by Cleo Odzer
When Julian left us, Tom beamed at me. "I've been, you know, waiting to sleep in a real bed for six weeks now."
"Me too," I answered, as much aroused at the thought of stretching out as by Tom's body.
We found a guest house on the sand behind a chai shop. After weeks bent into a seat, I lolled luxuriously on the narrow bed. Red designs on the bedspread matched the red freckles on Tom. India—I'd made it to India, to Goa. Wow. Even the ocean air smelled of impending adventure. I couldn't wait to wake up in this new place. But, disturbingly, as I lay anticipating morning, I couldn't stop thinking of Julian.
The next day, after breakfast and a quick look at the wide, empty beach extending in both directions, Tom and Julian boarded their bus for the trip to Delhi. Time for me to find my own place to stay. Paul had told us a house in Goa could be rented for as little as seven dollars a month.
"Hey," I shouted to the bus window, "I'm going to find myself a house. You guys can stay with me when you get back." They smiled and waved and drove away, leaving a trail of red dost.
Now what?
I made a tour of the chai shops. Actually, the people there seemed touristy. They reminded me of the backpackers in Europe, vacationers who'd soon return home with a couple of stories and crates of photographs. Tourists! Where were the Freaks I'd heard about? This was not what I'd expected. Was this it? Was this Goa? Where had Pam and Paul gone?
"Try Anjuna Beach," suggested a man with a camera around his neck and white cream on his nose. "That's where the parties are."
"It’s in Goa?"
"Of course. Goa's a whole state." He took out a guidebook and leafed through it. "See here, it says Goa has eighty-two miles of coast."
"How far is Anjuna Beach?"
"A few hours. You go down this beach to the end. That's Baga. You cross the Baga River, then go over the mountain, and on the other side is Anjuna. Can't miss it."
Mountain? River? Sounded like a real excursion. I made another tour of the chai shops. No, nothing happening there. I decided to check out Anjuna Beach. A Frenchman offered to let me stay overnight in his Baga house and I accepted, enjoying the company for half the journey. I unrolled my sleeping bag on his floor.
I declined his unwanted midnight passes. "Shh, no! I'm sleeping. Goodnight."
Early the next morning, I made my way to the Baga River. The tide was out. Following the Frenchman's instructions, I waded across through shallow water. On the other side was a hill (not a mountain), which I climbed by following a rocky, and in some places nonexistent, path. Halfway down the other side, I had my first view of Anjuna Beach, bordered by another hill about three miles away. I could see only the tops of palm trees and acres of paddy fields. It was getting hot, and the ocean to my left looked welcomingly cool.
The first house I encountered was a chai shop called Joe Banana's. Three steps led to an open porch bordered on either end by cement benches and wooden tables. Scantily clad Freaks sprawled there passing a chillum of hashish. Fat clouds of smoke drifted by. Aha! Now these were a different type of people from those in Calengute. No white-cream noses here. No cameras. No guidebooks. And they had that elusive quality I couldn't put into words. This was it. This was for me. Now I had to find a house.
I tapped the shoulder of a guy with a mass of long curls. "Excuse me," I said, "do you know where I could find a house to rent?"
He gave me a curious smile and stared a second before answering, "You asked me that question before. On Ios, in Greece, outside of town. Remember? You stopped me and asked for directions to a cave. You asked in the exact manner you did now."
Hey! An old friend, almost.
"You're still on the road?" he added, laughing. "I remember thinking you were just a vacationer."
A vacationer! He called me a vacationer. I was crushed. That was like calling me a nine-to-fiver, a worker, a peasant. "No!" I protested in a voice pitched higher than usual. "I've been on the road three and a half YEARS! Before Greece, I lived in a tree house in the SINAI! Before that I was on a KIBBUTZ! And before that I drove ALL OVER EUROPE living in a painted car! It had a big face on the front and an egg on the roof."
"Okay, okay." He laughed some more. "I'm sorry. That's what I thought at the time."
"I found that cave on Ios you directed me to," I continued, still affronted. "Lived there a MONTH. Up on a cliff, with nobody for miles—it wasn't TOURIST season."
"I believe you, I believe you."
