Ryan grins at me broadly from across the street, walking briskly in my direction. He is a tall, burly man wearing a red and black checked shirt and blue jeans tucked into worn brown leather boots. He has the appearance of a lumberjack and a personality to match. Looking at him, one cannot tell that he is the head of a music conservatory in New England. He is accompanied by his wife, Julia, a strikingly attractive woman in her mid-forties sporting a mane of red hair that flows down to her waist. She is dressed in all black today — black polo, black wool trousers and black pumps. 

We hug in a tight embrace. “So good to see you,” says Julia after a long pause. I nod in agreement, not knowing what else to say. We are meeting after a gap of a few years. The last time we saw each other was at her and Ryan’s wedding in New York. 

The conversation quickly turns to the event that’s brought us here today — Mari’s funeral.  She had been pronounced dead from a heroin overdose a few days earlier. It came as a shock to both Julia and I. When I last saw her, she had gotten herself admitted into a methadone clinic and thrown herself into her favorite activity, creating sprawling artworks of abstract expressionism. I can clearly remember her telling me in her lilting voice how happy she was to be doing what she loved most. 

“Where’s Bill?” I ask. “I thought he would be here by now.” “Don’t hold your breath,” says Julia with a grimace. “He’s probably been up drinking all night.” Our friend Bill is — was — Mari’s husband. “Crap. I was wondering how he’d take it.” “Well, what the fuck did you expect? The guy’s been nursing her like forever, and now this….” She trails off as her eyes moisten with tears.

Mari, Bill, Julia and I went back a long way.  It all started one hot summer afternoon in Amsterdam. 

***

Julia is resting on a large brocade pillow propped up against the wall, rolling a joint as I walk into the cafe. She is in her late twenties, has reddish-blonde hair tied in a topknot, and is attractive in a fragile, waifish sense. I walk over and sit down cross-legged opposite her, placing my satchel on the low table that runs the length of the store. A worn copy of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha lies by her side.

We are at the Global Chillage, an Amsterdam coffee shop and a popular hub for backpackers returning from India, Nepal and Thailand, or those about to embark on the trip. The place is also known for stocking some of the finest hash in town. Hordes of stoners troop in and out all day, quaffing chai, green tea or organic coffee, swaying their heads to trance, reggae and acid jazz. The air is thick with the mingled odors of hashish, coffee, incense and freshly baked croissants. I recognize the cloyingly sweet odor of Nagchampa, a brand of Indian incense popular at dope dens around the world. 

From the general cacophony inside, I can discern Hebrew, German, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, French and Liverpool English being spoken at various decibel levels and emotional registers. Being a polyglot has its uses. A bookish Frenchman drones on about Malana cream, a hand-rubbed variety of premium hashish sourced from a remote corner of the Indian Himalayas. He tells his friend that if Indian growers were compensated fairly for the fruit of their labors, they would be “purchasing real estate in Europe.” A muscular Israeli man, clearly fresh out of the army from his aggressive tone and brand new rave gear, asks the barista if she knows of any cheap accommodations in the area. An Italian woman with multiple body-piercings is telling her partner that their relationship is a “farce” and that he is free to seek out other lovers. He doesn’t seem too happy with her proposal. 

Julia delicately places the joint between her lips, and digs inside her bag for a lighter. I pull out a box of matches and offer it to her. She takes it without saying a word, lights the joint, takes several long drags, and then passes it to me. I take a couple of hits. “Great stuff. Tastes like Afghani.”

“Yes, it’s from Mazar-e-Sharif, or that’s what they tell me.”

Mazar-e-Sharif  is an Afghan city named after a large blue-tiled mosque in its center, not far from the Uzbek border and the ancient city of Balkh. Apart from the visual grandeur of its architecture, the region is known for the hashish cultivated in the surrounding mountains. I tell her that my friends and I had traversed the region on our way through Central Asia a few years back. It was the beginning of a long road trip that is still going strong. I have hiked, walked, taken buses, trains and planes across the planet on a journey of discovery with no end in sight. It has been simultaneously, a grueling, exhilarating and harrowing experience. 

