Vivid dreams slowly gave way to consciousness, vanishing from my perception like sifted flour, leaving only a residue of disconnected, fleeting images. A giant wave, a floating garden, tinkling laughter like elven wind chimes... my sluggish brain quit its feeble attempts to link them into any sort of logical narrative as I opened my eyes and took in my dismal room. A ray of sunlight cut through the dust, illuminating my crumpled magician's coat where I'd unthinkingly discarded it in my delirium the night before. Actual warmth penetrated the atmosphere; in my slumber I'd even tossed aside one of my blankets. No pain remained in my stomach, and through the night the bleeding, opened callouses on my rectum had sealed. It was like the day before had been a mere nightmare, a feverish hallucination, or simply hadn't occurred. Except, of course, for the yellow, potato-shaped stain still ruining the white sheets of my second mattress.
I rolled over, avoiding it, and sat up. I felt remarkably fit. Okay. Let's pack up and move to Old Manali, shall we? Get the fuck out of here before they realize what I did to their bed. I threw my few possessions into my oversized rucksack, collected my passport from the front desk, and split as quickly as possible, my jaunty and hurried pace down the road a striking juxtaposition to the anus-clenched zombie-walk of yesterday.
Too lazy to attempt the trek with my huge bag and, despite today's well-being, still a little cautious about being caught shit-pants-ed in the middle of the street again, I got blatantly ripped-off by a rickshaw-wallah for the three kilometers instead. I regretted nothing. The sun illuminated the fertile greenery all around; kingly pine trees, reminiscent of Californian redwoods in their immensity, sprouted from the mountains like dozens of giant, prickly-bearded chins; groups of colorful hippies strolled amiably among Indians, Nepalese, Tibetans, dogs and cows of all ages; above, peeking over the pines like a mischievous four-year old playing Hide-And-Seek, the classic white-glazed Himalayan-postcard summits were just visible, wisps of sentimental clouds drifting picturesquely among them as if aware of their legendary majesty.
We crossed the river. Strewn hither and thither along the banks and boulders were assorted ropes strung across the tumbling current, with lines of honeymooning Indian couples waiting their turn to harness up, cross halfway, and be bounced invigoratingly up and down by the grinning zipline-wallahs. Whoops of exhilaration from the girls echoed amongst the steady roar of the river and occasional horns from cars and buzzings from rickshaws. The buildings of Old Manali, mostly guest houses and restaurants with names like "Chill Out", "Drifter's Inn", and "Hotel Relax" sat above, dotted alongside the twisting mountain road, with plenty of trees and grassy paths extending between them.
I watched carefully for the sign to Rainbow Guest House, the one touted at me from the Nepalese guy the day before, and located it about halfway up through the town, whereupon I directed the rickshaw-wallah to stop. As if waiting for me, the guest-house's owner stood at the driveway entrance, arms folded across his grey woolen sweater-vest. A look of distaste lay over his face in a scowl, though a twitch at his lips made me unsure whether it was in jest or not. He unfolded his arms with some theatrics and shook a finger in my direction.
"You said you would come yesterday, one hour! I wait for you two, three hours." He squinted and raised his eyebrows at the same time; they vanished beneath his colorful, brimless hat, sending both a look of exasperation and good humor. A good trick, that.
I'm going to call him Cappy.
"Yeah, dude, sorry. My stomach erupted like Vesuvius yesterday and I was doubled over in pain pretty much all night. I wanted to come, but I was afraid of painting the streets yellow. It sucked. I can show you the laundry I need to do if you don't believe me." I heard a stifled laugh from the rickshaw-wallah behind me as I untangled my bag and stepped free. He gunned his motor and took off in what I would've thought was an impossible U-turn, killing the engine almost immediately to coast back downhill to New Manali.
Cappy's expression didn't change. "You said one hour. I wait three hours. Now I give room to someone else. Full book. Why you not coming yesterday?"
"Well, like I said, I guess I was trying to mimic the geyser at Yellowstone and I shat my fucking pants. Bed too. You're lucky I wasn't staying at your guest house. Jeez, I'm sorry, fuck, I'll find somewhere else." I began to leave. All at once, Cappy's scowl melted into the smile that had almost been there the whole time, and his laugh echoed down the street, causing a pack of feral dogs to glance over in minute curiosity and a little Tibetan girl to slip on a cow patty.
