SOAP, MY TOXIC FRIEND (2ND PART)

(by Pablo Burgués)

A couple of weeks ago I was queuing at a fritter-truck (a street stall selling churros as those we’ve always had, indeed) and right in front of me there was quite a character of about 40 and many years old and 66 and something pounds in weight who was constantly self-exploring some small burns he had on his right arm. The guy, whom I christened as Soap, noticed I was looking at him and without raising his eyes he said: “I bet you a dozen churros that you don’t guess what these marks are due to”. Common sense and statistical laws told me to play dumb and don’t go along with that strange human being, but the Mother Teresa I bear inside me thought that small body would appreciate a good handful of saturated fat, so I accepted the bet.

Have you been stung by a jellyfish? I asked. “Negative”, he replied, “you have another chance”. A household accident? “It wasn’t an accident but indeed it happened at home, so as good friends we’ll call it a tie and you’ll only have to buy me half a dozen churros”. Wow, a friend who feeds is a friend indeed, I thought. Once I accepted my defeat, Soap told me that he himself had made him those burns on purpose with a hot iron. The aim of such an acceptable action was to put over those open wounds a certain drug that seems to make you high much more if it’s applied in this way. Good heavens! What a really loutish thing to do, it seemed a censored scene of the film Trainspotting!

While we waited to be served, my new old friend went on telling me the wonderful talents of that substance: “Indeed it’s not a drug but the poison of a toxic frog from the Amazon called Kambo”. Ah, that makes me feel calmer, I replied. “It’s not much known here in Europe, but the tribes from Brazil have been using it for centuries to clean the body and take the bad spirits outside out”. Seeing his skinny figure I thought he might have taken the frog from side two. “If you want to try it you can come home and we’ll do it”. I thanked him for that gesture of junkie comradeship but I told him that I’m a rather weak guy and for that day I had enough with the sugar rush from the churros.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t like Kambo too much, to burn yourself is a real pain and then the rush doesn’t last much. I prefer pure DMT. Have you tried it?” Of course, I replied, and immediately after that I took my mobile and checked Wikipedia to see what the hell was that: N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT or N,N-DMT) is a psychedelic drug taken from the root of the Mimosa tenuiflora. It’s commonly used in some indigenous cultures for their shamanic practices, because among its effects we can highlight strong and very elaborate hallucinations, non verbal communication with “unknown beings”, “futuristic machinery and cities”, “journeys to other realities and spheres”, “mental expansion”, etc.

“Guy, this shit is like having the fucking Hubble telescope in your eyes”, said Soap. At first I didn’t understand whether the fact of having a jumble of 24.300 pounds of iron and aluminium foil inside your cornea was synonymous with something good or something bad, so I asked him to, please, fully develop that wonderful statement he had just made. Then, he explained that after taking DMT your sight sharpens in such a way that you can see the elementary structures things are made of. That is, you become a sort of walking super microscope.

I told him that reminded me of the washing machines old TV commercials in which the host became tiny and in a genuine Indiana Jones style he got among the threads of a sweater to show us the stains from inside. Soap started to laugh and told me that comparison seemed very appropriate taking into account what happened to him in his last high due to dimethyltryptamine or whatever shit you call it…

(To be continued)

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Translation: Dora Sales