no one seemed repulsive or crazed.
Beatrice chatted me up rather enthusiastically, asking me how long I’d been OMing. I told her I’d never OMed before. “Oh, I’m jealous! I’d give anything to go back to my first time; I mean, especially knowing what I know now. It will CHANGE. YOUR. LIFE,” she exclaimed, with such excitement I didn’t know if I should be convinced or worried. “It’s literally transformed me—I mean, I was lonely and seeking, and now I just feel happy!”
For a moment I pondered that some variation of that same monologue was likely being recited at that exact same moment in various church basement AA meetings, Mormon potlucks, and Buddhist meditation meet-ups. It fascinates me what we fragile humans find and cling to and convince ourselves is our salvation. I felt a sudden sense of waffling. Sure, Patrick wasn’t great in bed, but now that I’d gotten over the hurdle of sleeping with someone who wasn’t Brant Bitterbrush, couldn’t I find someone who wasn’t totally lazy in the sack and ask him to rub my clit for fifteen minutes or so? Did I really need to be in a room with this group of friendly zealots?
But before I could make a break for it, Beatrice clapped her hands lightly and called for everyone to gather in a circle. Some people sat in chairs, some on the floor, and for a horrified moment I thought I might be called on to lie on the ground in the center of the gathering and pull up my skirt. But no, this seemed to be some sort of intimacy building warm-up exercise. We all went around the circle and introduced ourselves, and then Beatrice said, “Now, let’s share what we’re most afraid of.”
Shit! Shit! Shit! I had not signed up for some sort of group therapy session. I regretted not asking Artemis and Annie their opinions about whether or not I should attend an OM meeting. But I hadn’t done so because (while Artemis was a wild card) I knew—more or less—what Annie would say, which was “Are you fucking crazy? Don’t do that.” Advice I would have felt compelled to heed and thus I wouldn’t be here, forced to confess my deepest fears to a roomful of strangers.
As we went around the circle, I did appreciate the opportunity to check out each person closely without seeming like I had a staring problem. There was Lisa, a sultry thirtysomething who was scared of dying alone; Kevin, a muscular thespian who was scared of never having his artistic talent recognized (“You stole my fear!” I wanted to shout); Sharon, a striking woman with hair dyed so platinum blond it looked like it might be possible to break the strands like matchsticks, who was afraid of never finding true love; Samantha, who in her early forties would have been pretty if she hadn’t paid to have her face shot full of Botox and fillers (“Let me guess,” I wanted to say, “you are afraid of aging and losing your sexual power!”), who said she was scared she and her daughter would never get along. An Australian guy named Mike who was in his mid-fifties and wore coke-bottle glasses confessed his fear that he wouldn’t get a green card. Beatrice said she had to “second the emotion” of Kevin’s fear of never receiving recognition as an artist. Then everyone giggled, making it impossible for me to “third that emotion.”
I felt a great, unexpected anger well up in me. I did not want to be able to relate to these people at all. I wanted my fears to be special and absolutely unique. As I was up next and the very last to share my deepest fear, everyone in the group stared at me expectantly. The room went totally silent, and when I spoke it was like a dam broke open inside me, and I flooded the room with angry words.
“Lots of the very best artists are never recognized for their work,” I said. “Henry Darger was a hospital custodian. When he was alive no one knew he was writing ‘The Story of the Vivian Girls.’ It was fifteen thousand pages long, with an additional several hundred painted illustrations. Or take James Hampton, another janitor. He spent fourteen years building a ‘gilded’ throne for Jesus’s Second Coming. Sure, ‘The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly’ is in the Smithsonian now.” (As a side note, I sometimes think Ignatius J. Reilly was