Tarnished Gold of Souls

“God, I need a sign. I’m watching and listening.”

The question asked, I open my eyes and raise up off the pillow, today’s meditation officially over. Out my open window, we join a perfect New York morning already in progress: Warm, clear blue with a tingle of fall. Reconnecting with the external, I look down the bed to see my own baked brown legs, igniting a near-sexual flush of a thousand little fires across my chest, lips, forehead, a rush of filmed highlights featuring the fragrant clatter of endless midnight cafés, Antonio Gaudi castles that appear designed by the children of potheads, heat-wobbled knots of ancient streets flowing into elegant boulevards and honky-tonk ramblas, briny olives and anchovy swimming beside rivers of warm red wine, my sun-baked extremities have become an organic time-and-space-machine, a free ride back to un mamsasita caliente, un atractiva paella grande, La Barcelona.

“We’ve been talking about opening an institute in Stockholm, but we don’t have anyone who’s qualified... ” 

Gabriel, my former spiritual teacher and Barcelona host, his sweet, smart Swedish wife, Kiki and I sit beneath a shade tree in an afternoon blast-furnace 10 steps from where we stood last night.  The proprietor of this sprawling mountain-side retreat approaches our table, speaks of two dozen chickens killed the night before.

“Perros salvajes”, she hisses.

Wild dogs. 

Down the hill, two old men shovel dirt into a dog-dug trough below bent fence. 

And 10,000,000 scattered matchsticks flash-form an intricate parquet: Gabriel's out-of-nowhere email inviting me to teach in Spain, his refusing to allow me to pay for my own lodging – an unheard of first. And then, of course, last night’s Grand Event: The Castanadian psychic mind-fuck we both pretend didn’t happen.

Yep, Gabriel, now a Euro ex-patriot, is still at it , I guess.  His coy e-vite hovers like a cartoon anvil frozen in the swelter between us. I can’t look at him, instead chaining my eyes to the old men down the hill, smiling, nodding, feeling my atoms, my molecules, my entire being re-arrange.

Before I’d returned to New York, Gabriel finally asked outright if I wanted the directorship of the Stockholm institute. My first thought: That’s never going to happen. Why would I leave New York? And give up with out a doubt the greatest life I’ve ever known?   

Of course, this isn't something I'd actually say to him.  Instead, I say I’ll do what’s he taught me to decades earlier:

“I’ll take a look at it.”

Psychic Spiritual Master-speak for, “I’ll meditate on it.” 

And here, 21 days later, I sit at the edge of my bed, firmly grounded to the island of Manhattan.  Though I have no desire to change a single damn thing, I’ve  stayed true to my word, capping each morning's meditation with a request for direction, for signs indicating a move to Sweden. Just in case.  Just in case it’s what I’m really supposed to do (can’t be). Just in case Gabriel’s invitation wasn’t some psycho/psychic manipulation, but a divinely inspired memo from Management that I’d be insane to ignore (ridiculous). I’m not going anywhere, after all, because God obviously wants me in this grand city – right here, right now – spending as fast as I make more dollars than I’ve ever (legally) amassed . Nope, I'm stayin' right here in downtown Manhattan. Lowtown, my town, U.S.A.. 

I blink away the tan-induced images and stretch, relaxed and energized by today’s session, about to swing onto the floor and start rolling, but the sound’s getting louder and closer, so close the loft vibrates a little as the first of two jets crash into the tall buildings 10 blocks away.

Any sign at all, God.  I’m looking and listening.

•

Yeah, I know how this sounds, me asking God for a sign and ka-boom. If someone used this in a movie, I’d be brutal, i.e., “I’m sorry - that scene where he asks God for a sign and the planes hit? What kind of bullshit was that?” Yet it’s exactly what happened.

But nudge the perspective a little.  Move just one seat over, and “Bullshit” becomes, “Huh… no shit?” All you need to do is add a voice-over: “Was I the only human being below Canal St. (or in New York/on Eastern Seaboard/in the entire U.S.A.) requesting a divine sign at 8:52 am?”

