the bills while Aaron devised his plan. He signed him to a long-term contract, got his teeth capped, paid him a weekly salary, and got him laid on a regular basis.
Then one night, the magic that is show business smiled on Shawn Spurl. He was driving a middle-aged woman named Darcy Trumbo to a country concert that had been booked to follow the Brewers game in Milwaukee. Darcy Trumbo was from the Jersey Shore and had graduated from Princeton with a degree in journalism, but she opted for a job offer to follow the Eagles around the country on tour. After a show in Nashville, she somehow got separated from the caravan, which moved on, and when she came to, she liked what she saw and decided to stay in Nashville. She went from cocktail waitress to Music Row secretary to becoming the host of a country line-dance show on the Nashville Network. She too was just waiting for the right thing to come along at the right time, and somehow she recognized it in her limo driver in Milwaukee.
Darcy Trumbo sat in the back of the long stretch limo, stealing glimpses of Shawn in the rearview mirror and asking her driver polite questions that did not require complicated answers. When Shawn opened the door for her at the press gate of the ballpark, she paused, took one full-body look at him, and said, “Care to join me?” Well, their relationship bloomed, and so did Shawn’s new career. It was Darcy who bought out Aaron Segal and became Shawn’s manager, signing him to Rhinestone Records. Then she went to work on making him a star.
It didn’t take long. She groomed him, dressed him, fucked him, and got him voice and guitar lessons. She changed his name to Tex Sex. Then she made a country video that combined the highlights of Roman orgies with a Las Vegas rodeo championship, and it brought out the Christian coalition in droves across America to protest the sexually charged video at record stores and the offices of Rhinestone in Nashville.
It was like throwing gasoline on a fire. The first Tex Sex album sold 4 million copies. They were off to the races, and Darcy Trumbo was driving the lead car.
In less than a year, Tex Sex was it in the country field. He skipped along atop a kaleidoscopic existence filled with beautiful women, fast cars, jet planes, and Hollywood mansions, and just when everything was going gangbusters, Shawn Spurl, aka Tex Sex, made that amazing but often repeated mistake that so many shallow performers do. He went looking for depth in his life and his career. Frustrated to discover that there was none, he called a news conference in Nashville and announced his retirement. Darcy was in London, setting up his first European tour, when Tex Sex got on his private jet and told the pilot to head south to Machu Picchu. He had seen a program on a National Geographic TV special about the lost city of the Incas, and he was heading there to find the answers to his questions.
The plane had a pressurization problem over the Gulf of Mexico, and the pilot made an emergency landing in Cancún. While the plane waited for parts, Tex Sex went to the bar. There he was recognized by a Jet Ski dealer from Houston who told him that they had lost cities in Mexico as well, and pointed to Tulum on the tourist guide map. Tex Sex bought a case of Dos Equis, rented a Jeep, and headed south on Mexico Route 403, following the signs to Tulum. He was trying to read a road map when he went right past the turn to Tulum. Lost on the Yucatán Peninsula, he drove until he ran out of beer and gas about a half mile from the Punta Margarita ferry dock, where he was directed to the only pay phone in the area. He accidentally stumbled onto the ferryboat and landed at the Fat Iguana a short while later.
Tex Sex never made it to the pay phone, but he did find a bar stool at the Fat Iguana. There, after ordering a variety of local rum drinks, he fell over backward off the bar stool, carving an eight-inch gash in the shape of a half-moon around his left ear. Shawn Spurl, aka Tex Sex, proclaimed his immediate infatuation with Machu Picchu and his revelation that he was a reincarnated child of the sun.
“You are a drunk