Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India

by Cleo Odzer

  "Did you get your stash back?" someone asked.

  "I bet he did."

  "Of course he did."

  Jacques smiled, raising and lowering his eyebrows. "Bien sur! When we walked back, I waited till we passed the stairs then felt around in my pockets and said I'd forgotten my cigarettes. I ran back and picked up the punch."

  The Goa Freaks clapped.

  "The man gave me a funny look when I caught up with him but said nothing. Poor guy was so disappointed."

  The Goa Freaks moaned and then laughed.

  "To celebrate, I had champagne on the plane."

  One close-call story brought another and another.

  "That's like what happened to me."

  "Once when I was leaving Orly."

  "Germany's the worst. You know what they did to me?"

  "No, Heathrow's the worst. Did I tell you about the time . . . ?" Weeks went by laced with coke, smack, and stories. At night, we'd go clubbing and spend time in the bathroom snorting and giggling. Everyone was free with their cash and stash. We felt rich, wild, and infinitely superior to everyone else. We were the Goa Freaks from India.

  For my birthday, the gang threw me a party. The gifts were of gold and silver.

  "Where are you going from here?" Monica asked one day.

  "I'm not sure. The monsoon's starting in India, right? So I guess I can't go back there. What's the monsoon like?"

  "Hoo, boy—it pours every day all day. It's impossible to stay in Goa in the summer. It's the time to do business and hang out somewhere hunky dory till the rains stop."

  "How long does it last?"

  "People start going back to India in September."

  "I heard someone mention Bali. Ever been there?" I asked.

  "No, but I've been thinking of going. Why don't we go together."

  "Great! I want to visit Momsy in New York first. I'll meet you later."

  "Okey dokey. Leave me your number and I'll call."

  I prepared for New York. Airports had recently begun frisking people for weapons. Since I didn't want to be caught going into the States with a mass of cash, I decided to take the train. I phoned ahead, so Momsy would expect me, then enjoyed the relaxing train ride, feeling like a business traveller.

  "Baby, is that you?" came her muffled voice as I entered the apartment.

  "Momsy? Where are you?"

  "Over here, in the closet. Do you think you could help me . . ." (She grunted.) "I'm trying to make room for . . . Oh, nuts!"

  I entered her ballroom-sized walk-in and peered through a cluster of hanging clothes. Momsy." She looked so sad standing there with a finger in her mouth amid a pile of hat boxes. "What's the matter?"

  "Fudge, I broke a nail," she answered.

  When Momsy told me Aunt Sathe was in town from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, I hopped with excitement. Usually Aunt Sathe made only day trips to New York to see her migraine doctor, but this time she was staying overnight in a hotel in order to do some shopping. Though Momsy didn't get along with Aunt Sathe, I thought she was nifty. Tall and slim, she advertised electrical equipment on local Wilkes-Barre TV. She was also a bit wild. During my teen years. I'd turned on my cousin Matthew to marijuana, which I liked in those days. He, subsequently, had turned on his mother, and after that, whenever I'd visit, the three of us would retire to the basement for a puff. I could discuss things with Aunt Sathe I wouldn't dare with Momsy. Now, hearing she was in town, I couldn't wait to see her.

  As soon as she opened her hotel room door I grabbed her in a hug. "AUNT SATHE!"

  She responded with her usual heart-warming, "TATALA!"—an old endearment. Aunt Sathe and the Wilkes-Barre branch of the family came from the Orthodox end of Judaism. She kept a kosher house and generously sprinkled her dialogue with Yiddish. Momsy, on the other hand, prided herself on her big-city worldliness and wouldn't be caught dead with a word of Yiddish in her mouth.

  Aunt Sathe and I sat on the bed, and she held my hand as I told her about Goa and India. Then I dumped my cash on the coffee table. It formed a considerable mound.

  Her mouth opened. "Oy vey, tatala. What did you do, rob a bank?"

  I had just completed, in my eyes, a remarkable feat and felt triumphant about my accomplishments. I'd travelled around the world for three years and returned with a load of money. I was a success.

  I told Aunt Sathe the truth.

  At first she was shocked and apprehensive. But the longer she sat before the cash, the more she mellowed. She picked up a rubber-banded packet of fifty hundred-dollar bills.

