Spanking the Children of Paradise and Other Travel Tales of Cosmic Despair

Spanking the Children of Paradise

And other travel tales of cosmic despair

Bad Mike

Published by Hooptedoodle Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Bad Mike

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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ISBN 9781311488114

The Dragon Cafe on Om Beach, Gokarna, India, Oil on Paper, 8x6", 2014

For every misfit who yearns to wriggle free and embrace the many dark wonders of this wounded world.

A journey is a gesture inscribed in space; it vanishes even as it's made. You go from one place to another place and on to somewhere else again, and already behind you there is no trace left behind.

Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room

There's often a fine line between the comic and the cosmic.

Tom Robbins

True Travel Tales of Cosmic Despair

The Prologue ... and our apologies

Spanking the Children of Paradise

The Whipping Post

A Fear of Angels

A Dispatch from the Other Side of a Shit Ditch

Dirty, Rotten Tour Groups

Fun Sally—Getting It On with Peanut Butter in Lao

Hangin' with Charlie in the Nam

Last Call for Mercy

Losing Chicken—Boarding an Indonesian Ferry

Snakes and Satans

Stasis in the Afternoon—an awful life on a remote tropical island

Missionaries, Jesus and the Kaimana Honey Trap

A Wonderment of Innocence

Losing it—the Saga of my Indonesian Departure Card

Baby, Light my Pyre

A Pillar of Wisdom

Lunatics and Dirty Little Girls

Volleyball Concubines and More Dirty, Little Girls

Revenge of the Hammock—A Hampi Love Story

I Haven't Got a Hat

Things You Probably Should Not Know About Bad Mike

The Prologue ... and our apologies

DIRTY, LITTLE GIRLS are to be found on remote tropical islands. These are not adorable and vulnerable waifs; they are elfin menaces, diminutive, scruffy stumps eagerly awaiting the arrival of a solitary traveler, rudely demanding money and chocolates and, when inevitably rebuffed, resort to throwing rocks. Their aim is uncanny. Headshots are the norm. There is little to like about dirty, little girls. Infer what you will.

Spanking happens too. But this collection of stories is not about spanking. Although a bum slapping tomb would be a delightful addition to any library. The spanking occurs during the epic battle between a contingent of truncheon wielding Indian police officers and a large gaggle of flower children, hippies, if you must, held sway under the dulcet vibrations of Momma Earth's herbs and magical mushrooms. And, yes, even hula hoop girls are spanked, their tender bottoms rendered pink and blue.

These are travel tales of cosmic despair told by a once mild and timid fellow, self-exiled by penury, now gone bad, a loose cannon on the good ship Lollypop.

Some of these tales may cause you to snort your cappuccino through your nose. You might even pee your pants. We cannot take responsibility for whatever mishaps might result from reading these stories.

Kindly accept our sincere apologies in advance.

The Editors,

Hooptedoodle Press

Spanking the Children of Paradise

Names have been changed to protect the luscious, the salacious and the truly delicious.

I NEVER SAW A BODY washed up on a beach before. From a distance he looked to be enjoying the waves lapping over him as you or I would enjoy laying in the surf on a hot afternoon. As I came closer, something, I don't know what, seemed wrong. His body was covered with a fine white powder which didn't make any sense. He looked peaceful until I saw his bulging eyes. He had seen something terrible.

Drowning is common in paradise. The rocking horse soothing of the Indian Ocean's surface belies a treacherous undercurrent.

I live in a thatched bamboo hut on Kudle Beach, Gokarna, India.

Across the neighbouring headland to the south is Om Beach and after that is Half Moon Beach and for the truly intrepid who disdain any clothing that unnecessarily impedes getting down to Momma Earth's primal rhythms there is Paradise Beach. This quartet of sand, as fine as a powdered baby's bottom, and sea, as blue and sparkling as a strumpet's come hither eyes, and salubrious entertainments of many a dubious quality, stretches for about, maybe, four kilometres. But who can really be bothered to measure the distance. If you demand specifics, well, the postal code here is 581326.

A large rat, about the size of an alley cat, visits me in the nocturnal hours. She is well behaved for a rat and sometimes slips under my mosquito net to nuzzle me. I call her Lulu. I am assuming Lulu is a she. We haven't been formally introduced.

Tim lives in the hut next to mine. He is a dislodged Californian. There are no jobs for him in California. Tim figures that if he must be poor he might as well be poor in paradise. Most people would call Tim a hippy. He wears funny clothes and his curly red hair explodes atop his head like lit firecrackers packed tightly into a trash can. I guess we all wear funny clothes here. They look normal to us.

