The Answer to Everything (20 page)

Nod. Sip.

“Amy and I were just connecting in the Lord’s love. Nothing smarmy about that. That’s a beautiful thing to do, right? That’s why I invited you to join us!”

Sip. Nod.

“You should have,” said Amy.

“Seriously man, would I have invited you to join us if we were tryin’ to hide somethin’? I mean, think about it.”

I considered. I nodded. “OK,” I said.

They were pretty convincing, actually. Maybe Raine wasn’t such a shitty actor after all. I may have even believed them if I hadn’t heard that sound. That familiar Amy sound.

It was the sound she makes when you fill her with cum.

“So we’re good?” said Raine, squeezing my knee and rising.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll see you guys in the morning. Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas,” said Amy with a little wave.

But we didn’t see him in the morning. I’m happy to report that I never saw the large-headed, thick-thighed dipshit again. Because he left Elderbrook that very night. He left soon after returning to the house and discovering that young Coco was not sleeping peacefully in the guest room like she was supposed to be. No. According to Amy, Raine found darling Coco in Eldrich and Steve’s room, starkers with her mouth full of Peter Scheibling’s balls and her legs spread wide as Eldrich attempted to cram his colossal schlong into her teeny tween twat (while Steve-o knelt behind him, tonguing his master’s glory hole and jerking himself off).

It seems the mushroom trio had gone cuckoo for Coco puffs.

My absolute fave part was that degenerate-Eldrich and his pervy crew reportedly gave Raine the same spiritual-connection spiel that he and Amy had laid on me in the bubble.

When I heard that, I remember thinking:
Maybe there is a God. And maybe Eldrich is right about his magnificent sense of humour
.

Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold.

Emotions flare. Emotions obscure.

Raine’s last visit with us was at Christmas. John moved back to Hawton Boulevard in January. But neither of them ever denounced the Institute. Not once. Not ever.

Whoever suggests such a thing is a liar.

So … Eldrich, soaring on psilocybin and suffering a horrendous lapse of judgment, tried (and thankfully failed) to have unprotected intercourse with Raine’s fourteen-year-old daughter. Unfortunately, Mushroom Steve and Peter Scheibling were in on it too. A group thing. Not at all unusual for the Institute at that point, except for the underage-minor portion of the equation. Was the girl sexually compromised? Yes, of course. Three adult males took her to bed—though not against her will at least. Coco admitted that she’d sought out the men and initiated the escapade. But who knows how far she meant it to go. Did she leave the Institute as a virgin? Yes, assuming she arrived as one. There was nudity and oral, but no actual penetration.

Thank heaven for small mercies and huge cocks.

Raine, who stumbled upon them in flagrante delicto, was, I thought, incredibly reasonable about the whole thing. Of course, he took his kid and split right away—we didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye—and he immediately severed official ties to the Institute (he texted from the airport, asking me to remove his endorsement and photo from the website, which I had Wayne do right after breakfast), but he didn’t press
charges and he never spoke out about what had happened. Even after everything went horribly wrong, when reporters were all over Raine, digging for dirt, clamouring to know why he had dissociated himself from the Institute (no more tweets/visits), he remained astonishingly tight-lipped and restrained, stating that while he felt that the Institute had done a lot of fine work, and that Eldrich had a good heart and a lot of positive views on how to live a life rich in God, he couldn’t get behind
all
of the Institute’s philosophies and so had decided to pursue his own spiritual path.

Amazing.

You know, John loves to slag Raine, but not only did the man not rat us out (and capitalize on an opportunity for endless publicity), he was also incredibly supportive and gracious when we needed him to be. I mean, we’re already in legal hell; the last thing we need is a statutory rape indictment on top of everything else. I think we should be very grateful for Raine’s loyalty and wisdom. Unlike your typical person, he was able to see past his own emotional response. He was able to detach from assumptions and try to really
understand
what had happened. He knew that one slip-up of judgment didn’t define Eldrich or the Institute. Give the man some respect.