  "What if you got caught, you shmeggeggy you?" she said.

  "No chance. If you look good, you don't even have to go through Customs. Not in Canada."

  "Oy, sounds like mishears to me."

  By the end of the afternoon, she began to have visions herself. Though Aunt Sathe had not needed to work after her divorce from my uncle, I knew that grand vacations and thousand-dollar dresses were no longer a part of her everyday life.

  "You know, tatala," she said, "I've been thinking for a while now. There are no eligible men in Wilkes-Barre, and believe you me when I tell you I've looked. There's not one worth this much of my little finger. I have to get out, go somewhere. I wonder . . . Maybe . . . Do you think you could include your old aunt in one of those deals?"

  I thought she was kidding.

  "Now? What do you think?" she pressed. "Nothing dangerous, of course."

  Aunt Sathe was serious.

  "Didn't think I had the chutzpah, did you?" She crossed one long leg over the other and looked into another packet of hundreds. Aunt Sathe was really serious.

  I didn't like the proposal at all. How could I involve my aunt in a scam? Could I send her through Customs with a set of cases? I looked closer at the elegant woman caressing her chin with hundred dollar bills. She was poised and chic and classy. No one would ever suspect her. Not in a million years. But she was my aunt!

  At the end of the visit she reminded me, "You won't forget me now, will you, shana maidala?"

  I shook my head but dismissed the idea from my mind.

  Meanwhile, I ran out of dope again. I didn't want to find out how I'd feel without it. I searched the streets of Greenwich Village in the hope of finding something there. As I crossed Bleecker Street I heard someone call my name. It was an older version of someone I'd hung out with as a teenager. And it turned out that Older Version had been on the methadone program for years, though at present he was clean and working in a T-shirt store.

  "Please, please," I begged him. "Score me some smack."

  It took time to persuade him, but eventually he agreed. After I waited impatiently in his store for two hours, he finally brought me a packet, from which he'd taken some as commission.

  Oh, a little snoot felt so good. I loved the feel of it seeping through my body.

  But scoring the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that was an enormous hassle. It entailed begging Older Version to go and then waiting ages after he finally agreed.

  "Baby?" Momsy said one day as I sat, miserable, by the phone in my third hour of waiting for Older Version to call me back.

  "What?" I answered grumpily, not wanting to leave the instrument that was going to ring any second.

  "I need your help."

  I found Momsy in the dining room with her hands on her hips and a frown on her forehead. "I can't five with this upholstery another day," she said. "Look how the sun changed the colour over there. What do you think of a snazzy print to replace it? Creamish, maybe."

  I shrugged. "I'm waiting for this guy to call."

  "Or do you think a print would make the room too busy?"

  I shrugged again. Two hours later. Older Version still hadn't phoned. New York was a real drag. I was ecstatic when Monica called and said she was ready.

  *

  Monica and I agreed to meet in Amsterdam and timed our flights to arrive within an hour of each other. I spotted her halfway across the international waiting room.
Tall, blonde, and Nordic, with a guitar case on her hack, she was hard to miss.

  We ran into each other's arms. After New York, it felt especially great to be back with my Goa friend.

  "I have a hunky dory place for us to stay while we're here." she said. "You know Amsterdam Dean? I have the address of his houseboat."

  I'd first met Amsterdam Dean when he'd been Saddhu George's roommate. We became better acquainted over the season. During the extended stay in Bombay, while Dayid, Ashley, and Kadir had succumbed to Bombay Syndrome—so engrossed in partying that business was delayed—Dean had a birthday party at the Horizon Hotel in Juhu Beach. The ballroom of the five-star hotel had been rented for the occasion and packed with Goa Freaks. Several rooms in the hotel had also been reserved and turned into opium dens, complete with opium baba and smoking paraphernalia. After hours coked-out at the party, the opium had been a delicious respite. I'd been impressed, and the idea of staying on his houseboat appealed to me.

  We taxied to the designated canal and searched for the boat with the right name. Climbing aboard, we found Dean. He seemed thrilled to see us. "Welcome to my summer home," he said.

  A pig stay. No maid service, obviously.

