West of the Quator

by Cheryl Bartlam DuBois

  “Who said money doesn’t grow on trees,” thought Rob.

  As far as he was concerned, business got right down to the bare essentials of things. All making money entailed was planting the right seeds under the right conditions, with other people’s money whenever possible, watching the weather forecast to insure the proper growth period and conditions, and reaping the harvest when the crops, or stocks, were right for the picking.

  Since Rob had asked Sydney to marry him, or had it been the other way around – he could no longer remember, he had begun to realize the future importance of a lucrative career seeing that Sydney was quite accustomed to life in the lap of luxury. The lap of a down right filthy rich father who had his eye on Rob’s business acumen. In fact, he already had Rob’s name painted on the door across from his. A room with a view was an understatement since the office, which Sydney had secretly spent the last year decorating for Rob as a wedding present, had a 180 degree panoramic view of the city and Lake Michigan.

  Of course, much of this was still unknown to Rob who actually had his eye on a small brokerage house he had dreams of buying with his best friend, Kyle, another successful trader who had already been on the floor a year when Rob had come to claim his own territory. Sydney couldn’t fathom how Rob worked on his feet all day, without even a window to look out of not to mention a million dollar view – in that horrid animalistic pit called a trading floor.

  Maybe that was part of his recent frustration, thought Rob to himself, as the Chateaubriand was delivered by a waitress wearing a red Chinese ceremonial robe and headdress – followed by the wine steward who approached the table in a blue sari and silently refilled their glasses, then stole away as quietly as she’d come. Maybe, Rob had just been cooped up too long. Maybe he had that syndrome he had read about in Newsweek that executives get from all the positive ions in office buildings. What had they called it? At least if he could put a name on it he could start to understand the problem and attempt to do something about it.

  What more could any man ask for from life, Rob thought to himself. He owned his own penthouse, a new BMW, he was tall, good looking, well educated, and had a respectable savings account for a guy of thirty-two. All of those wonderful attributes it seemed to Rob, should have constituted happiness, and in essence a sense of ‘Paradise’ in his life. But, for some reason something important was missing.

  “What am I doing with my life?” thought Rob. “Have I sold my soul for comfort, status, and success? Do we all just trade our childhood in for responsibility? Are we afraid to escape from the security of nine to five, afraid to venture out into the unknown? Or am I just too ambitious?” Rob questioned. “I don’t think so. I really don’t want much. I actually get up five days a week to make money in order to support Sydney in the style to which she’s accustomed. Is it because of women that men are destined to slave their entire lives away, unhappy, in order to make them, if not happy, at least comfortable? If Eve hadn’t eaten that apple, maybe things would have been different,” he pondered. “Maybe mankind wouldn’t have been evicted from Eden and doomed to live in search of Paradise for the rest of eternity. Or, am I trying to find someone else on which to place the blame? In truth, it is probably for the power that we enslave our lives to money in order to prove oneself and take control of our lives? Or, do we indeed have control – has money become my true master?”

  As much as Rob tried, he would never have remotely suspected that the root of his unhappiness might be his underlying uncertainty of his true love for this woman who sat before him, immaculately dressed in chartreuse Valentino, who was considered by all as a ‘wonderful catch.’ Why, any of his friends would have jumped at the opportunity to trade places with Rob’s ‘wonderful life.’

  But Rob was unable to uncover the source of the empty, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach at the end of every day when he lay his head on his pillow and turned out the light. There was definitely something missing – something at the very core of his being as if he had overlooked something intrinsic to his formula for the perfect life. And of course Sydney, who lay in bed next to him in the dark extolling on and on about the extravagant plans for their upcoming wedding six months hence, would never understand that somewhere deep in his soul he felt this vast emptiness. An emptiness that neither work, nor money, nor Sydney could fill. But with what or how could he find what he needed to fill it? Maybe he was just tired. After all, it had been years since he had really taken a vacation. Maybe he should suggest a trip to Mexico or some tropical island. Maybe there he and Sydney could rediscover what happiness felt like. But no, he didn’t want to get away with Sydney. What he really wanted was to go without her, far, far away. But he knew she would never understand his reasons for needing to be alone.3*

