PANAMA

Behind the Bar

FROM THE TRAVEL DIARY OF KILO FOXTROT

I push the drawer into the register with my thumbs and it pops open with a metallic whirling sound. Like any cash drawer, it has internal components for separating denominations of bills and coins. But unlike any other cash drawer you have ever seen, this drawer is for dispensing drugs as well as collecting cash. David is working at the bar and I'm standing next to him, working at The Bank, a perpendicular window in the side of the bar where festival-goers exchanged their cash-money for our proprietary food-and-drink tickets. The Bank is also where we sell the drugs. There are more than 500 people at the festival from more than 60 countries.

Here is a typical conversation, which usually takes place in broken English:

Customer cautiously approaches The Bank, the window in the side of the Driftwood Bar.

Customer: Hi. Yes, so, you have things here? Other things?

Me: Yeah.

Customer: What do you have?

Me: What do you want?

Customer: Um, yes, um...

Me: Coke, speed, acid, molly, ketamine, DMT. Oh, and weed.

Customer: OK...OK. How much is the acid?

Me: Liquid or paper?

Customer: Um, paper.

Me: Ten for twenty. A hundred for fifty.

Customer: OK...OK. I'll just take some coke for now.

Me: How much do you want? An eight ball?

Customer: Yes, the eight.

Me: OK. That's thirty.

Then the customer shuffles through their leather satchel and I push open the drawer. There's a ledge built into the wall about a foot beneath the window that functions like a desk, and the register is sitting on this ledge, slightly but not completely obscured from the customer's view. In each of the slots, in front of the money, is a different drug. There are clumps of weed in front of the $1 bills, a baggie full of crystalized molly with the $5 bills, coke with the $10s, meth with the $20s. Next to the register is an electronic scale. I blow off the powder from the surface of the scale, tare it, shake out some powder from the tens drawer and measure 35 milligrams. There's little balls of sticky weed all over the counter, mixed with sand and dirt, obscuring a collage of papers underneath. This is the desk where we work. On top of the pile of papers is a clipboard, with a running list of how many free beers each worker has taken. I tear off a piece of the list, careful not to disturb the line of unidentifiable white powder someone poured out onto the list and walked away from. I use the scrap of paper to funnel the eighth off the scale and into an empty baggie, of which there are many piled next to the register. Then the customer pays with a combination of Panamanian and American currency, which is fine, because both are legal tender in Panama, which is part of what makes its economy so well suited to money laundering and bribery.

The people who worked in the bar and the bank didn't work in scheduled shifts. They sometimes sat on stools behind the bar 18 or 22 hours all in a row. In strictly monetary terms they worked for free. They received as compensation discounted entry to the festival, and as much methamphetamine as they required to keep working, Plus one free beer per hour worked. Any more beer than that you have to pay for or write down on the clipboard. Usually, two people worked together inside the Driftwood Bar, one dispersing beers at the counter along the front of the bar and one handling transactions at the bank window. Both of them drunk and tweaking. Moon sunning, ocean waves beaching.

Driftwood Bar Menu

There were machetes, for the coconuts, which were what we ate, not while working at the bar, which didn't usually involve eating, but just in general. The machete was about shoulder height, about four feet of knife. Usually, two people worked together. If one person stood at one end of the bar holding a machete, carefully, their coworker could snort speed off the other end of it from all the way on the other side of the bar. Bar-length machete. During the day, lots of people hang out behind the bar. The most difficult working moment to negotiate played out many times and went something like this: I turn around and realize one of my coworkers has wandered behind the bar and is standing right next to me and extending a pocket knife with cocaine on the tip of it, offering it to me at nose height. With a finger pressed against my nostril in an unmistakable silhouette, I bend down to inhale the powder, and while I'm turned away from the bank window I accidentally make eye contact with a customer waiting at the bar. Then I have to decide whether to go ahead and sniff drugs right in front of them before taking their order, or to renegotiate my physical position in a way that protects the precarious powder from falling off an instrument held in unsteady hands, ideally while communicating silently that I still totally want to hit that shit as soon as I help this one customer.

At night, while everyone was dancing at the stages, that's when the bartenders were mostly alone, accruing an indefinite number of hours. Eventually, another person who was trusted to work at the bank would sneak behind the bar to get themselves a beer. At that moment, if the person working ran away, the new person who only came for beer would have no choice but to keep watch over the bar until someone else came along. In this manner, shifts behind the Driftwood Bar began and ended.