Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India

by Cleo Odzer

  "Monica, you leaving?" I asked as I saw her heading for the rocks. "You used to dance all night."

  She winked at me. "Now I smoke bhongs all night."

  *

  From then on I hardly ever left the house. As long as I had opium I preferred to stay home and read. Neal would leave in the afternoon and come back at night to find me in the same spot.

  "Have you been here all day?" he asked once. "You haven't moved from that pillow for weeks. Are you okay?"

  He was worried about me.

  When I heard that someone taught Tai Chi every evening at sunset, I decided to join. The Tai Chi I'd seen at the Rajneesh ashram had awed me with its slow beauty. Now I left the house every day for an hour. At least Neal stopped looking at me as if I were a vegetable that had rooted in the living room.

  Sometimes I relished having Neal in the house. Occasionally he joined me downstairs while Eve spaced out upstairs and Ha played by herself. We'd chat. I loved the way he shook his bangs and peered through them laughingly. He always seemed bursting with amusement. We had him even in the absence of the CLICK, CLICK chopping of the powder we could no longer afford.

  "So, cutie, how's your momsy?" he'd ask as we looked deeply at each other and sat dose.

  "Momsy's fine. I just got a letter from her—on ancient Tiffany’ stationery with our old address gouged into it."

  Sometimes he'd brush my hair and I'd brush his.

  Still, having Eve and the baby there irked me endlessly. Around the time I began to think I'd strangle Ha or throw her out the window at the very least, Neal decided to head for Bombay. He and I made a tour of Eve's belongings to retrieve the things she'd stolen, and then they left. What a relief—though I was sorry to lose the opium.

  Meanwhile my last rupee had left too. Forget about putting a scam together—how would I eat? Or pay the maid? The situation was critical. I lived on credit. I had a bill at Gregory's restaurant. I had a bill at Joe Banana's. I had an enormous bill with the maid's family on top of what I owed her in wages. I had to do something—immediately.

  I met John.

  "Is it true you have a flush toilet in your house?" were the first words he said to me. We were at Dayid and Ashley's, where I sat waiting to be passed a bhong. John, a small and skinny American with two braids hanging to his waist, had an intensity in his eyes that blazed across the room. Smart. This was one intelligent guy. Adorable too. We became inseparable. The first time he came to my door, he had an apple in his mouth and a dumb crocodile on his shirt. So I named him Applecroc.

  Applecroc shared a house on the other side of the paddy field with Little Lisa. Little Lisa had recently turned eighteen but had been living in Goa since she was eleven, after being abandoned by her mother in Kathmandu. She and John had turned up, and John had been taking care of her ever since. She certainly didn't seem to need someone taking care of her anymore. Dealing with Little Lisa required extreme caution; no one would describe her as mild mannered. Sometimes I slept at John's, which wasn't comfortable, because I'd have to face Lisa the next day.

  "HEY, JOHN," came her grating voice first thing in the morning from two rooms away. "Where the fuck is the herbal shampoo?"

  "I don't know. I didn't use it," he answered.

  "Then who the fuck did?" Her head speared the strings of glass beads in the doorway, and she glared at me. "Did you take the fucking shampoo?"

  "Hope, hasn't me."

  "Then where the fuck did it go, man?"

  I liked it never when John stayed at my place—but then, of course. Little Lisa would soon drop by.

  "HEY, JOHN," would come the voice through the window, not waiting for me to open the door. "I thought you were coming right the fuck back. Where's my kerosene?"

  "I forgot about it. Sorry," John said. Then he added, "Well, get it yourself."

  "Fuck you, man. The fucking light ran the fuck out of kerosene in the middle of the night." She laughed. "Look at my foot, man." Her whole leg came through the window bars. "Covered in fucking wax from the goddamn fucking candle I had to use." Theirs was one of the houses that hadn't yet been electrified.

  Despite Lime Lisa I found John terrific, and the fact that he needed a runner for a trip he planned sealed the relationship into a partnership. Since we were, romantically involved, the proceeds would be split fifty-fifty, and meanwhile I shared the dope he had with him.

  Saved after all! Maybe I wouldn't be the last one off the beach this year.

