I had told Lucien I was moving to LA for him. I had told myself it was to research a book on my latest obsessions: Kundalini yoga, Western astrology, and other New Ageisms. I grew up in a household, the ideals of which I followed into my canonical Great Books undergrad, where such flaky, unsubstantiated quackery was derided. What I discovered in singing Sanskrit mantras, breathing into my heart, and charting astral maps was great practical knowledge—cures for my diseases. I’d started to suspect that the derision of New Ageism was misogynistic and imperialist, marginalizing truths we should rather honor. I still wanted to be validated by the people and institutions who raised me, though, so, instead of just enjoying practicing yoga and astrology, I rationalized it into work.
As I prepared to leave Toronto, this was my plan: I would study the New Age movement, its history and contemporary practice, its scientific research, and its language viruses, from its hotbed of Los Angeles. I would go undercover, immersing myself in this world, with the excuse of a popular text I would then write and publish to save myself from the dead-end career I thought I was in.
What I ended up doing instead was an even greater Los Angeles cliché: I fell madly in love with the child of one of my favorite celebrities and started working in TV!
Lucien’s mother was a great dancer, poet, and painter, someone who straddled popularity and esoterica. Her name was spoken often at our family dinner table in Canada because my parents loved to tell my origin story: “You were conceived in an early Frank Gehry house in Point Dume, Malibu. Our next-door neighbor was . . .” Lucien’s mother.
“The night I met your mother at a Venice Beach bar,” my dad would recount, “she got drunk and dropped her only dollar bill in the toilet. She fished it out and paid her tab with it.” This charmed him, as did the fact that: “She was the first woman I met who could eat a whole box of Chips Ahoy! in one sitting.”
My parents moved to Canada when my mom was eight months pregnant. They were twenty-seven and thirty, artists who couldn’t afford to give birth in the US. Lately, Dad likes to tell me they immigrated because of politics.
“We left Los Angeles the year people started shooting up freeways for no apparent reason, and it’s only gotten worse.”
My parents wish I’d “come home,” but Los Angeles is my home. I understood, within a week of being here, why people fight over land, how you can feel so attached to a parcel of earth, you’d risk dumb shit for it.
Lucien’s mother bought the house I was conceived in the year after my parents left. Two years later, Lucien was born. He lived there, in this house that was storied to me, until he was twenty. This is just one of many coincidences we’d later read as serendipity. He’ll say it’s like he doodled me and there I was: his dream girl. I’ll say the same, but it was writing. I wrote him: my destiny. Lucien tore Reality open for me more than any other. He decimated my ego, and I loved it.
Our relationship was more than low-key abusive at times. I went from believing I would have your children, Lucien once texted me, to now absolutely fucking hating you. I should honestly slap you hard across the face.
Part of me loved Lucien’s verbal abuse, the same Oppositional Defiant part who would cheat on him, convinced he was doing the same. (He was.) It’s not exactly the same part of me that’s writing this, well-knowing that Lucien may see it as the ultimate betrayal, which I get. I was cautious with our love, respecting his privacy, slow to commit. I wanted to be sure that I loved him-him, not what he was born into. (People use famous people like they do hot women—objectifying, flattering, worshipping, manipulating, and getting off as they cut us down.) I do. Love him. I’ve consulted every organ of my being, in every state of being, and no matter the mood: I love him. We have this elemental connection: eye to eye, flesh as God. I pray daily that the world delivers all the beauty, knowledge, and happiness possible to that little fucker. One of the smartest and most sensitive creatures I’ve met, and tortured. So cute!
Part of me also recognizes, though, that my love may be Stockholm syndrome. Lucien’s not the only patriarchally diseased boy I’ve been turned on by. (The morning of Trump’s election, I found myself ramming a red jasper dildo up me to channel our new president’s Chi.) I get off fiercely abusing abusive boys. I take my hatred of patriarchy out on them one by one—making them fall in love with me and then crushing them with swift breakups excused because “I’m a feminist and you’re not.” Instead of schooling the boys in all the insidious things they’ve done, I let my resentment quietly build until I can no longer take it, then I’ll shout, “Read a book!” and I’m gone.