"Well . . . so now I need a house. Know of anything?"
"Not right here," said Greek Robert, as he was called. "All the houses are occupied. Everyone wants to five on Anjuna Beach."
"Try in back of the rice paddy," someone suggested in a strained wheeze, holding in a lungful of hash smoke.
I asked Joe Banana, an old, wrinkled Indian wearing gray shorts, but he said the same thing. Beachfront houses were taken. He let me leave my bag in his back room, though, and I set out to explore.
A vacationer. Huh! I was NOT a vacationer. Never had a real job in my life. What kind of drudge did Greek Robert think I was?
Anjuna had no paved roads, only paths created by tramping feat. The thick cover of paling protected me from the sun as I walked. I passed Goan houses made of stones and topped with thatched roofs. Few Goans seemed to five there, though—only Freak foreigners. European women, naked above the waist, lounged in hammocks. They smiled at me as I went by. The men wore a rectangular piece of material called a lungi. It wrapped around the hips to form a skirt. They smiled too. I passed three people bathing at a well. One stood naked and soapy as the other two poured buckets of water over his head.
"Whoa, that's cold," he exclaimed. "Hi there."
"Hi," I answered.
Then reached the beach, I surveyed the scene. Over a hundred people, all naked, sat together soaking sun. A group of tan, naked guys played volleyball. A laugh and a yell reached me as someone crashed into the ocean after a Frisbee.
I felt flurries of excitement grow within me. This looked exactly like what I'd been dreaming of—a community, a Freak community—in par-advice. This was it. Here was a fellowship I could belong to. Here was something to be part of. This would be the place, I just knew it. This was where I'd make my home. I didn't want to five in Calangute or in back of the paddy field, though. I wasn't a worker on vacation. I wanted to five right there, near the sea.
I turned away and walked toward the hill at the other end of Anjuna Beach. A mother pig and a bunch of piglets screamed at my footfalls and scampered away. In a yard, some chickens pecked. A water buffalo lifted its head at me and shivered an ear. I wanted to find a house so badly. I wanted my own territory in that wonderful place. I passed people sitting under trees. Everyone smiled and said hello. I belonged there, I just knew it.
Crossing rocks, I stopped a blonde guy in a lungi coming the other way, carrying an instrument he plucked unmelodiously.
"Excuse me, do you know where I can find a house?"
His answer came in a German accent. "Good timing you have. My name is Ramdas, and I am leaving for Poona. You can have mine until I return."
"Oh, really? Where is it?"
"Right on the beach. I will show you. It is a marvelous house."
First Season in Goa
1975 — 1976
YES, IT WAS A MARVELOUS house, and only a ten-minute walk from the south end of Anjuna Beach, where the crowd gathered. Ramdas left the next afternoon, and by the day after that I was settled in. As I opened the shutters facing the sea on my third morning as an Anjuna resident, a crow whizzed by. Its "caw, caw" mixed with the squeaking sound of someone drawing water from a well. "Oh', I love this place already," I thought,' as I prepared to step out of my seaside abode.
I put the lock on the door, opened my purple parasol, lifted the hem of my ankle-length purple dress, and stepped over the boulders that separated the sand of my yard from the sand of the beach. Though starting daintily, I had to sprint the last few yards to the sea to cool the burning soles of my fee
t. The water barely pulsated against the shore. Not a wave in sight. I hitched my dress another inch and proceeded south through the water. Nobody swam in the middle or at the north end of the beach, partly because of the rocky bottom, but mostly because the south end was the place to be. As I approached the hill that marked the southern boundary of Anjuna, I could see tanned, naked bodies lying in the sun. Aside from a few isolated groups of twos and threes, everyone collected in one big troupe. Near where the shore met the palm trees, the volleyball net had been set up. I watched a naked guy serve the ball. His penis bobbed as he jumped back against the force of his fist. To my right, three people bounded into the ocean in a chorus of shrieks.
I slowed my steps and desperately scanned faces. Maybe I could find Greek Robert or one of the people Ramdas had introduced me to. I'd the if I reached the end of the beach without finding a place to sit. That would brand me a tourist, new to the scene. I was NOT a vacationer.