  In no time I packed up the house, and the three of us—yes. Little Lisa came too-moved to Bombay.

  "HEY, JOHN, will you get the fuck over here and Lift this goddamn fucking bag off the goddamn fucking baggage rack."

  Unlike others, John didn't get hung up in the Bombay scene—no Bombay Syndrome for this guy. And, unlike everybody else, he didn't tell his business to the whole world. John was smart. Within days we flew to Bangkok—without Lisa, thankfully—and John contacted his Thai connection. He bought a kilo of heroin, which came packed in a plastic bag with the logo of the heroin's brand name "Double-UO Globe": two lions on hind legs holding the world.

  John had a clever method for carrying cargo—inside the plastic Frame of a paint kit. The kit's prize feature was that it was hollow and had an air hole.

  Now the work began, shoving powder through the tiny opening. It took three days. One of us held a paper funnel to the hole while the other poured the dope and pushed it through. A long and tedious job. A perpetual cloud of while dost hung over the room.

  During this time I polished my story for Customs in case they questioned me. It was wise to be prepared, especially when coming from the East. I invented a new angle—(hat I was returning to the States after travelling with my fiancé, an entomologist. I figured that since etiologists voyaged to strange places in search of strange insects, it would seem plausible that one's fiancé had visited the countries stamped on my Passport. I'd once hitchhiked with an entomologist in Israel, from Tel Aviv to Nueba. He had stopped every few miles to scamper through the bushes with a butterfly net. It took two days to make a journey that could have been done in hours. A memorable character.

  Crossing borders in the past, I'd always carried my portfolio of modelling pictures to give myself legitimacy. Now I added the part about helping my fiancé by accompanying him in his work and drawing pictures of his insects. Every day I went to the library to look up bugs and copy them. By the time we were ready to leave Bangkok, I had a booklet of them, intricately drawn and coloured, neatly catalogued and described. There was Monochamus notatus, Phyllium scythe, Linognathus vituli . . . I was prepared for any Customs' question.

  John and I did stay in Bangkok longer than absolutely necessary. But after Goa, one always desired to indulge in the luxuries of civilization: Peking dock, Toblerone, cheese fondue, air conditioning. Now THAT was living. John and I capered through the American-style supermarkets like tourists at the Louvre. We'd stop and poke—picking up an instant mix, a pretty jelly, a flashy box. Squeezing, smelling, shaking. Look at this! Wow! What a cute label. So many brands of cereal. Oo, oo ketchup!

  Thailand also had American TV programs dubbed in Thai, with the English soundtrack on the radio. "M.A.S.H." on TV and ketchup on my hamburger—now that was civilized. John and I cackled over a new American sitcom called "Soap."

  Finally it was time to leave the comforts of Bangkok. With the paint kit filled to capacity, John sealed the hole with glue and covered it with a circle of green felt designed to stick to the bottom of lamps to prevent them from scratching table tops. The kit looked good, really good. Still reasonably light, and if you knocked on it, it sounded hollow. Perfect.

  But we had a large amount of dope left over. What to do with it?

  "We can't take it with us, and we don't want to throw it away."

  "Maybe we could leave it somewhere for next time. And the bhong. What do we do with the bhong?"

  "Could we hide it?"

  We looked around the room for inspiration. Hmm. Behind a curta
in? Under the bed? The hotel maid was sure to stumble across it. John checked the bathroom "Hey, c'mere. Look at this," he said. He'd found a compartment in the wooden frame encasing the bathtub. A door in the wood opened to the space beneath the tub. "How about leaving the dope in there?" he asked.

  "The inaA might find it."

  "Why would anyone look inside this thing?"

  "What if the tub clogs or something?"

  "The pipes aren't under here. There's nothing but dirt. We could push it way in the back. It's so dark down there you'd only be able to reach it by feeling around. It's better than throwing the stuff away. Even the bhong will fit in there."

  "We must remember what room this is."

  So we left the bhong and a couple ounces of dope stashed beneath the tub of room 409 at the Royal Hotel. Instead of heading directly to it we thought it would be more cool to go via Nepal. I'd never been there and looked forward to seeing the place Petra and my old boyfriend Chic from Bali considered home. We'd fly separately to Kathmandu, with me leaving first and John arriving a day later. I booked a flight at a time of day deemed advantageous for passing through the airport without being hassled.

