The Joy of Uber Driving

  Another challenge came when I had the opportunity to design the wardrobe for a comedy pilot called Husbands and Wives involving the foibles of six suburban couples, produced by Joan Rivers and her husband Edgar Rosenberg. This was my true initiation into the world of TV costuming. Besides catering to the wishes of twelve prima-donna stars, I had to balance the wishes of two different executive producers who had two different ideas, and also a director, an assistant director, and a stage manager, all with different ideas and demands. Each one would tell me in strict confidence to ignore the others’ suggestions or demands. My head was spinning, and I was out of breath running from store to store and trying several different versions for each star for each scene. In the end everything worked out OK, even though the last garment I found to replace another came in the middle of the taping just before that person came on with her scene. Such is the world of showbiz. It is a world where egos collide, but in the end, with a “lil’ bit o’ luck,” perfection is obtained.

  Here are a few quotes from Joan that I have to include to honor her memorable comedic brilliance:

  I don’t exercise. If God had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.

  People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.

  I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I’d look like without plastic surgery.

  While we’re at it, guess who was starring in a comedy series at CBS: Nameless the Clown himself! But my low self-esteem had built a huge protective wall around my heart, so I could regard him only with cold ambivalence mixed with unwarranted awe for his celebrity status. I was awkward and he was arrogant, especially for a nameless clown.

  There were many times I felt out of place at CBS, thinking I had cheated by chanting to get the job instead of being adequately qualified. My lack of confidence in myself was reflected in my reaction to Nameless. When I came face to face with him, there was none of the intimate connection we once had. Now he was a complete stranger to me.

  I should mention that during this time my father had remarried again, but this time to my cousin (yes, cousin on his side), who was thirteen years younger than me and forty years younger than Dad (he sixty-four, she twenty-four). His last wife had become an alcoholic, much like my mother, who had developed migraines and epilepsy. How ironic that he was a doctor who made the women close to him sick. This last one was a little bit smarter. She was intact when she left him in the middle of the night after seventeen years of abuse. But it destroyed him. He got very old very fast and died two years later.

  Life in the fast lane at CBS got to be a bit too much for this three-wheeled buggy, with the in-house politics and my own inexperience getting me fired after only a year. But I had a good enough driving record to succeed as an independent costumer at other major studios for five more years. It was an exciting time, and my self-esteem got back on track.

  PING! Pulling up to the Marriott Hotel in San Francisco, I see a crowd of mostly tall, beautiful women dressed in cocktail dresses and evening gowns. One of them spots me and waves her arm enthusiastically to get my attention. She pulls two other friends with her and climbs in the front seat while they occupy the back seat. My car is suddenly enveloped in a mixture of three strong perfumes as the lady in the front seat peers at me from under long false eyelashes and says in a deep masculine voice, “Hi, honey, how are you? I’m Marci, the one who called you.”

  I noticed immediately that I felt self-conscious and awkward in this new reality. They were on a happy high and soon ingratiated themselves, making me feel I was accepted as one of them. Their joi de vivre attitude was striking, as was their dramatic makeup and glamorous clothing. They explained that they were at a transgender convention and had made friends with each other only that day. I couldn’t help cracking up at their hilarious observations of straight people who were skittish around them. With every comment they would start with the word honey and try to outdo each other with outrageous descriptions, like, “Honey, did you catch the short, fat guy adjusting his toupee when he grinned and said “hi” to us in the elevator?” to which another chimed in, “Oh, honey, he was so cute. I wanted to pull it off and kiss his adorable bald head.” They howled with laughter, and then they asked if I would like to join them for a drink. I was truly touched and honored by their generous invitation and thanked them but said no, I needed to work. I often wonder what it would have been like if I had said yes. It was probably a missed opportunity.

  Every show I worked on was a family affair. We all became bonded like a close-knit family, from the biggest star and supporting actors to the stagehands and costumers. One thing we all had in common was being happy to be working. A deep sense of gratitude was our glue. The other was the gift of creativity we all shared and respected in one another. We knew we were each a relevant part of a team that was creating a singular work of art.

