Indonesia: Getting Wasted

Instructions for the use of this short story: This story can be read alone but is better if read as a part of a series. 1. Read Indonesia: Getting Answers, Indonesia: Getting Closer and Indonesia: Getting Through It. 2. Play the Music. 3. Read the latest installment. 4. Tell an unsuspecting friend to come visit. 5. Come back soon for more.

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     The other side of the mountain was shrouded in clouds that hugged the earth as close as they could, mist kissing ground. On the other side of the cave, I found myself somewhere else; somewhere otherworldly. Kickstand opening automatically, the bike parked itself below the last lip of rock because it could not follow me here. Our journeys were no longer intertwined.

     I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I seated myself on the temple steps. Mysterious forces had pulled me along at an unreasonable pace all morning and now that my adventure was on a break, exhaustion smothered every muscle. I wobbled over to the old man, who waited with infinite patience.

 

     He smiled and indicated that I sit beside him and drink. Steam poured out of the cup he placed before me but it was unable to add heat or humidity to the already torpid atmosphere.

 

     It was too hot out here. My skin had been leaking a constant stream of sweat since I’d  arrived in this country and I glistened, almost salamander-like. Nothing was ever dry here. Between the water that poured out of me and that which had been deposited by the breath of the jungle I was swimming my way through Indonesia.

     I gazed into the tea cup but my will did not make it lemonade. It’s hard to imagine enjoying a steamy cup of tea in such a climate. It seems that tea is better enjoyed in cool, foggy regions where the chill from the air creeps all the way into the center of your bones. Nevertheless, I lifted my tea cup (so hot it left a red ring between my hands) and drank.

     Though the temperature of the beverage was surprisingly agreeable, the medicinal flavor nearly forced me to spit it all over my host. Out! shouted my brain and tongue in unison, but I kept my teeth firmly clenched around the offensively bitter drink and forced it down. There was something chemical about the flavor; something dangerous.

     I sipped while the old man and I did not speak to one another. In the West, we were having what would have been called a long and very awkward silence, but here I was learning to let the quiet happen. The spaces between words are not danger zones where accidents happen. There was no need to rush words out; they would come when they were necessary and important.

     While I sat sipping quietly on my horrid drink I tried to guess what might be in it. Lemongrass? Citronelle? Tree bark? Dirt?

     Once, a boyfriend brought home a white paper bag filled with tea he’d received from the acupuncturist. It was medicinal, he’d told me and so I dumped the contents out on the counter to see what it was made of. There were chunks of mushrooms, sticks, spongy flowers, small stones and curly bits of bark that had been stripped off tropical trees. I also found inch long pieces of something familiar that I couldn’t identify. The pieces were round, like a long, thin cylinder, and were covered with circular ridges that were spaced equally apart. I slid these pieces out of the pile of forest tea and put together the puzzle. When it was complete, I could see that these sections had once been an earthworm.

     On the temple steps, I tried to forget this story as I gagged, but you try not thinking about earthworm tea while you’re drinking tea that tastes like dirt. I forced myself to swallow.

     When I finished my cup, the old man did not pour me another. It was the first time I’d ever seen a cup run dry in this part of the world.

     “You are looking for something; that’s why you have come to me.”

     I wished that he knew because of some mystical force. I wanted him to have heard of my arrival from the gods; I wanted him to have had a vision of me riding up to his temple while he was lost in meditation. Nowadays, I knew, even mystics carried cell phones. The concierge at my hotel was likely the one who had notified him that I was coming, not, alas, a messenger from the spirit world.

     “I am looking for something.”

     “A pterodactyl.”

     Definitely the concierge.

     It sounded so ridiculous now that he said it. I laughed but nodded, “Yes.”

     “When you are ready, continue down the path.”

     He disappeared back into the temple, leaving me alone on the steps. The water from the air pooled into drops that slid down my skin. Watching it, I couldn’t help but feel like I was raining.

     When I finally pulled my attention away from my newfound cloudlike superpowers, the sky had shifted into indigo twilight: bottomless and bright.

     But that wasn’t right. I’d left early in the morning. It couldn’t have been much later than two in the afternoon. My gaze sunk onto the dirt path in front of me, where the colors of evening had also spilled. The ground rolled in purples and deep reds, like the sea when it robs the sunset out of the sky. It moved like the sea, too, in shallow waves that undulated in rhythm with my breath. Or had I adjusted my breathing to match the spacing between the waves of blue soil?

