by Sam Lansky
For the ceremony itself, Buck had ordered several days’ worth of catered meals dropped off, preportioned containers of unsalted, unseasoned vegetables, quinoa and chicken, all of which were now stacked neatly in Buck’s refrigerator. “Is it normal to have your transdimensional journey catered?” Sam asked Buck, who had shrugged.
Buck had also planned to set up what he called “a fabulous yurt moment” in his backyard for their home during the ceremony. “That way,” he explained, “we’ll have all the resources of the house close by but we can still benefit from the experience of communing with the earth.”
“I love this,” Sam said, egging him on. “Ranch-hand glamour.”
“Rugged. Evocative of the great American West.”
“Masc seeking masc,” Sam said. “Flannel shirts. Suede boots. Pendleton blankets!”
“That’s perfect,” Buck said. “Is there a Pendleton store in LA? We need to find machine-washable blankets, in case we barf on them.”
Sam was responsible for picking up buckets for vomiting, and a few other last-minute items. Buck called him the morning of the ceremony with a shopping list.
“Did you get the buckets yet? I would try the Container Store at the Grove, maybe—I bet they’ll have the best selection of stylish buckets that will fit our aesthetic. And it would probably be good to have a few more green juices—maybe pop by Moon Juice in Melrose Alley and see if they have something nice and alkalizing, maybe a chard blend? And I’m wondering if a few snacks might be good to have on hand—if you go to Erewhon, I’d pick up some activated cashews and dried mango slices, just in case we need it, and anything else that looks appealing that fits within the dieta. I also meant to stop at Candle Delirium on Santa Monica by Laurel Hardware and pick up—let’s see—oh, twelve six-inch cylindrical white or off-white unscented candles, one and a half inch in diameter? And I was thinking, just to really boost the energy of the space, it might be nice to anchor us with a few selenite towers—just four or five, really—so if you wanted to swing past House of Intuition and grab a few, not the enormous ones or the travel-size pieces but the medium ones, a little less than a foot tall, I’d feel so much more secure just knowing that we had them nearby. You know selenite, right? The clear white luminescent crystal.”
But when he arrived at the house, Jacob took one look inside the yurt—big cushions lining the perimeter of it, Pendleton blankets in tones of sand and ecru, and the selenite towers now scattered artfully throughout the space—and nixed it. “You’re going to want something sturdy to lean up against,” he said, pushing against the thin canvas of the yurt’s walls. “Trust me.” Buck looked disappointed.
Same with all the snacks they’d bought from Moon Juice—chocolate truffles rolled from raw cacao and cinnamon, and sprouted grain crackers made with sunflower seeds, and little bags of goji berries and dried mango slices dusted with cayenne pepper and lime, sorted into little wicker baskets on the dining room table—all of which, it turned out, contained Himalayan pink salt. “What did I say?” Jacob said reproachfully. “No salt.”
Most of all, he was unimpressed by the small gray teacups and kettle that Buck had set out on a long wooden table for them to use for serving the ayahuasca.
“What is this?” Jacob said, pointing at it.
“Oh—I bought them at auction,” Buck said. “It’s this extraordinary artist out of Düsseldorf. They’re made from concrete taken from the Berlin Wall!”
“No,” Jacob said, and he shook his head. “No. That’s not energetically appropriate for this work.”
“But—”
“Buck,” Jacob said sharply. “I need you to stop trying to produce this experience and just trust me.”
Buck looked up, surprised. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”
Jacob looked out the window at the sky. “It’s going to be sundown soon,” he said. “We should find our gathering place.”
They settled in the den off the side of the great room. It was lined by bookshelves, with an oversize sectional, cozy but not claustrophobic. The three men stood and surveyed it.
“This will work,” Jacob said. “You can sit on the floor and lean up against the side of the couch.” They laid out cushions on the floor in front of the frame of the sofa and spread out blankets over them, so they would be soft and padded underneath their bodies but could still lean back against a sturdy surface.
