The Televisionary Oracle (11 page)

When this pleasure ended, I was finally allowed to be dressed. Vimala and the twelve other chiefs covered me with a silk magenta robe and slippers. But in trade I had to submit to a greater indignity. Vimala drew my bangs off my forehead and bobby-pinned them to the top of my head, destroying the function I cultivated them for. Now my birthmark was glaringly revealed.

In the best of times, I bought the Pomegranate Grail’s party line that this was a beauty mark of messianic distinction. But right now, feeling exposed and humiliated even as I basked in the strange triumph of playing the music of grunting backs, I hated the blotch more than I ever had before. In fact, it was at that moment I decided I would get rid of it, somehow, someday, I didn’t know how.

I was guided to sit upon a rose-bedecked throne on a litter that was picked up and held three feet off the ground by four strong women. My valets then circumambulated me very slowly, throne and all, thirteen times counterclockwise and thirteen times clockwise around the entire assemblage. While this excruciating part of the ritual dragged on for what must have been an hour, Vimala and the twelve other chiefs intoned from the holy texts of the Pomegranate Grail, from the most ancient to the most recent. The last section had a particularly spooky part.

Finally the reading and the circumambulations stopped. My four valets set me down beneath the myrtle tree where the effigy of Persephone leaned. A group of five singers then droned on with sacred hymns to Persephone for a long time. Their voices were pretty but the melodies were quite boring. As they sang, the thirteen chiefs came up to me one by one and kissed my blotch. When they were done, Vimala crowned
me with a half-gold, half-silver headdress.

Darshan followed, a creepy event in which my job was simply to sit and radiate my direct connection to the Goddess while everyone else squatted and stared, soaking up my channeled beneficence.

The awkwardness didn’t end but changed form as I oversaw the ritual of the divine feast. After placing my now-magical hands over the bread and salt and wine and flame, I distributed the blessed food to the assembled. Following this mirthless adventure, I opened my gifts interminably, the polite performance of which distracted me from the heavenly music of harp and drum and three singers.

Finally the mood lightened. The real feasting began, with unconsecrated salads and broiled fish and home-baked breads. The bonfire was lit, I let my bangs down, and the dancing began. For a time I was a mere sprout again, not a stiff old queen. I skipped and squealed and tumbled. I grass-stained my ceremonial gown and used my crown to play catch with Parvati, a friend my age, until Vimala stopped me.

But my temporary happiness hatched the miserable panic that had been pregnant in me all day. Without words, yet with unmistakable consciousness, I registered the fact that I had become a living symbol. I no longer belonged to myself; didn’t even belong to my seven mothers. I was a possession and creation of the scores of loving, nurturing women who had all day gazed towards me with infinite expectation. I was too young to have this realization, but that’s the story of my life.

As the first star burst out over the hill behind Isis Tower, I heard myself thinking a prayer. I didn’t understand it for many years, yet the words were unmistakable: “I will never be the queen you want. I will never be the queen you want unless you give me back myself.”

B
rainwash yourself before someone nasty beats you to it. Study the difference between wise suffering and dumb suffering until
you get it right. Commit crimes that don’t break any laws. Visualize Mother Teresa at the moment of orgasm. Build illusions that make people feel so beautiful they can’t stand to be near you. Pretend to be crazy so you can get away with doing what’s right. Sing anarchist lullabyes to homosexual children. Love your enemies in case your friends turn out to be jerks. Review in detail the history of your life, honoring every moment as if you were conducting a benevolent Judgment Day. Eat money. Fuck gravity. Drink the sun. Dream like a stone. Sing in the acid rain.

A
s I open my eyes, I find I’m not in a marsh being ravaged by a blue, eight-armed goddess. I’m not floating down a red river on a raft piloted by Rapunzel. Instead I’m sprawled awkwardly on the sidewalk in front of the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. There’s a rip in my pants near the right pocket, and blood stains the hole. It seems that while I was zonked—was it a dream or some hypnogogic hallucination generated by that strange cotton pad?—my flesh intersected with a broken bottle lying nearby.

Ruefully, I fully register the fact that I’ve returned to the state of mind that hundreds of millions of people all over the world ingest drugs and alcohol daily to escape. How long have I been away? Too long. The sun is going down. Twilight isn’t far away.

I try to slide back into the vision. The last thing I recall is the message scrolling on the weird, “organic” TV.

