The first time I laid eyes on Carlos, he was licking a bit of carpet, high on mushrooms. Carlos was the sort of guy you might catch stealing twenty dollars out of your purse and have no qualms about forgiving immediately. He was so effortlessly charming that he made whomever he was with feel like they’d arrived just in time to save him from boredom. Even when you saw him make someone else feel this way, you didn’t take it personally; it was like you shared a secret with him, like he was only performing for everyone else and not you.
I met Carlos one year at the Woodford Folk Festival, which, if you’re over forty, is a week-long celebration of culture and music, but if you’re twenty, like we were at the time, it is just a party. My cousin and his friends would go to the festival every year, and this year I’d decided to join them. I had actually been a few times with my mum, because she had performed there as a musician, but, up until this particular year, my time there had been fairly subdued. I’d been drunk and stoned, sure, but always with the looming deadline of having to return to the tent I shared with my mum and pretend to be sober. The trick, by the way, to appearing sober in front of a parent is to be the same petulant self you are when you’re not drunk or high. For some reason, teenagers trying to cover up the fact that they’re drunk or high seem to think that the best plan of attack is to be extra chatty, engaging and bright with their parents, which, for my mum, would immediately arouse suspicion.
This particular year, though, I camped with my cousin at his friends’ campsite, which had been set up by one of those men who know how things go together and who at some point in their lives will drive around Australia in their customised truck. He had brought carpet and couches and set up beams of wood that connected together perfectly to form a semipermanent structure that was so comfortable, barely anyone left the campsite to actually enjoy the festival.
I went into the grounds a couple of times, but regularly found myself annoyed at the groups of hippies who roamed in big packs, sometimes while on stilts or hula-hooping completely naked, and who would stare at me accusatorially as I tried to move past them. The thing about hippies is that they’re just regular people who have the same selfish desires as the rest of us, but never engage in an actual discussion long enough to be called out on it. It’s all peace, love and sharing until they’re cutting in front of you in the line for food – and if you say anything, you need to ‘relax’.
It wasn’t just the hippies. The whole thing was a bit of a pain in the neck, to be honest. I’d have to queue to get inside the festival, queue to get something to eat, and figure out which artist I wanted to watch. And after all that, I’d constantly find myself at the wrong tent. There I’d be, holding a plate of overpriced lentil curry, trying to decide whose armpit was the least gross to be under, and having to watch an hour and a half of a women’s choir or, worse, a slam poetry semi-final. The thing about slam poetry is that it’s not very good. It seems like anything can be slam poetry if people just talkreallyfast and then SLOOOOW it right down. I don’t even know how I feel about poetry in general; I think I’m too impatient for it. The only kind I’ve ever enjoyed is when a friend is drunk-texting me and keeps accidentally hitting the return key.
Where are you
I need
Help
Might get kebab first
Then come
I have always thought music festivals were so hot and awful, and I could never understand the endless amounts of energy people had around me. My heart would sink every time someone suggested another tent, another band, another bar. After six drinks (which included hours of lining up for said drinks, then needing to piss almost immediately), my entire body would be aching with fatigue and all I’d want to do was get something fried I could eat off a stick and find somewhere to lie down.
So back to the campsite I would go.
I at least vaguely knew the thirty or so people staying at the campsite, but Carlos was new. He seemed immediately popular, which made the light he shone on me every now and then feel like even more of a blessing.
On the first day, Carlos made mushroom brownies and invited neighbouring camps over to party with us. He was great at introductions and knew just who would get along best.
On the second day, one of his new friends brought around some ‘really good acid’, and I watched on as everyone let this man in a corset drop it into their water bottles. Carlos asked me if I wanted to try it and I flat-out rejected the idea – it seemed like one of the drugs on the ‘too far’ list, one that would make you mental.
It didn’t take long, however, for persuasive Carlos to convince me to try the acid. I was terrified of what would happen, certain I would die. Instead, about half an hour later, I was overcome with the most intense euphoria, the kind I hadn’t experienced since being a child, which is to say I was just living in the moment, which is where all the good feelings are apparently.
I don’t want to go on some Kerouacian rant about how I felt, but let’s just say that day I finally understood the appeal of music festivals. Every conversation I had was the most interesting; every idea I had was a genius one (and everyone around me seemed to agree); every mud puddle was worth looking at, sitting in, playing with. I couldn’t care less about what anyone thought of me then or in the future. And the whole campsite was feeling the same way.
