OK, so I’m crashing at my friends’ apartment in LES. On Saturday night, I lay supine on their couch in a delirious fugue, watching Rachel Weisz’s nightmare camp lesbian diorama Dead Ringers, and felt a sudden, sharp craving for dark chocolate. It’s in the freezer, a voice told me. Indeed, there was a stash; indeed, I took a satisfying bite; and — you know where this is going — only after I consumed the entire confection did it occur to me that this may be a…special kind of chocolate.
PROLOGUE: THE ECLIPSE
Before we launch into the telling of this particular odyssey, let’s catch up a bit. Thursday’s eclipse set something off. Even by Tuesday, an opaque veil of demonic shmutz had descended over the city; walking back from my dermatologist’s office by Madison Square Park (apparently there is no cure for dermatitis?), I spotted Kathleen Turner, in full athleisure, walking the Bowery with ski poles. None of us is getting out of here alive, I thought, as I watched her hike towards Jolene. That evening, while Ben and I enjoyed Lambrusco (which I always say like Lil’ Kim says Moscato in “Lighters Up”), I ran into someone I’d ghosted months before. They’re all out. On Friday, Lulu and I had a blessed, blitzed walk through downtown, where we were assailed by an NFT-activated, members-only, non-dairy soft-serve installation. Signs, omens, portents. Everything was converging — or melting.
Ruby had warned me that Thursday’s eclipse would be all about relationships, as had my fellow astrologer Maliea Croy (whose writing I’m obsessed with). I’d just had the run-in with the ghostee; and a few days before, I’d ejected myself out of a very lovely Italian man’s apartment when his desire for genuine, romantic intimacy set me into what felt like Vietnam war flashbacks. I’d come to believe that I would never have fun again, that every night of my life would be consumed by guilt, obligation, people-pleasing, all tilted into nightmare hellworld by a pathological revulsion towards closeness and affection.
I started to contemplate the possibility that many of the so-called abuses I’ve lived through weren’t necessarily targeted at me; perhaps I'd just been landed, by repetitive patterning, around black-hole narcissists who were only acting in their nature. The real problem was my hyper-empathy, lack of self-definition and primary directive to shape-shift to ensure my own survival. In these relationships, I was incidental, whatever the other wanted me to be, and soon there would be nothing left. Going to make amends to my ghostee, I got sucked back into our old routine. We hit the West Village on Friday night, and it felt like Odysseus encountering all of his fallen comrades from The Iliad. I thought you were dead! I wanted to scream, as I was consumed by the necrotic reality of a long-passed social life.
THE TRIP
OK, flash forward. By the time I’d nibbled on that chocolate, I was so devastated I felt as though I could hardly stand. The weight of every interaction, every self-compromise, had finally buried me under. But Dexter was DJing for his birthday at Nowhere Bar, and Jake and Melis said I could meet them before for dinner at Kiki’s. Get up, you old bag.
I told the two of them that the night was about to go 50/50. Melissa identified the situation properly: this was my Smiley Face. They assured me: I was going to have a great night. As the meal progressed, I found myself laughing more, especially when we got into a classic discourse on aughts-era Showtime, the age of the deviant suburban white lady — Weeds, The Big C, United States of Tara — and when I got up to the bathroom, it really hit.
In line for the bathroom, I felt a tidal of emotions come to the fore, out of my usual dissociative fog. I could feel joy, pride, presence, etc. It felt like it could tip over at any moment. I had no choice to but to double down, to affirm that this night was going to be spectacular, that my friends would protect me, that something had called me to that freezer. I forced myself to completely relax in their care.
We stepped out, to pouring rain on cobblestones. Everything had suddenly gone hyper-cinematic. New York looked like Dick Tracy. I tried checking my phone, but a text from my stepmom looked like hieroglyphics. Oh yeah. It has begun.
We took a yellow cab to Nowhere, and entered to “Groove is in the Heart.” Kiko was there, and Kryn, Gaby and even Emily, and all sorts of other faces I never expected, all converging at the right place and right time. Dexter ruled from the DJ booth, pounding a Negroni and playing a Madonna medley which included “Sorry,” “Isaac,” and, of course, the Miami Mix of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.”
I observed myself smiling, laughing and dancing; noticed what it felt like to have an active sex drive and not a low-hum of dread and fatigue. This is a person who is meeting their friends on a Saturday night. Just like any other person. There I was, one complete and contained me, able to exchange life force without losing all of it.
It was a vision of the future, of what could be realized if I could draw lines, close my gate, build an understanding of where I end and others begin. My impending departure from New York, and the many travels I pray will soon come, took on a new and purifying purpose. I have to leave so that one day I can come back. I have a prize to claim, a mythic boon: the power to love and receive love without being annihilated. If I can complete this voyage and return with it, I’ll be able to do this — to be here — without psychedelic enhancement.
The night tore on blissfully. It was my first night off from martyrdom in months. I’ve been yakking for weeks about how I haven’t had a chance to dance, how I never have fun, how it’s always something. That’s no one’s fault but mine. I realized that my guides had to lead me to chocolate to trick me into having fun. I’d made it that hard for them. I can’t do that again.
By 1:30 the mist of the high was dissipating, so I headed into the rain, with the intention of walking to The Cock. There had been a handsome stranger at Nowhere, but when it came down to it, when we were close enough to touch, I did something new, something alien to me: I followed my instincts. This wasn’t what I wanted. Perhaps it’s Saturn in Pisces, reflecting the discernment of Virgo, but I felt the thrill of discretion, of conservation, of retaining something that is my own. I said no.
I stepped into the Cock, where the British hag running the cash box informed me that it was $20 cover. I had $18. I walked out. That power of choice was suddenly thrilling. What if I didn’t push myself to the edge, risk exposing myself at my most sensitive to the ghouls of the dungeon demimonde? What if I took care of myself instead?
The walk home through the rain was beautiful, terrifying, upsetting, dripping in immanence. I stepped into a smoke shop, bought a Gatorade and Fudge M&Ms. The city felt new and foreign, and I had visions of this sensation repeating on rainy nights to come: in Osaka, in Madrid, in Bogota and in Lima. It made sense that I was leaving again. My work over this retrograde would be to clear out my fucking storage locker, to look my friends in the eye and say goodbye.
It felt good to trip this hard, at this moment, at this age. I didn’t fear the return to normalcy, the jagged decline back to the hell of life as it was. This was me, and tomorrow I’d be me as well. No more lightning bolts or flashes of instant becoming. No more awakenings. Just arrival.