  Somehow, Rob just wanted to slip into that void somewhere between awake and asleep where he could be with himself and his thoughts, or even more importantly his feelings. It had been a long time since he’d felt anything other than that numbness, that total lack of feeling in any part of his body or being. He felt an overwhelming need to find something within himself, about himself that was more intimate, higher – more connected to the Universe. That ‘void,’ that’s where he thought he’d find it. For the first time in his life, the last thing he wanted was to be social, with anyone, including Sydney. It seemed that confusion had set into every area of his life except his work. When Rob was at work he was a machine – a money making machine that wouldn’t stop. But when he was off, he felt moody and confused. He never even seemed to have energy for sex anymore.

  “Something has to be wrong with me,” thought Rob. “There was a time when I always wanted sex. But somehow I don’t feel a thing, no desire, no drive. I don’t even care if Sydney and I ever make love again. I don’t think that’s normal for a man my age. Of course, it still works whenever I want it to, but funny enough… I don’t really care.”

  “Did I tell you Tracy’s giving me a lingerie party next Friday night?” said Sydney interrupting Rob’s stream of self dissection.

  “But, you know my class reunion’s next Friday night. I thought… you’d be going with me.”

  “You are joking dear?” You don’t really expect me to go with you to the ‘Iowa City Corn Huskers’ Reunion’? I mean it’s so, you know, small town,” Sydney lamented with a hint of indignation in her voice. “And besides, you do want me to look like a sex kitten on our wedding night don’t you sweetheart,” she whimpered attempting a purr which sounded slightly more akin to the sound that a wounded cat might utter in its final gasping breaths after being run over by a Peterbilt.

  “I guess that makes me a small town sort of guy then,” said Rob as he stared at the ceiling, wishing desperately that there was something to stare at.

  “Sweatums… you know I didn’t mean it that way. You know you’re different. You’re… cultured, you don’t think like a ‘Corn Husker’ anymore,” Sydney continued in a regretful tone, attempting to dig herself out of her subconscious blunder and correct her unfortunate choice of descriptive adjectives. “I mean, you know the difference between Geoffrey and L.L. Bean. You’ve been away from there long enough to loose all of those unattractive small town traits. And besides, small town is, sort of coming back into vogue,” Sydney reasoned further, working hard to extricate her size ten foot from her mouth. Coquettishly, she pursued another tactic as she rubbed her hand down the length of Rob’s chest and stomach to his ‘Benny,’ as she called it – stroking him in an attempt to move on to a different topic.

  But for some reason, Benny just wasn’t responding tonight – no more than Rob was responding to her advances. When it finally became apparent that her efforts seemed to be failing miserably, Sydney slid her body onto his and began to work herself on top of him, expecting that this would surely muster up an appearance from the ‘Benny Monster,’ as she would teasingly refer to it on a good night. But to no avail, the Benny Monster was just not going to perform for her tonight.

  “Oh God,”
thought Rob, “Maybe I spoke too soon. Now I can’t even get it up. That’s what I get for not appreciating what I have. Look at this beautiful woman sitting on top of me. How could I not want to simply ravage her right this minute. I mean, this is the woman I’m going to marry. Marry! I must be out of my mind. Do I really want to marry a woman who I hardly even know? I mean really know. Of course, I know where she shops, what social events she deems important to attend, which restaurants she has to be seen in that week, and what she feels is chic to read, wear, or which cause to support that month, but, do I really know her? Have we ever discussed how she feels about anything truly important? Have we ever discussed the origins of the Universe? Things like life, love, freedom, happiness… ‘Paradise?’

  And love… what about love,” thought Rob, “It seems to be all about practicality and compatibility… that is why most adults get married isn’t it? At least that’s why all my friends have gotten married. Does anyone truly marry for love anymore? The last time I really remember feeling in love was in eighth grade, when Julie Anne Phelps sat down next to me in homeroom. It was the first time I had ever laid eyes on her and it was the last time, since I never took them off of her again,” reminisced Rob. “Not until the day I drove away to college and she kissed me one long last time in the driveway. She told me then that she loved me but she couldn’t leave her mother, and she knew that I was destined for the big city and great things. I think my heart’s still there in that locket I hung around her neck that first Christmas we went steady. My mother says she still wears it. It still beats there I’m sure of it, since there’s no sound of it anywhere in my chest. I lie here listening, but all I can hear is Sydney, the woman I’m about to marry, repeating one of her discourses on proper etiquette for a wedding shower which her maid of honor had so inappropriately neglected to follow.”

