Impossible Vacation

There's an old tantric idea that excessive indulgence in sex can take you to the other side and free you of a need for it. I thought I was going to have a chance to test that theory. I could see opportunity looming on the horizon in India, of all places. Yes, I was off to holiday in India, the place where tantric sex began.

Meg had a great idea to import Kashmiri rugs and sell them at one of the New York City flea markets. She had borrowed enough money from her father to pay for two round-trip tickets and to buy the rugs. I had saved money from unemployment and my furniture-moving job. So we were off.

I had heard there was a new guru in India with a huge following of Westerners. His name was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and word had it that he advocated you could get over your constant need for sex and move on to greater spiritual realms only by having so much sex that you got sick of it. His theory, or at least the way it came down to me, was that because sex had been forbidden by our puritanical parents, we all thought--as I did--that sex was what we wanted more than anything else in the world. Until we got past that, we would never grow up; we would never pass on to larger issues of commitment and meaningful labor. And best of all, what the Bhagwan prescribed for getting through these sexual hang-ups was doing it. Doing a lot of it. He preached a kind of homeopathic sex cure, fucking your way to the other side. And if there was anything I needed a cure from, it was from those compulsive thoughts about sex. All I wanted was to get laid over and over again with a stranger. I had the notion that pure, isolated, uncomplicated, nonintegrated sex could cure me. Sex with Meg was best for me when I could manage to turn her into a stranger through fantasy, and that was getting more and more difficult. So I wanted to keep Meg as a comfortable friend and explore the rivers of anonymous Dionysian sex; that was my idea. I had to go to that island of licentiousness, that bastion of free love right in the middle of the town in India, Poona. I was sure the Bhagwan had a great sense of humor and had decided to locate his free-love ashram there just for the turn-on of that name: Poona. Can you imagine pooning in Poona? Just saying it gave me an erection.

In the States, one would be put down for an interest in tantric sex practices by being called a swinger. But in India, you could get away with what would be considered crass swapping back home. In India, you could indulge your wildest needs with the fantasy that you were a tantric monk in search of a female surrogate with whom to unite your cosmic polar opposites. I admit, this vague tantric idea was perhaps just an excuse for me to become a rhythm pig, a naked animal coupled with another naked animal, with some faint notion that we could in the end return to being our respectful, independent human selves. I'm sure this was the concept of most swingers' clubs, and Rajneesh's ashram in Poona appeared to be a swingers' club for the spiritually minded. It attracted a certain class of people who felt it was too tacky to swing in New Jersey. They had to go to India for spiritual validation. That was my cynical view of it at the time, anyway. Nevertheless, I was gravitating toward Poona. If I lived only once (not an Indian concept), I had to try it. Meg just said, "Do what you have to, Brewster. I'm going to Bombay and then I'm going to Kashmir to buy rugs." Then she added with a smirk, "Something disease-free and lasting."

It was hot, very hot, when I arrived. There was no more room for people to stay in the ashram, so I checked into the first hotel I could find. It was a humble little place called the Ritz and it served mainly vegetarian food. Some of Rajneesh's followers, or sannyasis, were also staying there. You could immediately tell who they were by their long, flowing orange robes and the mala with the black-and-white photo of Rajneesh hanging around their necks.

I was told by one of them, a German, that there were about 4000 people spread out all over Poona who'd come to be with the Bhagwan. I was a little taken aback. Not only did I hate orange but I also hated crowds. I got lost in them and always felt like a statistic rather than a person.

I went to bed early and I got up early and headed down to the ashram while it was still dark. It was a short walk from my hotel and easy to find. Over a large ornate wooden gate was a big sign that read Shree Rajneesh Ashram. There was an Indian gatekeeper who looked like he'd been up all night. He was stretched out in his chair, half asleep, with an empty bottle of wine beside him and a copy of People magazine open on his lap. He directed me to the dynamic meditation pavilion with a loose hand gesture. "Oh, yes, you will go just so straight ahead and then when the sun rises, you will hear the music," he said with a thick Indian accent, his head bobbing back and forth as if he were actually telling me, "No, don't go."

I walked until I found the cement pavilion. It was a large green area with a stone floor and a green opaque plastic roof covering it. I squatted with my back against the cool cement wall and waited. Then the sun slowly began to come up and the music began. It was emanating from huge rock-concert speakers and sounded like a combination of Indian spiritual ragas and disco. It was almost too sexy for that hour of the day.

As the music got louder, the pavilion began to fill up with lithe young people, all dressed in orange robes, coming from every direction. As they entered, they would immediately wrap orange bandannas around their eyes or put on orange sleep masks like the black ones you get in first class on the airlines. Then they'd begin to swing and sway. Soon the pavilion was packed with these beautiful lithe men and women all swaying in the most languidly sexy way. No one had any underwear on. I could see hints of everything through their orange robes. I could see public hair and breasts and the way the men were hung. And there I was, trying to dance in beige pajamas with underwear on. I was the only one without an orange robe and a blindfold and I couldn't stop looking. I'd never seen such a collection of beautiful people in one place before.

