Excerpt:

##THE CIGARETTE MACHINE RITUAL

The day always started the same way: without a damn cent, without a smoke, and without a drop of alcohol in my blood. I’d wake up with my body trembling and my head groaning from the void of the night before. There was no coffee strong enough to lift me, no routine to sustain me. But something moved me… a primitive impulse: to walk out onto the street and pretend to be the man I wasn’t.

I became a sort of drunken master of disguise—a shape-shifter who changed skins and tones depending on the bar and the victim in front of me. It wasn’t just about lying to others; it was about inhabiting—if only for a few hours—that version of myself that addiction had stolen from me.

To be a good con artist, you couldn’t look like one. That was the first commandment.

I wasn’t the typical desperate soul who walks in shouting or with a nervous twitch. No. I was an artist of deception. My strategy didn’t start at the cigarette machine… it started in my closet. I dressed the part. I put on the clothes of someone who has somewhere to be; someone with nothing to hide. I walked into the bar with the confidence of a man who owns the world, even though inside… I was slowly dying.

I’d choose a bar where I wasn’t known. Though the script remained the same, the stage changed. It took me very little time to analyze the psychology of those before me. In a matter of seconds, I’d study the environment, dissect the bartender, and identify their weaknesses. Once I had the x-ray of their character, the hacking began. I hacked their mind, and from there, the system was mine.

I’d sit at the bar, rest my arms calmly, and order a whisky. That first whisky was the one that tasted best of all. It wasn’t just alcohol; it was the key to my momentary freedom. With that first sip, the withdrawal retreated, the knot in my stomach unraveled… and I began to feel secure. It was the fuel that allowed me to start cooking the plan. Without it, there would be no actor, and no con.

While the bartender served, I’d go to work. I observed. I analyzed. I threw a conversation into the air—quiet, measured, with an intellectual tone that made everything feel natural. I became a method actor who believed his own role. The second whisky was the definitive entry into the character. I needed that exact level of intoxication… that controlled “buzz” that gave me cold blood and energy.

The twisted part was that, to ensure success, I’d make him my friend. The closer I was to him, the further he was from suspecting me.

My secret tool was in my pocket: a few cent coins. Worthless pocket change, but my master key. I didn’t use them stealthily; on the contrary, I displayed them as part of the show. I did it the opposite way everyone else does: I executed the plan when everyone was watching. I’d approach the machine, drop the cents in, and hit the coin return button. The sound was dry and resounding: clack… clack… clack. In everyone’s mind, it meant: “That man just put money in.”

Then the spectacle began. I’d shake the machine and stand there with a face of pure confusion. The bartender would come over: “What happened?” I’d show him the cents: “Look,” I’d say sorrowfully, “it gave me the change, but the cigarettes won’t come out.” “Don’t worry,” he’d reply, “which brand did you want?”

There came the climax. At that exact instant, the “Om” resonated in my head—that Buddhist mantra symbolizing absolute peace. In that precise moment, I donned my invisible costume, shed the character, and transformed before his eyes into the Buddha: a being of such profound integrity and calm that it was impossible not to believe him. While that mystic vibration filled my mind, I projected an unshakeable serenity to hack his will. I activated the cruelest reverse psychology:

“Please, there’s no need,” I’d say with the calm of the enlightened. “Keep the money, keep the cigarettes. I feel terrible about this. I’ve worked in hospitality myself, and I understand this is a problem for you. If the cigarette vendor comes tomorrow and barks at you, you’ll have to pay for it… I couldn’t live with that.”

The bartender felt indebted. His professional pride was wounded by my divine assurance. “Nonsense! Take the pack, for God’s sake!” he’d insist. In the end, he’d accept the pack because he needed to give it to me to feel good about himself. And the moment he handed it over, I’d look him in the eye and, with all the solemnity in the world, give him a sort of Buddhist hand gesture… a silent blessing so he could be at peace. It was the final seal of the con: I robbed him, and on top of that, I made him feel blessed for it.

While executing the trick, I was already racking up a debt on my bar tab. To everyone, I was a great guy; someone likable who knew a bit about everything. To make my presence a guarantee when it was actually a threat—that was my greatest theatrical work.

