Chapter 45: How To Backslide In One Easy Step

It’s 3 am and I can’t find my crown anywhere. I give up and leave.

What’s that, you say?

You want to know what happened??

We went to a cafe and talked till 3 am, gosh coffee is amazing!

No, we didn’t.

Want the real story?

I enter the hotel bar. Funnydude is waiting. I hold my head high and approach, one bold Superhero making dreams come true. He rises and greets me with a big hug…

BOOM.

Just like that, I realize chemistry is possible for me! And this is absolutely major chemistry happening here. Zing. Tingles. Butterflies. The shit they write about in songs and poems, and here it is, right in front of me. Here HE is. Slight build, medium height. Bright pale blue eyes like clear summer skies with a mischievous twinkle that looks like trouble. Fair warning. Brown hair, flecked with grey, tousled into almost spikes. Oh, this is exciting!

He draws out a bar stool for me and I slide into it, nervous, awkward. I am clearly very new to this, and completely naive, I’ve never met a guy in a bar for a drink in my life. Bars were banned from the menu in the church, and with DX we never really dated, just kinda hung around.

This is My First Date, though I don’t know if I can really call it that. More like My First Can I Buy You A Drink.

He takes his bar stool, open position facing me. We already hit it off when we met, and we immediately are back to our rapid-fire conversation, punctuated by laughing so hard my stomach hurts. We have a delightful connection. and as he talks he touches me conversationally at first, then his arm finds its way around my waist, then he’s stroking my arm. It’s amazing zippity zap chemistry and I don’t stop him. The bartender makes reference to us having a great marriage. We look at each other and just crack up. Oh, honey, if you only knew. I may not have been able to Laugh My Way to a Better Marriage, but I am definitely laughing my way to something tonight.

He is fun, flirty, and affectionate.

He is also wicked smart, and has degrees in science and psychology, two areas I would have studied had I not taken that left turn at Albuquerque and gotten involved in church leadership. I really should have taken notes on the fact that having cerebral conversation is important to me, I could have avoided lots of bad dates later on had I realized that I match best with an intellectual. But, then I wouldn’t have the next seventeen chapters, and you would be bored.

We talk about church, and groupthink, and mob mentality that happens so easily when a mass is told what is right and wrong by a respected leader, the tendency being that once an individual has a following, the followers rarely, if ever question the leadership. They no longer think for themselves, the leader can figure it out for them. Human beings have a tendency to be drawn to quick and fast rules, simplifying life down to do this, don’t do that. We don’t favor grey areas, preferring to color boldly in black- and-white shades of ABSOLUTELY YES and HELL NO. You see this all the time. Trust something in a textbook? Is it true just because it’s printed and bound by MacMillan, gospel canon because the paper is thick and yellowed? People watch news anchors and assume they know what they are talking about because WOW is that girl on channel 12 hot! They can’t just make things up… can they?

Not only do many tend to believe those who have the appearance of authority, they are even willing to obey authority figures to the point of causing pain to others, as evidenced by Stanley Milgram’s sobering studies in the 60’s, in which volunteers were willing to cause pain to a stranger just because they were instructed to do so by a person who had the appearance of one in authority. This does not speak highly of us, and yet there it is. Humanity will listen to authority figures until millions die, as has been recorded repeatedly throughout the annals of history, and they will drink the koolaid as instructed, resulting in the macabre scene of hundreds lying dead in the hot Guyana sun, followers obedient till the bitter end. Why are we like this? Why are we so damn suggestible? It has nothing to do with intelligence. Listed with the devotees of oppressive regimes and religions are highly intelligent people. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, professors. In spite of their supposed high intellect, and assumed higher level of critical thinking, even these types of professionals are numbered with those who still follow authority without question. And you would think we would have evolved past this, but society evidences that critical thinking is easily overruled by the words of someone behind a podium. Bonus authority points if you add an expensive business suit or a lab coat, one-up if you add a stethoscope. People believe anything if you have a stethoscope. I probably gained authority just by spelling it correctly.

He talks about mindfulness, a new construct for me. Be present… close your eyes, focus on what you sense around you… be in the moment, enjoy the moment. He says most people live in a trance, never really paying attention to what is going on in their lives, how much better it can be, and it’s totally true. I snapped out of my life-trance, but most people I observe do not, choosing to stay comfortably numb rather than go through the hell of changing everything. He says most live in the past or the future… how true!! This is where you find the aging jock STILL reliving his dreams of that fourth-quarter Hail Mary pass, or the many who have their life on permanent pause because they can’t let go of love lost. And the future is where people place the dreams they will never actually pursue… I’m going to to this someday, I’m going to achieve that, with zero action it simply never happens and remains a dream not come true. He says pain comes from the future… obsessing, worrying, the sky is falling, oh nooooo! The media keeps society in a constant and obsessive fear over what they say might happen, is going to happen, could happen, but the real news flash is they are not God and they don’t know. The sad part is that many choose to live in fear, by fear, of things threatened that mostly never come to pass. Fear kills dreams, and can keep you imprisoned by your own mind. And the more you fear, the more your brain creates superhighways of bundled neurons, myelin binding tightly around them so the fear impulses can travel even faster…

Funnydude’s day job is as a hypnotist. Seriously. This power over the mind is fascinating to me. The events that followed had me thinking… did he hypnotize me? Will I ever know? What he helps people with, besides the obvious stop-smoking lose-weight hypnosis so common to the field, is getting people un-tranced so they can live their lives free of paralyzing fear of the future or being stuck in the past.

Very cool.

Okay, you’re waiting for the good stuff.

Fine.

We talk for hours. I know I am unlikely to see him again, he lives states away from me. But that doesn’t matter, I have learned well enough at this point to appreciate what is in front of me. We could be gone tomorrow, who knows? I am determined to enjoy my life WHICH BELONGS TO ME and I no longer need to clutch all these life instruction pamphlets people keep stuffing in my hands. No! I don’t want them.

Phoenix Monica soars high, and sees exactly where she wishes to land.

As we talk, he goes from stroking my arm, to holding my hand, to rubbing my back, to touching my leg…The conversation is heated and charged, incredible communication happening verbally… then physically.

It is finally super late, and he asks if I’d like to come up to his room for a nightcap.

I know damn well what this means, and I, half thinking lightning is somehow going to strike me right here in the hotel bar, double check my phone to make sure everyone is safe and sound and no emergencies have popped up… but my phone remains a silent witness to the events that transpired that evening, thank God. In a final act of rebellion, passion, and self actualization, I say, why yes, capital idea. He pulls me close and kisses me. Holy shit. This is what I’ve been missing? We are a hot mess of passion in the bar. Yeah, yeah, I know people hate PDA, but I had a 43 year dry spell, and I respond as one coming off a 40 day fast and being presented with a seven course meal at the Ritz-Carlton.

I kiss back. I have my hands in his hair. He has his lots of places.

We leave the bar, a moving twisted human pretzel meandering awkwardly toward the elevator, and have a precious thirty seconds of uninterrupted making out before the doors reopen. We tumble together down the hallway, hands, arms, and bodies finally arriving at his room… he magically produces a key from somewhere, and we are in.

And in a final middle finger salute to everyone who has been telling me what to do/what not to do with what was supposed to have been my own life, the second hotel door I pass through that evening shuts with a satisfying CLICK.