Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India
Page 40
"You don't really have to go today, do you?" asked my beautiful new friend. "Why don't you stay?"
"I can’t."
When the taxi came, he helped carry my bags to the dirt road. Bach ran in circles around my feet, crying. I told the driver to go ahead and that we'd meet him at the paved road. I Look Bach in my arms as I climbed on the back of the motorbike. He licked my face nervously.
The family at the Three Sisters' restaurant was still asleep when we pulled up.
They were expecting me, though, and opened quickly to my knock.
"Here he is," I said to the sister at the door. I didn't say goodbye to Bach as I handed him to her. How would I live without him?
Epilogue
1995
HOW TO BRIEFLY DESCRIBE the past fifteen years of my life? I returned to New York and entered a drug program called Daytop and became totally drug-free from that day to this one. Daytop taught me how to five in the straight world, sleeping and eating at regular hours and doing the necessary chores of daily life, which I hated. But without some basic tools of self-discipline, I couldn't have existed in this rule-governed, legal-minded, work-ethic-based culture. With enormous difficulty, I accepted the teachings and adapted—I had no choice.
Six months after I left Goa, I started college and discovered that learning was as stimulating as any psychotropic chemical I'd taken, and with the will-power Daytop demanded of me, I was capable of postponing immediate gratification in order to aim for long-range goals. I got a Bachelor's Degree, a Master's Degree, a Ph.D., and would have kept studying except the student loans ran out. For the doctoral dissertation I returned to Thailand for three years to do research, which became the basis of my first book, Patpong Sisters, published in 1994.
Some of the people mentioned in this story have since died: Narayan in the early '80s in a mysterious way similar to Neal, Alehandro last year in a car accident, and Joe Banana.
Other Updates:
Norwegian Monica moved to Ibiza with only occasional visits to Goa. She had a daughter and gave up drugs. She is currently living in Norway. When Mental got out of jail he returned to Goa. He ended up back in jail for a while, then returned to Goa again.
Serge is the same, travelling the world and acquiring new adventures. He drops in on my life every now and then, once in Thailand where he ruined my relationship with a Thai boyfriend—but that's another story.
Barbara returned to New York and opened a boutique.
Junky Robert and Tish broke up soon after I left India, and Tish got together with John, Applecroc, for a while, during which time Robert took the Baby away from Tish. Robert later spent two years in jail in the United States but; then became a respectable drug-free citizen, working in the garment industry. He's held custody of his daughter and is now married with two more children.
No one has heard from Dayid or Ashley.
No one has heard anything about Eve and Ha.
Marco was seen in Goa a few years ago, desperately seeking a copy of my movie of his marriage to Gigi.
Trumpet Steve now owns a successful concert-promotion agency in Florida, booking live entertainment all over the world. His son Anjuna grew into a conservative young man with short hair who refuses to be called Anjuna, and who just enlisted in the United States police academy.
Richard is doing great, as always, and is a long-term resident of Bangkok and a dose friend.
Paul, Jerry Schultz, and Eight-Finger Eddy can still be found on Anjuna Beach during the popular winter seasons.
Bach—I don't know. Leaving him was too painful for me to ask anyone if they've seen him, but I still have the ear from his elephant.
I missed Goa terribly for years after I left. One night in a New York City parking lot, I Looked up and saw a full moon. I mourned the full moon parties of the home I'd lost and hated the asphalt and concrete beneath my feet. I hated it and hated New York and hated everything in my life that wasn't India.
Today I've settled into a new home, a cyber home on the internet. Though I've been known for a while on CompuServe's CB under the name "Goa," I just this year discovered the phenomenon of MOO. Since returning to America, I've been enraptured by computers; and as a graduate student I worked part-time teaching computer programming. What I've now found on the MOO is a place where I can program fantasy things and meet fellow internet junkies, each of us interacting with one another's creations. I log on to the MOO many times a day and join the hundreds of people worldwide who are also logged on and who make up my cyber community.
On Chiba MOO, I've created a space called Anjuna Beach. I describe its sea and palm trees and have programmed robots named Monica, Mental, Dayid, and Ashley, who, every sixty seconds utter sentences like "Please pass the mirror." I've also programmed an object called Neal that dispenses LSD if you give it the right command.
While the MOO dazzles me with its futuristic technology, it also provides me with an identity group and allows me to incorporate the past into this innovative MOO present.
When I log off, my cyber body remains in my cyber "home"—Anjuna Beach, Goa.
About the Author
CLEO ODZER grew up in New York and, after graduating from high school, travelled throughout Europe and the Middle East before settling in Goa, India, in 1975. She returned to the United Stales in 1980, where she earned a PhD in anthropology; her dissertation on prostitution in Thailand was the basis for her first book, Patpong Sisters An American Woman's View of the Bangkok Sex World (1994). Odzer lives in New York, where she works for Daytop, a drug rehabilitation organization. She is working on a new book about her adventures on the MOO, a programming society on the Internet.
Cover design by Monica Elias
Printed in USA