Stoned

A short time after my arrival on Bequia I went snorkelling off the reef at Princess Margaret Beach.  I was thrilled by the beautifully colored reef fish  and delicate anemones as well as the pristine white sand and clear  water.    The beach was not  far from where I was living  with my sister and brother-in-law at Friendship Gap, a trek  up  the goa t path to  the Lower Bay Road would take me home.

I  was  walking  towards  Friendship  that afternoon when  I  heard  some-one  calling  my  name. Looking up, I saw Mac sitting on the edge of a balcony and he was beckoning to me. I had met Mac when he dropped in to visit Mary and Dave and  was  impressed  by  how  handsome  he  was – kind of  like  a young Harry  Belafonte!   Having  no pressing  agenda  that afternoon I climbed  the steps and joined him on the porch.

Mac opened his fridge and offered me a drink, the choices being red wine, white wine or rose.  He  had  just  returned from Martinique and had stocked  up  on French  goodies.  He opened a bottle of rose and we sat and chatted     as the afternoon sun waned.  Mac then rolled  a fat joint and lit  it, taking for granted that I was comfortable with smoking weed.  Well, I had never been stoned before and figured a few little puffs wouldn’t hurt.

Sheesh!  That  stuff  paralyzed  me!  My  mouth  turned  to  cotton, making     me gulp  the  rose greedily.  My tongue  was so  thick  in my mouth  that I couldn’t seem to  speak  properly and  my brain was churning so slowly I had nothing to say anyway.   I knew it was time to leave but  my legs felt like lead and my  bottom was  glued to  the chair.  A beautiful  blonde  amazon of a woman  had  arrived  and she was obviously waiting  for  me  to  make  my departure.

I started to walk home. It was beginning to get dark, and looking up I could  see that the trees had joined to form an arch over me.  It seemed to take an eternity but I finally got to the house, wishing that  Dave and  Mary had not gone away for the week-end.  I  was  VERY  stoned and it wasn’t  wearing off   in a hurry!

Once inside I locked the door and went to lie down, figuring that was probably the smartest thing to do. Every sound seemed magnified, a cricket’s chirping had me leaping out of my skin and the noise from the tree frogs was incredibly amplified.  I  could hear a strange  banging  too, and  it  took a while for me to realize that someone was knocking at the door.  I had left the outside  light on and  could  see a figure on the porch so  I  cautiously opened  the  door.  And screamed!  I screamed  and  slammed  the  door on  the  hallucination standing on the front porch.  It was a mummy wrapped in bandages with pink eyes and oozing sores, obviously a sight conjured up by the marijuana.

I awoke the next morning feeling surprisingly normal and considered what had happened the night  before.  Obviously  the  island  weed was not something  I would  be  indulging  in  again anytime  soon,  such  lack of  control topped  by hallucinations was not for me.

Two weeks later as I was walking to school I saw the mummy again. To my deep (to this day!) embarrassment I realized that what I had taken for a drug-induced hallucination was a human being, a local albino lady.  She had come to the house to collect something for her sister, and under  the  porch  light  her  bandage-wrapped  skin and  pink  eyes  had  terrified me.  I  was mortified as the poor woman edged warily to the side of the road as we passed …. I wasn’t the only one who had been frightened that night