Cleo Odzer - Goa Freaks - My Hippie Years in India

"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.