Green IslandCandy Gets Religion and Shnade Gets a New Guitar
August 4th 2010 15:06
“Really dirty shit. Ah that feces is just soo dirty. Out with the shit. Flush that excrement away and restore harmony to the body. When the body has harmony so the mind can reach peace. Where there is shit there is chaos. Where there is the absence of shit there is the possibility for beauty to grow. That is why I cannot recommend too highly that you sign up for colonic irrigation. The first step to liberating the mind is to detoxify the body. And only 500 Baht if you are in the full resident program.
Metaphorically, what are toxins? Yes, that is right. Toxins are shit. And literally when you clear all that old ordure from your tubes you are also venting all the toxins. Ah the beauty of irrigation. Why is it called irrigation? Is not irrigation the nourishment of the soil to allow the soil to grow food? Well so it is for colonic irrigation. You are nourishing the body to make it strong and vital and ready to grow spiritual rewards. And is it not for spiritual rewards that you are here?
As my dear and lately departed guru always said, “Spiritual rewards are like the most beautiful flowers of the field.” How wise he was my guru, Sri Baba Mercedes, spiritual growth is as simple and as beautiful as a blooming flower. Only that flower will not grow in shitty soil. No, it needs higher nourishment. Only the four-fold path will nourish the flower. What is the four-fold path? It is one of India’s oldest ideas. Jnana, bhaki, karma and yoga.
Jnana is the way of wisdom. It is studying the great spiritual scripts such as the Rig Veda and the Bhagavad Gita. And it is studying the masters’ commentaries on these scripts…”
Candy zoned out for a moment. She thought: “There are so many numbers to remember: the Five Transporting Points of acupuncture, the 12 meridians – six ying and six yang, the Six Realms of Existence, the Three Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path of the Buddha. And now the Four-Fold Path. This holisitic approach is wholly confusing.”
She had been taking notes and she was pleased with her own silent pun. Candy’s eyes drifted away from Vishy as he like to be called. The gathering of ten or so guests at The Retreat all had somber expressions tediously focused on Sri Bodhi Maha Vishnu Varuna. They looked as if they were getting a colonic irrigation and were desperately trying to hold their composure by thinking about anything but the hosepipe up their rectum. Candy turned from the shady part of the ‘Dharma pad’ as it was pretentiously called and looked behind her. The view held granite boulders, lush vegetation and tropical trees - palm, cashew, durian and jackfruit trees, endlessly fecund. And off in the distance way below she saw the strip of sand that was Yaoyin beach and beyond that was the twinkling sea. Candy wanted to study the science of spiritual growth and she did have a certain amount of faith in Vishy. Despite the fishy name, the tight, crutch-hugging shorts he wore and a tendency to verbosity, he did seem to radiate a certain aura, a charm that poured from his intensely dark and fathomless eyes. He had the flicker of an ironic smile that constantly fluttered around the edges of his mouth when he gave these ‘wisdom sessions’ that seemed to elevate the man. As if he was at the summit of the mountain and with a father’s patience and humour he was watching his children struggle to clamber after him.
It wasn’t Vishy and his ideas that had made Candy sign up for The Retreat. And yet in some ways it was. Candy had originally wondered up to the path from the beach on a whim. She had seen a poster offering free try-out yoga sessions and she thought why not?
That first yoga session had been lead by Bhopal. Bhopal was half Thai and half Indian. He had sad eyes and a round belly. Yet despite the belly he contorted into several advanced yoga positions with a casual fluid ease. Candy hadn’t exercised for so long she couldn’t remember. She was blessed with a natural thinness and enjoyed sexual aerobics but she was surprised to discover how strainful yoga was. Sweat poured from her as she shakily held the asanas Bhopal demonstrated. Bhopal finished the yoga session with ten minutes of lotus position meditation. Again Candy was surprised. She had thought that meditating would be easy. Thinking of nothing, zoning out should have been just like those interminably long bus journeys in South America, but it wasn’t. She just couldn’t clear her mind. Pete, Rapi, drugs, Canada, what she would eat for diner, whether she had any clean knickers, her parents, her sister, Bhopal’s tummy and a thousand other thoughts all colluded to muscle in on her empty consciousness. She knew no way to control her mind, to control herself. She was beginning to see that she was both out of shape physically and out of control mentally. All the drugs she had taken had only been an abandonment of control; all the sex just an abandonment of her body. Candy even from that first mediation was beginning to grasp that it was not escape that she wanted but power over herself. She saw herself as a puppet whose strings were pulled by whim, desire and some notion of freedom that was a nebulous combination of needing to escape, getting high and getting fucked.
