Life's Golden Ticket

  He walked back to the three people standing at the front of the stage and briefly touched each of them on the head. “If you just felt your head touched, I want you to pretend that the crowd is gone and you’re safe and comfortable. You just hear my voice and you feel totally comfortable. As a matter of fact, you’re better than comfortable—you feel like you’re about to have the best sex in your life. . . . You feel absolutely HORNY.”

  The crowd erupted in laughter. So did I. For some reason, his serene Indian accent just didn’t seem to go with the word horny. The three subjects didn’t seem to notice. Harsh motioned for me to come and stand behind the woman in the black skirt.

  He continued. “As a matter of fact, you feel so good onstage right now that you think everyone on this stage is absolutely sexy. You believe that so much that if you should take your seat and I should ask you later on how the people on the stage look, you’d jump up and down and scream as loud as you could, ‘They’re sexy!”

  Harsh reached up to the woman’s forehead, pushed her backward, and said, “You’re in control.”

  The woman fell into my arms and opened her eyes in surprise. I helped her stand, and she turned and looked at me in confusion, wondering what had just happened. Harsh approached her immediately and said, “Well, ma’am, you were right—you’re in complete control. I tried to hypnotize you and you just fell asleep! Luckily, my assistant caught you! How do you feel right now?”

  The woman sprouted a huge grin, and her face turned a forbidden red. The crowd burst into laughter.

  “Why don’t you go back to your seat, my princess. Everyone give her a hand for joining us and playing along.”

  The crowd obliged, and Harsh moved on to the other two. He did exactly the same routine: a push, an apology, a question that made them feel aroused. The crowd ate it up.

  Motioning to the remaining seven people onstage, Harsh said, “Okay, now on to our lucky seven. They’ve been standing back here the whole time, unconscious, and missing out on all our fun. What do you think, folks? Should we invite them into the fun? Should we throw them a party?”

  The crowd hooted and hollered.

  “Good. So let’s throw a party!”

  A dance song exploded through the speakers, and colored spotlights showered the stage.

  “Now, of course, at any party,” Harsh said, “you’ve got to have some dancers. What do you think, folks? Are these people cut out to be dancers? How do they look?”

  The skinny woman in the black skirt and the other two volunteers seated in the audience jumped to their feet and screamed, “They’re sexy!”

  The crowd burst into laughter.

  The three suddenly looked around, unsure what had just happened, and immediately sat down, embarrassed.

  The crowd erupted into more gales of laughter.

  Harsh continued. “Oh, well, if the seven people up here onstage are sexy, I guess they’ll be great dancers. Of course, we all know men are usually too chicken to dance, but maybe these four remaining men will play with us today.”

  Harsh touched three of the men on their heads and whispered something to them, leaving the fourth man alone.

  “And we all know women are much better dancers,” Harsh continued. “Women have much better rhythm than men, so I’m sure these three ladies are like Madonna—they really know how to strike a pose.” He touched the three remaining women on the shoulder and whispered something to them.

  “Okay, folks, we’ve got our dancers. Unfortunately, since the men are just big chickens, it’s going to take a lot for these three women to convince the boys to dance with them. You never know what could happen at a good party. Of course, we all know that at any party there’s always that one guy who stands over by the punch bowl and refuses to dance. . . .” Harsh walked up to the fourth man, touched his head, and whispered something in his ear.

  “. . . But you never know, maybe even that guy will dance tonight.”

  The scene was set. The music blared from the speakers. The colored spotlights danced across the stage. The three men stood on one side, the three women on the other, while the other man stood alone at a table with a punch bowl. All seven were now conscious, staring at one another and wondering what was happening.

  Harsh suddenly pointed to the group of women and shouted, “You’re Madonnas!”

  The women immediately broke into dancing. One woman did a vogue-like sequence, stoically moving her arms around her head; another shook like a stripper. The third woman danced rhythmically and made suggestive faces. They all looked ridiculous.

  The crowd howled.

  All the men onstage laughed as well.

  Harsh chuckled into the microphone. “Now, wait a second, men—you’re laughing at the women? I don’t see you busting a move out there. What is this, a high school dance? You’re a bunch of chickens.”

  The men all put their hands in their armpits and started clucking. They kicked the ground, heads jutting out as if they had beaks, and moved jerkily about.

  The man at the punch bowl dropped the cup he was drinking from. Eyes wide, he looked horrified.

  Harsh pointed toward the strutting chickens and said, “What do you think, folks? How do our men up here look?”

  Three people in the crowd jumped up and screamed, “They’re sexy!”

  I could hardly stop laughing.

  One of the chickens suddenly approached the wallflower at the punch bowl and started ramming his nose into him, as though pecking him with a beak. The man jumped back and scrambled to the other side of the stage. One of the dancers intercepted him, though, and grabbed his butt. The man jumped again and bolted in the opposite direction, where another woman grabbed him lasciviously, pulling him close. She started dancing suggestively for him, and suddenly he didn’t seem to be in such a hurry. Another woman came and danced behind him, sandwiching him between her and the other woman. The man grinned, then started putting his hips into it.