•

The way sound bounces around Manhattan’s artificial alps, I think I’m hearing a plane go down somewhere in midtown, maybe 30, 40 blocks north.

I call the actress warehouse a floor above me.  Kirsty, the Aussie, answers. 

“I think a plane just crashed uptown.”

“The radio says it’s at World Trade.”  She’s rasping, either choked-up crying or still asleep.

“Meet me out front.”

A warp in the rules of New York culture occur in times of real trouble: Strangers start conversing without hesitation. No preliminary hand shakes or awkward self-introductions, it’s as if a previous conversation had been picked up mid-sentence. You might have thought the group gathered on Hudson Street to watch a 110-story building burn had, if not shared a sofa at a party, maybe temped together a few years ago:

“Musta run outta fuel, right?”

“Sheila o-ways said, ‘Dem taowas is a magnet fa air-o-planes’.”

“Do you see any clouds? No. I don’t either. No clouds, no fog. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Now elfin sweet neighbor Kirsty’s beside me, tear-streaked and silent.  Though not really close, something primal and protective involuntarily moves my arm, pulls her into me, absorbing the shivers,  then – BOOM! - a Michael Bay exploding fireball blows thru the top quarter of the second tower.  From our perspective, none of us saw the second jet, just the explosion.

Like sheep catching the scent of coyote still miles off, the energy shifts in our huddle, scattering half of us.

“That was no plane, that was a bomb, yo”, the Afro-Latino kid announces, but instead of being repelled, he starts south, toward the pyre.

Before the second tower explodes, I’m sure this is the number one most hallucinogenic accident in our history, already stacking stats against Hindenburgs and Titanics.

But two? No, not random.

My ‘Rican biker neighbor George walks up.

“Dude, can we go up on your roof?”

“Yeah, c’mon.”

Kirsty, George and me leave the thinning herd, climb up to that dangling, dangerous last staircase and back to the horror set in deep, endless blue.  From up here it’s closer somehow, more intense without all the hysteric torrent of emergency vehicles thundering by. And then it gets a little weirder: The roof is covered with rows of professional grow-troughs filled with tomato and sunflower arraigned to camouflage a core thicket of tall marijuana.

Standing three abreast at the edge, silent, it looks like the world’s largest air conditioning units burn and smoke. Ten million file folders have magically emptied out and released a sparkling confetti pre-commemorating the saddest, strangest thing that’s ever happened.

Soon, my optimism tells me, the fire department will put it out and we can do something else.  Until then, there’s nowhere else to go, nothing else to look at.  We’re hypnotized, enslaved by our collective mind’s inability to categorize, file away, make sense.  Every so often somebody says, “It looks like a movie”, because that’s as close as anyone can get to wrapping logic around what we see.

The spell is broken when my artist neighbor, Chet, appears, edgy and more superior than usual.

“I just got off the subway at Chambers.  You know, there’re people jumping.”

“No there’s not,” I deny, indignant. “I’ve been watching the whole time – I haven’t seen any people… ”

“There’s one”, he points out. “There’s another one.”

And thru the slo-mo rubble twister, I see them now, realize I’ve been watching human beings freefall a hundred stories for what seems like hours. And not just forms of humans. I can actually tell what colors they put on this morning, before they left their apartments, their children, their bodies.

Suddenly it’s no longer abstract and way too fucking intimate.

“I’m not watching any more.”

I start down to my loft, Kirsty and George following.

Back inside, I turn on the television. I’m worried about Kirsty: If there’s a look that says, “near-catatonic”, this is it.  Her family’s on the other side of the planet and she’s too thin, shivering convulsively. 

“Are you okay?”

“Got any smoke, Randy?” she asks in tiny Australian.

I dig out a stash I keep for friends and fill a pipe for her.  She’s shaking pretty bad and suddenly I wonder if I’m hallucinating, pretty sure I can see see thru her  clothes and skin, down to her skeletal structure, a panic-activated x-ray vision. 

Okay, yeah, tranquilization.  I open a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator. Macho George’s, “Thanks, man” is a little too breathy, nearly gushing. He pulls eep on the glass. So do I and pour us some more. 

