Howard Marks' Book of Dope Stories (3 page)

I presume that you have taken the precaution to choose carefully your moment for setting out on this adventure. For every perfect debauch demands perfect leisure. You know, moreover, that hashish exaggerates not only the individual, but also circumstances and environment. You have no duties to fulfil which require punctuality or exactitude. No domestic worries – no lover’s sorrows. One must be careful on such points. Such a disappointment, an anxiety, an interior monition of a duty which demands your will and your attention, at some determinate moment, would ring like a funeral bell across your intoxication and poison your pleasure. Anxiety would become anguish, and disappointment torture. But if, having observed all these preliminary conditions the weather is fine; if you are situated in favourable surroundings, such as a picturesque landscape or a room beautifully decorated; and if in particular you have at command a little music, then all is for the best.

J
AKE WAS REFLECTING
on the first time he met Skyman. It was on his eighteenth birthday. His dad had bought him a new bike. He had forbidden Jake to hang around the waterfront with thieves and fornicators – the riff-raff. He reminded Jake that he had spent a lot of money on his education. Jake knew what he was going to say next.

‘The wages of sin.’

Jake came from a long line of Preachers, as far back as way back. His old man had been trying to convince him to become a Preacher too. Jake often wondered if his father really believed all that shit he laid on his congregation. But he assured him he wasn’t going near the waterfront. He was just taking his bike for a spin.

Jake took his bathing trunks off the clothes line, tied them on to the handlebar of his bike and started to ride out of Kingston, on the coast road. He was feeling good as he rode along the coast taking in the scenery.

He rode for about fifteen to twenty miles out of Kingston. He came to a nice cove with a sandy beach and decided that it was a good place to stop for a dip. There was only one boat in the bay and apart from a Rasterman painting his dinghy on the beach, there wasn’t anyone else around. There was a groovy little shack in the right-hand corner of the cove. Whoever made it had done a good job.

Jake felt a wave of admiration for the Rasterman, who was among his father’s categories of riff-raffs, ganja smokers and layabouts, as he watched him painting his dinghy like an artist. He stood there for a while, enjoying the Rasterman paint, seeing him stop from time to time to take a toke on his pipe.

Eventually he walked over, towing his bike and smiling.

‘Hello, Raster, what’s happening?’

The Rasterman didn’t reply right off. He looked at Jake for a while. His eyes aloof – the shutters almost half closed. Skyman knew that apart from the authorities, no one else was aware that he was back in Jamaica; if anyone was, he was reasonably sure that they wouldn’t recognise him. Just the same he didn’t talk to many people.

He guessed that the young guy was from Kingston, he seemed a nice enough guy.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Jake! What’s yours?’

‘Just call me Raster, for the time being.’

Jake knew, right off, that Raster – or whatever his name was – wasn’t a real Rasterman, but you wouldn’t know that by looking. His dreadlocks were very impressive and he had a full long beard, streaked with grey hairs. Jake was intrigued.

‘Can you paint?’ asked Raster.

Jake smiled. ‘Yes, but not as good as you.’

‘Well, grab a brush anyway.’

Jake was elated. They painted in silence for a while, Jake looking at Skyman from time to time. Every now and then Skyman stopped painting to reload his pipe. He picked up his corn-husk pipe from a makeshift workbench. First he would clean it carefully with a pipe-cleaner, testing it a few times, until he was satisfied. Then he fished into the small pocket on the front of his white T-shirt and brought out a white draw and extracted a fat bud before replacing the bag like it was a prized possession.

Jake noted the pungent smell of the herbs as it mingled with the paint in his nostrils, as Skyman crumbled the bud. Then the Rasterman took a king-size box of matches from the bench and started to light his pipe. He circled the bowl with the fire about four times, puffing gently each time, to effect an even light. Satisfied that the light was good and the pipe was drawing freely, he dragged hard and deep, the bowl glowing, as if about to catch light as he filled his lungs. He held the smoke for about a minute before reluctantly letting it go and automatically moving to pass the pipe to Jake. Hesitating a moment, he looked at Jake.

‘Hey, man! You smoke?’

Jake wasn’t really lying when he answered that he did. He had burned a few joints on several occasions with some of the guys from his school and dug it. But he had not indulged too much because he was aware that the worst thing that could happen to him was for the Preacher to hear that he had even tried the ‘Devil’s Weed’. But this was different.

Jake took the pipe without any hesitation and started to puff gently the way Skyman had done. Realising after the first puff that the pipe was ready, he hit it and tried to hold the smoke like Skyman but he felt that his head would explode if he didn’t let go. He opened up all his valves and for all he knew, when he started to cough and he felt like his head was going to come off, smoke might have been even coming out of his ears! Skyman took the pipe from Jake and gave him some coconut water. Jake had drunk a lot of coconut water but now he felt like he was tasting it for the first time. The taste was so lucid he even thought he could see it.

Within minutes hot beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. His mind was scrambled but he was acutely conscious of himself, as if he was filming everything he did. He felt that the sun was getting hotter and he had to get out of it. He wanted to tell Skyman that he was going over by a tree to sit in the shade for a while, but he couldn’t string the words together. He saw himself gesturing, pointing at a tree. He realised he was still holding the empty coconut. In other circumstances he would’ve scooped out the jelly and enjoyed it before discarding it, but right now he couldn’t think what the hell to do with the thing. He was relieved when Skyman took it from him in slow motion and told him he could use the hut.

