The Sun on My Head

by Geovani Martins

  We arrived and found Gabriel waiting for us. I felt happy knowing I’d spend the last few days of the year with him. Gabriel is my oldest friend, the person I’d shared all my very first secrets and discoveries with, and his company at a time of so much change was a relief. Some things really should stay the way they’ve always been. Right then, I needed that stability. Luckily, Nanda and Gabriel got along well with each other, which made it as easy for Gabriel to extend the invitation as it was for Nanda to accept it.

  The house belonged to Gabriel’s cousin Juan, an Argentinian. He was a happy, bumbling gringo, like too-blond gringos tend to be, at least when they’re on vacation. When he was quiet, not jabbering on in Spanish, he had a certain charm. Except, what he liked most of all was to gab and laugh as loudly as possible. He really loved fine weed and had brought several baggies of top-notch asparagus with him, such that in under two hours we’d each smoked three blunts.

  The house was modest and empty, a hidden nook in a beautiful setting, the perfect place to spend a few days just digging life. There were two bedrooms, a small bathroom, a kitchen that led to a living room, and a hammock hanging on the veranda. It was the first time I was in Arraial, and I couldn’t wait to explore every centimeter of it.

  Wanting to reciprocate their hospitality and fine bud, I pulled two squares of LSD out of my backpack. I asked Gabriel to grab me a pair of scissors so I could dole out the sugar cubes. When he saw what was happening, Juan jumped up all agitated, yelling in Spanish “No, no, no.” He ran his hands over his head, spitting out words in sticky-tongued Spanish, and turned shrimp red. I was disturbed by what I saw. I looked over at Nanda, who also seemed confused. Was Juan one of those potheads who couldn’t stomach other drugs, not even psychedelics?

  Gabriel, on his way back with the scissors, burst into a deep, forceful chuckle when he realized what was going on. The weed we were smoking was far superior to what we were used to buying in the favelas that were easily accessed from Fundão; I say this to justify how mental I was, everything unfolding before me in slow motion.

  Juan’s voice echoed inside me, along with Gabriel’s laughter and Nanda’s discomfort. Nervous and embarrassed, I felt like a real space cadet for wanting to drop acid at two in the afternoon, and for no other reason than our hangout.

  What was Nanda thinking about everything going on? Did she see me as just another druggie wannabe artist, like so many others at our school? Gabriel’s laughter seemed to go on forever, scattering to every corner of the kitchen and the living room, bouncing off windows and walls, buzzing back louder each time. When things finally quieted down, he told me that Juan was just begging me to please for the love of God save the sugar for New Year’s Eve, that he didn’t know where to get any around there and didn’t want to miss the chance to trip balls as the fireworks went off. I was deeply relieved. I felt my breath returning to its usual rhythm. It’s possible it all lasted no more than a minute, yet to me it had felt like hours. That bud really was a sucker punch to the brain.

  I asked Gabriel to tell our host not to worry, that we’d be well and truly blasted as the ball dropped, high on good old bike 100. As Gabriel translated my message, I grabbed the two sheets of acid I had with me from my bag, primed to give us the mind melt we deserved, along with some cash to help out with any expenses. It felt good to not be a space cadet anymore, but a knight in shining armor.

  The gringo got all excited. He looked adoringly at the colorful squares. It was a strange and beautiful sight. Gabriel let out another one of his thundering belly laughs, but this time it didn’t frighten me or get me down; instead, I was infected by the powerful energy of his laughter, and joined in with my own chortle. Following suit, Nanda surrendered to the moment in a burst of high-pitched and syncopated laughter. After a long moment studying the tabs, Juan finally joined us. It was a happy and frantic sound. We were victims of a genuine Joker attack.

  I cut the two squares into four (nearly) equal parts, and we each got (practically) half. We dropped the tab and could barely taste the bitterness in most acids. Nanda and I knew that, though flavorless, the stuff was fierce. We’d taken a quarter in my dorm room once and gotten mucho locos, babbling on about our childhoods, promising to be as honest to each other as we could, to not hide anything from one another, not even our most embarrassing or humiliating experiences. Then, I’d sketched her lying across the pillows resting against the windowed wall.