After Bhopal had slowly brought the meditating students back to the here and now of a shaded platform on the edge of the jungle, Candy felt altered. Her instincts had been right about coming to Thailand and trying to clean her shit up. This was what she needed.
Bhopal remained and chatted with a Swedish couple who were keen to discuss certain asanas. Another Indian looking man appeared on the decking. He headed straight for Candy.
“Hello, my child. I am Bodhi Maha Vishnu Varuna. I am the boss here. But nothing like Bruce Springstein.” It was a lame joke but it made Candy smile. Sri B M V V continued. “I noticed your confusion right away. What is your name?”
The man addressing her was in his forties. He had long shiny black hair with streaks of grey. It was tied back in a small tight bun that sought to hide his balding crown. The hair was matched by a shaggy beard with big patches of white. And the guru look was complimented by a smell of incense that hung about his loose blouse and tight shorts. The whole effect was masterfully rounded off by a slightly comedic sing-song Indian accent that permeated his English.
“Candy”
“Is that Candice?”
“Yes”
“You see there is your problem. Your name should mean purity, honesty, truth, but instead it means sugar, sensuous pleasure. You have allowed your desires to take control over your mind. The world sees you as you see yourself – as something sweet, something to be consumed. See yourself as wisdom, as sapience, as the sacred not the profound. Take control of your name, Candice and take control of yourself.
Ah this is a lot of talk from an old man. Don’t believe what I say because you are desperate to believe something called ‘Eastern wisdom’. I want you to go away from here. Go and float in the sea and instead of trying to think about what you should do, just look at the birds circling in the sky and the clouds passing over the mountain. Go now, Candice.”
And with that Vishy winked at Candy and turned away. He walked over to a higher platform where Bhopal and the Swedes were sipping yoghurt shakes. Candy was momentarily stunned. It had been so long since anyone had called her anything but Candy. She picked up her bag, slipped on her flip flops and with head cast down she descended the steps from the elevated decking and headed back to the beach.
____________________
“Power chords, dude. Gotta play it hard, man. If the audience can’t feel you feeling the music then there’s no connection see? Man. Yeah. Harder drums. That’s it.”
The drummer smacked the drums and cymbals briefly with venom like he was visualizing someone’s head that he wanted to kick in. Shnade held his right hand up to silence the drummer, Gen. Shnade’s left hand lovingly held the neck of his second hand bass guitar. He had been lecturing Hiro, Masa and Gen for over an hour. It was the second band practice. Hiro, Masa and Gen couldn’t quite remember inviting the foreigner with the potato shaped head to join the band and nobody could remember the meeting that put Shnade in charge; but at the same time nobody was going to confront Shnade about it. Shnade had met them in a bar and had delighted the band members with tales of touring with American rock bands about to make it big, about taking coke with Axl Rose and about teenage groupies with watermelon tits. Now Shnade was holding forth about how to play hard. Hiro had studied music at college and he wondered if that lecture had been one of those Monday morning lessons that he had skipped. Hiro couldn’t put his finger on it but the audaciousness and intensity of the foreigner seemed to be what the band needed. The only problem was that the American couldn’t play his instrument. He crunked through a few basic cords and invariably got his fret work slightly off. His chubby digits held down too many strings and he always played too loud. However, there was punk music and low fidelity which sort of said that not being able to play well wasn’t a hindrance to fame and fortune.
“And dude’s what gives with the name? What is the band’s name again?”
“Patna,” Masa said with a slight weariness in his voice.
“Patga? What the fuck is Patga?” Shnade despaired with the Japanese and their inability to come up with a proper rock band name.
Masa the lead guitarist ventured upon an explanation: “It’s ‘Patna’ not ‘Patga’. Did you read Lord Jim by Conrad? No? It’s a great book. It’s about a man who abandons his boat too early and spends the rest of his life escaping from his guilt and bad reputation. ‘Patna’ was the name of the boat.”
