, against traffic of 20-some "Federales" and assorted army personnel escorting people out in handcuffs. Needless to say, that place was deserted and we soon left. We made our way back to the U.S. side around 5am and waited for some of the other guys to gather some belongings out of their cars.

Meanwhile, Karl, Casey and I see these elephants shackled to one another circled off with yellow caution tape. We decide it's a good idea to go pet them. After crossing the yellow line, we started petting this calmer one, whom we promptly named Stompy. But Karl decides that it's a good idea to try to free them from their shackles because it's “wrong to keep them like that.” He motions over to another elephant who is prancing around like he isn't happy and next thing I know, there's Karl being flung across ten feet by the angry pachyderm! Apparently, the pissed-off elephant wasn't happy that Karl was tugging on his shackles and kicked him, HARD! He landed on his head, which was cut open.

Did we go to a Laredo, TX ER at 5-6am? Nooo...we thought it would be best to drive back to Austin and ditch the hotel. We made it back to Karl's house at around 1030am-11am, but instead of going to an ER, the other guys went home while Karl and I watched basketball, drank beer and ate chicken all day. Interesting post-script to this story is that the next Monday, the local Fox affiliate showed the Simpsons episode where Bart wins a radio contest and the prize is his choice of $10,000 or an elephant, so he goes with the latter and names it Stompy.