There is no fear and loathing here.

We were somewhere in the South Pacific on the edge of the ocean when the withdrawals began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “Where the hell are we?”

My attorney said nothing. Sitting in the sand, he wore only a pair of hideous bell bottoms with red and white stripes that resembled a peppermint candy on copious amounts of LSD. He ignored me and repeatedly tapped his bare foot into the gentle rush of water as it crawled up the beach.

And suddenly I realized I had no idea how we had gotten there. A gaping hole in my memory sparked a brief sense of panic.

“Don’t let it get you,” he said before yawning and falling onto his back.

“Let what get me?” I half shrieked, eyes peeled for wild beasts. Who knew what roamed this place in the night.

“The silence…It’s not something to be feared,” he muttered before passing out cold.

Then I noticed just how quiet it was.

No howling wind coming off the ocean. No creaking insect sounds emerging from the jungle. I wondered if larger prey was about, scaring all the little bugs into soundless terror.

The moon was directly above me and brighter than I’d ever seen; thousands of stars littered a backdrop of black, the incessant glimmering bordering on surreal. The absence of light pollution was new to me; miniscule sparkling galaxies worlds away from Vegas but just as insanely colorful.

Las Vegas had been a psychedelic escapade, a yellow brick road soaked in ether. It was a plethora of flashing lights that made me pleasantly dizzy and consequently made me vomit in excess.

It was a memorable time; a fantastical journey where getting high was an obsession mistaken for chasing the American dream, and oh what fun it was.

So much fun, in fact, that I never gave up the chase, and I never stopped getting high either.  

What fun would the seventies be without mind altering drugs?

We all needed something to take the strain from our eyes in this sea of orange Formica and puke green bean bags chairs. It was like American society celebrated the end of the Vietnam War in the most visually painful way imaginable. And don’t even get me started on Disco music.  That would make me vomit more forcefully than Las Vegas ever did.

But here and now, on an island that seemed mute, the untouched quiet was a breeding ground for sober thinking.

How long could we maintain? I wondered. How long until one of us gave into starvation and tried to eat the other? I wanted a strong drink. I searched the shore for a boat, some means of escape and found nothing. I wandered this new place in a frenzy until I couldn't do anything else except succumb to sleep.

When the morning sunlight broke over the horizon, I found myself waking up next to my attorney who was face down in a pile of sandy drool. And to my surprise we were not alone.

Was this a dream? A residual hallucination? I stared at her naked body as if she would disappear at any moment. Something so beautiful couldn't be real, could it?

Her first words to me were, “Drink this.”

She handed me a cup and I drank, choking down some kind of foul concoction that made ether smell like daisies. As my throat burned and my stomach heaved she laughed and so did Dr. Gonzo. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and the drool from his face he said, “It’s good, isn’t it?”

It came on too quick for me to answer. I remember blinking hard, cocking my head to the side as I watched giant silver manta rays rise from the water and float overhead. They were smiling, whip like tails waving from above.

My own smile was freakishly large and it stayed plastered to my face until my cheeks ached and even then, when the pain threatened to bring me down, I stayed up.

Up, up, up. The cloudless sky strikingly blue, the manta rays and translucent jellyfish joined tails and tentacles, holding hands, hundreds of them gliding overhead in a strange magical blanket.

“Wanna go higher?” She asked and because I’m a fiend I said yes.

Instead of offering another cup of whatever the hell she gave me before, she brought me to her home. Periwinkle, she called herself, lived in a tree house not far from the shore. It was made from the remanence of a boat.

Shipwrecked, she told us. She guessed that it had been a few years that she was stranded on this island but she wasn’t really sure. I stared at her and then made this half laugh, half choking noise, amazed at how she shrugged it all off.

For a moment I wondered if she was an alien, a being who didn’t know the ways of human life on earth. Periwinkle giggled and said, “It may sound weird but I think getting shipwrecked was the best thing to ever happen to me.”

She held out a bowl filled with nuts and dried fruit, and with a wink she said, “Actual food.”