Jake looked at the hut, sure that it had been much closer a while ago. He wondered about his legs, he knew that they were there because he was still standing, but he couldn’t feel them. He looked down at his feet to make sure that they were facing the right way. He started to walk but his legs wouldn’t move. He had to get out of the sun. His underclothes were already sticking to his body. He almost fell over with the first step. His legs were so heavy he had to lift his foot very high to compensate for the weight. He was doing a kind of knees-up walk on his way to the hut, mindful of each step as his feet seemed to stick in the sand every time he put them down.

By the time he got to the hut, Jake was exhausted. All he wanted to do now was flop out. He made straight for the bunk bed, which seemed to come up to him, as he flopped down on it. Now he was floating up there in the ceiling, looking down on his helpless carriage. He became aware that it was he, I and I, and not his mother or the Preacher that was in charge of his carriage. He saw a new dimension and knew there wasn’t any way back.

He was counselling himself about some immediate changes he had to make, when he fell off the ceiling and the bunk began to spin and rock as if he was on a boat. He eventually fell off the bunk. Back in himself, laying there on the floor Jake had decided he wasn’t going back to bed when the floor started to perform as well. He couldn’t decide which was worse – the floor or the bed, but in the end he opted for the floor because he figured he couldn’t fall any further.

The floor was spinning faster and faster as if it was about to take off. He held on as long as he could, but the experience had wasted him. He let go and flew around the universe a few times before he fell into a deep sleep.

It was not only deep, but long. The sun brought him back among the living the next morning, with the sound of the sea, as it gently washes the sand. It was a nice way to wake up. Jake was feeling fresh and new until he realised that the sound of the sea washing the sand wasn’t a familiar sound first thing in the morning. And he wasn’t in his own room, on his floor. Then it all came back to him in a flash, so vivid that it was hard to decipher what was real, fantasy or dream.

Jake got up from the floor without giving a second thought to his legs. He had an urgent need for a piss. He looked for the door. There were two. He hurried for the nearest one, almost tripping over his bike. He was smiling as he relieved himself, thinking this was the best piss he had ever had.

He had wanted to piss since last night but the floor was spinning so fast he couldn’t get off and when he dreamed that he had found a place to piss he couldn’t find his cock. Jake went back into the hut; he had never felt better. He didn’t see much of the hut yesterday apart from the bunk but now he noticed that there was a table with a hurricane lamp on it, two chairs and an open cupboard with fifteen suits hanging in it. Each suit carrying a silk shirt. Jake moved nearer to the cupboard for a closer look. Now he was really knocked out, these suits were a collection of the finest rags he had ever seen. You know, the stuff only the rich Americans can afford; sharkskin, silk and cashmere. On the floor were seven pairs of shoes made of snake, croc and calfskin. Three matching belts hung in a corner. Jake tried to visualise Skyman all done up, without his dreadlocks. His perceptions were of a guy who looked like a million. Top drawer. Plenty of class and a lot of style. Jake had found a hero.

Jake undressed and got his swimming trunks from his bike, put them on and went looking for Skyman. He walked back towards the spot where they were painting the dinghy. It was no longer there. He looked out to sea, the boat was still there with the dinghy tied up astern. Skyman came up from below with a broom and bucket. He made out the name of the boat –
Seafree
. Jake waved. Skyman put down his bucket and waved back. Jake took a long run to the water and dived in and started swimming towards the boat. He thought about his parents, it was the first time he had ever stayed away from home under such circumstances and was amazed at himself that he felt no anxiety, it was more an obligation to phone and let his folks know that he was okay. He made a mental note to do that and went back to the task of swimming all the way out to
Seafree
. It was a tidy swim by most standards but he was a fit young guy and he made it easy.

Skyman tossed a ladder over the side for Jake and invited him to come aboard. As Jake got on board and sat on the rails to give his heart time to adjust its beat, he noticed the sound of jazz and that familiar smell of ganja coming from below. Skyman came over and extended his hand.

‘Hey, man! How you feeling today?’

Jake smiled, full of confidence with his new being.

‘Great! But I wasn’t doing so good yesterday! I only just made it to the hut.’

Skyman smiled back.

‘Welcome to the club.’

Calypso Train
, 2001

William Shakespeare

‘A
ND SO YOU
think that opium-smoking as seen in the foul cellars of Mott Street and elsewhere is the only form of narcotic indulgence of any consequence in this city, and that hashish, if used at all, is only smoked occasionally and experimentally by a few scattered individuals?’

‘This is certainly my opinion, and I consider myself fairly well informed.’

‘Well, you are far from right, as I can prove to you if you care to inform yourself more fully on the subject. There is a large community of hashish smokers in this city, who are daily forced to indulge their morbid appetites, and I can take you to a house uptown where hemp is used in every conceivable form, and where the lights, sounds, odors, and surroundings are all arranged so as to intensify and enhance the effects of this wonderful narcotic.’

‘I must confess that I am still incredulous.’

‘Well, if it is agreeable to you, meet me at the Hoffman House reading-room tomorrow night at ten o’clock, and I think I shall be able to convince you.’

The above is the substance of a conversation that took place in the lobby of a downtown hotel between the writer of these lines and a young man about thirty-eight years of age, known to me for some years past as an opium smoker. It was through his kindness that I had first gained access to and had been able to study up the subject of opium-smoking. Hence I really anticipated seeing some interesting phases of hemp indulgence, and was not disappointed. The following evening at precisely ten o’clock I met the young man at the Hoffman House, and together we took a Broadway car uptown, left it at Forty-second Street, and walked rapidly toward the North River, talking as we went.

‘You will be probably be greatly surprised at many things you will see tonight,’ he said, ‘just as I was when I was first introduced to the place by a friend. I have traveled over most of Europe, and have smoked opium in every
joint
in America, but never saw anything so curious as this, nor experienced any intoxication so fascinating yet so terrible as that of hashish.’