by Rob Binkley
It was cleansing after all the damage we had done to ourselves. It was nice listening to the waves break while doing my book work on the beach. Of course, the second I finished my course, Brian, John, and I went out and polluted ourselves all over again. (A few years later, I heard John died while diving. This was discomforting news since he taught me everything I knew about dive safety.)
The next day Brian said he was ready to get moving. We hadn’t done much in Sebang, and Brian was bored. “At least we dried out,” I said.
“Dude, we got hammered last night. How long do you really think it can last?”
We took another Jeepney across the island to Roxas. The ride was a lot of fun. We rode through green valleys full of palm trees, waterfalls, and wildlife, and got to sit on top of the jeep and feel the open air in our faces like a couple of dogs without a worry in the world. Brian looked as happy as he had drumming in the Australian jungle. “We’re gonna live forever!” he shouted.
We arrived in Roxas and didn’t bother getting a room. We were so blissed out on nature we just spent the night on the pier and waited for the banca, which is a canoe-type boat that would take us on a six-hour passage to the small island of Boracay, located in the western Visayas region of the PI.
The Visayas was ground zero to our Utopian aspirations. It’s where all the beautiful little islands were that I loved as a child. Boracay has become a tourist mecca so it’s not the same if you visit now, but when I was young it was paradise—an amazing sight to behold.
We took in the beautiful white sandy beaches and tropical jungle backdrop. Turquoise blue waters surrounded the island, and dolphins swam with us off our bow. Maybe this was the utopia I’d been looking for. Brian was thinking the same thing.
“Is this paradise?”
I smiled. “We may never go home, my friend.”
I’d been searching the world for Utopia and, to my surprise, my travels had led me back to where my wanderlust began. “My journey has come full circle,” I said breathing in the clean air. “Let’s stay awhile.”
We checked in at the Tin Tin hotel at the end of the touristy section of the island called White Beach. We met a lot of cool people the first night out. We drank too much, but that was to be expected.
On our scenic walk home from the bar, my dream of Utopia began to fissure. Deranged dogs were barking everywhere. “Did someone spike our Red Horse?”
Around every corner there were black dogs threatening to attack. Was this another nightmare? Was Jack lurking around the next corner? The black dogs appeared on every sand road we walked down.
“This is not good.” Brian said as we confronted a gang of slobbering dogs glaring at us through a chain metal fence.
“It’s a pack of Cujos,” I said. They appeared to be a mix of pit bull and rottweiler.
“Are they from the Rat-O-Dome?” Brian had forgotten where we were.
“No … These are the hounds of hell.”
Brian gulped. “I thought we were supposed to be in heaven?”
We picked up our pace. But the dogs kept stalking us from behind a long high fence.
“Thank God for that fence,” Brian said.
We hurried around the next corner; they kept following us. They were hungry and pissed off.
Then our luck ran out. The fence suddenly ended and there was nothing between the barking beasts and us but air. Even the dogs seemed surprised; they stopped barking to sniff the end of the fence like they couldn’t believe their luck.
“Where’d the fence go?” Brian was sobering up quickly.
“No sudden movements,” I whispered.
The dogs set their yellow eyes on us. I could see drool dripping from their mouths. Brian and I were fresh meat (again) on an island full of hungry natives. But these weren’t go-go dancers licking their chops.
“I knew we shoulda got rabies shots,” Brian said. “Run!”
We took off. The dogs gave chase in a full ravenous sprint. We scaled a rickety wooden fence and landed in the backyard of an abandoned shack. We were safe momentarily. Brian, lungs wheezing, watched in terror as the fifteen dogs banged their bodies against the fence like battering rams. “Cujo’s hungry and that fence is rotten!” he yelled over their barks. “It’s gonna go down!”
“This isn’t heaven, this sucks!” I yelled. “What now??”
We were about to jump the fence and run for our lives when out of the dark a small puppy emerged from the backyard. The pup was trying to bark like his brothers on the other side of the fence.