     It occurred to me, for a moment, that I ought to panic, but I’d used up my adrenaline in the cave and though the frightened thoughts were there, the chemicals had run dry. I thought of fear and did not feel it. This was probably a good thing; there was no way to rid myself of what I’d taken. What’s done is done.

     So, I let go. I let the fear slip beneath my conscious thought; I let the expectation evaporate into the clouds. I released my close association with my own body, and allowed the line between me and the world to blur. I let the magic back in; I forgot about cell phones and the loss of mysticism.

     And then I walked further into the jungle.

Read the last installment of the Indonesia series: Indonesia: Getting Back

Photos courtesy of Connie Freeland

Belize: Getting Wasted

Play the video and then read while listening. Enjoy and repeat as needed.



     I wasted the good weather on the jungle and the hot, unfruitful dance floors. Sun showered down on the first sixteen days and then it was a race to see who would hit the water first, me or Hurricane Carla. Board balanced on my head, I ran across the sand but she beat me to it.

     Rough waves wrecked the shoreline for days. Bored, land-locked, I searched for something to do. An overstuffed chair rested comfortably in one corner of my hotel room. Grabbing it by the arm, I dragged it across the tile, out of my room and onto the balcony. I needed to keep an eye on that water out there; check to make sure this surf was unsurfable. Face it, I had nothing to do but stare at the ocean. Well, that and let an octopus brush and braid my bush (wait for it).

     Trusty Mai Tai by my side, I watched and waited and the sea spat rocks at the land. She coughed up all manner of sea creature. She tried to splash the seaweed upon my eyelash. This was the end of the trip. This was my reward for all the hard work I was going to do later based on the notes I took on the backs of coasters.

     I tilted back in the chair, balanced my feet on top of the rail, where they could feel the spray and sipped Mai Tai after Mai Tai. Not too long and I could feel the rise and fall of the sea swell against my memory.

     The waves racked the shore, rolling the boulders against each other, up and back.

     The sign seemed unnecessary, but then, mermaids never listen.

Palau: Getting Wasted

"The Long Wait"

I see myself in this picture; the years I stood with my own nose pressed to the glass.

A bar is like a secret society when you're six. It's forbidden and irresistible.

You can't see much through the tinted glass, only shadows gliding through the mystery. Sometimes, a stray beam of light would catch in a glass and for a moment, just for a moment, the room would light up and I'd see the future. But it was a distant future. For a kid, a week is too long. What is 15 years? May as well be forever.

How long before these iron bars soften and I can squeeze my way through?

This was surely me. You who have read the "Getting Wasted" stories know. You who have lived the "Getting Wasted" stories know better. I am this little boy with his face pressed against the dark glass of the dive bar, back to the ocean, taste of hops a dream on the tongue.

This is the next generation of me.


I kid you not. The boy in this picture, taken almost a year ago now, is my little brother. It's in the genes.

Here's to the future.

Sam's a meanie.

Cameroon: Getting Wasted

Fitchuk comes in two varieties. The first, they call The Drink of the Gods. You can smell it everywhere in Cameroon, like a smooth honey perfume wafting along on the warm air. It’s a mild drink, more alcoholic than beer but softer against the body and mind. Sharing a bottle or a bowl or a gourd full, you get the impression that maybe you might be able to sip this drink eternally, rising to immortality like a Greek tasting ambrosia. And you must always share fitchuk: the more, the merrier, no matter how short the supply. This is the drink that binds us; this is who we are. Long day on the tobacco plantation and you need a pick-me-up? Here, drink this fitchuk with me, my friend. High blood pressure? Fitchuk will fix that for you. Low sperm count? Put some power in your pump with another cup of fitchuk.

The second variety seems to be battery acid and is invariably served in a plastic bucket by a sideways man with crazy eyes. It’s unacceptable to refuse a drink, though paradoxically, it’s never okay for a woman to appear drunk. The red-eyed demon offers you the ladle and you take it from him. The drink will go down like poison, burning off the lining of your esophagus, searing through flesh and bone and skin until you’re standing on your head debating best practices for growing cacao trees with the moon. And the moon is winning.

That’s why I stayed far away from the bucket man and his danger drink. He lingered on the shadow edge of the market, always in view but lacking substance; a bad omen. I would keep my hands busy with bottles of warm lager and I would keep my eyes away. As painful as not observing was, the morning after, upchucking fitchuk, would have been far worse. 

