Group Hex Vol 1

by Andrew Robertson

  “Hi Brad,” I almost coo, shoving my hair behind one ear while I attempt to tilt my head in a sexy way.

  His gorgeous profile appears onscreen, curly blond hair backlit by his dorm lights. His full lips are surrounded by perfect stubble, and broad shoulders stretch inside a tan t-shirt.

  He looks up then away quickly. Not my best entrance I guess.

  “Hey Amber, listen I’m not going to be able to make it tonight.”

  “What?” I ask, my voice betraying my disappointment.

  “It’s just… finals are coming and I think maybe we’ve been moving a bit quickly.”

  Here we go, the face to FaceTime break-up I’ve been anticipating for a while now.

  “I get it,” I say flatly.

  “I’m sorry, maybe after break we can pick this up?” He asks like he means it. He doesn’t mean it. I know I haven’t been keeping it together, showing up a little disheveled and to put it one way, not as floral as I could be.

  I end the call. Enough has been said and I can read the subtext. Time to move on, get to class, and probably time to get a new face scrub.

  Professor Grey teaches world Religion 201. She is a gorgeous, older woman that generations of students have been in love with. Her immense appeal is enhanced by her endless knowledge of gods, deities, ancient practices and the arcane. I gaze down the stairs at her from my usual aisle seat in the auditorium’s tenth row.

  “Today we are looking at the Living Buddha of Japan, China and India,” she begins. “I know it may be hard for some of you to imagine disconnecting from daily life, leaving your Instagram and pursuing a higher goal,” she jokes to laughter from the students. “But there are quite a few examples of ascetics from a sect known as Shingon Buddhism who chose to attempt the long and painful process of mummifying themselves on the road to enlightenment. In the process they became sokushinbutsu. We do know that this was practiced between the 11th century and the 19th, if not long before that, and the process involved a very strict diet. For the first thousand days, those choosing to take this path would only eat nuts and berries, nothing fatty that would cause decay in the body. They would also drink water and shed fat as part of this first stage. During the second thousand days, they would only eat roots and pine needles and tree bark and start to drink urushi tea. This tea comes from the Japanese lacquer tree, which as you may have guessed is not meant for regular human consumption. This tea would induce vomiting to remove water and dry out the body while helping to reduce decay. The substance would do all this while also protecting the body’s tissues from maggots, invasive flesh eaters and other predators by making the body toxic to them while perfectly preserving the skin at its point of mummification. There were also other herbs used as a part of this 3000 day process.”

  She pulls a clicker from her pocket and presses a button, bringing a screen down from the ceiling. An image flickers to life showing a human man dressed in saffron and golden robes in a temple, but this man’s skin is pulled tight on his bones. A mummy preserved in a perfect lotus position.

  “Once an ascetic was ready to undergo this process, they would assume the lotus position and sit in a small tomb, just big enough for their body. Other followers would wall them in, leaving a small tube for them to breathe through as they meditated, and a bell outside the tomb that was attached to a rope that wound through the tube. Once inside, the ascetic would ring the bell once a day, and when the bell no longer made a sound, the tube was sealed up for three years. After that time, the tomb would be opened and then the other followers would see if the ascetic had been successful in his effort to become a living Buddha.”

  My stomach lurches. How could someone choose to ingest things that would go on to crystalize their organs and turn their blood to sap? I’ve never understood suicide, and despite being open to all religions, it just seemed horrifying to me.

  “I know it may be hard to understand,” continues Professor Grey, as if reading my mind and the tension in the room. She scans the faces of the students and then lands on mine, making eye contact for a moment as my world goes into soft focus. “This was a path toward enlightenment for the sokushinbutsu, who believed that ascetic acts would lead to the successful completion of spiritual goals. Even in religions like Christianity, there are similar equations between an incorruptible body and signs of a special relationship with higher powers or even supernatural abilities. We know of Catholic saints and martyrs whose bodies resisted the ravages of decay and corruption after death which would be attributed to their holiness. This is just a different method of achieving a similar spiritual goal.”

