Mother cleanses my psyche like it's her hobby. She won’t let me near her without a clean bill of energetic health. Sometimes she cleanses me over the phone. A psyche seems never to be clean enough, like some fresh, yawning wound one needs to shield from the endless on-slaught of debris.
You have a being attached to your liver!!! That’s why you’re so tired! Take some liposomal-c and imagine your tailbone shooting down to the center of the earth.
NO! I want to say. I say it by clenching my asshole and then surrendering to her ritual.
Mother is not wrong, I am exhausted. I never quiet the spiritual chatter out-in-the-world, at Staples, the grocery story. I walk around as open as possible, I have no choice. Psyche maintenance is her obsession. Like all forms of preventive care, this project is impossible. Leaving my psyche unlocked allows her to endlessly tune and clear me. It’s our thing.
Psychics smell me out. It is rare for me to go more than a week without a psychic approaching me and offering their services to help me get my shit together. Baby, you walked in this room with the past on your back, I can help you lessen your load! Also, your friend is jealous of you and you will have three sons. I’m close to snapping at one.
My gift has always been quite weak. No crystal balls or tables for me, everything is fuzzy and sounds like the static between radio stations. Spirits give up on me. I’ve had to refund clients because my readings were so unsatisfactory. Sometimes, I have been on the verge of allowing the deceased to communicate with the living, and then a migraine appears, my back seizes up.
I’ve never wanted to be a psychic. I want to be an actor.
I have a vague theory that Mother set up some sort of curse that made it impossible for me to pursue acting. I’ve always wanted to be an actor, ever since I watched Funny Girl for the first time on VHS. It was the kind of desire, once awakened, I struggled to conceal. It was all over my body, all over my face. Something shifted in me. I wanted a lot for myself. Mother wanted to protect me from my own desire. Mother can’t handle someone close to her loving something she doesn’t love, or wanting something that would take them away from her. My desire to become an actor was so alive and full that Mother became jealous. Jealous of my dreams. Before that desire turned online, Mother was much more my world. That chord between Mother and Child flares like nerve pain. Our drama felt so intimate.
If I didn’t have the curse, I would perform a contemporary review of The Three Stooges with my chest. I always wanted to split into three and run a slapstick gig. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve been split in three, but I doubt anybody sees me walking down the street and thinks to themselves: slapstick.
I want to learn lines for some local theatre. I want to show up to auditions and humiliate myself. I want to leave the auditions hot and alive from the edge of sanity.
The only time I took an acting class, I was taunted by visions. During the improv part of the class, I said something I thought was divine inspiration, but in fact I was spilling a family secret. I thought I was yes-anding. To everyone’s surprise I was simply a messenger from behind the veil.
I was on stage with my scene partner. She described herself as an amateur improv artist since birth.
She said, “Hello, my name is Jodi Katz and I came out of the womb doing improv.”
Jodi was a seasoned woman with gristly chin hair on her jowls and an ass that turned inward. Her hair was thinning. In the thirty minutes we spent as a group of adult amateur actors, I decided she was fearless. It occurred to me that her freedom came from being truly ugly and embracing it. I was never the kind of beautiful that launched oneself into certain social circles, but neither was I that kind of ugly that freed you.
Mother cleared this all from my psyche when I returned home and she told me I would only run into more trouble like this if I kept pursuing acting.
“You will always be a distraction and a liability to the cast. Theatres are terribly haunted places, riddled with souls. It is spiritually inefficient for you to waste your energy there.”
Mother stroked my head as she said this to me. Like giving a dog a pill disguised with peanut butter.
***
Tyler the Hollywood Medium struggles with his lack of identity.
I watch YouTube compilations of him talking about his insecurities. I am uninterested in his psychic readings. Mother hates that I watch Tyler so much. She thinks it’s creepy, she thinks I’m attracted to him. She also thinks he’s a sell-out, that doing this work for entertainment is ethically blurry. My connection to Tyler is much beyond sexual, and I would think she would understand. Psychic representation is so few and far between… and he’s made it to Hollywood with his gift. He showed me we are more than just a gimmick, we can be respected.
Tyler has an almost sickening warmth to him. His eyes crinkle in a way that makes him look like a gay Benjamin Button. Baby-face-elder-wise. He has this look that I’ve only seen PeeWee Herman have. This misunderstood and overly powdered twink is aging in front of us.
I wonder if he has chronic pain like me. I wonder if he is vaccinated. Tyler underwent multiple brain surgeries to remove a cyst. Perhaps all gifted people are saddled with some sort of physical burden. I imagine all that energetic labor could build up into a cyst.
I wonder what his favorite food is.
His boyfriend is named Clint. Clint looks like a youth pastor. Pretty, with that cult-leader twinkle in his eye.
Needless to say, Tyler is unsettling. People, especially celebrities, are afraid of him, what he possesses, what he could expose. And the masses love seeing a celebrity falter. Secrets promise falter, or at least vulnerability. The recorded psychic readings of celebrities feel like a horrible prank show. What are the contracts? What if something comes up that the celebrity can’t take out? I want to ask him about his lawsuits. Most psychics I know have been sued at least once.
Those who seek out alternative help are usually already off kilter. Shadow work stirs up all sorts of crazy dynamics. I want to talk to Tyler about dynamics. I want to hear Clint’s experience of being in love with a medium. I wonder if it could happen to me… Mother doesn’t like the word medium, she prefers sensitive.
***
If I could be any actor, it would be Marlon Brando. In Guys and Dolls of course. Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson. Forget Frank Sinatra, it’s all about Sky. I want to be Sky Masterson. I’m ready to fall in love with a missionary who can rid me of my bad boy business. I need a missionary lover who has the key to free me of my curse so that I can fulfill my destiny as an actor. I’ll take her to Cuba and get her drunk and surrender to love and the stage, together. She will always be in the audience.