What the fuck? Shnade thought. More faggy British English. Reading books! He had sold that Kindle that he had taken from the faggy Jap at the station and with that money and what remained from his first month’s wages after paying off his ganja debts he had been able to buy his pride and joy, his fender shadow. It had demanded sacrifice from the Shnade man (that sacrifice primarily consisting of sleeping in Jay’s spare room because he couldn’t afford to pay key money and rent for a place of his own). But it had been worth it. All legends demand sacrifice and now Shnade felt really good about himself: the Shnade man was up and running hard. He had a job (which Jay had helped him get), he had a new dealer (who Jay had introduced him to) and he had a new band (which Jay had nothing to do with). And some fucking dumb-arsed name like Pagna or Patfa (or whatever it was), wasn’t going to stand between him and being a household name. Only trouble was that Masa was a black belt in karate so his faggy bookish ideas were not something Shnade felt confident in openly deriding too much. Although Shnade overshadowed most Japanese in height and width he was wary of little fuckers with martial arts belts. He knew all about that Bruce Lee stuff: best to chip away at the name issue. Tackle the band members one by one and get them to persuade Masa that Pogna was no flag for rockers to fly.
____________________
The Retreat was on a small hill in the jungle. From the main balconies where people ate and did group yoga sessions the Gulf of Siam could be seen sparkling in the intense light. The white sand beach of Haad Yaoyin was just a ten-minute walk down a jungle path and over huge granite boulders. The beach was cut off from the rest of the island. There were only two ways to leave Haad Yaoyin: either you walked for an hour through the jungle to get to the main road or you caught a boat. The boat only made trips to the beach when the weather and sea would permit. So when a storm hit the island of Koh Rahmai people staying on Yaoyin were stranded. Candy liked this. She wanted to find a place as unlike Bangkok as possible, a place without stress and far away from any busy centre. Candy was certain about Yaoyin as soon as she got off the boat and stood in the still blue water up to her knees waiting for a Thai to pass her backpack down to her.
On that first day she could only see four people on the small beach. A few simple wooden structures were hidden in the tree line and as she looked up she saw the mountain covered in trees that effectively cut the beach off from the rest of the island. There really was very little to do in Yaoyin other than swim, sunbathe, get stoned or take one of the New Age courses offered by The Retreat. Candy had been less certain about the Retreat than she had been about the beach, but since she had felt in need of revitalization and detoxification she had given it a go. And after that first yoga session with Bhopal and the cryptic conversation with Vishy she felt as sure about the rightness of studying yoga and meditation as she did about being on the beach. She enjoyed being left alone. She felt a kind of sober happiness that she hadn’t experienced for a long time. How Thailand had changed for her. On Candy’s second day in Bangkok she had been on the verge of tears. She had felt emotionally battered. Leaving South America had been necessary but it had bought home to her questions she had been avoiding asking herself. The main question being: what the hell was she doing? When she left Canada with the credit card cash she had imagined that she was starting a new life - a life full of adventure, seeing the world and all its marvels, using her wits to live on. So far she had seen a handful of South American cities and the Amazon jungle. She hadn’t gone to Machu Picchu or Angel Falls or any Brazilian beaches. Other than that night buried in a hole in the jungle when she and Rapi had seen the capybara family she hadn’t even seen much of South America’s famous wild life. And where was this famous wit she was meant to be living on? So far she had prostituted herself to some ex-con to make small change dealing coke and then she had become a pusher for a small time Bolivian dealer. Candy realized that it was her looks and her body that she had traded to earn her daily bread. She didn’t feel very proud of herself. For a moment she wanted to go home but the fear of going to jail stopped her making a call to Canada. So she had gone through the motions in Bangkok and had entered a travel agent in Khao San Road.
“I wanna go to a beach where I won’t meet any of these people.” Candy said pointing out the window at a young Japanese woman getting fake dreads attached to her thin hair as she sat on a stool in the dirty and busy road.
The travel agent was a middle-aged Thai woman who smiled at Candy and replied, “Koh Rahmai is island for you. Here you look.” The woman pointed at a map on the wall behind her desk, “Here are many beautiful beaches, few tourist go here. This like paradise. No like Khao San road.”
Candy was sold. She bought a bus and boat ticket for Koh Rahmai leaving that night.
And now it was two weeks later. Candy was glad she had followed the advice of the travel agent. She was glad that she had chosen Haad Yaoyin and she was very glad that she had committed herself to a 10 week course at the Retreat. Every morning she did yoga and meditation and every afternoon after Vishy’s lecture she would go and float in the ocean. In the evening she would eat a simple vegetarian meal and hang out for a couple of hours with other students staying at The Retreat. She had stopped drinking beer and recently she had stopped smoking weed. At around midnight Candy would retire to her simple bamboo thatch hut in the jungle and fall asleep to the distant sound of the waves lapping on the shore line.