"Ok, ok my friend, ok," he said, still laughing, "tonight you stay at my friend house. Nice place! The Isreali, he will leaves in three, five days, no problem. Then you come to my place. OK? No problem. Come with me." He grabbed my arm and led me across the street and up a delightful little uneven road, shadowed by a great green cliff cut with a little stone path. For the first time, I noticed that every single patch of weeds covering the landscape contained at least one, usually many more cannabis plants, growing cheerfully and plentifully. They seemed to be amicable neighbors with stinging nettles.
We went up the hill and I checked in to his 'friend's' place. As soon as I'd lay down my bag, Cappy leaned in close and whispered to me, "Don't tell that you move to my place after. OK? Just you and me between." Yeah, yeah, I know. I rolled my eyes at him, smiled, and nodded. He grinned back and clapped a strong palm on my shoulder. "What you think, my friend, you like something? Hash?"
I couldn't avoid a rueful smile as I admitted that, actually, the events of yesterday had overshadowed my intended drug-purchase. Without skipping a beat, he reached into his pocket and produced with a flourish a plastic bag with a hard little black blob, which he immediately broke open to display the faint green tinge inside. He held a lighter to it for a second or two and held the smoking ornament to my nose. I shook my head.
"Naw, sorry, dude, I don't have a sense of smell. Never have. I lost it when I was way little, after banging my head too many times." I reached out and took the morsel. "Looks nice, though."
It did indeed. Much less crumbly, much more compact, and with a creamier, greener inside than anything I'd seen up until this point on my travels. It appeared Manali lived up to its reputation. "How much?" I asked.
"Two thousand," he said confidently. I whistled.
"Damn, dude, I haven't paid more than like eight hundred since I got to India!" I lied. I'd been flagrantly ripped off when I first hit Varanasi. That motherfucker charged me two grand also. And I'd later been informed it was obviously cut with cow manure. I mean, really. At least cut it with incense, like everyone else does, which still fucks your throat up like you'd gargled razor blades but at least you're not literally smoking shit.
"My friend, this very good quality," said Cappy. I studied it like I was a pro, and though in truth I was still very amateur at judging hashish quality, it was easily better than anything I'd yet procured and ingested. But still, Jesus, two thousand?!
Rupees, of course. Not dollars. Jesus. Forty bucks, people. For ten grams, or a tollah in, ahem, street lingo in India. Yeah. I'm a gangsta. And, being a gangsta, there ain't no fuckin' way I'm going to pay forty fucking bucks for ten grams of some of the best hash in the world. Do I look like a chump?
"OK," I said. I pulled the two grand from my pocket and exchanged it with Cappy, who grinned, saluted me, and sauntered off. I shut the door.
Shit.
Why'd I do that?
Fucking twenty meters away there was probably cheaper hash for sale. I could probably ask at the damn jewelry shop and nab some cheaper shit. And probably better. Fuck.Stupid Hoku. Oh well. Forty bucks. Still cheaper than the States, and it's actual straight-up legendary Manali hash, like the dude in Varanasi had claimed with the cow-shit. Now I need some cigarettes, some papers, and a lighter. It hath beguth.
I got the munchies after a while. I was nicely baked and found myself wandering aimlessly. Almost everyone on the street nodded and smiled at me in passing, and a handful of people pursed their lips and arched their eyebrows in approval at my attire (I was currently clad in my curled, pointed shoes, a houndstooth bowtie, Diamond-patchwork Ali Baba pants in all manner of color, and of course my pimp new magician's coat draped stylishly over a black-and-white checkered shirt) and, nodding, met my eyes with a simple "Nice," to which I would grin and bow thanks. Nearby my guest-house was a parking lot full of children in maroon school uniforms playing cricket, with a drowned puppy lying mournfully disregarded at its entrance. I made a note to return with my camera for a shot of the dog's corpse. A little further up the hill, I noticed a sign for a restaurant called Shesh Besh: Fresh and Funky Restaurant, with psychedelic art all over the walls and numerous hippies smoking joints at the tables. It piqued my interest.
I drifted through the gate and down the steep driveway, and noticed I was grinning like an idiot. I had, in truth, been smiling at people all day, quite content and happy to be in Manali, but now that I was high the silly paranoia kicked in and I began to wonder if people thought I was smiling because I was high. Shit. They know. The smile left my face abruptly, as if it had suddenly remembered a previous engagement. I sat at a sunlit table.
Right there in front of me was a folded backgammon set with a cheerful mouse hand-painted on it. The slogan read 'Keep Smiling Always.' My delighted countenance returned.
"I like Manali," I whispered to myself.
