by Jenny Mollen
“Remember, this is the opportunity of a lifetime?” I said optimistically. I needed to get Denny back on my bandwagon before I lost my balance and fell onto his. “Look, we are here. We have to make the best of this.”
The camera crew retrieved our luggage while Denny, Chelsea, and I were escorted through customs and put on another plane. After a short two-hour flight, we arrived in Iquitos, the city known as the gateway to the Amazon. We checked into a modest hotel with barred windows on the far side of town and tried to FaceTime our loved ones while we could, before disappearing into the jungle the next day.
Once the center of the great Amazon rubber boom, the former banana republic, battered and bruised from years of colonialism, was undergoing a face-lift with the growing popularity of drug tourism. The largest city in the world not accessible by road (the only way in or out is by plane or boat), Iquitos was an eclectic hodgepodge of cultures, isolated from the rest of the world. Crumbling colonial mansions shared the sunlight with pastel concrete warehouses and floating barges with palm-thatched roofs. Latin-influenced foods and flavors commingled with the wild, unfamiliar tang of the jungle.
The next morning, Chelsea walked downstairs wearing the same silk shift dress she’d been wearing the last time we’d vacationed together. She’d bought the dress in Spain the previous summer and hadn’t worn much of anything else since. I’d seen her in a winter coat in New York, but I’m not convinced she wasn’t hiding the dress under a sweater. It came off while we were in Tahiti, of course, but only after she was told she wasn’t allowed to scuba dive in it. Here, a year later, the dress was back in full force.
We cut across town on colorful moto-cars down to the Mercado de Belén, a huge outdoor market that offered the predictable hearts of palm, coco leaves, cow innards, and skewered piranhas. There were fruits I’d never seen at Whole Foods and an extensive array of indefinable jungle products said to cure anything from erectile dysfunction to breast cancer. Lower Belén, where most of the vendors lived, was an expansive shantytown floating on the Río Itaya, a tributary of the vast Amazon. Children sold clothing out of storage shacks along the river basin. Everything was embroidered with a serpent, a symbol of life, rebirth, and wisdom.
Everywhere you turned, there was something about ayahuasca. Throughout the ramshackle stalls it was touted not as a drug but as medicine. I was surprised by the kinds of tourists I kept seeing. They were yoga instructors, doctors, mothers and daughters on college graduation trips, many of them there for their second or third time. One woman I spoke with told me that she’d bought a package online that included a day trip to Machu Picchu followed by a three-day ayahuasca ceremony. Nobody seemed scared, only eager for what new insights they might discover about themselves. Though I couldn’t help but wonder if the pursuit of self-understanding was any less narcissistic than the pursuit of Netflix stardom, it did calm my nerves knowing that ayahuasca drew such a varied crowd.
The air was muggy and the sky looked hazy and foreboding as we piled into a long wooden riverboat and prepared for a two-hour ride down the Madre de Dios. It took several tries for our single-engine vessel to cooperate, gargling in a mouthful of muddy water, then choking it back up. But finally, after some prodding and pounding, we were on our way. I looked down at my phone with zero service, good for nothing other than scrutinizing the smile lines in my pictures from hours earlier. Chelsea sat on Molly’s lap until she was certain no snakes had managed to slither aboard. Denny tried to open a bag of Qancha, a type of large-kernel corn that is toasted with oil in a hot skillet, but he was already too dehydrated and weak. The arduous demands of travel were no match for his fragile hipster body. I was eye level with the water when I noticed a fleshy pink hump breaching in the distance.
“What the fuck, I think I just saw a school of swimming labias,” Chelsea screamed.
Our translator Frieda laughed. “Those are pink dolphins.” They didn’t look like any dolphins I’d ever seen. They looked like lethargic albino sea snakes with prehistoric beaks. Our guide spoke a few words to Frieda, who informed us that we could swim with the dolphins if we so desired. While getting my vaccinations for the trip, I remembered my doctor saying that men shouldn’t swim in the Amazon because there was a kind of parasite in the river that liked to swim up urethras. That was enough to convince me that animals in the wild need to, as much as possible, be left the fuck alone.