Out my window, the sky is still perfect clarity, dotted with flurry of - what are they? Legal documents? Résumés? Emergency procedure manuals for offices filled with jet fuel and melting steel?

When the first tower collapses on itself, I have a dreaming sensation of watching something on television while simultaneously feeling it’s faint tremors radiate thru the paved earth below me, a small thunder passing into 200-year old brick.  An alien sorrow moves into my chest, my body a radio tower pulling in the single sound of every kind of person - man, woman and child, all ages and colors, all nationalities, all classes – joining in, a sound distinctly human, a spiritual shockwave, it’s origin in the wreckage 10 blocks south, it radios north, echoing up the streets, muffled yet unmistakably clear, it’s volume rising, the chorus now around our building, up the stairwell, my living room, into our bodies, embracing, pulling at our lungs and heart and now, involuntarily out our mouths, too, we've  now become transmitters too, passing it north, to Vestry, Debrosses, Canal, a harmonious moan that moves into SoHo, a tarnished golden cloth woven from human heartbreak, a single, necessary, congruent oral wound –

“Oooohhhh!”

- a release fired up from the gut, one shared wordless expression of painful, beaten, spent sadness and awe.

The sky fills with ash and plastic, dark smoke and more paper. Sharp chemicals are released that I taste. 

“Let’s close the windows.”

The phone keeps ringing: L.A., Bay Area, Europe, the Bronx, Florida, Upper West Side.  “Yes, I’m fine.” One tower still stands and already I’m feeling an awkward guilt, the side-effect of repeating the same epic tale that's yet to end, editing, honing, it becomes an oddly rehearsed version of a tragedy too big to know. Ever.

“I love you, too. No, I’m okay. Really. Bye.”

Christy Whitman says our downtown air is safe to breathe.  Adolph Giuliani morphs into Il Papa before our eyes. All flights are grounded, gridlocking the planet’s airspace. Now the Pentagon’s attacked, then a forth jet’s down – maybe shot down – out in Pennsylvania.  When the second tower goes, it’s terrible force cracks the seals on twin Pandoric ampules, releasing vapors more dangerous than imaginable: 

The first emits airborne ice vapors of sorrow and loss, resetting what was thought to be the American human’s capacity to endure.

The second far deadlier: a floral-scented stream of genetically engineered lies so sophisticated, it binds the atoms of fear (red), hatred (white) and death (blue) with the air supply, a subtle atmospheric infusion, an invisible cancer, infecting thoughts, ideals, morals and hearts, a new and potent vapor now a part of every breath on Earth.

•

“So, if your offer still stands, can we talk about me opening that school in Stockholm?”

Even 4,000 miles away, I don't miss a single nuance contained in Gabriel knowing chuckle, this one dosed with more than a few notes of that internationally recognized audio-smirk, a silent, “I told you so.”

“Yes! Fantastic! When’re you coming?”

The Mean Little Children of God

I’ve always believed in Magic.

Magic’s power to change everything. In a flash. Just for me.

Magic will, before my very eyes, shrink my Beautiful Hitting, Hating Monster Movie Star Mother right down into a Beautiful Loving, Protecting TV Star Mother.

Magic, will, as I lay me down to sleep, shape me, before I wake, into a fearless, athletic sneering badass.

Magic is my Escape to Freedom, an Instant Dark-to-Light/Pain-to-Elation/Poverty-to-Luxury extra-ordinary, beyond the confines of physics and logic, miraculous metamorphosis.

Magic is God’s Operating System, a Divine alchemy reshaping the raw materials of bruises and tears into an intelligent magnetic entity guiding the tumblers of the Mystery Vault into place, granting me sole ownership of the loving adoration of every living being. This belongs to me.

I am not one of 7 billion others, feeling my way along a dark wall for the switch.

I believe in Magic harder than anybody and, so, am allowed to color outside the lines. Mundane laws do not apply because Magic is my inheritance. I am blessed. Special. A Son O’ God Golden-Haired, Blue-Eyed Silver Screen Young Jesus who knows: If magic’s going to work for anyone, it’s me.