Over the next week, I settled into a comfortable routine. Within a day I'd moved to Cappy's guesthouse, right on the river, with a field of apple trees, yellow flowers, and marijuana plants leading right up to the dancing current. I had a genuine hot-water shower - my first in India, a nicely-sized room, and a private balcony overlooking the field and river. The courtyard was always filled with children playing cricket, volleyball or tag, and Cappy's wife was usually at work on her amazingly crude handmade loom, weaving incredible garments with fresh goat or rabbit fur. I'd awaken, smoke a joint to myself and roll another to take with me, go for breakfast at either Shesh Besh, The Beat Bums (a brand-new cafe run by a couple, with a lending book library and actual, honest-to-goodness beef hamburgers) or Dylan's Roasted and Toasted (a cafe known for it's Bob Dylan-theme, with good pancakes, chocolate chip cookies, and real fucking coffee. Some of these places literally put fucking Nescafe in an espresso machine for a latte. Don't get me started), use le internet, and go walking. I quickly discovered the National Park between Old and New Manali, a gorgeous trek that leads one through the pines and mossy boulders along the riverside instead of trudging up the steep, ugly concrete road.
The weather was pretty dismal: rain and more rain. As a result, I found myself reading a little more than a book a day to accompany my numerous solitary joints. I contemplated things and found, to my surprise, that I'd gone through a foundational philosophical shift of some magnitude almost without realizing it. Growing up surrounded by old hippies who'd traveled to India over and over in search of spiritual fulfillment, who'd all gained gurus and delved deeply into the rigors of their own consciousness, I suddenly realized my own interests lay in nothing of the sort, and indeed hadn't for years. No particular profound notion overtook me with this realization, nor any feeling of resentment or wish for rebellion against my upbringing. It was simply interesting to note that, quite easily and out-of-the-blue, I could disregard the entire notion of 'spirit' without altering my worldview in the slightest. Except maybe that it gave me one whole less thing to worry about.
As the days passed, I leisurely attended to my few necessary productive activities. I got my laundry done, sewed my Due Return patch and a few others onto my magician's coat, purchased a chillum, a stone, a cleaning stick, and safi material from a little stand, took the plastic wrapping off of my mattresses so they wouldn't rustle when I moved, and rearranged my little room to better suit my character and feel more homely - a false nose hanging here, playing cards there, etc. The only thing missing was friends, and I realized with a start that I needed to meet some Americans in the next few days or I'd have no one to share four-twenty with.
Luck, as always, was with me. The next morning I trudged up the now-familiar hill to The Beat Bums for a full English breakfast complete with pork sausages, to find the place chock-full of Americans. Well, three of them, to be exact. Two pimply lads shoveling food into their mouths and subsequently spewing it over the table as they strove to interrupt one another, and a disinterested, dreadlocked hippie in the corner, who was pouring thoughtfully over a fashion magazine and occasionally toking the joint hanging from his fingertips. I sat next to the younguns, at the only seat available.
"Yo," I interrupted after a particularly violent tornado of chewed egg flew from the mouth of the Asian-looking fellow next to me, "you American?"
He nodded, raising a glass of water to his still-overflowing mouth and somehow washing the sludge down. "Yeah, dude, fuck," he spewed.
I'm going to call him Frothy. His blond friend, sitting across from him and attempting to construct a spaghetti-milkshake within his jaw, I'm going to call Rrist.
"Word, me too," I said. "I'd been looking for Americans to hang out with, being as it's 4-20 the day after tomorrow." Despite their lack of table hygiene, I forced a smile and held out my hand, which was ignored. "I'm Hoku."
Frothy nodded like he'd already heard and didn't care, only to throw a food-filled rant across the table over the voice of his friend Rrist, who'd been quaffing about how glad he was to be in a city that wasn't overrun with poor people.
"Fucking right? Like thank God and shit. Motherfucking India, man, I'm fucking psyched for the mountain, though, shit, the slopes and the -"
" - all shitting in the street and they don't even give a shit and they don't even have toilet paper with them, how the fuck - "
" - fucking hit the powder and we should've done this the whole time instead of volunteering at that stupid fucking -"
"- HA HA HA HA a fucking stump for a leg!"
I nodded to myself. Oh yeah. That's why I usually don't seek out Americans.
My food arrived. I began to eat and politely tried to shield my plate from their exuberant mastication. Frothy motioned to the dreadlocked guy in the corner, who I hadn't heard so much as a peep from.