For days on end the three of us cohabitated in this tropical wonderland. Drink me. Tin cans that had washed up on the shore acted as cups for her stinky elixir.  Eat me. Brightly colored leaves could be chewed and swallowed, mellow you out, cool you down better than the frequent warm rain showers. Fuzzy little seeds pods crushed up with rock pestle and mortar worked better than any quaaludes I’d ever ingested. Long walks through the jungle hauling jugs and pails for fresh water. Creating fire with nothing but the sun and two pieces of dry wood. Catching fish with our bare hands and drawing in the freshest breath into our lungs. The salty air like some sort of mystical healing agent, making me feel strong, powerful.

Tripping through survival, not tripping to escape. A new realm of exploration. An unfamiliar world of foreign yet glorious quiet. Completely sane in this place that was maddenly absent of sound.

Noise was so different there. Loud was how I’d always lived. Blaring the car horn at every opportunity and screaming into the night hoping someone screamed back. Playing music with the purpose of waking the dead. Rock concerts so deafening that my ears rang for days. Shooting big guns, bullet after bullet and cackling at the thundering blasts.

In the very opposite of everything I had known, I found myself immersed, and enjoying a quiescent way of life. The hard work didn’t seem so hard with manta rays and jellyfish cheering us on. At the risk of sounding cliche...I adapted to my surroundings.

It shouldn't have surprised me.  I had always known that humans have an incredible survival instinct. We harvest determination and let it fester, releasing it when threatened, watching it spread like an infestation that puts cockroaches to shame.

We lived for the moment, suddenly yielding to a hushed paradise.

Until a fracture in the silence.

Dr. Gonzo was screaming. We ran to investigate finding him jumping up and down, waving his arms like a madman. He pointed and laughed, he wailed and cartwheeled when the boat come closer.

A boat.  It was loud. It’s motor on overdrive. It was everything this island was not.

I just stood there, a statue, a pillar of unresolved questions.  What did this mean?

The captain was a young man of maybe twenty, his long blond hair whipping around with the constant breeze. He shook my attorney’s hand and offered us a rescue.

Panic.  It crept up my spine like the rising vibe of an acid frenzy. The reality began to make it’s way into my brain, the noise of the boat hurting my ears, making me scowl.

The captain was wary of me and rightfully so. While my attorney turned on the charm, I held back, my hands like claws, ready to strike this man who dared to make so much noise.

Did I think that or did I say that out loud?  Perhaps I shouldn't have eaten that last mushroom...

“Is he okay?” The captain asked, stepping back toward his boat. He had fear in his eyes. Taking me in, looking at my haggard clothes and my unshaved face, my eyes wide and crazed. I must have looked like a demon.

Periwinkle laughed and slung her arm around my waist before saying, “It’s okay. He’s just admiring the shape of your skull.”

Dr. Gonzo was suddenly standing before me, soft eyes and unwavering grin.

“As your attorney, I advise you to get your ass on that boat, we need red meat and alcohol before we turn into wild hippie-animals.”

I looked down at the sand and then close my eyes, relishing the feeling of sand between my toes and her arms squeezing me tight.

She whispered in my ear, “It’s okay. Go.”

Her eyes were blue with tiny flecks of green, like the ocean at sunrise.

Then I looked back to the beach, to the jungle and I remembered everything.

Here, I survived because of her. I’d written epic novels inside my head, told stories that took weeks to tell, pissed in the ocean, shit in a hole. I would write about this. I would tell the tale of the girl who was so happy with so little; the girl who showed me another way.

Here I can look east or west, north or south, I can spin in circles and no matter where I look...I didn’t need a high water mark carved in the horizon to show me where I am or how much I’ve grown.

We climbed onto the boat and left her behind, the roaring motor drowning out the quiet.

I watched her get smaller and smaller, the island getting further and further away.

There she goes, fading into the distance. A creature far from any prototype. The simplest form of perfection that men would mass produce if they could figure out how.