That is one thing about getting older that makes me sad. When you’re younger, you share such close, chemically induced moments with people you barely know, and there’s next to no possibility of that happening to me now. In my day-to-day life, there’s a very slim chance I’ll end up in peals of laughter with a girl wearing fairy wings. Those people probably don’t even exist anymore. It’s not that the girl with fairy wings is dead, but she probably lives in Geelong with two kids and a husband who’s a cop.
It’s funny, because, now I’ve done most drugs, I find it hard to empathise with someone who’s scared of them. In those moments, I should remember that I am now Carlos and the scared person is me before my first acid trip.
There was a time once, not too long ago, when I found myself hanging out with a famous Australian comedian in his late forties. I asked him if he’d like to join me and another comedian as we smoked a joint. He told me that he has never touched the stuff, and that he knew a guy from his hometown who had smoked weed and then killed himself.
I didn’t say it, but I remember thinking that the guy was probably going to kill himself anyway. The weed he was smoking had probably been one of the few things that helped him get through the day.
What was funny was that the forty-something-year-old comedian kept insisting that he would try it, definitely, at some point, ‘but not tonight because I have an early flight in the morning’. He then proceeded to drink fourteen vodka sodas and pass out while slumped against the wall standing up.
It reminded me of that time at Woodford Folk Festival, where I’d first done acid, when a brother of my friend’s friend turned up to the campsite with a carton of Jack Daniels and his own camping chair, and just sat and watched us all in turns melting towards each other and then rolling away, while continually commenting that we were ‘random’. If someone said something outrageous, he’d exclaim that it was ‘awkward’, which it wasn’t — at least not for us.
Later in the night, at the back of an outdoor amphitheatre in the festival, I watched the trees breathing in and out, and discovered a newfound willingness to forgive anyone who had ever caused me pain. As I was taking in all the tiny acts of humanity happening around me, my friend’s friend’s brother’s face popped up into view and he breathed, ‘I’m so fucking wasted.’ The hot stench of bourbon stung my eyes. It felt like an ungodly act.
The morning after, I opened my eyes and stared at the tent’s ceiling while listening to Carlos have a spirited conversation with someone about the ethics of euthanasia. From the smell of bacon and eggs, I could tell things were back to normal, at least until the afternoon.
We passed the week like this, all of us dancing, laughing, repeating our inside jokes, until one morning towards the end of the festival, Carlos had disappeared. It was a morning like all the others, until someone noticed his tent had been packed up so neatly, there wasn’t a trace that he’d ever been there. Well, there was probably some of his DNA on one of the couches – he had seduced at least four of the girls we were camping with, including one who had a boyfriend who was not a fan of Carlos.
As people slowly came out of their tents, the others would ask them if they knew where Carlos was or why he’d left. But no one did.
Some people were upset that Carlos had left without a goodbye, but I stood by him for the way he left. Sometimes the nicest thing you can do is leave without saying goodbye, particularly in a party setting. Some people are obsessed with doing the goodbyes and, frankly, it’s no good for anyone. Why even remind other people who are still invested in the party that leaving is an option? You’ll be at the pinnacle of a good story when someone comes over to explain why they have to leave: ‘Well, I’m off, guys, I’ve got tennis in the morning.’ Yes, we know, we heard your little song and dance to three other groups of people before you reached us.
Eventually, the conversation at the campsite turned to who might know where he’d gone, and that turned into a discussion of who knew him best, and after some time it became apparent that no one had known Carlos at all. It turned out that every person at the campsite had only met him at the start of the week and assumed he was a friend of someone else.
I still think it’s one of the funniest things anyone has ever done. He must have just been walking by on the first day, seen the incredible set-up, and realised that the campsite had everything it needed except him.
In recent years, the thought of trying to contact Carlos online has occasionally crossed my mind. But what would be the point? We’d had a good time, and now I don’t ever have to see him in a suit or read the questionable things he might share on Facebook. He’ll remain forever alive in my mind the way he wanted to be seen.
So thank you to Carlos for teaching me that sometimes not saying goodbye is the perfect way to leave.