  As usual I thrilled at visiting a new country. The mountains! They rose unbelievably high. As we neared Kathmandu, though the plane was above the clouds, one mountain in the distance rose higher than the plane. Hey, wow—I'm in the Himalayas!

  I checked into the Woodlands Hotel and set out to find Freak Street, which I'd heard about. For transportation I took a bicycle-rickshaw, sitting on a tarn plastic seat as a Nepalese pedalled through town. We passed under an arch painted with one large eye, a religious symbol. A compound of stupas turned out to be my destination, and the driver showed me the way to Freak Street from there. Stores catering to foreigners lined the road. But the only place vaguely resembling a hangout was a café called Don't Pass Me By. Was this the fabulous Kathmandu? Freak Street disappointed me. I didn't run into anyone I knew. Nor did I find the flourishing Freak scene I'd expected.

  I waited for John. A few days went by. Then a week. Where was he? Every day I checked Poste Restante. Nothing. Every day I checked Reception. No calls. No inquiries. No telegrams. My personal stash ran out, and I had to break into the paint kit for more. Then I ran out of cash. Shit, I'd have to sell some dope to pay for the hotel. Where was Applecroc?

  I'd met few people. My best contact was an American woman, Nikki, who lived in a guest house with her sexy Nepalese boyfriend. I sold Nikki a couple of grams. Sometimes I hung out in her room. But actually, Kathmandu seemed dead to me. Where was that great Freak scene I'd heard about? Maybe this was the wrong season? What had happened to John? I was worried.

  Another week went by, bringing with it a crazy holiday where people threw red paint and water out their windows. Two blocks from the hotel an entire bucket of water landed on my head. I didn't find it nearly as amusing as the people in the street, my rickshaw driver, and the desk clerk at the hotel. Applecroc, where are you?

  Finally, after I'd begun to panic over John's disappearance, I spotted his familiar braids bobbing down the street. "APPLECROC!" I yelled, jumping on him and taking a bite of pigtail. Oh, my Applecroc. "Where've you BEEN?"

  "I was delayed in Bangkok waiting to hear from Lisa," he told me, "but I've been in Kathmandu three days. The desk clerk at the Woodlands said you weren't registered there. I've been looking all over for you."

  "The moron! How typical."

  "Bastard!"

  John had a room in another hotel, and I moved in with him.

  "I brought you a surprise from Bangkok," he said, pulling his taps recorder out of a suitcase.

  "What, what?"

  "I taped the last episode of "Soap" for you. Wait till you hear. They arrested Jessica for murdering the tennis pro."

  John had been in Nepal before, so he knew the scene better than I did. He took me to a suburb called Swayambuh, where the Freaks hang out. Now Kathmandu was much better.

  For my birthday we went to the fancy Yak and Yedi Hotel. A fountain bubbled outside, and John handed me a Nepalese coin. "Here, make a birthday wish."

  "Oo, okay." I hell the coin and considered what I wanted. What could I wish for? I had everything. Everything I'd ever wanted—a wonderful home in a fantasy paradise, a wonderful Freak community to belong to. My life was the best. To wish for more would have been greedy. I gave the coin back to John. "Applecroc, I already have it all."

  Soon I was on the move again. While John flew directly to Bombay, I returned to India by way of Benares, the most sacred spot in the country and an inconspicuous point of entry. In my role as tourist I stayed a few days.

  Interesting place. Benares was where, if possible, Indians went to die. No bigger than a large village, its streets were lined six deep with dying bodies. Some lay side by side on cots; some sat up, holding themselves as if in pain; others coughed thickly. Many of those prostrate in the sun looked as if they'd already made the transition to corpse. Matter of fact, they looked liked they'd been dead for days. I wondered if a government official periodically searched the prone masses to remove those who'd achieved their holy aim.

  John and I timed it so we arrived in Bombay the same day.

  "HEY JOHN, it took you goddamn long enough to get the fuck back!"

  Back in Bombay with Little Lisa.

  Since John didn't want every Goa Freak knowing the details of his business, we didn't go hotel hopping. We avoided the Bombay social scene. Instead our days were filled with food and comic books. And Lisa. Lots of Little Lisa. The only person who discovered our location was Gigi.

