fucked.

there’s no other way of describing it – my state, my decision-making ability, my mindset, all of it – fucked.

I’m still uneasy talking about it, for one. another thing is I cannot separate fact from fiction. nor do I really want to revisit the experience to sift through.

I don’t even know why I did it – I don’t smoke for a reason: it makes me lose my mind. I simply can’t handle it. ask Lis, she found me in the bathtub in Amsterdam unable to move and shivering from the cold water. ask anyone – I say ‘no’ to very few things, but weed and hash are 2 of them. I think (a relative term at this point), think, that it was half out of jubilation from picking up a cash payment and the other being that I had never seen a ‘bhang lassi’ (yogurt made with hash, bananas, nuts, et al) advertised and didn’t really think that the 13 year-old serving me on the rooftop could manage it.

he could.

it started mellow and, to be honest, watching Hash Dealer (another one) hit Snake Charmer was fantastic. ‘this is so India’ I told myself. I was sure that someone was about to get bitten and that made me laugh. no one did. the snakes, strangely enough, stayed fixed during the whole ordeal. however, 15-minutes later as I walked by the burning bodies down on the Ganges riverfront, things started to get…distorted. telling myself it was psychosomatic, I hurried by the burning flesh and in-between the goats that 2 days ago, I found inexplicably amusing. the turn I took was up into town, which – if you’ve never been here, is impossible to navigate – even the locals go home by way of the river, as there are numerous mazes of filthy streets lining it.

I didn’t recognize a thing. 20 minutes of a very fucked-up foreigner stumbling close to shop signs for any resemblance of familiarity. there was none. a kid asked me where I was headed and I slobbered ‘the main street’. he pointed me in the direction and, 30 feet from getting to this opening – one that I had stepped on more than a dozen times my week in Varanasi – it looked new. I’d not been here and the kid was fucking with me. but there are cars, I hear cars, so it must be a place to get a taxi to the train station. the flies were, at this point, stopping a few inches in front of my face to buzz and then scatter when my flailing arms made motion.

the street was…India. during a festival. India is colorful enough on a slow day. during a festival, in the holiest of cities, it was madness. while each day sees your life come within inches of making contact with any of the thousands of old yellow cabs, this time it become milliseconds. I know for a fact I was honked at twice for stepping in front of a few, god knows how many else thought me suicidal and not even worth the acknowledgment.

whether the driver said ‘50′ or ‘500 rupees’ I do not know. I can tell you this, by this time, I was heavily hallucinating. lights seems to trail from all objects, the noise of what I previously referred to as beautiful chaos was now simply chaos. and none that I could escape. finding some way to get on-board, I found myself face-to-face with a corpse – decorated for the journey through town and into the fire. 4 feet from me. both of us eye-level. it was now that I began to cry.

what happened during that half-an-hour ride through town is even too much to relive 48- hours later. I can tell you that children with black-painted eyes ran after me begging for ‘bon-bons’ (true), a bike rider got his tire stuck in the back of the rickshaw and grabbed me to help (true), policemen pointed a shotgun at me (false – but from my raised position and his sitting, it seemed aimed in my vicinity), my driver scowled at everyone who got in his way (true) and took me on a shortcut that for 30 seconds I became so convinced he was going to kill me (false) that I attempted to jump off (true – until I realized I wouldn’t know where to run).

reaching the train station was only the smallest of battles won in a larger war. this was an Indian train station. during Diwali. thousands of bright saris cascaded out of the huge station and it was my job to somehow walk through them…and the noise. oh god – the noise. drivers and music. traffic and fireworks. by this time, tears were rolling down both of my cheeks and how the poor attendant managed to point me in the right direction is still a mystery to me. I found the train, accidentally stepped on a few people who I was certain were going to tell the police I was off-of-my-head and found my compartment.

my bed was the top of a 3-leveled set-up. I’ll go ahead and let you picture that.

it was 5.20pm. I placed my bag in the corner and untied my sarong from it to dry my face. managing a fetal position, I covered my entire head with it until the train started. every once and a while, I peeked out to see if anyone was looking at me. they were. they all were.

I passed out. finally.

only to be woken up by the ticket collector who – up until this point, I had never noticed – carried a pistol. I’m guessing he tried to rouse me a few times because his final, and successful attempt was slamming his open palm down on the plastic covering next to my head.

I quickly thought about calling Scott and realized the embarrassment I would suffer from later wouldn’t be worth it. he’d never mention it, but someday, when we were having a serious talk, I’d wonder if he was thinking about ‘that time Aric called me from India crying’. I quickly contemplated putting on my music, but didn’t want to ruin it like I previously done with Depeche Mode. I passed out again.

woke up at 6am to the sounds of ‘garam chai – garam chai‘ and started to lose it again until I remembered that I was on a train. in India. ‘garam chai‘ means ‘hot tea’. I took 4.

it may have been the chemicals, it may have been the experience, but I stayed foggy fort the next day. checked into the guesthouse and stayed under the hot shower until I felt I couldn’t stand anymore.

hash. all of this from hash put into yogurt.

what a silly, stupid thing to do.