Oliver Benjamin
The girls looked superb in clothes. Outfitted in tight, colorful dresses
and sandals that laced halfway up their shins, their tans shining in
the moonlight, their beauty was enhanced by their radiant
anticipation of the evening. I instantly made up my mind about the
acid. Helen took my arm and the four of us walked to the restaurant,
breathing the fragrant night air and talking excitedly.
It was quite a scene. Colored lights and lanterns carved from old
plastic water bottles were strung up among the palm trees,
undulating in the warm breeze, while monolithic bonfires shed light
on the small tables and mats where people congregated for drinks
and conversation. Black-lights induced fluorescent-painted bamboo
nightclubs to glow eerily under the stars. All the while, familiar
western music pumped out via portable generators over the massive
roar of the ocean. Samrin beach at night was an unmitigated assault
on the senses.
We found a nice little restaurant with good prices and an
animated host named Noi. Noi manufactured his own brand of
yogurt, widely distributed on the island, and his pretty, German wife
baked fresh brown bread daily. Noi seemed to have a marijuana
cigarette permanently glued to the corner of his mouth, and spoke
loudly when he wasn’t laughing uncontrollably. At least five times
throughout the meal he came to our table holding out a joint and
pointed to it, barking:
“Mary-joo-wanna,” then he would crack an incredibly wide grin
and ask, “joo wanna? Hahaha…”
I declined, seeing as how I was already anticipating the
unpredictable effects of one hallucinogen. The girls both smoked
eagerly, but Huge declined also, though for a different reason.
“I do triathlons, so I never put smoke in my lungs,” he said
proudly. Obviously a lie designed to impress the women. He drank
like a fish and took chemicals that had been known to disrupt mating
patterns of primates for years, plus the saddlebags around his waist
would hinder his drag coefficient in the water dramatically.
Once we were seated, the girls passed around tiny slips of red
paper that had miniature pictures of cartoon rocket-men on them.
Hugo wasn’t kidding when he quoted the Elton John “Rocket Man”
song. We put them on our tongues and after a minute swallowed
them. For the next hour, we sat at the table talking and I, suffering
from evaluative pre-hallucinogenic paranoia, became highly
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