  Two of my favorite shows were Happy Days with Henry Winkler and Ron Howard and Laverne and Shirley with Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, both done at Paramount Studios. At that time, Robin Williams was an up-and-coming star working on Mork and Mindy. A couple of times he came to watch our Laverne and Shirley tapings when he was done taping his show on another soundstage. Once, he and Penny, Cindy, and I inhaled helium balloons and cracked each other up talking in high-pitched cartoon voices. We were all blown away by his quick off-the-wall wit with or without the helium.

  One of my favorite Buddhists, Patrick Duffy, who was just an up-and-coming actor when I knew him, asked me to babysit for him and his wife in his dingy old roach-infested apartment above Hollywood Boulevard. He gave me a script to read that he had just gotten the lead part in, The Man from Atlantis, and asked me what I thought of it. Two years later, after only one season of The Man from Atlantis, he got a starring role as Bobby in Dallas, and I had the good fortune to be assigned to the show as the female costume coordinator at MGM for a few months. (A side note: Patrick and I took on Hollywood Boulevard one night to do Shakabuku, which is the Japanese word for enrolling strangers into coming to a Buddhist meeting. He was really good at it. I marveled at his ability to connect to perfect strangers.)

  Patrick also had a lightning-quick sense of humor, which he demonstrated with Larry Hagman in the outtakes. In between sets, while some of the crew were setting up for the next scene, they would reenact the last scene as a satire, hilariously and brilliantly ad-libbing to the delight of an audience of attentive cast and crewmembers.

  In four years, I had done dozens of movies and TV shows. By this time I was a Costumer 2, and my big break came as the head designer/costumer of a TV series that I was particularly fond of called Another Day with David Groh and Joan Hackett. This was done in front of a live audience at Warner Bros. but lasted only one season.

  I created a style of clothing for Joan that was classy and unique. She often wore hats that outlined her adorably expressive face and sometimes had a feather that drooped down and tickled her nose, causing spontaneous laughter from the audience. Joan had a whimsical charm all her own, but she was in constant competition with David, who, she insisted, tried to upstage her at every opportunity. She displayed a deep inferiority complex that had her acting out as the quintessential prima donna, fighting the director and the writers during every rehearsal. She sometimes flew into a rage and walked out. I had to constantly soothe her ruffled feathers with exaggerated compliments to get her back on track. She was the undisputed star of the show with her exceptional acting ability and comedic sense. Sadly, she died a few years later of ovarian cancer.

  Right after Another Day, I was asked to be the head designer of Flo, a spinoff of Alice, with Polly Holliday at Warner Bros. This was also done before a live audience.

  Designing for Flo was categorically the opposite of my work for Another Day. Flo’s wardrobe consisted of flashy spandex pants and sheer ruffled blouses in bright colors. She pranced around like a peacock, saying things like “Kiss ma grits!” in he
r southern twang.

  PING! Four rowdy twenty-something women dressed in white cocktail dresses in midafternoon squeezed their oversized bodies into my car. I asked why they were all wearing white, to which they replied with an air of importance that it was an all-white dress party (Stupid me, I thought sarcastically!). To add to the ambiance, one of them turned on a loud rock music station on her iPhone, and they all talked simultaneously to each other in louder screeching tones. Regrettably, my app indicated that I had forty-eight minutes to go with them as they were headed toward Pier 1 at the Embarcadero in San Francisco. They squealed with excitement about the boat ride they were going to take. At one point I covered my ears and asked if they could take it down a notch, which they did for about thirty seconds.

