“We need something bolder,” he says, sighing into the phone. “Also we can’t afford Pride.”
“Have you been back to the putt-putt course?”
“Laham and I go every day.”
• • •
IN THE MORNING I watch Judge Judy and SportsCenter. There are a few screeching cartoons on, ones without purpose or humor, proof that children’s minds are weakening, that we’re a culture in decline. I wonder what a trip would be like, a long Nietzschean hike through the Sierras or just a few days chasing girls in San Diego. I should just touch a tree. I bet touching a tree would be an immense help.
I’ve read about ecopsychology—a theory that says our problems are due to our disconnection from the natural world. There may be something to it, though it depends on what you mean by natural. I wouldn’t trade my city life for dodging lions on the savannah. And it’s also got the problem of purity. All ideas with purity at their root are monstrous and must be distrusted. The World Trade Center would still be standing if it weren’t for an obsession with purity. Yet I’d like a little purity!
I consider calling Rachel again. I even consider calling Raj. Instead, I get in my car and head south. I think I might tool down Highway 1 and sit on the beach, but I cruise by the turnoff to Pacifica. I pass Daly City and the necropolis of Colma, waiting for the Santa Cruz Mountains to rear up in the west before I admit that, wanted or not, I’m going to work.
When I open the back door I find Laham slumped in his Aeron, scooping trail mix out of large burlap bag and eating it from his hand. He’s watching an Internet program called Headline Gnus. As I approach, his eyes don’t move from the computer screen. He looks like he might have spent the weekend here. His clothes—though polyester to his shoes—are wrinkled and stained.
“You okay?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer, but he offers me the bag of trail mix.
“Did I ever tell you about my trip to Bali?” I say. I walk around the room and turn on all the lights. The place needs to be swept, maybe mopped. On the walls, the whiteboards are covered in formulas. One is labeled SYNTHESIS OF JOY?
“I was twenty-two years old,” I say. “Before I met my ex-wife.”
“You are divorced?” He finally looks at me, scandalized.
“Marriage is hard. You’ll see when you get married.”
He squints in the bright lights. “I am married now.”
I look down at his hand, which is bare. “What do you mean by married?”
“I am married three years.”
“Like a long-distance thing? She lives in Jakarta?”
“Redwood City.”
“Why haven’t I met her?”
In English, his gesture would mean, why would you have met her?
“Ah, look who’s here,” Livorno says, coming into the back room. He scoops up his own handful of trail mix and scrutinizes it, eating only the nuts.
“Did you know Laham was married?”
“Aila is a lovely woman.”
“She speaks English very, very good,” Laham says.
“In Laham’s culture,” Livorno explains, “marriage is a social contract, an agreement between families.”
“It was an arranged marriage?”
Laham nods, eating. His attention is being pulled back to the computer screen.
“Married life going well?” I ask.
“If you were a good scientist like me,” Livorno says, “or obsessed with money like Laham”—Laham does not object to this characterization—“you’d have gotten the whole business over with and never looked back. You’d file ‘marriage’ away in the accomplishments bin and return to life’s real business.”
“Laham’s not obsessed with money.”
“Asians love money. Right, Laham?”
“You have many children,” Laham says, making the international sign for balancing. “You need much money.”
“Because they all work,” Livorno says. “Pooling their resources.”
“You have children, too?” I ask, feeling a flash of panic. Has Laham bested me? Did he skip my life, like a grade?
“No children,” Laham says. “Aila must finish college.”
“Neill,” Livorno says. “A romantic invests his life into his romance. That’s where the word comes from. For you love is the only thing.”
“Me? How did I get pulled into this?”
“I’ve been reviewing the transcripts with Dr. Bassett,” Livorno says. “What happened to this young lady you were keeping up with?”
Keeping up? “We’ve decided to be friends.”
“You should marry her.”
“She’s twenty.”
“Don’t be so conventional. A hundred years ago she’d be an old maid.”
“This isn’t a hundred years ago.”
“What are her strengths?”
“She has lots of strengths, but we’ve decided to be friends.”
“Marriage is good for men,” Laham says. He hooks a finger under the collar of his white T-shirt, freeing a silver necklace with a ring on it. The boy wonder is lecturing me! Me!
“Aila was sixteen when they married,” Livorno says. “Isn’t that amazing?”
They both burst into the laughter of madmen.
Livorno shakes his head free of hilarity. “I bought a tiramisu,” he announces, returning to the front.
“But, Laham,” I ask, “is it working? Are you happy?”
He titters, shaking his head, eyes wide and averted. I don’t think he’s saying no. I think he’s saying he won’t engage such an indecent question.
So I go into my office and sit down at my desk, where I discover that Livorno has been telling the absolute truth. I’m not needed. Dr. Bassett will not respond.
frnd1: i went camping
frnd1: do you remember us going camping?
frnd1: do you remember us going to showbiz?
frnd1: do you remember us going to church?
Livorno is standing in my door.
“Go home, Neill,” he says.
• • •
BACK IN THE SUBARU, though, I know home is the last place I should go. I call Jenn.
“You want to have lunch?” I ask.