Here’s why:

Because my family’s from Hollywood.

We possess arcane knowledge. We know how the magic is made and how it’s all done because my great grandfather, Herbert Alden, owned his own movie studio.

Yep, we go all the way back. Okay, so he lost his studio in the depression (his, not the financial one), but he got right back up on that stuffed horse and took a job at the only studio that’s actually in Hollywood: Paramount, the very studio that eventually absorbed his studio. Paramount, sitting majestically right there on Melrose Avenue, with its elegant ironwork gates and it’s rich Cinema History (DeMille, Von Stroheim, Gloria Swanson, Popeye). Herbert’s picture sits atop our antique desk, watching over us, wire-frame glasses set upon a serious face, his strong lower jaw locked up tight onto his upper lip like a no-nonsense judge. Herbie, on a daily basis, reminds me to remember who I am. He took the position of Paramounts’s Chief Electrician and moved himself, along with his wife (future great-grandmother) Henrietta, daughter (future grandmother) Elvere and my toddler future mother Glenda into a house that shared a fence with the studio so friends like Bing Crosby could come over during lunch to hold my little mom and sing her a song. Unfortunately, Herbert’s tottering alcoholic ego got knocked on its ass by his studio loss, never to regain sure footing. Neither Movie Star friends nor a permanent place in Cinema History as co-developer of the 24-frame-a-second projection speed (forever eliminating the jerky flicker from the early silent ‘flicks’) could quash his Chandlerian fade-to-black. So, like many other True Tales of Hollywood Horror, one hazy afternoon, Herbie started up the family car, closed the garage door, uncorked a bottle of gin and took The Big Nap.

But like our magical counter-parts, the Jews of the Old Testament, we persevered.

My grandmother, Elvere, my Grandma Mambo, was in “Our Gang”! Mambo’s beauty was legendary: Mischievous emerald eyes dominated her camera-ready, lushly decorated candy-box face, all framed inside a full mane of rich dark chocolate hair. Even those who later spoke unkindly of her always tempered their observations with her dazzling attributes. Like: “She was such a mean bitch, but so beautiful and talented.” Oh, Elvere had what it took for Hollywood, alright: that rare combination of huge talent coupled with a natural affinity for any form of artistic expression that struck her fancy: Acting, singing, drawing, make-up artistry, manipulation. By all accounts, Elvere was bound for stardom. But it was not to be. Our family’s twin propensities toward feeling good and the questionable quality of living by our wits manifested in Elvere as a pesky addiction to any drug she could get her gorgeous hands on and, later, the easy money prostitution offered beautiful (beautiful and talented) women. Elvere Maxine, our very own Fallen Angel, powerless against the overwhelming temptation to lay with the Sons of Man, cast out into the Abyss. But before the tragic Fall, her great beauty and talent were forever captured on Divine Celluloid for 23 glowing seconds (an eternity in Screen Time), good-heartedly scolding the wayward Alfalfa).

But even Elvere’s misfortunes could not revoke our Divine Right because I possessed the ultimate proof of our divinity:

My own mother was in movies – almost.