Jacob spread out opposite them, with his back to the wall, so he was facing Buck and Sam with a few feet of distance separating them. Carefully he rolled out a faded orange serape in front of him and spread out a number of objects on it. There were two bottles of a dark, viscous-looking liquid—one larger, one smaller—and a wooden tobacco pipe, several bundles of sage, a few sticks of palo santo, two large feathers and a small plastic bucket, which, Sam noted, was much less stylish than the teacup-shaped wastebaskets he had picked out for ceremony.
The sun was starting to dip down below the mountains. It was dusk. They sat in front of him in silence as Jacob laid out his kit, organizing these items.
Sam looked around the room, already feeling slightly dazed. It was as if there was already something happening, even though they hadn’t ingested anything yet. Some invisible ripple of energy, some calming balm. He felt peaceful but somber.
“This first night is just about opening you up to the medicine,” Jacob said. “It’s very common to not experience any effects. It’s also very possible that you’ll experience full effects. This isn’t an exact science. But you can consider this first evening as more of a statement of intent. You’re telling the spirit of the medicine that you’re available to her—inviting her to come do her work with you. And the work does begin tonight, whether you feel it or not.”
Sam felt a little more tension release from his body.
“I want to lay down some ground rules,” Jacob continued. “I call these the four commitments. The first commitment is that in this circle we will observe a code of noble silence. That means that the two of you don’t talk to each other. You don’t touch each other. If one of you is experiencing strong effects or struggling, you don’t comfort the other. You stay in your own experience. Is that clear?”
Buck and Sam both nodded.
“Please say yes,” Jacob said.
“Yes,” they both said.
“Thank you. The second commitment is that we don’t leave the circle before the ceremony has closed,” Jacob said. “Of course you can get up to use the bathroom if you need to. But you don’t get up and go to bed halfway through. You don’t go outside. We stay in ceremony until it’s over. No matter what happens. I need you to commit, verbally, that you’ll see through the night. Please say yes if you can make that commitment.”
“Yes,” Buck and Sam said in unison.
“Good,” Jacob said. “The third commitment is that you do not leave the sacred space I am holding for this ceremony, which extends as far as the gate at the base of the driveway and the end of the yard. Everything that happens within that domain is under my protection. I can leave that enclosure—and I probably will, tomorrow, during the day. But you need to stay within those bounds until we close this ceremony on the third morning. Please say yes if you can agree to that.”
“Yes,” they both said.
“The fourth commitment is that you don’t die during ceremony.”
Sam’s tranquil mood broke. He looked at Buck, then back at Jacob.
“At least not in your physical body,” Jacob continued. “Other parts of you may die. Your ego. Your sense of self. Your consciousness. You may release things that needed to die a long time ago. All of that is fine. But not in your body. Please agree that you will not die during ceremony.”
Sam raised his hand.
“The medicine is very safe,” Jacob said in response to Sam’s raised hand. “You won’t die. I just need you to agree to that.”
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“I’ll do my best,” Sam said, and he thought briefly about how nice it would be if he died in ceremony—how convenient it would be to not have to deal with his credit card debt or work inbox, to just never have to go back to real life. Stop, he thought. You choose life.
“Me, too,” Buck said.
Jacob breathed in deeply. “Things will happen here over the next three nights,” he said. “Wild things, and sacred things. Your responsibility is to stay in it, no matter how frightening or uncomfortable. I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. But it’s up to you.” His eyelashes fluttered. “The mother is a teacher,” he said. “She is not always gentle. But she is always loving. As much as possible, try to trust that she’s taking you where you need to go. Ask her to show you what you need to see. Be humble.”
Sam reached over for Buck’s hand, then remembered he wasn’t supposed to touch him. They looked at each other for a long moment. Please, God, let this work, Sam thought.
