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The Molecular Dreamboat Excursion

Randall K Rogers Copyright 2019

    Every road starts a journey. No matter where you go. I was wondering where I was going. I was twenty-nine. I’d got myself into a hometown scrape and it was hard to live down. Ruined me. Now I have to deal with the consequences. And it is getting difficult to do. Sometimes I take long showers. I let the hot water run over me and think. I think about the universe. I think about what I did. I deeply regret my actions. But I did it, yes, I’m guilty. I abandoned my old buddies, I left behind the old gang.

    I didn’t return their calls. When I got back to town I virtually ignored the entire group. Following our initial few calls to each other I didn’t call them and they didn’t call me. Time passed, and now eight years on I think we must be strangers. Or are we? We’ve aged so, in these pivotal mid-life years, could we still recognize each other? We grew up together, would our minds still be similar? Had the years irrevocably changed us? A lot of political water had flown beneath the bridge. Were my friends still Democrats? I had a lot of questions. Did they continue to take acid? Still smoke pot? I knew they wouldn’t be married. Who would marry one of those guys? Or me? We all in our group, at least the ones I liked, were misfits. Not really misfits, I guess, more like weirdos in a good way. We were as Janis Joplin put it, “normal weird.”
    We were into music. Some of my friends had developed an encyclopedic knowledge of rock music. Especially music that was then current and popular. Because in the late sixties early 1970s music was so good. Rock music seemed to lead in popularity back then, but country, jazz, glam, rockabilly were all riding a creative high. In the nineteen sixties and seventies music was great. I’m still reeling from the effects of late sixties psychedelia. By the early eighties, however, music was finished. The creative effects, musical vision, drive, and social ethos ushered in by liberalizing changes wrought by the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War were winding down. After a long period of turmoil it was time to live. Greed and desire for money replaced protest and hippiedom. Except for the Grateful Dead most changed. My friends were huge Deadheads.

    I wondered if they’d recognize me. I wondered if they’d read the papers, if they’d seen me on TV. Did they know I was on my way? I hoped they’d welcome me back, but I wasn’t sure. We were once the best of friends. In my teens and young to mid adulthood they comprised the gang I hung out with. But I’d been away. I’d changed, had they? Had they changed so much as to not accept me?

    I’d traveled the world. I’d experienced things. I’d been in prison in a third world country. I’d seen people die. I’d seen poverty and widespread sexual display. I’d seen and heard delights and dangers in areas of the world where the law is complicit and such things are catered to. Often nowadays I question the extent of what I’ve seen, dabbled in. My sense of lived experience, therefore, is tempered with some regret. Yet, as a sociologist, I consider it all field work, and therefore valuable. My travels and living in foreign lands have been immensely beneficial to my teaching oeuvre. Being able to use examples from other cultures bolsters and “fleshes out” my instruction. However, now I may be tainted.