  Tamara, the heftiest and loudest girl of the bunch, sat in the front seat in her very tight and very short mini-dress and immediately put the visor mirror down so she could adjust her headband, her long corkscrew curls, her eyelashes, and other parts of her face in between taking selfies with the girls in the back seat. At last count, she did this eight times throughout the whole ride. I, unfortunately, could find no redeeming qualities in any of the girls as they blathered on about how many hours it took to dress that day, talking over each other to add to the volume. It seemed they were competing for who took the longest. They squealed, screeched, and howled with the loud rock music for all of forty-eight minutes, and I thought to myself, Why me, God? Wasn’t my prayer of intention sincere enough for you today? Happily, I arrived right on time, and one of the girls said, “You’re a really good driver. Thank you for getting us here safely and on time,” to which the others agreed vociferously. Hmmmm . . . OK, God, I get it. Maybe if I had been a little less judgmental, I might have enjoyed the ride.

  I find that I still struggle with my over-activated judgmental nature. Being an artist and a photographer with somewhat high standards of beauty, when I see extremely overweight women dressing and acting as if they’re size-two supermodels in search of a talent agent, I get a little crazy. This tells me I’m still a stretch away from my goal of self-love.

  Throughout this period, besides loving the work I was doing and still practicing Buddhism, I began delving into metaphysics and attending channelings. One day while taking an afternoon nap, something extraordinary happened. It was my first out-of-body experience: I was in the middle of a dream in which I drove to our set at Warner Bros. and got a handful of clothes on hangers out of my trunk and followed Polly Holliday into the soundstage. I followed her through the audience risers to the stage and then backstage, where I saw her disappear through a door. I went to the door and opened it to find another door immediately behind it, then four more doors, until I got to the last one, which was just a half a door. I burst out laughing and said, “Do you call yourself a door?” With that I was immediately transported into a scene that was more real than reality itself. I found myself lifting off the ground and then flying as the landscape whizzed by until I was high in the blue sky looking down at a valley nestled between beautiful green hills with cows and winding roads and small cottages (pretty much like where I live today). Then suddenly blackness was closing in, and the scene was getting smaller and farther away. . . . I cried out, “Please let me stay here a little longer!” and a male voice said, “No, it’s time for you to go back now.” With that I was suddenly plunked down into my body, but the scariest part was, I didn’t know how to open my eyes for several seconds.

  I have always thought this to be a gift to let me know I am not my body and that life will go on and may be even more beautiful and strikingly real after death. I have heard and read so many personal accounts of life after death, and my friend Dannion Brinkley personally recounted his first near-death experience to me. Dannion is an author who is well known for his three near-death experiences, two of which were caused by lightning, with the first one rendering him clinically dead for twenty-eight minutes. He returned to his body, which was already in a body bag, after quite an “enlightening” experience in the afterlife. His experiences and spiritual awakening are well documented in his books: Saved by the Light, At Peace in the Light, and Secrets of the Light. He has had numerous guest appearances on TV talk shows.

  Meanwhile, I was still practicing Buddhism and effectively still celibate, even with all the temptations at hand in this made-for-TV world. So, not only sex but also love was still elusive. Chanting for thirteen years had gotten me nowhere on that score, and I was still unconsciously attracted to married men and they to me. I remember the first time I kissed someone at a cast party while I was still celibate. I connected with the assistant director, and after our first kiss, we decided to go to his car and make out in the back seat. He and I continued kissing in the back seat of his car for hours until the break of dawn. I couldn’t stop and neither could he. We sucked each other’s faces off, but we never went any further. I think I was finally satiated after eleven years of being a nun. My life was not a blockbuster hit yet, but at least my B-movie was a little more interesting and had the potential of being nominated for a technical Oscar: the longest presex kiss in cinematic history. Did anything ever come of this? No. In the light of day, the magic wore off, and we both went our separate ways.

  I’M A BELIEVER

  My Fate Was Sealed When I Saw His Face

  By the time I was forty, I was desperate for a single man to love and went to see a psychologist, who gave me three books to read. Be Here Now and Grist for the Mill by Ram Dass and Hammer on the Rock by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho). I think he sensed it was time for me to look outside of Buddhism for the answer. Yep, uh-huh, I was ready!