When we arrived at our eco-lodge, Frieda and Molly and the rest of the crew heaved cases of camera equipment up several sets of steep wooden stairs. Chelsea and I clung to each other as we hiked up behind them.
“Gorgeous view,” she deadpanned, looking out at the stagnant brown water that surrounded us. In my mind I guess I’d always pictured the Amazon to be more glamorous, more Tarzany. I thought it would at least look like the Rainforest Cafe at South Coast Plaza. Where were the adorable lemurs? The howler monkeys? The safari fries?
Frieda led Denny, Chelsea, and me to an open-air hut on stilts looking out over the water.
“The three of you will be in here.” She smiled, gesturing toward three twin beds lined up along a thin divider wall, separating our sleeping quarters from a shower stall. Denny looked at me, despondent. Chelsea looked at Denny, trying to decide whether he weighed less than her. I felt like we were the three bears in an Oliver Stone retelling of Goldilocks. Frieda, like everybody I’d met in Peru, was under five feet tall, with dark curly hair and large brown eyes. She seemed like the type of girl you instantly connect with when you first check into rehab but then quickly realize is the exact type of person who is going to peer-pressure you into drinking again. Molly stormed in and doled out three headlamps, informing us that the resort’s generator would be turned off at ten and we’d be without power until nine the next morning. The headlamps had two settings. You could use them either as a bright white lamp or as a flashing red disco light.
“I don’t get it.” I placed the lamp on my head and switched it to the flashing red setting. “So this is to notify people that I’m in distress?”
Molly shrugged.
“Seems a little subtle, no? We don’t think screaming would work better?” I looked over at Chelsea, who’d opened her suitcase and pulled out a digital bathroom scale, the glass kind that belongs in your home and the kind that would definitely get confiscated from your luggage by airport security, not because it was dangerous but just because it was fucking perplexing. “Umm…Why do you have a scale with you? Did you pack that?” I asked.
“Denny, get on the scale! I need to see if you weigh more than me,” Chelsea demanded. Denny trudged across the room like Eeyore and obligingly mounted the scale. “Oh my God! Denny only weighs two pounds more than me!” Chelsea shrieked. “Denny? Be honest, are you eating, or are you too depressed because you left your pregnant wife?”
“I am depressed. But I am eating. There’s just not much I can fucking eat. I’ve been on this ayahuasca-prep diet for a month and I’m withering away. I’m ready to just drink the tea and have a fucking beer.”
“Wait, Molly, we’re not supposed to be drinking beer prior to doing this?” Chelsea said. “I thought just no hard alcohol.” She looked at Molly, then over at me. Molly had sent us a list of things to avoid before our ceremony, which included all alcohol, salt, pork, fried foods, hot spices, peppers, onions, red meat, cured fish, and overly ripened fruit. We were also instructed not to have any kind of sexual stimulation for at least two weeks leading up to the event.
“I think the only part I stuck to was the celibacy portion,” I added helpfully.
After meeting up with the rest of our crew for an excruciating dinner, where Chelsea, Denny, and I were allowed only chicken broth and yucca, the three of us headed back to our room to try to sleep. Our meager beds were covered in small gnats that had died there earlier in the day. Once the air conditioner shut off with the generator, we were left in total darkness, sweating and mocking the entire situation. We tossed and turned and laughed deliriously at things I knew woul
d never be as funny again. I felt like I was at summer camp.
Trying to get comfortable, Chelsea removed articles of clothing until she was wearing nothing but a bra and her headlamp. (“I need it to pee!” she explained.) After discussing our favorite authors, which of Chelsea’s friends Denny and I hated, and who on the crew we would fuck if stranded on a desert island, we eventually fell asleep.
Around 4 a.m., the sound of insects and nocturnal creatures partying outside our open-air windows was so loud it woke me. I sat up instinctively, thinking I’d set the volume too high on Sid’s sound machine. Looking around the room, I saw Chelsea fast asleep, her headlamp having somehow made its way down to her ankle and flashing our room red like it was the whorehouse from Beetlejuice. I laughed to myself, then reached over and shut it off. As I was lying on my back giggling, waiting to lose consciousness, I reflected on the last year and a half. There was no denying that I’d been running—from the responsibility of parenthood, from the pain of being in love. Alone now, I saw the way I’d been completely at Sid’s mercy. Emotions I thought I knew had evolved into feelings so electric and explosive that they tore my chest wide open.