    I no longer think in Ferdinand Toinnes’ Gemeinshaft (community) manner. I now consider myself a Gesellshaft (society) man. That is, I am no longer tied, so much, to place. I’ve lived as much as a native a white-American can teaching high school in Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. Taking the bus and walking to and fro from the school I met the people. After a while, seeing other whites almost only at school, I thought I was black. And I spoke funny; English with an American accent. I’m of Scandinavian-English stock, however, born in Minneapolis: I have a round face. Jamaicans told me if I wanted to get rid of touts just answer “Nein!” to those whom approach me.
    My friends did not have such a wide range of options. Education did it for me. It sent me out of small town USA, out of the Midwest and into the world. I started teaching private school kids at a US State Department assisted school. The school was in the Jamaican capital city of Kingston, specifically New Kingston, Jamaica, on Hope Road. I was thirty. Some of my students were sons and daughters of foreign diplomats stationed in the West Indies, including some ambassadors’ children. These kids were quite cosmopolitan, and open to sharing their experiences. Other students were children of wealthy Jamaicans. A few were reggae stars’ kids. At times my students shuffled from Jamaica to New York City, and Miami.
    Discipline problems alone built thick my character. Don’t get me wrong, growing up in Rapid City’s south side was rough, and had its deviant charms. But for oddity’s sake going from Dakota cowboy to island funk was culture shock. I went from ranches and rolling tree-less prairie to curry goat and the prehistoric looking plants of the mist enshrouded Blue Mountains. With the local grown cannabis, Jamaican rum, reggae music, and island women, for a young man Jamaica has much to offer. The Bob Marley House and Museum, along with Jamaica’s Government House, and my school, were all along Hope Road. The first time I went into the Bob Marley compound grounds I saw a guy in uniform and freaked out. With all the weed about I thought we were going to be arrested. Then an old dread guy passed me a burning pipe. He told me not to worry, that the man in uniform is the Museum cop. It’s his job it is to keep the real cops out! I felt better but leaving the place walking home, for a teacher in public, I was way too high. The herbal delights were so powerful on the island, so enlightening, debilitating, plentiful and cheap, I smoked every day. There were many times I was so high I didn’t want to leave the apartment. I wouldn’t answer the door or the phone. In effect, I was hiding. I’d get the munchies so bad I’d eat all my food in one night.
    But nothing is so constant as change. My Mom died, and I was devastated. She left me an inheritance, though, and I used it to move to Thailand. I had to get away. I secured a position teaching English conversation at the ECC Language School Siam Square, downtown Bangkok. Another eye-opener, living and working in Thailand. Then I moved to Cambodia. Then China and back to Cambodia. Fourteen years in Asia total. I remember once being at the “Walk About” bar in Phenom Penh, drinking with my boss and another teacher. We all taught in English at the local Norton University. I taught graduate sociology classes. While we were seated at an outside area of the bar, across the street from us a man ran out of a branch police station shooting backward. The man crossed the street and ran to hide behind a truck parked in front of the bar.

    We sat outside on concrete picnic style booths. Our boss, a ruddy Englishman, when the shooting started he and I got down among the concrete. Bullets were flying and we wanted to be safe. Our companion, who’d been in-country the longest, was an old hand. Crouching, he maneuvered toward the action. It seemed like only moments before two open truckloads of AK-47 wielding troops arrived. The trucks pulled up in front of the bar, in front of the parked truck. From their positions standing in the truck the soldiers opened up on the man at the back of the truck. Following a sustained burst from multiple shooters there was silence.
    We waited. When our colleague returned he said it was okay to get up. “They got him,” he said, adding, “it’s not a pretty sight.”

    We didn’t go look.

    When I was teaching at Kharkov National University in Ukraine Bill Clinton came to Kiev to speak. I didn’t go. Kiev is too far, all the way across the country. In Lviv/Lvov, Poland, I stayed in the same hotel as Hillary and Chelsea Clinton had when she was Secretary of State. At the hotel bar, while having a couple beers, I met a forty-ish professional chess player. He was from Slovakia, in town for a chess tournament. Sitting at the bar were also a couple of hookers. I took the tall one up to my room. She was pale, really white, and bigger than I. She checked her ID with the hotel floor attendant.

    In Turkey, in Istanbul, I was vacationing from my job at Kharkov National University. I walked in fate’s path. I went to an Irish pub soon after landing. It was early morning and after I checked in at my hotel I went out to find the Irish pub. They only had one. Turns out at the pub I walked into had had deadly football fan violence the night before. I just wanted to talk to a local who speaks English. I try to go to Irish Pubs in non-English speaking lands for this reason. It appeared I was the first customer in that morning I walked in and sat down at the bar. A middle-aged European man was wiping down the bar. He asked me if I was from Channel Four. He looked to be fretting.
    I said “no,” and asked, “why?” He understood I knew nothing when I commented “That’s the TV station from England, isn’t it?”

    He poured me a beer. He said he thought I might be a reporter. I informed him I was an American, a Yank, teaching just north across the Black Sea. He poured himself a beer and sat on a stool behind the bar on the other side of me. He seemed relieved I wasn’t a reporter and happy he had someone to talk to. It must have been nine o’clock in the morning. The inside of the place smelled of stale spilled beer. The inside of the bar was stained wood; gold tinted windows let in little light. In 1999 in Istanbul it was the only Irish bar I could find. I don’t remember the exact name.