  “Maybe we just leave love behind with happiness,” reasoned Rob, “To keep it company when we grow up… when we leave childhood behind. Can we really love as adults having lost the innocence of childhood? Maybe The Little Prince and Peter Pan had something there. Maybe its better to never grow up. If so, we could keep love and happiness locked somewhere inside us, instead of in a silver trinket around someone else’s neck. The last time I remember not having to think about whether I was happy or not was when I was a child, maybe that’s because you don’t have to think about whether you’re happy or not when you’re happy. Maybe it’s when you think about it and talk about it all the time that you’ve lost it, and you hope that if you talk about it enough, you might find someone who can help you find it again. Maybe adults just aren’t meant to be happy at all,” reasoned Rob, “Maybe when we grow up we’re supposed to take the burden of the world on our shoulders and never be happy again… never find Paradise.”

  “That’s okay,” Rob relented letting her off the hook, “I’ll go alone,” trying to hide the fact that he was actually somewhat relieved, since he hoped to spend some time catching up with Julie Anne. He wanted to see if she was indeed still wearing the locket, even though she had married only two years after he’d left and had already had two kids.

  Lying there in bed that night Rob felt lost. Not lost in the sense of not knowing his way to the therapist’s office across town, who was temporarily filling in for his own therapist who had jumped off the Chrysler Building while visiting New York, two weeks prior. But a feeling somewhat similar to being lost at sea. Where you sit floundering in that trough between the swells at high noon surrounded by nothing but water, with no sign of land or buoys to mark the way. You look in every direction but there’s nothing on the horizon, not even a hint. Nothing to tell you that if you head north you’ll find eternal ‘Happiness,’ east – ‘Failure,’ south – ‘Hell,’ and west – ‘Paradise.’ Suddenly, you realize that the only source of navigation you have is yourself, and that inner voice one can turn to at times like this seems to have suddenly come down with laryngitis.

  1*PLEIADES – A small cluster of stars in the heavens also known as ‘The Seven Sisters.’

  2*UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO—The University which spawned the term ‘Chicago School’ – the monetarist, conservative approach to economic policy.

  3*ALONE – (adj.) With only ones own company. Apart from anything or anyone else; singly.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Guardian Angel

  “I am here and I shall not leave you until

  you have fulfilled your reason for being.”

  Archangel Gabriel

  If only Rob could tune in and listen. But like most, he hadn’t even learned how to turn on the radio yet, let alone tune into the right frequency, even though I’ve tried my best to guide him along this long, perilous journey called life.

  Most humans are usually quite oblivious to it but everyone has a Spirit Guide1* whom they hired before embarking on their journey in this human incarnation. On a day to day basis, being one’s Spirit Guide is a thankless job. Even if we are the ones that keep guys like Rob from stepping off the curb in front of an oncoming truck, if it’s not their time, while their mind is on other more important things than walking and staying out of the way of moving objects. But our real purpose is to attempt to make their subconscious minds and hopefully their conscious minds aware that we’re always here for a little objectivity on what is referred to by humans as life, even if they are far from truly living. Our job is to somehow assist them to tune in to the needed information to fulfill their reason for becoming human in the first place. This of course, doesn’t mean that we don’t love what we do. In fact, it’s a learning process for us here on ‘The Other Side’ as well, not to mention good entertainment, but most of all, we benefit from the experience in some ways more than souls like Rob.

  To back up a little, maybe this story of one man’s search for Paradise would be best told if I were to introduce myself and provide my qualifications for the aforementioned job. I, am Rob’s Spirit Guide. On ‘The Other Side’ as well as in my last life as a merchant sailor in the West Indies, my name was and is, Ian. Like most humans, I have incarnated many times before, but finally graduated from the rat race when I, in my last life, truly discovered Paradise. So, for his last time around, I was chosen as Rob’s guide on his sail through life in search of himself, and of that elusive destination.