Lucien discerned this in me early on and called it out. “Kali dominator.” “Feminist punisher.” “I’m not your punching bag, Fiona,” he said. “I only take it because I love you—”
“I LOVE YOU!” he used to scream, as if saying it was enough. “Let me love you! Let me love you!”
(Every concurrent Justin Bieber hit was a theme to our early relationship. “Sorry.” “What Do You Mean?” “Love Yourself.” “I’ll Show You.” It was charming at first—the songs were always on the radio—but it’s time to grow up.)
Lucien has repeatedly told me the reason he wants to be with me, and only me, is because he’s already done “the fuck everything thing.” Once he told me he used to call it “bag over the head” sex. He could sleep with anyone if he pictured a bag over her head. “But it felt horrible, Fi,” he moaned. “I never want to do that again.”
Lucien’s beheading confession was so fucked-up and banal. Typical LA fuckboy. Hollywood dreamboat predator. Equally fucked-up, though, was how my body, instead of reacting in disgust, was turned on. I took to fantasizing about sitting on Lucien’s face, smothering his golden-boy beauty under my goddess squat, or picturing him with other women: his whimper, our power. I cum so easy and BIG for this kid. For the last year of our on-again off-again, I’ve pretty much masturbated to Lucien exclusively. Even when I was with other people, I thought of him. And mostly, my fantasy was of the reality of our lovemaking. Our connection, beneath all the rubble of gendered conflict, is soulful. We Tantra together. It’s wild! Sacred Energy eXchange. Our lovemaking is so sweet. “I love you I love you I love you,” we repeat. It’s Lucien’s babies I want. If only he’d wise up.
But what about me? When will I wise out of my patterning? Attracted to friction, I don’t go for lovers who are plainly good to me. I like to be pushed around too much, beaten even. The first “great sex” I had left me covered in delicious bruises. An easy explanation is that I was beaten as a child. I remember once being spanked in front of my friends at my sixth birthday party. I’d been loud, bratty, acting out—I can’t remember why. I do remember I was deliberately escalating the conflict with my father though. I knew what was coming, because this was our pattern, but it wasn’t the public spanking that upset me, nor was it the sting from my biggest toenail getting caught on a doorframe and torn off as my tiny body was swung around the room and into his lap—it was that he let that happen. It was his inattention.
Episode 06—“Simone”
ONE OF THE PREMISES OF Western astrology is that we choose our lives, the time and place of our birth, and our parentage. Harmony, a dancer I know, says this is true in African cosmology too. Life is like a game we set ourselves up to play. We select certain givens—the imprint of celestial bodies, in astrology—which direct our play, to a point. When I was in my pre-LA healing phase, I found this idea empowering. Some greater I than “I” could totally discern chose this for me. Canada; parents who never said “I love you”; a tendency to self-sabotage; and a body built for gymnastics: I chose these, pre-destinies. This meant that, beyond my Earthbound personality, the constructed nature of which bored me (Just a Girl, brought to you by Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy), there was . . . a soul? A me-being who was free!
It meant I wasn’t victim to the bullshit of consensus reality. I was, rather, an active player in a game of life I’d decided to play in my own particular wa
y. Maybe I’d even chosen to be brainwashed! Stockholm Syndrome, brought to you by the soul of Fiona Alison Duncan.
This explained why a part of me was entertained by my pain. Why reality felt so ephemeral; The Matrix glitches, déjà vu, and premonitions. It even explained my yogic hallucinations. There was a part of me—a loving-light part, unstuck from ego—who knew what better to do in all situations. My own guardian angel. Supreme Fi.
I saw the study of astrology as a way to self-actualize into this higher-level self. If I understood the patterns of my personality—like how my Leo Moon, my emotional center, is magnetic, playful, and showy, and can make me fall in love with almost anyone, and vice versa; but is also victim to illusion, vanity, and pride—then, maybe, I could evolve into the best Fi I could be.