It was the most sensual dancing I'd ever seen and I felt completely undermined by it. I think I would have felt better if I had been in a room filled with people in wheelchairs. I was too much in my eyes and head again and I felt awful. I longed for the safety of my familiar relationship with Meg.

After the dynamic meditation dance was over, people filed out for breakfast at the cafeteria and I followed along, feeling even more alienated because no one around me was speaking English, only German. Also, it was starting to get really hot.

After breakfast, there was a brief break where people hung out and spoke German and then it was time to line up to go hear the Bhagwan speak. I got swept into the crowd, but I didn't panic at the thought of disappearing. I was able to remember who I was because I was the only one not dressed in orange.

We were ushered down a narrow passageway into a large open tent that faced an empty stage. After everyone got settled (I'd say there must have been close to 2000 people, all orange as far as the eye could see), there was a long silence followed by a small commotion of whispering, which was followed by an announcement over the P.A. system. The voice that came out over the system was smooth and hypnotic and had an Australian accent: "Would whoever is wearing the perfume or scented soap please remove themselves from the gathering." There was a silence and no one moved. Then everyone started looking around and whispering again. Soon five or six young men, all with beards, started up the aisles, bending over now and then to do what I can describe only as sniffing. They would lower their faces close to people's heads, take a sniff and then move on.

I could not contain my curiosity any longer, so I asked the young blonde woman next to me what was going on. She told me, in a thick Dutch accent, that the Bhagwan is very sensitive to all smells and that the strong smell of any perfume could cause him to leave his body. I was not sure what she meant by "leave his body." I wasn't sure if she meant die or astral project or what, but before I could ask, I saw one of the languid sniffers discover the scented culprit and lead her out of the tent. As this happened, the whole atmosphere got very concentrated and charged. The focus of energy was enormous as two bearded orange men brought out a great white V.I.P. executive's chair. After the chair was set and the two men were standing on either side of it, the Bhagwan swept out in his white robes, the only one besides me not dressed in orange, and sat. As soon as he was in his chair, I thought, Yes, the perfect guru. He was like Kennedy, the perfect President. He had the charisma. He had the aura. He had the look. He was a tall man with a balding head, long hair on the sides and a flowing white beard. His face was open and expressive, but his eyes were the thing. I had never seen eyes like them. His eyes were anything and everything you wanted to read into them.

He was silent for a while, sitting there, taking in his devoted audience. Then, placing his hands in prayer position under his chin, he began to speak. And what he said was even more threatening to me than watching all those orange people do their sexy dance.

"You are not asleep. You have chosen (continued on page 148)Impossible Vacation(continued from page 80) to do whatever you are doing now, and if you are in agony and anxiety and pain, I want you to realize that it is because you have chosen it. Then you have to ask why? Why would you choose a life of pain and suffering? There are reasons for it. You have to realize that only in sorrow can you be. When you are in ecstasy, you disappear. Suffering gives you a definition. It makes you feel solid."

He went on talking about how we are divided by our pain, how misery separates and separation makes us more miserable. He told us that when we become happy, the ego cannot exist. He asked us to take a look and see how when we are suddenly happy, the ego disappears.

By now, the man had really terrified me. I could not remember the last time I was suddenly happy. The most I ever got was a mild sense of well-being and I wondered if I even had an ego to lose.

After more talk about ecstasy and ego and how the choice is ours whether to go deeper into pain or let it go and cry and laugh together so that we at last become one, he started explaining his initiation process. "All you have to do is tell me when you're ready and I will be ready to receive you. When you do this, it is not throwing away your responsibility, it is giving up your resistance. If you cannot trust yourself, trust me. Pass through the Master in trust, in love, in surrender, and things will start happening."

God, this was tempting stuff. If he didn't mean it, he sure knew how to say it well. Of course, I felt everything he said applied to me. I was the ultimate self-help-book sucker. I was unhappy, and to some extent, I suspected that I was engineering my misery. But I had no idea how to stop. It had become such an ingrained habit. To take it away would be to take away me.

Yes, many things the Bhagwan said made seductive sense, but I was not yet sure if I trusted him. I had to get closer to him physically to find out.

When the Bhagwan finished speaking, he placed his hands in prayer position, bowed to his audience and, gathering his white robes around him, strolled regally off the stage. As soon as he was out of sight, the two tall bearded assistants removed his great white chair. Instantly, about 15 or 20 women rushed onto the stage, threw themselves down and kissed the floor where the chair had been. "What are they doing?" I asked a person next to me.

