I lie here waiting for Tina’s call like it controls the world. Her parents really are strict! Especially about me! So she calls me after they are in bed. People would think we were bananas. Us both putting our alarm clocks under our pillows and waking up at 2 A.M. so I can catch her phone call on the first ring. It doesn’t seem to bother our sleep though. In fact I think we both sleep better after we’ve hashed out our problems and things. We’re really both on the same wavelength . . . have similar auwas . . . oh crap, what made me think of that.
September 26
I can’t believe this! Tina’s into O too! I say it’s a surprise and yet in my heart I really think I’ve known for some time. When she was so sure of herself about the election . . . and, I don’t know, I guess just a couple of little things she’s said. I don’t know how to lay it on Dell and Brad! We all made a sacred pact to play it cool till Christmas when we were going to have another evaluation in our lives. No booze, no drugs, no sex, no occult! Now this dumped in my lap. Oh crap. . . . I want to go running back to Daddy, crying that I’ve got another problem I can’t handle.
September 27
Tina is really strange. She’s so cool and loose about most things but when she’s talking O she becomes tense and serious as another person, a nine-million-year-old ancient that seems to have all the answers for everything.
Her folks were away for the evening so I went over to her house. She has a beautiful little chest in her room. It’s got drawers for jewelry and scarves and stuff, looks mostly like other little whatnot pieces, except that it has a secret compartment that opens in the back; in fact, the whole back comes out and one sees that actually the drawers in the front are dummies, only go halfway through. In this secret part, she’s got an Ouija board, a crystal ball, little jars of herbs, lots of Cosmic Consciousness and Rosicrucian stuff about the mastery of life, and of course all the Astra junk. Besides that she’s got garbage I’ve never even heard about like the voodoo wanga she said was mine that she just keeps for me. It’s kind of a weird little gismo made in Haiti, the land of voodoo. It’s supposed to bring wealth, love, health, and good or bad luck.
It was a spooky but fun night, sort of reminded me of the old Halloween parties I went to when I was a kid. Tina and I sat on the floor with a candle between us. In a very low, muted voice she told me how, in the dark evening in the hills of Haiti, the drums begin to throb in the warm night air and the Houngan priests conducted sacred secret ceremonies requesting favors from Ibo, Damballah, and other gods. It was like we were there almost. Slivery shaky shadows from the candle wobbled on the walls and curtains as she leaned over and placed the wanga in my hands. Tina said that sometimes wangas were advertised in the National Enquirer and other magazines, but without the knowledge to know how to use them it was sort of like giving a baby electricity when he didn’t have the instructions or wasn’t smart enough to turn on the switch.
I took the wanga in my hands and felt a strange sensation . . . curiosity mixed with repulsion.
Tina asked me to work through its powers to bend a bobby pin she had placed beside the candle. I felt stupid and couldn’t make myself do it. I said I’d pass.
Ignoring my negativeness she began to chant and concentrate herself. Slowly the bobby pin straightened itself from a tight U to a loose, barely bent one.
After a while I relaxed and we levitated a few coins. For me it’s physically and emotionally harder than lifting the heaviest weight possible. Tina says it gets easier with time and practice. I hope so. Tonight I sweated like I’d played center through a whole basketball game, just to get two measly little coins four inches off the floor. The bobby pin is the same principle.
Then we messed around for a while with the Ouija board and the crystal ball. Tina said they had both told her emphatically that she was going to win the election, that’s why she had never had any question.
What’s the difference between what we were doing and faith? The church teaches faith! It’s the “secret combination” bit that scares me. I can understand why it has to be secret because the scoffing of the unbeliever will dilute its power and yet . . . Oh crap, it’s so confusing. Tina is trying to convince me that it seems confusing because I’m just beginning to see that these, unknown to most people, powers work and I don’t know yet how they work. I wonder if she’s right and it will all be very simple once I understand the principles?
It seems kind of childish and immature of me not to at least give the whole concept a chance. I know faith works! I’ve personally seen it heal the sick and other things. God said faith can literally move mountains. I believe that! I can’t understand it, but I literally know both these strange but uncomprehended power sources work! Or are they both extensions of one?
September 28
Tina’s mother thinks she went to a school function. Actually we went to this queer old lady’s house who has powers I still can’t believe. She actually levitated me! I know I didn’t just think it because I was very careful not to eat or drink anything. Again, could there possibly be something piped into the air? That’s the only explanation other than that it really happened.
We took turns concentrating our group powers on one person and it was amazing how we could make that person feel a sensation that he/she didn’t know we had chosen for him/her.
When it was my turn to go into another room, I really strained to hear something but I couldn’t. It was like they weren’t even whispering as they made their decision. When I got back in the group I sat again in the yoga position like the others and waited; in a few minutes I literally could feel heat waves striking my body. It was like squatting in front of a fireplace and having someone pile Christmas tree branches, or something highly flammable, on the fire. Sweat began to run from my hairline down my face. I tried to fight the power, set up a defense, block it out, but I couldn’t. At last when I thought I was going to explode like a pressure cooker I gave up and admitted that I could feel it. . . . Feel it? Judas, it almost cooked me alive. I wonder if their power, or faith or whatever, really could have cooked me . . . killed me?