"Anyway," said Frothy, turning his attention towards me in a torrent of chapati speckles. I discreetly covered my baked beans on toast. "We're leaving tomorrow, fuckin' no four twenty for us, but that guy," here he jerked his thumb towards the hippie, "Snowman, he'll fucking be here. Shit. He's from Colorado. I can't believe I didn't bang that babe in Rishikesh..." He was talking to his friend again.
To their, uh... credit?... these kids were young. Maybe that's an excuse. They spoke with annoying voices that sometimes cracked like fine china if they got too excited. Their bodies bounced up and down as they spoke, like yipping puppies who hadn't been housetrained. As if finishing a sentence was an illustration of incompetence, the lads fell upon hesitating periods or innocent commas in a flurry, flourishing their newly-formed opening syllables like broadswords. With the added casualties of the menus and magazines spattered with gory remains of half-chewed morsels from their snoutlike lips, the scene didn't half resemble a battlefield. It was exhausting just to watch. Rrist went to the bathroom, and I stood and crossed the room to greet the Coloradan, Snowman.
"Hey," I started, "you're from Colorado?"
He ignored me, or didn't hear me, his eyes dancing greedily upon the magazine in his lap and the spread-eagled, almost-nude model Photoshopped there. I stood awkwardly for another second or two, then sat on the couch. Jimi Hendrix wailed from a nearby speaker into my right ear.
Oh well. With nothing else to do, I grabbed the mixing bowl off the table and pulled out my hash and lighter; I began to roll a joint. At least I could smoke down the way cool couple who ran the place and browse the remaining books in their library. I'd just finished a series of moving short stories by Saadat Hasan Manto about the Partition of India after the British pulled out, and the bloodshed from both Hindu and Muslims against their neighbors in the subsequent carnage. I was looking for something a little lighter. Like Chuck Pahlaniuk.
Suddenly, the dreadlocked Coloradan let out a whooping bark of a cough, making me jump. He thrust the magazine toward me. "DAMN motherfucker, she's the hottest fucking thing I've ever seen, right? RIGHT! HURNHURNHURNhurnhurnhurn..." He trailed off into another guttural laugh. I studied the image. It was a sexy, typical airbrushed model, splayed out in front of a tree. Blond hair. Eyeshadow. Completely unoriginal, without a trace of her own face. She could've been anybody. I nodded appreciatively and handed the magazine back. Snowman ripped a piece of paper out of his notebook and stuck it between the pages, next to the model's perfectly Photoshopped neck. "I'm making footnotes, HURNHURNHURNHURNhurnhurn!" he said. I nodded again.
"So," I tried again, "you're from Colorado?"
"Yeah, you? HURNHURNHURNhurnhurnhurn." What a guy. What a sense of humor. I liked him, though. Anyone who can laugh just answering a straightforward question must be pretty happy. Or drunk.
"New Mexico. We're neighbors! We should chill for four-twenty."
"Aw, shit, four twenty! HURNHURNHURNhurnhurn. When is that shit? HURNHURNhurn."
"Uh, the day after tomorrow."
Frothy had come over in curiosity and grabbed the magazine from Snowman. "Shit, man, you think she's cute, shit, there was this girl in Rishikesh, shit, man, like damn, she was fucking HOT my brother, allright? Like smoking hot, like damn. She looked like this but like way hotter, like so much hotter, although, ha ha ha ha, it was fuckin' hard to tell at first 'cause she had short hair, you know what I'm saying, like shit - "
"I've always considered girls with short hair cute," I offered. Not that anyone was listening.
"- but she was fucking fine, my brother, like damn, if she hadn't had that short hair she would look exactly like this model, only, like way hotter, you know what I'm saying..." Frothy went on like that for a while. Now there was no food in his mouth, he wasn't quite spattering the walls, but his seemingly endless monologue barely left room for breath and I noticed a white foam coalescing at the corners of his mouth. I shuddered and resisted the urge to hand him a napkin. His buddy Rrist came back from the bathroom, his wrists flopping lamely about his hips.
"Oh, shit, that looks just like -"
"I know, right -"
" - that girl in Rishikesh, right, fuckin' Ver-"
"Veronica, only she - "
" - only she was way hotter."
" - way hotter."
"Way hotter."
Thus agreed, they simultaneously downed the rest of their milk. What weird kids, I thought. Was I that loud and interruptive when I was their age?
"Hey," I said. "How old are you?"
They wiped their mouths with their sleeves (finally, I thought, in the case of Frothy) and chorused, "Eighteen."
