THA SHAMAN
“I like your brand of nonsense Mike”, she says in a complimentary way just after I’ve spewed some hifalutin spiritual psychobabble recited verbatim from some ancient religious text. I’m able to do this with more clarity and exactitude than most people because I’ve been blessed/cursed with memoria photographia, which is a pretentious and asinine way of saying that I have a really good memory. By she, I mean Bobbi, who is seated to my left. She’s got a striking look that both sexes are immediately drawn to. People naturally want to be friends with her, which is a trait that I cannot boast for myself but it’s clear that she’s raised my attractiveness level by roughly 12% simply by sitting in such close proximity and occasionally addressing me in a friend-like manner. This is of great assistance to me and softens my rougher edges while sufficiently distracting people from the truth that I am actually a bloodthirsty, sex crazed, lunatic who will absolutely destroy the life of any individual who decides to join their genitalia with mine.
“Are you nervous?” she asks.
“Not really”, I say with a terrified look on my face. I scan the room and wince at the sight of the sad group of individuals sitting in great anticipation of their long awaited “spiritual experience” and wonder what the fuck I’m doing here. These people are all lost beyond reason. These are people without sense, looking for someone or something outside of themselves to take them away from the blatant absurdity of it all. This is a mistake. I should get the fuck out of here immediately. My brain tries to trigger the flight response but my body stays inert. I smile at Bobbi as I privately curse her for dragging me to yet another one of these self improvement gatherings, where self centered narcissists congregate in order to participate in a psycho-spiritual journey for the purposes of becoming even more self centered. I pause when I suddenly realize that I might also be one of these egomaniacs before I quickly shuffle that thought out of my head.
“You’re really going to love Fabian. I mean, he’s a genius. He’s like an actual doctor.”
“Like with a PhD?” I ask.
“Yeah. Biochemistry. He makes the medicine himself. It’s some process that’s too complicated to even explain.” replies Bobbi causing me to snort. Fabian is her newest Shaman, a term that is loosely thrown around in Los Angeles with meanings ranging anywhere from medicine man to snake oil salesman with a funny haircut. She was referred to Fabian after hearing about him from her stylist’s pilates instructor’s shrink, who is also some big wig over at Warner Brothers. The word on the street is that Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, and Ralph Lauren have all journeyed with Fabian and say that they will never journey with anyone else. I’m skeptical however.
Just then a hush comes over the room as Fabian enters with his hot Albanian fiancé, who not surprisingly handles the donations for the evening’s ceremony. She’s dressed to the nines in Louis Vuitton and sporting a diamond encrusted Cartier watch. Something tells me that this is not the attire of Buddha or Ghandi but Fabian is wearing a matching acid washed sweatsuit reminiscent of early RunDMC so I give him a pass and forgive him for having a materialistic life partner. He exchanges hugs and pleasantries with some of the group who have journeyed with him before. Although everything is so sincere it makes me cringe and I boil with an underlying hatred of everything and everyone.
“Can we get started already?” I shout and that stops the room dead. Smiles turn to looks of disgust as everybody turns to me and suddenly I’m the asshole without patience who desperately needs “the medicine” and people make prayer hands and thank god I’m able to “get help”.
Fabian launches into an hour long diatribe spouting spiritual mumbo jumbo along with medical study facts that have little basis in consensus reality but he’s got the group eating out of the palm of his hand and nobody flinches when he mentions that there is a possibility of death after ingesting the medicine before he starts giggling in a slightly demonic and infantile tone. I turn to Bobbi and she smiles as if this man is the second coming and although I’m thinking that I should probably kill him and stop the spreading of his poison in this once great city, I simply smile back at her.
