Caustic Ingestion

 

 

 

The sirens of emergency service vehicles play the same musical intervals (and a similar pattern) to the song “Taps” played on trumpet at military funerals in the US. For my ear, they flood the area with a sort-of unintentional reverence and I briefly consider the ill and injured as they go flying by. I am not without empathy.

I’ve encountered the first type of traveler I’d rather never experience again. There happen to be a few in this hostel, but one in particular is really driving a wedge. He said, “It’s Thailand! It’s never too early to start drinking,” cracking a beer at 8:30am with a look that said, “please join me,” in part pitifully, and in part aggressively. Those two states, pitiful and aggressive, seem to exist simultaneously in most of the alcoholics I know.

I was off-put mostly by the notion that Thailand itself justified being a wasted bag of garbage; like it was the fault of some greater cultural value of the Thai people and not his failure to address whatever it is he needs to address. So I fumbled the dismount and just kind of walked away without saying anything, but I certainly thought, “It’s never too early to stop drinking in Thailand, twat.”

I came and went a few times that morning; each hour, him still on the front deck a few more bottles under the seat and eventually a hip-flask pint concealed in his shirt. Each hour a bit more red, a bit less articulate, a bit closer to sleep; snoring at noon.

They must be common at hostels. It must be why he chose the front porch to black-out at noon on a Monday. Every traveler staying has no choice but to walk directly past him and they are helplessly called to play-act along with the fantasy that he’s still the life of the party. I feel bad for him, within reason, but I also have no interest in being a participant in the delusion that he’s just a real-fun-guy living his best life.

All this stilted judgment aside, I was high as a kite today. Although, mostly without trying. When I was in my teens and obsessed with altered states, I covertly purchased Douglas Rushkoff’s “How to get high without drugs.” Which was basically a how-to manual for various cultural methods of achieving altered states without accessing anything on a Federal schedule. One of the methods discussed was a Native coming-of-age ritual where pubescent teens gorge themselves on as many Scoville-stacked peppers as they can fit in their stomachs, as fast as they can. The caustic near-poisoning that follows is said to produce a transcendental state somewhere between bliss and blinding pain. I never saw fit to try that one, no matter how strong my urge to get high.

            She said it would be spicy… but that’s just what they say to all white guys, so I dismissed her concern with unearned bluster. What I ordered was a cucumber and papaya salad with fermented fish. Cucumber and papaya are not ingredients that scream transcendental state of blinding pain. The dish that arrived did have those ingredients but more accurately it was: hot peppers soaked in fish sauce, with a couple tomatoes, a few slivers of papaya, and some cucumber dust tossed in.

            I saw what it was. I’m not blind, or I wasn’t yet. And I thought to myself, “Let’s give this a shot. Let’s take it slow and see what happens.” Let me tell you how Mr. Rushkoff’s book got this point of historical hearsay about pepper gorging rituals and their transcendental results absolutely and unequivocally correct. I was in the courtyard of the Artist Residency and very well may have made friends with several of the sculptures there. So when I stumbled back home to find the drunk Scotsman dead asleep on the front porch I thought, “Well, we’re both quite fucked, but I still imagine he’s the one in more pain.”

            I can’t guarantee I’ll feel so magnanimously when it eventually passes out of me, though.