Unwifeable(49)

The wineglasses never get used. The boot shapers get tossed in the corner. That’s okay, though. Because I’ve just read The Secret. You have to spend money to make it. Besides, I’m not digging myself deeper into debt. I’m attracting things. With my credit card.

I call this Secret-ing yourself into bankruptcy.

Around this time, the other spiritual pop bestseller of the moment is Eat Pray Love. I read that, too, and when I spot that SNL’s Mike Myers has a new movie coming out called The Love Guru, I pitch a trend piece on the topic.

To report “Feelin’ Guru-vy,” I reach out to several gurus, including Amma, the so-called hugging saint of India. At the end of my interview with her spokesperson, he tells me I should come meet her myself the next time she visits New York.

When summer arrives—and so does Amma—I do just that.

When I enter the Manhattan Center on Amma’s first day in town, I’m dazzled by its top-to-bottom transformation into a sandalwood-scented bazaar, with kirtan devotional music piped throughout. When I go to receive one of Amma’s famous hugs, she clutches me close to her bosom in what is called darshan (a Sanskrit term meaning “visions of the divine”). I lose track of time and feel all-consumed by a sense of love and acceptance I didn’t anticipate. Amma releases me backward and gives me a playful smile, hands me an apple, and I am moved to the side, where chairs have been set up for people to meditate.

What the hell just happened? The little glimpse of peace I feel is like a rush of heroin to the veins. Is it cult? Probably. Maybe. Who cares.

As I explore, I sign up for healing treatments being offered. Spiritual acupuncture. Sound healing. Distance Reiki. Pranic healing. There’s an Amma retreat coming up in Massachusetts for only $200 in a couple of days. Should I go? Yeah, I should definitely go. I sign up and fork over my credit card. When all is said and done, I spend more than $2,500 in a matter of days.

When I start going to the healing sessions, I fall even farther down the rabbit hole. I am going to be healed, dammit. I don’t care what it costs.



* * *




IF MY SPENDING on “spirituality” were the only thing that made balancing my budget hard, perhaps I would not have spiraled out so much financially during this time.

But from the very first day I arrived in New York, my almost daily shopping sprees to look like I fit in began. I watched as my savings account, which had started at $18,000, at first dwindled, then disappeared entirely, and then suddenly went into negative territory. As I watched my credit card statements mount, I told myself: It’s only a few thousand dollars. When one credit card completely maxed out, I just applied for another.

These are all reasonable purchases, I told myself. The $150 bikini wax, the $600 facial lasering, the $80 nails, the $60 eyebrows, the $400 teeth whitening, the $500 hair, the $300 makeup, the $200 perfume. When I travel with Blaine up to the Hamptons and Newport, I try to observe and write down the best brand names all the socialites are wearing; then I run out and buy these, too.

There are outfits for beach days (Scoop sunglasses, $200; Lilly Pulitzer beach dress, $200; Jack Rogers sandals, $80; Vineyard Vines tote, $100; Tommy Hilfiger bikini, $60) and outfits for brunches (Rag & Bone denim, $225; Barbour jacket, $200; Brooks Brothers shirt, $80; Ferragamo shoes, $350) and outfits for evenings (Kate Spade dress, $300; Gucci purse, $500; Tory Burch high heels, $250; Oscar de la Renta jewelry, $300). I won’t even get into what a skiing weekend costs—just in accessories alone.

It is my desperate attempt to fit into a world that I very much do not. Instead, there is often tension—and the feeling that I am a very expensive liability.

One weekend, one of Blaine’s friends drives me up to Newport before Blaine, who is finishing business in the city, and even though no one is home at the house where we are staying, the friend drops me off to sit on the steps, alone, in the dark, with nowhere to go.

I’m pissed at how I am treated, knowing that Blaine’s friend never would have dumped some socialite girl on the curb like that. I drink even more than normal that night, starting out with a Dark and Stormy and working my way up to glass after glass of champagne.

Blaine and I are having dinner with a bunch of his friends, and one of them begins to tell me about how even though he is in his sixties, he dates girls in their twenties.

“Sometimes even younger,” he says with a smile and a wink. I take this as a guy doing a bit with me, so I “yes and” him to the ludicrous extreme.

“You fuck kids?” I ask. “Wow, this guy fucks kids!”

The man laughs and raises his glass to me. We are all drunk, cracking up, in hysterics, being obscene, like a scene from The Aristocrats, when Blaine turns to me and hisses, “You need to tone it down.”

I look at him, blind from the alcohol, and get up and leave the table. He comes and finds me, where I am crying in the bathroom, enraged. I say that I’m going to go back to New York.

“Oh, come on,” he says. “You’re acting like a hot mess.”

“What does it matter?” I say. “Everyone’s laughing.”

“I don’t care,” he says. “You need to stop.”

I go back to my seat and stare down at my food the rest of dinner. The next day I apologize, but I know that the anger is coming from somewhere else. What we’re talking about doesn’t have to do with one tasteless joke to an old pervert. Blaine doesn’t approve of me in general—nor do his friends.