"Uh huh," I said. Made sense. Snowman caught my eyes and rolled his. We exchanged a grin. Fuckin' eighteen year olds. Turned out they were rich little spoiled eighteen-year-olds, too... just my favorite kind of person. Though I would be remiss if I hadn't taken advantage of the opportunity. They insisted on showing us their rooms, barely bigger than mine though connected, for which they were paying fifteen thousand rupees a night, smoked us down numerous times, and gave us some acid, although it did nothing for me but leave me with a body high lasting all night that prevented me from sleeping.
Rich kids may be rich kids, but they're also rich kids.
I rolled over, avoiding it, and sat up. I felt remarkably fit. Okay. Let's pack up and move to Old Manali, shall we? Get the fuck out of here before they realize what I did to their bed. I threw my few possessions into my oversized rucksack, collected my passport from the front desk, and split as quickly as possible, my jaunty and hurried pace down the road a striking juxtaposition to the anus-clenched zombie-walk of yesterday.
Too lazy to attempt the trek with my huge bag and, despite today's well-being, still a little cautious about being caught shit-pants-ed in the middle of the street again, I got blatantly ripped-off by a rickshaw-wallah for the three kilometers instead. I regretted nothing. The sun illuminated the fertile greenery all around; kingly pine trees, reminiscent of Californian redwoods in their immensity, sprouted from the mountains like dozens of giant, prickly-bearded chins; groups of colorful hippies strolled amiably among Indians, Nepalese, Tibetans, dogs and cows of all ages; above, peeking over the pines like a mischievous four-year old playing Hide-And-Seek, the classic white-glazed Himalayan-postcard summits were just visible, wisps of sentimental clouds drifting picturesquely among them as if aware of their legendary majesty.
We crossed the river. Strewn hither and thither along the banks and boulders were assorted ropes strung across the tumbling current, with lines of honeymooning Indian couples waiting their turn to harness up, cross halfway, and be bounced invigoratingly up and down by the grinning zipline-wallahs. Whoops of exhilaration from the girls echoed amongst the steady roar of the river and occasional horns from cars and buzzings from rickshaws. The buildings of Old Manali, mostly guest houses and restaurants with names like "Chill Out", "Drifter's Inn", and "Hotel Relax" sat above, dotted alongside the twisting mountain road, with plenty of trees and grassy paths extending between them.
I watched carefully for the sign to Rainbow Guest House, the one touted at me from the Nepalese guy the day before, and located it about halfway up through the town, whereupon I directed the rickshaw-wallah to stop. As if waiting for me, the guest-house's owner stood at the driveway entrance, arms folded across his grey woolen sweater-vest. A look of distaste lay over his face in a scowl, though a twitch at his lips made me unsure whether it was in jest or not. He unfolded his arms with some theatrics and shook a finger in my direction.
"You said you would come yesterday, one hour! I wait for you two, three hours." He squinted and raised his eyebrows at the same time; they vanished beneath his colorful, brimless hat, sending both a look of exasperation and good humor. A good trick, that.
I'm going to call him Cappy.
"Yeah, dude, sorry. My stomach erupted like Vesuvius yesterday and I was doubled over in pain pretty much all night. I wanted to come, but I was afraid of painting the streets yellow. It sucked. I can show you the laundry I need to do if you don't believe me." I heard a stifled laugh from the rickshaw-wallah behind me as I untangled my bag and stepped free. He gunned his motor and took off in what I would've thought was an impossible U-turn, killing the engine almost immediately to coast back downhill to New Manali.
Cappy's expression didn't change. "You said one hour. I wait three hours. Now I give room to someone else. Full book. Why you not coming yesterday?"
"Well, like I said, I guess I was trying to mimic the geyser at Yellowstone and I shat my fucking pants. Bed too. You're lucky I wasn't staying at your guest house. Jeez, I'm sorry, fuck, I'll find somewhere else." I began to leave. All at once, Cappy's scowl melted into the smile that had almost been there the whole time, and his laugh echoed down the street, causing a pack of feral dogs to glance over in minute curiosity and a little Tibetan girl to slip on a cow patty.
"Ok, ok my friend, ok," he said, still laughing, "tonight you stay at my friend house. Nice place! The Isreali, he will leaves in three, five days, no problem. Then you come to my place. OK? No problem. Come with me." He grabbed my arm and led me across the street and up a delightful little uneven road, shadowed by a great green cliff cut with a little stone path. For the first time, I noticed that every single patch of weeds covering the landscape contained at least one, usually many more cannabis plants, growing cheerfully and plentifully. They seemed to be amicable neighbors with stinging nettles.