Wow! This has been my first encounter with voodoo. Who would ever have dreamed that I, the egghead, would become involved in the primitive, the superstitious . . . THE TRUE! It does work. They don’t need pins and all the stuff you see on TV and in movies. No, they just need controlled cosmic mind power. Once I read about the power of a single atom. We are all composed of atoms, most of us just don’t know how to harness their amazingness. The first chance I get I’m going to the university—as well as the public library—and see how much research has been done regarding voodoo and other unknown powers.
It’s beginning to scare me less and intrigue me more, and it’s easier to stay detached than I thought it would be! A thorough scientific study really must be made of these phenomena.
September 29
This afternoon, after church, Tina said she was going to a girl friend’s and we went up the canyon. She had her Ouija board tucked away in her big school bag and we sat under the trees in a little grove and asked it questions about life. At first I felt little rushes of uncomfortableness, but they passed, and we asked about school and sports and my job and our families and everything we could think of.
Then we just stretched out and both took a nap. The yellow leaves that completely covered the ground were like a soft comforter, and the fragrance of the wild shrubs around and the gentle plop plopping of the water over rocks made us feel like two children out of a fairy tale. Old Toad was the good green dragon guarding us and we were safe . . . life was pleasing, fulfilling, and at ease.
Did problems and pressures, angers and hurts really exist? Not in our world! I remember thinking all kinds of beautiful thoughts like that while we hung on the fringe of sleep. In fact, I held back not wanting to let go.
What can I say? We communicate, we express, we interact, we feel, we happen. We happen! We (I) can dig it. It just is there. Good vibrations. We lean on each other. It doesn’t need reminder, or
force of lies or encouragement, it just happens. I am joyful.
September 30
Tina has become part of my life! We cut assembly and lunch and drove up River Dell. She feels as I do that our auwas have merged. That we are one. At her insistence, I am going to include her in my rituals each night as she has included me in hers for some time. She wants me to be one with her in all things, but I’m still holding back about O . . . I didn’t say so but I know she can feel it for we can now send ESP messages to each other even though we are in different classes or at home. It’s a phenomenon but not one of the powers that are completely foreign to me because I see my parents and other people who have married for long periods and are very close, and they often finish sentences for each other or say “I know” or something long before any of the rest of us know what’s coming off.
I sit here at my desk thinking how important Tina is in my life, how I love her body and her mind and her soul, but I can’t be with her completely . . . I can’t dedicate myself to her forces, and reject my church completely . . . Everything was fine as long as her thing was an extension of mine, an expansion, but I don’t know, if I have to choose . . . will it be her? It’s like I’m two people, one who wants to go with her and one who doesn’t, and like she’s two people and I only want one of them.
Oh sleep,
Why do you wander like a sheep that’s lost
And in my time of deepest dark and need of thee
Cannot be found?
Come sleep
And soothe my furrowed head.
Come sleep
And rest with me upon my bed.
Please sleep
Come rescue me
’Tis I am lost, not thee.
Tina’s parents hate me. It’s one constant hassle with them!
October 1
Today Tina gave me this strange note. She said she laid awake last night for hours with my aura torturing hers because of my uncertainty. That my indecision was shattering her.
I feel rotten but I can’t change the way I feel. I don’t want to! I’ve got to stay alert and mentally disciplined because I’m turning my paper on the “Factors Affecting Phagocytosis” in tomorrow as an entry in the medical department of the Science Fair. I can’t let anything interfere with that. I won’t! Dr. Harten at the hospital research board says I know more about blood than premed students starting medical school. I can’t give that and everything else I’ve got going for me up for a few fun trips to Halloween land.
Aw come on, be honest! Actually Aiae has helped me immeasurably with my concentration and mental disciplines. I can literally isolate myself within a mental cocoon while in the midst of the noisiest, most unhinged environment. Aiae has to have credit for that. And some of the other disciplines that I understand and practice I do appreciate, but the whole way . . . I can’t go the whole way. It’s like giving up my free agency! I’ve been taught all my life that that was one of the greatest principles in life. Oh shit, Tina’s making it so difficult!
. . . I’m shattering her reality! . . .
. . . She’s shattering my reality . . . and disturbing! . . . I’m practically a mental case!
She says I can’t be a complete person without her, nor her without me, that our karma, our auwa . . . our . . . her letter is as mixed up as she is . . . as I am . . . Can we make it together? Man, I love her! I don’t want to even try it alone! . . . alone . . . alone . . . The saddest word in the world.
A busted up, confused letter from a busted up, confused chick. I didn’t want to do that to her. I love her. I don’t want to hurt her. I want to soothe her pain . . . make her well again.
October 1, 3:47 A.M.