"That," she replied, "is bhakti yoga, the yoga of worship."

I filed out with 2000 people dressed in orange and retreated to the Ritz to recuperate. I had to be alone. It was too confusing. I had lost my sex drive. It was too hot. I missed Meg a lot. The whole place suddenly reminded me of one big Christian Science camp, except everyone was dressed in orange and making love. Nothing made sense. I wanted a Scotch very badly. It was too hot to drink in my sweatbox of a hotel, so I walked down to the Blue Diamond, the only five-star hotel in town. I had Scotch and a steak and everything made sense again. The Blue Diamond was dark and air-conditioned and I got into just fuzzing out. The booze worked as it always does: It slowed down my head. I felt like Dad.

•

The following day, I went down to the ashram to sign up for an audience with the Bhagwan. After putting my name on the list, I retreated to my hotel. By four o'clock, the day had cooled down enough to be bearable and I took a slow walk down to the ashram. Eight of us lined up at the gate and again I was the only one not dressed in orange. The others were dressed in flowing robes, but because they had not been initiated yet, they did not have the mala with the little black-and-white picture of Rajneesh around their necks. I assumed they were going in to be initiated. This made me think about why I was there, outside of curiosity. I remembered something Rajneesh had said in his talk, about not coming to him out of curiosity but rather with a sincere and open heart.

While I stood there, I did my best to open my heart, but I had no idea what or whom I was opening up to. Just to be wide open seemed a little risky unless I was looking to be Christ.

We were all led around to a little garden behind the ashram and told to sit. We sat cross-legged on the grass and stared with great anticipation at the big empty white chair on the porch. A young woman of about 19 or 20 came out dressed in orange and sat cross-legged just to the left of the chair. I think she was one of the Bhagwan's consorts. Then he appeared and moved in a very direct and focused way to sit. He lifted his hands into prayer position, closed his eyes and breathed.

Opening his eyes, he said, in a most sensual and hypnotic voice, "Now I am here to receive you." One at a time, people were singled out by one of the bearded ushers to go up and kneel. As they did, the Bhagwan would look at them with this great open smile and study them for a bit until he intuited the right Sanskrit name to give them. When he got the name, he would write it on a piece of paper and hand it to the initiates while he spoke it to them and told them what it meant. After he put the mala, with his little black-and-white glossy picture on it, around their necks, he got out a little pen flashlight and shined it onto their third eye and dismissed them. Most of the people were joyful and ecstatic. It was a big event for them, I could see; but, much to my surprise, I could also see that each initiation was being video-taped by two of the ushers off to the side and there were two small microphones on the edge of the porch right at the foot of the Bhagwan's chair. It was all being recorded.

When my time came, one usher approached me and whispered, "Go up and kneel but not too close or you may cause him to leave his body." At that point, I had a great temptation to get in very close, but I could also see that one of the ushers standing just behind Rajneesh was really a big bodyguard.

When I kneeled, he smiled and, seeing I was not in orange, said, "What can I do for you?" At that point, I felt very lost. Nothing came to mind, not even that I wanted to get laid. I just felt lost and empty and I told him I was confused and didn't know what to do. He told me to take a workshop and he listed some of them. "You can take the enlightenment intensive, the centering group or interpersonal confrontation. Or you could try primal scream, let go or art therapy. You choose one, do one and then come back to me and we shall talk some more."

When I left, I saw a little counter where they were selling audiocassettes and videotapes of the entire event.

Back at the Ritz that night, I got angry, thinking, What does Rajneesh mean by live in the moment, forget the past, and then he goes and sells you videotapes to remember your moments with him. All moments are not equal. The Bhagwan is driving me nuts. It's too hot here. I've lost my sex drive. And besides, I think all the people here have money. I don't have enough money to take a lot of workshops that won't do me any good once I get back to the real world. I wish Meg would come save me.

Meg did come the following day. She came to take me away to Kashmir where it would be cool and real and just us. But first I dragged her to see one of Rajneesh's talks. It was about the same old stuff, liberation from personal pain. Meg was not impressed. I was impressed by her lack of impression.

•

Meg and I rented a houseboat on Dal Lake. It was beautiful, but it wasn't enough, just sitting there on the boat looking at those mountains. So one day not long after our arrival, we rented a gondola for a tour of the lake. The boatman put flowers around our necks and sat us up in the bow. Meg looked great with the wreath of jasmine around her neck. The lake was very still as the boatman poled us across. This was so much nicer than the Ganges, only we couldn't get the Ganges out of our minds because of the smell. Even the jasmine didn't overpower it. We couldn't figure out why the boatman didn't notice. We thought he must have grown used to it, or had just learned, like any good tour guide, how to ignore it. As we were passing through the mouth of a shallow inlet, I bent over the bow of the gondola and saw a bloated, decaying baby calf stuck on the bow like some big, stupid death bumper.