  One of the students behind me clears his throat to ask a question.

  “What about the days in between?” He asks. “Was there not a period where they were partially preserved but still living and breathing, like a vampire or something? Did they age in any normal way? Did it hurt?”

  Professor Grey considers the question for a moment, turning on her four-inch heel to look at the image we all faced. I feel myself holding my breath for her response. Was there a way to delay aging?

  “There is not much research on the days leading up to the Sokushinbutsu monks internment in their tombs. We can assume that the majority of the mummification process took place once the diet was solely barks and resins, and I imagine it would be quite painful to move at all during the later stages. I would prefer we don’t use terms like vampire in this context. We do know that the skin and body would stop aging as there are no signs of decay but I’m not sure what walking, talking or even blinking may have looked like in those late stages. And before you all think this is the fountain of youth and a way to hold on to your youthful good looks, it’s very dangerous which is why you don’t see urushi tea and tree bark on late night television.”

  More laughter from the students.

  She turns back to the class and faces us with a bright, white smile. She presses a button on the clicker in her hand and a slide of text appears behind her.

  “I would like all of you to take down the links on screen, and consider what ascetic acts we see in other religions, or perhaps even comparable examples in your own life of what you have done to achieve your spiritual goals and we will discuss it in small groups during our next class.”

  I gather my things and leave the class, stealing one last glance at Professor Grey while I wonder if she has her own secrets to eternal youth because I know I’m not the only one that stares.

  Standing in front of the wall of skin crèmes, masks, serums and scrubs in a high-end beauty boutique, I feel deflated. My mother’s snarky comments really hit home and now I see a tired disguise hiding who I should be every time I look in the mirror. Little wonder Bradley wants his freedom. There are beautiful women, younger and even older all over campus and I don’t even have a decent night cream at home. Not even dental floss!

  A busty sales associate with teeth like subway tiles and a deep orange tan saunters up to me.

  “Can I help you find anything?’

  “Do you have a miracle cream to sort out this face?” I ask, trying my best to grin and act like it’s not my biggest concern today.

  She practically twirls toward the shelves in response; ready to hand out all the advice that beauty school armed her with.

  “Well we have this new one in. It has beta-peptides with essential amino acids and hyaluronic acid which is great for slowing down signs of aging,” she says in an excited voice while showing me a vast, clear plastic container with a tiny reservoir inside. “It’s part of a great antioxidant line. This retails for $59.99. “

  “That looks nice, but do you have something easier to pronounce?

  “Sure!” She squeaks. “I also have a great BB cream moisturizing cleanser that works very well with many of the antioxidant lines we carry here. Or if you prefer something organic, this serum contains tea tree oil and eucalyptus which is a great anti-fungal and is popular for both its anti-bacterial and antiseptic properties.”

  I take it from her hand a
nd examine the long, slender vial. The top is capped with a graceful pump made of transparent plastic in a shade of emerald green.

  “That sounds good,” I say. “Like tea tree from tree bark? Does it also protect the skin tissue from other invasive…predators?” I choke out, realizing how stupid I sound.

  “What do you mean?” She asks with a difficult smile creased along her subway tiles. “Like…acne?”

  I realize how ridiculous I sound, but press the issue further.

  “Do you know if there are any products here made from urushi? I think it’s Japanese.”

  “Oh, um, let me check the computer, it sounds so familiar.”

  She floats over to the cash register and begins typing on the keyboard. My heart skips, hoping that she has actually heard of the toxic Buddhist elixir and isn’t just pretending to know her stuff.

  “I don’t see it in my computer. Is that from a grapefruit? Maybe I will Google it and see if there’s something we can get in stock,” she says. I start to sweat and get blotchy, feeling stupid in this gallery of femininity.

  “No, no that’s okay, I’ll just take this,” I sputter as I push the tea tree tube toward her.

