Let's Go Mad

by Rob Binkley

  We made a beeline for the buffet downstairs like three starving urchins invited into the king’s palace to feast. Piling my plate high, I had a flashback to Tibet … Even though I’d been stuffing myself for weeks, to see all this food at once was crazy—I still had PTSD from starving myself.

  I felt like I’d just returned to civilization after being stuck on a desert island where I ate bananas and grabbed fish from the water with my bare hands like some kind of caveman. Now here I was—magically transported to this modern spread, with all the chocolates, finger sandwiches, huge poached salmon, and mounds of fresh shrimp by the cubic ton. The champagne was flowing forever and a chocolate fondue bar was oozing liquid sweetness all over the place.

  I stopped heaping food on my plate and stood there, nauseous from the excessive scene. I visualized all the times Brian and I ate runny rice or fish soup for dinner—and the contrast blew my mind. It all seemed so wasteful.

  Are we all just a bunch of greedy, Western pigs?

  The next day at the pool of the King Hotel, my visualization of Brian and I eating and laughing over fish stew in some third world hut became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  I was laying out with Petra and Simona on chaise lounges among a sea of oiled-up tourists—it was hard to concentrate on my “dates.” The Italian girls strutting around the pool in their bikinis and high heels were driving me crazy. The sex was oozing from their skin; when they stared at you, you melted.

  I tried to take a nap and forget about all the women lying half-naked around me, but just as I was about to drift off I heard an all-too-familiar American guffaw coming from the other side of the pool. I sat up and pulled my hat from my eyes to get a look. I squinted into the sun and saw the silhouette of something, somebody perched on the side of a chaise lounge, laughing with a gaggle of Italian girls around him.

  It was a shadow that reminded me of a long lost friend.

  The man was massaging the back of some beautiful girl in a bikini. She would “ooh” every time he massaged her. He said, “Let me open your mind to what’s possible. Look around at all this conspicuous consumption. Don’t you know this is how civilizations die? What if you died today, my sweet, would you say you have been following your bliss?”

  I heard the beautiful girl reply, “I don’t knoooow … Oooooh, more, more.”

  Then the man said, “This whole scene is a perversion! Sexy ladies, join me while you still have souls to save!” By God, the chameleon had changed colors again … but his cult leader rhetoric was the same.

  I leaned over to Petra, “That looks like Brian …”

  “Who is this Brian?”

  “That is this Brian.”

  Flabbergasted, I got up and stomped over to his side of the pool. How the hell did he get to Italy all the way from Nepal? How could he afford this place?? I got closer and saw he was rubbing a new lady friend I had never seen before. He was wearing a cheesy gold bracelet that had replaced his leather yak Buddhist bracelet. His hair had grown out and was slicked back like a Greek oil tycoon.

  I watched him, wondering if I was going mad.

  My holy friend who dumped me for not being holy enough for his rarified airspace had turned back to the dark side. He was wallowing in the samsara like a typical American douchebag.

  I had to approach him. I tapped him on the shoulder, “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Aristotle,” I said, and handed him the umbrella drink he was reaching for.

  He took the drink then looked up at me. He stopped massaging and just stared at me from behind his sunglasses and a newly grown beard. He said, “East meets West in a most auspicious setting—sit down! C’mon girls, keep the drinks coming!”

  Brian had lost his Nepalese righteousness, and that Zen smile of his had turned back into that old familiar devilish grin.

  He didn’t stop his banter just because I crashed his party. He kept regaling the girls with tall tales of his past adventure. He said he’d flown in a cargo plane full of live poultry over the high Himalayas under the shroud of darkness to get here—and he was now surely wanted by the Chinese government for crimes against the state. “Don’t call me an outlaw, ladies—call me … a Tibetan freedom fighter.”

  “Oh my God, is this true? I adore the Dalai Lama! He has such amazing style and grace.” His hot Italian massage woman was buying it all: hook, line, and sinker. I just watched him go. He had reverted back to his original state: a charming and persuasive bullshit artist.