“Uh.” She’s in the middle of something. “Where?”
“I would offer my place, but it’s a long drive for you.”
“Your place?” She’s all ears now. “Oh, you mean lunch.” She nearly takes a bite out of the word.
We agree to meet at her place. When I let myself in, I find her sitting at her kitchen table in a satiny green dress, her legs spread, not like a porn star but like a boy, a baseball player. She’s chewing gum.
“I don’t know what’s come over me,” she says.
Me either. I’m salivating. And when I put my hand on the back of her neck she unfolds like a book, pressed open by the flat palm of her desire. She looks up at me, as if begging for her life.
I grab her under the arm and haul her toward the bed. She stumbles like a drunk. I pull my shoes free and drop my pants as she works out of her underwear. She unbuttons my shirt while I’m already on top of her. She pinches my nipples with her nails.
“Don’t come inside me,” she says, wrapping her legs around me.
“You’re so wet,” I say.
“Your little phone call turned me on,” she says. “You couldn’t wait, huh?”
“I was so hungry.”
“Yes. Harder. And faster. And hold it.”
“You want to do it porn style?” I ask.
She’s breathing heavy. Her regular face is struggling inside her ecstatic face, like a person underwater. “I’m going to come. I’m g
oing to come.”
I pull out and straddle her chest, and I see that lostness, that same expression from the girls online. I think, who is this? I don’t know her at all.
“Jesus Christ,” she says, hiccuping, laughing. She rolls over, feeling blindly for the bedside tissue box.
“Hold still,” I say. I pull a tissue and dab her face with care, the way you look after a child’s scraped knee. I’m sorry, I think. I’m sorry my heart flinched. I’m sorry we’re strangers.
She mentions that the humming class I attended—it sounds like humming—was really successful. “You’ve definitely got the stroke down.”
“The stroke? Thanks.”
“The way you applied your index finger to my clit.” She pushes up to her elbows to study me. “I’m supposed to say ‘clit,’ right?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know, the VAM Method. I’ve been reading up on Pure Encounters.” She says this sweetly, as if it’s a gift she’s giving me.
“They teach you how to finger your girlfriend at Pure Encounters?”
“I didn’t know it was limited to your girlfriend.”
“What’s pure about that?”
“Don’t get upset at me.” She puts her hand on her heart. “I’m not a member.”
“Neither am I,” I say. What the hell? The VAM Method?
“You don’t know what a ClickIn is.”
“I think it’s like group therapy.”
“How about unifying?”
“No idea.”
“Wow.” She falls back on the bed with a thump, blowing out a deep breath. “You really have no idea. I’m kind of afraid to admit this, but I’m having this really strong feeling right now. Relief—I feel relief.” She nods, amazed at herself. “You don’t think this means I’m, like, falling for you?”
I remain exquisitely still. Anytime the eagle of another’s heart soars, whatever you are—mouse, toad, snake—don’t move. From such great heights, it might not see you.
16
THE BROCHURE FOR PURE ENCOUNTERS, which I take from Jenn’s house, features only one couple—an older woman and a slightly younger man holding hands and striding down the beach, feet imprinted with sand. The other four pictures are of people alone, looking contemplative or laughing with revelation. The point seems to be that Pure Encounters start with no encounter, and that even single people should come to study “mindful touch” to achieve a “deeper limbic click” in their lives and relationships. This is all old information for me, but there’s also an undetailed, enthusiastic description of a core spiritual practice—the VAM Method. They don’t describe the process, but assume the pamphlet-reader has heard all about it. “Despite appearances, the VAM Method is not intercourse, it’s an inner course.” There’s a bit more jargon tossed around: “unifying,” “click,” “reverse love.” But I can’t find any sense of what these classes are like, and what happens to women or girls—or, let’s face it, Rachel—when she goes to this. From Jenn’s description it sounds like a cross between a Lamaze class and an orgy. Men and women team up as “intimates” for a session, and the man fingers the woman for an hour or more under the supervision of a sexpert. I can’t imagine what makes these encounters pure. They don’t even sound psychologically stable.
“You finally decided to buy a condo,” Raj says on the phone. “They’re moving fast.”
“Actually, I’m calling about VAMing.”
“I know. I was just kidding. Look, I can’t explain any of this stuff over the phone without it sounding completely crazy. So why don’t you come up here this weekend, for the men’s retreat. You can learn all about it then.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I say. “But I’m not going to be an intimate or whatever with a man.”
“You’ve been doing your homework—great! But we won’t be doing the VAM Method. VAMing is strictly man on woman. This is totally, one hundred percent hetero. It’s a men’s retreat. Fire in the belly—all that. It’s about being stronger and more self-confident and more assertive. And, look, it normally costs twelve hundred dollars, but let me make you an offer. Why don’t you come for half price?”
There’s no way I’m going to a retreat. I don’t even like the word, with its sad air of military reversal, of turning tail. Retreat!
