“Or a very brazen lover sneaking around behind Edward’s back,” the Yogi retorted, and Edward’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. They stared at each other for a long moment before Edward spoke again.
“Okay, so what are you here for? You say you don’t want any money, but I can’t afford to feed you for the rest of your life either. So, if you think you can cure our son then you’d better get started.”
“I already have.”
“He was in there with Jason all afternoon. I heard Jason talk and-and he laughed.”
“Who laughed? Him?” He pointed at the Yogi.
“No, Jason did.”
“Jason? How?”
“I don’t know. He won’t let anyone in there to see him. There was all this screaming and I heard him talking to Jason and then Jason started laughing.”
“Laughter is one way that people cope with pain.”
“What do you mean he won’t let us see our son?”
“I don’t think it’s wise right now. Jason is in a very delicate place. He needs my guidance without distractions. His is such an unusual case. I have never dealt with a child before who has never known anything but pain. I need to concentrate all my efforts on him to help him through this.”
“Through what?”
“Through his pain. He has been insulated from it all his life, insulated from everything. So his coping mechanisms have lain dormant. He needs to awaken those mechanisms now and learn new ones if he is to survive. He has to throw away the crutch and learn to deal with life. Tonight will be his last night sleeping in that bag. Tomorrow he goes off the pills.”
“Whoa! Whoa. You’re moving a little too fast. You can’t just take him off his medication. The withdrawal will kill him.”
“He’ll survive. And if he doesn’t then at least he’s out of his misery.”
Edward and Melanie both looked at him in shock.
“Get the fuck out of my—”
That’s when they heard the shouts.
***
Jason’s head felt like it was being crushed. But he knew that it was not. He knew that there should be no pain here. “Then why was it there?” The doctors had said he was wired wrong. But what did that mean? It meant what he was feeling was not real. It warns of no danger, it indicates no injury. It is an illusion. His life had been misery because of something that did not even exist.
“THIS IS NOT PAIN!” Jason screamed and this time the strain twisted his stomach into a knot and he doubled over and wretched up his lukewarm lunch onto the bedroom floor.
“Oh, my God!”
Edward, Melanie, and Arjunda stood in Jason’s doorway staring down at him as he lay trembling on the floor in a puddle of bile and sweat. He looked up at his mother through a haze of horrific agony and smiled.
“I’m okay, Mom. There is no pain. There is no pain.”
Melanie froze for a moment, startled by the sound of her son’s voice. It had been months since she’d heard it. She took a step toward him then turned and ran into the bathroom to retrieve his medication. Jason screamed as they helped him off the floor. He trembled as they bathed him in warm water, cleaning the vomit off his face, neck, and chest before tucking him into bed. Melanie gave him a fist full of Darvocet and Percodan and watched as his pain slowly subsided and he fell asleep.
Jason’s parents walked out of the room as if they were sleepwalking.
“I’ve never seen him like that before. Did you see that, Melanie? And you said he only spoke to him for a few hours?”
“I don’t know what I just saw. But Jason spoke to me. Did you hear? He spoke to me.” Tears coursed the fissures and wrinkles in her face down to her trembling lips.
“He was fighting it. He was fighting the pain! Didn’t you see that? He was resisting it! I’ve never seen him do that before.”
“You are wrong, Mr. Thompson. Your son was not fighting or resisting it. He was accepting it and soon he will make peace with his illness and his life will begin. Unless you still wish for me to ‘get-the-fuck out?’”
Yogi Arjunda smiled again and this time it was Edward who shivered.
***
Jason sat cross-legged in the lotus position, doubled over with his forehead touching the floor in front of him, shivering, twitching, and trembling. It had been almost a month since the Yogi had arrived and Jason knew that they had made great progress, yet still the pain persisted. At his parent’s insistence Arjunda had held off on taking their son off his medication for weeks, but now it was time. He knew that it had to be done, but still Jason missed the pleasing fog he’d lived in for so long buffering him against the indescribable suffering he was now enduring. He wanted to beg the Yogi for a pill, but he did not want to disappoint the man. He wanted to show them all that he was getting stronger. He wanted to walk out in the sun, listen to music, watch television. He wanted to run and jump, sing and dance. He wanted to love and make love. He wanted to hug his parents tight and tell them how much he appreciated them. But right now, he just wanted to die.
His stomach was a nest of eels, their razor-sharp teeth tearing at his insides, their long serpentine bodies constricting his intestines, squeezing them until his lunch came boiling up out of his throat and down through his bowels simultaneously. Once the vomiting began it exploded forth in a deluge of chunky yellow and brown, splashing the walls and floor again and again. He urinated in a steady stream and diarrhea flowed freely from his rectum. Jason didn’t care. This wasn’t about dignity. It was about getting through his pain.
His skin was alive with sharp stabs and pinpricks like he were being set upon by a swarm of insects biting and stinging him everywhere. His muscles contracted violently, involuntarily contorting his body as bone-wracking waves of purest agony ripped through him. In the past this would have been enough to kill him. At the very least it would have put him in a coma. But he was stronger now. He would survive.