Anyway … as everyone already knows, things went sideways after Christmas. John dumped me and pretty much took off as soon as his sculpture was finished. He would stop by to pick up his paycheque and cozy up to Phil. That was about it. He didn’t do any work. Raine was out of the picture, of course. And I really missed his energy and the excitement he generated on his visits. Peter Scheibling had settled in and,
together with Steve, was planning the big ayahuasca ceremony. The first thing he did was go through the kitchen and get rid of anything that tasted remotely good. He put us on the most bland and punishing diet for weeks. No sugar, salt, oils, pork, fat, spices, bananas or apples. No alcohol. Nothing processed, smoked or pickled. Nothing fermented or canned. And worst of all, no caffeine! I spent the first two days in bed with the world’s worst migraine and boils sprouting on my neck. Seriously, I had pus-oozing withdrawal pimples. It was hideous. And that was followed by three weeks of mashed lentils and herbal tea. I lost nine pounds. He also banned sex and masturbation, which made the men all testosteroney and hostile. Plus the weather was unrelentingly awful. Freezing cold and tons of snow. I felt trapped and depleted. It was the first truly joyless period of the Institute. Everything had gone dark, and things seemed to be getting worse and worse all the time.

I should have guessed something bad was coming.

As for the night of the ceremony … I’m not supposed to talk about it.

And I don’t want to talk about it.

~

Holy Oliver Sacks, Batman! Drew Woollings has awakened! He focused his peepers. He spoke semi-coherently. He attempted a feeble squeeze of the damp mitt of Mama Bear, who managed, in her excitement, to unwedge herself from a hospital armchair (I usually had to hoist her out, and was thinking of installing a winch).

Guess what did it? A sleeping pill. Yes, that’s right, a drug designed to induce somnolence. A little tab of zolpidem, otherwise known as Ambien—a pharmaceutical so mysterious and daffy not only does it sometimes cause sleep-walking, sleep-driving, sleep-bingeing and sleep-fucking, it can also rouse patients who have been in a persistent vegetative state for years. This was discovered by accident and relatively recently, so there haven’t been a lot of clinical trials, but anecdotally it works in about 10 percent of patients. And it worked on our boy Drew! I was there when it first happened. A nurse administered the drug. Half an hour later, Drew’s cheeks flushed with colour and he began making mumbly-grumbly sounds. The doctor was summoned. Soon after, Drew turned his head, looked at Doreen, who was already hyperventilating, and said, “Mommy?” She fountained into tears and lunged at her boy. A flurry of
I love
yous
and
I love you toos
and
kissy-kissy
and
Am I in hospital?
and
Are you in pain?
and then all of it interrupted by the neurologist and his questions, so my only interaction was a sheepish wave when Doreen exclaimed, “Your best friend is here!” Drew was understandably confused. Mama chalked it up to the coma and I was off the hook. An hour later, Drew slipped back into unconsciousness, but the doctor assured Doreen that he would come around each time he took the drug, and that the neural pathways, thus stimulated, may well begin to heal.

Doreen would likely get her son back.

And I would likely get my story.

I took her to the Ikea cafeteria to celebrate.

T.O. MAGAZINE—July/August

Questioning the Answer Institute

They came from across Canada and the US, seeking spiritual guidance and fulfillment. What they found was a New Age sect that took their money, fed them hallucinogens and, for a core group of devotees, cost them their lives.

AN EXCLUSIVE INSIDER’S TALE OF SEX, DRUGS AND AN ACT OF GOD IN ONE OF TORONTO’S TONIEST NEIGHBOURHOODS

by Griffin Hill

IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A CHURCH.

In fact, 81 Elderbrook Avenue is a private residence in Toronto’s exclusive Bridle Path neighbourhood. The home was purchased in 2010 by Chen Xi Quan—also known as “Phil”—a Singaporean expat from one of that country’s most powerful and affluent families. Between November 2011 and February 2013, Quan allowed his home to serve as headquarters for the Answer Institute—a New Age, quasi-religious organization that promised “enlightenment, healing and truth” to its followers. Today, the luxurious house sits empty, cordoned off by police tape, pending a criminal investigation into the deaths of nine Institute members—including Quan—and a legal battle contesting ownership of the property.

Davinder and Bebe Dhaliwal have lived across the street from 81 Elderbrook for more than two decades. Like most houses in the neighbourhood, theirs is set well back from the street and shielded
by trees and shrubbery. The Dhaliwals, both retired, are private people who have never kept tabs on their neighbours. Still, about a year ago, they started to notice a lot of cars parked up and down Elderbrook every weekend. “We assumed they were young people having parties,” Davinder told me. “Sometimes we’d hear music or drumming, but it never went late and we were never disturbed, so we didn’t pay much attention.” It wasn’t until the Dhaliwals were awakened by police and ambulance sirens in the early-morning hours of February 2 that they realized something more sinister might be going on across the street. And when they learned there had been ritualistic drug ceremonies and orgies taking place so close to their home, they were shocked. “We had no idea,” Bebe says. “If we knew what was going on over there, we would have moved.”