My mother was supposed to be The Next Shirley Temple. And Glenda looked exactly like Miss Temple until she grew up to look exactly like Elizabeth Taylor. My mother had a contract with 20th Century Fox to play the little girl who rode horses in “Gone With the Wind”, until they found out she was too young to read scripts. And I know exactly where her contract is at all times, supposedly hidden in our hall closet, it’s omnipresent 20th Century Fox logo right up at the top like a special dispensation sent down from the Vatican: A Holy Seal featuring movie premiere searchlights shining up to heaven, framing the stacked 3-dimentional letters, a representation of what must surely sit atop the studio itself, the original made from - what? Granite? Ancient Italian marble? Gold? She has never shown it to me herself, of course, always careful to conceal our true identities from the lesser persons of this shit town, always careful to say, “I’m from Los Angeles.”, never, “I’m from Hollywood.” But I know who we are, I’ve overheard the fables passed lip-to-ear when I was supposed to be sleeping or watching TV. We’re a secret Hollywood family with proof tucked away in the hall closet. We can’t tell just anyone in this shit town who we are: incognito celebrities who possess otherworldly information. This is our family’s big secret that makes all the other secrets fall into place. This is the secret occupying the top box on the hierarchy chart that informs and excuses the other secret: Glenda is a dangerously abusive Movie Monster That’s Trying to Kill Me! Glenda possesses a physics-defying hand that can somehow reach back and slam your head against the side window while continuing to competently operate a car on the freeway. And a tongue able to puncture the breastbone and surgically extract the living heart from plumbers, shop clerks, cosmeticians and family members with staggering precision. Glenda’s lack of control often gives clues of our secret, but when you live in a movie, it’s all okay. It all makes sense. All is forgiven. Because everyone knows that this is how real, glamorous, raven-haired movie stars act! And act and act. Everyone knows that the pressures placed upon a sensitive screen artist are the true reason for this dramatic behavior. Who else can truly understand? Who else’s family is from Hollywood? Who else’s mother went to Hollywood High with the sons of stunt men, who staged fake fights on Sunset Boulevard, filling socks full of cotton to look like blackjacks, and real fake blood, who’d stop traffic until the LAPD arrived? Nobody else’s mother dated Lon Chaney, Jr. and went to school with Carol Burnett and had Anthony Quinn’s autograph and nobody else’s mother looks exactly like Elizabeth Taylor (everyone says so!). My mother is a full-blown Magic Movie Star from Hollywood.

And I’m going to be one, too.

•

“But it ain’t in a needle or a spoon, a pipe, his pants, her panties, a zillion dollars or the deep blue sea, poodles. See, that hole in your soul - y’know? The one you’ve been tryin’ to patch up your whole glamorous junked-up low-down life? I’m here to tell you: None of that – ‘fact, nothing external - is ever gonna be able to fill that gaping maw.” This delivered in emphysemic croaks and tiny assault rifle bursts by Joyce Cagestone, my very own zaftig kewpie doll, ginger curls and still-barely-visible blue-black needle scars zigzag up her freckled arms.

“The ripping, the running, the sex and – for all us losers up in this joint - the dope, well, in the end, it all just stopped doing the job, din’it? I’m gonna let you in on the real-deal: The only way out is goin’ in, baby – All those pretty little EXIT signs are fakes, leadin’ right back into the hottest part of the fire. This whole damn world – and especially the likes of us - got it wrong. You really wanna kill the demons? Not just put ‘em to sleep for a few decades, but once and for all time eradicate those fuckers? Here’s where you look.” She pauses a beat. Two beats, a pro holding her audience of 8 dope fiends rapt, she extends an index finger at arm’s length, circles it lazily to her front, then buries that stubby digit heart-ward, dead-center of her ample cleavage. “Right here. No where else. It’s an inside job. ”

Efraim Gutierrez, the oldest junkie in the room, is sparked by the boob-probe and decides to mix it up. Clasping his own hands prayer-like, eyes turned earthward, he dials his scruffed prune of a face to Humble Bracero.

“E’scuse me, Miss Yoyce, but, for me, no, da shit never stop working.”

Saint Joyce has heard this argument before – in fact, employed it herself not so very long ago - in this very room, a member of a circle much like one we sit in tonight, defending her case for a life she’s left far behind. Now a state-certified ringmaster extraordinaire, she allows Efraim’s Universidad de Calle Mission distraction to become one with the cigarette smoke as she burns her halogen blues into the center of my brain, a challenge daring me to not understand. I choose a thoughtful nod and far-off gaze, calling on years of smack-rewarded street theater to appear as if I see a slow sun rising in the east, that I get it. And I want to get it, because I’m always intrigued by anyone’s claim to Hidden Truth – which is, after all, the very essence of Magic. But I am not prepared for this level of initiation. It’s still too early for me and Joyce knows it, watches her words circle the over-crowded La Guardia of my mind.

Because, simply, this is not how I understand life to be navigated. Not by me nor any other human anywhere.

