Big Joe Learns The Difference Between Winning And Not Losing

During my first decade living in Mexico while still practicing law in the U.S., I wrote a column entitled “Me and Big Joe” that recounted my adventures with a 350-pound Mexican bodyguard, Big Joe, a lunatic psychopath with a serious grudge to settle. He was big and stupid, but loyal. I have republished a few of those stories here and I do so again today if only because I have spent the last three months writing only about grief, about pain. I am tired and I am sure you are, too.

It is time to get back to The Front . . .

March 3, 2008. 33,000 feet somewhere between LAX and Houston Intercontinental

It ended like it began. Suddenly, no warning. The evil bastards who had told us from Day 1 they had a lock on the case just gave up. After six weeks of hand to hand combat, it ended with a whimper instead of a bang. When I was younger, and a lot stupider, I would demand they stand up and take it like a man, but years have taught me that hits, runs and errors are no different than a forfeit if only because a “W” is a “W” no matter how or even why it ends up in your column.

The folks who pay the bills seemed happy as evidenced by the wild, drunk orgy that began in a tony outdoor restaurant in downtown L.A. about 7:30 p.m. last evening and ended, well, I’m not sure, but I know that I fell in love at the dinner table and left early enough to take a shower and make my way to LAX where I was fondled repeatedly by a TSA agent who could sense I had way too much fun the night before and was pissed she didn’t get in on the action.

But that’s not the point. This isn’t about being gang-banged by the government again. It is about happiness and I want the folks paying my whiskey bills to be happy even when my statement for services arrives, some of which are so large that even my accountant is embarrassed to discuss them. Well, fuck him, too. I think I’ll fire that bastard soon enough. After all, if you have enough money that you need someone to count it, you don’t need someone to count it. Not that I have that much but I have learned the difference between more and enough.

More is just one buck or banana that you didn’t have yesterday. A moron knows what more is. The more difficult question is “how much is enough?” The concept of enough isn’t numeric. Enough is a decision and drawing that line in the sand is the only way to ever be satisfied.

Jesus, I can’t stay on point. Now I’m off on philosophy. This is the result of too much Patron tequila. I’ve seen these results before. So, let me start one more time. You just want to know how the story ended in South L.A. and that is what Iam going to tell you if the battery in this laptop will hold on for another few minutes . . .

Big Joe barged through my door about four o’clock whooping like a wild hyena on speed.

“Hot damned!” he barked, slapping his leg.

“Get out of my office, Joe,” I said without looking up.

“It’s done, Mister Jim. All over. You won! Here’s the paper,” and he slammed a fax down on my desk.

I picked it up and read it quickly. I had seen it all before and I pushed it back across the table.

“We won! Aren’t you happy, Mister Jim?” he implored. My lack of excitement was palpable and I could see Joe was disappointed that I hadn’t joined in the celebration that I could hear spreading down the hallway.

“We won?” I asked quietly. “Is that what happened here, Big Joe?”

His eyes fell and he looked confused and stupid, mostly because he was.

“What did happen here, Big Joe? Tell me,” I said softly.

“We won” he repeated, but I could see in his eyes he knew that wasn’t the right answer.

I opened my desk drawer slowly and pulled out a new C2 Taser that had just arrived my Federal Express the day before, touched the trigger lightly and I could see the laser dot hit Big Joe in the solar plexus. Joe saw it, too, but before he could object I pulled the trigger and I heard the ‘whoosh’ and in in less than a tenth of second the barbs found their mark. Big Joe hit the ground like a sack of dead cats. 50,000 volts --whap! The Taser company describes this nasty little weapon as “propelling wires to conduct energy to affect the sensory and motor functions of the nervous system.” I don’t know what the fuck that means but I do know it is the understatement of the year. After being hit with a fresh Taser you lay on the floor writhing like a fish out of water. The pain is indescribable. You want to say something but all you can do is groan -- just like Big Joe. But I did Joe with a good heart, thinking of it as rebooting him in order that he might think more clearly.

