It probably wasn’t the best idea to practice my Spanish on a Border Patrol officer, but it was the middle of the night and I was giddy from performing, so I wasn’t thinking clearly.
I was dancing on tour with The Go-Go’s and Berlin in 1999 with two dear friends and fellow GoGo-dancers, Pleasant and Kina. It was 2 am, and we were road tripping back to LA from our show at the San Diego Bowl. We were discussing possible names for our GoGo-dancing group, and we decided we should call ourselves, “Girls Marked Danger” after a Sophia Loren movie, although there was nothing dangerous about our job, unless you call sneaking out onstage like ninjas and climbing onto GoGo boxes to dance, dangerous. We would climb onto the giant boxes built for us, wearing our sequin hot pants and GoGo boots, and dance our cheeky choreographies until the curtain dropped. It was late, and I was giddy from performing for thousands of people at the San Diego Bowl on a hot summer night. Every car leaving San Diego is required to stop at the Border Patrol. I must have been a little punchy, because I rolled down my window, and cheerfully said the three sentences I know really well in Spanish: “Hola! Como Estas? Hablo espanol un poquito.”
The Patrolman wasn’t amused. He pointed to my car and the curb, ordering us to pull over. I said, “I’m just kidding. I don’t even speak spanish. Although I wish I did.” Then I proceeded to say the other few sentences I know in spanish: Mi madre is mexicana. Mi abuela es de La Paz.” OH MY GODDESS!! MARCI! STOP! When I’m nervous I tend to run my mouth.
He pointed again and added an even more gruff, “Pull over.”
“Cello! What are you doing? Why are you speaking Spanish?” Pleasant asked, zipping up her jeans. She had eaten too much in our dressing room and was riding with her pants unzipped. Also, she called me Cello because I had recently started taking cello lessons. Up till then she had called me Marchella, but that was now shortened to Cello.I answered in a frantic whisper, “I was practicing my Spanish! I didn’t know they’d pull me over for it.”
Kina was also perturbed. I was unaware that someone had given her two joints, which she had stuffed into her pocket, so when the officers made us get out of the car and sit on the curb, she acted very nervous. She kept saying, “I have to use the restroom,” so she could get rid of the contraband, but I kept saying, “Don’t use those port-a-potties!! They are gross! I’ll take you to a clean bathroom.”
When the officers brought out their German Shepherds to sniff around my car, pushing aside my cello to do a thorough search, we all held our breath. Belinda, the Go-Go’s lead singer, had put a big bottle of tequila in the back of my car as a gift, and it had spilled.
“Why does it smell like alcohol?” one officer asked brusquely. “Hairspray!” I said, thinking quickly. I had heard somewhere that tequila and hairspray smell similar, or maybe it was vodka and hairspray. I don’t know? The guards didn’t find anything in my car. Before we climbed back in the car, we asked the officer if we could take a photo for our collection of cop photos. Cops frequented our parties often to tell us to quiet down. We usually ended up taking photos on their cars and sometimes they even turned the flashing lights on for us. It was a perfect collection for a group called Girls Marked Danger, although I think a more appropriate name would be Girls Marked Monkey Business.
