Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs - Dave Holmes Page 0,95

then immediately began calling and texting friends, begging them to come along. David had already learned plenty about his soul; Ben seemed halfway on board; and my friend Matt gave a tentative yes.

You were supposed to bring a check with you, and you were not supposed to write anything in the memo line about what the check is actually for. I loved this detail, because it meant that at least once, someone had written “HEALING JUNGLE HALLUCINOGEN CEREMONY” or “SACRED TRIPOUT,” or simply “DRUGS.” The whole thing would cost $250, inclusive of a vegan comedown meal in the early evening and all the organic mango you could handle, all day long. I circled the date on my calendar, and I promised to stick to it this time.

The morning of the ceremony, Ben and Matt cancelled on me, which I chalked up to karma, because I was already talking like a poorly written acid-victim character from an ’80s movie, and I went ahead anyway.

The event was to take place in the Laurel Canyon home and grounds of someone very wealthy and trusting. I got in my car, took a few deep, calming breaths, and drove up there. Along the snaking, endless driveway was foreign SUV after foreign SUV, with California, Arizona, and Nevada plates—the footprint of Southwestern hippies who don’t care about their carbon footprint. The men getting out of their cars wore long, flowing Maharishi shirts and Toms shoes. The women wore Lululemon yoga pants and espadrilles, and most of them were being played by Molly Shannon. Everyone seemed to know one another.

When I walked through the open front door of this Laurel Canyon palace, the song playing on the expensive and ear-splitting sound system was “Proud,” by Heather Small, which you may know as the theme song from NBC’s The Biggest Loser. Echoing off the tiled walls was “ah-WHAT HAVE YA DONE TA-DAY TA MAKE YA FEEEEEL PROUD.”

I shook the hands of a few gentlemen in billowing linen, and then I was hugged from behind by a stranger. “Hello, beloved,” a complete stranger said, “I’m Butterbean.” Of course you are, I thought. Get your hands off me.

Shamaness Pam was ninety minutes late, so we all spent a lot of time wandering the grounds, checking out the giant house and the huge pool and the grotto. The house was massive. As the people around me cooed about how blessed we were to be in this home, all I could think was: How do you get this rich and still have time to hallucinate? The man of the house, Rafael, offered no hints. The really wealthy ones never do. He and his eighteen-year-old son would be tripping with us, and his new wife would be there with their maybe one-month-old child, sober and supervising. Still, a couple dozen strangers hallucinating around an infant. Yikes.

When Shamaness Pam showed up, she got her cactus trip-out tea party show on the road lickety-split. What we would do was this: we’d go around the circle, one by one, each of us holding a glass of water, into which Shamaness Pam would dump one large spoonful of dark green powder. We’d stir and drink quickly and then be given an organic lollipop in the flavor of our choosing: yellow or green. (I went yellow.) There were about twenty-five of us, so the circle was big and the process took a good half-hour. The perimeter was studded with Moroccan pillows and small trash cans lined with plastic bags in case anyone needed to barf. A lot of people needed to barf. We were, after all, drinking poison.

Afterward, we were to go around the same circle and state our intention for the day. As you have probably already guessed, there was a “talking stick,” which we would pass from person to person, and only the one holding it would be allowed to speak. I was near the top of the circle, because I wanted to get all of this over with, so I got my intentions out of the way early. I was quick and direct: “I feel like there’s something I need to get off my chest, something I need to discover, or examine, or something, and I’m hoping this can loosen me up enough so that I can find it. So. Um. Namaste?” I spat this out in about two seconds, because I was nervous, and also I didn’t want this mystery cactus drug to kick in while I was in the middle of a sentence,