The Native-American inspired business card caught my eye on the table full of promotional fliers in the downtown yoga studio. I just finished up a class, for which I also had a free pass. I looked up at the long Indian magenta tapestry, which hung before me in the spacious loft. It blew towards me like a gentle breeze on this hot summer day.

I was being taken care of, I thought—the free pass was another lucky offer of abundance falling into my lap of limited funds. I took the card and went outside into the incredible heat of last summer.

Upon researching the particular holistic health center where the pass was to be redeemed, I virtually encountered its pioneers: Dalia was a petite woman from Yonkers who administered colonics to high-paying, seemingly dependent customers (she claimed people came back week after week to cleanse with her), and David, her Shamanic healing, Ivy-Leagued husband, spiritually advised them. They were a husband and wife dynamic detox duo who offered the public the chance to purge—both their waste and their emotions.

At that time, I refused to pay for holistic services. There was always a way for artists to try New-Age things for free: to work-study, trade, or to stumble upon a flier like I had, since the rich people in New York kept those businesses thriving. It seemed all I had to do was show up and be open to this man detecting my spirit, energy waves, electromagnetic currents, and subtle bodily presence. But what began as an innocuous freebie lure soon transgressed into an all-out psychic hook.

***

One fateful day last summer, I entered the centre. As I obeyed the sign to remove my shoes at the door, Dalia greeted me at the desk. She looked at me carefully and gestured to her left. Suddenly, a man who I presumed to be David the healer appeared in the doorway. Bent over at the waist as I untied my shoes, I looked up when I detected his energy. My initial moment of eye contact with David was one of cautious connection.

He was in his early 30s, tall and gentle, with an almost Victorian manner that seemed to mask a more intense inner life. His blue yogic tunic matched his bright blue eyes.

I immediately felt like we knew something about each other. Although we stood about 20 feet apart, some kind of current was being transferred. And then I realized, it wasn’t just David and I in the room; it was David, Dalia and I, and it would always be the three of us.

In the healing treatment room, David sat across from me on a pillow and closed his eyes.

“How do you feel about sitting on the floor here?”

“I feel good about that,” I said, and sat on the colorful jeweled pillow. I felt shy, and for some reason, my voice was uncontrollably weak and shaky, as if I had just had a lot of coffee.

David lit sage and candles, and turned down the lights. That was something I usually did when getting romantic with a man, I thought to myself. I looked David over. He was a poet, I’d learned from his website, and once underwent training for the Catholic priesthood but had not completed it. I could see why; he probably had trouble abstaining from certain pleasures.

He opened his eyes and looked at my black tank top.

“Do you wear a lot of black?” he asked, softly. The answer was, yes, or at least much of the time.

“Start wearing more white.”

“Oh…really?”

The danger and darkness he claimed I was attracting into my life could be exacerbated by my subconscious color choice. I always tended toward the darks and earth tones. It was no coincidence that, when I came to David, I was searching for some light.

I began to tell David about my travails with men. And soon, I began to shed tears. David responded by leaning forward and saying “ohh”, even though his eyes were closed. I felt that he was with me, there for me, in that moment. I could get used to that, I thought.

Distance, not touch, was part of David’s technique. He escorted me to lie on the table and began to move his hands over my body, several inches away from it, and then placed different crystals on my seven chakra points and a blindfold over my eyes. He waved a Native American feather over me and mumbled gyrating sounds as he asked me to focus and said a prayer. He began to ring bells that sounded like church bells.

I began to drift into a semi-conscious dream state. Images moved like projection slides in my head: the color blue, like his tunic, then the image of a church, and then David and I existing in Renaissance times, involved in an illicit affair, in the religious life. Was I regressing to a past-life or did I just want David now?

I told him about the image, and he nodded, knowingly.

“You have an enormous amount of life force,” he said, moving his hands emphatically.

He helped me off the table. The session was almost over. We sat on the adorned pillows once again, and then David finally opened his eyes and looked directly into mine. I laughed. He was very comforting. For a second, he broke his healer mode and seemed like a normal, down-to earth guy.

“Meredith, you know, I’d really like to keep seeing you,” he said firmly. “And if money is an issue, we can barter.”

“Barter what?” I asked. I thought he would suggest I baby-sit his toddler, whose name was Thunder, I’d learned from the website.

“Well, we need a receptionist.”

“Oh, I see.” I nodded, uncertainly. After being fired from a yoga studio reception desk back in college for behaving “too mellow” towards customers and not properly folding the mats, I had lost faith in my receptionist skills. But I was allured to what else David might help me uncover about or prophesize for my future. I said I would think about it.

Two weeks passed. I had not pursued the barter idea, though it was still lurking in the back of my head. Then, one night, I ran into David on the street. Apparently, we lived just a few blocks away from each other. He walked out of his building and appeared like a mirage, wearing white. I, too, wore white. I squinted to recognize him.

“Hey!” He gestured toward me with his hand. He was pleased that I had followed his color adjustment advice.

“Meredith,” he said firmly. I didn’t know if I would see you…again…,” he said.

“I didn’t know if I would ever see you in everyday clothes,” I smiled.

David smirked back as he unchained his bike from the rail. Sans tunic, David looked just like a guy I would date. He was an everyday, 34-year old New Yorker with a tattoo. And a wife.