When we got tired of the view, we would go to the rug factories. Although the rugs Meg was looking at were beautiful, I was bored. Meg could see into the patterns and workmanship in those rugs. She could see the entire story of how the rug was made and it mattered to her. Meg wanted a rug to live with. She wanted to grow old with a rug. Things mattered to Meg but not to me. I didn't want a rug. I didn't want to grow old, with a rug or anyone. I wanted an orgy. I wanted an endless orgy now.

Now that the weather was cooler, my sex drive was coming back, but we were having problems with our sex life. Problems in the sense that the drive for each other was absent. It was there before we came to India, and then it just went away like the windy mystery it is. Maybe all the sights of death had helped blow it away.

So the more Meg looked at rugs, the more I stood beside her and fantasized that I was back in Poona. Only in my fantasy, the weather was cooler and I had at last decided to take one of the so-called gestalt encounter groups. In this fantasy, there were 20 of us: ten very good-looking young women and ten real handsome men--me included. We were all tan, lithe and languid. And the group leader was a German gestalt therapist who had given up her few belongings in Frankfurt and had come to Poona to live. And she comes into the room where we are and says, "Just do what I tell you to do and trust me because what I'm going to tell you to do is going to feel real good. I want you to take a risk to feel pleasure. I want all of us to pretend that we are here today just to experience pleasure."

We're all standing on these mattresses as she's telling us this. The mattresses are covered with clean white cotton sheets that have just been hand-washed by a bunch of local Poona women. And the gestalt therapist, who I am now calling Hilda in my mind, says to us to please disrobe and hang our orange garments--raiments, I think she was calling them--on hooks that are all along the white wall to one side of the room. And as we all slowly slip out of our raiments, all kind of languid and humid, our muscles now completely relaxed by the warmth of the place, we look across the room and see that the wall is one big mirror. And Hilda hands us all some almond oil and asks us to begin rubbing one another's bodies in front of the mirror. I can feel hands going down between my crack and around the back of my balls, and my oily fingers go down between other cracks and everything's all slippery and fluid, and as we stand there looking at ourselves naked in the mirror, Hilda adjusts the lights to a low amber and relaxing Indian music begins to play.

Hilda says in her German accent, "Come people. Make a sitting circle in the center." We do as we are told, no problem, and it feels right. It feels good to do this. It feels all so perfectly right as if there is no other place in the world to be. And then we sit there, just gazing at one another's eyes because we are still a little inhibited about looking at one another's body parts even though we just rubbed them all with almond oil. Now Hilda pulls out a long wooden hash pipe and says, "Before we go any further, I just want everyone to take a big hit of my herbal medicine here. I promise it will help you relax even more." And she lights this pipe and passes it around the circle, filling the room with the sweet smell of hash. The pipe keeps going around and we all get high, real mellow and real relaxed. I can feel the hash smoke go all the way down into my belly and fill my balls. I can feel my balls begin to swell and roll. I can feel my lazy dick begin to sprout and peek out to see what's going on. And it's like Hilda is a great snake charmer who is gently bringing all the snakes out of their holes in search of new warm ones.

And then Hilda gets up and says, "Now I'm going to turn the lights out, and I'm going out and I'm going to lock the door from the outside, and I'll be back in two hours. I want you all to go to town--to do crazy things you've never done before. See if you can feel where heaven is. I want you to go to the Garden of Eden before you knew there was an apple tree. I want you to go to the Garden of Eden when the garden was only flesh, not flowers, when the landscape was you and not the earth, when your bodies were all the earth and the earth was your bodies and there was no separation. Please go there. Please, please take the courage to go there just this once, so you will know pure pleasure before there was time and history, pure, pure, historyless pleasure." And she's saying all this wonderful stuff with a German accent as she turns out the lights and leaves us.

