by Cleo Odzer
"I don't know how they stand it," said Robert, nodding out, eyes closed and head leaning against a porthole.
"Can you imagine going to job every morning?"
"I'd puke!"
"Loathe me, nine to five. How do they do it?"
"Beats me. I'd rather be dead."
In deck class, the last time I took the boat, dinner had been banged down on a crowded, dirty counter; this time it was served on a white tablecloth. Before; it had been cold rice on a tin plate, this time I had crispy chicken on porcelain. Yes, India could be quite luxurious if one had money.
During dessert, Robert fell asleep with his spoonful of honey pastry midway to his mouth. It dropped from his hand and landed on his lap, waking him.
"Damn it," he said as syrup spread over his thigh.
As we laughed, a smile crept across his face. He inserted the spoon in his dessert cup and scooped out a load of syrup. Whop! He shot it at Shawn's chin.
Whop! Shawn fired back.
Whop! Whop! Tish and I joined in.
By the time we left the table, yellow streaks covered the tablecloth, and my hair was sticky. A glob of honey ran down the wall, and Tish had honey hanging from an ear. We left the room giggling uncontrollably. With his head held high and one eye closed, Robert slipped fifty rupees into the waiter's palm. The waiter bowed.
In poverty-stricken countries the rich could five like sovereigns.
MAP OF ANJUNA BEACH
Second Season In Goa
1976 - 1977
ARRIVING IN PANJIM, we split up because bags and packages filled every inch of my taxi, and I wasn't going directly to Anjuna Beach anyway. I first had to go to Mapusa, the village near Anjuna where Lino the Landlord lived. I'd sent him a telegram and found him waiting for me in his four-foot-square battery shop.
Anxiously I asked, "Is the house ready?" I couldn't wait to move in and become an official resident.
He shook his head side to side Indian fashion. It looked like no or indecision but meant, "Sure." Then he said, "One or two things remain needing to be done, but you can stay inside."
"Wonderful!"
"You go now? I will follow on my motorcycle."
I felt euphoric. As the taxi headed down the traffic less road to Anjuna Beach, tears filled my eyes. How beautiful it was there. My territory now, where my people lived. I knew there'd be a party that night.
I was surprised when we turned oh the paved road onto a dirt way that took us across the paddy fields. I hadn't known a car could go so close to the sea. The taxi left me thirty yards from the house, and I ran to see the new hone.
Yes, it had a roof. White and blue windows. It looked immense.
Wow. Mine. My home! Lino pulled up beside me. "You see, it is finished."
With a key, he opened the padlock connecting the brass rings of the front doors. I walked in with the reverence someone might show for a cathedral. Shiny red tiles felt cool beneath my feet—no dung floor here. I passed through the front room and up three steps to the main room—huge! The tree was gone, and the ceiling rose high above me. The staircase! It faced me from the far wall, turned, and went up to the square landing I'd designed. Upstairs, one enormous room led into another. The end room turned right to extend a further thirteen feet. Wow. I'd make this gigantic space the bedroom. I opened a window to a fishy-smelling breeze. The ocean lay fifty yards away, on the other side of the pig-as-waste-disposal toilets.
Toilets? "How could they build toilets in front of the view?" I asked Lino, who'd followed me upstairs.
"We are afraid to swim. Our houses face away from it, and we put the toilets behind the house."
"You never swim? Hey, is that a door?"
"Yes. You have five doors leading outside."
I opened it to find concrete steps descending to the back porch. A few feet away was the well. I stepped down and ran a hand lovingly over the seats of the porch.
"How do you like?" asked Lino.
"It's the most wonderful house in the world."
I re-entered through the kitchen door. As I moved from room to room, images, colours, and designs flew through my brain. "This will be the dining room. Is that a sink?" By the window was a concrete depression with a drain hole. Bending to peek through the hole, I caught the eye of a chicken pecking in the yard. "Oh! . . . How cute." Water would have to be carried in from the well.
"Are there furniture stores in Mapusa, or must I go to Panjim?" I asked.
"No stores. I know a carpenter. He made your stairs. You want I send him to you?"
"No ready-made furniture?" I gazed around the room. "Hmm. Actually, it might be fun that way. I can design what I want. I'd like to have a long table here. Enough to seat twenty people. Low, so we'll be sitting on the floor, get fluffy cushions. . . . Hey, this will be great!"
