by Dave Holmes
David added me to the e-mail list for the event. To this day, I have no idea how he got on it, because it is best not to ask questions in these situations; all roads lead to sketchtown. I learned that the ceremony would be led by a South African shamaness named Pam, who traveled the world unblocking people’s emotions, leading whole tour groups of people deep into the wilderness of their own souls. It seemed more responsible, more noble and mature than my youthful drug experiences. It felt like homework. The hallucinogen of choice was a substance called San Pedro, created from the pulverized innards of Peruvian cacti and consumed as a tea. According to Shamaness Pam’s website, San Pedro is known as the spirit of St. Peter, a masculine, guiding spirit that takes you deep into your mind, your soul, your past, your problems, and whispers your solutions to you, like your big brother would. (Of course, anyone who has ever had an older brother knows that whispering your problems and solutions to you is not part of that particular package, but I was eager to believe.)
The cancellation policy on a thing like this turns out to be lenient, because what is a shamaness going to do if you flake on her jungle drug group therapy expedition, take you to court? I signed up, and then the morning came along and I chickened out. Someone else went in my place and everyone had terrific insights and a wonderful, serene journey, and I immediately felt like an asshole for having bailed. I apologized to Pam via text and made a plan to do it the next time she brought her soul circus to town.
Shamaness Pam made a return visit about six months later, and since I was still on the e-mail list, I got an early alert. A woman named Sarabeth, whose name on her e-mail account was “sarabliss,” alerted me to the new event. “Beautiful soul: I am excited and lucky to tell you about a sacred healing ceremony in…” and I stopped reading. I said: “Holmes, you are not going to bail on this.” I reserved a spot, and then immediately began calling and texting friends, begging them to come along. David had already learned plenty about his soul; Ben seemed halfway on board; and my friend Matt gave a tentative yes.
You were supposed to bring a check with you, and you were not supposed to write anything in the memo line about what the check is actually for. I loved this detail, because it meant that at least once, someone had written “HEALING JUNGLE HALLUCINOGEN CEREMONY” or “SACRED TRIPOUT,” or simply “DRUGS.” The whole thing would cost $250, inclusive of a vegan comedown meal in the early evening and all the organic mango you could handle, all day long. I circled the date on my calendar, and I promised to stick to it this time.
The morning of the ceremony, Ben and Matt cancelled on me, which I chalked up to karma, because I was already talking like a poorly written acid-victim character from an ’80s movie, and I went ahead anyway.
The event was to take place in the Laurel Canyon home and grounds of someone very wealthy and trusting. I got in my car, took a few deep, calming breaths, and drove up there. Along the snaking, endless driveway was foreign SUV after foreign SUV, with California, Arizona, and Nevada plates—the footprint of Southwestern hippies who don’t care about their carbon footprint. The men getting out of their cars wore long, flowing Maharishi shirts and Toms shoes. The women wore Lululemon yoga pants and espadrilles, and most of them were being played by Molly Shannon. Everyone seemed to know one another.
When I walked through the open front door of this Laurel Canyon palace, the song playing on the expensive and ear-splitting sound system was “Proud,” by Heather Small, which you may know as the theme song from NBC’s The Biggest Loser. Echoing off the tiled walls was “ah-WHAT HAVE YA DONE TA-DAY TA MAKE YA FEEEEEL PROUD.”
I shook the hands of a few gentlemen in billowing linen, and then I was hugged from behind by a stranger. “Hello, beloved,” a complete stranger said, “I’m Butterbean.” Of course you are, I thought. Get your hands off me.
Shamaness Pam was ninety minutes late, so we all spent a lot of time wandering the grounds, checking out the giant house and the huge pool and the grotto. The house was massive. As the people around me cooed about how blessed we were to be in this home, all I could think was: How do you get this rich and still have time to hallucinate? The man of the house, Rafael, offered no hints. The really wealthy ones never do. He and his eighteen-year-old son would be tripping with us, and his new wife would be there with their maybe one-month-old child, sober and supervising. Still, a couple dozen strangers hallucinating around an infant. Yikes.
