KAVA, BABY, KAVA!
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The Kava ceremony.
It began around, well, we'll say 5:00 PM, but the folks on my tiny home island across the lagoon in Fiji in the South Pacific really have no concept of time. They go to bed when the half halo of the blue Pacific moon takes to the skies and awaken when the sun tells them it's alright to stop hiding from that big blue orb, which hides again until the next night. The Kava was stirred just right, and it had already been chewed and expectorated in the ceremonial bowls where we keep the rest of the ground roots.
We were told we could bring some outsider friends, you know, folks people knew outside of these cool, and sometimes alienated beached grounds, but nobody brought anybody because, well, nobody knew anybody. Except me, of course, the college boy most now looked at with scorn and ridicule. "Ne Decko Gee Ha Ha," they say behind my back within earshot, which, when translated means, "Go back to school, you redneck hick!"
Two years away from home at college in California--and I'm already a "redneck hick." I'll tell you, it kind of hurts me right here (hand over heart) Kind of.
Anyhow, I brought my friend, Troy, a big, athletic, deeply tanned, brown-eyed California surfer boy. I invited him to our ceremony because he said he was bored, and I was sick of going to bars with him as the "firewater" always got him too riled up for his own damn good. He might end up in an emergency room getting the splinters plucked out of the nape of his neck after being pounded over the head with a chair.
He was more than happy to tag along, and not just for the Kava, which I told him would give him an out-of-body experience of absolute bliss that not even good 'ol trusty alcohol could match. There were also these voluptuous, sweetly tanned, Pacific Island girlies; Troy had dreamed about tapping one of them ever since I described how voluptuous and nubile some of the girls here could be. Especially after Kava. You shoulda seen him.
I'm not the first person to bring an outsider, and Kava's not as out of your range as you may think. You want to know who's partaken in the glug-glug of Kava? You ever hear of President Lyndon Johnson, infamous for being one of the masterminds of Vietnam? Hell of a guy, I'm told. He was absolutely stressed out when he came here, kept saying how his soul was tired, taxed out. But good old Kava, that stuff got him right back on his feet and giving orders. What a champ.
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Who else? Let's see. Queen Elizabeth, she's got a penchant for the plentiful punch, so did Pope John Paul the II, bless his heart. Stories circulate around these parts, even though I usually have to hear about them through e-mail because I spend so much time in Cali. I hate being back home in a way and maybe I wouldn't be if not for the Kava), as some of my home people do actually fear the moon, I'm not joking about that. Or maybe that just justifies their love of Kava, like the old guys who cry when they get liquored up because they miss their dead mothers.
Anyhow, depending on how important you are in the tribe, you get first dibs of tipping back the bowl to your eager lips. Being an exile of sorts, I got the bowl last. (Even after children! You believe that?) Well, almost last, hapless, bumbling, stumbling, Little Big Horn Troy, he got the very bottom of the bowl. I only drank a little.
I took my swig and then passed it onto Troy, it was the least I could do for him tagging along. He was eyeing a pretty, fawning girl who was wearing nothing but a V-neck cute little shirt. The fire in her eyes electrified us all in the circle of Kava.
I lay back on the dirty brown, cool sand, the earth shaking beneath me, and the night clouds passing over me at the speed of blissful dreams. The Kava was taking effect quickly, much quicker than normal, and the slow-burning, fizzling fireworks that popped off in my brain behind my eyelids were worth the trip alone.
Troy tilted his burly neck backward, his greasy, blond hair hanging over his shoulders touching his vest, and let the small amount of Kava trickle down his throat, as his Adam's apple caught some of it on the way down like a bucket hurdling down a well not sure how many times it wants to bang against the stone wall before it shatters to pieces. He had a hard time getting it down, poor guy.
I sat back up, alert, as he began to gag, his lips were trembling. Those new to the pungent, sticky taste of Kava usually react to it like this, and Troy was no exception.
Later, under a tree, he slept like a baby. There was a smile of contentment on his brimming face. Everybody was too caught up in the Kava to worry about anything except the out-creeping moon that night. Or were they? Struggling to get Troy home by myself I wondered if the fear of the moon was simply an excuse for leaving all the drunks on the beach when it was time to go home to enjoy the aphrodisiac effect of the Kava.
While I dragged Troy off the beach, the pretty, fawning girl went off laughing with someone else ... afraid of the moon, huh? When he awoke mid-afternoon, his elongated eyelashes fluttering like butterfly wings, he stared up at the whirring ceiling fan in our room and, without even saying good morning, blurted, "I had the weirdest dream last night. We were at the bar, and nobody else was there. You said something about my sister, and I started pounding you in the face. Weird, I'll tell you, weird." He gave a slight snicker, then slumped back to his pillow and dozed off for the rest of the day. He had a smile on his face the entire time.
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