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35
MIKE GOES CRAZY

Throughout all this, the parties with the tourists continued. We partied a lot. Sometimes, I even got sick of partying. I developed major problems with my sinuses. My nose was permanently running and often it bled when I blew it. I had great difficulty getting to sleep. I got severe headaches that lasted for days on end. Apart from these symptoms, I thought that sniffing cocaine was relatively harmless until I watched Mike the chef completely lose it.

He was drunk and high that night, but since he had a perfect memory, he remembered our conversation word for word. We laughed about it afterwards, but at the time it was scary. It happened shortly after Ana, Mike’s Bolivian girlfriend, had broken up with him. They had been together before he was sent to prison, but had separated over some small incident. When Ana began to visit him in San Pedro, the relationship started up again. They had only been back together for two months, however, before Mike got himself so twisted up with jealousy, imagining what she did on the outside, that he destroyed the relationship. Every time she came to visit him, he would abuse her in public: ‘You’re late, you fucking prostituta. Who have you been with this time?’

On one occasion, Jack and I pulled Mike aside after Ana had left in tears. ‘Hey Mike, chill down,’ we told him. ‘You can’t treat her like that, man. She’ll leave you.’
‘I don’t care. She’s a puta.’
But Jack stood up to him. ‘You’re a prisoner, Mike,’ he said. ‘She’s beautiful. What she is doing in here with you, I will never know.’

Mike glared at him. I think Jack wanted Ana for himself, because whenever she was around he took his sunglasses off and moved his