"How'd it go, man?" he asked.
"Great. Oh, Kadir, this is so much fun. I love this life. But, listen, I want to do my own trip. Will you help me?" I knew Kadir wouldn't mind losing me as an employee. I was now one of the Goa kindred, and India abounded in impoverished travellers awaiting financial inspiration.
"Of course, man. You already know where the shop is."
"I don't know where to get the hash, though. Or how much to pay . . . "
"Dayid and I are planning another trip soon. I can have extra cases made for you. How's that? I will sell you a full set."
"Wonderful. How much?"
"For you, man, because you're my special friend, you can have them for two thousand."
"Great. Great. Here, I can give you the money now."
"No, wait, man. Pay me when they're ready."
"Oh, Kadir. Everything's so wonderful. Do you think I should get a new passport?"
"If you want, man. But you have plenty of time to prepare. Why don't you go back to Goa? I'll be coming down myself as soon as Dayid returns."
Perfect! Now I was a real Goa Freak home-based in Anjuna Beach.
Several methods of transportation existed for travelling to Goa. It was rare to find a Freak bus like Tom and Julian's. The public buses, I'd heard, were torturous. I wasn't yet comfortable with having money to spend, so I decided against flying. Another way—the one I took—was by boat. A thirty-hour trip.
Standing in a crowded hall at the dock, I was approached by numerous barefoot coolies in rags. Before I could pick one, one picked me and shooed the others with gestures, growls, and a proprietary grasp on my bag. He pointed to a swatch of cloth pinned to his tattered jacket. Number II. He looked at my ticket and asked, "Blanket? Blanket?"
Was I supposed to give him a blanket? I shook my head and shrugged.
"Blanket," he repeated. "No blanket?"
"Sleeping bag?" I tried and pointed to the roll I'd collected from storage at the Rex.
He looked at it a moment, then nodded.
I had no idea what was going on. All of a sudden, the crowd moved. Number II vanished, and with him went my worldly belongings. Oh, no. I had a flash of panic, imagining everything I owned had just been stolen. I moved with the masses—I had no choice. Out a gate, I had my first glimpse of the boat over the turbaned head of a Sikh. The crowd herded me up a wooden plank. On deck, the fury grew as women in saris pushed past me, dragging two handfuls of children. A fat Indian in a white suit stepped on my foot, and I flattened against a rail as a pack of people rushed by. Why was everyone running? I looked around the deck. No chairs! Family groups sat together on the floor on pieces of cloth. Spread out here and there were cloths with nobody on them. Over one of the unoccupied cloths stood a coolie. Aha! That's why Number II had a blanket—to reserve me a spot. As I looked around, someone banged into me with an elbow. I must have looked confused, standing there in the rushing mob, because a man with a beard asked if I needed help. He looked at my ticket and pointed me toward B deck, one flight up. At the end of a slippery, metal stairway, I found Number II standing over my sleeping bag, which he'd unrolled, unzipped, and spread in a prime spot against a wall. My hero! I gave him a generous tip. He deserved it.
The voyage down was curious and boring. I should have brought a book. Lone travellers sprawled on the hard wood, covered their faces with handkerchiefs, and slept. I took a walk to the stern. The roofless rear of the boat contained benches fall of people, baggage, and chickens—lots of chickens roaming and pecking free. I spotted a familiar Goa face. "Richard!"
"Cleo, hi. Going to Anjuna?"
"Yeah, just came back from Canada. I can't wait to hit the beach."
"Canada, huh? I just returned from Thailand."
We exchanged knowing smiles. Now I knew how the Goa Freaks made the money to splurge on so much coke. Now I knew, because I'd been initiated. I was really one of them. More foreigners appeared, and we gathered in a group. Inevitably, the chillum came out.
"BOMBOLAI!" yelled Richard, applying flame to the pipe. "BOM SHANKAR!" yelled someone else. I marvelled at their unconcerned attitude toward smoking hash in public. Anjuna was a Freak beach where the police never went, but this was a public place! Natives sat an arm's length away. I sneaked a look around and noticed no one seemed disturbed. Richard offered the pipe to two Indians across from us. With a nod and a smile, they accepted.
India!
When the chillum came to me, I declined and felt proud of myself for doing so.
The boat docked in Panjim, a major city of Goa, and a few of us shared a taxi to Anjuna Beach. After asking around for a place to stay, I found room in a house on the north end. Unlike the south end, which had relatively few houses, the north end crowded one house next to another. Each had a walled-in plot of overgrown land. A lumpy, rock', dirt road, walled on both sides, divided the area into rectangles.
A week later Michael, an American with dark hair and sparkling blue eyes, threw a party. Michael lived in a large room in the house of a Goan family. Having his own entrance, he'd built a fence of palm fronds around the area, creating a private compound.
"Fatima is something else, man," Kadir told me as we sat outside on the sand.
"Who?"
"Michael's girlfriend. Over there with the platinum hair. She was arrested in Germany, man. She played crazy and got herself transferred to the psycho ward. Then she escaped and hitchhiked all the way back to India. Without a passport, man!"
"I heard she once married a Kuchi chieftain in Afghanistan," Richard added. "James Michener based his novel Caravans on her."
Wow, I thought. I just loved the Goa Freaks. How exhilarating to be part of them.
And what a party! Dayid and Ashley turned up and secretly spiked the punch with LSD. I became suspicious when my limbs grew heavy and the reflections from candles spread out and touched. When coloured light hung from my eyelashes, I knew somebody had spiked something. I hadn't even known Dayid and Ashley were in Goa until they stopped by my spot near a wall of the compound, from which I hadn't been able to move since the acid hit. I barely managed to raise my head in salute.
"You look like you're enjoying yourself," said Ashley. The train of her slinky, black dress trailed three feet behind her. I could only answer with a pleasurable noise. My body wouldn't move and my words wouldn't connect.
"He'll leave you to your apparent jollification," said Dayid, and they moved on, grinning at the evidence of their good deed.
Not till midmorning did I manage to break loose from spacing out on sand specks. Light blazed off the palms in the yard. I zigzagged across the sand into the house. An Oriental carpet filled the room.
"Oh, boy," said a guy I recognized as the Neal who frequently dispensed liquid acid from a straw at parties. An American, he had shoulder length brown hair with long bangs that he shook continually out of his eyes. "You look like you could use some of this." His hand held a glass block with an engraved lion on the underside. CLICK, CLICK, SCRAPE, SQUEAK, SQUEAK went the razor blade on the glass as he divided white powder into lines. He passed me the block and a gold straw. Sniff. The efficient gold instrument shot the powder up my nose like a vacuum cleaner.
"What was that?" I asked when the unfamiliar taste of it drained down my throat.
"You thought it was coke?" he said, shaking his bangs and giggling. "It's smack."
As the heroin seeped into, my bloodstream, my spaced-out body relaxed. Ooo, exactly what I needed. It eased the sharp edges of the acid aftermath. "That's wonderful," I said. I closed my eyes and sank deeper into a cushion. "Just right."