The whole crew was in Bali, and we decided to eat mushrooms on the beach. Wyan knew some kids that picked the right mushrooms in the rice patties. The cows defecate in the water, and the mushrooms grow out of the damp stool. So we each kicked in a few Rupiah and bought a salad-bowl of the small mushrooms.
Francis insisted on saying a short prayer to Mother Gaia. Francis is known as the Gay Prince of Bali. He obtained a decades-long lease on a palace from the bankrupt royal family, which he then decorated with a large collection of handsome Balinese men. My dad (who doesn’t have much patience for the New Age after a particularly dippy girlfriend) said “To hell with that! Let’s just be honest and say we’re gonna get really ripped on shrooms!”
It was a fine day. The mushrooms made the sky an intense blue, and the forest the greenest green. My stepmother Barbara ran around taking pictures of everyone while the children frolicked in the waves. We ate barbecued fish burgers, and swam in the ocean. The water was clear, so we could see the coral garden on the bottom.
The next morning I woke up feeling a little out of sorts. My stomach was squirming like a toad, and my head felt screwed on a bit too tight. Barbara was in a cheery mood and asked how I was feeling. I stuck my tongue out in the “blech” expression. My stepmother did a violent double-take. “Sticking out your tongue one more times.” she commanded. Her Italian accent was very thick in those days.
My tongue was black. I stared at myself in the mirror in mild disbelief. I brushed my teeth, and wiped my tongue on a towel until it was dry and rough. Dry and rough and still black. By now my headache was getting worse, so I popped two of the Vicodin I always carry with me when traveling. A doctor had prescribed a bottle for a nasty ear infection, but I hadn’t used them all, and you never know when you’re going to need a strong pain reliever.
My father insisted that David, who was a medic, take a look at me. David said to watch the symptoms, but that since I wasn’t in too much pain (thanks to the Vicodin, but I neglected to give them that information), there was no emergency.
The headache got worse as the day progressed, and by nightfall my entire spine was on fire. I tried to lay perfectly still on my back on the hard teak floors. If I moved my head even a centimeter in any direction it sent agonizing bolts of pain town the whole length of my spine, and my head felt like someone was hammering a railroad spike through it. My tongue remained black.
We called an ambulance out to the remote village of Jasi, and six hours later it arrived. The ambulance was a red Volkswagen convertible with a hitchhiker in the passenger side. The ambulance driver waited while my dad and David carried me on stretcher to the car and bundled me in the back seat. I’ve been in auto accidents, been bitten on the face by snakes, and had an accumulated 11 hours of tattooing, but nothing came close to the agonizing pain of the ride to the Denpasar hospital.
My dad had kicked the hitchhiker out of the front seat and talked to me the whole way. I told him about the Vicodin, and he was angry and suspicious about where I had obtained such a controlled substance. Between bumps I told him about the ear infection, but he didn’t believe that any doctor would think such a trivial ailment would warrant the Vicodin. I told him I’d show him the bottle when we got back.
The avocado-green hospital room very large, and almost empty. The doctor did a test for spinal meningitis, and after I tested negative, he said I had typhoid. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I was too tired to fight it. They wanted to pump my stomach, so they stuck a thick plastic tube up my nose and down the back of my throat. “Now you need sallow.” The doctor instructed me. “Keep sallow. Yes. Sallow, sallow, almost done…”
After the contents of my stomach were in a plastic bag, which the nurse took away, they pulled out the tube, which burned my throat and sinus. I had been asleep for a few minutes when I involuntarily rolled over, jerking the IV bag off its perch. It fell, yanking the tube out of my arm. The nurse put it back in its place and scolded me for moving too much. I didn’t care. Morphine revealed the humor of the situation.
The next week in the hospital was very touching. I never spent a night by myself. Katut, a good friend and local cop, stayed two nights in a row. He sent his wife to stay with me when he finally went home. He was feeling awful that Balinese mushrooms might have made me sick. Though marijuana is punishable by death in Indonesia, mushrooms are perfectly legal and a source of local pride.
Several months later my dad got an ear infection from surfing and driving home in a convertible. The pain was driving him crazy. He apologized for being suspicious about the Vicodin, and apologized for wanting to see the prescription bottle. He said if I suffered ear infections like his all throughout my childhood without ever crying, I was a tough bastard.