Ando and I had walked to a nearby village in search of a satellite dish and a few cool drinks. Well into his second year of service, Ando was a local by now and I walked safely next to him. 

Tonight, tensions were high. Cameroon was playing Denmark and everyone within ten kilometers had gathered to witness. Tickets cost fifty cents, a steep price out here, and those that didn’t have the money pressed against the thatched walls to peek in through the cracks. Ando stepped over to a booth left of the bar to pay our entry fee and procure us a few beers.

I didn’t even see him coming, this terrifyingly drunk man who charged over at me and closed my tiny wrist in one of his massive, palm tree-crushing hands. He roared at me in French with a terrible urgency.

“I don’t speak French,” I lied. I do speak French but I’ve learned that I can’t understand their accent and they can’t understand mine. I pulled at my hand, hoping to slip away but he had me like a vice. Ando was gone.

The enormous man squeezed my arm, shook his head and repeated himself louder and faster than before.

“I’m sorry. I don’t speak French. I’m an American. Je ne parles pas le francais.” I used my thickest accent: nasaling the sweet French vowels into ugly American ones and pronouncing the final consonants as if I didn’t know any better.

But he dismissed my protestation as irrelevant and shouted at me again.

I shook my head and tried my best to shrug innocently.

Once more he bellowed, this time in English. “You know what the problem with the French is?” he spat at me, “It’s that they think they can come over here and take our land and our women and our drink and give us nothing. Nothing!”

He was angry, not at me, but I was standing closest, so I’d do.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “That’s not fair. They shouldn’t do that.”

“You’re French,” he informed me, coughing up the word like a lung worm.

“No, I’m American.”

“You come here with a cat and you call it a rabbit.”

Were we insult sword fighting he would have gotten me there. I had no retort.

He pulled me closer, examining me suspiciously through squinting eyes. I could smell the distilled drink on his breath. “You tell them when you go back. Tell them, ‘Go home!’ Tell them, ‘Stay away!’ Tell them from me.” Then he grunted, like a bear when it decides not to chase and maul you after all, and lumbered off.

Without any blood left in it, my hand glowed white in the moonlight.

The woman collecting tickets informed me that my friend had already paid for me and that he had gone inside. I bought a bag of peanuts from her.

In the darkness of the bar, I found Ando in the corner, balancing on a slim wooden plank suspended a good four feet off the ground. This place had stadium seating. 

“Looks like you made a new friend.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Prague: Getting Wasted

I had always believed that swinging on a chandelier was a saying; something only done in metaphor. It's such a bizarre Tarzanian feat that even though the phrasing is as ordinary as any cliché no real person could be that nutsy-gutsy. And then there are the logistical problems: How do you get up there? When do you let go? How do you keep the thin metal chain from snapping in two or the ceiling from collapsing in on you?

Myself, I've swung on my fair share of rope-swings, memorizing the sensation of the parabola's focus; learning to let go at the exact moment that would maximize one's flight time. But I'm also well versed in the hazards. My second day on Kauai I sprained my ankle so bad crashing down into shallow water that I was out of commission for the rest of the trip. Perhaps a chandelier strung up over the deep end of a pool might be swingable, but you can't count on such an unlikely placement for this most elegant of lighting fixtures. Surely "to swing on a chandelier" couldn't be based in reality.

My copy of Young Torless crammed under my arm, I left my hotel that first morning in Prague to seek out a quiet place to enjoy a cup of coffee and a pastry. I was traveling alone this time, unburdened by busy American friends who always seemed to want to visit every museum, every castle, every point of interest mentioned in their guidebooks. I was determined to enjoy the city from its peaceful sidelines, appearing to the untrained eye to be nothing more than a local.

This book required the perfect spot. I'd only pretended to read it in my former life as an English major, and I believed I owed it to my degree to finish the dry, unheard of and somehow influential text. So I scoped out the cafe situation. Nope, that cafe won't do: too busy. That one over there? Too quiet. Too beautiful, too quaint, too charming. I was turning into Goldilocks; a ditzy blonde wandering around someone else's home judging all their stuff as unsuitable. I stopped, frowned at Torless and agreed that the next cafe would be the one.

So I strolled into the Irish pub, ordered a pint of Guinness, and broke out my novel, staring intently down at it from my usual position, tucked into the last barstool against the wall. Behind me, seated on long wooden benches around a table a raucous group of Welsh men had already started to sing an unintelligible drinking song at the top of their lungs. It must have been, like, ten in the morning.