  The crowd roared.

  After the show, I waited for twenty minutes inside Harsh’s tent. Finally, the hypnotist walked in, grinning.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been chatting with Henry for a bit. What did you think of the show?”

  “I loved it—hilarious.”

  “Oh, good. Thanks.”

  “I couldn’t believe how powerful your control was over them. Especially the shy people. They really screamed from their seats. Your mojo really worked.”

  Harsh laughed. “So why do you think it worked? Why did people do all those things they normally wouldn’t do? Why would they do things they would be embarrassed to see themselves doing?”

  “I don’t know!” I said. “I was wondering the whole time how you did it!”

  “Actually, it’s pretty simple. Other than the hypnotic relaxation mumbo-jumbo, I essentially did only one thing up there tonight. I momentarily stripped the volunteers of their self-awareness by preventing them from being able to answer the question ‘Who am I being right now?’” Harsh paused and chuckled. “You see, if they could have answered that question, their internal dialogue would have sounded something like ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m acting like Madonna up here, and the crowd is laughing at me!’ or ‘I’m dancin’ like a chicken in front of strangers!’ or ‘I’m screaming something embarrassing at the top of my lungs!’ But you see, they couldn’t answer that question because I took away their ability to do so.”

  “How? How’d you do that?” I asked.

  “I simply took away the three reference points every person needs in order to be self-aware. First, I told them to stop paying attention to their thoughts and feelings. Second, I told them to stop paying attention to feedback from the outside world, to pretend the crowd wasn’t even there. Third and most important, I told them who they were, in this case Madonna or a chicken.”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “That’s all it took?”

  “That’s it, and that’s powerful. Think about it. If you are unaware of the world within you—your internal thought
s and feelings—and you are unaware of the world around you—how people perceive you and your behavior—then you don’t have the ability to answer the question ‘Who am I being right now?’ Because you judge who you are at any point in time by your thoughts and feelings as well as by what other people are thinking and feeling about you. Follow me?”

  “I think so. . . .” I paused to digest the discussion. “So you’re saying that to be self-aware,” I continued, “you have to know what’s going on in your internal world and you have to know what’s going on in the world around you?”

  “Close,” Harsh said. “Don’t forget the third reference point. To be self-aware you also need to know who you are. You have to have an internal standard for who you are or who you want to be. This is the most important reference point in self-awareness. Think of it as a three-legged stool. You can know your internal thoughts and feelings. And you can get feedback from the world. But if you don’t have an internal standard for who you are to compare that information to, you aren’t self-aware. In other words, you have to take your thoughts and feelings and the feedback you are receiving from other people and you have to ask yourself, ‘Are my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors supporting who I want to be?’”

  Harsh examined my face. “Get it? Self-awareness is all about paying attention to the world within us and the world around us and then using that information to decide whether we need to change our consciousness or conduct, what we’re thinking, or what we’re doing. Does that make sense?”

  “Sure. So tell me again how that allows you to make people dance like chickens.”

  Harsh and I laughed for a few seconds; then he suddenly got a serious look on his face. He looked at me quizzically, almost annoyed. “But listen, you know that you’re not here to learn how to make people dance like chickens, right?”

  I was taken aback by his sudden change in disposition. “Uh, yeah, of course.”

  He didn’t seem convinced. “Before I walked in this tent, Henry and I had a nice chat. He told me about your situation, and I think you can take an important lesson from our conversation about self-awareness. Are you willing to listen?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see, you’re lucky. You have the gift of consciousness. Unlike the volunteers onstage, you do have the ability to tune in to your thoughts and feelings. You do have the ability to pay attention to how you’re making others think and feel. You have the ability to define who you are. Because of these things, you have always been able to ask yourself, ‘Who am I being right now?’ and you have always been able to decide if that person was the person you wanted to be or not. Do you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Harsh’s demeanor grew even more serious as he squared his shoulders, tucked his chin, and stared down at me with cold eyes. “Then it’s about time you started asking yourself, ‘Who am I being right now?’ a little more often, don’t you think? Henry told me what you said to Mary.”

  He took a menacing step toward me, as if he might knock me down.

  “What?” I stepped backward.

  “I heard what you said to Mary. About her parents not liking her very much.”

  He took another step toward me.

  “What?” I was so shocked by his sudden aggressiveness that I couldn’t seem to say anything else.

  “All you had to do was think about what kind of person you were being to her at that moment. All you had to do was pay attention. All you had to do was look at the horror on her face when you said that to her, and then shut your mouth and apologize.”

  Harsh grabbed me by my shoulders and started shoving me toward the tent’s exit.

  His voice suddenly changed, and he no longer had an Indian accent. “Instead, you’ve always been a little coward, dancing all over Mary’s self-esteem, still letting your daddy control your mind, scared as hell to love anyone.”

  Harsh pushed me violently through the tent flap. I landed hard on the ground outside.

  He stormed out after me and towered above me. “Stop being a chickenshit and start being a man!”