Fabian begins shaking plastic water bottles filled with a dark, thick liquid that has a menacing appearance. He pours a small amount into a shot glass and hands it to a girl. She dumps it down her throat and he continues around the room distributing the medicine. When he gets to me, he asks if I’ve ever journeyed before and I say yes so he gives me a rather hefty shot and I say “Cheers” before knocking it back. It tastes like tree bark that has been slowly dissolved in gasoline but in my recent past as a dedicated alcoholic I’m positive that I drank worse and enjoyed it more. Since I’ve barely eaten all week and have been fasting for the entire day, the medicine hits me like a ton of bricks and within minutes I can feel the shit coursing through my veins and it’s clear that this is not something that anyone should fuck around with. Before he’s even finished administering the medicine, an enormous German man named Sven screams out, “Fabian! Fabian! It’s too intense. I’m burning up”, then begins tearing off his white linen outfit. One of the “angels”, a euphemism for one of Fabian’s assistant helpers, rushes over and grabs Sven who is now having full on convulsions. I look around the room and strangely some people are totally calm while the sane among us wear faces of sheer terror. I look at Fabian and he shrugs his shoulders then giggles maniacally as if this were a totally normal and natural occurrence. That’s when the two hot Russian sisters sitting directly across from me start violently retching into their plastic buckets. Vomit spews as if projected from a firehose. While I’m aware that this is par for the course in adventures of this nature it’s disconcerting nonetheless. Within seconds the medicine takes effect and my visual field is overtaken by a kaleidoscopic swirl of geometric shapes and patterns and I have an overwhelming sense that I’m leaving the material realm for a land populated by entities of a malignant nature. This becomes abundantly clear when I see a screaming neon monkey that disappears before it’s able to sufficiently frighten me. Soon I am surrounded by aliens and crystalline polygonal structures behind which demonic creatures are hiding, waiting to scare the living hell out of me for purposes beyond my limited understanding. I desperately want to puke but there is simply nothing in my stomach and instead I release a burp that smells like I’ve recently eaten hot garbage out of a dumpster behind a dollar Chinese restaurant. None of this matters because I am still dealing with the colossal fire breathing dragon that will not allow me passage to the spirit realm. The level of sheer panic is so profound that I open my eyes and when I do, I look at Bobbi and she looks like Count Dracula’s sister before morphing into the second daughter of the Virgin Mary. I’m suddenly struck with an immediate and intense desire to defecate, so I stand and stumble to the bathroom. I pull down my Pour La Homme pajama bottoms and before I can even sit on the bowl, fecal matter in the form of a Satanic Chinese Red Dragon erupts from my anal cavity with such force that I’m concerned I may have chipped the porcelain. I can’t worry about that now because the dragon is speaking to me:
“Your mother has implanted a rather powerful psychic cord in your second chakra.”
“Shit!” I cry out. “Can nothing be done about this?” I question seriously.
“I’m working to dislodge it as we speak,” explains the Satanic Chinese Dragon.
I’m concerned but allow him to do the work regardless and when he’s freed the energetic block I feel lighter and freer and decide to go back to my cushion, where I see Bobbi hurling into a plastic bucket and praying for mercy. I put my hand on her back as if I’m the Archangel Raphael and it does little to quell her agony and she begrudgingly moans “I’m never doing this again.”
I decide to lay down and find myself tormented for hours by frightening visions and heavy emotional content the nature of which would bore even the most astute reader. I have no recollection of falling asleep but realize that I must’ve when I awake abruptly at daybreak.
Fabian looks chipper and explains that last night we took the Mother and now we will take the Father. I have no real use for these labels and I’m only half paying attention until I realize that I’m expected to ingest another powerful plant medicine that I have never heard of. I’m now starting to wonder why I have relieved my bank account of several hundred dollars to partake in this experiment. Within minutes I’m holding a glass filled with what I’m told is the Father and my Roman Catholic upbringing is suddenly called forth and I ingest the liquid as if it’s the body of Christ.
Then I wait.