On the way, I’ve been jailed for a week in Mexico,been robbed at gunpoint in Panama, broken my arm surfing in Sri Lanka, danced non-stop for three days at a clandestine rave at an ancient temple complex in Nepal, roared at the heavens from high atop the Andes, and fallen sick more times than I care to remember.  I move like a butterfly flitting from one flower to the next, seeking nectar. Why am I doing this? A good question for which there are no ready answers. I am 24 years old and the world is my oyster. I feel invincible and immortal. 

Julia is a cellist performing at clubs and private events around Europe. We talk about the music business for a bit. I tell her about my brief stint learning music in New York and the time I played drums with an indie-rock band in San Francisco. I pick up her book, open it to a random page and read aloud. “And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.”

“That’s deep, real deep,” says a heavyset bearded man, wearing an oversized poncho. “Really? I was about to say it sounds like a Hallmark greeting card,” I reply. I like Herman Hesse, but have always been wary of grand summations of the human condition, religious or otherwise. I would rather experience these epiphanies myself than read about them. 

The man laughs and introduces himself as Bill. He pulls out a large bag of dried fungus and puts it under my nose. It has a musty, acrid odor. “The shamans call it Teonanacatal. It means flesh of the gods. TEO-NANA-CATAL,” he says for effect. He has a hillbilly twang that sounds like Mississippi or somewhere thereabouts.The bag contains hallucinogenic mushrooms grown from spores he has brought back from the Sierra Madre highlands in Mexico. 

“Only hundred bucks for the whole bag. Considering they were served at the coronation of Aztec kings, it’s a steal. And I’ll throw in some Purple Haze,” he says, referring to the purple-hued marijuana strain that is the rage in Amsterdam that year. 

“We can go Dutch,” says Julia, giggling at her own joke. I had ingested the Peyote cactus on a field trip to Oaxaca some years back, so I have an idea of what to expect. Certain plant varieties have been used as a ritual sacrament, a visionary aid by indigenous Mesoamericans since ancient times, a practice that has been enthusiastically adopted by modern hippies and urban nomads. 

The numbers for addicts and drug related casualties in Holland are the lowest in Europe, mainly because of the decriminalisation of drug use and availability of cannabis products in coffee shops, grown locally and sourced from countries like Morocco and Pakistan. The total turnover in the soft drugs business is approximately 2 billion Euros, generating around 400 million Euros in tax revenue. 

We pay for the mushrooms and begin chewing on them without further ado. The effects come on in about thirty minutes. I become acutely aware of every sound, movement, shape and texture around me. The colorful oriental tapestries that adorn the walls take on a life of their own. They are pulsing with animated torrents of information moving too fast for my brain to process. Tendrils of incense smoke reach out and probe the room like octopus tentacles. 

After a long silence, Julia asks if we would like to go back to her apartment. I nod in consent and collect my things. The three of us walk out of the café together.

We stroll through the streets in the waning light, mesmerised by the sights, sounds and smells of the city. The odor of grilled shawarma, the rotating bicycle wheels of evening commuters, big and small boats ferrying tourists across the canals and diffused orange glow of street lamps blend into a sensory mélange. Julia links her arm through mine. We walk that way for a while, then, in what seems like an instant, we are at her place. 

Julia goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on, while I sit on a large couch covered with pastels prints that have detached themselves from the cloth and are floating around the room. Bill launches into a description of a breathing technique he has learnt from a Yogi in Venice beach, California, and then proceeds to demonstrate it for us. It seems to put him in a trance. He closes his eyes and goes silent. 

The mushrooms have come on pretty strong by now and I can hear my heart tapping a staccato beat as I walk over to the kitchen area. Julia stands motionless, staring into the boiling water swirling around the kettle. I go up behind her, place my hands on her hips and turn her towards me. We kiss for a long moment. She takes me by the hand and leads me to her bedroom. We take off our clothes and fall on the bed entwined, eagerly exploring each other’s bodies. 

She takes her time with me, going over every inch like she’s mapping uncharted terrain. I am lying on my back staring up at the white ceiling. It melts and drips on me like hot molten wax. I close my eyes and try to focus on the electric sensation rippling through my chest. I am enveloped by a black void. I can see nothing, hear nothing and feel nothing. Now I am floating in what feels like embryonic fluid, encased in a fleshy, translucent cocoon. The space around me throbs with the sound of a beating heart.  All my senses tune into the pulsing rhythm.

