CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MILA KINSLOW

(Excerpted from interview #MC1803/D)

It had all been so outta sight when it started.

In the beginning, one of the things I had dug the most was the vibe that the Deva radiated. He’d look at a tree, or a flower, or the body of a woman, and his face would totally transform, like a child’s. I don’t think I had ever seen an adult act that way before. His eyes would just sparkle like little stars. He used to say, “Nirvana is right here, right now.” We felt like we already lived in heaven.

We had become a volunteer family, glued to each other by a universe of love and the power of the Deva, who was a father, a brother, a lover, and a spirit all at the same time. We gave up our given names, even gave up our birthdays; Deva remade us into something better, something more beautiful and connected.

“Together we make one completed body,” he said to us. “Separately, you are the limbs, while I am the heart and the soul and the mind.”

When I was a little girl, I remember when my mom would sometimes have friends over to our house. When it got late, she would tuck me into bed in my little room, but I could still hear the drone of conversation from wherever the adults were, in the living room or out on the porch. I remember that warm, safe feeling I’d get when I heard the grown-ups laughing. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but that rhythm would lull me to sleep. That’s what it felt like when we first came to the ranch. The patterns and pulse of the community became so familiar, made me feel safe and alive, like I was wrapped in a cocoon.

I don’t know if I was ever in love with Deva, but I loved him in a way that seemed to please him. I don’t think that I knew what real love actually was at the time. Maybe I still don’t. Either way, it makes me sad to think about it now, because sometimes when I would catch Sweet Pete stealing glances at me, I’m pretty sure I got a hint of what it was supposed to look like. Poor Pete.

Sweet Pete didn’t have the same open-minded attitude where I was concerned. For most of us, it was a journey of sensual exploration. No big deal. Get it out and get it on, you know? For him it was different though. Pete and I had driven here together, trying to escape the craziness of LA, and to meet up with his friend. But his friend was long gone by the time we arrived at the ranch, and Sweet Pete felt alone and a little adrift because of that. Don’t put me down for this or anything, but somewhere along the way I’m pretty sure that I kinda broke his heart.

Little by little, I noticed that Deva began to separate the men from all the women, and he started getting super jakey. It was right after the high school kids came out to visit, and afterward Aurora was talking with that foxy, colored deputy. Deva Ravi fucking hated that. Excuse the language.

The topics of his nighttime bonfire talks gradually became these open-ended raps that could get pretty heavy and disturbing. Every once in a while you could still catch a little of that childlike glint in his eyes, but mostly it just seemed like some kind of cloud had drifted over him.

This one night after dinner, we were gathered by the fire singing songs and passing smoke around. One of the guys—I don’t remember who, maybe it was Timberwolf or the guy we all called “Corncob” cause he had these big buck teeth, and looked like he could eat a corncob through a chain-link fence. Anyway, he started laughing at something. He wasn’t laughing at Deva, he was just laughing and having a good time. But Deva Ravi had been spending more time with Larry and Mac from the mechanics shed. The three of them started doing more and more hallucinogenic stuff, like psilocybin and peyote and acid, and when they did, they’d all get super paranoid. So when that poor guy started laughing, Larry whipped out this buck knife that he carried and held the blade to that guy’s throat. I was sure he was going to slice his neck open right then and there, right in front of us. Just for laughing. After that, we all called him Scary Larry. But never to his face.

Another time, Grand Funk Railroad was scheduled to play a concert up in Portland and bunch of us girls were all set to drive there and see them. Truth is, we all thought Mark Farner was pretty cute, and that hair … Anyway, at the last minute, Deva totally freaked out and wouldn’t let us out of the gate. At first I was pretty pissed, but then I got embarrassed for him cause he was acting so crazy. I remember staring down at the ground while he screamed at us, just to have something to do, you know, so I wouldn’t have to see his face.

From then on, it seemed like everything got way more uptight.

Deva’s fireside talks about the Universal Mind gradually faded out completely, and the nighttime speeches became more about the rules we had to follow. Every few days, completely at random, we’d be called in one by one, to go up to the main house for an aura check. Deva would stare into our eyes, sometimes for minutes at a time, like he was peeling the skin right off our skulls; other times, he would circle us like a jungle cat, his palms inches away from our skin, feeling the waves and dimensions of our energy, making sure that we were still cosmically pure.

Not long after the aura checks began, Deva Ravi had us gather in the Spirit Room, the men seated on one side, the women on the other. He went on and on about the differences between the genders, and how even the earliest of civilizations had relied on rituals to mark the passage into manhood. That was how the sojourns started.

Deva said the purpose was to demonstrate resourcefulness, courage, and loyalty, and in the end, the men would discover their Universal Purpose. Each man was expected to go off by himself, each one in a different direction. They weren’t allowed to contact one another, and they couldn’t carry money or food, only the clothing on their backs. They were to rely on the universe for the provision of their needs, and were forbidden to come back to the ranch until the next new moon. This was for the cleansing of their spirits, Deva said, and to prove their worthiness.

It all felt really sad, man. That same night, all the girls stood in a line and watched them walk out through the gate. The only men left behind at the ranch were Deva Ravi and the two guys he had really started to lean on, Larry and Mac. Both of those guys had turned super creepy, I thought, but that’s a whole nuther story. The point is, that was the night that I remember feeling that sad and empty feeling for the first time, as we watched the men just walk away and disappear into the dark. Up until then I felt like I’d been living inside a magical world decorated with all these big, bold, fancy colors.

All of a sudden, it was like all those colors had turned to gray.