As the Goddess Project says, to heal pain points: “Ice to water, water to vapor. Ohhhhm.”
Julia calls—she wants me to join her in a 6 p.m. Groupon cardio barre class.
Cardio barre.
Goddess-like, I dig within my True Self and find . . . the inner no!
IN THE MAIL, I get a catalogue from a company called Softer Seasons and I like it. I like it a lot. It features serene women of a certain age smiling secretively to themselves as they move glamorously alone through gauzy abodes. There is:
A single wine glass holder for personal tub soaking. (Note: nothing is for two.)
A kind of bathrobe/kimono that—it’s hard to explain—looks like you can take it on or off in one simple tie.
A pashmina blanket—wait, no, Snuggie—a specialized Snuggie for people who apparently find regular Snuggies too complicated.
I love all of it. From now on, I want everything around me to be soft. I buy a discounted pillow from Target that says, SWEATPANTS ZONE. Also, socks just for the house, fuzzy socks.
I see walk-in tubs advertised in AARP Magazine and think, What a great idea!
I CONTINUE MAKING online forays into goddesshood, from a menu of options that come to resemble a kind of Angie’s List, if you will, of personal transformation. This voyage does not proceed entirely smoothly.
I do a five-minute online meditation. It’s a video of a peaceful forest, with Tibetan bell sounds, but I’m bothered by a faint buzzing sound in the background. Is that a chainsaw?
I try an online webinar in goddess energy. The goddess energy is, unfortunately, being summoned from a rather dingy looking attic. Louise Wellman, the webinar leader, an addled older lady with a shock of gray hair, is having a lot of technical problems. “Is it on?” she keeps murmuring, in her trance voice. “I think the camera’s on now. A red light is blinking. Isn’t it?” But we can only see her from eyebrows up.
I study an online brochure for a seventy-two-hour women’s spiritual retreat. I am tempted—the surrounding countryside looks gorgeous. But it’s hard to figure out whether the cabins are nice or dumpy. There are one too many enigmatic close-ups of hands reaching out to plates of fussily arranged fruit. There are one too many soft-lit photos of lumpy women in sweatpants with closed eyes, holding hands in a circle.
Where is the wine—?
Ah— Possibly no wine, because the retreat is about “women’s emotional healing, addiction recovery, trauma relief, personal transformation, midlife reinvention.”
This sounds too intense. I’m breaking into a sweat just thinking about it. Ice to water, water to vapor.
I think I’m going to have to do this goddess thing my way. Sort of an à la carte thing. Compare goddess fabric swatches. I drive to the Third Eye Bookstore I’ve always been curious about, in South Pasadena. VISA card in hand, I strike gold. Granted, at first I get a little snarled in the Wiccan section. I’m visually drawn to a “Know Your Elves” calendar with daily magickal practices. But as I page through it, I realize there are too many kinds of elves—wood ones and air ones and water ones. It requires too much constant gardening of little herb pots and then buying special stones like lapis lazuli to place into the little pots. Instead of “self-care,” it is “elf care.”
I pick up another book: The Warrior Goddess Way: Clarity, Creativity, and Inner Power for Women—Birth a Path of Authenticity and Honesty. Blood red cover. No.
But look: here’s The Pocket Pema Chödrön that fits into a felted saddle bag with a peace sign, 40 percent off! A tarot deck . . . totally made of cats! “I love it!” I hear myself crow. An essential oil (chamomile, frankincense) car air freshener! Something called The Green Goddess Cookbook, featuring stunning sunlit photos of olive oil, peaches, soft cheeses, and—look at this sultry chapter title: “A Passion for Ramps.” Ramps! I think, shimmying my deliciously plump shoulders. “A Passion for Ramps!”
I see an Ayurvedic Goddess Massage advertised and, while it’s pricey, for my birthday, I book it! Then I turn the corner, and there it is: the Himalayan tie-dye section. The colorful drapey hangers invite and fling their musliny arms out to me. And I see them: blossomy purple harem pants, in a style I might call “Pema Bollywood.”
I look at the tag and see those four magical words: “One Size Fits All.”
MY BIRTHDAY ALWAYS falls around the time of Mardi Gras.
A rabid New Orleans lover, Charlie always observes Mardi Gras. However, Mardi Gras is a very hard party to throw. “Fat Tuesday” is also always a big fat school night. Anyway, most of our friends in L.A. think Mardi Gras is kind of weird, like some kind of skanky Bourbon Street boob-flashing thing. As opposed to having deep mystical/Native American/Zulu tribal roots, according to Charlie.
So, in the past couple of years on Mardi Gras, Charlie has started having just three friends over who I’ve dubbed “the Gentlemen Callers.” Let me describe them to you this way. Picture a yin/yang symbol of polar opposites. If on the left, Sheryl Sandberg and her flotilla of Type A female leaders are leaning in in snappy A-line skirts, to the right, Charlie and his brethren are leaning out, in colorful dashikis and tinfoil hats.
Which is to say, theirs is an artisanal (aged in small batches) definition of maleness.
These brethren all met at Columbia in the late 1970s, when you could practically get in with a C average. (A simpler time, Charlie wrote his AP English essay on a work of literature he totally made up called “Apartment House Raga.”) The Gentlemen studied everything arcane and fascinating and useless, from English to erotic Japanese statuary to eighteenth-century horticulture. Passions include Hinduism, Sun Ra, Afrofuturism, vinyl, free jazz, and home cannabis delivery. You may also see antique globe collections, matchbook collections, and, hanging above a snarl of out-of-tune electric guitars, a broken tin whistle. By day they make small livings (manager of an apartment building, used-books seller, freelance luthier), not typically discussed.
The Gentlemen have a swath of put-upon wives and girlfriends. Many of us are on the spectrum—we are science fiction novelists, library scientists, oboe professors. Financially independent, we suffer our Gentlemen’s eccentricities and fiduciary problems, because, unlike many alpha males with real jobs, they are amusing company.
So, celebrating Mardi Gras here today are:
Tex, Hawaiian shirts, has some family mystery money, collects vinyl.
Jerry, Utilikilts, has a professional background in dance, mime, and clowning. Jerry married very well, to that gal on TV who plays the astrophysicist on that thing (one of the Star Treks?).
Bradford writes opera librettos. I have to say, Bradford has really blown up over the years. He is now almost obese, but never not in a blazer, the buttons practically popping off. But he is happy with himself. As he has said comfortably, stretching his arms out: “I am a perfect size fifty-two.”
All four Gentlemen, including Charlie, have lived, at various times, in New Orleans. (Most went to Burning Man once, but were too lazy to go a second time.) They all understand Mardi Gras, the history, the legacy, the various parade “krewes.”
So here it is, 2 p.m. in the afternoon. WWOZ New Orleans is streaming from the big living room computer. Charlie is standing in the kitchen, drinking a Bloody Mary and swirling a roux.