Authors: Elyse Friedman

The Answer to Everything (11 page)

I was fully expecting
our
villagers to scoff and turn away, but instead everyone erupted into applause. And this one guy named Drew actually started blubbering like a baby and didn’t stop until Eldrich went over and cradled him in his arms. I remember thinking:
The freaks have found each other … and it’s on my terrace. Super-duper
.

John, of course, had a grand time. First he wolfed down half the sandwiches that were intended for guests, then he spent the rest of the party stalking (and flirting with) Phil Chan, Eldrich’s wealthy benefactor. Poor Phil. John had him wound around his finger from the get-go.

After Phil left, John seemed eager to wrap things up. He had set out a donation box and was obviously dying to see what was in there. Phil had very generously donated a hundred-dollar bill, which John swooped up like a hawk with a rabbit. He said it was for the food, but I was with him for the shopping and
couldn’t help but notice that he’d only spent seventy-two bucks and change. He took the rest of the money—fifty-six dollars—to pay for web hosting, and the postering he had done. He said we would hold another gathering soon, and that, because of all my help, I could keep half the proceeds of that. I told him I didn’t give a shit about proceeds, but I wasn’t making any more pinwheel sandwiches.

I have to say, it was kind of bizarre how jazzed John was by that hundred-dollar bill. I think it gave him an actual hard-on, since he put the cash in his wallet and then immediately tried to mount me on the living-room floor. I found his monetary excitement off-putting. Plus the apartment stank of chopped egg. I think that was the first time I didn’t want to have sex when he initiated. And maybe the first sign that we were very different people. Anyway, a few days after our initial gathering, Eldrich came by and asked me to show him how to log on to the site to post. That’s when he started putting messages directly on the splash page. That’s when he began corresponding with his people.

Friends, Tender Hearts, Explorers …

Life is a gift. Seekers such as yourselves know this. Others who are less aware squander the gift through misuse or, more commonly
, under-use.
Some even throw the gift away
.

Our greatest goal is to make the most of the gift. To do this, we must find our Absolute Self—not who others expect us to be, not who society says we should be—but our true, authentic self. Only as our Absolute Self can we commune with the All Powerful. But how do we do it?

Can a seed take root in a quiet garden? Yes. Can a seed take root in a roiling sea? No. Can our Absolute Self take root in quiet contemplation? Yes. Can our Absolute Self take root in a flurry of emotional gyration? No. Just as we wouldn’t toss a seed into a whirlpool and expect it to grow, we can’t expect our True Self to grow in a vortex of regret, bitterness, anger, blame, self-recrimination, intolerance, unforgiveness, guilt, shame, desire, or self-consciousness. These toxic elements poison our waters. We must purify to find stillness and see our true selves reflected
.

Let us purify together
.

Your Absolute Self is waiting to be discovered
.

With love and optimism
,
Eldrich

John

I celebrated Eldrich’s first website post in the most appropriate way I could think of: with a bag of Meyer lemons and a bottle of vodka. Amy and I got rightly hammered on my very cold, very excellent martinis (straight up, with a citrus twist). She danced interpretively (pretty) to the new Tom Waits (wild) and then let me do things no woman has let me do before. A memorable night.

I think it’s safe to say that we discovered our
Absolut
selves.

Amy

Eldrich was a joke to John. A very useful joke.

I admit that Eldrich’s early website posts were a bit airy-fairy, maybe a tad exalted. But there was usually something in them, something true and compelling. To me, anyway. John thought they were complete rubbish. He said that Eldrich never really said anything, or just said the same vague spiritual thing over and over again, which is why they worked. And, oh man, did they ever. Our hits went up exponentially when Eldrich took over the postings. That’s when we got our first visitors from outside Toronto. That’s when we first heard from Mushroom Steve.

Steve

Dudes/Dudettes, my name’s Steve. Nice to virtually meet you. I’m in the Peg right now, but I’m originally from Quebec. I think I must be the first person ever to move from Montreal to Winnipeg. :) It’s usually the other way around. When people ask about it, I say I needed to find a worse winter, so it was either this or St. John’s. :) Seriously though, there was some personal BS that I needed to escape, and since I have family in Alberta, I decided on Manitoba. Ha ha! But seriously, I’m not into that whole cowboy, pickup truck, oil-sands vibe. I like Winnipeg. It’s comfortable. I can wear my pyjamas to the store and no one notices or gives a shit, right? But I’ve been here a couple of years now and I’m thinking it’s time to push on. More BS. Surprise, surprise. I have a part-time job in the kitchen at Thai Origins, really good people, good food, but I’ve been seriously thinking of checking out the Centre of the Universe. :) Burned some bridges in Vancouver a while back, so I think Toronto’s my next destination. I see you’re headquartered there. I’ve been reading all the comments about your recent open house and it sounds like it was pretty frickin’ cool and good vibes all around. Are you having another one soon? My guess is I’ll probably be
splitting in the next week or so, so maybe you can let me know. It’s freakin’ freezing here, dudes! We got snow already. Yesterday was minus twenty-five. OK. I’ll keep checking the site. Peace out! [email protected]