Then again, how else will I find out what they’re about? And can I really call myself a true San Franciscan if I’ve never gone on a retreat? So I head off to Marin, to the Dry Earth Ashram. It’s actually outside Fairfax, and I stop on my way to see if Rachel is at work. She’s not. I order a coffee and sit in the window contemplating the possibility that she’s off getting “stroked” by strangers. Excuse me—getting her clit stroked. I thought the upfront language was just some weirdness on the part of Jenn, but she told me that the Pure Encounters group prefers “clit,” “pussy,” and “cock”—they find the words more “powered up.”
I’ll try again: perhaps at this moment Rachel is off getting her clit and/or pussy stroked by strangers. I feel the coffee hot and awful in my stomach. I sit very still—I’m an experienced practitioner of the art of falling apart on the inside while appearing catatonic. It’s one of my proudest adult skills. I take another sip of coffee, consider brown sugar. I will not contemplate ways to work “cock” into the image, though happily Jenn tells me that cocks don’t get much attention during the VAM Method. Actually, any attention. Does this make me feel better? A better question: who am I to feel better or worse? I’m barely an ex-boyfriend. I’m not even her “friend.”
I dump my cup in the trash and walk to the Subaru. I head west, out of town and into the dry country, where the hills are as bare and worn as an old lion pelt. I can still be concerned about Rachel, of course—something beyond jealousy. In fact, feeling protective of her was (at least in part) what made me call it off. If Jenn wants to do that, fine. Jenn’s a professional in her thirties. Rachel—younger and a deeply betrayed person—is a more combustible mix.
To the north the trees run out. It’s a good half-mile of barren hills before I hit the turnoff to the ashram, a dirt path that leads to a rowdy wooden bridge lined with Zen-like sayings. A yield sign that reads YIELD TO THE PRESENT. That kind of thing. At the cedar guardhouse, which looks like a sauna with a window, an imposing bald-headed monk asks for my confirmation printout. He might have been a bouncer in a previous life. I hand it over and he nods, walking out to a catapult-like structure that is the vehicle gate, where he leans on a stone counterbalance to raise the long wooden arm.
The cars in the parking lot suggest a crowd from many walks of life. Sporty-model Beemers, beat-up Hondas. There’s also an old Porsche, a beauty, which must be Raj’s. I park and follow a steep wooden staircase up to the ashram, which is a large, homey cabin encircled by a high stucco wall. As I walk along the porch to the glassed-in board with the weekend’s events posted Baptist-church style—“Old Energy, Old Hurts,” “Unifying,” and “Pure Encounters”—I remind myself that I’m here as a researcher, a detective, but I can’t avoid a flash of terror from the seclusion, the hopeless earnestness of any weekend gathering of adults.
Raj comes out of a set of French doors, dressed in slacks and an Oxford but barefoot.
“I just got here,” he explains. He has me take off my shoes and shows me down a long wooden hall to my room, a cell bare enough to please Saint Bernard. The ceiling is low, the walls in arm’s span of each other. The mattress is rolled and tied in one corner. It seems to have been stuffed with gumballs. But the astringent smell of eucalyptus blowing in from the window makes everything feel fresh and healthy.
“Is that your Porsche?” I ask.
He nods. “It’s a 1972,” he says. “Awesome? I’ll have to detail its awesomeness sometime later—we can’t really do unstructured talk right now. But about the
weekend, I just wanted to say that I think this can be a transformative event. I love it. I come up here for a total recharge. But it may not be your style, and that’s cool. Participate when you want, don’t participate when you don’t want. The ClickIn might seem a little strange your first time.” He laughs, his clean even teeth bright in his reddish face. His background is truly sun-averse, Irish or northern German. “Maybe a little confrontational?”
“I just want to confirm that I won’t have to touch or stroke anyone.”
“There will be no touching or stroking,” he says, punching me in the shoulder. “We’re going to be diving down deep. This is about authentic masculinity.”
Oh, boy.
• • •
WHAT HAPPENED TO US American men? There we were, joyfully plundering the world like openhanded pirates, and now that we have it all we sit in half-lotus on the edge of paradise, the most beautiful county in the most beautiful state in the luckiest country under the sun, to meditate on loss and resentment.
We’re breathing in, we’re breathing out. We’re keeping our minds loose, simply observing thoughts as they come up. The men in the room with me—ten in all—have degrees from good schools, do interesting work, earn their way in the world. Yet each one of them is trailed by the cymbal crash of bafflement. It shows in their bright, uncomprehending eyes, and in their striving. They struggle to breathe at the right pace with the right ujjayi breath—a wheezing effect you get by constricting your windpipe. The man next to me, an intellectual property lawyer, sounds like Darth Vader in a steam room.
Our meditation leader is a short, pasty-faced man named Larry. He owns a popular pizzeria in Berkeley. (I get a burble in my stomach thinking about it; they haven’t fed us a thing.) He’s talking about Old Energy, Old Hurts: “Focus on one pain you’ve caused in your relationships. Maybe it’s infidelity or just a mean insult. Maybe it’s negative intentions. Now breathe in and on the exhale let go of that roadblock. Let it go. Good. Now let’s think about pain you’ve been caused. Focus on one pain. Just one. Breathe in and on the exhale let go of that roadblock. Good. I can feel it, men. I can feel that old energy releasing to the air.”
A Working Theory of Love Page 18