As soon as I unloaded the taxi, I unpacked the most important item—the bhong. I smoked a few bowls of tobacco and smack, put on a new Singapore dress, grabbed the silk parasol I'd bought at a Bangkok market, and headed for the south end beach.
"Hi, Laura!" I waved to familiar faces.
Zigzagging through bronze bodies, I helloed my way to Amsterdam Dean and laid out a lungi. "I got a house," I said, overflowing with the joy of a homeowner.
"Yeah, where?"
"Just down there, behind Apolon's chai shop. It's two stories."
"Two stories near Apolon's? Isn't that a ruin?"
"It was. I had it fixed. Took a ten-year lease."
"A lease? How much are you paying?"
"Ten thousand rupees a year," I said proudly.
"TEN THOUSAND RUPEES! What? He’s ripping you off. You can’t let him get away with that!"
"It's a terrific house," I protested. "He made it the way I wanted."
"No place is worth ten thousand rupees. You'll give the Goans the idea they can change us anything they want. Watch, now everybody's rent will go up." Dean had been cleaning ashes from a chillum and, turning the chilum over, he pounded it forcefully. I felt misunderstood. "TEN THOUSAND RUPEES!" he exclaimed again, louder than before. "You'll ruin the beach."
"Wait till you see it," was all I could answer. Why didn't he applaud my building a mansion in a prime spot? Humph!! Did he expect me to settle for a shack behind the paddy field?
Then again, although the Goa Freaks were money-oriented, life in Goa was rather simple: no electricity, no running water. Would domestic extravagance change the ambiance? Well, so what? They'd called me Hippie Deluxe in Europe; now I'd be Freak Deluxe. A few comforts wouldn't destroy the pristineness. Besides, the Goa Freaks hired locals to fill their water vats, clean their houses, and do laundry. They'd already progressed beyond living like natives.
Ruin the beach; I'd show him ruin the beach. I would make: myself a castle. Let everybody's rent go up. The Goa Freaks could afford it.
Before returning home I ran an errand—scoring coke. This season I wouldn't wait to be offered some. I had plenty of money to buy my own. I could buy as much as I wanted, and I wanted a lot.
Junky Robert and Tish lived in a house up the rocks from the beach. I entered their door to find Tish on a mattress reading a book and Robertin the process of falling asleep. While the bottom half of Robert kneeled on the floor, the top half curled over, about to plunge head first into an open suitcase.
"Cosy little place you have here," I commented.
". . . to Bombay Brian's," said Junky Robert, waking suddenly and finishing the sentence he'd apparently started before he nodded off. "Oh, hi, Cleo."
"Did you find your letter?" asked Tish. "Joe has it for you in his back room."
Joe Banana now kept aside the mail of people he knew, putting the rest in the box on the porch. I felt honoured. An official Anjuna Beach resident. Tish supplied me with a gram of coke, and the three of us went to Gregory's restaurant for dinner.
Exhausted by the time I returned to the house, my vitality returned when I saw my roof peeping over the palms. My home! The coke perked me up more, and I
spent the night pushing boxes and planning what would go where. My very own house, made to order. Oh, this was going to be great.
The next day, I crossed the paddy field to the road where motorbikes and their Goan drivers waited for passengers. Unlike my male friends, Goans would obey me when I told them to drive slower. In Mapusa, I hired a taxi and, making numerous trips to the marketplace, filled it to overflowing. I needed twenty kerosene lamps to light all the rooms. Pillows, mattresses, bags and bowls—I had trouble matching the drab coloured items sold in Mapusa to the bright colours I envisioned for my interior decor.
"No, not grey," I said to a merchant. "I need orange. You don't have orange? No, no. That's a boring brown. I need orange. ORANGE!"
When I could spare time from art work, I went to a beach party. With the noisy generator up the cliff out of sound range, the band's electric guitars blasted from a wooden stage. Beneath them, eighty dancers stomped the sand in bare feet.
Beyond the dancers, hundreds of Freaks stood and mingled. Further back, groups sat around candles planted in the sand. Furthest away were the worm-like shapes signifying sleeping people in bags. Goa's Freak beaches extended north and south on either side of Anjuna, and the people who lived there came to our parties and spent the night. While some hardcore Goa Freaks preferred to five off Anjuna—usually on an isolated beach far away—most of the people from other beaches were transients, new to the scene.