A little later, I hear a rustling of sheets and feel a clammy hand stroking my back. I hear a gruff voice. “Can I join?” I whirl around and see Bill who has climbed into the bed. Julia screams, jumps off the bed and yells. “Get the fuck out of here”. He mumbles an apology and shuffles out of the room. We look at each other and break out in peals of laughter. 

It is breaking dawn when we climb out of bed and amble into the living room. Bill is lying spread-eagled on the floor, stripped to his boxers. Bitches Brew by Miles Davis is playing on the vinyl deck as the early morning light streams in through the large windows. At that moment in time, everything makes perfect sense. Things are just as they were supposed to be. Julia looks stunning as she stands beside me, with her shoulder-length red hair framing her face, the light accentuating her cheekbones and the line of her jaw.  

It has been less than a month since we met. I’ve asked myself a number of times if I’m in love with Julia. I do not know if what I feel is love but I feel lonely when I’m away from her. It’s not a feeling I am comfortable with. I have tried to protect myself from such feelings by not getting too close to people. My insecurity stems from a troubled childhood, growing up in a family with my parents always at loggerheads. I am not sure if I should express my feelings to her. Wise men have said that expressing your ‘true feelings’ is a deal-breaker. Play it cool and aloof, they say. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep up the act. 

“Are you just going to stand there? Go make some coffee,” Bill yells from the shag carpet, jolting us from our reverie.  I look at Julia, grinning broadly. She tells him gently to get up and make it himself.  

When Bill and I finally walk out of the apartment, the sun is directly above us. Julia said she wanted some time alone, saying she needed to prepare for a Cello recital later that night. 

“Do you want to see where I live?” Bill asks. It’s not the Ritz, but I think you’ll like it.” We haven’t talked about the incident from the night before. I tell him about the trip, about feeling like I had died and been reborn. He is silent for a while, and then he grins. “But we could have taken it to a whole new level if you had let me join.”

“I didn’t know you were gay”. 

“I swing both ways, Yin and Yang.” 

“Did you think I swung both ways too?” I ask.

“I don’t know. You sound like an open-minded guy,” he says. “I don’t think in terms of being pan, bi, homo, hetero. I don’t go to pride parades or give a toss about a lot of things related to it all. I’m just me.” 

Back home in Birmingham, Alabama, Bill had a day job as a restaurant manager and played the keyboard for a local band in his down time. A ten-day Ayahuasca retreat in the highlands of Peru had radically changed his outlook on life. He ended his failing marriage, took all his savings and moved to Amsterdam in search of kindred spirits. He stayed in various squats, and then with a former Senegalese athlete with whom he had a brief fling until he met Mariat an impromptu bash. He schmoozed his way into her life and a few months later, moved into her place near De Wallen, the red light district of Amsterdam, where she works as a professional escort. 

He now plays the keyboards for two different bands and sustains himself by working as a bartender in addition to cultivating mushrooms and selling them to outlets around the city. 

De Wallen is an eclectic neighborhood located in the older part of the city, and a major hub of sex tourism in Europe. Prostitution in the Netherlands is legal and regulated and operating a brothel is also legal. De Wallen is criss-crossed with a network of alleys lined with hundreds of one-room cabins rented by professional sex workers offering their services from behind neon-lit windows. At night the neighborhood comes to life, like a Disneyland for adults. 

The Netherlands has a long and storied relationship with prostitution. Even as far back as the middle-ages, the authorities had a pragmatic approach to the flesh trade believing it to be a necessary evil, to be tolerated for the greater good of society. An official decree by the city of Amsterdam in 1413 sounds like something a modern day libertarian would say. Because whores are necessary in big cities and especially in cities of commerce such as ours — indeed it is far better to have these women than not to have them — and also because the holy church tolerates whores on good grounds, for these reasons the court and sheriff of Amsterdam shall not entirely forbid the keeping of brothels. 

The rationale behind the Dutch policy of tolerance was that women would be safer if prostitution was legal and regulated instead of being consigned to the shadows, making them ripe for exploitation by the underworld. The same logic has been and still is applied towards the soft drugs trade in the Netherlands. 