  Her facial expression changes as a new screen loads in front of her.

  “It says here that urushi is a toxic lacquer used on Japanese paintings… that can’t be what you are looking for? It’s like a poison ivy!”

  “No that can’t be it,” I laugh nervously.

  “Did you mean yuzu? Cause I just remembered that’s a grapefruit and we have something with that in it.”

  Leaving the store with two products I don’t want, I hop on the subway and head to work at the bar wondering how I will pay the credit card bill when it comes in. No one tips the ugly waitress that much.

  Late that night when work ends I rush home and Google urushi myself, just to see how badly I embarrassed myself. Most of the pages refer to its use in Japanese art as a toxic lacquer like the beautician said. Then I come across a page on Chinese medicine and I find other uses, including the treatment of internal parasites, inhibiting the progression of disease and as a very powerful antioxidant.

  I’m sure it’s not cheap but if I learned anything at the beauty boutique, it’s that every woman needs an antioxidant, but maybe something more powerful than a gloopy crème could have a better, longer lasting effect. If it could keep an old man looking fresh for hundreds of years, it could surely be adapted for other uses.

  My next search is for Chinese medicine practitioners in town and I print out a page of places I can stop by tomorrow. Being a scary spinster witch living alone on a hill is not part of my life plan. I need a solution, not a pink cream that smells like lipstick.

  It’s been pissing rain all morning. My first two stops prove fruitless with the staff speaking very little English and understanding what I was looking for even less. But as I walk up to the third place, it looks promising. Deep in Chinatown and down a narrow flight of stairs I enter a basement shop through an ancient curtain made of wood beads. The beads rustle and fuss as I step through before settling behind me allowing my eyes time to adjust. Sandalwood and incense are heavy in the air, a thin line of smoke rising from an ashy plate. Jars line all the walls of the small shop with so many twigs, stems, mushrooms and leaves that I am certain I will find something good here.

  Various bushels of dried herbs hang from the rafters and petrified fruits and fish sit in baskets along the floor. Picking up a long, zucchini like object, I look around to see who is minding the shop. A thorn pricks my finger and I drop the husk as an elderly woman shuffles up to me.

  “Sea cucumber,” she says in English with a faint Asian accent.

  “Oh it’s a vegetable,” I respond.

  “No, it’s a fish,” she retorts, laughing at me as she bends down to pick it up. “Used to be all wet like you.”

  “Sorry about that,” I say to her. “I thought it pricked my finger.”

  “So you hurt,” she laughs again, pulling a dry Kleenex from her pocket and handing it to me. Tiny motes of dust come off it like talcum after being crushed in her pocket for so long. “You need Chinese cure!”

  “Actually I’m looking for something specific,” She heads slowly toward a low glass case with many shelves and tiny boxes within. The case holds more vials, bottles of liquid, and something that looks like seahorses suspended in honey. She wears the black slip-ons with one strap, a tiny silver buckle, and the orangey brown sole that seem to be the uniform for Asian women of a certain age. “I’m wondering if you know where I could get something called urushi.”

  She stops and turns halfway around, assessing me with a sideways glance.

  “Cash only,” she says in a low voice. I nod in agreement and she continues. “That can be dangerous you know. Not many white people looking for it. What do you need it for? You are an artist?”

  I shake my head, no.

  “Well, I heard it is good for the skin and for cleansing the body. And I brought money with me.” I pull a hand from my pocket and hold out the $500 I took on a cash advance from my credit card. She glances at it but doesn’t take it from me.

  I let the words land hard in the unmoving air as she determines her next steps.

  “White girls always looking for the miracles,” she chuckles in a soft voice. “Chasing dragons or unicorns, is always the same result.”

  I ignore her comment. Botox can be dangerous too, but this could stop aging altogether and then I can focus on other things. Like impressing Brad and shutting up my bitch of a mother. The elderly lady turns around to reach into a small drawer beside an ancient cash register. She pulls out a key.

