Journalist takes bad acid trip.
http://stabmag.com/jed/a-south-african-wins-j-bay.-journalist-takes-bad-acid-trip/
by Jed Smith
[July 2010]
"A South African won J-bay….Woooooo," hoots a middle aged woman in yoga pants.
It's after midday and I sit on a grass patch in a commune 20
minutes drive into the wilderness from Supertubes. Last night's LSD
is still very much in my system, casting a haze across my eyes. The
devil wind coming off the mountains, the one I'd been told by contest
director Mike 'Snips' Parsons was supposed to postpone the final
until the end of the waiting period, has turned my face to charcoal.
"What? Did they run today?" I ask. "I'm a journalist. I'm meant to be
there covering the event."
"A South African won," the lady replies, grinning and nodding at me.
A couple of hours earlier, Jordy Smith had vanquished he and his
nation's demons. He won his first world tour event and became the
first South African to win J-Bay since Shaun Tomson. With Kelly's
third round loss, he also became the first South African to lead the
ratings since the ASP World Tour began. All of it on Nelson Mandela's
birthday. While he lives out his dream, I am trying to convince
myself this isn't one.
I woke this morning naked on a couch in Africa, unable to separate
dream from reality, in a room full of strangers, with my thoughts
trapped in a cycle of despair by relentless trance music.
The night before I had gambled on the contest being postponed and
journeyed to the last night of a three day trance festival. It was
called "Concious Convergence" and had been held at an experiemental
retreat called "Wacky Woods."
I came with a blonde model I had befriended at a bar across the road
from Supertubes. She had a bad coke habit and liked to party. Her
boyfriend was a famous DJ and she spent a lot of her time touring the
clubs of Europe with him. They had a violent argument in the bar and
I suggested we bail to the festival.
She wafted her poon past an older man and convinced him to drive us
there in his Ute. As we were leaving, I ran into Owen Wright and Matt
Wilkinson and asked them to come. I told them it would make a good
story and that they should try to escape the pro tour bubble when
they travel. They refused.
Once at the commune I ran into the guy who'd tipped me off about the
party. I'd met him during Dusty and Dan Ross's round three heat. We
smoked a joint of potent indoor South African "skank" while he talked
spirituality with a Christian man I didn't know. He told me he was a
Rastafarian convert (he is white) and gave me a tab of acid. He told
me to take half and I did. I could taste chemical when it hit my gum
a bad sign.
The hallucinations are fun initially and I dance to the frenetic
beat. When the euphoria begins to dissipate, I take the second half
(I was later told a quarter in total would have been sufficient). At
which point I begin contemplating ideas of religion, human nature and
where I fit on the scale of good and bad.
I think about the people who accompanied me to Wacky Woods - a
substance abusing model and a fast driving middle aged guy with
ambitions of fucking the girl. How did we find each? Was it because
we were all equally as fucked up? And was it a coincidence that all
three of us had ended up at a festival titled "Conscious Convergence"
in Wacky Woods and that I had begun the night listening to a
Christian and a Rastafarian talk spirituality?
I look at one of the psychelic 3D eye images on the wall. It consists
of neon mushrooms that when you stare at it, turn into tormented
creatures that look like something out of a Tool film clip. A UV
light makes everyone's eyes appear demonic. The music is hard, fast
and stunning.
I attempt to dance with the model but she dances away from me. It
strikes me like a punch in the temple that she has an eastern
European accent (it was actually German/Italian, I would find out in
the morning).
Concious Convergence, Wacky Woods, LSD, tormented imagery… But of
course! She is a cheap hooker purchased from eastern europe by
religious fundamentalists and been planted in the J-Bay club to lure
sinners to this place.
With my paranoia mounting, I turn to the one person I think I can trust.
"Are these people crazy Christians?" I ask the African bar girl.
"Yeah, I think so. Some of them."
Ah, fuck. Fuck it. FUCK!
"Listen, you have to get me out of here."
"What? I can't. I don't finish until morning."
"What? What do you mean you can't?"
I wander around the dance floor and return to the bar lady.
"Please. I'll pay you," I beg.
"But I'm going to Port Elizabeth (the opposite direction to J-Bay)," she says.
