My Mother My Mirror

by Andrea Kitt

  Dave looked a bit like Cat Stevens, and he played the guitar and sang devotional songs beautifully. My have I been vulnerable to guitarists in my life! There’s something in their mating call I find impossible to resist. Not that he was consciously calling to me of course, but I got the message none the less. He was a charmer. When I served him with dollops of shepherds pie or trifle he would flash his big brown eyes at me and smile and say lovely things, and I swooned. I kept wishing he would do something horrible to put me off, but of course he didn’t. Presently he took me out on the back of his motorbike, arms tight around his warm waist. It turned out he’d had another girlfriend for quite some time, a single mother whom he visited regularly. I was shocked; I presumed at this time that everyone else was as squeaky clean as I had been. But he agreed to take me on as number two, and we snuck off to my mother’s house a few times for a kiss and a cuddle. I was keen for more, but he often made excuses... perhaps two girlfriends was too much for him after all. Still, we were close for a while. He worked as a photocopier repair man and would buy me nice traditional presents: gold earrings, perfume, chocolates. And I would agonize over him endlessly to a very sympathetic girl called Stephanie who was also part of the housekeeping team, crying and telling her how much I loved him. I can’t remember exactly what the problem was now, but I do know that they later had a child together!

  I should explain at this point that Carmen had now moved to London with my three sisters, and was running therapy groups from her house in Hampstead. She had also been to India and had an audience with Baghwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho, another guru who now had thousands of Western followers; and she had received Knowledge from Maharaji, though it seemed to me that this was just another badge in her collection. I always had a feeling of, “I can’t possibly compete.” Most of the time she was way ahead of me, having become expertly competent in everything that could possibly have formed part of a rebellion, from partying and sleeping around, to drink and drugs, to every sort of ground-breaking therapy and new-age spirituality. She was knowledgeable, expressive, popular and well-known, and always right, even when she was apologizing. Compared to her, I felt like a mouse.

  16

  Brighton & America

  It was becoming obvious that the ashram system didn’t work as well in the West as it did in India. We were all much too used to having relationships and living life the way we wanted; and though people hung in for a number of years, sooner or later someone would catch their eye and they’d be off to set up house independently. I can’t exactly remember the politics around 1983; Maharaji and his advisers were always changing things, trying to work out how to make it work in an environment so different from the Indian culture. All I know was that at this time everything became a bit looser and it didn’t seem to be a problem for me to move down to Brighton and stay with some non-ashram premies for a while.

  Sandra and I, as die-hard devotees, were planning to rent a flat together, do it up really nicely and turn it into an ashram where Divine Light Mission celebrities could come and stay; but we hadn’t found one yet, and in the meantime she stayed in London and I shared a flat with Hans and Angus. Hans was one of those people who always had a new business scheme on the boil that was going to make millions, but in the meantime needed a little help, or at least a willing ear so he could enthuse about his plans. Angus, on the other hand, was self-depreciating to the point where he had made himself seriously ill, doing ‘service’ and ignoring the needs of his body.

  He had a colostomy bag and had to have a wheat free diet, and I would often make special bread for him from rice or rye flour; in fact I was eager to do lots for him because he never asked and was humble and kind, and I could relate to the sad and lonely innocence in his big blue Scottish eyes. When he passed his driving test his mother gave him a new car and he took me out in it sometimes to practice my driving. I had had one lesson at this time, but still thought the whole business terribly risky. I tried taking him to bed once, because I liked him a lot, but there wasn’t really any chemistry between us, and in any case he was still unwell: very thin, with some skin problems. He bought me a necklace made from freshwater pearls which I kept for many years.

  Sandra finally clinched a deal on a top floor flat in Palmeria Square, Hove. We carpeted it throughout in pale cream and bought tasteful wallpaper: Hessian for my room, pastel tulips for the living room. Then we found plenty of good quality furniture, including a nice pine bed for each of us. But nobody really made use of it. The main place for satstang continued to be a house belonging to a couple, which was more easily accessible and had a big front room.