  I finally got him to stop talking long enough to pull him away from his gaggle of women; it felt like I was talking to a different human, yet again.

  “Dude, are you some kind of schizophrenic psychopath??”

  He mused, “To take a lesson from Walt Whitman, ‘we are all mosaics, a million versions of ourselves, all fighting for supremacy’ … Fancy meeting you here!”

  “Are you following me?”

  “How could I follow you? I had no idea where you went. This is kismet, baby!”

  “When did you get here??”

  “Just now! Look, baby, maybe I was hasty in relieving you of your duties back in that monastery, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.”

  “My duties?? Stop calling me ‘baby.’ What am I, your freaking valet?”

  “Perhaps ‘duties’ is a bad way of putting it—how about ‘responsibilities’ for keeping up with me. See … I had an epiphany while praying with the monks. God told me to mend fences and offer you an olive branch. Girls, who wants me to oil them up!?”

  The girls cheered.

  I said, “I think you owe me an apology.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder, “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. Maybe dharma brought me here. Or, let’s be honest, maybe it’s the fact I’m totally broke and need your help to get home,” he laughed. “Okay, okay, no seriously, I confess. I called your mom’s house and found out you were at Giancarlo’s—then I called him and he told me you were here … Are you mad?”

  This was a test. Could I practice my Buddhist learnings? Could I be the bigger man?

  I said, “Not mad … just slightly confused as to who you are, from country to country.”

  “Don’t let that upset you. I’m a walking contradiction—I don’t know who I am either! Do you know who you are after this year?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question. But, I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Oh I’m back, baby.” Brian had returned to finish our journey together.

  “I’ll take you back. Just stop calling me ‘baby.’”

  “Deal.”

  “Are you just taking advantage of me cause you know I won’t leave you hanging?”

  “Maybe? Just … don’t get pissed if I charged these drinks to your room, okay?”

  We hugged it out then goofed off at the hotel resort for two more days pretending we were a couple of sultans in from the Ottoman Empire. I put everything on my tab since he had nothing. Every time I did, he gave me this knowing look, like we were both in on the fact that I was somehow paying for his forgiveness, which I wasn’t. But who cares.

  All that mattered was Brian had his mojo back, and so did I. All my Bavarian angst was washed away.

  We had turned a corner in our personal renaissances. All the girls at the resort were magically into us, and Petra and Simona loved Brian so much we all slept in the same bed for the next two nights. It was all we could afford, considering our alcohol budget.

  Brian and I fell in love the next few days, not with the girls, but with each other again, and the shiny glitz of Rimini and all its Western trappings. It had sexy women, great beaches, and sidewalk cafés galore. It made me miss having money. I wanted to buy things. I could feel the lure of Western capitalism seeping back into my bloodstream.

  We explored the town and noticed the smaller highways were lined with good-looking prostitutes with cars pulled over negotiating a deal. It was fun to honk while you drove by; even the girls liked it. We called it the “love highway.” When we ve
ntured out to the beaches, they were so packed with chairs the sand was barely visible, all you saw were Italians running around in their Speedos showing off their bellies.

  “What in God’s name are you wearing??” Brian asked.

  “I, uh, borrowed a pair of Giancarlo’s underwear,” I said.

  “You’re actually wearing someone else’s purple underwear in public? Hahahaha! Perfect!”

  By the third morning in the King Hotel, the fantasy had to end. We finally had to check out. I knew the tab was getting to a dangerously high level and Brian and the girls had no money. We were a tad late arriving at checkout. The snooty guy manning the front desk looked at us both wearing sunglasses to hide our hangovers, then looked at Petra and Simona, who probably looked like hookers to him, and frowned.

  After some clacking on his computer, the hotel guy announced we “must pay” a thousand US dollars. We sat there, mouths agape. “Um, that was not our agreement.”