    The man told me he was the bar owner. I said I just arrived in Istanbul that morning. After checking in at the hotel this was the first place I’d come. He informed me there was a big football match the day before, Turkey vs. England. Following the match many English fans were on the streets celebrating. English fans thronged the main square of Istanbul drinking and carrying on. In time the English fans made their way to his Irish Bar. Once inside the place the fans began to cause mayhem. They were harassing the bar staff, throwing glasses, and in general causing mayhem. He could not stop them. Though he stressed he did not want to he called the police. The police arrived and evacuated the bar.
    The English fans returned to the streets carrying on and drinking. Some carried small Turkish sports fan flags on a stick. Souvenir type flags. In the main square a group of English fans began stomping on their Turkish souvenir flags. A Turkish fan runs into the middle of the group of English fans. He stabs and kills two. The two killed are older, family men. One of the men in his late forties the other in his early fifties. The bar owner tells me he’s been up all night, talking with Turkish TV crews and the Istanbul police. The English media are due to arrive at any time. He thought I was the vanguard of the coming from England media onslaught. He felt guilty, tremendously guilty, he says, for calling the police, for what happened. He was unsure what he was going to tell the English press. I think he was practicing his story right there talking to me!

    With those hooligans, I consoled, those old guys are generals. They organize the ruffians into ranks, like soldiers. If they got killed they had a part in their own deaths. They are the hoist of their own petard. These Turks are real nationalists, English fans should have known better than to have been stomping on their flag. Pretty non-important tiny sports flags, however, and not worth killing over.
    That early in the morning it was all a little heavy for me. Only just arriving in country. I planned on going in there for a few just-landed-first-time-in-the-country beers and some info. From a native English speaker. I didn’t think they’d be open when I tried the door. Imagine my shock. I don’t think they closed all night. I drank a few, heard the fellow out, said my goodbyes and left. I went back to the hotel. I think I helped him. He was able to get his concern off his chest and practice getting his story straight before going on record. I was able to make a bond with an ex-pat, help him somewhat form his story, and get a real scoop. When the English TV crew did arrive and it’s leader introduced himself I was still sitting with him at the bar. I paid up, wished him luck and exited as the TV crew were setting up their cameras. He was to be interviewed right there in bar.
    Strange things happen when you travel. Here’s more: I got a rare condition called burning mouth syndrome or BMS. Sometimes it’s called burning tongue syndrome. Before I knew what I had, I didn’t really know what a “syndrome” was. When I looked it up I was not pleased. A condition the “signs and symptoms” of which “there is no known cure... lasting of unknown duration[!]” However, a “spontaneous remission” may occur, in seven years! If you are young enough, then, I guess, there is hope. Too bad the condition usually strikes the elderly. Most often postmenopausal women. Spontaneous remission when it happens usually occurs following seven years of the hell of living with BMS. The condition is part psychological and part physiological, but in which and what measure and why are still unknowns.