My crowd sat near the band. I found myself a choice spot next to Dayid, Ashley, Barbara, and Max and offered my stash of coke.
"Did you and your aunt have a nice time in Sydney?" asked Barbara.
"Eek, would you believe the police searched our apartment?" I said. And I recounted the events that took place after I left Barbara in Australia. I loved the admiration the Goa Freaks showed for my successful brush with the law. "Close call, huh?" I said at the end. "Who's that?" I asked, pointing to someone in black and silver dancing around a tree.
"That's Petra," answered Dayid. "Haven't you taken cognizance of her in Kathmandu? She's resided there for years. I think this is her first peregrination to Goa, though."
"You should see her house in Nepal," said Ashley, holding, aloft a foot-long cigarette holder. "It’s decorated in black and silver, and she has a pet owl."
Petra joined us. She wore layers of black skirts in different lengths. From her neck, ears, wrists, and waist hung jingling silver ordainments. She had a deep voice with a German accent and spoke with sharp, dramatic emphasis, a remnant of her days touring Europe with the Living Theatre.
"HelLO, CHILdren of the sun god HuitziloPOCHtli," she said, spreading her arms like a priestess addressing a temple of followers. "This beach is MARvelous. I've never been a BEACH person, though. I like the MOUNtains."
I offered her a snoot of coke and felt thrilled to be part of these spectacular people.
"NEAL!" I shouted, spotting my old friend distributing acid to the crowd. I ran to kiss his cheek. "Where've you been?"
He giggled and shook his bangs. "What a story. Open your mouth and have a drop of this first." He held an acid-packed straw over my tongue and tapped. A drop fell.
"Mm, thanks. So, what happened?"
"I went to California and found out I was a father! I met this woman the year before. We were only together one night. Shortly after, I left the country."
"Meanwhile she had a baby?"
"Can you believe it?"
"Were you writing each other?"
"No, nothing like that. I never thought I'd see her again in my life." I laughed. "So now you've brought her here? The baby too?"
"Both of them."
"Oh Neal! Has this woman been to India before?"
"She's never been anywhere before."
I clapped my hands, giggling.
Later I met Eve, the mother of Neal's baby. Wavy long hair covered most of her face, with her half-concealed eyes looking spaced-out. "Neal's told me about you," she said in a soft voice—sickly soft, almost a whisper. It sounded controlled, like she had a scream she was trying not to let out.
"What do you think of Anjuna Beach?" I asked. Her one visible eye focused on me again. "Two weeks ago, I never guessed I'd see Neal again. Now here I am." She arched her back peculiarly and seemed to shift inward, focusing on a private thought. "Well, good luck." I said, thinking Neal had snared himself a bizarre one. Actually, I was almost sad that Neal had a woman and baby with him. He'd been a great friend to hang out with. I wondered if it would be the same with than around.
Soon, daylight crawled over the hill. As the stars faded, dawn energy had everyone up and dancing. Through the eye of my movie camera I watched them face skyward to dance with the sunrise. Here and there, a sleepy head surfaced from a worm shape to behold black night turn whitish blue. I filmed Paul on the stage singing a song he'd written, inspired by such an occasion: "Welcome in, come on welcome in, come on welcome in the dawn, welcome in the dawn . . ."
This had to be the best place on the planet.
Later that morning, I took a walk with Paul to his house on Joe Banana's hill behind Tish and Junky Robert's. He and Pan had been having problems lately, mostly over his use of smack. Pam was now pregnant and living elsewhere on Anjuna Beach.
"You must come see what I'm doing to the house," I said as we climbed his front steps. "I bought fifteen mattresses in different sizes. A tailor in Mapusa is sewing covers for them Poor man had a hard time measuring them while they were stuffed in the back seat of a taxi."
Paul began to chop coke and I pounced on a pen and paper I spotted.
"Let me show you what I'm doing in the dining room," I said. Lying on my stomach, I drew. "See, this is the table having made. I bought nine orange and nine yellow rugs to go under every side cushion." Paul stretched out next to me and placed the mirror on my drawing. I snorted a line and moved the mirror aside. "For the two ends, I have bigger carpets in the same colours."