  Monica and I moved aside enough of the clutter to make room for our luggage. "I don't have extra beds, but you're welcome to the Floor," said Dean, who had thinning, curly hair and glasses. The floor was fine. Dirty mess or no, I was with my Goa friends, and everything was dandy. I felt connected, a member of a secret society.

  Sitting slanted on the broken arm of a couch, I browsed through the Amsterdam section of my address book. Perhaps I could find an old friend to look up. Bach! There was the phone number of his mother's house, where I'd spent one glorious week with him three years before. Did I dare call Bach? No, I didn't. But I couldn't help smiling as my mind filled with images of his blue eyes and the red and white striped shirt he'll worn the first time I'd seen him at a club called the Oxhooft.

  His real name was Bart, but I'd called him Bach because he was so spectacular for an everyday name. His bulging blue eyes were as engaging as any concerto. Bach had been the first person I'd met who used smack. Being himself a masterpiece, anything associated with Bach was masterly too—including smack.

  I looked again at the address book. No, I couldn't call him. But I let my finger ditch the spot where his name was written.

  That night, I suggested we go to the Oxhooft, which was still a popular discotheque, according to Dean. Upon entering, I hunted every corner in search of Bach. No luck. I recognized the bartender, though, and let him slip me a free drink for old time's sake—a Genever, the Dutch gin.

  Monica, Dean, and I danced and told Anjuna stories. What a difference between the drug scene in New York and the drug scene of the Goa Freaks. In New York it had been ugly. It entailed slinking down graffiti covered hallways and dealing with creepy, slimy people. With my Goa friends it was glamorous and gay and exciting. I felt part of an enchanted community as we huddled in the cloak room for a snort of coke, scooped in the silver Aries spoon Dayid had given me for my birthday. Before we left the club, I looked for Bach again. Still no luck.

  The houseboat was fun, despite the stench of the toilet, which didn't flush and had to be dumped—where, I didn't ask. After another day there, Monica and I thanked Dean for his hospitality. "See you in Anjuna in September," we said and caught a plane to Singapore, where we checked into a Holiday Inn.

  "Oh, poo!" I exclaimed, banging my fist on the bureau top.

  "What's wrong?" asked Monica.

  "I forgot to come in on my old passport. Now the new passport's ruined with this Singapore stamp. Shit!"

  It took us an hour the next day to get a visa for Indonesia. Then, after buying a ton of electronics—Singapore having the best and cheapest in Asia—we hurried to catch a flight to Bali. Since we'd heard Singapore didn't allow longhaired guys into the country, we decided the place wasn't for us.

  We arrived that night in Denpasar, the only city—more like a big village—in Bali. We slept in a hotel and had our first view of Indonesia in the morning. Breakfast awaited us on the patio, the teapot diapered in a strawberry-shaped piece of wool. As we sat outside and buttered our toast, we took in the leafy sights and chirping sounds and thick, flowery scents.

  "Hoo, boy, look at that," said Monica, jabbing her marmalade toward a black-and-orange bird hopping along the railing.

  "Oh, Monica, this is so great," I said. "I can't believe it. This is like a real vacation-type vacation that straight people go on. Only we don't have to go back to some job somewhere. I love being rich like this."

  Later we took a walk through town, and Monica ran into a Goa Freak named Jimmy whom I'd never met. He had a puffy afro and wore a judo outfit pinned with a silver star that said "Sheriff."

  "Yo! You chicks gotta come stay at our bungalow lodge in Legion. All the Goa Freaks are there," he told us.

  "Hunky dory! I'm glad I ran into you. Who's here?"

  "Trumpet Steve and Laura, Cindi, Michael, and Fatima. There's a bunch at the lodge, then Narayan and Richard have a house not far away . . . "He grinned and stuck out his chest. "I'm the sheriff."

  Within an hour we were there. The lodge, right on the beach, comprised many bungalows, each split into two connecting rooms with their own bathrooms and patios. Monica and I took one next to Black Jimmy and his girlfriend, Elame from Vancouver. Across the way was an American couple, Trumpet Steve and Laura, and their baby, Anjuna. Anjuna had been born in a hut on Anjuna Beach during a full moon. Laura—and the twenty-two people who'd crowded in to watch—had been stoned on acid at the time. With her brown, shoulder-length hair and her large breasts, Laura was the epitome of "Earth Mother," and since her baby was named for the place we called home, she was a mother figure to us all. Though he didn't fit the part, Trumpet Steve tried to assume the role of papa.