I tend to agree with the old white men who wrote the decree into law all those centuries ago. The world is what it is. The sooner we accept and come to terms with our desires and fantasies, the better off we will be for it. Sex is a primal urge, one that can lead to self-destructive neuroses if suppressed and not addressed pragmatically. 

Mariske sits on a wooden chair outside a glass-fronted store with ‘Dharma Café’ embossed on a green awning over the door. She is a tall, athletic woman in her early thirties, with sharp features and glowing brown skin. “Mister Mushroom! Where have you been!” She greets Bill with a sloppy kiss. Shaking hands, she asks me to call her Mari. We sit down on a wooden bench under the shop window. 

A middle-aged South Asian gent walks out of the swinging doors to take our orders. He has a shaved head and wears a black tee tucked into black jeans. Several rings encrusted with semi-precious stones adorn his fingers. Mari introduces him as ‘Baba’, the owner of the cafe. I ask for a round of coffees, a cheese tomato sandwich and apple pie. A few minutes later, he comes back with the order, places it on the table and sits down beside us. 

“Good dope. Fresh from Manali,” he says to no one in particular, as he rolls a joint. “A German friend brought it straight to me from India.” He gives us a graphic description of the traditional method of transporting cannabis resin from Asia to Europe. The hash is rolled into cylindrical pellets, shrink wrapped and sealed, then swallowed a few hours prior to boarding the flight. At the end of the journey, it is excreted out and cleaned, now ready for sale and consumption. Many veterans on the hippie trail make their pocket money this way. 

I wish he hadn’t told me. Although I am familiar with this mode of transporting drugs, it is not something I want to be reminded of while smoking a joint, especially as I am still recovering from the previous night’s binge. 

“You are from India?” he asks a few moments later, looking at me. I tell him that I am indeed of Indian descent though I had spent most of my life outside the country. “You are a lucky man, roaming the world like an English hippie.” I laugh, saying that life on the road could be stressful and unpredictable, and not very glamorous. I ask what brings him to Amsterdam.

He tells me that he ran a travel agency and a Yoga center in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, catering mostly to former Israeli military personnel decompressing from their mandatory tour of duty in the middle-east. He had a fling with one of his students who brought him to Amsterdam and introduced him to her friends in the cannabis industry. Before long he was a pot entrepreneur with his own little store. In his spare time, he teaches yoga and meditation to the ladies of the night. 

“We’re going to India next year,” Bill proclaims. “Tantric sex with hot yoginis and the finest dope on the planet. Can’t beat it.” 

“You’ll get all the dope you can smoke,” I reply, “I’m not sure about the Tantric sex.”

“You mean I can’t fuck my way to Nirvana?” Mari says wistfully. 

“Maybe you can fuck your way to non-attachment,” I reply.

 “That is the first step to knowing your true self. So says the Buddha.” 

“You can make good money with that routine,” says Bill with a smirk. “I see a bright future.”

“Sometimes I zone out when I’m having sex. My body’s all there but my mind is floating in the clouds,” she says. 

Her description reminds me of an article I read somewhere about sex workers ‘zoning out’ of their bodies to cope with demands of frequent sexual intercourse. 

“It sounds like an out-of-body-experience. Have you seen Flatliners?” I ask, referring to the 1990 film about five medical students who attempt to find out what lies beyond death by conducting clandestine experiments that produce near-death experiences, or NDE’s as they are known in the medical community.  

Mari is an endlessly fascinating person. I resonate with her on a very basic level, unlike most people I have known. I respond to those who have nothing left to lose, because life has already taken everything from them. It is only when one loses everything, that one catches a glimmer of what it truly means to be alive. 

She was born in a favela, a ghetto township in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is the progeny of a black Brazilian mother and a Dutch father who brought them both to Holland when she was two years old,only to abandon them a few months later. Not having anyone to turn to, Mari’s mother did whatever it took to survive. She eventually succumbed to a virulent form of syphilis when her daughter was only fourteen. 

She was left in the care of her mother’s former boyfriend who raped her repeatedly. A few months later, she bludgeoned him with an iron skillet while he was passed out on the couch. She was sent to a juvenile home till she reached adulthood and soon found herself following in her mother’s footsteps. With the relaxed Dutch laws on prostitution, sex work was a relatively safer and easier way to earn a living. 