  After about twenty minutes, our euphoria passed. We made a couple of passing remarks about psychedelic experiences, trying to explain one trip or another, but it’s impossible to describe what happens after the acid drops, and soon we fell quiet, waiting for the next high to hit, enjoying the deep chill of the weed.

  I already felt like blazing up again. Aside from the smooth taste of fresh bud, I was sure a blunt would help the psychedelic high ride in once and for all. I was too embarrassed to ask the gringo to skin up, and even more so to roll one myself with the crushed weed I was carrying in my pack.

  I decided to light a cigarette. In that moment, I sensed it might inspire Juan to generate more smoke (we get all kinds of notions when we’re stoned). Between one drag and the next I began to notice Juan was uneasy. He even stuffed his hands in his pockets, like he was looking for something. Since he couldn’t find it, he started wandering around the living room, searching. I couldn’t keep a small smile from creeping onto my face, thinking he was after some weed, indirectly influenced by the blue haze filling the living room, or telepathically compelled by the desire that had taken hold of me.

  This illusion crumbled once I realized Juan had found what he was looking for, an enormous capsule filled with cocaine. Gabriel went bug-eyed and let out a burst of laughter.

  As he set up the cola, the gringo offered us some and laughed. His eyes glimmered over the platter. It was almost depressing, and yet the task filled him with such happiness and satisfaction that he remained dignified as he carried out his function. Gabriel had never done coke. He takes it easy when it comes to drugs. Besides weed, he only drops acid and huffs lança-perfume (on special occasions). He asked for a bit to dust his tongue so he could feel his mouth go numb. Then he just stood there, curiously watching his cousin’s passionate work.

  Juan offered me a line, which I turned down: “No, no, muchas gracias.” He immediately offered some to Nanda, his tone utterly gentle. I don’t know how things work in Argentina, but, in these parts, we usually offer drugs (especially the hardest) only to those who we know use them regularly. I glanced at Nanda, trying not to communicate anything with my eyes, trying not to weigh in on her decision in any way. She looked briefly in my direction before accepting the line from the gringo.

  My heart raced, I wasn’t sure exactly why. I almost changed my mind and accepted a line of the white powder, but it was too late. I didn’t want to seem like I was so easily influenced by Nanda. As I watched them sharing the straw they’d fashioned out of a two-real note, I felt jealous.

  After that, we headed to the beach. Juan and Gabriel led the crew, talking animatedly in Spanish. I walked beside Nanda, locking into the rhythm of her steps. The high was starting to hit, and it rode in heavy. I was fascinated by the shape of my fingers, and admired them, thinking: “Whoa, we’re just perfect, unique. Isn’t it amazing to be alive, here, sending off another year of our life in this place full of trees and sky? The houses on this street are so beautiful! People’s lives seem so chill here!”

  Now and then Nanda sniffled. She wasn’t used to doing coke. Honestly, I was kind of scared she’d get too blasted from mixing acid with powder, that she’d space and start getting paranoid about everything. Her expression was serious, impenetrable. I felt the need to know what was going on in her head.

  “What do you think of Juan?” I asked.

  “He’s so wild. He doesn’t understand a thing we’re saying, and yet he goes on and on, laughing, playing. He’s super intense. I think he really believes he’s happy, and that’s why he can experie
nce his happiness so intensely.”

  “When you say ‘so wild’ do you mean ‘so high’?” I continued.

  “Everybody goes a bit overboard this time of year. Some with stress, others with love, anxiety, guilt, their quest for freedom. The truth is we become really vulnerable to ourselves. Juan’s just surrendering to it, riding the waves of the weekend high. ’Cause this time of year always feels like the end of the world. And the end of the world either makes us want to live life till everything goes up in smoke and all we’re left with is an empty silence, or it leaves us feeling disappointed. ’Cause we know that in the end we’re just incomplete. That’s why, when December comes along, we’ve got to stay strong.”

  “You think he’s gay?”

