Getting Paid to Do What You Love When What You Love Is Drinking
Getting Paid to Do What You Love When What You Love Is Drinking
333 Beer in Saigon
They say that the secret to happiness is getting paid to do what you love. The dynamics of how this might work are simple to understand if, say, you take great pleasure in carpentry or fixing cars. In my case, however, I never figured that there was much money in getting wake-up-in-jail-three-states-from-home drunk and then attempting to woo young college students back to my bed.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was mistaken in my beliefs, and so I found myself properly marinated in Saigon attempting to charm the dress off of either—or both—of the beautiful young university students sitting in my lap, and being paid $100 for the experience.
I should rewind a bit. In Vietnam, being foreign had qualified me for a number of things I was not intelligent, educated, or good-looking enough to have a chance at doing back home. When a casting agent approached me about being in a movie as I was finishing lunch, I signed up without hesitation. I was instructed to bring as many of my male friends as I could round up; looks, qualifications, and sobriety not being important factors.
We were informed that this was to be a war movie, and we were to be American soldiers. On the first day of shooting, after getting suited up in our Vietnam War-era GI uniforms, we marched through the streets of Saigon and gathered in a park near the set. Before we had the opportunity to get bored, conspire, and start sneaking drinks, the production assistant showed up and began handing out garbage bags filled with cold cans of 333, the finest beer in all of Vietnam.
“Today,” shouted the production assistant, “We are shooting the hooker scene. I need you all to be drunk and act like soldiers in a whorehouse.”
A murmur of satisfaction arose from the assembled soldiers in a number of different languages. The production assistant began handing out packs of cigarettes as we opened our beers. We made quick work of the initial bags of beer, and someone was dispatched to bring us a few more bags of 333, or, in Vietnamese, “Ba-Ba-Ba.”Soon enough, we were ready to act out the drunk part of the job description quite accurately.
Next, we were issued girls.
Until this point, I had never been very interested in learning Vietnamese beyond the essentials, such as ordering beer. I learned Spanish in school growing up, and I can get by in Mandarin. Vietnamese, however, is one of the most difficult languages to learn as an adult, and I never planned on staying long enough for the investment to make sense. When I saw the girl I was required to be with for the rest of the night, I quickly regretted every single day of my life up to that point that I had wasted by not learning the Vietnamese language.
My mind was properly lubricated, however, and language need not be a barrier. She was a student at the local university, and worked as a model on the side. Later, I was issued a second girl, and was expected to do my duty by flirting convincingly with both of them in the bar on set while continuing to guzzle down beer.
At the end of the night, as I stumbled into a taxi with the prettier of the two girls, I had a fleeting realization. Had I just stayed home, I could have had a proper career at this point, working in an office for a respectable company. I am so glad that didn’t work out.