For the first time, I entertained the possibility that maybe tomorrow’s ceremony would bring me a sense of peace that I’d unconsciously been seeking.
Denny and Chelsea spent the next day floating in the pool and trying not to eat. It was almost dusk when they finally broke down and shared a plate of jungle noodles, hearts of palm drizzled with olive oil and lemon.
“I told you guys you should have eaten something. I’ve been eating all day.” I offered Denny a half-eaten bag of almonds.
“Don’t do it, Denny! Everything we eat is going to get vomited back up,” Chelsea said, looking at Frieda for confirmation.
“But I’m so weak!” Denny caved and took three nuts.
“Just one hour more,” Frieda said empathetically.
After sunset, we changed into comfortable, easy-to-remove clothes and headed up a vividly green hill toward a large wooden yurt high above the lodge. My heart started racing the way it did when I knew I was about to do any kind of drug. Part of me wanted to run away. The other part of me wanted to charge faster up the hill.
“I’m freaking out. I think I’m gonna have diarrhea before this even starts.” I tucked myself under Chelsea’s arms and tried to slow my breathing. Molly held a lantern out in front of us as the camera crew filmed our ascent.
When we entered the yurt, the rest of the crew was waiting. A small video village hid in the shadows as Frieda walked me toward the light. The center of the yurt was round and stark, save for three mattresses, three large buckets, and a tiny Peruvian man smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. His resting bitch face seemed to contain a sliver of sadness. He sized us up and down and started singing. The cameras were trained on our faces as we tried to keep calm and not burst out laughing. The shaman first handed each of us a cigarette, then, once we were finished smoking, pulled out a water bottle that looked like it had been scavenged from under the seat of my car. The repurposed Arrowhead bottle was filled with a murky brown liquid that the shaman had cooked earlier that day. First, he walked toward Denny and poured a shot glass worth of liquid into a cup. Denny, clearly the honor roll student in school, respectfully accepted his cup and drank it. Next, the shaman approached me with a similarly filled cup. Looking down at the turbid water, I panicked.
“Um, I feel like this is a lot for me. I’m sort of a lightweight. I don’t really drink much,” I said to Frieda, who was sitting off to the side. Frieda translated what I’d said to the shaman, who grunted something back. I could already tell he hated me.
“He says that he isn’t giving you a lot,” Frieda explained.
“This looks like more than you gave Denny,” I said.
“It may not look like it, but we weigh less than Denny,” Chelsea interjected. Growing impatient, the shaman told Frieda that I could drink as much as I felt like having. I took one last lucid look around the room before tilting my head back and gulping it (or most of it) down. When it came time for Chelsea to drink, she didn’t hesitate for a moment, just slammed the shot like she was at a beach bar in Tulum.
After we’d drunk, the shaman, also under the influence of the drug, continued singing and spitting into the surrounding darkness. None of us felt anything for the first ten minutes. Chelsea and I giggled and whispered while Denny lay on his back and tried to focus. By the fifteen-minute mark, it was clear we’d lost Denny. I looked over at his clammy white body as he fought to keep from throwing up. “Are you feeling anything?” I asked.
“Umm…yeah,” he confirmed.
“Is it good? What does it feel like?” His body language already told me everything I needed to know.
“I wouldn’t mind for it to be over,” he said, then leaned over his bucket and heaved.
“Of course this happens to me. I knew I wasn’t going to feel anything,” Chelsea complained to the camera. “Jenny? Do you feel it?”
“Maybe? I don’t know,” I said, like a girl who doesn’t know if she’d ever had an orgasm.
Minutes later, I knew exactly what I was feeling. The room started to buzz as I dizzily stood and stumbled to the bathroom. Frieda followed, steering me toward a row of toilet stalls, each with nothing more than a curtain separating it from the rest of the room. The second I sat down, liquid exploded out of me, of the kind that sounds more like you’re peeing than shitting. Just when I thought it was over, it would start again. It was joined by vomiting. For the next ten minutes I did nothing more than sit on the toilet, shitting and puking at the same time.