"Hi, Cleo!"
Saved! I looked toward the waving arm. It belonged to Saddhu George, an American I'd met the day before at Joe Banana's. I recognized the blonde, matted hair reaching to his naked waist. He wasn't really a saddhu, the Indian term for a holy man. Supposedly, at one time in the past he'd relinquished his possessions and stopped combing his hair to wander through the hills of India in search of inner knowledge. He had given up that holy life, though, his matted strands the only sign left of his spiritual foray. Much relieved, I veered around sunning bodies and laid a piece of cloth next to him.
"Hi, George. What's new?" As I folded the parasol and took off my dress, I noticed that the most popular Anjuna faces were nearby. Good. This was an excellent Spot. Saddhu George's quest and his long stay in India had bestowed upon him respect and notoriety. I longed to be an insider too.
"Are you going to the party tonight?" he asked.
"Where is it?"
"At Bombay Brian's. On Joe Banana's hill, third house from the sea." THUMP. A Frisbee slid by. George scooped it up and ran to the shoreline to throw it back.
"Want a drag?" asked a guy offering me a joint.
Though I'd smoked marijuana during my teens, lately both it and hash made me confused and paranoid. I accepted the offer but tried to inhale as little of the smoke as possible.
In the States one takes a drag of a joint and passes it on, but I'd noticed in India, with hash abundant and legal, one held onto it as long as possible, even if it meant finishing it off. I took another hit, this time trying to blow out instead of in. That made the end glow and look like I'd inhaled.
"Do you five around here?" I asked him, looking at the joint that, unfortunately, was only a third gone.
"At the other end. And you?"
"Just down from here," I answered. "You can see it. That white house over there. As I turned my face to point, I faked another drag. I could already feel the effect of the little I'd smoked. I didn't like it. "That's Ramdas's house. How did you get that? It's almost impossible to rent on the beach end of Anjuna."
"Ran into him on his way to Poona. Guess that means I was meant to live here."
I took another minipuff and figured I could appropriately hand the joint hack now. It seemed to take him forever to pry it from my fingers. Then he said something I couldn't understand. "What?" I asked. It made no more sense when he repeated it. "Water; swim," I said standing up besides confusing me, hash affected my ability to form grammatical sentences.
I headed down the—now enormous—distance to the sea. I swam out past the other swimmers, then turned and surveyed the beach. Not a leaf moved on the palm trees. Only three houses could be seen, one of them mine. I lay on the water, closed my eyes, and floated.
I must have stayed there quite a while. By the time I swam in, the ends of my fingers were pruny and I could think straight. When I returned to the beach, I found George lying on his lungi. Adorable. A baby face topped his thin Body, tanned dark bronze. I sprinkled water on him.
"Oh, feels good," he said. He wet his hand on my leg and patted it over his chest.
"Like it? Here's more." I leaned over to throw drops on his back.
He watched me. "Want to go with me to Joe Banana's for a coconut milkshake?" he asked. "Then Show you my house. It's behind those trees."
"Sure."
He wrapped his lungi around his hips to form a sexy wrapping that hung halfway to his knees. After putting on my dress, I opened the parasol, lifted my hem, and followed him toward the trees. Eeh, ah, oh—hot sand. I ran ahead and waited for him in the shade. In that form. I must have looked like the cartoon Road Runner charging forward, a tourist with virgin soles. How long would my feet take to adjust? We headed inland.
Joe Banana's, no more than a glorified shack, formed the center of Anjuna Beach activity. The mail went there. Since there were no street names or house numbers, a mailman couldn't do anything more complicated. I joined Saddhu George in his letter-by-letter search through a cardboard box hanging from the roof, though there could be no mail for me yet. There was none for him either, and we sat at a rickety table on the porch.
As I sipped a milkshake and waved at the fly trying to Land on my glass, a continuous flow of people browsed through the letter box. Many stopped by our table to offer gossip and report the contents of their mail. News of the party passed from nationality to nationality.
"Who's that?" I asked George as a tall, beautiful blonde with a pink flower behind her ear mounted the steps for a postal search.
"That's Norwegian Monica. Hi, Monica!"