Eldrich

Dear Steve,

Our next meeting will take place on Saturday, November 12, at 55 Hawton Blvd, apartment 1203. You are most welcome. Please join us. We will be having a potluck luncheon beginning at noon and ending whenever we grow weary of connecting and discovering.

You are loved.

Eldrich

John

The second gathering was kooky and kind of great. We had nearly sixty sweaty Seekers, all bearing macaroni salad or mini-marshmallow brownies or some such toothsome treat, crammed into Eldrich’s apartment. In a matter of weeks we had doubled our attendance. And thanks to my inspired conception to make the get-together a potluck, we had leftovers for days, including one particularly fine batch of homemade beet-leaf
holopchi
, crowned in a creamy dill sauce and transported all the way from Winnipeg by our first long-distance convert, Mushroom Steve. Insert hearty lip-smacking sound effect here.

“Phil,” alas, didn’t show. According to Eldrich, he had to undergo some kind of medical procedure. At one point, Eldrich hushed the crowd—including the spillover sardine-ing in the bedroom, kitchen and hallways—so we could all take a moment to send positive, healing energy to our “dear friend.” Everyone dutifully stopped mingling/masticating, fell silent and focused on … what? I grudgingly paused midway through a red velvet cupcake and scanned the room. Everyone had their eyes clamped shut. I felt thrillingly alone until I spotted Amy in the corner of the dining nook by the didgeridoo, looking
back at me. We smiled at each other and it was a crackling good moment of connection. We were both amused and amazed by the folly we had fashioned. With my eyes locked on Amy’s, I went to work on the cupcake, thickly and lasciviously tonguing up a dollop of pink icing. She averted her gaze, shaking with stifled laughter. Eldrich’s “moment” of healing silence went on and on. I was about to quietly unbutton and waggle my cock, when some hapless schmo—I think it was crazy Wayne—flushed the toilet in the bathroom and spoiled my antics (and possibly Phil’s expedited recovery).

“Thank you, friends,” said Eldrich gravely from his wicker throne after the plumbing-interruptus, and at that very moment, as if he were a cunning Vegas magician with a confederate waiting in the wings, his cell phone began to vibrate and spew the opening bars of some indie hipster hit. “It’s Phil!” he announced, beaming at the synchronicity of it. “He says the procedure is done and he’s tired but fine!” A self-congratulatory cheer went up around the apartment as if the motley throng had personally scrubbed up and performed a delicate surgery. I tried to exchange a contemptuous smile with Amy, but she wouldn’t meet my eye.

She was cheering along with the rest of them.

Amy

It was the second meeting, the one at Eldrich’s, that catapulted things to the next level. Mushroom Steve came, but I don’t remember him specifically because it was crazy crowded and I was talking mostly to Heather. I know he was there, though, because he left his calling card in the donation box—a homemade paper and Scotch tape envelope with enough psilocybin inside for two. John wanted us to try them together, but I said no thanks. He got pervy enough when he was drunk. The last thing I needed was him hopped up on hallucinogens, trying to maul me in some weird way. Guess what else was in the donation box that day? Nine hundred and seventy-two dollars. Almost a thousand bucks. We couldn’t quite believe it. It made no sense. The funny thing was, after the first meeting, John was all like,
You can keep half the proceeds from the next gathering, Amy, ‘cause of all your wonderful help and support
. That changed, of course, as soon as he saw what was in there. Suddenly he was like,
We have to start a bank account
and
We should look into getting charitable status for this thing
. He suddenly realized the potential of what he had started. Here was a way to make money that was a lot easier and more reliable than applying for grants and then waiting five months to find out if he could survive for the
next six on a pittance. It was a potentially more lucrative thing too, judging by that one afternoon’s haul. That’s when John started talking about holding meetings every Saturday. That’s when he started asking me, or more accurately
begging
me, to take a year off school to help him run the thing. And that’s when he set up the Twitter account and persuaded Eldrich to start tweeting.

TheAnswer2Everything
@AnswerInstitute

TheAnswer2Everything