I tend to join trends as they’re cresting—I told you I was cursed with the initials F.A.D. Astrology’s gone in and out of style before; right now, it’s peaking in popularity, because people are desperate for a meaning system more nourishing than capitalism. I joined this wave of interest two years before my move to LA. In 2013, after being introduced to the art and science by a couple of committed esoterics, my astrological birth chart became my cheat sheet and rule book, a secret guide I consulted constantly. I started studying those of friends and family, cities and celebrities.
Every sign in the zodiac, I learned, has levels of actualization. We can act like victims to our own inclinations, or we can make the most of them. We can be annoyed by others’ oddities, we can manipulate and take advantage of them, or we can nurture, honor, and love them. For example, Virgo is famously exacting—a potentially brittle perfectionist (Beyoncé) and a bitch to be around (Mother Teresa)—because she has access to the divine. This level of perfection is not possible on Earth, though, except through her imagination. She can’t enact it here, which, if she’s unaware of this, will frustrate her, as she works tirelessly to an impossible standard. But Virgo can, in her visionary determination, get us as close to divine beauty and justice as Earth’s gravity will allow. Virgo must learn to love the perfection of imperfection, our here and now. We must encourage her to take it easy. Organizationally shrewd, she clocks linear time so effortlessly, one of Virgo’s duties is to learn to relax and forget about it, like Pisces, her sister sign, who swims in eternal currents. I learned that everyone has every sign, house, and celestial body in their chart, and that each chart is unique. We’re all made up of the same stuff, in different proportion and weight.
Another premise of Western astrology is that we’re living out past-life karma and early childhood trauma until thirty. Our progressed Lunar Return at twenty-seven and our Saturn Return from around twenty-seven and a half to thirty are rites of passage—energetic and material obstacle courses designed to free us of the past and/or make it obvious, so we can integrate nature-nurture-soul-whatever, and move on and into: a Real adult life. Survival habits, ego facades, and buried hurt are supposed to come to the fore during this period. We start to see how we’ve been patterned, what has and hasn’t worked, or what doesn’t anymore. We become more refined, or picky: knowing more clearly what we want and don’t want, and how we might get it or not get it. You can’t account for everything, though, and that’s one thing I’ve learned: how marvelous it is to surrender to the unknown.
My best friend from Canada was Returning twenty months ahead of me. Simone, which is pronounced like see-Moan-ay, and I haven’t lived in the same city since we lived at Hermie Island, but as she’d say, “The island is a state of mind.” We text every day.
As a rascal teen, Simone was a semi-pro rock climber. She lived in a van after high school with a much older boyfriend, also a climber. They drove around North America, scaling rock faces and selling weed. Then Simone went to art school. She studied painting, sculpture, and art history. Her father, who she hadn’t seen in years (he lived off the grid on an island near Honduras), died near the end of her studies. After graduating, Simone, like me, hung around Montreal doing almost nothing. That’s when we got close. We’d bike around that adult playground of a city, so accustomed to laughing we started doing it for its own sake. “What’s funny??” “I don’t know!” We’d laugh until, every once in a while, one of us would pee our shorts. When this phase—as phases do—waned, Simone moved back to her hippie hometown of Guelph, then to Toronto, Ontario. She did all kinds of odd jobs, sometimes imagining them as professions, but none felt right. Her attention was mostly placed on her home garden, boyfriends, friends, and family.
Her Returns started with a house fire. Thanks to a greedy Toronto real estate developer—arson—Simone lost almost everything she owned, including her late father’s diaries, which she’d been saving to read when the loss was less fresh. After the fire, Mo’s Returns took her to Florence, Italy, where she committed to study art restoration, a trade that perfectly marries her accrued talents. Art restoration was a path Simone had considered after undergrad, but wrote off, for the student loans she knew she’d have to take on, and the effort. It’s hard work! But unafraid to scurry up and down the scaffolding to paint church ceilings, Mo’s perfect for it. With an eye for color, an esteem for history, and a freak flag that’s charming to the kinds of weirdos you meet in art and religion, I couldn’t think of a better career for Simone, and she made it happen.
