found Dean. He seemed thrilled to see us. 'Welcome to my summer home,' he said.

A pig stay. No maid service, obviously.

Monica and I moved aside enough of the clutter to make room for our luggage. 'I don't have extra beds, but you're welcome to the Floor,' said Dean, who had thinning, curly hair and glasses. The floor was fine. Dirty mess or no, I was with my Goa friends, and everything was dandy. I felt connected, a member of a secret society.

Sitting slanted on the broken arm of a couch, I browsed through the Amsterdam section of my address book. Perhaps I could find an old friend to look up. Bach! There was the phone number of his mother's house, where I'd spent one glorious week with him three years before. Did I dare call Bach? No, I didn't. But I couldn't help smiling as my mind filled with images of his blue eyes and the red and white striped shirt he'll worn the first time I'd seen him at a club called the Oxhooft.

His real name was Bart, but I'd called him Bach because he was so spectacular for an everyday name. His bulging blue eyes were as engaging as any concerto. Bach had been the first person I'd met who used smack. Being himself a masterpiece, anything associated with Bach was masterly too—including smack.

I looked again at the address book. No, I couldn't call him. But I let my finger ditch the spot where his name was written.

That night, I suggested we go to the Oxhooft, which was still a popular discotheque, according to Dean. Upon entering, I hunted every corner in search of Bach. No luck. I recognized the bartender, though, and let him slip me a free drink for old time's sake—a Genever, the Dutch gin.

Monica, Dean, and I danced and told Anjuna stories. What a difference between the drug scene in New York and the drug scene of the Goa Freaks. In New York it had been ugly. It entailed slinking down graffiti covered hallways and dealing with creepy, slimy people. With my Goa friends it was glamorous and gay and exciting. I felt part of an enchanted community as we huddled in the cloak room for a snort of coke, scooped in the silver Aries spoon Dayid had given me for my birthday. Before we left the club, I looked for Bach again. Still no luck.

The houseboat was fun, despite the stench of the toilet, which didn't flush and had to be dumped—where, I didn't ask. After another day there, Monica and I thanked Dean for his hospitality. 'See you in Anjuna in September,' we said and caught a plane to Singapore, where we checked into a Holiday Inn.

'Oh, poo!' I exclaimed, banging my fist on the bureau top.

'What's wrong?' asked Monica.

'I forgot to come in on my old passport. Now the new passport's ruined with this Singapore stamp. Shit!'

It took us an hour the next day to get a visa for Indonesia. Then, after buying a ton of electronics— Singapore having the best and cheapest in Asia—we hurried to catch a flight to Bali. Since we'd heard Singapore didn't allow longhaired guys into the country, we decided the place wasn't for us.

We arrived that night in Denpasar, the only city—more like a big village—in Bali. We slept in a hotel and had our first view of Indonesia in the morning. Breakfast awaited us on the patio, the teapot diapered in a strawberry- shaped piece of wool. As we sat outside and buttered our toast, we took in the leafy sights and chirping sounds and thick, flowery scents.

'Hoo, boy, look at that,' said Monica, jabbing her marmalade toward a black-and-orange bird hopping along the railing.

'Oh, Monica, this is so great,' I said. 'I can't believe it. This is like a real vacation-type vacation that straight people go on. Only we don't have to go back to some job somewhere. I love being rich like this.'

Later we took a walk through town, and Monica ran into a Goa Freak named Jimmy whom I'd never met. He had a puffy afro and wore a judo outfit pinned with a silver star that said 'Sheriff.'

'Yo! You chicks gotta come stay at our bungalow lodge in Legion. All the Goa Freaks are there,' he told us.

'Hunky dory! I'm glad I ran into you. Who's here?'

'Trumpet Steve and Laura, Cindi, Michael, and Fatima. There's a bunch at the lodge, then Narayan and Richard have a house not far away . . . 'He grinned and stuck out his chest. 'I'm the sheriff.'

Within an hour we were there. The lodge, right on the beach, comprised many bungalows, each split into two connecting rooms with their own bathrooms and patios. Monica and I took one next to Black Jimmy and his girlfriend, Elame from Vancouver. Across the way was an American couple, Trumpet Steve and Laura, and their baby, Anjuna. Anjuna had been born in a hut on Anjuna Beach during a full moon. Laura—and the twenty-two people who'd crowded in to watch—had been stoned on acid at the time. With her brown, shoulder-length hair and her large breasts, Laura was the epitome of 'Earth Mother,' and since her baby was named for the place we called home, she was a mother figure to us all. Though he didn't fit the part, Trumpet Steve tried to assume the role of papa.

'Like, hi. Welcome to our bungalow lodge,' he said. 'Let us know if you, like, need anything. We're, like, one happy family here.'

Next to them, Sylvia, a dark-haired Italian, had half a bungalow, with Patrick, an English man, in the other half. Cindi, an American with short, blonde hair, had her own bungalow next door. All were Goa-people I'd never met. They welcomed us warmly, coming to say hello and to offer information and gossip. I felt very much at home. When I learned Jimmy was into smack, I felt even more at home. That evening, Monica and I dropped by his room.

'Yo, girls! Come smoke a few bhongs with the sheriff.'

A bhong was a vertical bamboo pipe containing water. One's mouth fit into an opening at the top. The smack, sprinkled over tobacco, went in a bowl on the side.

'I didn't know you could smoke smack,' I said.

'Hoo, boy—it's the best way. You use more dope, but it's more fun.' Yes, I was going to like it there very much.

The beach wasn't much fun, though. Bali forbade nude bathing. Though we were miles from the touristy Kuta Beach, and though our beach was usually deserted, we still chanced a fine going naked. But constant horizon-scanning did not make for peaceful sunning.

One morning Monica came through the connecting door to my room.

'I'm not doing any smack today,' she said. 'I'm going to quit.'

A controversy was growing over the smack. It was actually fairly new to the Goa Freak scene. Since the early sixties, when people started migrating to Goa, drugs had been a focal point of activities—but not heroin; mostly just hash and acid. The only people doing dope had been the 'French Junkies,' and they'd been scoped by all. The term  junky itself was used in a socio-economic sense to refer to a low-class drug user. It denoted a poor, sleazy person, someone likely to rip you off.

As the early residents of Goa involved themselves in the drug trade, the lucrative business transformed the sixties hippies into the rich Freaks of the seventies. Soon the loose cash led to the widespread use of cocaine, which led to cocaine nerves and then to the discovery of the soothing smack effect. It was Neal—who'd originally turned on the beach to acid—who'd also turned on the beach to smack. Neal had been an Original member of the scene. Everybody knew him or had heard of him, and everyone around him loved him. For as long as anyone could remember, Neal had given freely of his acid, his money, and his time. When he began to give out smack too, the smack rode an express pipeline into the soul of Anjuna Beach. When I'd arrived in Goa, it was just being introduced to the scene. Not everyone used it, and those who did didn't really see themselves as users. This was how it was with many of the Goa Freaks in Bali who, though they indulged in it now and then, also frowned on its use. On the days Steve and Laura didn't take a snoot, they disapproved of anyone who had.

'Like, you girls have to be careful with this powder,' Steve said. 'Like Laura and I, if we smoke one day, then we, likely won't do it for two or three days with that.'

They and Sylvia and Patrick went through grumpy days now and then when they were 'getting the powder out of their systems.' None of us was sure where we stood in relation to it.

'I should stop too, sometime soon,' I told Monica.

'Well, I'm stopping right now,' she said. 'I don't want to be too hooked. I haven't had any yet this morning.'

'Good luck. How do you feel?'

'Fine. Come on, lazy bones, let's swim.'