“It’s a puppy … it’s a baby panda!” Brian yelled over the barks.
The pup did have the markings of a panda; the little fella couldn’t be more than a few weeks old. Brian picked it up and held it up to the moonlight; it looked like it was starving.
Brian was losing his mind. “Let’s throw Panda over the fence, sacrifice it to the pack, then make a run for it!”
“What are you, nuts?! We’re bringing him with us!”
“You carry it then! That fence is coming down!”
Two seconds later the rotting fence collapsed and the pack of dogs came charging in. I scooped up Panda and we ran the other way, leaping over the fence on the other side of the yard like two jackrabbits.
We ran like lightning down a sandy road, past an old drunk who was staggering the other way. The drunk just looked at us two Americans who were carrying a baby panda like a football while zigzagging down the road with fifteen feral dogs snapping at our heels.
I never understood why the dogs didn’t go for the old man.
The good news: When we got back to the hotel, the trauma and long run home had sobered us up. We slammed the door and laughed like idiots. It took a minute for us to hear the baby barking sounds from inside my shirt.
“Oh … I forgot we had this little guy.” I pulled him out of my shirt.
“Congratulations. It’s a boy.” Brian collapsed on his bed.
The first night Panda slept with me on my chest. He peed cute little puddles all over the bed and gave me a horrendous case of fleas, but I didn’t care. I was in love, maybe for the first time in my life, which was a frightening notion to ponder while I drifted off to sleep.
The next day we woke to the sound of Panda barking. Since we had fed him nothing but beef jerky, we went looking for some real food. We paraded him around White Beach. He was so cute; everyone who saw him immediately wanted him.
“This must be how proud parents feel,” Brian said.
We went searching for dog food but there was none on the island. Apparently the natives don’t feed their dogs—and sometimes even eat them.
“This philosophy must be why dogs are so angry here,” Brian said.
We found Panda some milk and raw shrimp, which he ate like the ravenous mongrel he was. Then we took him down to the vet and got him some flea medication and lathered him up. All clean and pest free, he was even cuter. A fuzzy little baby bear. We took him to the beach to frolic.
Maybe this was heaven after all.
A week later, we were two happy expats-in-training, wallowing in our newfound paradise. Brian and I had seamlessly slipped into the idyllic life of the beach bum. All was right in the world.
I spent the days playing with Panda, reading, and hanging out with the locals. Panda was one happy dog, and all the girls walking up and down the beach loved him. I spent many afternoons scuba diving. I finally saw my first shark, which was unnerving until I realized it was a white tip reef shark that couldn’t care less about humans.
Panda had become the hotel mascot. Since we were still staying at the Tin Tin hotel, whenever the owners were around, I called him “Tin Tin” to grease the wheels a bit. It worked; they didn’t evict him or us. They loved the little furball like everyone else, even though they’d probably prefer to broil him over an open flame.
Panda learned how to swim and loved going in the ocean with me, which we did every day as part of his flea bath. I was happy as a child again teaching him how to
swim. I’d throw him into the surf then help him navigate all the waves. After a while he was doggie-paddling like a pro.
“Doesn’t get any better than this,” I said to Brian one night while Panda was sleeping in my lap.
“You said it,” Brian said. “Forget California, I’m never leaving.”
One day we were wandering the beach and finally ran into some young female tourists. I had actually forgotten Boracay had an international airport nearby on a neighboring island. It had been a long time since we’d seen any cute girls that were not go-go dancers.
“I’m feeling a stirring in my … you know,” Brian said.
“Puppies are the best wingmen in the world,” I said, then let Panda loose in the new girls’ general direction. Of course, he led them directly to us.
“What a chick magnet,” Brian said while scratching Panda’s ears.
“Welcome to paradise, ladies,” I said in my coolest voice. “I see you met our little friend here. You new in town?”