Simone has been experiencing depressions throughout her Returns. Usually the sun of the party, she’s become antisocial bordering on agoraphobic. The last time I went to her apartment, we sat in the dark. Mo claims, “I’ve always been dark. What’s new is that I’m tired too, so there’s no hiding it.” All the deaths Simone experienced young, which she felt but didn’t fully process, she’s now been going through. She says she’s also been mourning the loss of her jubilance. (Jouissance? I text back. yes. my wet . . . fire. Our carefree, girly, fuck-me energy. Mine’s waning too.)
When I met Mo, I was depressed—twenty-one and masking existential terror under vintage Chanel. Prissy, bitchy. Mo was this wild child. Juicy, messy, and mobile, she had layered affairs and an infectious levity—time for others. She was always horny and hungry for salami, baguettes, and brie. Mo could spend a whole day preparing for a dinner party, not because the food was complex. She’d take coffee breaks, reading breaks, nap, sex, and phone breaks. (Both her Sun and Rising are in slow-moving Pisces, and Montreal was so cheap at the time, one could really take her time.) There were inevitably one or two key ingredients Simone would have forgotten to buy. Too busy being charmingly lackadaisical to return to the store, she’d text a few guests to bring the missing ingredients. Often, we ended up with three different hunks of Parmesan. People would come to Mo’s meals and stay for hours, late into the night, and sometimes the next morning, afternoon, and evening. Simone could corral a group of neuro-diverse near-strangers to chill. She called us “wizards.”
I remember once, early in our friendship, Simone and I got coffee and then went grocery shopping together. Later, when we were hanging out in a small group, Simone recounted the tale of our day. It sounded epic! “And then,” she storied, “all of these pears started tumbling and—” She couldn’t stop laughing. It wasn’t the day I had experienced. My day had been cold, stressful, same-old. Listening to Simone tell it (her audience rapt), I suddenly experienced it differently. The sky had been “a twisted shade of purple.” And the story that Vito, the local grocery store owner, had told us had been “hilarious!”
When I moved to New York a couple years later (initially: because I thought Simone would be going too), I got my best friend’s middle name—Palma—tattooed on my left wrist. This, to channel her courage, goofiness, humility, and everyday narrative creativity. This, before I understood the qualities I discerned in others must be in me too.
The night of that failed first and final photo shoot at La Mariposa, a few seasons into my own Saturn Return, Morgan had been late (coming home from school), Max had been drunk, and I had been 100 percent in the Real and unable to stop crying. Alicia, Miffany, and Nadezhda ha
d taken control of the situation, modeling in their bedrooms and on our roof in interchangeable outfits, while I was on the phone for the first time in five years with my first boyfriend.
We had been together for four years—I lost my virginity to him—and, then, when I was Morgan’s current age, I asked for openness. I wanted to feel other people inside of me. He said no then yes then maybe no yes maybe no no no. I hated that (I thought) it was up to him. So I cheated on him with three men. My third affair inspired me out of our relationship. The sex was as good as I knew it should be. We’d fuck all night, and wake up fucking. So fun! My first boyfriend was devastated—“emasculated,” he said. He offered to give me a few grand to get out of town. (We existed in a small community. He didn’t want to have to see me. Insert eyeroll emoji.) I was rationally apologetic, but heart-truly? No. It felt like a worse betrayal to apologize for something that was good for me. Sex—good sex, real sex, not the idea or image of it—offered the first glimmer of what I’d later experience as the Real. Immersive, intuitive, singular-knowing. Bliss! Here-nowness.
But now I understood, on that late January evening in Los Angeles, at twenty-eight years old, how I had been selfish. How at some point, determined to liberate myself from a claustrophobic labyrinth of inner/outer confusion, I had become ruthless. In the name of feminine empowerment, I had enacted an unapologetic slut. I would have done anything to become “myself,” but I already had ideas of what that was, and that was the problem.
Exquisite Mariposa Page 6