  He explained the extra fee was due to the fact we were an hour late for checkout. And he was also charging us an extra night, and for four people in the room each night, plus a parking spot for two nights.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, nice try Emilio, if that’s your real name—but we were told we were paying for two people per room (we had been sneaking Petra and Brian in after hours). Nobody told us we couldn’t have any guests in our room.”

  We demanded to speak to the hotel manager who took one look at us and immediately threatened to call the police. We said, “That’s a great idea!”

  After staying quiet, Brian suddenly lost it. He totally forgot about his Zen teachings and started yelling at the guy, saying he was crazy—the manager went nuts. Things were deteriorating fast, so I told the manager we would compromise for this misunderstanding by generously offering to pay for “three people for one of the nights, but that was it!”

  Clearly tiring of the affair, the manager finally agreed. With some quick thinking, when he turned around, I switched the exchange rate on his calculator and we got a great deal.

  Great deal or not, after I paid the bill, we were relegated to the car again (now with Brian in tow), which totally sucked.

  We spent the next night sit-sleeping again in the back seat with the girls upfront. The girls loved “car camping,” but somehow we weren’t having fun. Maybe we were tired of it all. That night, I kept fidgeting to find a comfortable spot on the window to lean on.

  I moaned, “I’d rather be sleeping under a school bus in the rain.”

  Brian (sleep mask on) mumbled back, “When does the stewardess come by with the cookies?”

  In the morning, the girls and I decided to pull the ripcord and go back to our beds in Germany. Brian said nothing; he just asked us to pull over at the bus station on the way out of town. I knew what was coming.

  “You want to come to Bavaria with us? You can stay with Giancarlo and me.”

  “No thanks, I’m the man with a plan; it’s time for me to blow this Popsicle stand.”

  Brian said he’d learned all he needed on this trip. “It’s time to go.” Meaning home. He was going to catch the next bus to the airport in Venice.

  “You’re really leaving?”

  “What a wild ride it was … but I must bid you a fond farewell.”

  “Should I come with you?”

  “No, I’m broke, and you still have the time and money to keep going. Thanks for floating me these past few weeks. I’ll pay you back one decade.”

  “I’ll put it on your bill. Thanks for coming to say goodbye. I didn’t want it to end like that.”

  “We’re brothers forever. No fight in a monastery will ever change that.”

  “Here,” I gave him the Barbie doll I’d been carrying around since India. “I want you to have my dream girl.”

  “You still got that little heartbreaker?” He took Barbie and combed her filthy hair with his fingers, “Guess it’s time to find the real thing, now, huh?”

  “That may be harder than finding Utopia.”

  “Think we learned anything from all this?”

  “Well … one thing I learned is there’s something out there (pointing to the sky) other than ourselves. As for what that is—beats me. But I’m open to anything; we just have to keep searching, man. That’s why wisdom comes with age … We’re still too raw to know anything for sure. It’s all so conceptual, this life.”

  “I guess, I was hoping for something less conceptual and more tangible.” He laughed. “That only happens in the movies. Now it’s time for us to put away childish things and start testing our concepts in a slightly more mature way—But we had fun, didn’t we??”

  “Enough to last a lifetime.”

  “I’ll never forget it … what I remember of it.”

  I smiled. “One of us should write about it. I’ve been keeping this journal, maybe it will come to something.”

  He put his arm around me as we walked to the bus. “The wise ones say, ‘Do or do not … no try.’ If you want something, make it so.”

  Brian looked back. The Czech girls were in the car honking at us; they wanted to go. Brian’s bus to the airport started up, people began to board. He said, “Well. I guess this is it … Hope you don’t end up in debtor’s prison.”

  “Thanks, at least jail would be a place to crash … Probably nicer than some of the hostels we stayed in.”

  “Fewer fleas … less floods … no old cougars looking to pounce in the middle of the night.”

  “Well, not too sure about that, but Elena’s barricaded herself in my condo so I’m definitely homeless. What are you gonna do with your life?”