When Shamaness Pam showed up, she got her cactus trip-out tea party show on the road lickety-split. What we would do was this: we’d go around the circle, one by one, each of us holding a glass of water, into which Shamaness Pam would dump one large spoonful of dark green powder. We’d stir and drink quickly and then be given an organic lollipop in the flavor of our choosing: yellow or green. (I went yellow.) There were about twenty-five of us, so the circle was big and the process took a good half-hour. The perimeter was studded with Moroccan pillows and small trash cans lined with plastic bags in case anyone needed to barf. A lot of people needed to barf. We were, after all, drinking poison.
Afterward, we were to go around the same circle and state our intention for the day. As you have probably already guessed, there was a “talking stick,” which we would pass from person to person, and only the one holding it would be allowed to speak. I was near the top of the circle, because I wanted to get all of this over with, so I got my intentions out of the way early. I was quick and direct: “I feel like there’s something I need to get off my chest, something I need to discover, or examine, or something, and I’m hoping this can loosen me up enough so that I can find it. So. Um. Namaste?” I spat this out in about two seconds, because I was nervous, and also I didn’t want this mystery cactus drug to kick in while I was in the middle of a sentence, or worse, listening to rich hippies talk. “Namaste,” the circle answered.
As the talking stick passed from person to person, the stories got longer and longer, because if there’s one thing people who have the time and money to take a day off and explore their souls enjoy more than expensive sandals, it’s the sound of their own voice. Oh, you’re going to talk about finding your quiet inner voice? Well then I’m going to chant my intention. It was a goddamn bliss-off. About halfway through the circle, people just started taking the stick, breathing huge, showy cleansing breaths and saying “Wow,” and then pausing for fifteen seconds before launching into a monologue of jumbled Oprah words. It went on for a good hour. (It was actually not a very good hour.)
Finally the last person stated his intention—which was the same as everyone else’s and either took ten minutes or my dose was starting to kick in and my perception of time was warping—and we were dismissed to spend the rest of the day plunging the depths of our soul wherever we chose. I sprinted outside to find a good seat by the pool. I shook off the stress of the yoga-people talk, breathed deeply, and began to focus on the questions that led me here. What is it about me that has me perpetually on the outside? Why can’t I just relax? Who am I, anyway?
Just then, an older guy in a long white T-shirt and linen pants walked up behind me, gave me a rough and unbidden scalp massage and whispered into my ear: “I can’t wait to connect with youuuuuu.”
Oh, no.
I said, “Oh! Oh, my gosh, thanks! Me, too,” and he loped up a rock wall behind me, like some kind of mountain cat.
It wasn’t until this point that I started looking around me at the rest of the tripping hippies on the grounds. I took a good look at them and noticed that about a quarter were vomiting, another quarter were growling and kicking like animals, and everyone else was either crying and writhing on the ground like slow-motion sea bass in a fishing boat or dancing to the beat of the drum one guy was playing. (In a situation like this one guy is always going to be playing a drum.) Shamaness Pam made an appearance outside to remind everyone that the owner of the house would prefer that we barfed at the base of the olive tree, to help fertilize it. Those who were vomiting heard her and nodded, and then they calmly walked or writhed their
way to the olive tree to offer it their special gift.
I have always had what I believe is a healthy fear of hallucinogens, but this was fairly pleasant. Nothing major happened, no melting trees or devil faces. The walls pulsated slightly and the clouds gave me a mild kaleidoscope effect and that was about it. Decent. Manageable. I found a place on the grass to meditate, just as Shamaness Pam came outside to offer those who felt they needed it a second dose. I probably could have gone with a second dose. I felt in control, and I felt like if this thing was going to work, I might want to get a little out of control. I thought I might want to lose myself so that I could find myself again.
But then I realized that if I took a second helping, there was no way I’d be able to drive before the next morning, and I’d probably have to spend the night in a sleeping bag around these people in a situation that I was 94 percent sure was going to turn into an orgy. Unacceptable. A handful of people took her up on it, and I sat in the sun and counted my breaths, trying to quiet my mind and focus on the here and now.
