Spring of ’84. Lothar left New York … quickly. Started a fire with a sage wand in his West End Avenue apartment. The Board threw him out. He moved to Los Angeles, where I lived. Took complete control of my life. Whenever I felt depressed, I would pick up the phone, dial his number (now committed to memory), place the earpiece against my neck, and say, ‘Music.’ I could hear him doing something or another on the other end of the line. For all I knew, he might have been masturbating. But more likely, he was making the sign of the holy cross or sending energetic plasma through the phone into my neck.
During this period, my dear friend Tanya kept an overprotective eye on me. She was a major player in the ‘Music’ cult. Her specialty was apparition observation. She could identify whether ghosts were floating, flying, or caught between the astral planes. She also identified when I needed to place a demon-releasing phone call. That girl was crazy as a loon trapped beneath a frozen lake. How could she not be? She, like myself and all of his followers, were surviving on the nutritious egg-whites-and-sugar diet.
‘How’s your blood sugar, hon?’ she would regularly ask me.
Word came through Tanya that it was time to enter the next phase of commitment. Lothar was to inform us of our new and even greater responsibilities in the war against evil. We were summoned to a rococo mansion in the Hollywood Hills.
Thirty some zombies seated on yellow and blue tie-dyed furniture, three huge unbathed Afghan dogs lying on top of each other at the foot of a winding staircase, enough lavender verbena incense to smoke out any terrorist group, and a full moon … Wasn’t it a full moon when my mother died?
It was my turn to go upstairs. There he sat on a pink nau-gahyde throne, looking more like Beelzebub than ever. His sinister, sunken, blue-eyed gaze made me feel like a helpless animal on the way to slaughter.
He whispered, ‘How are you, Loli?’
‘Not so good.’
‘No? I thought we were doing so well.’
‘It’s not working. I’m scared, I cry all the time, I can’t sleep, and the egg whites aren’t enough anymore. I’ve been eating real food.’
‘You have? I’m terribly disappointed.’
‘I had some nova two days ago. I’m so hungry.’
‘No, Loli, the demons are hungry.’
He sidled up alongside of me. His hot breath penetrated through my crawling skin. He pressed his bony fingers deep into my jugular. I wanted to throw up. Silence … All of a sudden, he yanked my hair. My head ached. I was in the maniac’s clutches. Somehow, he managed to get me in a half, no, this was a full nelson, I could no longer breathe.
‘Stop it! Stop it! You’re killing me!!!’
‘I’m killing them. Now you will be released forever!’
I writhed, undulated, slid sideways off the pink throne. The madman dove over the throne, pounced on top of me. I was totally entangled in his grip. My heart raced. It felt like the Kentucky Derby at the finish line … ‘And the winner … by a neck … is …’
Somehow I got free, lunged for the door, opened it, slammed it in his face, grabbed onto the banister, stumbled down the stairs, fell headfirst onto the living-room floor, sobbing.
Finally, I took a deep breath, pulling myself up, tripping over the tie-dyed furniture. I was still alive. I looked around the room. The zombies had not moved. I heard a strange piercing sound in the kitchen. Tanya was blending another egg-white-and-sugar special. I shouted, ‘HE’S CRAZY! He tried to kill me! WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE? Don’t you get it?! HE’S A FRAUD!’
Tanya entered, egg-white sin fizz in hand, three Afghans by her side. She strolled over to the front door, opened it with mindful conviction.
‘Get out! You are not welcome here. Your polluted ego is in control of you. You are no longer protected by the light of the group’s energy. You’re on your own, hon.’
I wept my way toward my car. I looked back … No! Mustn’t do that. The lights faded in the rococo house. I tripped, fell, picked myself up, opened the car door, parked my ass in my moonlit silver BMW convertible. Took off. Demons followed me. Demons sang a hideous Gregorian chant in my ear.
‘You will die,
You will die.’
I drove down one dark canyon road and up another. Some force greater than myself guided me home. The raging demons screamed louder:
‘You will die!
You will die!’
I ran into the house, opened the refrigerator door, grabbed all the eggs, dumped them one by one down the garbage disposal until they swirled out of this world. I shoved a piece of nova deep into my throat, opened cupboards, found a two-year-old jar of Planters peanuts, flipped open the lid, chug-a-lugged the rancid nuts as fast as I could.
In the bedroom … The demons. Gray slime slid along the hardwood hall floors. Smoke filled the air. Voices screamed: ‘You will die … you will die … you will die’… I am dying. I wanted to die.
Door slammed … mind split. I reached for the Valium in the medicine chest … five … ten … fifteen milligrams. Is this how my mother felt? Is this how she died? I sat in a hot bathtub filled with lavender bath salts. I sweated, screamed, sobbed until completely empty, crawled into bed. Shaking. At four a.m. I reached for the telephone to call my old psychiatrist, Dr Guttman. The answering service picked up.
‘Hello, this is Dr Guttman’s exchange.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Doctor Guttman will be away until August 29th.’
It was August 2nd. ‘My name’s Loli Greene. I need to speak to him right away! Please?’
‘I’m sorry, but Dr Guttman left strict instructions. He is not to be disturbed, unless it is an absolute emergency.’
‘Is suicide enough of an emergency? Is it?! I swear on my … I swear to God I will kill myself if you don’t get him on the phone. I mean it!’
Pause. ‘Hold please.’ Centuries went by…
‘Loli?’
‘Loli, it is four a.m. in California. What seems to be the problem?’
‘I’m losing my … The demons … If I take too much Valium, I’ll die like my mother did … Please. Please come back now. Please.’
‘Now listen to me, Loli. Calm down. Listen to me. I can’t come back, but I can call up one of my colleagues, Dr Dot. He will get you through this crisis. Just calm down. Breathe. Take another five milligrams of Valium, a hot lavender bath …’
‘I already did that.’
‘Do it again. Go to the medicine cabinet, take a Valium, run the bath, and breathe.’
‘They’re after me.’
‘Nothing is after you. You are going to be fine. Hang up the phone so that I can call Dr Dot. Remember, breathe and bathe.’
‘Breathe and bathe.’
‘You’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll see you in September. Until then, I think it would be wise if you saw Dr Dot on an everyday basis.’
‘Are you sure that his office will remember to call?’
‘I’m positive. Now hang up, Loli. Good night.’
‘Good night, Dr Guttman.’ Click.
The one and only reason August is a wicked month is that all of the finest psychiatrists in America gather on Cape Cod. They play Frisbee and frolic near the water’s edge while psychotic patients spend thirty-one days anxiously awaiting their return. On August 1st at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time, a severe and sudden agitation develops in the astral planes, because millions of helpless, hopeless Americans cannot deal with their psychiatric withdrawal. Nothing can be done about this, unless one is willing to throw oneself, one’s angst, and all of one’s hysteria into the psychiatric arms of an inept stranger.
Dr Dot was my inept stranger. For the longest twenty-nine days of our lives, we were thrown together, while Dr Guttman rode the waves on old Cape Cod.