  With Rob, however I’m still working on the elementary arts, such as the art of tuning-in, in order to understand the bigger picture which is often quite hard to get the hang of for most participants of the human race. It can somewhat be compared to the usefulness of a sailor’s most basic means of electronic navigation – the RDF.2*

  Of course, another seldom used means of acquiring the bigger picture is by simply climbing the mast to get a better view and broader perspective of where you are. Sometimes life is just simply too close to see it clearly. From up here it all makes perfect sense, but unfortunately most don’t ever achieve that vantage point of perspective until it’s all over and time to go home.

  That night while Rob was laying in bed starring at the ceiling and listening to the hypnotic, whining cadence of Sydney’s voice, he realized that his life had grown cliché – a caricature of what human existence had become – society’s idea of the perfect life with all the trimmings of success, albeit happiness. He had been in compliance with the needs of society, but society hadn’t complied with his.

  Somehow that night, I managed to convince him that his only hope for happiness was to go in search of Paradise.3** It would be a search not unlike Monty Python’s quest for the ‘Holy Grail’ – an eternal quest for that elusive, amorphous treasure which Rob would hopefully devote the rest of his life to finding. In his heart he knew it was out there, somewhere. Maybe it was hiding with love and happiness – maybe it was indeed with his childhood.

  What Webster neglected to qualify when defining ‘Paradise’ was exactly where that ‘place’ or ‘condition’ is and how to find it. Webster had somehow overlooked the true location of Paradise as had Rob, and just about every other human o
n the planet obsessed with everyday life and its obscured definition of true ‘achievement.’ Like most of mankind, Rob mistakenly assumed that Paradise was to be found in some sort of tropical climate. So, at his high school reunion, when his old buddy and classmate, Joey Mitchell, invited him to the Caribbean for Antigua Race Week, Rob didn’t hesitate for a moment to accept an invitation to Paradise.

  Rob arrived at the reunion in the ballroom of the downtown Iowa City Ramada Inn, which had nostalgically been decorated in the same theme as their senior prom with the props from their production of South Pacific. It was a cornucopia of tacky, dusty crepe and construction paper palm trees and fake tissue paper hibiscus,’ complete with hundreds of sheets of sandpaper taped together to create the semblance of white glistening sand beach – the shop teacher’s contribution to the prom fifteen years prior. The class nerd, Ronnie, had actually salvaged all the party decor and stored it away in the attic of his parents store for all those years, to the dismay of the local fire chief, and had dug it out for this special occasion. Rob took it as a sign when Joey invited him to join him on his boat on a tropical island. He was so excited about the prospect of getting away, he snuck out of the party to book his ticket from his room, attempting to kill time while he awaited Julie Anne’s arrival.

  It was his maternal Grandmother, Lilly, who had inspired his intrigue for travel, even though he hadn’t yet left the country. Rob held a great fondness for Lilly, unlike any he felt for other family members, including his own mother whom he loved dearly. It seemed that over the years, Lilly had dominated his portrait of his family mythology since he’d spent much of his childhood in the kitchen of her little two bedroom house next door to his own. He remembered her fresh baked bread and her laughter and how she would tell him of the great secrets she had hidden in her steamer trunk, which had come with her from her homeland. The trunk had stayed under lock and key in Lilly’s bedroom, and had always served as mysterious intrigue to Rob and his cousin, Marie. Their curiosity was forever peaked and together they had begged daily – pleading with Lilly to show them its contents, since Rob imagined it to contain shrunken heads from Africa, and Marie some secret Italian recipe for a love potion. He had never learned what secrets lay hidden in that old trunk which had come five thousand miles with that young girl of seventeen, since Lilly had passed away while Rob was away at school in Chicago and her househad been emptied and torn down before it had fallen down on its own. But, the memory of that trunk had stayed with him and had always heightened his desire to travel, and now he had finally found his opportunity.