And then all the people who took a second dose came back outside, sat right around me, breathed deeply, and barfed.
After a couple of hours, the guy who wanted to connect with me came and sat at my side, and I thought: Okay, fine, let’s do this. I mean, I’m here and the clouds are dancing, let’s connect. He began to breathe, slowly, loudly, and I began to breathe with him. Ahhhhh. OOOOOOHHH. Together. Breathing as one. It felt nice, actually. Just breathing, connecting, doing whatever it was that we were doing, in a place where everyone was too busy dancing or vomiting to judge. Powerful. Almost sexual.
He whispered into my ear: “You’re intense.” I agreed. “Do you know the circumstances of your birth?” I said I heard I was a C-section, but didn’t have any clear memories. He said, “Well, it was traumatic. I know that. Your chi is blocked. Do you want me to call the healer over?” I said: “I mean, you probably should.”
He went over to the healer, who was on the porch doing a bong hit. They had a conversation about me that I could not hear, but their body language was that of EMTs on the scene of a head-on car crash. My blocked chi was going to have to get fixed. Twenty CCs of bullshit juice, stat.
The healer came over to me and said: “I saw you when you stated your intention, and I’ve been wanting to get my hands on you ever since. Lay down.” I laid down. Connection Guy said: “I’m going to hold space with you,” and I said “Oh, thank you so much!” The healer shook a rattle around my body. She drank from a giant bottle that looked like where Barbara Eden lived in I Dream of Jeannie and spat what I am fairly certain was bay rum all over me. She whistled around my chakras, pausing at my navel to whisper, so quietly I could barely hear it, “Come on, baby. Come on out. That’s right. That’s good. That’s right.” And then the healing was over. The healer looked at me with a look of absolute triumph. “How’s that?” I said: “Boy, you really did it. Thanks.” She gave me her card—she’s also a life coach and professional organizer—and I told her I’d call. I thanked Connection Guy. And then I slipped out the door when nobody was looking and sat in my car listening to music until the sky stopped breathing so I could drive home.
I put my iPhone on shuffle, and the drugs absolutely worked in that I felt each song deeply. Dawes’s “A Little Bit of Everything” made me think about our interconnectedness and the fragility of life and the importance of hope. Mayer Hawthorne’s “The Stars Are Ours” reminded me of my friends all over the country and how lucky I was to have them. The Hold Steady’s “Our Whole Lives” got me thinking about Catholicism and how it shaped me, whether I continued to embrace it or not. And then I drove home and Ben asked me how it was and I told him we’d talk about it later, but right now let’s make a YouTube playlist of all of Janet Jackson’s videos, in order, and watch them on the big screen with our Apple TV. And he immediately said yes, because I am absolutely with the right guy.
The next day, I woke up early, with a fresh, clean mind and a newly cleansed chakra system. I had two unread e-mails, one from Shamaness Pam to the whole group with a photograph of some items that had been left at the house: a feather earring; a leather cuff; a colander; a small, fine-mesh satchel with a baby tooth inside. The other was from my friend John in Ireland, asking for a full rundown on how the whole thing went. I said: “I didn’t get any answers. I didn’t learn anything about myself. All I wanted was to get away from these people and be on my own and listen to music. I think I did it wrong.”
And he hit me back immediately: “What if that’s your answer?”
And I stood right up out of my chair.
What if that’s my answer? What if I took a shaman-approved jungle hallucinogen that is supposed to give you insight into your soul, and my soul told me: “Rather than try to fit in somewhere that’s not for you, you’re better off on your own, wandering, writing, listening, observing?”
What if I’ve been trying to join teams and wear uniforms and live by other people’s rules my whole life, when what I should have been doing is trusting myself, like the Indigo Girls told me over Singapore Slings at Applebee’s?
What if I am my whole team, and what if I always will be, and what if that’s enough?
What if the millennia-old soul of Saint Peter really was in that cactus, and the secret he had traveled through time and over dimensions to whisper into my ear was: Do you?
