Oliver Benjamin
dress socks.
As I strolled down to the beach I heard someone calling out my
name. It turned out to be Gordon and Gwen, the Canadians I had met
on the boat.
“Hey, you guys are still here? How come I haven’t seen you?” I
asked.
“Oh, we were on a meditation retreat that lasted for a few weeks.
We weren’t allowed to talk or make eye contact with anyone, and they
fed us two small meals a day. The rest of our time was taken up
meditating daily for ten hours.” Gwen replied. She spoke as if she had
just been revived from a Valium overdose.
“Sounds great.” I said hesitantly, “How much did they pay you?”
“No, no. We paid to do it. It was really amazing.”
“I’ll bet. Sounds amazingly boring.”
“Yeah, it sure does, doesn’t it? Well we had heard good things
about it and decided to try, figuring that we could always leave if we
wanted to. You know, even though we couldn’t talk to each other, I
knew that Gordon was enjoying it as much as I was. It’s impossible to
explain what it’s like until you do it, Jake. Kind of like making love.
Really, you should try it.”
“I have. Making love is great.”
“I mean meditation.”
“Oh, I’ve tried that too. I found a half-hour boring, so I imagine
three weeks would be torture. No thanks.” I tried to steer the
conversation to something else. “So what else is new?”
“Not much, just headed down to the beach to get some sun. We
got pretty pasty inside that monastery. Got to go home with a tan,
right?” She stopped suddenly and asked, “Hey, what’s this deal with
the FBI? Somebody told me that they’re all over the place. What do
you think they’re here for?”
“Group vacation?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t know, probably drugs. With all the leftover
hallucinogens that are lurking in my body tissue I’m probably
walking contraband myself. Maybe I should go into hiding. You
think?”
“We’ll cover for you Jake.”
“Thanks,” I said and looked over at Gordon who had been
strangely silent the whole time. He couldn’t have been angry at me
because he had a serene smile smeared across his face. “What’s up
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