It’s true there is a new smell in the room. Crackly and chemical, like fresh dry cleaning. And it’s also true that I can see how this might benefit Rachel. I just hope that when she thinks of pain done to her, she doesn’t think of me.
We’re asked to visualize some time when a “partner”—that dreaded word—has done something hurtful to us. I take my ujjayi breath, and try to get past my gut feeling that the project feels mean-spirited. I’m not a sentimentalist, I hope—I don’t whitewash my father’s suicide; I don’t whitewash my ex-wife’s behavior in our marriage. But I don’t blame in any cosmic sense. The only person responsible for my problems is me.
I guess I should think of Erin, but instead I find myself thinking about the time before I met her. It was my last year in college, and I was having a fling based not on passion, but on friendliness. My father was recently dead, and this turned me a click in a different direction. Before this time—before his suicide?—I wouldn’t have dreamed of getting entangled with less than a full heart. But I found that this cooler, maybe sadder arrangement suited me well. Sophie—the partner in my love affair—was very pretty, with short red hair and fair skin. She had freckles and drove a little used BMW and listened to lots of girl punk. Her best-kept secret was her unclothed body. It was stunning. Long, pale, gentle, with breasts so perfect I’m not sure, in retrospect, they were real. I made love not to Sophie, but to that body. I loved that body, its feel, its vistas. I don’t know who or what Sophie was making love to, probably the absence of the boy she was truly devoted to, who had moved to Seattle.
We got along well. She had a good sense of fun—we went to concerts, we went to a hockey game in Tulsa. Then we’d get back and make slow, kind, sad love.
If I ever jump over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge it wouldn’t be for the impact that would stop the plunge, but for the plunge itself. That’s how I felt at the time—not suicidal, but plunging into a bottomless hole. I could have asked for help, but I didn’t know I needed any. The plunge had its odd pleasures. Not caring about the day-to-day demands of life may be a sign of depression, but it’s also a mark of freedom.
But freed to what? Slow, kind, sad love to Sophie. My last classes. Hard work at my restaurant job. This was my life, and it wasn’t bad. It was the kind of unthrilling, manageable existence I expected to end with, not to begin in.
I still went to Mass sometimes, but despite myself I was slipping from the church’s grip. My father’s funeral had revealed to me that I was at best a cultural Catholic. And then the hot sun of disbelief bleached the meaning from the prayers, the rites. For me, Mass became an absurd spectacle. All that dress-up, all that kneeling and standing and kneeling again. And the atonal Catholic singing—why didn’t we at least learn how to sing? At least there would be that for us, the faithless.
When I graduated, I threw a little party, surprised that I did have some friends. I invited a couple of people from work, a few fellow English majors, and Sophie. For posterity’s sake, I record their names here: Brandon, Justin, Patrick, Luke, Amie, Rebecca, Van, Jennifer, Brian, and Josh.
We set up in my backyard, drinking cheap gin and beer. We got very drunk, and at one point I made out with Rebecca in the hall. Then Patrick stumbled through the bamboo fence into the landlord’s compost pile, and we called it a night. Some partygoers walked home; some stayed in my living room. My head was spinning when Sophie and I got into bed. Hers, too—she had to get up and vomit.
“I’ve never been this drunk,” she said.
“I have,” I said.
She pulled my arm tightly around her. “I’m going to miss you,” she said.
I waited a while, sorting through my own feelings. It was very important to me to be completely honest. “I’ll miss you, too.”
“If you stayed,” she said, “would we still date?”
“I think I would want to.”
“I think I would want to, too.”
We were quiet. I thought I heard a noise, some shudder of sorrow.
“Are you crying?” I asked. I reached up to touch her face—but it was dry.
“No,” she said. She pulled my hand back down to her ribs, patted it in place. Out my window, the moon was gone, and the stars hung heavy in their forgotten patterns. It was one of those nights when the world seems full of ancient messages, intended for a people long since dead.
“Are you crying?” she asked.
I considered coaxing myself to tears. My father, after all, was an amateur astronomer. He’d never forgotten the stars’ patterns. But tears would have suggested I desired something, and I didn’t know if I could reenter the world of desiring things. I was left with cheap catharsis, or worse—manipulation—and I had made it so far without stooping to either.
• • •
AFTER DINNER, I’m as jittery as a wet bird. All that deep breathing was supposed to take me someplace calm, but my inner pilgrim made a wrong turn. The edgy, coppery-bright beginnings of a panic attack are crawling around my chest.
Raj approaches me on the porch, where I’m rocking in the big swing. “Chilly out here,” he says, sitting next to me.
We rock back and forth, his long runner’s legs powering us. I can see the guardhouse from here, the hulking monk as still as a chess piece.
Raj pats me on the knee. “Let’s go for a walk.” We head up the road and then off on a path covered in fallen eucalyptus leaves. It’s a little dark to be entering the woods, but stretching my legs feels good. It reassures me of the great truth of life: today didn’t take that long and tomorrow will be just as short. When we reach the top of the hill, Raj glances behind him, then pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
He shakes two out. “Strictly forbidden,” he says.