“Feel it all. It is all illusion. Your pain, your need, your physical form, everything around you is an illusion. It is all you and you are everything. You are its master, now control it! Seize the pain. Give it definition, give it form. Make it something you can hold in your hand. Do you have it now Jason? Have you captured the pain?”
“Yes. I have it. But there’s so much, it’s so… huge! I can’t hold onto it. It’s— it’s everywhere! I can’t hold it!”
“You must! Hold onto it Jason. This is the greatest agony you will ever know. If you can defeat this you will be free. But I need you to capture this agony and hold onto it. Give it shape. Make it into something you can control.”
“I— I have it. I have it.” His voice began to calm down. His breathing relaxed and his tortured visage began to smooth out.
“Now, change it. Change it into something pleasant. Change it into something that feels good.”
“I don’t know what it means to feel good.”
“Than you must find out. It is in you. Find your pleasure centers and stimulate them with your mind, but do not let it go. You must merge the two. You must change one into the other and make them one. Not just the absence of pain but a positive sensation, overwhelming joy. You must find that ecstasy.”
“I can’t find it. I can’t find it. There is no pleasure. I don’t know what it is!”
“Don’t worry. I will help you.”
The Yogi sat down and thought. He could not help the boy if he could not show him what joy was. He thought a long time before he stood up and left the room, leaving Jason alone, still convulsing in agony, his body wracked with spasms.
***
“You need what?” Edward’s eyebrows knitted together in outrage and indignation. He hated to feel like he was being taken advantage of.
“Five hundred dollars.”
“For what? I thought you said you wouldn’t charge us?”
“It is not for me. It is for Jason. I need help to get him past this stage of his healing.”
“You’re not buying him street drugs are you? I won’t allow it
,” Edward stated firmly, staring the little monk directly in his eyes while crossing his arms over his concave chest.
“The goal is to get him off of drugs Mr. Thompson. If all goes well than his treatment will be over soon. Once he has made it through the chemical withdrawal symptoms he will have mastered his illness. Then I will leave you, but first I need five hundred dollars.” Yogi Arjunda held out his hand and locked eyes with Edward and then with Melanie.
“Give it to him, Edward.”
“What?”
“I said give it to him. Think of all the progress he’s made with our boy. I think he’s earned our trust and faith. If he says he needs it to help Jason then give it to him.”
Edward reached into his pocket and pulled out his checkbook. He began to scribble in it when the Yogi reached out and placed his hand over the check.
“I’m sorry, but I really must insist on cash.”
Edward and Melanie looked at each other doubtfully and then turned in unison to stare at Arjunda.
“What exactly is this for?”
“It’s for your son. Now, please.”
“I ain’t exactly got it lyin’ around the house. I’ll have to go to an ATM.”
Edward slipped his shoes on and grabbed his car keys. He shook his head and huffed in exasperation as he walked out the door, slamming it shut behind him.
The Yogi sat down on the couch and stared at Melanie expectantly.
“What?” She looked around and then looked herself up and down, “Did you want something from me?”
Melanie remembered her initial thought when Arjunda first named his price: “Food, shelter, and her hospitality.”
Arjunda continued to stare at her. His face was devoid of all expression and his enormous eyes were calm and placid like dark waters reflecting her image back at her.
“Edward should be gone for at least twenty minutes if you want me to take care of you.”
“Take care of me?” Arjunda began to smile again. It was an uncomfortable thing to behold. His lips parted slowly as if a crack was opening in his skull revealing the white bone beneath, like watching a fissure in the earth split wide. Melanie shivered. She hated how he could make her feel so weak and vulnerable with such a harmless expression.
Melanie swallowed deep and steeled her nerves. Then she knelt down between the Yogi’s legs and slid her hands up his thighs to his groin. She felt his organ coiled up in his lap like a snake and began to stroke it appreciatively. It was much longer and thicker than she would have expected. He could have made a killing in porno movies.
“I’ll suck it for you. You can even cum in my mouth if you want.”
The Yogi shook his head, looking at Melanie as if she were some misguided child doing something ridiculous but harmless. He casually swatted her hands from his lap then reached out and seized Melanie by her shoulders before she could turn away in shame.
“Hasn’t your marriage to Edward cured you of this? Hasn’t he shown you that you’re worth more than the pleasure your mouth, ass, and vagina can bring? You’re not the fat girl at school anymore. You don’t have to give blowjobs under the bleachers to get the jocks to pay attention to you. No more getting passed from one guy to the next trying to prove your worth by how many men want to spill their seed inside of you. Edward loves you now. Your son loves you too. And I don’t want anything from you. I’m just here to help Jason. When I am done with Jason then perhaps I can help you deal with your pain as well.”
Melanie began to cry. Tears rained down her face like a sudden summer storm, her body jerked and hitched, racked with violent sobs.
“Just fuck me! You can fuck me in the ass if you want. You can cum in my face. I’ll make it good for you! Just go ahead and fuck me goddamnit!”
“No. I don’t need it and neither do you.”