The only problem for Candy was money. She was down to her last thousand dollars. She wasn’t sure if she would have enough after paying for this course to fly home to Canada if that was what she wanted. To save herself money and pain she had opted out of the colonic irrigations much to the annoyance of Vishy who took a peculiar relish in not only propounding the benefits of colonics but also in over-seeing the muddy practicalities of the procedure. It was hard, however, for Candy to get too worried about her financial situation. She felt her growing spiritual strength would reveal a path for her to follow. Ever since Vishy had commended her at their first meeting to not think about making a decision she had found it easier to know what she should do.
____________________
Jay hadn’t quite fathomed how he had been manipulated by Shnade but he knew that he had. Shnade had met him that first afternoon in town and had poured forth his trailer park charm. Shnade had insisted on hitting some bars. The first few drinks he had insisted on buying, but not the last five or six. Shnade also insisted that the two of them were real buddies and that fellow Americans needed to look out for each other. Shnade had even insisted that it was their Christian duty to look after each other, to get the other’s backs. Jay was indeed a Christian of sorts who believed not just in God but also in charity and it was this lucky stab at pity on Shnade’s part that had finally persuaded Jay to help Shnade. Jay was no fool: he knew that Shnade was not in A city for a weekend jolly.
“So are you still married to Otoko?” Jay casually asked in the second bar of the night, a Jamaican bar with a pretty Japanese bartender.
“Man, I tell you we had our problems but I’m glad I have my little boy.” Shnade had recently added evasion to his conversational armory.
“And what happened to the job? The one we used to do together. I thought you told me that you were the best teacher in the place since I left.”
“Yeah man. The kids I taught were way smarter than the other kids. I tell you, I had them saying all kindsa complicated stuff.”
“But did you get fired?”
“I needed a change of scene. That city was way too small for me. I love being with my kid and all and the job was going fine. I just needed to move on and up. Hey, say. What’s the scene like around here?”
“You mean music or drugs?”
“Well both, man. I sure could fuck that bartender. She’s hot.”
____________________
Candy had decided that she needed to see Vishy about getting a job. After the communal dinner she had mentioned that she wanted to talk with the master and with a slightly disturbing alacrity Bodhi Maha Vishnu Varuna had agreed and suggested they rendezvous in an hour’s time in his bungalow.
In the master’s room Candy sat on the soft bed. The floor was tiled and on the walls hung Indian batiks. Vishy’s bed took up most of the room. It was covered in an opulent satin purple sheet and held many orange cushions. At the foot of the bed was a big flat screen TV. And in the far corner was another door half open revealing a tiled bathroom.
Vishy offered Candy a joint. Candy had got in the habit of refusing joints which raised a few eyebrows on Yaoyin where everybody seemed to be high on ganja. Vishy lit the badly made one skin and smoked in silence. He looked at her and the customary flicker of irony returned to the corners of his mouth. After a few drags he stubbed the joint out in a ceramic ashtray that had a phallus protruding from it. It seemed the ashtray provided the theme for Vishy’s private lecture to Candice. He stood up and moved to stand before her, legs apart wearing his customary short shorts and nothing else. They were alone.
“Society favours the pussy. Most religions favour the dick. So it is that society tells a man he must marry. He must commit to one woman. He must work to maintain a family and stay with the one pussy. Society tries to tame the dick with marriage and mortgage. But that is not the dick. The dick doesn’t want to be tied down to one pussy for the rest of its life. No one pussy is good enough. Sometimes dick doesn’t even know why he wants a certain pussy. He just wants change. He just wants to be unfaithful. And that is why man invented religion. Religion is all about dick worship. The Hindus worship the lingam – the phallus. Pagans worship the may pole. Religion gives the dick freedom. It is religion that allows the dick to have many wives. It is the religion that allows the dick the joys of legal young brides. Religion lets the dick taste the erotic forbidden fruit of incest. It is religion that looks to get revenge on the pussy. Religion creates the idea of impurity and says a woman’s menstrual blood is impure and because of her impurity a woman cannot control the religion. Religion makes the dick supreme. Religion says sew up the pussy, cut off the clitoris, stay a virgin. Religion loves making women stay pure and virginal because the thrill of being the first is a great treat for the dick. And now Candy it is time for you kneel before my dick.”