I don’t smoke, but I take one anyway, charmed back into myself by a little mischief. From the first puff it’s a mistake. My head is whooshing and whirling; I feel disjointed, my chest clinched, my legs limp. “I think I’m going to fall down,” I say, and then I do.
When I come to, Raj is on his knees next to me, squinting into my eyes. He takes my chin, turns my head left and right. Above him, the tree canopy glitters darkly.
“Dude,” he says. “You ate it. You all right?”
I cough something up, phlegm from the ocean floor.
“I’m not a smoker,” I say.
“Let’s not be shy about what’s really happening. There’s some serious energy rebalancing going on in your body. Most people—takes them four or five of these weekends. You’ve just slipped right into it.”
I cough up more phlegm.
“I had a weird experience today,” I say. “I thought of my ex-wife, and couldn’t summon any resentment.”
He leans back on his heels and sits down. His lighter flares demonic light on his sunburnt face. He blows out a plume of smoke, waves it away into the air.
“Old energy, new energy—it’s not just a figure of speech. We’re feedbacks. We’re not confined to our bodies. That’s what we forget, especially if we’re not religious people. Puttering around in our houses. Living alone. Never being touched. Did you know when you put a group of women under one roof their mooncycles synch? That blows my mind. Their energies, their auras are interacting. They’re not even separate people. None of us are separate. We’re literally made up of each other. Which is why it’s such a problem that so many people live alone now. It’s like we’re less human.”
I clear my throat. “I live alone,” I say. My voice sounds blurry.
“So do I,” he says. “I mean I get it. You start to feel like you’re an image reflected in a mirror recorded on a videotape. Why not live alone? It’s a lot easier. I mean, think of Rachel.”
“What do you mean?”
“That pornographer she was living with. He basically tried to steal her soul.”
What does that mean? She said “regular stuff.” “I looked for the video the other day. I couldn’t figure out the search words.”
“Don’t do it, man. There’s nothing to be gained.”
I lie there on the dusty, warm ground. It’s not so bad down here.
“Was that her with Trevor, at that protest in the city?”
Raj looks at me, but his face is too shadowed to read.
“You know,” I say, “the one where he was dressed like a robot and he was pretending to penetrate Rachel on the sidewalk?”
“A robot?”
“Like a retro-robot. With tape wheels and buttons.”
“And that was Trevor?”
“He was wearing a helmet. I couldn’t see his face.”
“But you saw Rachel.”
“She was wearing a mask.”
He looks back up and exhales smoke through his nose. “I’d be surprised if you could get Rachel to lie down on a sidewalk in San Francisco. She carries hand sanitizer. Besides Trevor is off at a PE house in Oregon.”
“How long has he been up there?” I ask, pushing up to my elbows. I’m ridiculous. I feel unbounded relief.
“A couple of months, at least. He’s got quite a few resentment-anger management roadblocks to break through.”
“Is he up there VAMing?”
Raj nods. “Trevor is one of our most intensely clicked strokers.”
• • •
TO MY GREAT SURPRISE, I sleep like a stone. I have an odd mash-up dream where my mother tells me that my father is not an intensely clicked stroker. No doubt this was true.
The morning breaks with bright, artificial-lemon light. We gather in the cedar-planked meditation room to do some breathing, then adjourn for breakfast, which is a scoop of yogurt and three almonds.
Next is spiritual housecleaning, which consists of Raj telling me very funny stories of Internet dating, including one in which a woman “forgot” to tell him she was on ankle monitoring. He then segues into his work life, which has been a long, lucrative struggle with meaninglessness.
“I go to the office in the mornings,” he says. “Fix a cup of rooibos, stare out at Napa Valley. It’s gotten like a theme park. Disneyland. I think, who am I? What does it mean to sell condos and lots?”
Then we talk about some key concepts, including this feedback idea. Basically, clicking is volitional love, the choice to have serotonin, melatonin—all the friendly neurotransmitters—cascading through your brain all the time. The serotonin is a click itself. Clicks unite the limbic system with the more rational brain. At any moment when you might separate from other people, you click again. And as you become a more engaged person, as clicking becomes who you are, you reach a feeling of connection to others and to the universe (a dreaded word, but oh well). The body is a vehicle for the spirit and by clearing all the energy channels you liberate the spirit.
“You know that saying—‘Love makes the world go round’?” He rolls his eyes. “Cheesy, I know, but it’s literally true. It’s the basic force humming through the world. It’s what’s in all of us. And we can bring it out in each other. Flesh to flesh.”
Like Transcendentalism but with a focus on the genitals. All those years there was the battle between the heart and the mind. Hard to believe the winner will be the gonads.