And what happens when she goes out of the room is so delicious that it stops time and wipes out death. Death is nowhere in the room. The room turns into a pure impenetrable fortress against death as we slowly begin to pant and touch. And Hilda has even turned off the music so the room is completely dark and without sound, except for the sound of all 20 of us turning into pure animal heat. All the body parts begin to feel like parts of one body as we link and couple in that room. Some gentle hand has found my cock and is guiding it into a warm, wet hole, while I have found another kind of tighter hole with my finger, as all the oily bodies fit together. Someone wraps a thumb and finger around my balls and squeezes just so and, ooh, who's that, is that a tongue and, ooh, it's in my ass and, oh, we lie there humping and heaving until no body and no hole is unstopped. The holes and all the parts get miraculously connected like a great flesh puzzle linked up at last and it's all done by sheer animal intuition. And everything gets filled up and satisfied, all the empty places get filled. My ass is filled up solid with a cock and my cock is filled up solid with my blood and it fills up a waiting hole or mouth that a warm hand guides it to. And the whole room seethes and heaves and begins to fill with blue sparks that arc and jump around the giant united body pile as everyone swells into a giant moan and watches the blue sparks fly in the mirror, and we all come in our various ways, in our various holes together. We come together, we all come as one big panting river of flesh. And for just one glorious timeless time, it's all one sound and one body. It is the Garden of Eden before the voice of God spoke to Adam. It is exactly that for all of us. A total union. And we know it, all at once as we all come together and slowly collapse into a mindless limp slumber, a slight river of drool and joy juice trickling from all the slack, satisfied cracks. And we just lie there in that timeless, absolutely satisfied body heap until at last Hilda opens the door and turns the lights up slightly so we can all look into one another's eyes again. And we do it. As brightly and innocently as a team of Fifties cheerleaders at a high school in the middle of America. "Hi, guys!" our eyes say. "Hi, gang!" our mouths say. "Wasn't that great?"

"Yeah, that was far out!"

"That was great! Let's do it again tomorrow!"

And we don't even feel a hint of shame. Shame and guilt never enter that room. Of course, we knew they were right outside the door. But we also knew we had consecrated a sacred place. We had created the Garden of Eden before the knowledge of good and evil. And we'd do it again next Wednesday. And the knowledge that we had the power to create that place, that it would be there for us again on Wednesday, made us able to live with the guilt and shame of the outside world. It purified us. And Hilda turned up the music real loud this time and it was reggae, and we all danced naked, real happy, as we rubbed what was left of one another's juices onto our bodies to show we had been initiated into the brotherhood and sisterhood of pleasure: the Garden of Eden Club. Or the Eden Garden Club.

Now this fantasy was so strong that it played like a movie loop in my head. And the more I played it, the more I wanted to return to Poona. In fact, I was beginning to get paralyzed by not knowing what was real and what was fantasy. I was afraid that if I went back, I'd run into all the same barriers again. And I tried to calm myself by telling myself that I'd do it one day. I knew I loved Meg, but I also knew that I needed to get back to a place like the Garden of Eden Club. I had to get through the fantasy or it would turn on me and I'd go crazy.

You see, I was beginning to realize the mistake I made when I had my meeting with Rajneesh. I had been false. I had played some sacred and holy game with him instead of just coming out and telling him that all I really wanted was to get laid over and over again. I wanted to fuck, and for some reason, perhaps because of the guilt I felt toward Meg, I needed his permission to do it. And here is the sad part: My fantasy workshop didn't even come into my mind until I was all the way up in Kashmir with Meg. I began to feel tortured. I could not accept the fact that I was torturing myself, so I began to blame it on the guru. I mean, I began to blame it on Rajneesh! I began to think he had power over me and was torturing me for not accepting him. And this began to frighten me and make me nuts. "Unfinished business, unfinished business!" was the phrase that kept running through my mind. I was playing around with madness when I could have taken a risk and gone mad in a safe way in Poona. I was about to poison myself with regret. I was beginning to torture myself with the idea that I had to go back to Poona to do it right, to go to him and say, "I want to get laid. I need to get laid." Meg was not enough for me. I needed to lose myself and meld. I wanted to lose myself every morning and every evening in glorious, boundaryless sex.

•

Actually, I first decided to go back to New York City. Meg wanted to stay for a while in Delhi and take a yoga class. I was incredulous. I couldn't imagine how Meg could do yoga in that heat, but she was disappointed that she'd come all this way to India and never once got to take any lessons in yoga. All she had done was buy rugs. Until then, I had been thinking of myself as the spiritual quester and Meg as the merchant, but that was changing.

•

I flew Air India to Amsterdam, where I was supposed to change planes for New York. I didn't want the flight to be over. Six hours had gone by like six minutes. As soon as the plane had landed, the dizzy feeling of too much freedom came over me again, the feeling that I was no one and everyone everywhere, and that I could do anything I wanted--except there was hardly any "I" left to operate out of. Then, pulling away from the window, I realized that my head was locked to the right from having stared out the window for six hours.

I strolled into the almost-empty airport with my head locked to the right, walked past the Dutch immigration officials, who all looked like stoned-out hippies in uniform, and it occurred to me that I could have been bringing in pounds of hashish and opium and it wouldn't have mattered to them.

Yes, Amsterdam felt like a little paradise of freedom and all my plans to get on the next flight to New York City began to dissolve and crumble. "Why not spend one night in Amsterdam?" the little gremlin voice was saying in my ear. "Just one night." After all, I had an open ticket and what was the rush to get back to New York City in the summer?

