Soap, my toxic friend

(by Pablo Burgués)

Life, besides killing you slowly, bores you very soon, and that’s why since time began human beings have looked for stimuli that can make the world a funnier and more bearable place.

In the first years of our life there’s no problem, not even one, all is wonderful. Why? It’s very easy: because we’re high all day long with a really hard drug: the Three Wise Men, holiday camps, strawberry Petit Suisse, the busty teacher of Maths… But as we grow up these stimuli don’t turn you on anymore (except for the busty teacher of Maths) and we spend the rest of our lives looking in chemistry anything that make us repeat those epic rushes of our childhood.

In my case, I was 7 years old the first time I got high. I was tucked into bed when suddenly and without notice my first dealer sat down beside me, that is, my mother, who, with the skill of a surgeon, applied a green mint-smelled potion called Vicks VapoRub on my chest, back and forehead. Fuck off, all became black, suddenly I felt that this bloody planet could be saved, that the pleasures of life didn’t stop with the end of the anal phase and that there was something beyond that deserved to be lived.

In spite of that premature and positive revelation on drugs, Playmobil klickies, La Bola de Cristal and masturbation got me in high spirits and sober until season number 13 of my existence. At that moment the scriptwriters of my life began to slacken quite much and in search of new adventures I got drunk for the first time. As with any first time, it was horrible and, then, also for the first time, I looked up to the sky, raised my arms and shouted the 3rd less credible sentence in the world (after “son, open the door, I’m not going to hit you” and “after this pack of cigarettes I won’t buy more”): “I swear I won’t drink never again”.

But thank God words are blown with the wind and between peach liquor, Kalimotxo and grape juice with Cointreau season 16 arrived and with it the Gin-Kas and the first laughter cigarettes (and the second and the third). Between seasons 20 and 30 other things that make you dance also joined the party. I will not mention them here just in case my mother reads this and grounds me without pay.

From season 30 I constantly travelled around the world and for some time that became my new drug, my new sugar, my new Twelfth Night. But, of course, exotic countries also have their good exotic stuff and a curious and eager-for-knowledge guy like me had to play with some of those new toys. Thus, I got to know Space Cakes in Amsterdam, ayahuasca in Peru, opium in Laos, and peyote, san pedro, naphthalene, tachas and habanero pepper in Mexico. Mexico, a great country, indeed. The same as Thailand, where I met a Japanese Rastafari named Taka who, among other oddities, smoked scorpions. Yes, yes, scorpions. Those bad bugs that kill you if they bite… Well, that friend hunted them, let them dry under the sun, put them into a pipe and, wham! Inside! It was very funny to see how the guy explained, making a great fuss, the effects of the poison when it came into his body, while he constantly repeated “not recommended”.

And thus, when I reached season 41 of my life, I thought there was no natural stimulant, animal anaesthetic or disinfectant in the world that I hadn’t seen to be smoked, sucked or sniffed. But then I got to Ibiza and I met a guy I’ll call “Soap”, a walking Vade Mecum who told me about the more confused, surrealistic and funniest psychotropic experiences I’ve heard and will ever hear about. But I’ll tell you about this next week, because it’s getting late and these people would like to go to bed.

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Translation: Dora Sales