Then Sam felt around under his blanket until he found what he was looking for: the bear tooth his mother had given him. He gripped it in his hand, feeling its pointed edges smooth and cold against his palm. Then he took one long, deep breath and squeezed it tightly.
“Are you ready?” Jacob said.
Sam and Buck both nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Let’s begin.”
DURING
Part Two
7
Rich Gays
First.
Jacob filled his pipe with tobacco and lit it. He puffed on it, making fragrant plumes of smoke rise through the den. Sam watched through half-lidded eyes, the smoke prickling his nostrils.
Then. Jacob stood and left the room, walking silently through the house until the smoke was everywhere, in and around them, the air thick with it.
He returned to his seat. He picked up both bottles and held them to his forehead, murmuring what sounded like a low, sibilant prayer, hissing and whistling through his teeth. Buck and Sam watched him as he prayed over the medicine, or into it. Then he opened one of the bottles and poured it into a small measuring cup. He held the cup, full of liquid, to his forehead and repeated the prayer. Then he downed it in one gulp.
He sat for a moment, as if letting it settle in his body, then began the ritual over again. He held the bottles to his forehead; he poured a shot; he held that to his forehead; and then he motioned silently to Buck.
Buck crawled on all fours across the floor to sit in front of Jacob. Sam heard some indecipherable whispers and watched as Buck slung his head back, taking the shot. Then Buck returned to his nest.
After a pause, Jacob motioned Sam up to the mat, and like Buck, Sam crawled awkwardly toward him. Jacob held the bottles to his forehead again and Sam sat cross-legged in front of him. Sam could hear the prayer more clearly now—it wasn’t in English. Instead it was in some kind of ancient tongue that Sam couldn’t identify. Jacob poured a cup for Sam and handed it to him.
Now Sam held the cup full of ayahuasca to his forehead, and as he did, closing his eyes, some electricity shot from the glass into his head through the skin, and chills descended down his back like a shudder. Show me what I need to see, Sam thought. The glass was cold against his third eye, the ridges of it pressing into his flesh.
Sam opened his eyes. Jacob’s gaze was fierce. Sam wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. He held the glass in his hands and took a deep breath. Then he slugged it back in one shot. It was sweeter than he had expected, with the consistency of molasses, thick and gelatinous with a briny aftertaste that made his lips feel numb, and Sam felt it descend down his throat, felt it coat the roof of his mouth and stick to his teeth, swishing saliva around and swallowing it, trying to clear this taste from his mouth, but it was indelible, and it didn’t feel holy.
“Thank you,” Sam said. He returned to his nest and all three men lay in silence for a moment.
“How long does it take to kick in?” Buck said.
“That’s up to her,” Jacob said.
He stood and switched off the lamp and the room was cast into darkness.
Sam stretched his body out long. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly and deliberately. In. Out. In. Out. His mind was busy, as usual. He wondered what was going to happen. He wondered if anything was going to happen.
He opened his eyes. It was so dark in the room that it looked exactly like the undersides of his eyelids. He turned his head and he couldn’t see anything—no shapes, no outlines. He blinked a few times and saw the faintest shape to his right—the form of Buck’s body. Then, in front of where Jacob was sitting, Sam could make out the still-glowing cherry of his pipe. It was eerily quiet. Sam closed his eyes again. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears.
Then one loud thought rocketed through him like a thunderbolt: Did you just fucking relapse? Is that what this is? Sam’s heart raced. Stop it, he commanded his brain. Stop.
But the thought echoed in his mind, a warning. How many nights had Sam spent in high school waiting for drugs to kick in, waiting for some promised effect to take him out of his reality into another one? Now here he was, back again.
Sam rolled over onto one side. He sighed loudly.
As if Jacob could read his mind—or at the very least, sense his agitation—he spoke. “Clear your mind,” Jacob said. “And try to relax.”
Relax. The command was absurd. How could he relax when he was about to go traveling off into another dimension? What was supposed to be relaxing about that?
