Authors: Juan Pastor
“People do drugs every day.” He replies. “Nicotine.
Caffeine. Alcohol. Pain killers. Uppers. Downers. There are
drugs in the dinner you just had. You can not get through a
day without 'doing' drugs.”
“I mean recreational drugs.”
“I don’t really do drugs for recreation.” He says. “I do
drugs for research.”
“Uh‐huh.”
“Well, I’m having a beer now.” He says. “I suppose
that’s recreation. But really, I do a lot of drugs because I just
want to learn more about them. Have you ever heard the
saying, I think it’s Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, that a weed is a
plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered?”
“No.”
“Well, drugs are a lot like that. There are a lot of drugs
whose virtues have not yet been discovered. An awful lot of
drugs come from plants, for some reason. Most of the ones
that are really harmful are the ones that have been corrupted,
superconcentrated, oversynthesized, or just used for the
wrong purpose, or the right purpose in the wrong manner. For
instance, I personally believe that small doses of caffeine and
nicotine are actually good for you. But if you drink coffee and
cola, and smoke cigarettes all day, you’re going way beyond
good for you.”
“What drugs have you done?”
“Do you really want to know?” He asks.
“Yes. I do.”
“I’ve done mescaline, and LSD. I’ve used magic
mushrooms, ayahuasca, peyote, salvia divinorum.”
“You’ve used Mexican Sage?”
“It’s my favorite psychedelic.” He says. “For one thing,
it’s right here. I don’t have to go to Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, or
Colombia to get it like I’d have to for ayahuasca.”
“You don’t have to travel to get peyote, do you?” I ask.
“Well, it grows mostly in the next desert over, the
Chihuahua. But salvia is my favorite, not just because it’s right
here, but because it has the effect closest to the Greek
meaning of psychedelic.”
“Which is mind altering?”
“The Greek word for psyche means mind or soul. And
the Greek word for delos means to manifest or reveal. I don’t
like mind‐altering drugs, per se, but drugs that reveal what is
already in the mind.”
“You mentioned mescaline and peyote. Isn’t mescaline
found in peyote?” I ask.
“Well, we’re kind of flying off on a tangent from what I
want to get to, but since you’re interested, I’ll answer every
question you have. How is it you know what you do?" He asks.
“Rosaria was interested.”
“Did she ever do any drugs?" He asks.
“She was fond of café.”
Sin smiles. Egg is still on his teeth. He takes another sip
from his bottle.
“Mescaline is found in peyote, as well as other cacti like
San Pedro cactus. It’s also found in members of the bean and
acacia family. Psilocybin is naturally found in over 200 species
of mushroom, the most potent being from the Psilocybe
genus. Psilocybin is not really a drug but a prodrug that gets
rapidly converted into psilocin by the body. It’s psilocin that
has the psychoactive properties like mescaline and LSD.
Sometime, I’ll get into how that works. Psilocybin was first
isolated from Psilocybe mexicana that grows only in Mexico,
and your homeland, Guatemala. Isn’t it a little weird that the
best entheogens come from Mexico and Guatemala?”
“What does entheogen mean?” I ask.
“It means generating the divine within. An entheogen
is a spirituality‐enhancing agent.”
“Do you suppose things like this are why Americans
look at Central Americans with suspicion?” I ask. “I remember
American students telling us that the reason so many
psychedelic drugs were made seriously illegal in the U.S. was
because of the widespread use of them in the 60s and 70s,
and that political, military, and law enforcement leaders
thought that these drugs either caused or were accelerating
social unrest.”
“I think that’s part of it. But Americans have this weird
way of looking at things. You can sell just about any poison to
an American if it is super‐refined, is approved by the FDA, is
fashionably and convincingly advertised, and is sold in pretty
little packages. The only other culture I can think of like it is
the Germans. In fact, a lot of the drugs Americans buy are
produced by German, or formerly German pharmacological
conglomerates. Americans still buy drugs from Corporations
that developed Zyklon‐B, which was used in Nazi death camps.
My parents used to give me Bayer aspirin. Bayer was a division
of IG Farben, as is Aventis, BASF, and Hoechst. IG Farben
produced and distributed Zyklon‐B. And you’ll never guess
where else Zyklon‐B was used.”