People are looking at me and some ask if I'm alright. They attempt to
comfort me.
Get away! Don't touch me. Christians! I don't want your help.
I push their hands away.
If I force myself to sleep, I will wake and this will all be over.
Yeah. And so I curl myself in a ball three meters from the bar.
People try to help me up. I kick at them.
I get up and try to rip a giant sheet from the wall to cover myself.
It's nailed on but I rip at it and fall over.
A security guard helps me up and shakes his finger at me. I
appologise then sprint past him. I have to get out of here. Shyeah, right.
Wacky Woods was designed by an acid freak for acid freaks. The dance
floor is sunken among dense foliage and cacti halfway up a valley. To
reach the hut you navigate a steep winding path through dense though
incredibly well manicured growth. The sort of effort you encounter in
religious structures.The creator of the retreat is known to
spray-paint his sheep green.
It's nighttime and the path down the hillside is steep and
intermittently lit. It winds and winds again and you think it's over
but it winds one more time. I hear screams as I run. I laugh at the
horror. I outsmart the path. At the bottom I see a house and knock.
No answer. There's another house next to it. I knock. Nothing. I see
two silhouettes in the distance walking up a hill towards a gate.
"How do you get out of here?"
"What? I dunno," one replies.
Christians.
I must find the main road. I run. But I find the entrance to the
winding path again. I go back up it and finish at the dance floor. I
do another lap, maybe several.
My memories are fractured from this point on. Freezing water (I
jumped in the pool). Coldness (temperature reached a low of 11
degrees celsius). A giant computer screen projected on a wall with an
error box on it asking me, "Do you want to proceed?"
Of smashing a window with some plumbing I ripped from a house (I
reasoned that Christians would be binded by morals and, having been
defeated in my quest to find a way out, thought I'd test them with
violence. I paid 400 rand to get it repaired in the morning). Of
begging for death. Of closing my eyes and the music splitting colours
in my brain like a kaleidoscope. And of the colours getting smaller
and smaller with each beat. Of lieing face down in the dirt and
chewing on a rock. Of letting go. Of pissing myself to stay warm.
But all the time confident I would be found and nurtured back to
health because Christians are compassionate. They would take me in,
clothe me, put drugs in my food and I would be trapped here forever
working on their farm with the others.
I wake by a fireplace with a weathered older man offering me coffee.
I knew it!
I am freezing in my wet, pissed on clothes and the man tries to
help me out of them. "Get away," I yell and push him away.
I relent when the cold becomes too much and let him change me.
I have vague recollections of being on on a couch with people
heaping blankets on me. Followed by people sitting on me to keep me
warm. And of a didgeridoo permeating my torment.
Next, I'm standing outside and it's morning and there is a fog in my
eyes. I'm convinced it's a dream. It's only when doing a piss and
looking at my cock that I realise this is all real.
A man in pink knitted gloves and a green tie-dye shirt asks me, "Did
you take the trip or did the trip take you?" "Yeah, I, um. Wow. I
just…" is my reply.
The owner of the retreat confronts me. "You're lucky we didn't find
you when you running around breaking things last night. You'd be in hospital."
Which is exactly where a Dutch environmental volunteer ended up a few
weeks earlier. He too had fallen ill of a powerful hallucinogen.
Except where I followed the path down the valley, he ran straight
through the cactus and bush. They found him in the kitchen of a
nearby farmer, scratched and bleeding.
"He's lucky the farmer didn't shoot him dead," my new South African
friend had told me the following day as we sat in the sun. This man
had been the one voice of sanity in this situation having been in it
before. Anyone who goes through something like this needs this man.
"I just wish I got to you before you freaked out. I remember seeing
you doing laps of the place like a dog," he told me.
The man was also once a talented surfer who gave the sport up after
his brother, who had featured in South Africa's premiere surfing
magazine, Zig Zag, drowned while surfing in Kauai.
Later a small bug eyed man accosts me. "Do you remember what you did
last night?"
"Man, I'm sorry. I have no idea what I did. If I-"
"I'm not a violent man but I almost killed you last night. You have
issues, you know that? The demons had you, they were toying with you,
I could see them. Sort yourself out, man."
.
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