  I looked up in horror. Those were words my father had spoken to me the last time I saw him.

  PART 2

  9

  THE ELEPHANT’S LEASH

  That’s it. I’m out of here!” I yelled. I sensed that Henry was trying to keep up, but I wasn’t about to slow down.

  “Just one second!” he called out behind me. “Just wait!”

  I marched away from the hypnotist’s tent and back onto the midway, intending to leave immediately.

  “Hold on a minute!” Henry yelled.

  I charged through the crowd without looking back. “I didn’t come here to get thrown around or brainwashed. Screw this place!”

  Anger boiled in my gut, and I stalked off with a vengeance. I wanted out. How dare Harsh put his hands on me? How dare he give me a lesson in self-awareness, then throw me to the ground? How dare he echo my father’s words by calling me a “chickenshit”? But, come to think of it, how did he know my father called me that? Was it a coincidence? No. Nothing was a coincidence in this place.

  I peered over the rooftops of the food huts, searching for the Ferris wheel. I spotted it to my left and took a quick turn in that direction. I glanced back down the midway. No Henry.

  I stopped in midstride. The crowds were gone again.

  I stormed on and charged past the abandoned walkway where I had heard the carnies shouting at Mary, and then past all the kiddie rides.

  Not a soul in sight.

  I hurried under the Ferris wheel, past the park bench where Henry and I had sat, and into the open square with the flagpole. The emptiness of the entranceway struck me as eerie. I passed the flagpole and had almost reached the turnstiles when I heard someone yell behind me, “Strike two.”

  The wizard. I turned around and saw him standing at the entrance of the tent with the cavern inside.

  “You signed a contract. You agreed not to leave your host’s side. Where is Henry?”

  “I don’t care where he is,” I shot back. “And I don’t care about that contract anymore. I’m leaving.” I turned back around and stepped toward the turnstiles.

  “STOP!” The wizard’s voice boomed as if from the heavens. I felt its echo reverberate through my whole body. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I turned back around.

  The wizard’s eyes pierced me with anger. “Come here!” he commanded.

  My feet shuffled helplessly toward him. The closer I got, the less angry he appeared.

  He looked at me compassionately. “If you were anyone else, I would let you walk out those turnstiles. I would let you go back to your life. I would let you forget that any of this ever happened. But I cannot do that.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What do you care?”

  “I care for two reasons. One,” he said, pointing to my jeans, “is that envelope you have in your back pocket. I’m afraid that envelope can never leave here again until we figure out what happened to Mary and why. Two, I care for Henry. He put his reputation on the line for you to get in here. He cares about you for some reason, and I don’t want to see my old friend make such a sacrifice for nothing.”

  I stared at the wizard as if he had just spoken another language to me. “Why do you care about the envelope? Why can’t it leave here? What sacrifice did Henry make by bringing me here?”

  The wizard smiled. “You see, you still have questions. That is why you cannot leave. Your work here is not done.”

  “What work?”

  “Your learning. Piecing together your story and Mary’s. Settling things with the past. Making things right in the present. Planning a new future. These things you will learn in time.”

  “When?”

  “That’s up to you. I invite you to stay a little longer. Do you accept?”

  We walked past the Ferris wheel and turned left between two candy-and-soda booths. The pleasant smell of cotton candy helped release the tension in my body.

  ?
??Tell me,” the wizard said softly, “why were you about to leave?”

  The image of Harsh standing above me fired my blood all over again.

  “Harsh the Hypnotist. He got violent . . . pushed me to the ground. I won’t take that.”

  “Harsh? He pushed you to the ground? Why?”

  “I have no idea. He just pushed me down and . . . said something my dad once said.”

  “Really? What was that?”

  “My dad once said, ‘Stop being a chickenshit and start being a man.’”

  “How did you feel when he said that?”

  “Who? Harsh? Or my dad?”

  “Harsh.”

  “I don’t know. Scared, I guess. I was lying on my back, and he was towering over me like a madman.”

  “Just scared?”

  “Mad too. Steaming.”

  “Mmm,” the wizard grunted. “It’s not hard to be scared and angry at the same time. Why were you angry?”

  “Well, for one, because Harsh was being violent. It just brought up old emotions of anger, the ones I felt in the situation when Dad had said those words to me.”

  “What was that situation like?” the wizard asked.

  As we strolled past a row of small tents on our left and what the wizard referred to as the “Big Tent” on our right, I told him the story.

  I was seventeen, a junior in high school. It was the middle of basketball season. I had been kicked off the team the year before, but my mom was throwing a backyard barbecue for me and a bunch of the guys anyway. It was a great day. We all had our girlfriends there. I was dating a girl named Jennifer. Dad was inside in the den, drinking as usual. When everyone left, Jenn and I sat on the bench on our front porch and talked for hours. We ended up kissing, my first real kiss. I was on cloud nine, but I’d soon be in my own private hell.

  Dad called me into the house. I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was drunk. I told Jenn I’d be right back, then went into the house and glanced down the long hallway leading to the kitchen. I could see through the window that Mom was still out back picking up.