Cartwheels in a Sari (27 page)

After squeezing into a parking spot a few blocks away, Rick joined us in the line, wrapping Chahna in his arms and kissing her dramatically, as if he hadn't seen her in ages and desperately missed her.

“You look like a ghost. You look beautiful,” Rick said to Chahna, taking small steps toward the bouncer to the right of the door.

“The deader the better,” Chahna said in a Bela Lugosi voice impersonation through her lips suffocated under black waxy lipstick.

I walked behind, watching her velvet cape mingle with the sidewalk dirt, feeling anxious and invisible.

The first bouncer spoke with the kind of British accent that made the words “seven dollars cover charge” sound like poetry from Lord Byron.

“Nice dress, love,” he added to me.

I smiled at his comment, feeling a little more at ease. I saw Chahna puff up with pride, as if to say I told you so, regarding her choice of clothing. I then watched as Chahna and Rick disappeared arm in arm into the stairwell's mouth that led to the necropolis. They were inseparable, a coupled unit, complete unto themselves. I straggled behind, stumbling in the dark for my footing.

Tuesday nights were called “Communion.” The streaky darkness smelled like an incense of manufactured smoke and clove cigarettes. Aching, haunting music pulsated through the room. An opalescent strobe light stabbed through the dark room, and I moved through the crowds. Long-limbed outlines pressed against walls; huddled clumps sat in the corners, lit cigarettes dangling from slim figures. On the dance floor, black forms spun and gyrated like whirling dervishes. A man held a wineglass as he swayed and posed. To his right, a cadaver-thin woman dressed in a corset over a full eighteenth-century hoop-tiered black lace gown and wearing a black wedding veil shimmied to the floor, where she extended her gloved arms as if she were languorously plucking invisible flowers from the tiles.

Someone tapped my shoulder.

“Surprise!”

I looked up to find myself staring at the flat torso of an impossibly tall young woman.

“It's me!”

Way below her belly button, what looked like black Bubble Wrap functioned as a skirt, curtaining off the tops of her bony hips, while revealing black ribbons spiraling up both legs like barber shop poles. Seven-inch black platform heels completed the look.

“Tashvi!”

Tashvi had left the Center not long before me. When, shortly before her departure, her father became gravely ill, Guru had sent her a message that her own bad karma had been the cause of her father's suffering. Tashvi's guilt encompassed her until she was nearly catatonic, then she vanished, fleeing the Center and her parents without a note. Tashvi, a disciple who had been in the Center since she was five years old, now stood before me bare-chested with black electrical tape positioned as Xs that barely covered her nipples. I remembered her at Guru's longest-hair contest, smiling with her rabbitlike buck teeth as Guru announced her the winner. Her hair now was bobby-pinned into clusters all over her head and dusted with a coating of glitter that matched the glitter on her fake eyelashes, cheeks, and lips. I was speechless. My shock only increased when a beautiful boy in a black poet's blouse transparent from sweat and molded against his narrow frame clutched her from behind, enfolding her in his embrace and biting her neck in a sucking kiss. Without even flinching or turning slightly, Tashvi merely rolled her eyes, and when the suction from his lips ended, they didn't even exchange a word as he strolled forward only to be swallowed up by the crowd. This was the same girl who had stood beside me when Guru called the children up to recite his poems,
whose nervousness I had seen as her body shook before, during, and after she recited Guru's poem in a tiny cracked voice. Now she was fierce and uninhibited. How had she morphed from the jittery quiet disciple to the vamp in electrical tape?

Soon Tashvi was surrounded by an admiring group. I crossed the main dance floor, discovering a second, smaller, room. Crossing my arms, I felt incredibly alone. Unlike Tashvi, I wasn't sure if I belonged here with the ethereal romantics who donned black velvet and parasols or the harder industrials garbed in black leather and piercings. This was their sanctuary, and I was not an official member of their congregation. Hours passed as I sat on a carved pew listening as the music swirled in urgent rhythms. Beside me, a man wearing a black top hat remained completely still, with his eyes closed. When I glanced at him, he appeared to be meditating. He could have been at a function at the tennis court or at Guru's porch. I wondered what Guru was doing at this exact moment and if he missed me. I, too, closed my eyes, deciding to meditate to create a pocket of divinity. I summoned Guru's compassion, asking him to bless and protect me. When I felt a hand on my shoulder, I smiled, absorbing the weight that I imagined as Guru's confirming touch. I slightly bowed, reveling in its assurance. Suddenly another hand grabbed on to my thigh. I opened my eyes as the man in the top hat hunched over my lap in an attempt to heave vomit on the floor. A splatter of chunky liquid hit my shoes before puddling upon the ground.