  By this time I had done a massage course and been employed for a while in London as receptionist to an osteopath, who discovered my manual skills and got me to loosen up his patients before he treated them. It felt good to be using my body to help other bodies, after all the isolation of renunciate life, so down in Brighton I found another osteopath, just on the other side of the Square. I both helped him with his clients and began to build up a little massage business of my own in the back room. Even more than the treatments I gave, I loved to talk to people and listen to their problems.

  I remember at this time doing a huge amount of meditation – at least four hours a day. I wanted to prove that I could be completely content within myself, regardless of what was going on outside. And often I was. It was like making love: particularly the ‘nectar technique’ which involved reaching back with one’s tongue and tasting an inner fragrance. I wanted to be God’s lover, not to depend on any unreliable external source, to be detached from the world, un-hurtable. I filled long diaries with prayers to Maharaji. And from time to time I would reach a point of perfect, sacred stillness and light, my own inner sanctuary, a holy place where tears pricked my eyes for the sheer beauty of it, the heart-melting mercy of it, the fact that I was loved, that I was love, that all was well...

  And then Paddy turned up. My shadow. The darker side of things. He posted half-eaten Mars bars through the letterbox, and crumpled notes in his awkward, illiterate scrawl, saying that he loved me. He always seemed to be there when I went out, just round the corner, a few yards behind me when I walked along the street, climbing aboard the same bus as me. In other words, it began all over again.

  I told people, of course. A couple of men went and gave him a good talking-to, but I must admit premies were a bit soft; certainly he took no notice. We told the police, but because he hadn’t done any physical harm there was nothing they could do. I think the law has changed since then, but at the time a stalker could easily get away with it.

  Every weekend Sandra would go back up to London, and it was then that Paddy saw his chance. There was a fire escape at the back of the house that led right up to just outside our kitchen window, and he simply climbed up and climbed in. When I entered the room he was standing there in the middle of the floor, a loony grin all over his face. I felt panicky but I tried to appear calm and talk to him normally. I kept this up for five or ten minutes; I think I suggested he come and sit in the living room, but on the way he shoved me towards my bedroom and before I knew it he was on top of me and pinning me onto the bed with all his weight. I screamed and screamed and screamed. Nobody heard me, but by great good fortune he was strangely shocked at my response. I think in his fantasy I would have welcomed his crude advances. And so, thank God, he disappeared the way he had come in.

  Trembling and terrified, I locked and bolted everything I could, then phoned the police. Now that he had broken and entered and assaulted me, at last they could act. They took him into custody, I told the court what had happened, and he was sent to prison for three months. Then he came out and started haunting me again.

  It felt like time for a change. The ashrams were dissolving: our attempt to hang on to the tradition began to seem irrelevant, if not ridiculous. Definitely I wanted to get away from Paddy. And I thought perhaps I was ready at last to go out into the big wide world and find a career.

  Carm
en was pleased I was finally emerging from institutional life, and kindly paid for a course of ‘Rofling’ for me, in order to help the tension in my body and because I thought this may be something I would like to train in. The treatment was rigorous – painful, in fact, but good and effective. It involved pressing hard and deep along the dividing line between the muscles, separating the fascia that tends to bind them together. I never knew I had so much fascia! She even got inside my mouth and attacked the tension in my jaw. Months later I looked down at my legs when I was dancing and was intrigued to see the muscles sliding against each other in an uncommonly separate way. It did help me with neck and shoulder tension. Yet it wasn’t quite the thing I wanted to do: it required a lot of strength and exertion, and just didn’t grab me, if you’ll excuse the pun.

  The other question, apart from what to do, was where to go – and as I still wasn’t quite sure about the former, I thought I’d concentrate on the latter. I had been to America several times for festivals and always liked it and found the people friendly, so this was the adventure I decided upon. I knew two premies over there, and one was happy to have me to stay for a while. He lived in California. So I began to make plans to leave.