An unwelcome image weasels its way into my mind’s eye in response to the first question. I see myself quitting the music business cold turkey, abandoning the work to which I’ve devoted so many years of my life. It’s a painful thought that has become increasingly hard to suppress these last six months. I’ve truly grown to hate playing unventilated nightclubs where my lungs fill up with a year’s worth of secondhand cigarette smoke in one night. And I despise those odd nights when I’m totally uninspired and have to rely on professional tricks and techniques in order to fake boisterous abandon and improvisational fun. And I abhor it when my band members aren’t satisfied with a mere one hundred ten decibels, but feel compelled to crank their volumes up to eardrum-curdling levels that make it impossible for me or the audience to hear a word I’m singing. Worst of all, I can’t even bear to think about how much I despise dealing with slimy record company executives.

I force my imagination to slip over into more pleasurable meditations. I remember how utterly relaxed I was sailing along with Rapunzel in my vision. As I sneaked peeks up her rainbow batik mini-dress, I was flooded with memories from other times in my life I’ve felt perfectly at home. I can almost taste the white paste I licked from my fingers as I made a Valentine for Karol Darnell, the girl I had a desperate crush on in kindergarten. I can smell the cherry candies my grandma used to keep in a cedarwood bowl in her kitchen. I’m back at the Christmas pageant in church when I was eight years old, awash in smoldering myrrh and entertaining obsessive visions of growing as strong as Superman by drinking the hot blood of Jesus.

Two resolutions grip me. First, I’ve got to find out how to get in touch with Rapunzel. Second, I’ve got to summon every shred of wisdom I’ve accumulated about the arts of seduction and devote them to invoking that moment when I will gaze into Rapunzel’s adoring, lustful eyes—not in a dream but in concrete reality—as we weave our actual physical bodies together.

Censor that.

The previous fantasy belongs to an obsolete version of myself which I’ve earnestly sought to outgrow. Only in the old days would I have said, “I vow to do whatever it takes to win Rapunzel’s love.” Since then I’ve become wiser about the ethics of imposing my will on others. Witchy hexes definitely work—temporarily. As do manipulative stratagems copped from self-help books about love and relationship. But in the end there’s always sick-hearted, soul-withering karma to pay.

I recall an event from years ago, when Arlene, in a demonic show of strength, ripped out a half-broken piece of a curb across the street from the Dragon Moon dance club and hurled it through the windshield of my blue VW van. That was the night she fully registered how much I hated domestic routine and how unlikely it was, therefore, that I would satisfy her need to nurture me with regular doses of her fantastic cooking. The love spell I’d used to snag her infatuation three weeks previously had failed to take that detail (and many others) into consideration.

The shattered glass was easy to tolerate, I should add, compared to the revenge Arlene sought in the ensuing weeks. With lunatic clarity, she launched a letter-writing campaign to my friends, the local newspapers, and anyone else who’d listen, accusing me of all manner of crimes, from refusing to wear condoms to kicking a cat to using the term “cunt” in violation of my feminist principles.

No. The safer and wiser approach to seduction is to never never never seek to bend anyone’s will but my own.

“If it’s meant to be, it will be,” is how the New Agers phrase it.

Therefore I will now beseech the Goddess to reveal Her divine will for Rapunzel and me. Is it best for all concerned if Gorgeous Sphinx Prankster and I become temporary consorts? Best friends? Sisterly-brotherly comrades collaborating on some as-yet unimaginable project? Till-death-do-us-part soul twins?

“Dear Goddess,” I pray, “In the coming days please reveal your intention concerning the relationship between me and Rapunzel which will serve the greatest good for all concerned.”

Having said all that spiritually polite crap, of course, gives me at least half a license to lust and plot and scheme with all my heart and
soul and mind to make Rapunzel my lover. After all, my job as a human being is to master the art of being both a generous idealist and selfish narcissist at the same time. The two impulses should balance and complement each other. One should not overwhelm and cancel out the other.

Besides, the Goddess sometimes takes a while to reveal Her intentions. While I wait, I sure as hell am not going to be courteously passive. Instead I’ll proceed on the hypothesis that Rapunzel is my Queen and Chosen One, my soul twin and splitapart. Yes, I’ll be alert for signals from the Goddess telling me to cease and desist. But till those clues filter in, I’m full speed ahead.

So how will I track down my future muse? I think back to the performance ritual “A Happy Birthday for Death,” where I glimpsed her dancing atop the sepulcher. Were there any friends of mine there who might be able to slip me some intelligence concerning my heroine? Yes. Stim and Katrina. They were among the instrumentalists playing music to accompany her wriggle.

I hop to my feet as if I’m totally in control—nodding to the confab of skateboarders ten yards away as I gather my menstrual gifts from Rapunzel and pluck her underpants off my head—and bolt to the pay phone in front of the Catalyst.