Actually October 2, but I couldn’t sleep, so I prepared my paper on “Factors Affecting Phagocytosis” and drove it all the way into the city, and left it in the judge’s mailbox. Man, I enjoyed doing that paper. I love mental challenges, mind expanders, things that can’t be done or that are difficult to do. Mom and Dad are so proud of me, they’re sure I’ll win an Air Force Award.
Now I only have to see what the judges say. I can’t wait! Man, I hope they like it! What if they hate it? Oh now I’m being paranoid. I’ve got to make myself go to sleep. I’ll be a mess for the game tomorrow as well as for the test in Milner’s class.
Good night, good night nice friend. It’s important to have someone to tell my troubles to, especially now that I’m so confused about Tina and keeping something from Brad and Dell. That’s really hard. I think they suspect. Hell, what do I do? I made a pact . . . a vow . . . a promise . . .
I wonder how I would react to my paper if I were a judge?
October 3
Tina’s parents found out about her using the phone at night so they’ve stopped that and she’s got a cold so she’s not even in school. In a way it seems good. Dell and Brad and me have been like in the olden days, wandering the halls and spouting off at the chicks, wrestling and playing a little rugby on the lawns when we’ve got a few minutes, and racing around in Toad like he was a sports car. He does his bloody best and we screeched around corners and hung out the windows and threw water balloons. Man, today I felt like I was ten years old again.
October 4
Last night me and Brad and Dell all fell from grace . . . fell . . . splattered ourselves! After the game Jim and some of the kids invited us to a kegger up the canyon so we went, saying all the way up we weren’t going to drink only make out a little with the chicks but . . . well, we just couldn’t resist and once we started we all tried to outdrink each other, then out pot-smoke each other. Just as we were getting ready to cut out, Lyle and Fats came in with some PCP which none of us had ever tried . . . so . . . not feeling any pain at this point, we all indulged. Judas, I can’t believe that stuff . . . Just minutes later half the people there were swinging at each other, even Dell, the peacemaker. I felt some girl grab my hair and I reached out and clobbered her but couldn’t beat her off, she was like a wild animal, just crazy; and I guess I was crazy too.
I saw Brad weaving off through the bushes with some Loosie Goosie and I remember laughing and thinking that now I could forget about the little padlock I’d planned on getting him for his zipper.
October 5
Today in school Tina had Kim slip me a note asking me to meet her through the block from her house at midnight. “Important, urgent, important,” she had put all around the edge.
It’s no trouble to slip out my bedroom window and roll old Toad down the driveway and let him coast to the corner before I start the motor, so I did, wondering a little about Tina because we were having a summer thunder shower and it was raining and thundering and lightning like crazy. For a while I thought maybe she wouldn’t come and then she appeared running through the shrubs like some little lost fawn in the mountains.
I tried to talk to her but she seemed cool and detached, directing me to go to a certain house on the outskirts of town that was hidden way back in some trees. At the driveway she told me to stop my motor and turn the lights off and coast in.
Something inside me, all along, had felt kind of squeamish and I wanted out, but Tina seemed so intent that she made my sensations seem childish.
She knocked a certain way and the door was opened by a woman as old as my mother and kind of fat. She had on a checked pants suit and looked like every other lady you see in the supermarket, pushing her little old cart. What in hell are we doing here? I asked myself as we were led up a flight of stairs without even introductions.
In a small room at the top of the stairs I stopped wondering. One whole wall of the room was glass like an artist’s studio window, and outside the lightning flashed like white neon spears being thrown across the sky. A group of people sat naked around a spurting little candle. Quickly Tina and the woman peeled off their clothes. The old lady’s boobs sagging down to her waist and her belly dangling down to her knees. I thought I was going to throw up but I couldn’t—I really couldn’t move! I could feel the whole group throwing power at
me as real as the thunderbolts flashing across the sky, and a strange burning incense filled my nostrils, my throat, and my chest. The small room was hazy with the smoke. Detached from my own self, somewhat surprised, I found myself undressing and joining the circle.
I continued to try to fight but soon I was floating along with the rest. I remember thinking “What are they burning?” It wasn’t hash! What could possibly be that strong? Zombies sat around the flame. Thirteen stoned, ugly, naked zombies.
They went through incantations I had never heard before and did things I, even now, will not let myself believe.
When the storm seemed at its most severe Tina was given a vial filled with a foul-smelling, sticky, thick liquid, half of it she drank herself and the other half she passed to me. Like the zombie I was at that point, I drank it; then, as the torrents of rain beat on the window and the lightning shot and exploded through the sky and the thunder roared and banged and crashed through the clouds I hit her and kicked her and mauled her, sex was not enough, I wanted to hurt her! After what seemed hours the drug wore off. The people came back into place in the circle. Panting and groaning, I was led back to mine.
Tina crawled over and gathering blood from her cuts on her fingers she placed it in my mouth. “Master, Master, Master,” she whispered over and over. I was too groggy to do anything more than swallow.