  “You’re hilarious, Rafa. The gringo’s really caught your eye all of a sudden, huh? Look, you might not know this about me yet, but I can get pretty jealous.”

  I was filled with an immense happiness when we reached the beach. I immediately dashed toward that crystalline water, which gathered in the distance into an infinite blue. Gabriel followed. Together, we dove into the smooth surf, laughing and swimming side by side. The water was chilly and the sun bright and hot, further proof that the universe was in total harmony.

  Nanda sat on the beach, on her Ganesha sarong. Next thing I knew, she was already in her bikini. I was so mesmerized by the ocean that I didn’t even think to keep tabs on Juan, to see if his gringo eyes lingered too long on Nanda’s curves as she took off her clothes. I was expecting a glance at least, even from Gabriel. It’s impossible not to watch the miraculous sight of a woman removing her clothing. I just wanted to check for any signs of a malicious glimmer in the gringo’s eyes.

  I looked out at both of them on the beach. Juan was tripping, watching the sky, nearly motionless, the sun hitting his face. Nanda’s eyes were fixed on the ocean. Serious. She seemed to be contemplating the sheer existence of all that water and whatever incredible coincidence had allowed our atoms to come together in that place, in that exact moment. Sometimes Nanda thinks too much. Gabriel swam from side to side, diving, yelling. I’ve always found it beautiful to watch his body in the throes of freedom.

  After a while, the gringo walked to the edge of the beach and looked out at the calm waves crashing before his eyes. Nanda was right, he always did everything with absolute devotion, whether laughing, smoking weed, snorting coke, watching waves. She was soaking up the sun, lying back, her body loose over the white sand. The gringo came running toward us in the water, laughing.

  I became fascinated by all the many thousands of bluish hues that could fit into a single afternoon. I let my body float on the water, my eyes closed, felt the bright light and heat touching down on me, and thought: “Even though I’ve never been on this beach, I feel so close to this water, as if we’d met many, many times before on all the beaches I’ve ever visited, even rivers. We’re amigos. That’s why the water on this beach, which doesn’t know me, really, is so fully accepting of my body and lets me be in harmony with all the other creatures of this aquatic universe.”

  When Nanda finally decided to join us in the water, it was a huge party. The four of us mucking about, laughing, competing to see who could dive the farthest to collect sand. Right then, we were all totally tripping and happy, buzzing from the joy of being able to spend that moment together. Even my jealousy and paranoia eased up.

  It felt like we’d spent all summer long on that beach, so we said goodbye to that place, wanting to explore the rest of Arraial. It all happened really fast, I can’t remember exactly when the decision was made. It was only as we neared the next beach that I started understanding what was going on. I was thrilled. That was exactly what I needed: to explore so I could transcend.

  We walked for hours and hours that day and saw some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I was exhausted, my legs begging for rest. And yet I had within me a certain quasi-hallucinatory disposition that I was sure could carry me far beyond my usual limitations. I wondered how my travel companions were doing. I mean, what were they experiencing, deep inside them, in that very moment? It’d been a while since we’d communicated with words, instead using brief commands and bursts of laughter. Joker attacks that lasted an average of five minutes, sometimes longer, and gave us terrible and delicious bellyaches. We were blessed by a mysterious energy, I could practically touch it. Until Gabriel interrupted our moment of ecstasy by warning: “We should start heading back, it’s getting dark.”

  We decided to walk back along the sand dunes. Juan assured us that, if we were fast, we could reach the town center before nightfall. I loved that idea. Walking over those white sand hills was amazing. How long had all those grains of sand been heaped up like that? What was the ancient form of each of those little granules, dispersed around the world, before they’d experienced their great transformation? How many rocks, crumbled by time, were needed to birth a dune?

  It was in the middle of this thought that I realized we were being followed. I’d seen them before, two brawny blond dudes who looked like playboy gym rats, the “no pain, no gain” sort. They were a fair distance behind us. At first, I’d decided they were just on a walk in the area, but I soon noticed that the rhythm of their steps was synching with ours, that they were taking the same paths we were.