Panda helped us get to know the girls roaming the beach. We made plans to go out with them that night. My date for the evening, a Canadian from Toronto named Mandy, was all jacked up to go to the local party bar called Coco Mango’s Place and do the “Cocomango Dare” which always spelled trouble for the uninitiated.
Brian and I explained. “We’ve already lost many brain cells at both of Coco Mango’s locations,” I said. “We barely remember the one in Byron Bay. They nearly killed Brian by overserving him until he passed out on a homeless aboriginal tribesman.”
Mandy laughed at our stupid banter, “God, I miss American men! You guys are freakin’ awesome!” She was a fun bunny ready to rampage. “I’m stoked to lose my brain! Let’s go!”
“Shouldn’t we eat dinner first?” I asked, trying to be a good guy.
“It may make the stomach pump less painful,” Brian chimed in.
“Eff food—I’m thirsty!” Mandy replied, which made the girls cheer. For the first time in paradise, we had run into a fun hurricane ready to hit shore.
I looked at Brian, who whispered, “Screw our sobriety. That’s the sorority girl’s mating call.”
“All right, if you say so. See you girls in the emergency room!” I said and off we went, willingly swept up into their high Canadian tide.
The five of us sidled up to Coco Mango’s open-air bar at sunset. Coco Mango’s claim to infamy was it dared people to slam fifteen different shots in one hour. If you do it and don’t die of alcohol poisoning, you get a free T-shirt and your name engraved on a plaque. Brian informed the girls that your country of residence also gets one more notch added to its total on the “World Wall,” then pointed out the United States only had 246 people who had done “The Dare,” which was only good enough to get us to fourth place.
Brian looked at me. “Dude … do it for your country.” So we did.
“It’s a drink-off!” I yelled. “Canada versus the United States—may the best alcoholic win!” They rang the bell and Mandy and I proceeded to knock back fifteen shots each while everyone at the bar cheered us on. She talked a good game but was clearly an amateur and no match for me since, at this point in our world drinking tour, I had the “tolerance of twelve Bukowskis.” Knowing my superpower, I was cocky during the contest, and I chased all fifteen shots with beer. All my alcoholic literary heroes would have been proud.
When the hour was up, both our names were engraved on the wall and Mandy was swaying like a palm tree. We celebrated our victory by dancing on the bar wearing our new T-shirts, then Mandy fell off the bar and it was clearly time to call it a night.
I left Brian and the other Canadian girls at the bar to help Mandy back to her hotel. When we got back to her room, we both passed out and woke up in extremely rough shape the next morning.
Good times in paradise? I was beginning to have serious doubts.
The downward spiral continued the following night when Brian and I made the foolish decision to return to Coco Mango’s without the Canadian girls, who were smartly holed up in their hotel recovering from last night’s near-death experience.
On night two, there were no eligible bachelorettes around so we hung out with Sheila, our first transsexual of the trip. The Filipinos call them backlas, but Sheila said they call each other “ladyboys.” We spent the night dancing with our new friend and had a blast. It seemed all the ladyboys we met on the trip were extremely good dancers; Sheila definitely was. She had us cutting a rug with no inhibitions, which was rare for us.
“If she doesn’t give a hot damn then why should we?” I yelled while dancing like an idiot. “Let’s get Sheila drunk!”
“Red Horse it is!” Brian grinned and started ordering Sheila drinks, which turned the dance party into a class-five rager. By the end of the night, we had the whole bar rocking. The locals and travelers loved Sheila, who owned the room. At some point, a random girl tried to slap me; I have no idea why. I was drinking way too much to keep track of anything. Maybe it was Sheila’s girlfriend.
At two in the morning, we said goodbye to Sheila, and Brian and I walked back to our hotel along White Beach. It was a long, sobering walk, which got us talking about reality.
For the first time, we talked about leaving Boracay. Brian brought it up first, “I don’t want to burst your starry-eyed bubble, man. I love it here in ‘heaven’ and all, but even heaven on earth can get a bit … repetitive, ya know?”
