While in Central America I did some writing and photography for a magazine called Men’s Journal. (A self-portrait-with-my-dog appeared on the September, 1998 cover.)My most ambitious piece was an investigation into the shootout killing of a man named Max Dalton, an American expatriate living at the end of the road at the bottom of Central America, in outback Costa Rica. I met some interesting characters in the process of uncovering the truth of the killing, one being a Canadian living in a border town between Costa Rica and Panama. Called himself “The Facilitator.” The guy had this thick, jagged scar running ear-to-ear across his throat. That kind of guy. I needed the cell phone records of a corrupt Costa Rican police chief and had been told that if anyone could get those records, it was this guy. After some spooky phone calls to him – between which he did some background checking to see who I really was – The Facilitator agreed to a meeting, in a whorehouse just across the border in Panama.

So I’m sitting in this whorehouse waiting for this guy and the whores are of course hitting on me. I’m not interested. For reasons I myself don’t quite understand, I’ve never been into whores, sexually. But I’m joking with them and we get friendly. I had my camera gear and I start taking pictures. They vamp it up. Fun. One of the whores suggests we all go into the back room for some even better pictures.

So now I’m in the back room in this Panamanian whorehouse with these four whores and they get naked and jump around on the bed and so forth and I’m shooting away. I shoot a roll, then thank them and give them some money. (I’m figuring to bill Men’s Journal for this -- how could a magazine called Men’s Journal object to that sort of expense?) I go to leave and the whore who’d surfaced as the alpha whore says Since I’ve already paid for it, don’t I want to get laid? I say No thanks, not right now, and the situation immediately starts to go sour.

What do I mean, No thanks?

The alpha whore is looking at me with this expression indicating that I’m in a room with four naked women and a bed and so how could I possibly not want to get laid? Then she says Aren’t we pretty enough for you? I say It’s not that… What is it then? We had already gone through the Am I a fag? routine out in the bar and I’d of course vehemently denied it, so that wouldn’t work. Figuring it would be indelicate to mention I’m not into whores, I say I’m just not in the mood. The alpha whore says something in Spanish along the lines of Mood, Shmood! Next thing, my clothes are coming off and these women are not fooling around.

An observation: The male member is a bizarre device. It either doesn’t work at all when you really want it to, or it will work just fine in the most adverse circumstances.

But the point, and the connection to being broke at Montauk, is this: Men’s Journal owed me expense money from the assignment, like three grand – big bucks when you’re broke – but they weren’t paying. Didn’t say they didn’t owe it, didn’t complain about the whorehouse expenditure; they knew they owed it, they just would not send the money. I’d send memos, mellow reminders about the debt. At first they – this guy who was then the features editor – would come up with excuses, like the accounting department had just burned down or whatever. I forget. Then the guy ignored me. Weeks went by. I was calling the guy like every other day now. He never answered his phone so I’d leave pleading messages on his voice mail. I’m broke. Please send the money.

One day I picked up the phone, a pay phone, since I didn’t actually have a phone, and called the guy. Said this on his voice mail: “Send me the money or I’ll come into the city, wait outside your office on Sixth Avenue, and when you come out, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”

The money arrived via FedEx the next day, along with a note of apology.

Although these incidents – my threatening the features editor of a national magazine to get money owed me after being semi-raped by an alpha whore who didn’t like my attitude while I was waiting to interview a Facilitator with an ear-to-ear scar across his throat while I was investigating the murder of an American expat at the end of the road in outback Costa Rica – are probably interesting enough to be worth the words (plus they go to the title of this book, answering the question posed by it), they also act as a set up for an incident to come, in which I threaten a major Hollywood movie star, likewise to get money owed me. You’ll like that one, I think.

But the real point: On top of all the sweating and forehead bleeding and firing mega-talent agency pimps, this is some wild ass job, this writing job, no?

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Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir, and a Tale of a Lost Surfer’s Paradise is now in print and available wherever books are sold. (I do better if you buy it through me! See link below.)

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