Riding With A Demon
Trip Start
Mar 02, 2004
1
24
34
Trip End
Apr 02, 2005
Ko Pha Ngan,
Thailand
Friday, January 7, 2005
My drug-addled youth is long over, and it's been years since I've touched the stuff, but I have a soft spot for mushrooms. Most people would shy away from the idea of spending four or five hours barely in control of mind and body. There's just something about the bend that mushrooms give to your psyche. It's like shutting down your normal functions and letting a cheerful little demon take over.
The trick is to listen to it
Beach Dog
. Sometime earlier Jay and I are sitting at Game Bar with Jack and Stephanie, with a couple mugs of mushroom tea ordered from the bar and anticipation on our faces. Jay has his own, brave bastard, while the rest of us share one, Stephanie spooning it out into our mouths like some irresponsible mother bird. We order some drinks and smoke a bit of weed and wait, but I'm not waiting long before I feel my body working on the poison, my hands rubbing my jaw line as things take hold inside my head. Jack's been here before and knows well enough how strong this stuff is. "When I did this I puked my guts out for a while," says Jack, taking a casual sip from his beer. I can tell that the drugs haven't hit him yet, and that I'm well ahead of the curve. It's only been ten or fifteen minutes but I can tell I'm going a long way off tonight.
It's telling me to take a walk, and I listen. Across the street from the bar there's a dark, derelict lot full of weeds and rubble. I scramble over a ditch and onto a rough cinder block ledge, and settled in, inconspicuous in the shadows, I puke out everything in my system. My eyes stream and my nose runs and I'm a big convulsing mess, but when it's over I wipe my face with the back of my hand and feel sober for the last time in the night.
The stars are clear and sharp above me, and the tops of the palms are swaying in a lukewarm breeze. I'm not ready to go back yet, so walk down that dark road a ways as the rush sets in and mild hallucinations lurk in shop windows. For some reason I've left my flip flops at the bar, but the road is pleasantly gritty, and I walk slow and ponderous
Fire Spinner
.Back at the bar Jay and the gang are nursing beers and looking expectant, giving me sidelong glances as if wondering what ride I jumped on to that they missed. Being straight for their sake is not where I'm at. It's getting chilly, and the thought of ambling back to the bungalow for a long-sleeved shirt seems the greatest revelation of my life. Jay asks me to bring back his sunflower seeds, and in a flash I'm on a mission.
The walk back is long, perhaps half a kilometre, and off the road from the bar I plunge into a hushed world of bungalows and palm trees. I see no one and know that's a good thing with the shrooms coming on strong. I know the path well, leading out from Game Bar to the Bamboo and down to the beach, but the last stretch is bordered by thick, bushy leaved fronds of some plant unknown to me. The leaves are the size of serving trays and as they sway in the breeze, turn into a string quartet; into wrestling dwarfs; into an arm showing me the way to the beach. I give the arm a nod and carry on. I'm in it now, I think to myself.
But then I hit the beach. Or rather the beach hits me. The tide is way out, a hundred metres down from the shoreline, and a full arrogant moon shines down and nearly ruptures my cerebral cortex. In a moment I'm a laughing, crying fool dancing on the densely packed sand of the tideland. I tip-toe down to the water and gingerly wade in, feeling my feet sucked down by the wet sand and gently lapping waves. But...
The mission, dammit
Me & Mushrooms @ Game Bar
. Don't stray from the mission. It's like a voice in my head. Was it my voice? Pull it together man! Get the city-walk on and power down the beach. I can hear the wind whistling in my ears as I accelerate, but such bursts are hard to maintain with a head full of hallucinogenic drugs. Out front of Chai Bar there's a novice fire spinner, a white guy trying to master the art of taking long metal rods with fiery ends and spinning them around your body. Pretty racy stuff to watch, even when sober.
I'm a little too close to the guy as he starts up and he nearly clocks me. He apologizes. "It's okay, man", I respond. "Just do your thing, man." Christ, when did I turn into a hippie? But then there's whirling fire and I'm lulled out of any self-consciousness. The bright yellow-orange orbits of light make a humming, droning, delicious, glorious "Rom rom rom rom rom."
Some girl comes down from the bar to take a picture, and her flash brings me back to the mission. On mushrooms the smallest thing can lead to a great moment. But moments by definition are brief, and sooner or later you have to rejoin the swirling, heady thing that is the future
Mushroom Tea @ Game Bar
. Back at the bungalow I turn the lights on and for the first time encounter responsibility. At these times you need to pull yourself together, not an easy task when the peak is yet to come and you're still searching for a place to hang on to.