“Think about it,” he said. He rode away.

I hesitated. Even though no money was at stake, continuing to see David suddenly seemed like a major investment.

Foreboding aside, I decided running into David was a sign. I called to make another appointment. Dalia picked up the phone. Since David’s normal fee was $125 per session, I was to barter eight hours of desk time for one session.

“Ok, we’ll see you on Saturday then to train at the desk…,” said Dalia. When I hung up the phone, something about this deal suddenly registered as totally wrong.

The evening before my second appointment with David, I could not sleep. I drifted into a vivid dream. In the dream, David and I sat across from each other on pillows in the meditation room, Indian style. I told him I was afraid I infected men. He nodded. I was upset that I somehow diffused a negative influence onto them which drove them away.

The next morning, I awoke with a start; my cell phone was ringing from across the room. Something was wrong, I sensed. I crawled across my bed to pick it up. It was Dalia. She was outside, and I could barely hear her voice amidst the downtown city traffic.

“Meredith. David is very, very sick today. He can’t see you.” My jaw dropped.

“I am very, very sorry. I would be happy to repay you by giving you a colonic tomorrow.”

I hemmed and hawed, I was really not into the colonic thing.

“I see. Hm. Ok,” I said. “I hope David feels better.”

“I do too. Let me give you a session.”

“Well…Ok,” I hung up. Why was it always difficult to say no to these people?

As I lay on the table before Dalia the next morning, I peered at the colonic apparatus in front of me and listened, silently to the sounds of water flushing through the system. I had a headache because I had not had coffee that morning, or anything for that matter, except for a glass of water an hour prior to the treatment, as per her instructions.

I was more nervous and anxious to have deferred my normal AM routine than to come here and be “cleansed.” And, I didn’t trust Detox Dalia. I felt like she wanted to torture me in a toxic-mother sort of way. She shifted me onto my side as she inserted a tube into me. Does this really need to be done? I wondered. What about the colon’s natural cleansing process? I had seen the people coming in and out of the centre and tried not to buy into it all.

“How was your session with David?” she asked, rubbing my abdomen.

It suddenly crossed my mind that Dalia and I were basically strangers. With David, it seemed there was some automatic relation. But Dalia and I had a distance.

Warm water began to shoot up the tube. I found it difficult to focus on both talking to Dalia and dealing with the treatment. If I got carried away in conversation, would too much water enter my system? Was she paying attention?

“Oh. Great. We just, you know, discussed some relationship issues…”

“Are you in a relationship?” she asked.

I stared at her. I wondered if he told her about my session. I wondered if he knew I had the dream about him. Or both of them, for that matter. I had no idea what possible psychic connections could potentially develop out of this work.

“No, I am not.” She rubbed my belly again slowly.

“You know, originally it was difficult to get David to be in a relationship with me.”

I was not surprised. David didn’t seem like one who committed easily.

“Oh. Why is that?” I asked.

“Well, he’s a poet and a priest…,” she said, with forgiveness. She looked down.

“Yes, I can tell he needs his alone time,” I added.

“Oh. How can you tell that?” She quickly inquired.

“Oh, well, he just…reminds me of other men I know or have known.”

I hadn’t thought about the possibility that, even though David was taken in real life, he could still be unavailable in a way. I had been seeing him as a supposed guru. Dalia must have called the shots in the relationship, I realized. Maybe he liked that. Maybe that is why he stared at me the other day when I was working behind the desk and said:

“So. Do you feel like you can take the reins now, Mer?”

I had read into the question. That was what I had to do more of in my real life, and the reception desk was just a metaphor for it all.

Dalia smiled superficially and rubbed my abdomen.

“Omigod, you’re so young! It took me almost a decade from where you are to get to where I am now!”

Where she “was now?” Was it some triumph to get a man to marry her? I suddenly resented her. Or perhaps I was just absent to the understanding between a man and a woman in their thirties, who had a partnership, who functioned as a unit.

As the water continued to flow, I began to pester myself. I guess I had been selling myself short. Maybe all men want to be caught, challenged, and called out on their shit, not admired and worshipped. At least, that is the excuse that men in their 30s had always used on me when they tried to tell me that our fling was not going to become anything more serious.

“You can appreciate someone your age more,” said the last man with whom I was involved. I wanted to kill him after that one.

I suddenly felt angry at Dalia and all women like her who stole the men I had ever been involved with. I realized this was an extreme viewpoint, but the tension began to escalate as she pressed down into my abdomen and told me to breathe. I had to think about something intense to match the treatment, which was beginning to feel masochistic.

In the meantime, working behind the reception desk even one morning a week was proving to be a challenge.

The most interesting and relaxing part of my Sunday morning there was when David came by with a spontaneous visit. I chided myself for anticipating that moment, but it always seemed to occur. He knew that was when I worked, also. Dalia would usually be giving a treatment, so it gave us a chance to connect without her.

“You know you remind me so much of a woman I met once on a yoga retreat,” he suddenly commented, pointing at me. “She is an astrologer, like 20 years older than you. She has a husband and kid, and she said it took her this long to admit to her powers.”

“Wow, interesting.” I nodded. I had pegged David as a Virgo the first day we met. About two years prior, I had dated a man who was born eight days after David in the same year. Of course, they had similar traits.