“But, Edward doesn’t want me anymore. You said that he loves me, but I repulse him. I repulse you too! I’m just an old fat whore!” Her sobs increased in intensity. She pounded her clenched fists against her forehead.
The Yogi reached out and grabbed Melanie by the wrist. He pulled her hands back down to his lap so she could feel the tremendous erection swelling there.
“You do not repulse me. I desire you, but desire is just another illusion that keeps us bound to these physical forms. I wish to transcend this body someday. I can’t do that by giving in to this body’s wants and desires if I am ever to overcome its needs. But, believe me it is not because I find you repulsive. I find you very attractive and so does Edward. He’s just struggling right now. He can’t think about his own pleasure while Jason is suffering. All he wants, and all I want, is to find a cure for Jason.”
“But why? Why would you help us for free?”
“I feel that divine powers have sent me here to help him. It is the ultimate test of my theories. In him may lay the answer to all of man’s woes. If I can get a boy whose every breath is agony to know joy then how difficult could it be to cure the woes of the man whose greatest affliction is the loss of a job or a love or even a loved one? These emotional pains are all trivial next to the very real torment your child experiences. Don’t you understand?”
“I guess I do,” she said, frowning as if forced to swallow something decidedly distasteful.
This time when the Yogi smiled it did not look quite so menacing, though it was still unnerving. It still carried that air of overconfidence and superiority. Only now she recognized it for what it was. Fake. It was the Yogi’s best attempt to connect with a world that he felt no connection to. He was the enlightened one and everyone else was just an ignorant savage in need of his help. It was like watching something not entirely human trying to imitate human expression. Melanie returned the expression with equal enthusiasm. When Edward arrived she ran into his arms and hugged him so tight that they both almost toppled over.
“I love you, Edward. We’re going to be all right. This family is going to be okay.”
When Edward smiled down at her the expression was genuine, as real as the tears welling up in his eyes.
***
“Would you call me a taxi please?”
“Where are you going?”
“To acquire what is needed.”
“I mean what do I tell the cab dispatcher your destination is?”
“Just tell them that I am going downtown. Shopping and sightseeing.”
Edward looked at the man incredulously.
“Why does everything have to be so damned secretive? This is getting fucking ridiculous!”
“Edward! Would you just call the Yogi a cab please? It’s for Jason.”
Edward acquiesced as everyone in the room knew he would.
“Did you get the money?”
“No, I spent the last twenty minutes looking for an ATM just for the adventure.”
“Edward!”
“I’m sorry. Here. This is just so damned frustrating. He spends all day with our son and we don’t even get to know what he’s doing in there. We don’t even get to see our own son!”
“Thank you, Edward. Do not worry. Your son will be well very soon. Then you will have the family you dreamt of back when he was just a twinkle in your wife’s eyes.”
Half an hour later Arjunda was on his way to Vegas Blvd and Charleston Avenue.
***
As they passed the towering Stratosphere hotel Arjunda’s eyes did not crane to see its apex and marvel at the thrill rides perched precariously atop it, as most every other tourist would. His eyes remained at street level.
“You know they’ve got a rollercoaster up there? There’s a rollercoaster, a freefall ride and this new thing that looks like a seesaw that takes you right over the edge of the building. The tallest building in Vegas and some genius decides it would be fun to use it to scare the shit out of people. Can you imagine that?”
“Interesting,” the Yogi replied, but his eyes still did not avert from their study of the street life.
“So, where do you want to go? Anything in particular
you want to see?”
“Take me to where the whores are. Not the crack whores. I need a clean one.”
The cabbie turned to look over the little man in the orange robes. He was a heavyset Greek man with bushy eyebrows and thick forearms covered in coarse black hair. He resembled Bluto from the Popeye cartoons.
“I thought you were some kind of monk or something?”
“The whore is not for me. It is for a friend.”
“Still, that sounds kind of kinky.”
“Can you help?”
“A good clean whore?”
The Yogi nodded in agreement.
“That will be expensive. You could get one of these worn-out whores down here for a hundred bucks, maybe less. But then your friend will be risking all kinds of diseases. You could take him to Pahrump. They have brothels up there and those girls are tested for STDs every week. Wait a minute though, there’re some high-class call-girls that work out of Ceasar’s Palace. They wear Chanel suits and look like regular business women. They even carry briefcases and wear their hair pulled back in ponytails with glasses on. It’s all a front so that the hotel security doesn’t kick them out on their asses. See, there’s no hookin’ allowed at Ceasar’s. Everyone knows what they’re up to. But what would happen if Security started throwing out every woman that walked in there in a Chanel suit? They’d wind up tossing out legitimate business women, politician’s wives, actresses, and of course a boat load of hookers. It’s not worth the risk so they just ignore them as long as they are discreet.”
“And these girls are clean?”
“Well, all it would take is one prominent business man to complain to hotel management about catching a dick drip from some skanky tramp in their hotel to bring the entire scam to a halt. The management ignores it as long as no one complains, but how many people do you think would keep quiet with a whore running around spreading herpes and God knows what else? No, I’d say those girls are pretty clean.”
“Good. How do I find them?”
“They’re expensive.”
His Pain Page 4