I find the linen shirt I picked up on Lamai, and it feels cool and warm as I pull it on. Jay's seeds in hand, I have a fresh start...a checkpoint reached in the game...the rules are the same...but the mission has changed... simplified...amplified. It's a calm, collected walk back to Game Bar, down the glowing beach, past the happily morphing shrubbery, and I am wholly unprepared for the scene I walk into back at the bar.
I make my triumphant entrance flushed and ready for the madness that must now ensue. But when Jay takes his seeds I know something's gone horribly wrong. I break for the bathroom. My vibrations now are strong enough for a tall, pasty guy to make way for me on the path to the can, spreading his arms open wide as if to say, "Pardon me, your Highness." Back at the table the mood is constricted, grinding. A third cup of tea sits unfinished--barely started--on the table. Some very bad shit has settled in since I've been away and I want nothing of it.
Maybe it didn't kick for them. Maybe they weren't listening to it. Maybe these things need to be run in odd numbers. Maybe, maybe, maybe. My attempts to get things moving are futile. I'm too far gone, and they can't or won't catch up. I have a fresh bottle of water, ordered with some difficulty from the bar, and without knowing exactly what's coming next, I wish them luck and stroll out of the bar.
Outside, direction-less. There's always the beach. But no, not yet. Explore. Walk up the road toward another rocking bar up from Game Bar. I've never seen the place, jacked up with neon and house music, but it isn't right. I'm not supposed to be there. Along the way I pass a quiet little storefront bar, empty except for an extraordinarily tall German man with a Thai woman beside him. He calls me over, and as we talk the place closes in on me and my mind reels.
What am I doing talking to this poor man? My mouth is full of sand and his face is shifting in the shadows and what would normally be a pleasant chit-chat is going sideways fast. I summon up all the finesse I have at the moment and bid a hasty farewell. This just isn't my trip man, I hear myself say. You have to let me go. "Come back later," he says as I retreat. Christ!
The beach! Now I'm ready. Ah, the beach. Meditative. Soothing. Territorial. Beware the hounds. Each resort has it's dogs, like feral security guards, ruling their stretch of beach with savage efficiency. They're friendly to people, except the occasional couple trying to fornicate on the sand. I settle at the foot of the path, turf of the dogs from the Penguin resort. In the sandy delta of the path, a weathered palm spreads it's roots under a small and inviting patch of grass, and it's not long after I arrive that two mutts march by on patrol.
The older one, a tawny sharp-eyed male, gives me one over while the smaller dog waits for orders. Generally I don't like dogs. But at this moment, sitting here like some drug-addled Buddha, to me the dogs seem distinctly human. The older dog, after securing my fidelity and making his rounds, paws a shallow trough in the sand and settles in for a nap.
The little one, dark and energetic, takes over, sniffing, spraying, and watching the north end of the beach. There's nothing moving up there, so he too settles down in the sand. I wish these two could talk. Later, when some noise breaks the stillness of the night, the big one looks at me as if for reassurance before lapsing back to sleep. It's another moment, and when I stand to go the dogs join, trotting ahead down the beach, back to their little world. And I am a little closer to being back in mine.
At the bungalow I sit on the patio smoking cigarettes, finally capable of some kind of normal thought. Over the opposite bungalow a dog-shaped tree rises, and I'm sure that it would look like a dog to any sober person, but in the morning I forget to check. How many hours has it been, I wonder. How long have I been an altered mess? How much longer?
Each cigarette butt I grind into the floor brings little consolation, and when I finally climb into bed I'm accosted by a nasty tunnel vision, with voices swirling and eddying around me. There's Jay and Tirian and Alan and Stephanie and others I know here, snippets of conversations, laughter, a cacophony of voices leading down a great swirling black hole before my eyes.
Dressed again and outside on the patio, a fresh smoke in my grip, I stare at the dog looming over me and decide I can never write this story. How can I? It's too much to know, let along narrate; my life so far, blessed, charmed, sometimes melancholy but never tragic. The sun always rises, and as it does, I find a place on the downward slope to hold onto, to ride out the last of what's left, and later, to see that no matter what comes my way, by my choice or by chance, as long as I'm alive I'll be all right.
[Nov 2009: I've noticed that this travelogue gets more visitors than any of my others including my recent India blog. Wow! It's amazing that you're reading it, but who are you? I'm very curious to know and would appreciate if you left comments so I know what you think. Thanks again for reading! Dave/darkstar.]