We went up the hill and I checked in to his 'friend's' place. As soon as I'd lay down my bag, Cappy leaned in close and whispered to me, "Don't tell that you move to my place after. OK? Just you and me between." Yeah, yeah, I know. I rolled my eyes at him, smiled, and nodded. He grinned back and clapped a strong palm on my shoulder. "What you think, my friend, you like something? Hash?"
I couldn't avoid a rueful smile as I admitted that, actually, the events of yesterday had overshadowed my intended drug-purchase. Without skipping a beat, he reached into his pocket and produced with a flourish a plastic bag with a hard little black blob, which he immediately broke open to display the faint green tinge inside. He held a lighter to it for a second or two and held the smoking ornament to my nose. I shook my head.
"Naw, sorry, dude, I don't have a sense of smell. Never have. I lost it when I was way little, after banging my head too many times." I reached out and took the morsel. "Looks nice, though."
It did indeed. Much less crumbly, much more compact, and with a creamier, greener inside than anything I'd seen up until this point on my travels. It appeared Manali lived up to its reputation. "How much?" I asked.
"Two thousand," he said confidently. I whistled.
"Damn, dude, I haven't paid more than like eight hundred since I got to India!" I lied. I'd been flagrantly ripped off when I first hit Varanasi. That motherfucker charged me two grand also. And I'd later been informed it was obviously cut with cow manure. I mean, really. At least cut it with incense, like everyone else does, which still fucks your throat up like you'd gargled razor blades but at least you're not literally smoking shit.
"My friend, this very good quality," said Cappy. I studied it like I was a pro, and though in truth I was still very amateur at judging hashish quality, it was easily better than anything I'd yet procured and ingested. But still, Jesus, two thousand?!
Rupees, of course. Not dollars. Jesus. Forty bucks, people. For ten grams, or a tollah in, ahem, street lingo in India. Yeah. I'm a gangsta. And, being a gangsta, there ain't no fuckin' way I'm going to pay forty fucking bucks for ten grams of some of the best hash in the world. Do I look like a chump?
"OK," I said. I pulled the two grand from my pocket and exchanged it with Cappy, who grinned, saluted me, and sauntered off. I shut the door.
Shit.
Why'd I do that?
Fucking twenty meters away there was probably cheaper hash for sale. I could probably ask at the damn jewelry shop and nab some cheaper shit. And probably better. Fuck.Stupid Hoku. Oh well. Forty bucks. Still cheaper than the States, and it's actual straight-up legendary Manali hash, like the dude in Varanasi had claimed with the cow-shit. Now I need some cigarettes, some papers, and a lighter. It hath beguth.
I got the munchies after a while. I was nicely baked and found myself wandering aimlessly. Almost everyone on the street nodded and smiled at me in passing, and a handful of people pursed their lips and arched their eyebrows in approval at my attire (I was currently clad in my curled, pointed shoes, a houndstooth bowtie, Diamond-patchwork Ali Baba pants in all manner of color, and of course my pimp new magician's coat draped stylishly over a black-and-white checkered shirt) and, nodding, met my eyes with a simple "Nice," to which I would grin and bow thanks. Nearby my guest-house was a parking lot full of children in maroon school uniforms playing cricket, with a drowned puppy lying mournfully disregarded at its entrance. I made a note to return with my camera for a shot of the dog's corpse. A little further up the hill, I noticed a sign for a restaurant called Shesh Besh: Fresh and Funky Restaurant, with psychedelic art all over the walls and numerous hippies smoking joints at the tables. It piqued my interest.
I drifted through the gate and down the steep driveway, and noticed I was grinning like an idiot. I had, in truth, been smiling at people all day, quite content and happy to be in Manali, but now that I was high the silly paranoia kicked in and I began to wonder if people thought I was smiling because I was high. Shit. They know. The smile left my face abruptly, as if it had suddenly remembered a previous engagement. I sat at a sunlit table.
Right there in front of me was a folded backgammon set with a cheerful mouse hand-painted on it. The slogan read 'Keep Smiling Always.' My delighted countenance returned.
"I like Manali," I whispered to myself.