In about five minutes when he came to his senses and remembered who he was, Big Joe looked up. I was standing over him. “Why you did that?” he asked and I could tell by the tone of his voice that his feelings were hurt.

“I did it Joe because you got the answer wrong,” I replied matter-of-factly.

“Success is never about winning, Big Joe. Success is about not losing. Greed is the source of our desire to win. Fear makes us not want not to lose. Fear trumps greed any day, everyday. Do you understand what I am saying, Big Joe?

Fear is why people are successful, even though they attribute it to their own talent, entitlement or greed.”

“Yes, sir. I thinks I understands,” he watched my finger playing with the trigger which is another fine feature of the Taser. Even when the victim comes to his senses the barbs are still in place and one can administer up to 20 separate and distinct charges until they either give up or get the answer right.

Big Joe got up on his knees and then flopped his sweaty palms on my desk and stood up. Then he started laughing crazily for no good or even apparent reason. I almost started liking him.

“You wants your car, Mister Jim?” he asked, just like he did every night for the last six weeks. I smiled, reached over and jerked the barbs out of him and we walked out the door together and over to the insane-mobile as I have come to call it. This vehicle was so ugly, so stupid, so ridiculous, and so wrong, but it did have a genuine 502 cubic inch crate motor stuffed under the hood with a huge root blower on it which I used to crush a Viper on the 101 the night before in a dead heat from 60 miles an hour. I stomped him so badly the driver of the Viper pulled over, got out and started walking and crying at the same time.

Joe opened my door and smiled. “It sure has been good, Mister Jim. I learned a lot.” Something was running down his cheek. I thought for a moment it might be tear, but I decided it was snot.

I laid my Zero Halliburton case on the driver’s seat, opened it, pulled out the Glock .40, ejected the clip and thumbed the shells onto the ground and then pressed the clip back in gently. I felt close to Big Joe but after having just given him 50,000 reasons to want to hurt me, I wasn’t going to give him the benefit of the doubt and I damned sure wasn’t going to give him a loaded pistol.

“It’s yours, Big Joe,” but as he reached for it I pulled it away and said, “but only if you can tell me why I should give it to you.”

He pondered the question for a moment and looked up. “Because we didn’t lose. Because we didn’t get our asses kicked, Mister Jim. That’s why.”

I felt proud of Big Joe, handed him the Glock, and left him, a felon with multiple convictions, standing outside a bus terminal in broad daylight with a .40 caliber Glock in his hand, smiling broadly, figuring he still had no chance to win in life butat least he might not lose as often.

And now sitting comfortably in first class sipping a Mimosa, fresh off the post-lunatic orgy, post LAX pat-down, I know this -- the whole experience was altogether right from the start.

August 20 2008

Epilog

You recall that I left Big Joe, a 350-pound multiple felon at a bus terminal in east L.A. fingering a .40 caliber Glock that I had given him as a gift for keeping me alive.  Before I could make my plane, I got a call from the police saying that Big Joe had been incarcerated for “felony menacing,” whatever that meant.  I told the cop to “lock him up and throw away the key,” but as I approached LAX I decided I couldn’t leave the fat bastard and spun the flat black Suburban around and bailed Big Joe out. 

He was so happy to see me that he broke down outside the police department at which time I shot him (again) with the Taser C2.  He fell to the pavement spitting and sputtering and said something about tearing my balls off and shoving them up my ass.  At least that’s what I thought he said.  As I stood over him, I wept, too.  Here’s a freak of nature, I thought, put on the streets of a big city with no sense, no education and no excuse for anything.  He was a genuinely dangerous bastard but like a Pit Bull, he was who he was meant to be.  So, I offered him the position of “Head of Security” which he instantly accepted and we flew back to Mexico together.

He now lives in my compound and I pay him a thousand dollars a week, which is exactly $900 more a week than he ever made legally.

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