"Hi, George," she answered in a tuneful accent.
"You just get in from Ibiza?"
"Yup." The beauty found herself an aerogramme.
"There's a party tonight at Bombay Brian's."
"Hoo, boy! I can say hello to everybody I haven't seen since last season."
After a while we left for George's place. The soft earth coated my feet with red powder. The air was hot and dry, and I felt very comfortable as I swirled my parasol, its wooden handle rotating against my shoulder. I was ready for George.
He lived in a tiny house above the beach where we'd been sunbathing and shared it with someone named Amsterdam Dean. I asked for the toilet.
He turned and pointed inland. "Go straight and keep walking. You'll find it. Here, take the loti."
He filled the brass container from a clay tub of water in front of the house. I took the loti, though I had no intention of using it—I had a roll of toilet paper in my bag. The sewage system of Anjuna Beach consisted of raised platforms with holes over which one squatted. Disposal came in the shape of a pig that had its own passage to the underside of the hole. Whatever went through the hole was to be eaten by the pig. From the day I'd arrived in Goa, I'd been reminded PIGS DO NOT EAT PAPER. We were supposed to use water to clean ourselves, not toilet paper. I tried it once. Not for me. I didn't care if paper was bad for the environment: some vestiges of civilization I had no intention of giving up. In this regard, let them call me tourist, barbarian, or JAP. I preferred industrial society's way.
George's toilet was quite a trek away and had only three walls. This left the front open to every passing eye. I tried to string my piece of material across it. I looked around. All was empty and still. So I climbed in and lifted my skirt. Before heading back, I emptied the loti and felt only slightly guilty about leaving the wad of toilet paper.
I found George sprawled on a bright, satin-covered mattress on the floor. The room was strictly Anjuna decor—walls cloaked in Afghani and Indian tapestries and Tibetan paintings; mattresses overflowing with satin pillows; and a floor of straw mats over dong.
"Hi."
"Hi."
I dropped my belongings in a corner and sank into his arms. His skin was sun-warm and soft. My leg fit perfectly around his. When he turned his head downward to meet mine in a kiss, a scratchy lock of his matted hair fell over my shoulder. My fingers felt the flaky residue of salt water as they traced the inside of his leg. Mmmm . . .
We separated so I cou
ld take off my dress, and he removed his lungi with a twist and a fling. Before he leaned back over me, he took the front strands of his hair and tied them in a knot behind his head. Then he pressed himself against me again, and I heard the sound of his knee crunch on the straw mat.
We'd only been lying, locked and still, a few moments when Amsterdam Dean came through the open doorway.
"Pharaoh got in last night. You should see the speakers he brought.
Man! New tapes too. Hello."
"Hi," I answered, lifting a leg off George's back to wig my foot at him. George disentangled from me and went outside. I could hear him scoop water from the clay tub and wash.
"Want coffee?" Dean offered, kneeling in the corner over a kerosene burner.
"No, thanks." I dressed and told George I'd see him later at the party.
I returned to the beach to find that most of the group had left. I met an American named Richard sitting cross-legged and nude, concentrating deeply on a Chinese game called Go, and a slinky French-Vietnamese named Georgette.
I felt glorious as I ran into the sea to wash the sticky mess from between my legs. What an existence. This was the life I'd been bred for—relaxed and self-indulgent. I could do this forever. Back on the shore, my new friends tried to talk me out of going home to change.
"No, stay for the sunset," said Richard.
"Yes, you must stay for the sunset," added Georgette.
I stayed.
In groups and one by one, the beach refilled with Freaks. Their long hair flying loose, the men came in lungis. The women wore long flowing skirts, and many were bare-chested. Both males and females were loaded with antique Indian silver jewellery on ankles, arms, necks, and waists. They lounged on the sand and focused on where the sun turned red as it touched the water. Pink snaked across the sky. Purple. Orange. People gossiped in lowered tones, almost whispers. A hint of reverence glinted in their eyes as they looked at the colours rather than at each other. From a variety of mostly Western countries, the Goa Freaks were young people who'd rejected their home fives and homelands and had come to India to create a new way of life. The communal sunset was a ritualistic part of it.