I shift in the sun and, deciding finally that the heat isn’t going to let up, acknowledge it’s time to head back to my bunk. With no small effort, I rise to my feet, gather my bag together, and set off, moving gingerly. Soon Swan appears, looking fetching, her pupils dilated.
“Sam,” Swan breathes. “Hey. You want to share a joint?”
“I’m in pain,” I explain. “Inhaling hurts.”
She just stares at me and goes, “Marijuana is a known laxative,” as if that were a selling point.
For all involved, the first few days were predictably repulsive. It took a moment to gather the courage to lube up that probe with olive oil, and stick it into your own anus to receive the ten-gallon burst of creek water. But since then, since we’ve eased into the process, stopped eating, and let the herbs take effect, the oddest, most unpredictable stuff has begun to come out. Like fascinated amateur scientists, we all utilize colanders during the process, and even more disgustingly, Moon has gifted us each a pair of chopsticks to root through the accumulated detritus. Simon, an English guy in his mid-forties who’s not ashamed to wear a linen sarong like a skirt, swears he’s been finding pieces of white, rubbery, tire-like material in his colander, grooved in the precise S shape of his small intestine. Tomer has been using a digital camera to his advantage, snapping blurry, close-up flash pics of his bundles, bringing them back for the squealing, disgusted, giddy approbation of the group.
There’s none of that viscous rubber substance to me: just miles and miles of bright green, jelly-like material. I can’t figure it out for the life of me, but over the course of a few hushed conversations with
Shashi, a Reiki master and naturopath from London with beautiful glowing eyes who seems more grounded and knowledgeable than most of the rest of us (and yet, in her own way, totally insane, as if she knows with full calm certainty that she can cure disease with the universal-life-energy that flows from her hands), I form a theory that it’s probably bile. “It’s bile, guys,” I tell the group. “From my liver.”
Of course, it’s a wild guess, and even if that green stuff really is bile, it doesn’t explain in the least why I’ve sprouted these hellish boils. They are clustered everywhere: in my armpits, spread across my buttocks, under my nipple, and on the backs of my calves and hamstrings. Each morning I wake up with more. I can no longer sit down easily. It’s challenging, in fact, to get more than an hour or so of continuous sleep. Moon himself is mystified: he’s seen a pustule or so in his time, but never anyone who’s harboring so goddamn many . . . In the evenings, after my colonic and shower, I like to stand naked in front of the small mirror in the bathroom, twisting and bending, trying to assess the extent of my destruction. The bumpled, red surfaces that cross my body’s curves look sick and repulsive, but in that great, can’t-look-away way ... I wonder, when they eventually rise to the surface, what will I be exorcising? What will I be saying good-bye to?
Predictably, I’ve entertained a few thousand times the notion that I am enduring punishment for the indiscretions of the past years. Officially, I don’t believe in that kind of mystic retribution, but with my mind the way it is now, inebriated on fasting, inundated with the pedantic New Age prattle of ten other freaks, I’m tentatively leaving it open to debate. Regardless, dealing with the intense pain is gratifying in its own way. I’m at least dealing with the guilt, fingering it, remembering my batch of regrets, even though my rational brain knows it’s nonsensical to expect to atone for them.
Watching my feet, I walk down the winding path to my humble abode. For the equivalent of $2.50 a day, I’ve got a small little jungle shack all to myself, a modest, dingy little dwelling with a woven grass roof and the type of doors a crazed monk could kick down in a heartbeat if he had a mind to. But it’s a lovely setup, high on a cliff with a small square peekaboo window from which one is free to consider the jutting rocky cliffs and aquamarine waters of the sea, and a wobbly shelf or two from which to perch your clothes and seashells and rocks and traveler perfumes and ripped books and journals and pens and expensive backpacks, already filthy from the travels.
I’ve even got a nice little miniature wooden porch outside my door. This morning, I lay on it for one hour while a tiny Dutch grandmother, the resident spiritual guru and white witch of the island, gave me a chakra-clarifying massage. She didn’t lay hands on me once, just had me breathe through the pain, picture colors. “Inhale cleansing, white light, the color of forgiveness, peace and fire ... Exhale brown, and black, mucus and grief... everything you want to get rid of. . .” Halfway through the session, the deep, constant breathing took effect like a tranquilizer dart, and I was lifted off into a cloud somewhere else, a place temporarily without pain and judgment. When the session concluded, the sweet, smiling grandmother helped me to my feet. She waited peacefully, birds chirping, her eyes closed and her wrinkled, lovely hands folded calmly in her lap, until I rummaged through my things and pulled out a quantity of Thai baht to pay her.
I open the door to my shack and sit back on my bed carefully, trying to plot out a position for reclining where my body won’t scream out in pain. Horribly, I seem to have sprouted a boil next to my spine. The ones that rest near bony protuberances are absolutely the worst, since bones, being more or less stable, can’t move, and therefore there’s a kind of light pressure at every instant.
I ease myself down, wincing, and somehow find an acceptable position. I lie there for a moment, relieved. Then I curse myself; I’ve fucking forgotten to get my book. I can see it from across the room, sitting there innocently. I just lie there, for minutes on end, looking at the book. If only I had some kind of telekinetic powers... if only I could make it come to me by the force of Reiki...
I sigh, then heave myself forward to a sitting position. Shaking my head, I decide to get the hell out of here. I couldn’t read now, anyway; I don’t have the concentration for it. Nor can I sleep. I’ve got four hours to kill until my evening colonic; it seems an interminable, boundless stretch of time. Then I remember: there’s an afternoon yoga class at the wellness center that could occupy a couple of hours. Though I won’t be able to do most of the postures, maybe I could participate in the breathing . . . maybe, I reason, if I could get the endorphins flowing, I could start to feel like some kind of human ...
Slowly, I put on a new pair of fisherman’s pants, change my shirt, find a few baht to contribute to the class fee. Closing the door of the shack softly behind me, I begin to wind my way through the hilly, tropical jungle path of the island. The air is humid and alive with the sounds of small insects. Small trees sprout from the mountainous surfaces, making good handholds on some of the steeper inclines and more precipitous declines. The path evolves from dirt into rocky, slick stone surfaces, where it behooves the traveler not to step falsely: one misstep could land him hundreds of feet down below, with a broken ankle, arm, or worse ...
I am sweating through my thin cotton shirt by the time I arrive at the center’s curious outdoor yoga platform, netted against the buzz of tropical insects. There is a small spigot before the entrance. Turning on the water, I place my hands under the coursing stream, and I scrub them back and forth until the dirt dissolves from across my knuckles and the sand escapes from under my nails. A handful of water gets splashed across my face. Liquid courses off my eyebrows and nose, runs onto the collar of my shirt. I grin, wet-faced, feeling better, more refreshed.
I step into the shala and grab a mat, staking out a spot in the middle of the floor. Going into a gentle warm-up, I bend forward, my head lowering toward my knees, my spine lengthening and unwinding under me. My navel draws in, and my hips tilt slightly forward. There’s a loosening in the backs of my thighs, a pleasant stretching accompanied by a minor release in my lower back. This is a good place to hang out, so I just stay right there, and try to breathe.