Not quite sure what happened. It's almost like I went into a coma and, when I woke up, tada! I'm in LA. And that friend who I used to watch Melrose Place with? He ended up going out there too, but we won't talk about him. Our friendship did not end well.
It started with a call from my long, lost brother. I swear, I almost forgot I had one. We were really close when I was a little girl. Then he discovered Jesus. It was the late 70's.
It started with his sudden rejection of what he loved the most: Music... and Middle Earth. He destroyed his JRR Tolkien collection. I remember driving out into an undeveloped area of Palm Harbor in Florida with him. He opened up his trunk and we proceeded to smash his records on the concrete in a cul de sac. Super rare vinyl like the original It's a Beautiful Day album and the limited Heart Magazine album and some Todd Rundgren record. It was all sinful he told me. He, the brother who would sit in his car and read Salem's Lot to me while we waited for our laundry.
I remember one night my sister was watching Three's Company. My melodramatic brother screeched, "Demon's are dancing around her in there!". "Really?" I thought. Wow. Jesus was even stricter than the principal at my school. Life wasn't going to be any fun with Jesus in it. Oh well. At least I was going to heaven and I wouldn't burn into an eternal lake of hellfire like my sister and Jack Tripper and Janet and Krissy.
He traded in Joni Mitchell for Amy Grant and Led Zeppelin for a Christian band called The Second Chapter of Acts. They had a tune called "The Devil is a Liar" and my brother would play it really loud, all the while reminding me that the devil was, indeed, a big, fat fucking liar. Don't buy it! Fun is evil!
He took me to the drive in theatre to watch a series of films about the Rapture. The first one was called "A Thief in the Night". He had these little comic books that would show gay people in bars with demons whispering in their ears. Everyone was secretly gay, according to my brother's religion.
My mom had recently divorced my father. She was raised Jewish. In fact, her father lost his entire family in the Holocaust. That's how Jewish she was. Instead of embracing the Jew in her, she was influenced by my brother and was exposed to Jesus. Something I found out years later was that my brother had come to her and made a confession.
He was having impure thoughts about other men and was afraid that he was going to be doomed because of it. But Jesus had saved him from his homosexuality. I guess to show Jesus her gratitude, mom accepted him as her personal savior and lord. And that's how Jesus joined my family. I often wonder how different things would be if my mom would have reverted back to Judaism.
My brother ended up going to some Christian Retreat in Tennessee and camping on their grounds. Then he went to Israel with them to convert Jews to Jesus. I was sad to see my brother go. I was about 10 at the time.
I hadn't heard about my brother for a while nor had my mom. Then suddenly we found out that my brother was now Jewish and had changed his first name from Jerry to Yoel and adopted my mom's very Jewish maiden name. I didn't see my brother again until I was 18. We had both changed so much and any connection we had when I was a child had died. He was a stranger.... and kind of an asshole.
So years passed. He went to San Francisco. I went to New York City. While he hadn't come out to me, I knew. Finally, he moved to Colorado with his "friend" and out of the blue, he started writing me in New York. He sent me some audio cassettes of The Breeders. Apparently, he started some tshirt business with his "friend" and he would work "events" around the country selling them. He sent me a huge box of shirts. One of them was a Betty Ford Clinic one. I was flattered. How did he know I was an alcoholic? We had been estranged for so long.
Maybe my brother and I could be friends again, I hoped. The little girl inside of me missed her big brother. One day were were on the phone and i basically outed him. I told him I didn't understand why he felt he needed to keep it from me. If he was going to hell, I was gonna be right there with him. I had my own crosses (no pun intended) to bear when it came to my own sexuality issues plus... well, I was a lush and a cokehead. I was so out of control back then.
He invited me to come out West to help him sell tshirts at these "events" which were really gay pride festivals. We would set up a booth and sell tshirts to drunk gay people. He offered to fly me out there and pay me $1,000. I would be out there 3 weeks and I'd get to see Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, California.... CALIFORNIA! Fuck yeah!
And that's how I was introduced to LA. I worked the Long Beach festival, stayed there for a few days and realized that California was kind of nice and maybe, just maybe, it would help me tame the wild party beast that was definitely out of control. Also, it might help that stagnant career of mine. So, I moved to LA and lived there for ten years and that experience is another story.
The last year was pretty brutal. My dad had died a couple of years before and my mom had been battling Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow, for years. It was finally getting really bad. I was bordering on 40. That last year I thought a lot about those days with Rama. I even googled him.
Turns out Dr. Frederick Lenz aka Rama killed himself in a suicide pact. It was under mysterious circumstances and quite controversial. He was also on some list of cults. Many of his students had defected and some even wrote books about how he had sexually exploited some of his female followers and was a very materialistic man which went against everything he taught. I remember when I saw him, he was always talking about immediate wealth and how it was important so that his students would have the time to pursue their spiritual path instead of being consumed by some full time job.
I had one foot out the LA door and I was looking for some kind of guidance since I had that opportunity 15 years ago to take that spiritual journey and opted for a life of debauchery and partying instead. I had nothing to show for those 15 years. Just bad relationships and a career that never quite took off. I got work here and there but nothing that ever enabled me to not have to find other ways to supplement my income. So my resume was full of holes and I was pushing 40. My dad was dead and my mom was dying.
I tracked down my college roommate's (now) ex boyfriend online. I needed something-- anything--to help me deal with this intense feeling that my life was imploding. I was so grateful when he emailed me back.
He was still on the dharma path. He didn't mention Rama in his email. He asked me to coordinate an event with all the Hollywood big wigs to raise money for his dharma connection. He said that's all it would take to put me back on the path. I realized I didn't want to renew that relationship so I didn't respond.
A few months later I took my cat and moved back to Florida to take care of my mom who was clearly nearing the end of her life. My mom and I were always very close and I couldn't bear the thought of not being with her at the end of her life. I didn't want to regret it. But I was afraid to leave. I swore I would never go back to Florida and my mom had displayed signs of paranoia. What was I getting myself into?
Rock bottom, that's what.
But it's that rock bottom that brought me to a point where I resumed meditating after 15 years.
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