  I didn’t want to worry the others until I was sure there’d be trouble. Didn’t want to be pegged as the paranoid crackpot who gets the crew all worked up. But the feeling of being followed kept growing inside me, suffocating me. Something really weird was about to go down, I felt this with the greatest certainty of all time. Positive we were gonna be jumped, I sounded the alert. Nanda and Gabriel were tickled when they saw the looks of the two miscreants: blond, well-fed. There was no avoiding it, I’d been pegged as the Crew Crackpot.

  I dropped a fuck this noise and started running, pulling Nanda with me by the arm. She ran beside me yelling and laughing: “Are you bouldered, Rafa, baby, are you seeing stuff?” Juan and Gabriel stopped to watch the scene, but soon they were legging it too: the two dudes had stepped toward us. They were, in fact, members of the wellness generation and ran at a speed far superior to ours, on top of which they seemed familiar with the area, taking shortcuts that brought them closer and closer to us.

  First, they reached Gabriel, who rolled in the sand with the mugger. Nanda ran beside me, terrified. In a (nearly) insignificant fraction of a second, we split. She took a path down, while mine led me up the sand dunes.

  I had no clue where the gringo was, which would’ve been good to know, seeing as he was the strongest of us (physically), a key player in the scuffle that seemed to be taking shape.

  The other guy was closing in on Nanda. This just couldn’t be happening, not then, not like that. I swung toward the miscreant while instantly calculating the time and velocity needed for my body to slam against his.

  It was an incredible sight, my shoulder colliding against the rival body. Thanks to the hatred I felt, my skinny and malnourished frame managed to level that lout. We fell and rolled in the sand. I felt like a quarterback knocking down his opponent in the most important game of his life. As fists started flying, Juan sprang up out of nowhere and ran off with Nanda.

  I didn’t know what to do in that fight, I was too confused to come up with any combat strategy, and just kept flailing and contorting to keep from being immobilized. When I finally managed to move away from my opponent and think even the slightest thought about the situation, I yelled:

  “We’ve got nothing to lose, buddy, we were just digging the beach.”

  My rival responded by yelling to the other guy, who was grappling with Gabriel:

  “Ay, ay, he’s no gringo, man, this guy’s no gringo!”

  So Gabriel rose up, yelling:

  “We’re locals, man! You gotta respect locals. Shit!”

  And so the gringo robbers split. Just like that. I know it seems like a lie, but that’s life. Incredible. The worst of it all, though, was experiencing it
with Nanda. What had happened would certainly reverberate throughout our relationship. But how?

  We followed the path Nanda and Juan had taken. We weren’t familiar with the area and felt totally disoriented, which made it impossible to plan any next steps. Then, we hit an enormous swamp. Night began falling over everything, and in a matter of minutes we couldn’t see farther than a few centimeters. We walked carefully, calling out Nanda’s and Juan’s names. Nothing. Soon, I felt like crying. And then cried. Thankfully, the lack of light kept Gabriel from noticing. I couldn’t make any coherent sense of the events, and just felt a heavy weight on my shoulders. It was the worst trip I could’ve ever imagined.

  We reached the end of the swamp, the town center just beyond it. The streets were deserted. No sign of Nanda or Juan. My heart beat frantically, hard and heavy at the thought of all the many tragedies that could’ve passed. Until Nanda called out my name from inside the pharmacy and I was finally able to breathe. Juan was with her. She’d gone into the shop to buy a vial of merthiolate, her legs covered in blood.

  “We ran across the swamp before it got completely dark. I tripped through all the thorny bushes in the world. I could feel them slicing up my skin, making me bleed, but I wasn’t in pain. At the time, I thought it was because my blood was hot, that I was frantic, scared as hell and, because of that, detached from my senses. It’s so strange to be hurt, to be hurt and not feel any pain,” Nanda said.

  Juan was the same as when we’d met him earlier that day: happy and bumbling. He looked like he hadn’t understood any of what had happened, and that he didn’t want to understand. I just wanted to fall into bed and sleep. When I woke up, there’d only be two days left until that epic year’s end.