The concept of achieving sanity or peace by turning that gloriously ever-present 35mm Panaflex inward directly opposes my basic credo:

The degree to which one can look and act like a movie star is in direct proportion to the level of Success, Happiness and Respect I (and so, we all) shall achieve. And if the magic of elixirs and potions is what it takes to kill the screams and broken promises, is the insurance to make it all work, so be it.

This is based on my certainty that every single human being, the entire lot of us, are, to the bone, scared shitless and those who shake the success tree hardest are the ones able to perfect the pretense they ain’t. In summation: Life = acting, like I always knew it did.

The peace and freedom I’d been searching for my entire life wasn’t in bags, bottles, beds or balconies?

Balderdash.

And yet, here I am, asking for help – a rarity – to figure out how to ignore the demands for sedation from every atom in my body.

And yet, here I am, trying to learn how to stop dying so fast.

And yet.

And yet, in the Dr. Carl Jung Memorial Screening Room hidden deep down in the catacombs of my zip-zapping newly unmedicated psyche, an audience of one (me) sits rapt, seat-edged, subconsciously awaiting a rare presentation of, “Who Looks Outside, Dreams. Who Looks Inside, Awakens”. See the red velvet curtain rustle? The master-work of my current favorite Heroin Heroine, this raspy, plump Buddhette, tearing a minuscule pin-prick in the still-dark Magic Screen therein, subliminally creating a path I’ll walk the rest of my life.

•

My quest for the perfect used leather jacket abuts biblical fervor. As a believer in magic, miracles and divine right, the fact that ‘perfect’ only exists in Heaven in no way deters my pursuit of this holy raiment and my criterion remains unwavering: First, it should be black. Yes, I will admit to, on occasion, being swayed by a particularly handsome brown, but my eye goes to the blacks first and usually stays there. Okay, alright, I don’t often talk about this (and will deny it if asked), but there was, just once, in a North Beach dump called Dirty Peggy’s, a hue that caused me, I’m embarrassed to admit, a distinct stirring “down south”, a shade of green exuding so much sexual energy, it can only be described as “Olive d’Vaseline”.

Damn!

No, no, I’m okay…

Style, while negotiable, is tightly indexed. First choice: Authentic Motorcycle, the gage of which can be no more than a few millimeters shy of shoe leather, heavy enough to take a highway tumble at, say, 40 m.p.h.. Tied for choice No. 2 is the 50’s Harlem Bluesman leather blazer (gossamer as an ebony kitten’s ear steeped in butter) and the Authentic WWII Bomber, which are, every single time, too damn small, made for an ilk of man one size up from “jockey”. It should go without saying (though you’d be surprised) that sandpapering, machine scuffing or any other evidence of inorganic distress are not only immediate grounds for dismissal but visceral contempt.

In the presence of possible Leather Greatness, senses align, scientifically joining in uncommon symbiotic focus. Distracting salespersons intuitively scatter. Time stops as the Universe contracts to the space I inhabit, which, today, is an annual Flea Market held inside cavernous Municipal Pier No. 9 swaying atop a sensorially stunning San Francisco waterfront. I see. I smell. I experience calf-skinned ecstasy, kneading a creamy charcoal blazer as the world beyond dissolves.

Except, who the fuck are these people – silently yet insistently - pulling me Earthward, down from my rarified strata? I cannot be bothered, yet, for the second time, am and don’t know why. Discarding the “wrong weight/not dark enough/weird smell/too big anyway” garment atop a milk crate of pristine l.p.’s, I turn again toward their booth, this time actually reading the largest words in the low-key signage:

“Free Psychic Readings & Energy Healings”

Instantly, my soul begins tapping out a code I can’t decipher, instructions flashed out to various bodily outposts that bypass my approval entirely: “Attention Pulmonary: compress next 10 breaths in upper lungs.” “Sweat Glands, open to a Level 6 Moderate Flow at scalp, forehead, arm pits.” “Thoracic Fine Muscle Crew, stand by for a series of Controlled Tight Swallows.” “Reproductive Division 1 and Division 2, come in. Reproductive Division 1 and Division 2, respond? No, this is NOT a drill, this is an ORDER: Shrivel. Repeat: Shrivel.”