The figure at the centre of the Answer Institute, its spiritual leader, is Eldrich Becker, a self-described “metaphysician.” He is tall and lanky, with shoulder-length brown hair, intense green eyes and a wide smile. He sports a three-day growth of facial hair, a loosefitting white shirt, linen pants and worn-out Birkenstock sandals. There is something vaguely Christ-like about his appearance—the kind of modernized depiction you might find on a religious souvenir in a dollar store. His slow, soft way of speaking adds to the Jesus effect. He looks considerably younger than his thirty-four years. I meet with Becker at his modest, one-bedroom rental apartment in a high-rise at Yonge and St. Clair. He greets me at the door with an unexpected hug, and an offer of tea and toast.

Becker, an only child, grew up in Toronto’s west end, near Lansdowne and Bloor. His father, Mark, was a master plumber who left his wife and infant son, returning to his native Detroit
ten months after Becker was born. His mother, Lynette, a devout Anglican who played the pipe organ at her local church, raised her son on her own. Eldrich was a bright boy, an early reader who always had his nose in a book, but he didn’t do well in school. He was easily distracted and had trouble focusing. The older he got, the less meaningful the standard curriculum felt to him. When he was fourteen, Becker dropped out of junior high, left home and began busking on the streets of the Annex for change. “I felt happy to be free of the brick building and out into the
real
school,” he recalls. “It didn’t bother me that I was homeless or eating out of Dumpsters half the time. Just the opposite. I felt ecstatic. I was playing music, reading a lot, learning a lot, meeting great people, sharing ideas … I’m lucky because I found the right way to live early on. And I’ve been living that way ever since.” Becker smiles radiantly. His apartment is alive and green with dozens of house-plants. There are musical instruments of all kinds scattered about, and numerous books shelved in old Sealtest milk crates. There are volumes of poetry and philosophy—Keats, Kierkegaard, Plato, Thomas More. Another crate holds the
Summa Theologica
of St. Thomas Aquinas, the
Bhagavad Gita; The Essential Talmud
, and Augustine’s
Confessions. There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves
by James Kavanaugh lies open on the arm of Becker’s fraying wicker peacock chair. He seems more like a genuine bohemian than the president of a corporation that held seminars, solicited donations and sold T-shirts, souvenir photos and DVDs to the tune of close to two million dollars in its first fiscal year. He explains that his role in the Institute was to “explore truer ways of being and share God’s love with Seekers” (the official name given by the Institute to its followers). Administration, finances and all business
matters, he says, were handled entirely by the other principal players at the head of the Institute: John Aarons and Amy McCullough—a young couple who lived across the hall from Becker. (Aarons and McCullough are no longer romantically involved. Both declined to be interviewed by
T.O. Magazine
.) Aarons, a twenty-nine-year-old art school dropout, befriended Becker and quickly became interested in his philosophical and spiritual views. He introduced Becker to McCullough, who was studying psychology at York University.

Becker tells me that, for several months, he acted as a kind of mentor to Aarons, who was undergoing a spiritual awakening. “He was a man divided,” says Becker. “Hungry for God, but angry, confused … deeply wounded by what happened to his mom and dad.” Aarons’s parents, David and Voskie, died in 2003 while vacationing in Cabo San Lucas. The couple went swimming at Neblina Beach—a spot known for its dangerous riptides—and were pulled out to sea by a powerful current. At the time, reporters speculated the pair may well have been aware of the widely acknowledged risks of entering the water at Neblina Beach. Just a few weeks prior to leaving for Mexico, the couple learned they were among the dozens of victims whose life savings had been squandered by Paul Hagopian, a former mutual fund salesman at IGC Financial, and long-time family friend. (Hagopian, who had gambling and cocaine addictions, eventually pleaded guilty to thirty-three counts of fraud and served six years in prison.) Becker tells me John Aarons was haunted by his parents’ death but was able to find solace through Becker and his teachings. “He was in the dark, and I helped guide him toward the light,” says Becker. “I guess he wanted to share that experience with others.”