So I called Hans and Sonia, my only friends in Amsterdam, and said, "Hi, it's Brewster. I'm just in from India and I'd love to come over and see you." It felt so exciting to be able to say "just in from India." Never in my life did I think I'd be able to utter a phrase quite as jet-setty as that.

"But of course," Sonia crackled in her thick Dutch accent. "What a surprise!"

I caught a cab and was off, sitting in the back trying to force my head to the left, overwhelmed by the large, hypertrophic prosperity of all I saw out the window. The wealth of that city! Never did I think Amsterdam would look so luxurious. The people in the streets were like great blown-up sex giants, strapping male towheads and butter-and-peach-cream-skinned women, coming and going on black Mary Poppins bicycles, their spines gloriously erect, their eyes straight ahead with the great purpose of life.

As my Mercedes cab wound through the narrow Dutch streets, I could see flashes of bright-colored, overflowing vegetable stands. After India, all the vegetables in Holland looked as if they had been blown up by bicycle-tire air pumps. That's about the time the fever came on me, just as I was looking at some particularly plump cauliflower. It was a cool, wet, beautiful Nordic day in June and everything was so fresh, but all at once, I felt a chill creeping into my bones. I saw all the people again, all those Dutch people, and the realization crept into me like a chill that all of this had been going on without me; Amsterdam had been going on all the time that I was in India, or all my life, for that matter, and now I was just peeking in on it. Yes, all of Amsterdam, not to mention Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels or London, had been going on without me. And no one cared whether I came or went; no one cared what I did or felt; so my newfound freedom was turning into a horror. No one even knew I was in that cab or who I was, much less how I perceived the cauliflower or the upright Dutch women on their black Mary Poppins bikes. No wonder so many people craved fame, I thought. It allowed you the grand illusion that you were someone. No wonder people need to pretend that God is watching them all the time. Any illusion would be better than this loneliness, this awareness of infinitesimal existence, this awful freedom. Thank God for Hans and Sonia, I thought. At least they'll recognize me.

By the time I got to Hans and Sonia's apartment, I was shaking and sweating with a fever and sure that I'd come down with some exotic Indian disease. I couldn't believe how fast it had come over me.

•

Gradually I got better. I drank the mugs of homemade vegetable soup that Sonia brought up to me. I began to miss Meg a whole lot and I tried to figure out when it was that she had planned to be passing through Amsterdam on her way to New York. I was sort of sure that she had planned to spend 12 or 14 days at that yoga school in Delhi, so I figured, in 12 days' time I would try to have all the incoming flights from India paged at the airport.

On the third day of my recuperation, I began to get curious about the books on the shelf in my little room. I pulled out a small paperback called The Grammar of Living, having no idea what a vulnerable state I was in and how careful I should have been about what I filled my empty head with. The Grammar of Living was filled with all these lusty, sexy Sixties stories, told under the guise of teaching the reader how the nuclear family, with its accompanying Oedipal problems, had to be broken down and destroyed immediately, so we could all become free of guilt and experience liberating good sex, pure sex with no words, no conditions, no apparent historical consequences. I lay there and swallowed it whole.

This guy Cooper would tell about how he was just hanging out at the local antifamily commune in London, hanging out tripping on pure Sandoz LSD, and happy just to be there with no longings or desire, and then came a knock on the door. I mean, it wasn't even his door. It was just the door, because he was involved in this communal-non-ego-non-family-door situation. So there was this knock and there she was, this leggy Suzette, a long-torsoed, beautiful Frenchwoman from across the Channel. Without a word, the next thing Cooper knew, he was locked into some Kama Sutra tantric pose with her. Cooper, deep and hard into Suzette, and she with her long legs wrapped around him, swooning like a swan in blind lust. They were in the doorway just doing it in front of the whole commune, if they even cared, just doing it so the whole commune could observe and celebrate the end of the nuclear family. They were in what he called a deep sexual meditation, the unification of opposite poles, sex as a big France-and-England-joy-juice spiritual thing. Those stories put me in an almost unnatural state of desire and lust. I was so taken in by this damn book that I forgot to realize that this guy, this Cooper, had to have taken the time to write it all down, to get it edited and to get it published, which most likely meant that he must have rewritten it a number of times, but all of this didn't enter into my head then. I just kept seeing him as completely ecstatic in this state of ideal, pure, sanctioned, antifamily sex. I wanted some for myself right away.

As I lay there in bed, I began to have a big, stirring notion that I could find what I needed down at the Dam, the main square in Amsterdam where all the hippies hung out. And to make it even more perfect, Hans and Sonia were going away to the country for the whole month of July and they offered me their apartment for free! I could have it, I could stay there and do anything I wanted. I could smoke hash all day, or drink, or take LSD, or read whatever books I wanted, or indulge in tantric sex.