He had never expected to end up here, on the floor of somebody’s house, trying to fix himself. This wasn’t supposed to be the direction his life had taken. The Sam that had lived in New York would never have accepted this as an outcome. The Sam that had lived in New York would have been so judgmental of this, of all of this, the crystals and the shaman and the green juices that he couldn’t even drink because they had too much salt. He’d gone soft, living in Los Angeles. Soft and gullible, too willing to believe anyone who told him what he wanted to hear.
Yet in some ways he was harder, too, than he had been in New York, angrier and more wounded, less open in ways both big and small. Sam wished that he could go back in time, to be a different him, like the him that had lived in New York before everything had broken.
He tried to go back to the beginning of what happened in New York, but all those beginnings were arbitrary. Pick one, he thought.
A young man with dark hair and blue eyes standing by the bar, looking over his shoulder in Sam’s direction.
Sam breathed in and out. Not yet, he thought.
There. He settled there, right in his mind’s eye. The bar on Second Avenue—what was it called? No, not that—the Roseland. Oh, no, there was something before that, even. The roof of the apartment on Eighty-First Street.
Yes, like that.
* * *
It was fall in New York City.
It was fall in New York City, which was the best season in the only city, and Sam was moving out.
Out of the spare room of a drag queen’s Chelsea apartment he’d found on Craigslist his junior year of college. He’d chatted with her for five minutes, at most, before making the decision to move in, not realizing that he would spend the next two years in an apartment where every surface was covered in rainbow glitter and clumps of hair-weave.
In the drag queen’s bedroom, on shelves that encircled its perimeter just below the ceiling, were dozens of colorless mannequin heads cheerfully adorned with wigs: not just a wispy platinum Farrah but jewel tones, too, like a cranberry Reba, slightly askew. Sam’s room had a bunk bed with an efficiency desk in place of a lower bunk, where he sat on a tiny stool, hunched over his laptop, finishing his papers as graduation loomed. In a third, more generously proportioned bedroom, from which Sam was certain his room had been carved in some earlier reimagining of the floor plan, a sinuously built Czech go-go dancer surf
aced only at night, wearing skintight Diesel jeans and an Andrew Christian tank top. He spoke no English, nor did he need to.
By day, the drag queen worked at the Container Store on Sixth Avenue. The cupboards spilled over with trays and cubbies, closets stuffed with thin suede hangers and translucent tubs for storage. Sam stuffed his winter coats into stackable plastic bins. A cheap window air-conditioning unit whirred all summer long. Ethan Hawke lived in a brownstone across the street. Sam sat on the stoop some nights and smoked cigarettes. It made him feel close to something.
“Can you host?” No. No, Sam could not host.
Moving out, and moving up. For months, he’d been talking about getting a place with Brett, his best friend in New York. They’d met on Twitter while Sam was in undergrad. They both tweeted incessantly about pop culture, the way some people followed sports, and both had a soft spot for pop divas, especially the unlucky ones at the bottom of the pyramid. Twitter was a high school cafeteria made meritocratic, and every retweet was a little dopamine hit. When Brett followed Sam back, it meant something. You’re funny. You matter.
Do you want to come with me to the taping of a live concert Kelly Rowland is doing for Walmart? Brett asked him over direct message.
I thought you’d never ask, Sam said.
Sam loved Brett instantly. He was short and scruffy. Britney Spears was his patron saint: he called her Godney. When something was really funny, he dissolved into a fit of giggles so convulsive that Sam thought he might choke.
That first night, they investigated each other in the uneasy way that gay men did, trying to figure out if the other was a romantic prospect or competition. Instead they cried from laughter on the subway over a meme. There was no kiss. It was exactly right.
Brett was the first person Sam had ever met who wanted the same things he wanted. To talk endlessly about the way a swell of synths or a propulsive drum beat made a song tear at the heart. To scour Scandinavian music blogs looking for the next big star who would play a tiny show at a Lower East Side dive bar to a crowd of jaded label A&Rs.