Rattled by my body’s involuntary war-time response, it takes a moment to realize I’ve panned down, now eye-level with two of the three life-forms behind their table: A frosty Hitchcockian blond stands at the front, straightening pamphlets while easily serving up a combo-platter smile brimming with a main-course sweet greeting cuddled around a girly dollop of gentle judgment, both nearly hiding – but not entirely - a single spicy bite of ridicule. Yet, unlike with most of the human population, meeting her gaze neither deflects nor diminishes it’s boldness, as if she knows me, has already sussed out that her “come to me, you ass” countenance guarantees my own counterphobic “you WILL love me with every bit of that smile” response. Screen-left, a compact Mediterranean-hued male unpacks boxes, pulling one of those, “I’ll look at you until you feel it, then look away just before you catch me, then look back, faux-surprised to find you looking at me” theatricalities. When we finally lock eyes, his smile is sincere, easy, friendly. No distrust, no judgment. A second woman, global opposite of the Grace Kelly clone up front – distinct nose and hair of an Eastern Bloc Jewess – sits further back, eyes closed, oxymoronically “trying hard to relax”, a conflict I recognize and understand. I watch her deep-breathe once, twice, fascinated as her face untangles, releasing a slight, attractive smile, a special effect easing 4,000 years of cellular persecution.

I think: “I am in the presence of special humans and want information.” I want a free psychic reading, to get closer, see if they really know magic…

But it’s too late, too many systems have breached “ALERT” phase, elevated to official “PANIC” status, goading the response I do best, the one I’m born for: Run. I’m already moving deeper into the pier, away from this nonsensical all-systems freak-out and these extra-sensory beings who’ve completely blown my leather high.

“And what the hell are these clean, shiny psychics doing here, anyway, lit up bright in the middle of this dark old sea-seasoned wood cave packed up with mute-hued record albums, used books, vintage clothes and various hippie/African/Asian/grandma’s garage artifacts?”

Their eyes on my back are like a swarm of electric gnats pushing me back toward the southern corner of this archaic edifice where, suddenly, an welcoming oasis appears: Dirty Peggy’s Used Leathers. My pulse drops to down to navigable cocaine-like levels, allowing me to slow up. I smile and nod to the great Peggy herself, a big bespeckled hippie mama who knows my face and smiles back, but something draws her gaze past and behind me. I turn my head and see what Peggy sees: the psychic’s table inexplicably klieg-lit, it glows like a birthday cake hidden in a closet, three lit-candle faces beaming bright, lapping dangerously at the dark edges.

I cut left past a wagon filled with bleached steer skulls, cowboy hats, old spurs, headed fast toward the pier’s darker corner when a shift occurs, my illogical flight slowed – yes, as if by magic – as I’m fortified by a generations-old ancestral champagne bubbling up, gut-to-brain-stem, it’s effervescence of strength and valor washing over, saturating synapse, muscle, pace, I am both calmed and empowered, rendered drunk and invincible by The Family Inebriant: Rage!

“What the fuck am I afraid of?”

Moving at a cooler gate, I am certain, sharper, more myself.

“We’ll see who’s magic now, won’t we?”

I cut a counter-phobic circle back toward ESP-Land, maneuvering narrow paths between beautiful, rusted Chinese figurines and antique feather boas, my fear replaced with a scene of anticipated confrontation, the script for which I write (and alone) possess. The rough-hewn planks I step over become props connecting me to a timeless masculinity I absorb, become. I am a smart seen-it-all badass on my way to check out the side-show fortune tellers.

I push past a jungle of hanging peasant britches pushing out from the over-stocked San Francisco Opera costume booth and – bang! - slam hard into the edge of the table enclosing those three scary, welcoming seers, my gaff causing their entire booth to rock a bit, rousing all three to spout a disarming child-like chuckle.

This is not the scene I’ve written.