I put down that damn provocative book and lay there in bed having elaborate fantasies of what I was going to do. I was going to pick up a young, dark, foreign woman--an Italian hippie who spoke no English, just enough for her to understand what I needed. I'd bring her back to my little cozy Dutch apartment and get her in tantric poses. It was about to become my new Garden of Eden. We would do it in the window, on the table or while sliding down the banister. This was like a new fever, a fever in my brain.

I told Hans that I'd like to go down to just sort of look at the Dam, you know, from a distance. "You know," I said, "I'll take a nice little walk through Vondel Park and then head on down to the Dam."

Hans said, "Well, please take my bike."

And I did. I took Hans's big black Mary Poppins bike and I had that sickening, dizzy freedom feeling yet again. I was wobbling all over on that bike, the wind blowing in my hair. I felt free and alive and, God, what a scary place it was, what a wobbly, scary place. It was as though I suddenly found myself on a high wire doing a tightrope act without having had any practice, without any idea how I had gotten out there. I was in this scary, risky place and I knew that I could fall at any moment into the dark, soft, destructive side of pleasure--the pain that feels so good, the masochism--or I could opt for the joyous, humorous side, which I really knew nothing about and had a feeling Mr. Tantric Cooper didn't either.

The Dam was jammed with all sorts of hippies, hanging out, playing wooden flutes, dealing dope, selling their used VW buses. Everyone looked so fucking great, so beautiful, in their shaggy confidence, and so together, stoned and part of something that was beyond me. What was worse, no one even noticed me. No one noticed my incredible new skinny fresh-out-of-India body. No one noticed me in my raw silk Nehru jacket riding high on my magic Mary Poppins bike. No one noticed me as I got off my bike and stood at the edge of it all, like a lame, excluded boy longingly looking in on some glorious schoolyard playground at recess.

I thought maybe I should just go and have a beer and think all this over some more, go and make a few notes on the back of a napkin about what I just saw and try to put the puzzle together again. I could always come back to the Dam and pick someone up in a few hours.

I was tortured by this new gnawing dark thought that this had been the history of my life: retreat. I'd never gone after what I wanted because I'd never trusted that what I wanted was what I wanted. Everything always seemed like an illusion covering over another illusion, layers and layers of it.

I went to a bar for a beer, anyway. At last, back to the hops! The river of forgetfulness, I thought as I took my first slow sip. I knew I liked hops better than hash, because hops were grown in cooler climates and helped diffuse the flames of lust that were so often brought on by marijuana or hashish. Oh, God, that wonderful Dutch beer was so smooth and relaxing. But as soon as I'd get relaxed, all the ten thousand things would start entering my head again, the temptations that came like those wild and crazy birds flying at me, all those shoulds and woulds and coulds, which started now like an infernal engine in my head. Maybe I should go to Bali, I thought, or maybe I would or could take a train down to Greece. Maybe I should go to Ireland. Then I'd order another beer to try to quench what now seemed like endless desire spinning in my head like a giant wheel of fortune. I sat there in that overripe place of desire and expectation, poised and teetering on the edge of a life not yet lived.

I ordered another big pint of slow thick beer as Bali came back to my mind and then passed like those ever-changing June clouds of Amsterdam. I didn't even know what day it was now and I didn't care. I loved the lostness.

•

Eventually, I developed a new plan--that I would get work in one of those live sex shows in the red-light district of Amsterdam and thus have a sort of guaranteed, sanctioned and remunerative sexual activity. Then, once again, after Dutch coffee and sweet rolls, I'd get on Hans's big black Mary Poppins bike and, now with great purpose and direction, not once weaving or wobbling, I would ride down into the red-light district at midday before the sex shows were open to the public and make my rounds. I'd go to each sex show and make a rather formal request to the manager. To my amazement, they all treated me with respect and credulity. They told me that I would have to do three shows a night with a female partner and the shows would consist of some dancing, a lot of stripping and, then, public sexual intercourse. They said I didn't have to come three times a night, but I should be able to get erect and make a full-blown, obvious vaginal penetration in public. It struck me as a wonderful way to make money and have a good time. Like the New Leftists say, it would be true erogenous work; all the senses would be involved, and furthermore, the porn-show managers said they were open to me creating my own show. But (and here was the big show-stopping but) I had to have a female partner. They did not supply the female partner. The first person that came to mind was the KLM Royal Dutch flight information and reservations woman. Somehow I knew that was just a fantasy and out of the question.

Now I had a reason to go down to the Dam again. I would go to the Dam and try to find a partner. I was sure I could, but first I needed my lunchtime beers, and after two of them, I was thinking of Bali again. I no longer had a will. I was being swept away by an endless succession of fantasy whims. My will had been eaten away and I was blowing around like some weird wind.