• • •
THE AFTERNOON SESSION—the big finale—is led by Raj himself. Someone has lit a crisper incense. The Marin sun dazzles against the wood shades. The full title of his presentation is “Pure Encounters: Ready to Click.” The men—all ten of us—sit on meditation cushions in a circle. Anyone who wants to can discuss his problems, and the more experienced participants will help him “love over” his “roadblocks.” The youngest guy there, a kid named Walker, says that he can’t talk to women. He can’t express his desire, and he bottles it up and does reckless things. He masturbated in a public bathroom last weekend he was so amped up. He did drugs in high school and afterwards and he thinks he may have damaged himself—done something permanent to his limbic click. The lingo is horrible, but there’s no doubt that Walker is suffering. And if a little lingo will help him or anyone else—Rachel, for instance—then the least I can do is soldier through.
• • •
I LEAVE THE ASHRAM just before dusk. A few miles closer to Fairfax, my phone comes back into range of a tower. I have ten messages—one from Rick and nine from Livorno, who needs to speak to me right away. I stop by the Coffee Barn, where Rachel is still not working, and fill myself to the cockles with caffeine. Then I call.
He has something serious to discuss, but doesn’t want to do it over the phone. He invites me to an excellent Chinese restaurant for lunch tomorrow. Have I heard of P.F. Chang’s?
I don’t tell him it’s a chain, but this lack of knowledge—the idea that because he’s only seen one P.F. Chang’s there is only one—feels like the source of many problems. Amiante is supposed to evoke magnetism, but it really means asbestos. It’s a selfless vanity project, a dunderheaded finale to a brilliant career.
Of course, then there are all the problems with me at their root. Incoherence, ignorance, diluting of mission.
• • •
I DON’T KNOW if old energy can really be replaced by new energy. So, sort of as a test, I arrange to meet Erin out. We were going to have an afternoon coffee but we switched plans, dangerously, to a drink.
I sip my martini, smiling at her and smiling at the irony of grabbing a drink with someone who berated my drinking while we were married. Then since we’re supposed to be moving to some pleasant later stage of divorce, some stage of openness, I mention the irony.
She arches her eyebrows, perfectly tweezed. She really does look a little like Audrey Hepburn, though not as willowy. She’s started working Saturdays in a co-op bakery—since Ian, the boyfriend, works six days a week at his firm—and she displays her large forearms.
“Don’t forget,” she says. “You were so drunk our wedding night you couldn’t have sex.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “I was so drunk you wouldn’t have sex with me. Key difference.”
She laughs. “I guess you’re right. I do look back on those days and wonder what the hell was going on with us.”
“Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we were not well suited.”
“Like you and the young girl. You weren’t well suited.”
“She wasn’t that young.”
“Is that right?” Erin is sipping her whiskey at a pretty good clip. “Should I remind you how old you are?”
“I can always check my driver’s license. She and I are good friends now.”
“That’s too bad. I liked her.”
“You talked to her for three minutes in a restaurant.”
“I still liked her.”
“I’m actually dating someone who’s older than you.”
“She can walk without a cane?”
“She runs marathons.”
“Oh, boy. I guess you’re going to start running with her. Don’t get too skinny.”
“The first person to run a marathon fell over dead of a heart attack. No one seems concerned about this.”
“So what do you do with the old lady?”
Have sex. Go watch seals have sex. My time with Jenn seems unusually perverse. We have gone out to eat, though we both fidgeted at the table, waiting to go back to her apartment and . . .
“We’re in that getting-to-know-you stage.”
“Tell me about her.”
“She’s very smart. And pretty. She runs marathons.”
Erin orders another drink for herself and me. Why is my tongue suddenly mud around the subject of Jenn? Maybe it’s not the subject of Jenn but the audien
ce of Erin.
“She works down south,” I say. “Like me.”
Erin regards me, amused.
“Fine,” I say. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m waiting to hear some bigger-picture stuff. Is it a relaxed thing? Does it have a feeling of being right? Does it have a kind of sibling feel?”
Sibling feel? “I only have a brother.”
“I’m trying to figure out this choice of yours. Let’s say Rachel is innocence and naivety. But you didn’t want innocence, so . . . Jenn. She’s, what? A desire to settle into your life?”
I’ve never loved this idea that the people in your life are paths you might choose. It elides too many inconvenient facts. Such as that they’re people. But even if I were to play along I wouldn’t say Rachel was innocence, as much as kismet. The thought that something good might come unbidden. Which would definitely make her a different path than Erin, where the good took coaxing. “I’m flattered you think this is all in my power.”
“I’ll give you an example.” She slurps her whiskey. Who is this hearty party girl? “If I’m not overstepping boundaries.”
I wave my hand, go ahead.
“I dated that guy, Serge, right after you and I split.” Actually we were still living together, but I let this correction go unmade. “And then I started dating Ian. Serge represented excitement, carpe diem. But he was kind of an asshole. Those kinds of guys usually are, right? Ian is the absolute opposite of an asshole. He’s caring. He does work around youth justice. He represents stability and the long term.”
I’m no expert on the matter, but this does not sound like the heights of passion. And I’m glad to hear it. My pleasure, I’m afraid, is a petty feeling, strong evidence I’ve retained a few volts of old energy.
“This word ‘represent.’ It sounds like he works for Amway.”
She shrugs. “You’re still keeping things shallow. Playing the field. They can just be people to you. Not people who mean something about a direction in your life.”
A Working Theory of Love Page 19