The witching hour was over. The music stopped, the lights came on.

“Thank you for coming. Now get the fuck out,” the bouncer
with a large purple hat covering half his face said as he opened the vaulted doors and Chahna, Rick, and I stumbled into the street.

It was five-thirty in the morning when I dragged the covers over my head on Chahna's pull-out couch. The sky was already half lavender. I was more baffled than ever. Both Chahna and Tashvi had been disciples, inside Guru's protective cloister, nearly their entire lives, yet they had cast aside their former selves so quickly and with such apparent ease. Where was the anguish and ache for their former lives? Weren't they in fear of their own souls?

I rolled from side to side, vacillating between envy and pity for Chahna, who snored peacefully in her bed only a few feet away. She had her doppelgänger in Rick, a unified family, and acceptance into an inexhaustible social sphere; outwardly Chahna was well stocked with love and companionship. She was not isolated, cowering from a throbbing combination of solitude and fear. I needed to leave. With my hosts unaware of my departure, I headed home.

The familiar comfort of my small Jeep that had ported me in the familiar loop between the tennis court, Guru's house, and my own, with its stains from spilled prasad and a picture of Guru affixed upon the dashboard, held some solace. As I approached Jamaica, I eased my tightened grip on the steering wheel. When I turned onto Parsons Boulevard, the quiet of the early morning was only occasionally broken by a passing car. I surveyed the houses built tightly beside each other with barely enough lawn in front to separate one driveway from the next. Cracked sidewalks with littered patches of discarded bottles, cigarette packets, and escaped garbage can lids marked the seeming outer insignificance of the neighborhood
, but inside various homes, disciples were finishing their early-morning meditations and preparing for another day living for Guru.

As I turned onto 150th Street, I saw a man stiffly walking with a limp, swaying from side to side. Dressed in a white track suit and ski hat, it was undoubtedly Guru. I immediately pulled over. For a few years Guru was forced to withdraw from long-distance running due to a nearly crippling combination of knee and back problems, but daily he persisted in logging in miles by walking. Seeing Guru for the first time as a former disciple, I felt undeserving, as though the privilege of gazing at him was an exclusive right reserved for disciples only.

I ducked, peering through the steering wheel. With his arms straight by his sides and his fingers spread open, Guru leaned into the hill ahead of him. From his inchmeal pace, Guru was a worn old man, as though shuffling from his house out to his mailbox, rather than an omniscient and omnipotent avatar who controlled the cosmos. My whole life, Guru's powers over world affairs, forces of nature, and the distribution of karma had made him a massive figure, enormous and all-powerful. Now, trudging up the hill, Guru appeared dwarfed, reduced. When had this happened? Looking at Guru, the same imperial figure who plotted and portioned my entire life from before my birth until the present, limping along the cracked sidewalk, I saw him altered, mortal.

When Guru eventually reached the top, he turned and once again increased our distance by gingerly retreating down the hill. Outwardly he never glanced my way, but I was certain that he had been aware of my presence, and it was his turn to deny me. After he disappeared from my rearview mirror, I
proceeded home, convinced that this was Guru's clear signal that it was not yet time for him to accept me back, and that there was a very real chance that he would never accept me.

AS WEEKS CHURNED
into slow months, I felt more isolated. Chahna and Tashvi harped that barring myself alone in my apartment served no purpose other than brewing in misery. The longer I spent staring at the famous picture of Guru embracing me when I was only months old, the worse I felt. Of course the oblivious infant was cradled by Guru. At that point, without a formed mind or vital, I was an ideal disciple. In his arms, submissive to his will, he assumed that was how I would always be. The distance between the baby in the photo and my current self was immeasurable. Instead of evolving, my entire life had been slowly and consistently devolving. A spiritual seeker since birth, I was a dysfunctional wreck. I curled up on the floor with my back to my shrine.