The ending was masterful. I’d put on a look of relief: “I’m going to step out for a smoke, alright? Save my whisky, it’s still half-full.” The bartender, moved by my supposed saintliness, would nod with a smile: “Take your time, don’t worry. It’s not going anywhere. Smoke in peace.”

Then, I’d throw him one last look charged with peace and make that final hand gesture. Softly. As if telling him: “Don’t worry, you are blessed… blessed. I believe in you.” In that moment, he became the sacred guardian of my debt, convinced he was protecting the chalice of an extraordinary man.

He didn’t know it, but that half-finished whisky was my hostage. In anyone’s logic, nobody leaves a drink they’ve paid for—or owe—halfway through if they don’t plan to return. That glass was the anchor that prevented suspicion; it was the physical proof that my word was worth something. As long as the whisky was there, on his bar, under his custody… I was still that man I wanted to be.

I’d step out onto the street, light a cigarette, and take the first drag with brutal intensity. I felt the smoke mix with the alcohol and the adrenaline… For me, that wasn’t just a nicotine hit; it was something much deeper. It was a peace pipe I smoked with myself: a victory for having beaten the system one more day.

But right there, in the midst of the glory, remorse would ambush me and hijack the thrill. After all, despite being an addict, I was a man of values; I had an uncommon sensitivity, a vulnerability that made me feel things too intensely. That’s why it was unbearable to have done something that, deep down, I found despicable: abandoning my ally on that lonely bar. That half-whisky… what a fucking waste.

I was satiated, free, and drunk… but with the weight of that betrayal on my shoulders. A minute of calm before disappearing into the night, leaving behind an empty chair and my “hostage” growing cold on the bar. That glass stayed there, a monument to my passing. The bartender would stare at that half-glass for hours, even days, wondering when the Buddha would return… that enlightened gentleman who had given him a lesson in integrity. Never knowing that his “saint” was already miles away, hunting for a new victim.

In those days, there were mornings when I woke up so sick—so destroyed by the need to drink—that the tally of all those “half-whiskies” I had left along the way would come to mind. The only thing I truly regretted, the thing that pained my soul as I walked down the street, was having left that glass half-full.

That was my only remorse: the waste of having abandoned my best ally on an enemy bar, just so I could walk away scot-free.

AUTHOR’S REFLECTION

Today, many years after that character has passed, I stop to think and I’m a little alarmed… Damn, what a fucking moron I was. Seeing it with perspective now, I realize the amount of talent I wasted in those bars.

Looking back, it seems both a wonder—and a tragedy—how well I could have earned my bread. I could have easily been a professional illusionist or even a film actor, because I was a method actor without even knowing it. But if you think about it coldly… where I truly would have triumphed is in politics. I would have gone far there. Because everything I did… I could have done it on a grand scale and, what’s more, “legally”—in quotation marks.

After all, you don’t need studies or a diploma for that; all it takes is what I did: pretending with total simplicity to be the man you aren’t. I could have been just another member sucking at the teat of power like a piglet, because in the end, the same things are cooked there. That’s where the irony lies. There isn’t much difference: it’s about reading people, hacking their wills, and selling a reality that doesn’t exist… and yet, being admired for it.

I had all those ingredients; I wasn’t a Michelin-star dish like the big shots, I was more of a poor man’s meal, but in the end… the flavor is the same.

For me, back then, all of it was too easy. And that is the true waste: using a Ferrari engine just to go get a pack of cigarettes and a whisky… when I could have had the world at my feet. But thank God, in the end, I met with harsh reality: and that is that a liar, a con artist, has his days numbered. Thank God I’m still alive.

Now, I want to use all those experiences to release what my life used to be; that’s why I want to explain in these pages, for whoever wants to understand, that this was the Holy Grail for dying bit by bit. And what I’m trying to do is explain to the world that this is the easy path… and the easy path is the one that leads you straight to the casket. And in that state, if you continue that life, it all translates into an empty funeral, with echoes everywhere because there’s no one left. And that’s what I don’t want.

I don’t want tears. What I imagine is a funeral full of people laughing their asses off with me, smoking their tobacco and drinking their whisky while they tell my anecdotes in the same shameless way I told everything, without modesty. I want them to remember that I was a fun guy; a vividor who knew how to get up from a thousand falls, laughing at himself without any air of greatness…

…"

–Continue reading in its original Castilian language at https://fictograma.com/ , an open source community of Spanish writers–