Over the next week, I settled into a comfortable routine. Within a day I'd moved to Cappy's guesthouse, right on the river, with a field of apple trees, yellow flowers, and marijuana plants leading right up to the dancing current. I had a genuine hot-water shower - my first in India, a nicely-sized room, and a private balcony overlooking the field and river. The courtyard was always filled with children playing cricket, volleyball or tag, and Cappy's wife was usually at work on her amazingly crude handmade loom, weaving incredible garments with fresh goat or rabbit fur. I'd awaken, smoke a joint to myself and roll another to take with me, go for breakfast at either Shesh Besh, The Beat Bums (a brand-new cafe run by a couple, with a lending book library and actual, honest-to-goodness beef hamburgers) or Dylan's Roasted and Toasted (a cafe known for it's Bob Dylan-theme, with good pancakes, chocolate chip cookies, and real fucking coffee. Some of these places literally put fucking Nescafe in an espresso machine for a latte. Don't get me started), use le internet, and go walking. I quickly discovered the National Park between Old and New Manali, a gorgeous trek that leads one through the pines and mossy boulders along the riverside instead of trudging up the steep, ugly concrete road.
The weather was pretty dismal: rain and more rain. As a result, I found myself reading a little more than a book a day to accompany my numerous solitary joints. I contemplated things and found, to my surprise, that I'd gone through a foundational philosophical shift of some magnitude almost without realizing it. Growing up surrounded by old hippies who'd traveled to India over and over in search of spiritual fulfillment, who'd all gained gurus and delved deeply into the rigors of their own consciousness, I suddenly realized my own interests lay in nothing of the sort, and indeed hadn't for years. No particular profound notion overtook me with this realization, nor any feeling of resentment or wish for rebellion against my upbringing. It was simply interesting to note that, quite easily and out-of-the-blue, I could disregard the entire notion of 'spirit' without altering my worldview in the slightest. Except maybe that it gave me one whole less thing to worry about.
As the days passed, I leisurely attended to my few necessary productive activities. I got my laundry done, sewed my Due Return patch and a few others onto my magician's coat, purchased a chillum, a stone, a cleaning stick, and safi material from a little stand, took the plastic wrapping off of my mattresses so they wouldn't rustle when I moved, and rearranged my little room to better suit my character and feel more homely - a false nose hanging here, playing cards there, etc. The only thing missing was friends, and I realized with a start that I needed to meet some Americans in the next few days or I'd have no one to share four-twenty with.
Luck, as always, was with me. The next morning I trudged up the now-familiar hill to The Beat Bums for a full English breakfast complete with pork sausages, to find the place chock-full of Americans. Well, three of them, to be exact. Two pimply lads shoveling food into their mouths and subsequently spewing it over the table as they strove to interrupt one another, and a disinterested, dreadlocked hippie in the corner, who was pouring thoughtfully over a fashion magazine and occasionally toking the joint hanging from his fingertips. I sat next to the younguns, at the only seat available.
"Yo," I interrupted after a particularly violent tornado of chewed egg flew from the mouth of the Asian-looking fellow next to me, "you American?"
He nodded, raising a glass of water to his still-overflowing mouth and somehow washing the sludge down. "Yeah, dude, fuck," he spewed.
I'm going to call him Frothy. His blond friend, sitting across from him and attempting to construct a spaghetti-milkshake within his jaw, I'm going to call Rrist.
"Word, me too," I said. "I'd been looking for Americans to hang out with, being as it's 4-20 the day after tomorrow." Despite their lack of table hygiene, I forced a smile and held out my hand, which was ignored. "I'm Hoku."
Frothy nodded like he'd already heard and didn't care, only to throw a food-filled rant across the table over the voice of his friend Rrist, who'd been quaffing about how glad he was to be in a city that wasn't overrun with poor people.
"Fucking right? Like thank God and shit. Motherfucking India, man, I'm fucking psyched for the mountain, though, shit, the slopes and the -"
" - all shitting in the street and they don't even give a shit and they don't even have toilet paper with them, how the fuck - "
" - fucking hit the powder and we should've done this the whole time instead of volunteering at that stupid fucking -"
"- HA HA HA HA a fucking stump for a leg!"
I nodded to myself. Oh yeah. That's why I usually don't seek out Americans.
My food arrived. I began to eat and politely tried to shield my plate from their exuberant mastication. Frothy motioned to the dreadlocked guy in the corner, who I hadn't heard so much as a peep from.
"Anyway," said Frothy, turning his attention towards me in a torrent of chapati speckles. I discreetly covered my baked beans on toast. "We're leaving tomorrow, fuckin' no four twenty for us, but that guy," here he jerked his thumb towards the hippie, "Snowman, he'll fucking be here. Shit. He's from Colorado. I can't believe I didn't bang that babe in Rishikesh..." He was talking to his friend again.