    What I know for sure is I got it. And it’s bad. Mostly postmenopausal women get it. So do so-called super-tasters. Super-tasters have more taste buds than ordinary on the tongue. In BMS the tip of the tongue turns red and raw. On the tongue as a whole strange white and red blotches come and go. Waves of electric feeling undulate the tongue. The mouth is dry; at times there is a strong salt taste. The tip of the tongue burns. It is raw, painful, and red. Sometimes the reddened area stays at the tip of the tongue, sometimes it goes further back. When someone with BMS thinks of the pain they are experiencing – or is stressed – the pain is worse. People can’t eat. They lose weight. One is in constant pain. The more you try to put the burning out of your mind the more you can’t, and the worse it gets. You try not to think about it. When the mind is occupied you feel less pain. To become interested in something – engrossed - and occupy your mind is what helps. Medically, I found relief in the following order: 1) klonopin/clonezepam with gabapentin 2) Chinese medicine snake bile formula 3) alcohol 4) prescription morphine and methadone 5) codeine, heroin, and, finally 6) methamphetamine and phenobarbital. I had it for eight years. When I got it, it came on suddenly in a matter of hours. Almost if not exactly one year to the day following the death of my mother, whose body I found. BMS’ cause is said to be psychological. Unresolved issues with your mother. Things you wanted to say to her but didn’t, this inner emotional conflict plays out on the tongue. Mom was alcoholic, a heavy smoker. I should have said this, I should have done that. I had the condition for eight years. During this time I lived in Thailand, China, and Cambodia. I got it when my cousin first came to visit me in Bangkok. I had a spontaneous remission nine years later following his sudden death. Very odd to me that the condition came and went when he did, following Mom.
    That’s not all. Old people contacted me. One man, his wife was suicidal. She couldn’t eat. She was withering away; he didn’t know what to do. I told him to tell her to drink wine, if you must, before eating. Three glasses, then eat. For me it got to be a habit but it worked. When drunk or tipsy if you feel pain it’s less, and as the alcohol takes effect you get hungry. You feel alright even. One must eat, and feel good. To find relief or a cure in my eight years with the condition I tried acupuncture, capsicum and other mouthwashes, special salves, multiple medications, etc. Is it a fungus, candida, irritating metal fillings? depression? A Chinese guy faith healer in Singapore massaged my foot, prayed and shouted to God for me to be healed. In Singapore at the airport they have a branch of these chain Chinese medicine stores. When I went in and told of my condition the man behind the counter knew just what to give me; the snake bile formula. It came as an oversize dark brown oval lozenge, which ground up it is put it into into pill casings. A couple of the pills, and three or four snifters of Bailey’s on the plane back to Bangkok and they worked fine. I felt such tremendous relief on the plane I think I deluded myself as to the pills efficacy. I was on a Thai visa extension run to Singapore when I purchased them. My problem was I kept running out of the ground up stuff and it was expensive. It was difficult to find the hard lozenge when I did find it I needed it ground. The lozenge was very hard. I didn’t speak or read Chinese and tramping around Bangkok and Phenom Penh Chinatown trying to find what I needed was not working well. Heroin and Western no-prescription needed pills were easier to find. After Thailand, in Cambodia heroin, over the counter Ketamine, codeine, Valium, phenobarbital, special ‘ya ba’ meth pills, and dissolution became the solution. During my short time in LinAn, China (teaching at Zhengzhou Forestry University), there were for me no drugs but weak beer, bad wine, luxury liqueurs, and much guilt-free cigarette smoking.

    I eventually had more and bigger problems than just BMS. In Cambodia a restaurant and bar I built up flooded. Looters struck and I was arrested defending the property. I spent three months in Cambodia’s Siem Reap Prison before I was set free cleared of all charges. I was charged with among other things, shooting at police.

    By fast talking and sticking to the truth I got out of it all and returned penniless to the United States. I departed with only a suitcase of clothes and my Stratocaster guitar. I arrived at my hometown and within three weeks my hip and shoulder joints gave out. I couldn’t walk; I could barely use my arms. Mostly unknown to me my hip and shoulder joints had been dissolving for years. I thought it was recurring gout. They finally gave out completely when I arrived back in my hometown. My arm and leg bones dislocated leaving their sockets. Avascular necrosis is the name. I waited in a wheelchair in an assisted living center until joint replacement surgery. Doctors debrided, or cut away what was left of my hip and shoulder joints and replaced themed with artificial joints. Then they reattach the arm and leg bones to the artificial sockets using special bone cement. Plastic, rubber, titanium and bone cement comprise my new joints. The shelf life of a prosthetic joints is estimated at twenty years. I got ‘em in 2013 when I was fifty-two. I’m no longer whole.
    Later a different doctor did a correction of the right shoulder. I got an infection, MRSA, and spent a half-year in the hospital. Now some seven years after the start of this bone-joint replacement recovery I’m okay. I’m ready to meet my old friends. I’m good as I’m ever going to get. Yet I ignored them for so long. I didn’t return their calls. Now, so many years later, I’m ready to again make contact. To rekindle the old bromance. Still wondering how they’ll respond. I wonder if they’ll take me in. I don’t really care, though, I given up worrying. They are almost more memory to me now than real. Though long ago I did promise them I’d return. I promised to be certain to return to kill every last one of them. And in no way now do I intend to go back on my word.

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