  I told Sandra several weeks in advance, but nonetheless she got in a terrible fuss, implying that I had made some sort of promise to live there for years, which I hadn’t. She made outrageous claims that she had connections in the Customs Department and threatened to have me turned round at the border, but fortunately even Sandra’s influence didn’t extend quite that far, though she scared me a bit at the time. It was always much better to be in her favour, and not so pleasant to feel the lash of her tongue.

  But my tickets were booked, and for the last week I went up to Hampstead and stayed with my family. I remember being taken out by various people for goodbye meals, and feeling so sick with anticipation I could eat very little.

  When I stepped off the plane at Los Angeles airport it was already getting dark. Chris was there to meet me, and took me for a meal at a nearby Italian restaurant and then back to the house where he was staying on Venice Beach. Although it was called a beach, I had no idea how close we were until I woke up the next morning and virtually stepped out onto the sand. I wandered up the board-walk in the lovely California sun and feasted my eyes on stalls selling every sort of colourful clothes and ethnic items and fascinating foods imaginable. There were people playing music, and others claiming to be Jesus, and a chimpanzee roller-skating hand in hand with his owner...

  Chris took me upstairs and introduced me to some friends who were Scientologists and were trying to master the art of astral travel so they could locate hidden treasure whilst disembodied and dig it up when back to normal. They were very friendly people, particularly a woman called Suzanne who immediately offered for me to come with her on her cleaning round, so I could begin to earn a little money to pay my way.

  In the downstairs flat there was an Israeli premie called Thai whom I knew from when I was in Florida. She told me about the acupuncture course she was doing up the road in Santa Monica. This wasn’t a form of healing I had considered as an occupation, but she took me along to talk to the principal and I liked what I heard. It was interesting, it was a clean, cheerful building, the people were nice, and it was nearby. There was a meant-to-be feeling about it; so I signed on for the first trimester.

  In America you had to have a car. It was rarely possible to just walk to the post box or the local shop: everything was miles apart. On my second evening there I borrowed Chris’s car and managed to get lost somewhere down town, which was pretty scary considering I could hardly drive at this point, let alone smoothly negotiate complicated intersections and roundabouts streaming with right-hand-lane traffic. Anyway, it was obvious I had to find a vehicle of my own. There were a couple of wheeler dealer premies living in Malibu who dealt in cars and had easy access to the auctions, so at my instruction they bought me a series of small cars, all of which went wrong, and finally came up with an ex-police car, black and white with ‘sheriff’ written on the side, which suited me fine.

  It still had the holes where the panel of lights had been fixed to the roof, but the lights were gone; nevertheless, people would frequently slow down around me, which made me feel rather powerful. It was a great boat of a car – a Chevy – all automatic with lovely smooth suspension. I took my test in it, and managed to fail the first time (which is pretty hard to do in an American test) owing to veering a little too close to a cyclist. But the second time I passed, and was officially roadworthy.

  California lived up to all my expectations of America. There was a lovely, wide-open feel about it, with acres of sky full of plentiful sunshine, and when people said “Have a nice day” it didn’t jar at all. It felt thoroughly possible to have a nice day when everyone was smiling and positive and there was plenty of space and a generous amount of everything for everybody. And nowhere did I feel this more than when I was cruising up and down the Pacific Coast Highway in my Chevy! On one side was the vast, sparkling ocean; on the other the land rose steeply, with frequent landslides, to the dry, canyoned hills that were regularly swept with fire when the Santa Ana winds began to blow in the autumn. To add to all this drama there were even earthquakes from time to time, but in the year I was there I never felt more than a slight tremor. I drove past palm trees and beach houses, past healthy, suntanned people in open-top cars and groovy pick-up trucks, singing along to the ‘Eagles’ on my car stereo and feeling on top of the world.

