I Took a Pill in Ibiza

I Took a Pill in Ibiza

I never knew it was a song until just recently, but I took a pill in Ibiza, a small, white bitter pill-- and always wondered about that moment.  Why did I do that?  

 I was on a short vacation from school, junior year abroad in France, and decided to travel by myself. I was also becoming the writer that I would eventually become, and when I was alone, thoughts and lines spun through my mind like the scores on a player piano, uninterrupted by chatter. I loved trying to catch words that danced like fireflies in the East Coast summers. Maybe I also wanted to be invisible. No past.

  In Barcelona, I walked down the Ramblas, the huge boulevard with flower stalls, fruit stands, street performers, and staid tourists in groups holding itineraries. As a 20 year-old woman alone in a short dress—it was easily 80 degrees outside-- I was an easy target anywhere in the world-- and held my arms out as if to say, “Don’t come near me!” The catcalls from men and the crush of people overwhelmed me. Frantically trying to get away, I took a sharp turn into a small alleyway and ended up on a street of sex workers, half naked women leaning out of windows, lipstick smeared over their lips, cascading dark hair, luring men up to their rooms, the men all dressed up after Sunday confession. The streets smelled of sweat mixed with heavy cologne. I kept my head down and walked as fast as I could down the narrow street, men calling up to the windows and nowhere for me to disappear. I looked left and right and realized I’d have to walk a long way to get off the street and back to the Ramblas with its crush of people. I felt like a trapped animal. A few women laughed raucously at me and pointed and said things in Spanish I didn’t understand.

 I felt so out of place with my middle-class upbringing, formal mother—and her famous line, “Keep your legs together and your panties on,” and my intellectual Jewish doctor father. I also wanted to break free of my past. What did I really know of these women? A different life but still sisters on a different and perhaps more difficult journey. Many of them might have been banished from their Catholic families. Some might have had small children to raise.  They each had a story that I would never know.  I made it back to my hotel and decided to leave that night, for Ibiza, a stop on the “trail of cool.” I wanted to escape the city.

When I arrived, all the pensiones were full, one after the other, parades of young people, including me, trying to snag a bed; even the one at the very tippy top of the island was full. But I managed to get a bed at the last minute. We were so high up I almost felt I could touch the stars. I threw my backpack on the bed and went to explore. I swam that day at a beach right near the port and had lunch on a huge wooden table, watching boats come and go. The air was clean and the sea a million shades of blue and green. This was a hippie paradise, flooded with young people, some tripping on acid. The steep, cobblestoned street up to the very top of the hill was precarious to walk on, especially with my wooden Dr. Scholl sandals, good for my arches but noisy with each step. I thought about how hard it might be to walk up in the dark, but put that thought away.  That evening, after a nap and a shower, I carefully walked down and down and down the sheer street into a club, one of many on the island.  I got a glass of wine and sat down. A young man with thick blonde hair and mischievous blue eyes came and sat next to me, sidling a bit too close. I remember we were next to a window and the sun had just set. The island had few lights, so the streets were pitch dark. Stars gilded the sky and I saw one shooting and smiled. The man next to me talked a little about himself and then said, “Here take this. You’ll feel wonderful!” Everything I had been brought up with (be wary of strangers, be careful of drugs, always know what you’re taking) suddenly vanished out the window. “Why not,” I thought, perhaps on a deeper level feeling that my life needed to change. The stranger, and that is really all he was to me, got me some water and I popped the pill. I remember it was bitter. I remember that I never asked what it was but suddenly I felt in danger as he was moving closer and closer to me, I know hoping for sex. I didn’t want to have sex with him. I knew nothing about him.

The bar felt suffocating, filled with smoke and what seemed like mindless chatter. Outside it was beautiful. I grabbed my sweater off the seat and walked out the door without saying anything to the man. He didn’t run after me and for that I was grateful. Though the day had been warm, swimming-weather warm, the night was chilly. My one thin sweater did nothing to protect me from the cold, and I shivered.

I began the ascent up to the top of the island, trying to gaze at the stars, as if they could guide me and save me. As I began to walk, my legs felt wobbly, my breathing labored.  I was scared I might collapse on the cobblestones, collapse in the cold. Tears pooled in my eyes. What had I done? What was in this pill. Even my hands felt so weak I wouldn’t be able to grasp a pen. Step by step I forced myself to continue, hoping that someone might be walking up the hill, too, that I might say, “I’m having a hard time. I might need some help.” But there was no one. I kept looking and looking higher up, to see if I could see the end of the cobblestone trail; it went on forever and ever and finally I saw the pensione. The owner, an older woman in a black dress, was nowhere to be found. No one was anywhere to be found. Would I be found if something happened? All I wanted to do was lie down, like Sleeping Beauty, waiting for a kiss to wake me up. Finally, I fished out my key from my messy purse, went through the front door and felt like a ghost surrounded by foggy air. I found my room--my backpack, my home on my back--still there. It was 11 p.m. by the flashing red light of the clock radio. Tomorrow I’d swim again, I thought, as my eyes closed into the longest sleep I’ve ever had.

When I woke up the clock said 6 a.m. Saliva coated my chin. I wiped it off with a Kleenex. My mouth was dry, Surprised that I didn’t sleep longer, I got up and walked out the door, breathing in the sea air and gazing at the light house, now bathed in white light. The owner, sitting in a chair guarding the door, was dressed in her usual long, black dress, and asked me, “What time are you checking out?” I must have looked puzzled because she said, “Today you check out.” I suddenly realized that I had slept almost 17 hrs. and missed a whole day at Ibiza. 

“I’ll be out by 11 a.m.” I said, still a bit groggy. I went back to the room, took a shower then looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes looked dried out, my skin pasty but I was alive and well. I got dressed, grabbed my backpack, paid the owner and walked down the cobblestones, putting one foot carefully ahead of the next. Soon I’d have coffee and breakfast. After that I’d catch the boat back to Barcelona and then the train back to France. I had my whole life ahead of me.

Fifty-two years after I popped that pill—I wonder what might have happened if the pill had been stronger, or laced with something dangerous or if I had stopped breathing with no one to check on me? I think of all those people, often young people, who make one mistake—and don’t make it through the night. I also think of the helpers and the good fortune that lifts the lucky ones out of those drug-induced comas so that they might see the light, like the lighthouse does at the top of the island, these souls brought safely to shore.