  Bhagwan’s book Hammer on the Rock was actually a chisel that broke through the brick wall around my heart and let some light in. Upon reading the first paragraph of the first chapter of that book, I fell madly in love again, but this time from afar, with a spiritual master. What delivered the final love blow was a tape I heard later on the word fuck, which he lectured on for twenty minutes in his inimitably refined manner of speech. It began, “Fuck, is the most beautiful word in the English language. Let me tell you why,” and he listed all the ways it could be used grammatically. My sides hurt from laughing so hard, and after eleven years of celibacy, I knew I had to go to India to sit at his feet and begin the next stage of my development.

  Being impatient for self-gratification, I wasted no time dying all my clothes red, and those I couldn’t dye, I gave away. This was the color assigned to his neo-sannyasins (disciples), worn along with the mala (a beaded necklace with his portrait in a wooden locket) as a symbol of surrendering the ego to the higher self via our guide and catalyst, Bhagwan. Impatient for instant gratification, I went to a bead store and bought 108 dark wooden beads and a cheap gold-tone locket. I then found a magazine with Bhagwan’s picture, and when I cut it out, it fit perfectly into the locket. Having strung the beads together with the locket, I solemnly put the “mala” around my neck and proudly became a self-made Rajneesh sannyasin.

  My first encounter with the Rajneesh community was with a gorgeous, tan, long-blond-haired sannyasin named Swami James at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore in Beverly Hills. He came home with me, and we made love with our eyes. We sat cross-legged on the floor facing each other and looking deep into each other’s eyes. We focused on matching the rhythm of our breaths. This was my first taste of tantric foreplay.

  Then after reading a few of Bhagwan’s books, I took a trip to a place called Geetam in the high desert in San Bernardino near Victorville. This was a small, bustling Rajneesh community living high on life and love in a privately guarded desert paradise unbeknownst to anyone but those who sought to know. Driving up the driveway, I was not prepared for what I saw: handsome, long-haired, half-naked men and women walking around unselfconsciously doing odd jobs. One older man wearing only a tool belt/apron got my attention when I noticed his “member” hanging below the apron. Well, granted, it was a hot day in the desert, but coming from eleven years of celibacy and a
rigid social structure, this was a complete shock to my nervous system. However, something about everyone’s authenticity melted my resistance, and I quickly assimilated into this new culture, especially when that old man turned around to reveal an adorable bare bottom.

  PING! I picked up a tall, lanky guy with gray hair and kind eyes in Novato who wanted to go to Good Earth in Fairfax. He looked very familiar, and then I knew he was a sannyasin I’d often seen at satsang (Sunday morning home meditations and potluck). We exchanged hellos, reintroducing ourselves, and I asked him if he knew about the book called 93 Rolls-Royces, written by Deva Peter Haykus, which was about the last days of Bhagwan at the ranch in Oregon called Rajneeshpuram. He looked bewildered and said, “No. What is it about?” I giggled at his obvious faux pas and said, “Well, I think it’s about ninety-three Rolls-Royces.” Sheepishly he nodded and smiled. There was very little ego evident in this man, who was like a gentle giant. He asked what I was up to, and I told him I was writing a book about Uber driving and that I might put him in my book. He laughed and then said, “That’d be different,” which was true to his unassuming nature.

  After sending Bhagwan a letter about why I wanted to take sannyas, (become a disciple), I received a letter back from him giving me my new name, Ma Veet Yamini, with an explanation of its meaning—“going beyond the night into a life of consciousness,” which was my dharma (spiritual path). I was then given the official sannyas ceremony at Geetam, officiated by Krishna Prem, a sannyasin I had gotten to know and love. And so a real mala took the place of my silly homemade one. It was accepted that all shades of red or orange were the only colors we could wear as Rajneesh sannyasins. I was already ahead of the game with all my newly dyed clothes.