  Chris was an ex-public school boy. I knew him from the premie house where I had stayed in Miami. I admired the way he never seemed to feel obliged to smile, but smiled when he felt like it; and then his whole face lit up like the sun coming out. He was affectionate... he used to knead me like a cat... but he was a bit peculiar. He didn’t say very much, keeping it all hidden inside; and after a while, when we had moved to larger flat in Santa Monica, he began to say even less, in fact to pretty much ignore me. I got upset for a short while, then decided it was time to go.

  So I set off up the PCH to seek my fortune and my future, playing ‘Flashdance’ on my car stereo – “You can have it all: you can dance right through your life...” - feeling that light-hearted, free spirited feeling of taking yet another step in my lifelong adventure into the unknown.

  17

  Acupuncture & Ecstasy

  Ten miles or so up the highway from Santa Monica is Malibu, home of the rich and famous, with their English butlers and nannies and Mexican gardeners. Here I found a man called Matthew Katz, ex-manager of Jefferson Airplane; he was looking for someone to take care of his animals and make him daily jugs of carrot juice in exchange for a room. This seemed a reasonable arrangement, so I moved in and made myself comfortable.

  The first month I stayed at Matthew’s house, he went away to spend time with his family in Israel and I had the place to myself. I fed the horses, the birds and the dogs, and made myself at home. It was one of those sprawling, single-storey houses with plenty of ‘yard’ out back, up on the hill just outside Malibu. Such a different feel, living there: the freedom of being able to wander outside at any time into the warmth and dryness and almost guaranteed sunshine, the view of the Pacific, the very un-Englishness of everybody and everything.

  I didn’t explore the area much because I was still very much a premie: making my practice of Knowledge a priority, and to tell the truth being rather afraid of recreation. To retain my sense of self I needed the purpose that I felt when meditating, studying or earning a living. If I started behaving like a tourist I may slip back into that awful feeling of not existing: of pointlessness, of depression. It was always just behind my shoulder, and I had to keep up a certain momentum so that it didn’t catch up with me. I remember still struggling with my sluggish bowels, which didn’t always respond to the breath meditation that I kept up morning and evening.

  In order to get to college I now had to drive for half an hour down the Pacific Coast Highway, often starting off i
n a blazing sunrise that blinded me to the road and anything on it; but by grace and good fortune I made it every day. I enjoyed the acupuncture course. It was a bit of a shock having to use my brain again in my thirties, and to start with all the studying gave me headaches, but I got used to it. Soon my walls were covered in colourful diagrams of the human body and its meridians, and odd pictures to help me remember the Latin names for different Chinese herbs; and by the end of the first trimester I had memorized so many acupuncture points and parts of the anatomy that I was granted a scholarship, which meant I didn’t have to find the thousand dollars or so for the next term’s tuition.

  For the money I did need, I rented a room in a chiropractic practice on Point Dume, which is Malibu’s little shopping centre, and gave massage treatments. I got myself a table, a tunic and all the oils, towels and things that I needed; and I would also visit people in their homes, earning up to 50 dollars an hour for my services, which was a lot at that time. It was a relief to be somewhere where there was a feeling of abundance, and appreciation for what I had to offer. Of course there was more money around than in Brighton, but it seemed as if the generous, easy flow of money may well have contributed to the greater wealth as well as the other way round. And as a pretty blonde English girl, I was quite popular.

  I was also well-liked at college, which was a new experience for me, having always been the shy, awkward one at school. I found I was confident enough now to speak up in class, and the subjects interested me and the classes were small enough to make it a pleasure to be there. I never could quite get my head around the whole Chinese way of thinking about the body, but it was fascinating to try, and the herbs were particularly intriguing. Anatomy was interesting: I’d already studied it at school and on the massage course, but this time it was in more depth. One day we even had a real cadaver in the classroom. It was fascinating to see the way the body parts lay on top of each other, quite unlike in a two-dimensional diagram; though unfortunately she had been soaked in so much formaldehyde that I began to feel very sick and had to go out for a walk.