•

Then, one day in the middle of all my confusion, Meg arrived in Amsterdam. She arrived to stay a few nights with Hans and Sonia. She showed up without even having been paged at the airport. She just decided to come in to Amsterdam as I did, to break up her flight between India and New York. At first, I was as surprised to see her as she was to see me. Then I was sort of happy and relieved, and then, just as quickly as all that occurred, I didn't want her to be there because I saw clearly how over the years I had made Meg into my conscience, my guide to a controlled and meaningful life. As I said before, things seemed to matter to Meg.

Meg arrived in a bustle of purpose and direction, with all her customs papers for her Kashmiri rugs in order, and all her energy focused on getting back to New York to sell rugs and get on with her life. The yoga retreat she stayed at in Delhi had not been a successful event, but she didn't dwell on it and, more importantly, didn't have any regrets.

Meg perceived that something had gone wrong in me, that I was more troubled than usual, and perhaps she made a mistake when she said, "I think you had better come home with me to New York." That little statement put me in a mild panic because I began to assume that she thought there was something wrong with me, and that if she did, then there must be. After all, she knew me so well and if she thought it was important for me to go home with her, then most likely it was. At the same time, I kept ranting and raving to her about how I should really take the time to go to Bali.

When I'd spin out too far in too many directions, Meg would always rein me in, pull me back with questions like, "Do you think you'll find yourself in Bali, Brewster? Come back with me to New York, come back and find your roots there. We'll celebrate the Fourth of July in America."

So there I was in Amsterdam, packing my bags like some sort of lost robot. I didn't have any joy about the return trip. I was without joy and without satisfaction. I couldn't find the real world I was supposed to live in. It just didn't seem to exist out there for me and I seemed unable to make it up inside me. I was in limbo.

I felt like a little boy standing next to Meg saying goodbye to Hans and Sonia and Baby Willie, suddenly feeling remorse because I'd not really spent any quality time with them. God, I hadn't even gone to the Van Gogh museum. I had just run all around Amsterdam like a crazy, obsessed chicken. I knew it was because I had read the wrong book when I was sick. Hans and Sonia said they were sorry that I didn't want to use their place for July. I told them the thought of being alone at this point was just too much, it was out of the question. We left and headed for the airport.

It was at the airport that it happened. That's where I think I finally snapped altogether.

Meg and I had checked in our bags for the KLM Royal Dutch flight to New York and we were wandering around the duty-free shops, or rather Meg was wandering in her purposeful way and I was like this robot dog-boy behind her. I couldn't help noticing that I didn't have the usual feeling I had in airports. I didn't feel nervous or anxious about the flight and I didn't want to buy any duty-free booze, which is really weird. I didn't feel anything until we got close to the boarding gate, and then I had one very strong feeling, kind of an impulse: I didn't want to go. I did not want to get on that plane. I did not want to go back to New York. This feeling turned into a kind of nervous, neurotic twitch. As we stood there in the boarding line, I began to groan, and when Meg asked me what was wrong, I simply told her I needed to get my bags off the plane. Worst of all, she didn't disagree with me. She didn't try to talk me out of it or stop me.

By now, the flight attendant had noticed my distress and came over to ask what was wrong, and I said, "Please, please, I can't fly today. Get my bags off the plane."

Then to my surprise, the flight attendant paid attention to what I was saying. She stopped and picked up her walkie-talkie and began acting like she was really going to do something about my demand, and I began to think that maybe she was the same lady I had been calling on the phone each morning to reserve and cancel my reservation to New York.

I said again, "Yes, please, please get my bags off. Get my bags off the plane." And then as quickly as I said that, I changed my mind. "No, no, I'm on, leave them on. I mean yes, I mean no, yes, no, I mean no." And then I just fell into a short circuit: "Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no," and I groaned, almost barking like a dog, between noes and yeses and noes, and Meg, who was in front of me, slowly turned and looked at me as though I were going completely mad. Then she began to move forward toward the plane without me, and when I saw that, I just said to the flight attendant, "No, leave the bags on the plane. Let my bags go back to New York. I'm staying here. For better or for worse, I'm staying here."

And she said, still very politely, as though she were dealing with a completely sane and responsible adult male, "But Mr. North, I'm afraid that you can't do that. You must accompany your bags to New York. That's policy." By this time, Meg had already boarded without me and I stood there sweating and shaking in my self-created hell of confusion, then I took one giant step and I was on. I got on the plane to accompany my bags to New York City. I was surprised to find that I was not afraid. I was without fear. In fact, I was without almost any feeling at all in that completely mad summer of 1976, the year of the great American bicentennial, the year of the tall ships, the strangest year of my life.