  Wandering to the store entrance, she first locks the doors before leading me to another door hidden behind a screen of palm fronds at the back of the shop. She opens the door with a heave and pulls a chain hanging from the ceiling. Lazy yellow light shines down to reveal a stone staircase winding even further below this basement level. There’s the smell of earth and the faint odor of paint and green onions. Descending ahead of me, she unlocks a battered red door at the base of the stairs with the key from the drawer.

  Entering a small room with a low ceiling and a table in the middle bordered by many metal shelves, I am certain she has what I want. But I’m also certain that what I want to do with it must be far from legal. There are swords, statues, knives, and a pestle and mortar filled with bronze powder on the table. She removes the pestle and mortar carefully and inserts them in a nearby filing cabinet before starting to clear the table.

  One shelf near me definitely holds jars of small animals floating in a tea coloured water of some kind. I continue to look around the room marveling at all the other-worldly plants, liquids and objects.

  “Is that a jar of fingers?” I scream out.

  “No! You keep your eyes on what we do!” she yells at me. I jump.

  “Sorry, it just….they look like…”

  “Is long bean!” She snaps. “They look like long bean.”

  “Sorry…um, what’s your name?”

  “Jenny,” she replies, beaming at me now with a big smile so stretched out it is either the most earnest grin ever or an octogenarian’s “fuck you to a stupid, stupid girl”. Either way, her teeth are flawless.

  Turning back to the task as hand, she faces the shelves and turns around the jar of long bean fingers so the ashy label blocks my view of the contents. I am certain those beans had foamy looking nails on the end of them.

  “Urushi is very powerful, and very poisonous if you do it wrong,” she begins as she finishes clearing the table and moves to the shelves. Some jars are removed and placed on the floor before her small, spotted hands reach out to remove a hidden box covered in dust, revealing a large hole in the wall behind the shelves that leads into apparent darkness. Maybe she’s growing mushrooms to sell to teenagers looking for a hallucinogenic high. I can make out some dried flowers and what looks like some fabric trailing along the earth into the darkness.

 
“What’s back there?” I ask.

  She gives me a look like a bag of daggers and I choose not to pursue my curiosity. Probably better not to know.

  “The urushi tea is used to kill bugs in the body and can slow aging you could say,” she explains, dragging out the word “say” for far too long in a high-pitched voice. “But if you use too much, you become stuck to yourself. Arms don’t move, legs don’t move. It’s like a stroke. Nothing anyone can do for you then. You know this?”

  “But if you use too much of anything it’s bad for you,” I respond. “If you tell me what to do, I will do it.”

  She gazes at me again and says nothing for an uncomfortable spell. Anxiety starts to flush my face, heat rising in sweaty pinpricks from my chest to my cheeks. In this silence I can hear the rain pouring outside through a vent somewhere. Perhaps I’ve offended her. She holds my eye contact while exhaling a long, deliberate breath.

  Before I can explain myself or retract my statement, her reverie ends and the box is opened producing a tiny cloud and within it is revealed a large jar of a greyish yellow liquid. She brings the jar out and it rolls back and forth in her hands while the dirty honey inside moves languidly, like it exists out of time.

  “Women have tried this, what you want. It don’t always work.”

  “Have you?” I venture.

  She pauses, looking at the floor. “It give me loose bowel.”

  Placing the heavy jar in my hands, she pulls a drawer out of the table filled with papers, pens and calendars. She takes out a heavily lacquered wooden pen covered in images of tiny samurais on horseback, a calendar page that matches the month we are in, and a lunar calendar. Next, she examines the lunar calendar and marks up the other calendar page on certain days, writing instructions on some and placing X’s on others. When she is done, she does the same for the following month.

  “You mix with hot water and take the tea on the days I have marked. Not more. You want to take it slow, be responsible. You only take a little. It will make you feel sick. If you are very sick, you know, in the toilet?” she makes a gesture with her hand making it fall from her open mouth toward the floor.