Tim endures an unwelcome celibacy amid a freewheeling carnality seldom seen this side of the Cross. Tim is not a pretty boy. I suspect my duplicitous Lulu also nuzzles Tim in the empty hours. That is the nature of rats.

At sunrise lithe young women emerge from their bamboo huts to greet the exuberantly cheery sun and do yoga. Diminutive cattle, the size of petting zoo ponies, trot out from the back paddocks for a morning of bovine wilding. The yoga gatherings are disrupted by tiny bulls intent on being a nuisance. They steadfastly refuse to be shooed away by now very annoyed young women.

At mid-morning an unsteady truce ensues between territorial ungulates and perturbed yogis and the day settles into an easy cadence gently syncopated by naps and rainbow colored dreams sorting out the puzzle of existence.

There really isn't much to do in the hot soporific haze of the afternoon until Juan, the Argentine Mad Hatter—so named for the three hats piled recklessly on his head—sets up his chess board and demolishes all of us in less than six moves apiece. Juan is a world class chess master. His reality is defined by sixty-four squares. When outside that realm of harsh geometry Juan stalks the rim of the Arabian Sea looking like he has lost a contact lens.

Most afternoons I paint. It would be easier to paint in the cool mornings but I am not a morning person. I like the afternoon light. It is a factual light. The afternoon sun has nothing to hide.

The monkeys that harass me are a problem. They like my paint brushes and try to steal them. Many people think that monkeys are cute. I find them to be as cute as an impolite mugger on a pre-dawn IRT Express subway train hurtling through Brooklyn. It is difficult to concentrate on painting while fending off furry felons.

I usually return to my bamboo hut on the beach just before sunset. Sometimes I lose track of time and have to pick my way back along starlit paths strewn with sharp, serrated rocks and the few small cliffs that breach the headlands. One time I lost my palette at Half Moon Beach and had to go back and search for it at night. I wasn't too happy about that.

Sunset is a special time on Kudle Beach. We all gather to watch the big flaming tangerine lollipop slide into the yawning gullet of the violet sea. There is a small hippy market where highly polished shells, coconut trimmings and semi-precious stones are transpired into jewellery that is mostly necklaces and wrist bands. Some of the artisans have been travelling perpetually for over twenty years on the proceeds of their itinerant businesses.

In the crepuscular glow of golden vibes musicians pluck, strum and caress an ad hoc assortment of instruments into a harmonious celebration of twilit joy. An Indian woman's voice trills high above our heads weaving a magical tonal tapestry within the concordant thread of drum rhythms. It is wondrous and beautiful.

Jugglers emerge to juggle and hula hoops spin upon undulating hips of serpentine temptresses releasing spores of pagan desires into the warm moist air like hot tongues nibbling on eager nipples.

The children of paradise go to bed early. The evening's festivities usually conclude at nine. The clapped together and slightly disreputable cafes are empty save for the lonely hearts that are cast adrift and bereft of tender companionship. I often contemplate Orion's Belt glittering in the velvet blackness and once in a while consider Lulu. She is easily summoned with cookies.

Every three days a trip into town is required for replenishing sundries such as water, eggs and cookies. Gokarna is a holy town and quite popular with pilgrims, or yatri. There are tensions with the townsfolk who feel that the hippy presence is a sacrilegious affront. Many of us are more Hindu attired than the Indians who are usually dressed like Wal-Mart sales clerks. I wonder what they must think of us with our dreadlocks, elaborate tattoos, drooping dhotis and clattering ankle bracelets playing at being Sadhus. Many of us are in our late twenties and thirties. Arrested children, for sure; better a fantasy life than a florescent lit coffin.

The town folk fear that their gentle town will morph into a tourist infested horror like many of the besieged towns in neighbouring Goa. I cannot blame them too much; I fear for the future of Gokarna too. Yesterday a jet ski showed up at Kudle Beach—a harbinger of ill tidings.

Tim is losing his way. His travels have no other purpose other than passing time until his money runs out and he is forced to return to an American splendor of shit jobs.

Tim's birthday is Friday. Valentine's Day. He confides that he will be thirty and is disconsolate that his decade of the big pain is closing: being thirty colors things with less brilliant, more sombre hues.

A party is planned for Tim. Tuk tuk drivers are dispatched for beer and salty snacks. Herbal supplements are procured and eager musicians assembled. And the hula hoop girls too. The gateway to Tim's dismal year will be celebrated beneath the banyan tree in the back paddock where our Bacchanalian excess will be discretely removed