Jamaica 1992

It was a wild trip for me. I had never been down there and had no idea how intense the culture was and how absolutely lawless. My friends and I were young college students who had just been set free in the world with limited maturity and even more limited budgets. The trip itself was minimal in cost. I think I spent a total of 300 dollars on two weeks. the flight was 140 and I ended up renting a chicken coop that some industrious Jamaican grandma had thought to put a window and a bed in it..after removing or eating the previous chicken tenants. I believe that sheet metal structure cost me about 5 dollars a night, of course there wasn't a bathroom or a fan so it was bare bones living. But i was at the perfect age for that and all I really cared about was saving money for the "partying". Plus my coop was right next to a large room with a patio that my friends were renting and they had a bathroom that i could use.
the coop

Considering that a full garbage bag of weed was about 50 bucks and the cost of other things like that were equally as negligible, we ended up over doing it by a lot. One girl lost her mind in the middle of the second day while on the beach and was actually never quite right again. Another friend of mine, Honan, ate some "space cakes" and ended up turning into a turnip the next day. We literally carried his limp body from one shady spot on the beach to another, turning him over when we thought he might be burning. At one point we ordered food, and of course it took two hours to arrive. In Jamaica you will get handed a menu with, say, eggs on it. You then order it, asking if they have it, they nod, and then a second later you here a motorcycle start up and drive off. That means that they didn't have it, but had a motorcycle and YOUR time to go out and find some.

there's Honan in a stuper, the guy behind him was suffering but not quite as much

So, this time the lady comes back with food, finally, and gives everyone their dishes. She's left with eggs and toast and starts getting annoyed that nobody is claiming them. we turn to Honan and ask if he ordered eggs and toast and he just nods no. She storms off muttering about white people and a minute later Honan looks up and says "i'm hungry". We look at him and somebody asks if he ordered. He says "yeah, eggs and toast"

Honan recovered the following day, slightly slower then his usually slow self, but at least he was using his legs again. So we spent a nice uneventful day in paradise, puffing large spliffs and drinking Rum Creams and Dragon Stouts. The water there is always that perfect temperature and very calm. Everything was easy going except we kept on noticing a very tough looking Rasta guy with a large machete lurking around the bushes surrounding our rooms and my chicken coop. The grandma who owned our "inn" mentioned that he was her nephew and had come down from the hills to be "security" for her guests. well, we didn't feel all that secure, but once we knew this glaring character was working for the lady we assumed we could just relax and enjoy ourselves. so we did.

The next day we all went on a moped journey up through the mountains to some falls and our guide took us to his home and his very own field of ganja. it was a day i would label as "cultural" in terms of a Jamaica vacation and it was, in fact, very informative. It's a beautiful and rugged country, extremely poor, yet extremely proud and independent. There is a good deal of racism down there, due to the harsh history of the island and hundreds of years of slavery and abuse. I like to think of myself as being a "modern" white urban male, in that i am aware of the history but magically, because of my "coolness", i can manage to avert the consequences of racism towards me almost anywhere in the world.

I learned the hard way that isn't true down there. I'll admit that attitudes shifted once i got to mention coming from NYC, that carries weight in Jamaica since there is such a large connection between the two places and they all hear that NYC is a tough place...but if that never comes up.. I am a just another WHITEY BUMBOCLOT. I made the mistake of allowing my friend Imo, an attractive athletic African American from the south side of Chicago, the option of not renting a moped and riding on the back of mine because she was scared to fall. She wore close to nothing and had the relaxed look of a native riding on the moped of a tourist. That suddenly was brought to my attention when we were riding through towns up in the mountains. the winding mud roads would come around a turn and suddenly there would be hundreds of Jamaicans, out in the road walking about or dancing to the ever present Dance Hall music, It was usually blasting from speakers wired anywhere from rafters in the town's actual dance hall, to the branches of trees.
there's Imo in the middle and I am in the back all skinny with a ponytail