  “Oh yeah,” Brian said. “You gotta look me up, man. I got a Forestry Service gig!”

  “You already got a job??” I was gob-smacked.

  “I had to! I’m outta cash.” He said he was going to be a fire lookout in the North Cascade Mountains in Washington like Kerouac did in his book Desolation Angels.

  “I was looking around for jobs at this little Internet café in Tibet, so I sent them a picture of me climbing a cedar tree outside the monastery with my bare feet, bald head, and flowing robes—and they bought it!”

  “Incredible. You’re way ahead of me.”

  “Just know, I may be returning to the corrupt motherland, but I refuse to become a corporate slave.”

  “No, you’re working for the federal government—they’re not corrupt at all!”

  “Dude, the Forestry Service has a clean record!”

  “Okay, are the G-men gonna be mad when you don’t show up looking like a monk?”

  “I may have to shave my head again and get in my getup, just for the first few days.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “If you need a place to stay, come see me on Lookout Mountain—they never said I couldn’t have guests, and I’ll be the only person up there. I got my own cabin! But no liquor, no drugs, no women. Just me, myself, and I … I wanna come face to face with God and find out, once and for all, about the meaning of all this inescapable samsara we’re born into.”

  “I respect your choices, man. Stare into the abyss; find your bliss … But don’t fall off that cliff.”

  “You know I never do, brother.”

  We hugged it out one last time.

  “Thank you for opening my eyes,” Brian said.

  “No. Thank you,” I said.

  “Maybe we’ll have that double marriage one day.”

  “Yeah, maybe … Now get outta here.”

  I watched Brian get on the bus in that same roadworn gray sweatshirt he’d been wearing ever since it got cold in Nepal. It looked like it hadn’t been washed in a year, and it probably hadn’t—but the man inside of it looked renewed and ready to take on the next chapter of his life.

  I walked around to the back of the bus and saw him plop down in his trademark backseat on the left. He smiled when he saw me come around to his window. Always the prankster, he sneaked something out of his bag and looked around devilishly—then he held i
t up to the window. It was his last square of hashish chocolate he’d been drugging all of Asia with for the past six months.

  He leaned over to his seatmate, an old German lady, and offered it to her. The window was up so I couldn’t hear what she said, but she took one look at his disheveled state and shook her head no. He looked back at me, shrugged, and popped it in his mouth, grinning like the Cheshire cat who ate the psychedelic canary.

  Then he did something I’ll never forget. He put his open palm up against the window just like those Tibetan nomad kids did to us when we were stuck on that mountain.

  I put my palm up to his in solidarity. We had one final high-five through glass.

  I held my hand up there until the bus pulled away.

  And off he went, the mad inspiration for this whole trip, setting off on another adventure of his own. We would be friends for life, but I wouldn’t see him for months. The crazed rambler turned stoned Taoist-Hindu-Buddhist had to go his own way, like we all must.

  That’s the thing about life, you have those galvanizing moments of youth with your friends and then you grow up, start getting married and having kids, and you don’t see or talk to each other much anymore. But you still have that bond that comes from the shared memories of youth.

  No one can ever take that away from us.

  11

  Epilogue in Amsterdam

  BRIAN WOULD EVENTUALLY GET FIRED from his Forestry Service gig for extreme incompetence and end up back in Palo Alto working at a high-end restaurant called Strata and living in my condo. I told him he could live there for free if he kicked out Elena, which he did. When I finally caught up with him again, he was still full of glee.

  “What are you learning from waiting tables?” I asked.

  He said, “I’m learning how rich people eat! I want to open a high-end restaurant that only serves Buddhist cuisine! I call it ‘Zen.’”

  “I like your aspirations. I can see it now; write a new chapter of your life!”

  And so he would. Brian would never find his bus angel from the Philippines, but he would clean up his act, get a good job, and finally find true love in the form of his current wife, a lovely Vietnamese woman who he met while living in my condo and is now the mother of his two children.