“I can guess, but I doubt I’ll guess right.” I say.
“It was used for decades, starting about 1930, to
disinfect entire trainloads of Mexican immigrants entering the
U.S. And by 'Mexican' I mean anyone trying to enter the U.S.
through Mexico.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. That’s how it was first used in
concentration camps, for delousing and to control typhus. But
then, since it is basically cyanide, it was discovered, after a few
trial runs on Russian POWs, to be a very efficient way to kill
large numbers of people.”
Sin pauses for a while.
“I’m upsetting you, aren’t I?” He asks. “I’ll stop.”
“How
come
you
lost
your
license
to
practice
medicine?” I ask.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He says.
“Try me.”
“I developed cures for several types of cancer.”
there
really ever such a thing as "fully healed"? I would walk
again among my friends, disciples, and past and future
enemies. I would show them my stigmata, but only if they
asked politely.
They
would ask, "Is that where the bullet tore through
you?"
"Yes" I would say.
Sin noticed me looking in the mirror. I was wearing a
badly fitting bra that had once belonged to a woman with
breasts much smaller than mine. It made me look as if I were
wearing a push‐up bra, or, more accurately, a "spill‐over" bra. I
don't know how Sin acquired it. He never told me. He had
washed mine several times, but could not remove the blood
stains from it. I had on a pair of his underpants, tighty‐whiteys,
as he called them, and they were definitely tight, as I had a big
butt and he had no butt at all.
"It's all vanity." Sin says.
"What's all vanity?" I ask.
"All of it." He says.
I ask him, as I look at myself in the mirror, turning so
that I can look at the scars of both the entry and exit wounds,
"Will anyone ever consider me beautiful?"
"Some day," Sin says, "someone will cover you with
kisses. And he will kiss your scars twice."
"But will he think I'm beautiful?"
"I've yet to meet anyone who likes to cover ugliness
with kisses." He says. He smiles, revealing his yellow crooked
teeth.
"Would you cover someone like me with kisses?"
"The days of me covering anyone with kisses," Sin says,
"or anyone even wanting me to, are things of the past. But
trust me, little lady, you will be loved. And you are beautiful."
He puts the emphasis on "you" twice.
"Can I tell you a story?" Sin asks.
"Will it be long?" I ask.
"Yes."
"Will it be boring?" I ask.
"Long and boring like a Sunday sermon." Sin says.
"Will you tell it anyway, whether I say yes or no?"
"Yes." Sin says.
"Okay." I say. "You can't tell me a story."
Sin laughs. It is a hoarse, dusty laugh, much like his
speech. It is the first time I've heard him laugh. Up til then he's
only expressed amusement in quiet toothy smiles.
"There was a young boy..." He says.
"You're not going to start with the day he was born?" I
ask.
"Do you want me to?"
"No."
"Then shut up and listen to the story." He says. "There
was a young boy. He was riding his bike on the way to go
fishing. There was a certain intersection that allowed thru
traffic for a highway, but the town road that intersected it at a
T had a stop sign. Since there were few people in the town
where the boy lived, since it was quite rural, and few cars ever
went by on the highway, the boy usually ran the stop sign. He
was about to run it again when he noticed a car approaching.
Since he had always run the stop sign his brain told him to do
it again. But since the car was very close, and going quite fast,
his brain also told him to stop. Since he was a young man, the
part of his brain telling him to run the stop sign won out. 'You
can do it.' It said confidently."
"And he got hit by the car, right?" I ask.
"Had he not hesitated, he would have safely run the
sign, and not gotten hit. It wasn't the decision that got
punished, but the indecision that caused the delay of the final
decision."
"Of course," I say, "if he'd just always stopped like he
was supposed to, he wouldn't have gotten hit."
"And if Guatemalans would just stay in Guatemala, and
not try to go through Mexico, and get into America by running
the wall, they wouldn't get shot at."
I couldn't argue with Sin's reasoning. It was sound.
"The car broadsided me on the bike." He says. "My bike
was demolished and run over. My body damaged the grill of
the car, ripped off the hood ornament, and my head went
right through the windshield. I looked face to face at the
startled driver, who was a young woman. As the car screeched
to a stop, I rolled back off the hood of the car, and landed on
the asphalt just in front of it."