well, these towns would see the guide and clear a path, then they would see all the Whitey Bumboclots on their rentals puttering through in single file, until there was me and Imo. then they would lose it. Yelling to her to jump off and stay with them and actually start closing ranks and finally, after I would gun the acceleration to get them to jump out of the way, they would turn and literally chase us out of town. A few threw things at us, mangoes mostly, but a bottle exploded pretty near us.
We got home after many mishaps, including three accidents and a break down (not me, but others on the journey). After it got dark, my stupid moped's headlights broke, right as a storm rolled in about 2 hours before we got back to Negril. So i turned on my turn signal and it was like driving in half pitch black, half yellow lit jungle. Now you see the road, now you don't. I quickly learned to survey the lay of the road well ahead of me during the brief moment my signal was on. This was so i could coast while it was off and i was surrounded by pitch black peril. All that while in a tropical downpour of epic proportions which, in turn, formed little rivers in the road. Plus, Jamaicans were flying by in both directions, driving in cars not meant for off-roading, at speeds not meant for the autobahn, let alone mountain roads in the night rain. It was one of my most exciting rides ever.

Later that night we decided to unwind on the beach by taking a bunch of mushrooms and drinking for hours. My memory of that night is pretty foggy, but i do remember that at about 5AM I suddenly woke up to some laughing outside of my chicken coop and decided i wanted to rejoin the party even though it was absurdly late. so i went out and noticed my friends Matter and Berg "the slurg" Dorfman ( a name i coined myself after he refused to stop calling me "Matoose" for no other reason then the fact that i reminded him of an old friend by that name). they were sitting out on their little patio enjoying a spliff and some smokes. I also noticed an empty jug of Rum between them and knew they were totally wasted.

They welcomed my awakening by pulling out a chair and handing me the 6 inch spliff. Then we had fun talking and puffing for a while, until one of us noticed the glistening of eyes in the bushes about 15 feet from the edge of the patio. we hushed a bit and then there was some movement in the shadows around where we could see the eyes. There wasn't any moonlight so the darkness was pretty intense. I remember saying "I think there's somebody there". just when i said that the Rastaman comes out of the shadows and we can see him, standing their in the dark. He was wearing just a loin cloth and was holding a bottle in one hand and a dark metal object in the other. It was a gun. We all knew that instantly. there was a breathless silence, very long and very tense. until we started hearing the sounds of his low quiet voice. He was speaking in heavy Patwa (the local dialect) which made it almost impossible to understand over the sound of crickets and jungle insects all around. But we did start to catch on a bit. He was talking about how he killed white men before and how he was in the army up in the mountains. He was telling us a story, not really caring if we understood what he was saying and almost talking so quietly that it seemed as if he was muttering just to himself. the awkwardness and intensity of the situation scared the shit out of me. I knew he was as fucked up as we were and that he wasn't actually mad at us, but i had no idea how this would end up. especially, when my two blitzed friends started to laugh.

I was in a different world then my two friends. Matter and Berg had been pounding Rum for hours while i slept and they were way more scrambled then I. the nervousness must have gotten to them, or maybe they were really THAT fucked up that it was actually funny to them. either way, i gave them sharp looks and was like "Shhh!". but they wouldn't stop. it turned into one of those things where the laughing got more and more out of control. as if they were high and watching Super Bad for the first time. only what we were watching might have SEEMED surreal, but in fact, was VERY REAL. I tried to make the guy know that I wasn't laughing and that they were drunk, but to my surprise the guy never changed his position or his story. he seemed to not hear the laughing or not consider that it was him who they were laughing at, he just kept on talking about some horrible war-time killing he had been a part of. slow and deliberate the story crept on, with the occasional thrust of his gun into the air and a Patwa sound effect of gunfire. in the end, i got the impression that he had literally just confessed to some awful crime in front of us. but since we could hardly understand most of what he said, and we were clearly out of our gourds from days of substance abuse, that it was tantamount to confessing to a mango tree. it might have made him feel better without actually meaning anything or having any consequences.

What was interesting about that man in the shadows and his gun wielding tale, is that he was no longer around the next day and we never saw him again. That trip set the tone for my college breaks. I ended up going back no less then 8 times. but those 7 or so times afterwards were never as crazy or intense as the first window into that island.