"Yeah?" Paul peered at my scribbles. His body aligned the length of mine, one hand resting on my back.
"Every cushion will be different." I resumed drawing. His hand moved across my back and down my legs. "See, some will be striped this way, and some striped that way." When his arm could reach no further, it backed up, burrowing under my skirt.
"Two walls will be orange, two yellow . . ." He reached the top of my legs. I'd stopped wearing underwear months before. "Ummm . . . the shelves too, one yellow, next one, um, orange . . ." His fingers slid between my thighs and stroked the moist area there. He found my clitoris. ". . . napkins too, half orange half yellow . . ." He massaged in circles. ". . . Hmmm . . ." I opened my legs wider. "Ummm . . . orange . . ." His circles continued, and my hips moved to their rhythm. ". . . lots of orange, mmm . . ." The tip of a finger slipped inside me. "Mmm. . . uh, want to hear about the ninety saris I bought?" I asked.
"Tell me."
"Umm. . ." I rolled on my back keeping my legs apart He placed one of his legs between mine. His finger re-entered me, this time plunging deep. "MMMmm" I took hold of his hair. "Um. . . well, ninety saris, five yards of material each for the living room and the bedroom. . ." His finger thrust in and out. "Umm. . . I had the carpenter drape them. . . from. . . the ceiling to . . . create a . . . tent effect mmmmm."
Weeks flew by, marked only by the colour of paint I was currently using. I snorted enormous amounts of coke and, in coke furore, worked day and night on my fantasy house. Everything I'd ever dreamed of, I created in my new home. I made trips to Bombay for special things. While there, I also stopped at the safety deposit box at the Mercantile Bank Coke consumption nibbled hungrily at my money.
Neal visited often, and we'd turn each other on to smack and coke. He was a welcome break from the non-stop work on the house. The super-excessive energy of the coke spurred me to greater and greater detail and fanciness. Not a piece of furniture was one colour only. The low cost of Goan labour allowed me to hire an army of painters for pennies an hour. I indulged my every coke-inspired whim.
Neal listened patiently as I described my latest flights of creativity. CLICK, CLICK, SCRAPE, SQUEAK, SQUEAK went his razor blade on the glass block with the engraved lion. "This house is really coming along," he said during a visit, shaking his bangs and looking around.
"The upstairs is almost finished," I said. "I had linoleum laid on the floors. Red and white for the bedroom and blue and green for the boudoir."
"Boudoir? Uh-oh," he said, taking the glass block from my hand as I was about to snort a line. "Maybe you shouldn't do any more of this."
I laughed and grabbed it back. "Well, that's what I call it. Actually, I don't use the room for anything. It's just a place to walk through to get to the bedroom."
"And linoleum!" He smiled. "You're revolutionizing the beach. Where do you think you are? Beverly Hills?"
"But this is my home. I'm going to be here forever." I paused, gave him a pixie smile, and said, "Wait till you see my next project." Displaying papers covered with coked-out curlicued designs and intricate measurements, I explained, "I'm going to cut the kitchen in half and make a bathroom!" Neal slapped a hand to his forehead. "I've already designed it. See, look. Over here, I'm putting a flush toilet and a shower."
He shook his head. "A flush toilet? How can you do that?"
"They're building the septic tank now. And this little rectangle next to the toilet is a sink, a real enamel-type sink with faucets and a drain. I have it all figured out. . . Where's the other diagram? A tank on the roof will supply the water. It'll have to be lugged there from the well."
"You'll have the only flush toilet on the beach. Here." With a SQUEAK SQUEAK and a final CLICK, Neal passed me the block again. "Maybe this toot will inspire a sauna or a whirlpool bath. Who'll fill the tank?"
"The maid, though she doesn't know it yet, be glad to have a bathroom inside the house. You should've seen me the other night, coked-out and wired. I hadn't slept the night before—I'd been staining the wood of the staircase. Come to think of it, I don't think I slept the night before that either. Anyway, about 4 a.m. I took the pump-lamp outside to the toilet. Yippy, it was so bright in that tiny enclosure. Every bump on the wall formed shadows that swelled and contracted. Spooky! I couldn't wait to get out of there."