To their, uh... credit?... these kids were young. Maybe that's an excuse. They spoke with annoying voices that sometimes cracked like fine china if they got too excited. Their bodies bounced up and down as they spoke, like yipping puppies who hadn't been housetrained. As if finishing a sentence was an illustration of incompetence, the lads fell upon hesitating periods or innocent commas in a flurry, flourishing their newly-formed opening syllables like broadswords. With the added casualties of the menus and magazines spattered with gory remains of half-chewed morsels from their snoutlike lips, the scene didn't half resemble a battlefield. It was exhausting just to watch. Rrist went to the bathroom, and I stood and crossed the room to greet the Coloradan, Snowman.
"Hey," I started, "you're from Colorado?"
He ignored me, or didn't hear me, his eyes dancing greedily upon the magazine in his lap and the spread-eagled, almost-nude model Photoshopped there. I stood awkwardly for another second or two, then sat on the couch. Jimi Hendrix wailed from a nearby speaker into my right ear.
Oh well. With nothing else to do, I grabbed the mixing bowl off the table and pulled out my hash and lighter; I began to roll a joint. At least I could smoke down the way cool couple who ran the place and browse the remaining books in their library. I'd just finished a series of moving short stories by Saadat Hasan Manto about the Partition of India after the British pulled out, and the bloodshed from both Hindu and Muslims against their neighbors in the subsequent carnage. I was looking for something a little lighter. Like Chuck Pahlaniuk.
Suddenly, the dreadlocked Coloradan let out a whooping bark of a cough, making me jump. He thrust the magazine toward me. "DAMN motherfucker, she's the hottest fucking thing I've ever seen, right? RIGHT! HURNHURNHURNhurnhurnhurn..." He trailed off into another guttural laugh. I studied the image. It was a sexy, typical airbrushed model, splayed out in front of a tree. Blond hair. Eyeshadow. Completely unoriginal, without a trace of her own face. She could've been anybody. I nodded appreciatively and handed the magazine back. Snowman ripped a piece of paper out of his notebook and stuck it between the pages, next to the model's perfectly Photoshopped neck. "I'm making footnotes, HURNHURNHURNHURNhurnhurn!" he said. I nodded again.
"So," I tried again, "you're from Colorado?"
"Yeah, you? HURNHURNHURNhurnhurnhurn." What a guy. What a sense of humor. I liked him, though. Anyone who can laugh just answering a straightforward question must be pretty happy. Or drunk.
"New Mexico. We're neighbors! We should chill for four-twenty."
"Aw, shit, four twenty! HURNHURNHURNhurnhurn. When is that shit? HURNHURNhurn."
"Uh, the day after tomorrow."
Frothy had come over in curiosity and grabbed the magazine from Snowman. "Shit, man, you think she's cute, shit, there was this girl in Rishikesh, shit, man, like damn, she was fucking HOT my brother, allright? Like smoking hot, like damn. She looked like this but like way hotter, like so much hotter, although, ha ha ha ha, it was fuckin' hard to tell at first 'cause she had short hair, you know what I'm saying, like shit - "
"I've always considered girls with short hair cute," I offered. Not that anyone was listening.
"- but she was fucking fine, my brother, like damn, if she hadn't had that short hair she would look exactly like this model, only, like way hotter, you know what I'm saying..." Frothy went on like that for a while. Now there was no food in his mouth, he wasn't quite spattering the walls, but his seemingly endless monologue barely left room for breath and I noticed a white foam coalescing at the corners of his mouth. I shuddered and resisted the urge to hand him a napkin. His buddy Rrist came back from the bathroom, his wrists flopping lamely about his hips.
"Oh, shit, that looks just like -"
"I know, right -"
" - that girl in Rishikesh, right, fuckin' Ver-"
"Veronica, only she - "
" - only she was way hotter."
" - way hotter."
"Way hotter."
Thus agreed, they simultaneously downed the rest of their milk. What weird kids, I thought. Was I that loud and interruptive when I was their age?
"Hey," I said. "How old are you?"
They wiped their mouths with their sleeves (finally, I thought, in the case of Frothy) and chorused, "Eighteen."
"Uh huh," I said. Made sense. Snowman caught my eyes and rolled his. We exchanged a grin. Fuckin' eighteen year olds. Turned out they were rich little spoiled eighteen-year-olds, too... just my favorite kind of person. Though I would be remiss if I hadn't taken advantage of the opportunity. They insisted on showing us their rooms, barely bigger than mine though connected, for which they were paying fifteen thousand rupees a night, smoked us down numerous times, and gave us some acid, although it did nothing for me but leave me with a body high lasting all night that prevented me from sleeping.
Rich kids may be rich kids, but they're also rich kids.
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