"So you are the boy?"
"I was the boy." Sin says. "I don't know how much time
passed, as time loses its relevance on such occasions, but
another car appeared, then another, and another. For so many
cars to appear at once on a country road, a good deal of time
needs to pass. And this was long before cell phones. A police
car came. He must have radioed for an ambulance. I kept
telling everyone I was okay, that I just wanted to go home.
The people inspected all the damage, and decided to just keep
holding me down on the road. I must have had a lot of
adrenaline flowing because it took a lot of them to keep me
lying on the pavement. Someone took off a jacket or
something, I can't remember exactly, folded it up, and put it
under my head."
"Were you badly injured?" I ask.
"I'll get to that." Sin says. "It's part of the story. The
lady who'd been driving the car stayed in her car until the
ambulance came. She must have known I wasn't dead
because I kept trying to get up and leave. But she must have
been stunned. Think of it. One minute she's driving peacefully
down the highway. The next minute she is face to face with a
young boy she's just almost wiped out. Anyway, she finally
stepped out of her car, and immediately collapsed. She wasn't
injured. She just fainted. So they put her in the ambulance
intended for me, and drove her away. Another ambulance was
called for. I insisted again that I was okay, but they still
wouldn't let me get up and go home."
"God, that's actually kind of funny. If they took the lady
first, instead of you, you must not have been injured that
bad." I say.
"The second ambulance came. I was put on a gurney
and loaded into the ambulance. When I got to the hospital, I
was laid on the bed and told to undress. I rarely took showers
when I was young, and rarely washed laundry, because we
were quite poor. And my clothes were in a pretty sad state
anyway. The nurse took them and put them in a plastic bag for
disposal. I was given a robe. I was x‐rayed. The doctor asked
me many questions, I think to determine whether I had a
concussion or not. The doctor looked at the swollen bruise on
my left ankle. A nurse shaved away some hair on the left front
side of my head, and applied an antibiotic. The doctor applied
five stitches to the small cut that was there. While he worked,
he talked."
"You must be Superman." The doctor said. "The
ambulance people showed me a Polaroid of the bike and the
car."
"That's all you had, a bruise and a small cut?" I ask.
"Yeah." Sin says. "And every day a really cute nurse
would give me a sponge bath, and rub some kind of lotion on
me to prevent bedsores. She seemed to spend a lot of time on
my behind, I guess because that's where people are most apt
to get bedsores."
"How old were you?" I ask.
"Sixteen." He says.
"Just old enough to appreciate something like that?" I
ask.
"Yes." He says, seeming to remember it fondly. "But
here's the thing. I remember when I was laying in the road,
thinking, 'Something has finally happened to me'. Something
beyond the dull routine that comes with every single day. The
harsh uncaring string of cause and effect, that up til then I was
totally oblivious to, could have made of me a bloody corpse, or
a cripple. But it hadn't. Why not? Round 1 was over, and for
some
reason,
I
had
won
it.
I've
since
learned
that
overconfidence can kill, fear can paralyze, but nothing fate
throws at you can prevent you from reaching your personal
destiny."
"So was that your personal destiny?" I ask.
"Not even close, apparently. I still don't know my
destiny. But finding out requires sticking around, doesn't it?"
He asks.
"That's a weird story, in a way." I say. "I understand
your views on it, but it doesn't account for what happens to
people like Rosaria. But thank you anyway."
"You're welcome." Sin says. "When you look at those
two beautiful scars on your body, think of them as gifts. Think
of all the people living their zombie lives, going to school,
going to work, going to church. They're bored, but they don't
know why, or what to do about it. They want to be happy, but
they haven't a clue how to obtain happiness. In reality, they're
bored because they never volunteer to be tested, and they're
unhappy because they've never passed any tests. But now you
know what it's like to be on the receiving end of ignorance
and hatred and greed, don't you?"
"Do you think Jesús was resurrected?" I ask Sin.
"I don't know." He says. "Maybe He was like us, you
and I."
"How's that?" I ask.
"Maybe He didn't die. Maybe He was Superman."