Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

There was something called the ground luminosity and the path luminosity. At death they merged — in Buddhism, there was lots of merging and lots of death—“like a child jumping onto his mother’s lap.” She thought it achingly beautiful, and her respect for Kit and his years of dedication “to the cause” grew. How admirable it was that in the midst of Hollywood shallowness he would have been drawn to such a world! But she wondered… Was the Buddhism of the guidebook the particular form that he practiced? So much of the teachings seemed morbid and impossibly esoteric. It was one thing to have a book lay everything out in concise, no-nonsense terms. But if a person meditated, did he, at least over time, become privy to all of the rules? Did he get rewired? Was the educational material sort of magically downloaded as a consequence of incredible discipline? Lisanne wondered if the experience would be like living among a foreign people then one day waking up to speak the language, or at least realize one was dreaming in it. How many years did that take — two, five, twenty, fifty? And if a person finally did understand, by some kind of osmosis, was his knowledge something he was allowed to share with others if he was even able? Lisanne was possessed by the thought that Kit was nearly liberated but hadn’t, say, fully mastered a way of ejecting his consciousness, and was terrified that he would be trapped in some miserable bardo. Did he apprise Viv Wembley of his progress or lack of, before he got hurt? If Lisanne could learn something from the actress that was pertinent, it might give her comfort. Though it could be that Buddhism was like Scientology and you weren’t allowed to tell anyone about anything. Or did that apply only to outsiders? (Which maybe Viv technically was, not being, as far as Lisanne knew, a practicing Buddhist.) Not that she knew anything about Scientology, but you never heard Tom Cruise or Jenna Elfman or Lisa Marie Presley sharing their personal experiences. Lisanne thought that if she wanted to find out anything about Kit’s proficiency in terms of his struggle to be liberated, she would probably have to approach other Buddhists who knew him well. But why should they tell her anything?

The guidebook said that near the end of the forty-nine days, if you were destined to take a human rebirth, you began looking around for couples who were engaged in intercourse. The rule of thumb was that swarms of lost souls were always hovering around the entrance of a woman’s womb as she made love, “like flies on a piece of meat.” The book was scandalous! Maybe Buddhism was just an elaborately kinky sham.

There were so many questions. Did the fact that doctors had drilled into the skull to relieve pressure, bored into and broken bone in the crown chakra, from where consciousness waited to launch — did the surgical holes make “ejection” easier or, instead, somehow traumatically seal his fate and his doom? Anyway, the classical texts declared that a person had to be dead in order for phowa to occur. What if Kit didn’t die but remained imprisoned in his body, conscious but unable to move or speak? He could stay like that for years. What then?

There were evidently three different ways of dying (there always seemed to be three ways of doing this and three ways of doing that) — like a child, like a beggar, or like a lion. To die like a child meant to have no concept of dying or not-dying. Dying like a beggar meant not to care about the circumstances of one’s death. Dying like a lion meant to die in solitude. It was lovely, but what did any of it mean? She imagined that Kit would prefer to die like a lion, but with all those doctors and nurses injecting, monitoring, and restraining, how could he possibly have the chance?

She lay prone on the couch and closed her eyes. Phil’s gift, the Amazing Technicolor Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration Buddha, was close at hand. An ashtray overflowed. Lisanne shifted onto her side, drifting. Her nose pressed against the cushion, and she smelled the musty imprint of her heavy body. In conscious imitation of the Bliss-Wheel’s counterpart — the Sotheby’s gift — she let her left hand lay atop the gravid belly while the right dangled down to touch the carpeted floor. In her mind, the cautionary words from the guidebook regarding the afterlife struggle absurdly merged with sorcerers’ voices from The Lord of the Rings.

Like the confusion in the dreams of one’s sleep last night, later on it will be difficult to practice in the bardo.

If he could not die as a lion, she mused, it would be better to leave the world as a child than as a beggar.

Ladies Who Lunch

BECCA, ANNIE, LARRY, and Gingher had lunch at Swingers in Santa Monica.

Becca and Larry had met a few times for coffee since first sharing a table at Peet’s. Whenever they were together, she felt like the ingenue of a novel about the early days of a group of starving actors and artists, some destined for fame, others for tragic obscurity. When she finally made a date to introduce him to Annie, Larry brought along his chubby friend.

“Tell them how she shits in front of you,” said Larry.

Gingher laughed, jiggling all over.

“Oh no!” said Annie. “I really like her show— please don’t tell me she’s one of those people who get off on that.”

“Let us just say,” said Gingher affectedly, “that the lady tends to be rather unself-conscious in the washroom.”

“What do you mean ?” asked Becca, wide-eyed.

Larry was smitten. “Girl, you are so Southern — très naïve et gentille. Or should I say gentile. You are so Virginia. ”

“That when she goes to the bathroom, she…”

“We have meetings every morning,” said Gingher, “where she like gives me the list of stuff to do for the day?”

“You meet in the toilet ?” said Becca.

“You betcha,” said Larry. “That’s when she’s apt to pinch off a large one.”

“Oh my God!” said Annie, laughing. “That is so gross. ”

“The mirrors steam up like a jungle. Jungle fever. No: jungle feces!”

“Larry, you are crazy!” said Becca.

“Would I shit you, honeybear?” asked Larry. “Does a Viv shit in the woods? Who’s shittin who? Horton shits a Who. Tell it, girl.”

“I think it’s like some kind of power trip,” said Gingher. “But, you guys, you cannot tell anyone. She’d fucking sue me.”

“You’d never shit in this town again,” said Larry gleefully. “You’d be blacklisted — you’d be shitlisted!”

“I don’t even care. I’m walking. She is such a cunt.”

“You will never leave that job.”

“Watch me.”

“How did you even start working for her?” asked Annie.

“Doing craft service on her show. Actually my friend was doing craft service and I was helping him out. And Viv was really, really nice to me — this was before they were making like a million dollars an episode. Viv had this really horrible relationship with her mother, so she does this maternal thing where she likes to take in sick puppies. I was puppy-of-the-week. But she really did do all these nice things for me.”

“You ungrateful whore.”

“She paid for me to have my tattoos removed at UCLA. They were really gnarly. She has this whole side of her that’s really sweet and nonjudgmental. She just started asking me to do stuff for her. Errands and shit. She liked having me around, I guess. Like while she was getting ready for big auditions or premieres. She’d like ask my opinion on her clothes or her makeup. Even though most of the time she totally had stylists and makeup people come in and do her. I never even really said anything except that she looked really good but I guess I calmed her nerves.”