“SHWAAAASHHHWAA SHWASHWA,” the shaman exclaimed, walking toward me and spitting at what Frieda told me were evil demons trying to attach themselves to my body, or, more specifically, to my butt. Freida took out a large glass bottle of something called Agua de Florida, a cheap cologne-like water that smelled of camphor, gin, and poverty. She doused me with the tonic like a salesgirl at Dillard’s, assuring me that it would help quell my sickness. The shaman then cut in front of Frieda and started beating me over the head with a wand of leaves, shouting and SHWAAAASHHHWAASHWAAA-ing into my hair.
Once he’d stopped, I heard nothing but a zapping sound coming from above. I tried to look up, but I was too nauseated. Then, suddenly, a giant beetle with what looked like a feather Mohawk fell into my lap and onto the floor. Hanging my head over a bucket, I caught a glimpse of the creature again in my peripheral vision. He had at least eight legs and seemed to be waving at me with all of them.
“Okay, I’m officially fucked up,” I whispered to Frieda, who sat beside me, holding my hand and offering wet wipes.
Once there was nothing in me left to purge, I weakly walked back to my mattress.
“You okay?” Chelsea asked, still annoyingly sober.
“I’m so fucked, you guys.” I looked over at Denny, who seemed to be in the middle of the worst nightmare of his life.
“I don’t think Denny’s having the best time. He may have been the wrong choice for this trip,” Chelsea said, half empathetic, half trying to contain her giggles. She moved over to my mattress and spooned me lovingly.
My mind drifted into space.
First there was just blackness. Then a symbol spun toward me. I realized it was the Four Seasons’ symbol. “Whatever you do, never tell anyone you hallucinated the Four Seasons’ symbol,” I cautioned myself quietly. Next I saw the more classic “unicorn” vision, followed by a series of moving pictures. I was transported back to my father’s home at Gainey Ranch, where I’d spent so many days playing in the pool with my sister; our half brother, Brad; and various nannies. I stayed in the vision long enough to make sure none of the nannies molested us, then moved on to the next location. I was scrolling through my life like it was an iTunes music library. With each vision I’d have an accompanying epiphany, things that sound trite to repeat but carried such monumental weight at the time, like “Nothing matters besides the people you love,” �
��Your husband is an incredible man,” and “One day I’m gonna cut my hair into a super-chic silver bob.”
Cradled in Chelsea’s arms, my mind drifted to Sid. I pictured us doing a synchronized ice-dancing routine in which I spun his meaty little body over my shoulders like the tiniest Ukrainian figure skater of all time. We skated hand in hand, doing double axels and flying sit-spins as the Olympic arena leaped to its feet with sobbing applause. Then it was just the two of us—Sid and me. Holding my leg with both hands, he looked at me and, without saying anything, said everything. My chest heaved and I broke into hysterics. Molly came running out to make sure I was okay, as Chelsea rocked me back and forth, trying to help me calm down.
“SHWAAASSHHHWWAAASHWA,” the shaman continued.
“Don’t be sad, Jenny. Nothing bad is happening,” Chelsea and Molly insisted.
The thing was, I wasn’t sad. I was overcome. Sid continued to hold my gaze, communicating the simplest message, and yet the thing I most needed to hear.
“He loves me,” I wept, like I was a contestant who’d just been proposed to on The Bachelor. “He already loves me. Because I’m his mom and I’ll always be his mom.”
It seemed so obvious that I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me sooner. While I was busy trying to curate my image, to scale mountains, slay dragons, and generally do anything to combat my feelings of unworthiness—Sid already saw me as a hero. I was afraid of pain—of feeling it or causing it. But Sid was my pain, because he was my heart, torn from my body, running loose in the world. I’d thought that if I looked hard enough, I’d find a conclusion that would make the fear subside. I desperately wanted to reach a point where I could say, “I was afraid and now I’m not.” But what I was slowly coming to understand, what I think all mothers eventually have to accept, was that I’d always be afraid. Because, though I’d spent the majority of my life resisting it, I was now truly open.