Baba gets up and goes inside the cafe. He comes out a few moments later and beckons me to join him. As I walk in, he asks if I know anyone who wants to ‘get legal’ in Holland. He says he can arrange for undocumented immigrants to get “married” to Dutch nationals so they can acquire resident cards and work legally in the country.

“I’ll give you twenty percent on every confirmed client you bring to me. Don’t waste your life wandering aimlessly with the hippies. Work for me. Think big. An educated guy like you can go far in this place.”

I thank him for his generous appraisal of my qualities and tell him I would let him know if I came across a suitable candidate. 

I go outside and ask the couple if they are interested in joining me for a trip to the Rijks museum. I’ve been hankering to see the contemporary art exhibition currently on display. Mari tells us she often visited the city museums while growing up, as a diversion from the troubles at home. She surprises me with her intimate knowledge of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Renoir, Velaquez and various luminaries who graced the galleries around the city. 

She is particularly enamored with Hieronymus Bosch, the iconoclastic fifteenth century Dutch painter known for his fantastical, often sexually deviant imagery, and his intricate and nightmarish depictions of religious concepts and narratives. I have always found the chaotic world of Bosch strangely resonant with the circus going on inside my own head. The man possessed an uncanny ability to plumb the deepest recesses of the mind to excavate images that are mystifying but oddly familiar at the same time. 

Mari tells me about the time she had stood in front of the famous Bosch triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and felt like she was being drawn into the surreal, otherworldly landscape. The images were strikingly familiar to her. She had seen similar visions in her dreams beginning from early childhood. She did not move from her spot in the gallery, gazing at the painting for a good few hours until a guard came and informed her that they would be closing shortly. 

The intricacy of Bosch’s symbolism has led to a wide range of interpretations over the centuries. Art historians are divided as to whether the triptych is an admonition to sinners or a panorama of paradise lost, a warning about the perils of unchecked hedonism, or an evocation of unbridled sexual ecstasy. To my mind, it symbolises all of that and more. The Garden of Earthly Delights can feel like all of life, death and the afterlife compressed into a single frame.

Mari pulls out an album from her bag and opens it to show me pictures of an art opening where her paintings were exhibited a few years back. The paintings are very good. I ask if I can see her work sometime. She invites me over to her apartment the next day. 

Just then my phone buzzes. It is Julia. She’s had a big fight with her agent over unpaid dues and has decided to cancel her recital that night. I ask if she would like to join us at the museum. She happily accepts. I feel a sudden burst of joy at the anticipation of seeing her again. 

We pay the bill and we make our way to the tram stop. 

***

A few weeks later, Julia and I moved in together. Rather, it was I that moved in with her, since she had a place and I was just a drifter. I stayed with her for a year until the wanderlust hit me once again. We remained good friends and I’d send her a postcard, email or souvenir every few weeks. Then the gaps became longer and we both disappeared into the labyrinths of our respective lives. Julia moved to New York where she became a much sought-after performer, eventually marrying Ryan and later moved to Maine to start a family with him. 

Mari, who had struck up a close friendship with Julia, also moved to New York with Bill in tow. 

New York was a fresh start in some ways, but also the beginning of the end. It was here that she acquired a taste for heroin. “It takes me back into my mother’s womb,” she used to say, “a warm, safe place before the world began.” She saw in me a fellow traveler with the same urge to find and unite with the source of all things — of all that we know, or that we think we know. It was a doomed quest that we both knew could end in tragedy. 

Bill did finally make it to the funeral. He was chain-smoking, and as usual, looking disheveled with bloodshot eyes. We both wept silently. Afterwards, we drove back to Julia’s place, opened a bottle of Sonoma red, as Mari would have liked, and played Julia’s old vinyl of Bitches Brew.  

Mari had left her paintings to Bill, the love of her life. To Julia she bequeathed her extensive collection of poetry books. And to me she left a six-volume set of her personal diaries. It was a profoundly touching gesture. That she trusted me with her innermost thoughts meant more to me than all the riches in the world. On the back, she had affixed a yellow Post-it note. Scribbled on it were the words, “Don’t take the short cut.”