“No, you’re right. We can’t stay here forever,” I said. “We’re too young to settle for Utopia anyway. Are we really gonna leave paradise?”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s no such thing as paradise, man. I think—and this is just my opinion—but we need to keep testing the limits of our insanity. That’s what this whole trip was about.”
“I was actually trying to have a personal renaissance on this trip.”
Brian laughed. “My personal renaissance involves insanity! It’s all about deconditioning ourselves, man.”
After a long talk, we agreed it was time to go. Were we crazy? Was Utopia too good for us? Or were we too bad for it?
A few days later, the time had come to leave Xanadu.
Like all children must, Panda had grown up. We rescued him from certain death in the island’s “dog Darwin system” and now he was eating like a little horse. Good thing for him he was cute. The day before we left, I asked the owners of the Tin Tin hotel if they would watch Panda, aka little Tin Tin.
“I can’t backpack around the world with a little Panda,” I said rubbing his ears. The husband and wife hotel owners conferred for a minute then agreed to take Tin Tin. “Thank you. You take good care of him now. I’ll be back to make sure he doesn’t become an entree on your hotel dinner menu.”
The owners laughed and said they’d come to like him for more than his cuteness. “Tin Tin run off roosters that crow all night, slows crowing down!” Once I heard that, I knew he would have a good home here.
“Feels good to leave Panda with a job,” I said to Brian, who wasn’t as emotional about giving Panda up for adoption.
He just yawned. “At least one of us does.”
We said our final goodbyes to Boracay and chartered a banca to nearby Panay Island and its international airport in Aklan. On the ride over, the reality of leaving the only place I could truly call “home” and “heaven on earth” at the same time started to sink in. I was more confused than ever about my place in the world. If we found paradise and it wasn’t good enough, then what was the purpose of this trip? What am I searching for? My naive quest for meaning the past few months felt like a fool’s errand. A child’s dream. The temptations we had found flourishing in the rest of the world sure looked a lot like America to me.
“People are the same all over,” Jack used to say every time I complained about having to spend summers in a third world country. “The surface doesn’t matter. You gotta dive deeper. In the end, the only thing that matters in this crazy world is what’s in here—Jack pointed to
my heart—“and in here”—Jack pointed to my head.
“I don’t understand,” I often said when he was pontificating.
“Here’s a puzzler for you: What kind of man are you going to become? You’re old enough now to be thinking about how you want to turn out. Don’t pattern yourself after me. Genetics are an excuse. We all have free will. Find yourself…. Have a goal. Then make a plan to be the best version of you. That, my son, is the meaning of life—and your homework assignment for the summer. Don’t look so worried. Your entire life only depends on it.”
Then he winked at me. That was Jack.
“Dad,” I said to the ocean skimming by, “if you can hear me … I’m still working on that homework assignment.”
Boracay was disappearing behind us. Brian could tell I was having a “Jack Moment.” I told him I needed a minute. “Sure.” Brian patted me on the back and went to the back of the boat to give me some time alone.
I never let myself admit it back in the States, but I missed my dad so much. But I wasn’t going to cry. I will … not … cry.
I found Brian sitting on the other side of the banca, staring out at the water, lost in his own thoughts. I put my arm around him. “You okay, man?”
“Never better. You okay?”
“Dad always got philosophical on his trimaran. Guess it’s in the blood.”
“How’re the nightmares? Haven’t noticed you having ‘em.”
“They’ve stopped, for now.”
“That’s a breakthrough. What do you think it means?”
“Does it have to mean something?”
“Yes. Think hard.”
“Well … we haven’t been drinking as much. Also, I think I finally understand why I have them. They’re my subconscious showing me what I don’t wanna see when I’m awake.”
“And what’s that?”
“My future self.”
“That is some excellent psychoanalysis.”
“I think Jack’s my ‘Ghost of Christmas Future’ … My dreams are a mirror showing me what I’m afraid I’ll become.”
“You don’t wanna be like Jack—even a little?” Brian was playing devil’s advocate. “He seemed like a cool dude.”