“Hello there.” the swarthy male steps to his edge of the table I’ve walked into as the women drop back to arrange chairs. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good.” Though I’m the source, my voice sounds oddly distant, more echo than projection. And the panic’s rising up again, grasping my chest in slow, cold steel. I become aware of the ocean below us gently nudging the pilings. “So you guys are psychics?”

“Yeah, but so are you – everybody is, actually.” His delivery is matter of fact, scientific, his nods say he agrees with the universal truth he professes.

I’ve got to get outta here.

“Would you like to get a reading?” he offers. “It’s free.”

I’m scanning this guy deep, looking for cracks in their reason for being - a tell-tale huckster jaw-set, blank hypno-zombie eyes – hell, I’ll even settle for dirty fingernails – anything to validate the unjustified terror of being near these people. But it’s all zeros, I’ve got squat. Okay, his t-shirt’s kinda hokey – violet, with a hand-drawn rose crowned by the words The Center for Psychic Studies –definitely not someone I have much in cultural common with, but he’s so friggin’ genuine, obviously intelligent and easy-friendly.

Nonetheless, alarms are blasting as systems beyond my control pull at me, urge retreat.

“How long does it take?” No matter his answer, I can’t “right now”.

“Only about 10 minutes. I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy it - you entertainment-types always do.”

The two women let loose another playful little laugh, tickled keys on a kiddie piano.

What. The. Fuck. Did he just say?

I choke out a fake chuckle, feeling my forehead and ears enflame, I tuck my chin to steal a glimpse at my own clothing, sure he’s caught some sign, icon, symbol I’ve forgotten I’m wearing that identifies me as an “entertainment type”. Nope, nothing. Jeans, solid t-shirt, sneaks - my life-long standard uniform. No tells whatsoever.

Run! Now! Hurry!

“I’m Gabriel. Before your reading, let’s get you an healing… it’ll help relax so you can really be present to understand everything.” He turns to address his cohorts, both of whom are already seated, eyes closed, each moving their hands in strange/intriguing gestures before them, as if pushing or pulling - hard to tell – at the atmosphere directly in front of their bodies, polishing invisible rare curios, pulling at ectoplasmic putty in the thin air before them.

What the hell are they doing?

“Sandy, can you give our new friend a healing before…”

It’s all moving too fast.

“So, how does this work? What’s a…” I’m stammering, unnerved, trapped. “Like, how do you actually do a psychic reading?”

Well, all living things have an electromagnetic field surrounding them – that’s scientific fact. These energy fields can actually be photographed – ever heard of Kirlian photography?”

I nod as my eye catches a small frame sitting on their other table.

“The Earth’s energy field we call the atmosphere. And human beings – you, too - have your own atmosphere, which we call an aura. We, here, have been trained to see energy by a process of going within, by utilizing our Third Eye, which has the innate ability to see energy… ”

Gabriel’s voice begins to trail off as I zoom in on the framed quote across their booth:


“Who Looks Outside, Dreams. Who Looks Inside, Awakens”
- Carl Jung

Seriously?

“…so, before Linda takes a look at your aura, why don’t you come in and have a seat right over here so Sandy can give you a quick energy healing.”

Before I can ask what that is, Gabriel answers.

“It’s basically just a quick little session to help you release any distracting energy you’re ready to get rid of.”

I, of course, want to stall, keep him talking, extract more information, but the Jung quote has set off a little movie, an image of squeaky Joyce flashes across the screen of my Mind’s Eye Theatre, quick-cut edited to seemingly unrelated shots of the Hollywood sign, an extreme close-up of mom’s diamond ring chipping my front tooth, a montage of thousand-count bags of candy-colored LSD tabs, smack balloons, Quaaludes and hashish lumps dissolving into a bird’s-eye view of Alcatraz Island.

Magic fear, magic truth, magic love, magic drugs, magic people, magic God.

I am in the presence of real, exceptional magic. I want to know what these people know. I want to be able to do what these people do. I want the magic these people possess. I believe.

I believe I might have finally found my true, essential family.

I believe – just a little less - that I should be running for my life.