Candy looked about the room as if looking for guidance. Candy was unsure how the hell matters had come to such a head. She knew, like all women, that behind any man’s pose of spiritual perfection lay a thing of flesh and blood and she noticed that sometimes Vishy sneaked a glance down her top when she was leaning forward doing a yoga pose, but this was too much flesh and blood. She had come to Vishy’s room to try and negotiate some type of discount, to perhaps get a job in the kitchen. She hadn’t come to the master’s room to be confronted with the Sri Bodhi’s crutch just inches from her face angrily contained in his tight shorts.
“What are you doing, master? I came to ask you about a job. I agree with you about religion and sex, but I can’t remember agreeing to having sex with you.”
“I say again Candice it is time to kneel before my dick.” With an ungraceful shrug and tug Vishy managed to pull down his shorts. Candy remained seated and cast her eyes down to the master’s little master.
Her guru’s pride was not yet at full mast but rather sporting a semi lob-on that made it springy and banana shaped. The bulbous purple head pointed off to the side.
“Now is the time Candice-ji to worship the Sri Bodhi Maha Vishnu Varuna lingam.” Vishy gave it his best tantric teaching voice.
Candy remained sitting and made no movement towards the mini guru. She stared first at the expectant guru dick and then looked up at the brown-skinned face of the master.
“This pussy is not to be won over with words. I want a job here. I can wait tables, do some kitchen work. Maybe lead a few yoga sessions.”
“My child, everyone working at the ashram is a volunteer. There is no paid work.”
“You get paid and I bet Bhopal does too. And why would the Thai cook work for free? She doesn’t seem on any path.”
Candy could see the enthusiasm seeping out of the mighty lingam. She knew a thing or two about how to make a deal. If there was one thing she had learned on her travels it was that she shouldn’t underestimate the power of her charms. Candy grabbed the bottom of her T-shirt with both hands and as she rose from the bed she roughly ripped off her top revealing her flat toned stomach and young breasts nestled in a flimsy bra.
“Now is the time for you to change your policy. Pussy for a job. I want free board, lodging and yoga and 1,000 Baht a week. And I don’t mind telling you that I think that is cheap for what you are getting.”
Vishy’s face lost its beatitude. Suddenly he looked like a boy having to share his favourite toy. He looked pained but at the same time his eyes roved over the revealed bulges of Candy’s breasts pallid in the moonlight coming through the window. Candy could read the fight going on between the master’s mojo and his greed. Time for an ultimatum Candy thought.
“Well if you’re not interested. I’ll be going back to my room,” Candy began to straighten her T-shirt out and put it over her head, “alone.”
“Bitch,” Vishy muttered, his dick fast losing its impressiveness. Vishy looked wistfully at Candy’s cupped breasts being covered.
“OK deal. You get free food and bed, but only 500 Baht a week.”
Candy finished putting on her T-shirt. She stood just inches from Vishy and suddenly had a déjà vu. This was all wrong. This was what she was trying to escape. Had not the master told her to act with her mind and not follow the flesh. She was slowly regaining her self-dignity and here she was on the verge of throwing it away just to save some money. Fuck you Candy thought. She broke off eye contact with her teacher and fumbled in her bag for a few moments.
“You are pathetic. Worship your dick. Ha! Turning tricks in a brothel would be preferable to having to blow your arrogant self-aggrandizing mumbo jumbo New Age penis. Dick-pussy. Fuck that. And by the way say cheese.”
Candy pulled a camera from her bag flicked the flash on and in a matter of seconds had snapped mini Sri Bodhi Maha Vishnu Varuna. Clutching her bag she ran from the bungalow.
And so it was that Candice left The Retreat that night without paying her bill. She got posters made up of the master’s unmighty lingam early the next morning and taped them to several trees around the beach and on the path to the ashram. Feeling satisfied with her righteous revenge and ready again for the possibilities of the open road, she waded into the water, handed her pack to a young Thai man and boarded the first boat to leave the beach.
The opening picture is taken under the Wikipedia commons licensing system. Osho was fond of collecting Rolls Royces and gullible lost souls. He died a rich man in Europe. Still today Osho twats are to be found everywhere.
Catch up on earlier installments of Candy and Shnade:
Shnade Gets Drunk with a Serial Killer and Candy Arrives in Bangkok (Part 6)
Candy and Shnade Move On (Part 5)
Candy Trips in the Jungle and Shnade Trips Up (Part 4)
Candy Comes in the Jungle and Shnade Becomes the Man (Part 3)
Candy in Bolivia and Shnade in Hawaii (Part 2)
Candy in Argentina (Part 1)
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