  Gigi and her daughter were in town while her new husband, Marco, conducted business in Europe. Meanwhile Gigi had started fixing coke; in fact, she seemed to fix it compulsively. Whatever money she'd had on arriving in Bombay had been spent on coke, and she now rushed from hotel room to hotel room hustling turn-ons. She looked disarrayed. Gigi had gone Coke Amuck.

  It was amazing how coke crazies discovered sources and acquired coke whether or not they could afford it. Gigi's finding us in Bombay proved her mystery.

  "John, you can give me a stash for later?" she asked on a visit to our room.

  John did, but he turned down her request for a hundred rupees. John, Lisa, and I were short of cash.

  Since we needed a chunk of money to finance the trip West with our product, the inevitable long stay in Bombay did materialize. For weeks John and I loafed in the room, eating Danish pastries from the Taj Mahal Hotel and reading Asterix comics that we rented from a comic book store on Marine Drive. Alas, Lisa paid a daily visit. For dinner John and I went to a Chinese restaurant in Colaba, and, of course, Lisa came with us.

  "Stupid goddamn buffs, man," Lisa would exclaim loudly—"buffs" being short for buffaloes, a derogatory term for Indians. "I told the goddamn fucking buff to bring me ONE GLASS OF ICE and ONE BOTTLE OF CAMPA COLA. SEPARATELY! And look at this—every fucking time, man. The stupid buff pours the goddamn soda IN to the goddamn fucking glass! Now I'll have a goddamn watery fucking cola by the time the fucking food arrives."

  Once, while returning from the Chinese restaurant, we spotted Gigi through our taxi's window. We watched her run down the street with her little girl as if chased by demons. "That reminds me," I said. "I have to pick up the movie of her wedding."

  Just as our taxi turn ed the corner out of view, we saw leap a curb, her legs opening like scissors. The little girl fell.

  "Hey, John, she's probably on the fucking way to your room to hustle more coke," Lisa speculated.

  "Again? She was just there this afternoon."

  After a month of pastries, crispy wonton, Lisa, Gigi, and more comic books than I'd read in my life, money arrived from somewhere, and we were set to forge ahead.

  I chose Portugal as my midway point, since I'd never been there and it seemed an innocuous country. I'd stop there for a new passport. We didn't have money for my entire trip, so the plan called for Lisa to arrive in the States first and cable me
funds in Portugal. John would meet me in New York.

  Arriving in Lisbon, excited over seeing a new country, I checked into a pension. Next I found a candy store. Then I went to the embassy. I presented them with my old passport covered in red nail polish.

  "I'm sorry, look what happened in my bag," I said. "Nail polish leaked on my clothes too. Ruined everything."

  While waiting for the money from Lisa, I explored the City. I joined a bullfight tour and buried my head in my bag to snort dope. The Japanese tourist next to me never noticed. Olé!

  A week later, my travelling stash of dope ran out. I had to break into the paint kit again. Luckily I had a supply of the green things to cover the hole. I'd learned that in Kathmandu. After another week, the money ran out. Where was Little Lisa with the funds? Soon I could no longer afford the pension. Now what? I needed a free place to stay. How long would I be stranded in Portugal?

  When I'd first gone to the embassy for the passport. I'd met two Marines stationed there. They'd invited me to visit the Marine House, an estate where they lived and threw parties. I accepted their invitation and heard about a bar frequented by American servicemen. Now I decided to visit the bar in search of someone to put me up. Maybe I could stay at the Marine House. Might be interesting.

  Within an hour of entering the bar, I found myself an attractive Marine. For sure, he wasn't my usual type—hair only an inch long, jeepers—but something about him stimulated me anyway. Though his he-man attitude partly turned me off, I was also turned on. That night I went home with my Marine, and the next day I moved into his apartment.

  Little by little I told him about of my life. India. The Freak scene. Drugs.

  Soon, Marine realized he'd gotten more than he'd bargained for. "You have WHAT in that paint kit?" he asked, a look of shock on his face.

  Poor Marine.

  But not long after that, the money arrived. I'm sure he was relieved to see me go.