As sacred pseudo-religious epiphanies go, it was as good as any.
I chose to believe.
I was working in the office at Esquire in New York City on June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court issued their decision in Obergefell v. Hodges and made marriage equality the law in all fifty states. The decision came down in the morning, and we had to get the news out and write our instant takes and collect the best Twitter reactions, all the musts for a magazine these days. There was rejoicing, and because it was 2015, we expressed it by sending one another Chuck Norris GIFs in HipChat. (But we meant it. It was a great morning. Those Chucks had never been more sincere.)
Once we’d gotten all our content up, I made the decision to relive the ’90s and make it a Summer Friday, like in my advertising days, and I CitiBiked down to the Stonewall Inn. It seemed right: the modern gay rights movement had started with a riot there forty-six years before, nearly to the day. Plus, Pride Weekend was about to start. Say what you will about the Supreme Court, but they really know how to create a moment.
Just about everybody in the media had had the same idea. There were cameras and crews from all the local stations, radio reporters roaming with microphones, photographers clicking away. Everyone looking for a quote, a face, a fist, the perfect picture. I was, too.
But the windows were rattling from the thumping bass inside, and this was too important a day just to stand and observe. So I went in.
It was shoulder-to-shoulder inside, and the music was louder than the speakers could handle. You couldn’t hear anyone talk, which was okay because what was there to say? We’d won. We just looked at one another: couples, groups of friends, people like me who’d come alone just to be there. We looked at one another and smiled. People sang along—Calvin Harris had bumped Robin S. from the rotation since the last time I’d been in a New York City gay bar—and jumped up and down. We had all taken our own winding, treacherous path to that place on that day, but we’d all made it. A few decades ago we would have been thrown into paddy wagons just for being there, but as of that morning, we were a part of the American family.
My people.
I jumped up and down with them.
The ground shook.
It felt like a new beginning. And as Semisonic has taught us, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
I had to run up to Mamaroneck for a friend’s engagement party that evening, and after I’d been there for a couple hours, my friend’s nephew came up and introduced himself. “I’m Justin,” he said, a jubilant, braced-and-pompadoured kid fit for YouTube. “I heard you were coming. Have you had any of t
he seven-layer dip? That was me.” We chatted for a good long time, me and Justin. He was twelve, about to start eighth grade at the local Catholic school. “Ooh, junior high,” I said. “That was a rough one on me. How do you like it?”
“Are you kidding? I love it.”
I said: “That was the age we all started going to mixers. Are there still mixers?” He said there were. Because I honestly had no idea of the answer to this question, I asked: “What do they play at a mixer these days?”
“Hip-hop, mostly. But, like, the hard stuff. Big Sean.” And then he leaned in and stage-whispered, “the clean versions.” Just a hint of an eye roll.
“When I was your age,” I told him, “we wouldn’t actually mix for about the first hour. The boys would be on one side, the girls on the other, and then someone would finally go out into the middle and dance and everyone would follow.”
“Oh, we dance,” he assured me. “Me and my friends? We dance.” I believed him.
I had met Justin’s dad earlier in the night, and I saw him looking over at the two of us talking, and I may have been imagining it, but I thought I saw a look of okay, good on his face. I got the feeling we were supposed to be talking, Justin and I.
Now, maybe young Justin is a gay kid, like I suspect he is. Maybe he’s not. What he definitely is is an exuberant twelve-year-old boy who will never spend five minutes of his one life thinking he shouldn’t be.
I like that I grew up uncomfortable. It gave me the fuel that powered me through a very weird life. It made me want to succeed, it made me want to work hard, and it got me where I always wanted to be. But it’s not for everyone.
Maybe Justin will have his first crush and be able to tell his friends and parents about it. Maybe Justin will make an ass of himself falling in colossal stupid love with someone when he’s fourteen, when you’re supposed to make your embarrassing mistakes, and he’ll get to shake it off, the way everyone else does. Maybe Justin will stay this confident and composed throughout his youth, and when he’s my age, all he’ll be able to say is that his life is pretty plain. What a luxury.