  "Like, hi. Welcome to our bungalow lodge," he said. "Let us know if you, like, need anything. We're, like, one happy family here."

  Next to them, Sylvia, a dark-haired Italian, had half a bungalow, with Patrick, an English man, in the other half. Cindi, an American with short, blonde hair, had her own bungalow next door. All were Goa-people I'd never met. They welcomed us warmly, coming to say hello and to offer information and gossip. I felt very much at home. When I learned Jimmy was into smack, I felt even more at home. That evening, Monica and I dropped by his room.

  "Yo, girls! Come smoke a few bhongs with the sheriff."

  A bhong was a vertical bamboo pipe containing water. One's mouth fit into an opening at the top. The smack, sprinkled over tobacco, went in a bowl on the side.

  "I didn't know you could smoke smack," I said.

  "Hoo, boy—it's the best way. You use more dope, but it's more fun." Yes, I was going to like it there very much.

  The beach wasn't much fun, though. Bali forbade nude bathing. Though we were miles from the touristy Kuta Beach, and though our beach was usually deserted, we still chanced a fine going naked. But constant horizon-scanning did not make for peaceful sunning.

  *

  One morning Monica came through the connecting door to my room.

  "I'm not doing any smack today," she said. "I'm going to quit."

  A controversy was growing over the smack. It was actually fairly new to the Goa Freak scene. Since the early sixties, when people started migrating to Goa, drugs had been a focal point of activities—but not heroin; mostly just hash and acid. The only people doing dope had been the "French Junkies," and they'd been scoped by all. The term junky itself was used in a socio-economic sense to refer to a low-class drug user. It denoted a poor, sleazy person, someone likely to rip you off.

  As the early residents of Goa involved themselves in the drug trade, the lucrative business transformed the sixties hippies into the rich Freaks of the seventies. Soon the loose cash led to the widespread use of cocaine, which led to cocaine nerves and then to the discovery of the soothing smack effect. It was Neal—who'd originally
turned on the beach to acid—who'd also turned on the beach to smack. Neal had been an Original member of the scene. Everybody knew him or had heard of him, and everyone around him loved him. For as long as anyone could remember, Neal had given freely of his acid, his money, and his time. When he began to give out smack too, the smack rode an express pipeline into the soul of Anjuna Beach. When I'd arrived in Goa, it was just being introduced to the scene. Not everyone used it, and those who did didn't really see themselves as users. This was how it was with many of the Goa Freaks in Bali who, though they indulged in it now and then, also frowned on its use. On the days Steve and Laura didn't take a snoot, they disapproved of anyone who had.

  "Like, you girls have to be careful with this powder," Steve said. "Like Laura and I, if we smoke one day, then we, likely won't do it for two or three days with that."

  They and Sylvia and Patrick went through grumpy days now and then when they were "getting the powder out of their systems." None of us was sure where we stood in relation to it.

  "I should stop too, sometime soon," I told Monica.

  "Well, I'm stopping right now," she said. "I don't want to be too hooked. I haven't had any yet this morning."

  "Good luck. How do you feel?"

  "Fine. Come on, lazy bones, let's swim."

  I snorted a hit of dope, packed a stash in my bag, and went to join Monica on her porch. Two guys sat there with her—Richard, my old friend from Goa, and someone sexy named Narayan. They were both American. Though Richard's hair wasn't very long, Narayan's was real short. On top of that he wore glasses. Not my type at all. But there was something in the way he moved . . . the way he leaned on his elbows with his legs stretched out and crossed.

  I bent over to kiss Richard. "Where are you staying?"

  "Down the beach. Why don't you two come by tonight for dinner?"

  "Great!

  How do we get there?"

  "We'll pick you up. Listen, is it true you two are into smack now?"

  I looked over at Monica tuning her guitar. "Yeah, well . . . now and then."

  "You'd better stop that stuff, it's dangerous."

  "I will," I said to dose the topic. "Hey, are we going to the beach?" Monica strained a chord. "Monnn—ica!"