I turned the page after the appropriate amount of time had passed, eavesdropping with all my heart on the six young men behind me. Or, at least, I was trying to eavesdrop because it was impossible to understand a word they were saying. It took about twenty minutes of pretending to read before the band manager sidled up next to me.

Wasted isn't nearly a strong enough term. Eyes crossed, he shouted, inches from my face, "Thas myband. Dyu wanna joinis?"

I was seated between the bassist and one of the roadies before he hit the question mark.

Somewhere between the third round of Jaeger and the fourth of Guinness it happened. The drummer, a man only known by the large North American animal he'd adopted as his name, jumped up onto the table. His long, emaciated frame fit his heavy metal persona perfectly and, shouting something about dead, he launched himself from the table to the chandelier, ten feet above us. All eyes locked onto him despite it being it the fourth quarter of a World Cup match. He swung with the practiced grace of an aerial acrobat, and released his grip on the chandelier to land atop the bar. I couldn't decide whether to hold up an Olympic score card or find some way to distance myself from this unruly group of foreigners. The last thing I needed was to get myself arrested on my first day in Europe.

When he began to dance, I slid under the table and fled to the bathroom.

By the time I'd returned, the band had been ejected. I crawled back to my seat, head spinning with booze, feeling that I needed to sober up a bit before trying to figure out first: where am I, and second: how do I get back to my hotel.

It was midday by then and the bar was packed. The stools and small tables were all taken up, and it wasn't long before new arrivals to the pub slid onto the long benches beside me. I scooted over at one point to accommodate a friendly Italian man that had just wandered in. I tried to say a few words to him, but he shrugged indicating that he didn't speak English.

The Italian ordered a beer and opened his coat, revealing a crumpled brown paper bag. Waiting for his drink, he unwrapped the package and held it out to me to sample first. Inside was a large container of semi-dried long-stemmed mushrooms. I knew the variety well, and immediately shot up one hand, shaking my head, no. That was a recipe for disaster.

He shrugged and dug in. I got up to get a refill on my water, losing the illusion that my head had begun to clear the moment I stood up.

By the time I returned, the Italian had finished his snack. I snuck a glance over in his direction. He had eaten every bit of a 12oz container of psychedelic fungi. I turned my attention to the new soccer match on the TV and waited for the copious amount of water I was downing to thin out the alcohol in my blood.

More bar patrons arrived. We squeezed closer together. Out of nowhere, the Italian turned to face me; he didn't have far to turn.

"Mia fotographica!"

His eyes flashed. His breath wrapped around my head like a smothering scarf. I fell back against a French couple but his fingers had clasped tight around the edges of my shirt and he pulled me back against his face.

"Mia macchina fotographica."

"I don't speak Italian."

"Mia fotographica! Mia fotographica!"

He kept pulling me closer, though there was no closer to be. My fingernails dug into the wooden bench, scraping holes in the wood in my effort to pull away.

"Dove è elasticità."

His grip was like iron. I wasn't going anywhere but closer to his wild eyes and white flashing teeth.

"No," I began to plead, "No I don't have your camera. No photo-camera."

He had me by the hair, pulling me out of the booth, out of the bar, out of the safety of the crowd, who should have been coming to my rescue by then. Come on French couple, are you really going to let this drugged-out lunatic kill me right in front of you.

"Mia fotographica! Essa a me!" He let out a low growl, like a grizzly bear, and lifted me the rest of the way off my seat, throwing me towards the door.

It was his friends who came to my rescue. Two of them accosted him from behind, gasping each of his arms in two of theirs, holding him fast but leaving him snarling all too close to me, an attack dog on a leash.

"He says you have his camera."

"Mia fotographica."

"I don't have his camera."

"Mia fotographica."

"He says you do."

"He's on mushrooms."

"Mushrooms?"

"Fotographica."

"Yeah, he ate like a whole box of them."

The Italian man who had been talking to me turned now to his deranged friend and said something to him in their language. He turned to me again. "I think he left it in the hotel."

"Can you tell him that?"

"He does not believe me. He says you stole it."

"But you believe me?"

He shrugged.

I looked up at the chandelier, wondering if I could use it to swing to safety.

"I don't have his camera," I whispered.

He shrugged again.

Nobody moved, so I took a tentative step backwards, toward the door. Another.

In a moment I found myself out in the crisp air of freedom and I didn't look back.