When the phone rang, I reached over to pick it up, figuring that it was either my mother or Chahna. After my fake perky greeting, a silence stretched across the line until a man's raspy breath filled the receiver. I asked who he was and who he wanted. He responded only with clumps of deep breaths. I expected he would reveal himself to me, but his panting continued without interruption. I cradled the phone with both hands to decipher his message. The urgency of his breaths increased, getting faster and louder. I listened deeply until I realized that this was the language without words, the primal grunts, moans, and breaths of sex that transcended vocabulary. I had never heard it before. I closed my eyes, hearing him increase his frequency and volume. He sounded near
collapse. When I tried to imagine the way his body was positioned, I thought of Oscar. If I had only chosen to stay with Oscar, sped off on that subway with him, not only would I be an insider to glorious fits of passion but I would have someone beside me right now. With a final chalky moan, the man stopped. The line went dead. I lay on the floor, waiting for him to return, wishing he would call back.

That night I called Chahna to tell her I was going to the Limelight. I picked up Tashvi, who marveled at my outfit, a white sari slip and blouse, declaring my radical inversion of black was the perfect attention-getter. Entering the former church before midnight, the crowds were sparse, mostly clinging to the bar. I stepped onto the empty dance floor and, for the first time ever, I danced. Without caring about who was watching my spastic jerks and flails, I soaked up the entire space, thrusting my arms and legs in all directions. I shook violently, casting away the frigid lockdown on my body. If this was the vital life, the invigorating movement of the body, I was engaged in it. I rolled my neck, letting my long hair drag behind. Inside, I was waking and stirring. The beat propelled me, and I fastened on to it, allowing it to lead my explosions of movement and frantic need. When I could no longer contain my breath, when sweat ironed my slip against my skin, I leaned against a wall. The first man who stood beside me, with black pageboy haircut, black lipstick, and a priest's robe complete with a white collar, tapped my shoulder and when he asked if I wanted a drink, I shook my head no, stating I just wanted him. He put his hands on my shoulders and rubbed my arms. I leaned into him, he wrapped his arms around me until I was lost in his black vestments. By the next song, we were kissing frantically, our
tongues racing inside each other's mouths, while our hands rambled up and down, tracing each other's contours. As the club became more crowded, we didn't notice. The lights flashed and smoke spat from the DJ's fog machine. The hazy, streaked light and whirl of bodies on the dance floor made all markings of time and place irrelevant. Imbibing the smooth flawless skin of this raven-haired man, I felt starving, and unstoppable. I needed much more.

“Come on,” I said, and tugged him away.

He clutched me from behind as I led him through the tangles of people toward the bathroom. Inside, a black lightbulb barely leaked light. In silence, he slid the bolt into the door and pushed me to the sink's counter. Now that I had him, I let him lead. I decided that I could do anything. I was beyond repair. It only made sense to be fully broken. He lifted up my slip and ripped my white tights. He then hoisted his robe, under which he wore nothing, and pushed aside my underwear. With a few sloppy stabs, he entered me, making me gasp, causing my breath to disappear inside my chest. After violent thrusts, he collapsed onto me, then caught his breath and pulled away, letting his cloak modestly shade him. He pushed his hair off his forehead, nodded, unlatched the bolt, and left. In the soiled, dank bathroom, I slid to the floor. It wasn't until fists pounded against the door that I even remembered where I was.

I kept my eyes lowered as I pushed through the swarms toward the club's exit.

Driving home in the rainy night, my hands and legs shook. The exit for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway came too quickly, and I veered sharply to the right. Instead of following the curved route, my Jeep skidded across the lane, jerking
sideways until it propelled into a spin and whipped into a tight circle while still dragging across the exit. The brakes moaned, as the speed increased. Without any visibility or control, I knew this was it. And I was not surprised. The final impact rapidly approaching was inevitable. Guru had forewarned me, starting in junior high. Disciples did not betray their guru without karmic retributions. My offenses had been mounting, continually more egregious. Since my only purpose for living was Guru, without him I shouldn't be alive. Smashing into a concrete wall or pummeling into a truck—I didn't question my punishment. The soul sent down to serve the last and highest avatar had obviously been given a defective body, vital, and mind. There was nothing left. Rather than fear, I felt relief. I braced for the impact. Everything stopped.