After an ill-advised experiment with drugs, our sexual pioneer ends up in bed with a famous rugby player’s girlfriend
This month I want to tell you about the time I managed to have sex with the girlfriend of an international sportsman. But first – because the story also involves drugs – I am going to describe the most mind-bending trip I ever had. It took place near the eastern borders of Peru, in a region only accessible by canoe or seaplane. I was out there making a travel show and our local guide had arranged for us to trek into the jungle to meet a shaman, the South American equivalent of a witchdoctor. After a day on the river, we rowed into a small village. There were maybe ten huts there, a few pigs and a miserable, underfed dog. The shaman came to greet us, and after some negotiations he agreed to let us film a rare tribal ceremony.
Everyone else was given dinner to eat, but because I’d be taking part in the proceedings, I had to fast. Our guide was sketchy on the actual details of what lay ahead, but he did explain that I would be swallowing a potion called ayahuasca. Without access to a phone, we had no idea what effect this would have on a tubby westerner like me. When pressed, the guide would only say that he’d never taken it himself, but he’d heard that it “took the user on a voyage to see the face of God…” Well, that didn’t sound so bad. But then he added, “…in a canoe manned by demons.”
That night, we gathered in the largest hut and the shaman poured me a glass of brown liquid, as thick as melted chocolate. The director tried to find out what it consisted of but the shaman was cagey about his secrets. All we knew was that it had to be made from something out there in that dreadful forest. Frog poison? Tree bark? Snake droppings? I gulped it down in one. It tasted disgusting, and I told the guide to say that I felt like puking. After a spot of translation, he announced that this was good. “The shaman says you will vomit many times. And your bowels will be loosened over and over. It is the ayahuasca purging you. After that, you will receive a great insight.”
I was beginning to see why this particular hallucinogen hadn’t caught on in England. The “Madchester” scene wouldn’t have been quite the same if Ian Brown had barfed on the crowd at the Hacienda, or Bez had been famous for his crazy shitting. Sure enough, within twenty minutes I was perched over the makeshift lavatory, alternately having diarrhoea and heaving up my guts. Then the visions began.
From the corner of my eyes, animals began to leap into view. They were vague, ectoplasmic… a bit like the creature in the Predator movies. At first there were just a few of them, but then they came in swarms. A zoo of ghosts was jumping at my face. Sometimes they looked like cats, sometimes like insects. It was horrible. It was also unrelenting. For nearly five hours I cowered as the images attacked me, clawing at me even when I shut my eyes as tight as fists.
Finally, after feeling a great pain in my stomach, I was sick more copiously than before. A dozen bolts of vomit shot out of me in quick succession, each accompanied by a mournful croak. As I lay there on the floor, I remember being fascinated by how red my vomit was. I presumed there must be some stomach lining in there. It wouldn’t have surprised me. I was quite ready to die. At this point the shaman touched my shoulder. He spoke softly, and the guide translated. “He asks you, is it very good?” And there it was at last, my great insight. Given that I was covered in chunks of sick, was shivering like a malaria victim, smelled of shit and had eyes that were popping out on their stalks, I now knew, beyond any doubt, what the stupidest question in the world was.