I told myself that I loved the calamity; that the chaos was a
necessary fruit in my garden. I needed it like I needed fried chicken and
jerking off, maybe even more so.
My calves were tangled in female hair. Faces couldn’t be seen
and all that could be heard were screams, grunts, and exclamations like
“BITCH!”, “CUNT!”, and “FUCKER!”. Female
bodies were at my feet, strewn along a Chinatown thoroughfare, clawing at each
other like ferrule cats in spaghetti straps. A thud reverberated throughout the hollow concrete whenever a skull
hit the sidewalk.
This orgy of horizontal violence twisted my bearings like I was
standing in rushing rapids. Occasional glimpses of my red kicks through the sea
of locks and flailing arms kept my balance in check; kept me from being swept down river. My colleagues were somewhere close, I could feel them, but none of
them joined me in the thick of it. I looked up to see the newest guy in our
crew standing at the edge of the crowd. The reflections of wrestling drunkards
danced in his unblinking, virgin, Filipino eyes.
“Call the fucking cops!” I shouted, breaking his trance.
One of the girls at my feet, an acquaintance and local DJ,
started to take more hits than she was dishing out. It became clear that she
was losing this battle. A chubby Asian girl in a red dress ended up
spooning my DJ pal. She grabbed her hair and yanked back with vengeful force
while a white girl in a black dress threw down a karate chop across the DJ’s
neck. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She momentarily writhed in pain before
regaining her laser-like bitchiness.
I had seen enough.
I picked up the DJ, threw her over my shoulder, and ran her to the other side of Hotel
Street, but not before she used a free hand to slap some guy in the crowd
across the face. I set her down on her own two feet - a position she hadn’t
been in for quite some time. She started to cry.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” she pouted. “I’m so drunk right now, but
I know this is going to hurt in the morning. Shit!”
I chuckled at her uncanny sense of self-awareness. Her
opponents found their way off the sidewalk and were conspiring with a slew of
buffed looking local guys who seemed keen to play the role of Captain Save-a-Ho. Hoping to avoid any
further altercations I hurried the DJ around the corner and put her in a taxi
just as Pacific blue police lights crawled up the block.
Soon, beams from police flashlights mixed with those from my
fellow bouncers who were still trying to disperse the crowd. The energy
generated from a gaggle of girls, practicing their catty kung fu, subsided.
I reclaimed my spot at the door to the club. I greeted a
group of patrons with a smile, and politely told them to have fun as they
scurried past me into the club.
It was midnight on the dot. Two more hours until closing.
****
Sean knelt before me in the dark. He cleared his throat and
gathered himself before starting to sing an Icaro.
I still had the events of the previous night on my mind, and I’m sure I still
had some poor girl’s hair attached to my body. I was dealing with a certain level
of achievement that my ego wouldn’t let go of. It was another victory; another
notch on my belt of Chinatown street cred. Last night I saved a DJ’s life. But
as the deep tones of Sean’s ultra-rhythmic voice eclipsed my spatial awareness,
my ego dissolved quickly in a sea of visions. La medicina was taking effect.
Sean’s singing voice was an intense departure from his
overall demeanor. Although men like Sean operate in a shroud of mysterious
trickery, he presented himself as a very relaxed and humble Canadian dude under
sunlit skies. But at night, in ceremony, in complete and total darkness, he
transformed into a singing jungle cat with the healing larynx of God. His sound
was a technology all its own.
Almost immediately, I could feel Sean’s song interacting with
the medicine. Gentle quakes rocked my stomach back and forth as though a small
tree boa were slithering around my intestines. I was being transferred into
another dimension. Like an infant ape sitting before a symphony I clenched my
fists and swam in the Amazonian rhythms filling the empty space around me. My
whole body began to move in a seated dance. My arms moved like they were
beating invisible drums. The backs of my eyelids become other worldly.
The culmination of sounds, sights, and lights in the darkness
acted on my soul like an ancient language that I somehow was able to interpret,
though, not through my five senses as I knew them to be.
A voice from my subconscious, Mama’s voice, told me to
open my eyes. I did as I was told and shuttered at the sight of a fully-grown
jaguar draped in Sean’s clothing singing to me. His song became more powerful;
like his voice was chipping away at everything I had ever known. Suddenly, the
memories I held of me as me
completely disappeared and were replaced by an uneasy familiarity. I was being
returned to the place where I was created.
This, in part, is the magic of Ayahuasca when taken by a wayward man with a soul whose intentions are good.
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