I turn to Bobbi and it’s clear that she’s had a rough night and is reevaluating the life choices that have brought her to this moment. We stare at each other in anticipation of the inevitable and as if to announce this the Jewish screenwriter in the corner begins heaving into his pail. A morbidly obese woman begins sobbing uncontrollably. I look over to make sure Bobbi is okay but now she’s on all fours spewing into her bucket. Then all hell breaks loose and it’s like a scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only I’m totally fine. In fact, I feel quite pleasant and this disturbs me. Suddenly, a bearded blond actor screams out “I’m sorry!” at the top of his lungs. His chin is shaking in an abnormal way and he’s staring up at something on the wall as if Jesus Christ himself had appeared to him. “I’m alive! And that’s okay”, he continues. Fabian looks at me and shrugs then scampers off to assist another sad fellow who’s limbs have seized up and is now turning blue.
“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe!” he bellows as Fabian holds him and rubs his head.
“I’m afraid of my sexuality!” screams the bearded blond as he stands.
There’s an un spoken horror that overtakes the room, even among the sick and immobile. As if it couldn’t get any worse, the bearded blond wets his sweatpants then yanks them down to his ankles and proclaims confidently, “I have a huge cock!” I catch a glimpse of his microscopic member and decide that this is my cue to take a tour of the courtyard. Bobbi tries grabbing my ankle as I get up to leave but I tear my foot away from her and storm out, leaving her to fend for herself with the naked thespian.
Outside I find the two Russian sisters and I sit with them. The older sister drapes her legs over mine and seductively asks, “Are you Italian?”
“Yes” I reply.
“My ex husband was Italian. Very passionate.” Then she feeds me a piece of Mango and it’s literally the greatest thing I’ve ever tasted. I begin rubbing her legs while looking at the younger one and I imagine what it would be like to have them both at the same time. Two Russian sex kittens in a sexual frenzy, one on my mouth and the other on my cock, fighting with each other over who is going to cum first before I drop a bathtub sized jizz bomb on them both. No sooner does this fantasy enter my brain before I am struck with a sense that it might be inappropriate for this venue so I shove it to the nether regions of my mind and whisper, “I’m attempting to temper my passions”.
“You shouldn’t do that”, she says seductively and I’m positive that I should leave this situation before I’m arrested. I go back inside with a few strawberries in a bowl when I spot a tantric yoga instructor in all white with unbelievable tits. I offer her a strawberry and she exclaims,
“Your shirt is everything.”
I continue on, weaving through the carnage.
“I want to have sex with you!” screams the bearded blond, luckily he’s immobile.
I go back to my cushion where there’s an extremely thin East Indian princess who could be straight out of Aladdin. Within seconds after lying down, I find myself intertwined with her, her hands cascading all over my body. That’s when I notice her wedding ring, which boasts a rock roughly the size of my penis. It’s unnerving on several accounts but I allow this to continue until she begins weeping and convulsing in my arms. I’m not sure what to do so I simply say “Everything’s gonna be alright” even though I know that is definitely not true. After several minutes of this she finally stops crying and says “I think I want to let him in.”
“Who?” I ask. “Satan? St. Nicolas? The spirit of your dead grandfather?” I demanded to know who she wanted to “let in” at this critical phase in my journey.
“Him.” She points to a 6 foot 5 Austrian male model who is sitting alone having what appears to be a contemplative moment. My compassion kicks in and I wave him over. He strides towards us and lays down, putting his head on my chest and before long I’m holding both the Indian princess and the Austrian model and they are rubbing me and each other and I feel compelled to massage their backs as they do this. I’m confused both sexually and spiritually but I feel that expressing this might spoil the moment so I continue as if this is totally normal and I hear someone vomit followed by the bearded blond,
“I’m so afraid!”
“I’m never doing this again” proclaims Bobbi.
“I can’t breathe!” exclaims the computer science nerd.
Then I hear Fabian giggle with pleasure as I lie there with two strangers coiled around me and I think to myself,
This is alright. I’m fine.
I’m gonna be…
okay.