Part 3

The Love Spell. An Erotic Memoir of Spiritual Awakening
by Phyllis Curott

(Page 3 of 5)

What's the rush anyway? But okay, TV ought to narcotize me. I turned on the small black-and-white set, and the sound of an elderly man's voice shouted at me. Quickly turning down the volume, I heard his words clearly:

"For many days before the end of our earth, people will look into the night sky and notice a star, increasingly bright and increasingly near."

I stared in disbelief as James Dean walked into a planetarium.

He whispered to the teacher checking names at the door: "Stark, Jim Stark."

The class turned to see him; the lecturer looked at him, hesitated and then continued: "As this star approaches us, the weather will change. The great polar fields of the north and south will rot and divide, and the seas will turn warmer."

I was paralyzed, holding my breath and trying to understand what was happening. But as I wrestled the circumstances to earth looking for a logical explanation, the night's relentless tensions finally exploded - like a flare of light followed swiftly by a swelling tide of heat. A whirlwind rushed into the sudden vacuum created by the implosion, enfolding me in an invisible swaddling, and the relentless sounds of the street below disappeared. I found myself sitting at one end of a long tunnel, surrounded by darkness, the tiny set with its incandescent blue light far in the distance.

Am I dead? Isn't this what they talk about - a tunnel with light? Instantly, a beam of blinding illumination and a strange sound - like a cow mooing, or a bull bellowing - shot toward me, hitting me in the chest. I felt as if something, or someone, had just slammed into me. And then everything was normal again - or rather, I found myself sitting on the bedroom floor with the little television set glowing and James Dean mooing like a cow. My heart was pounding in my ears, I was light-headed and there was intense pressure in my temples. My breathing was quick and shallow. All of my senses seemed suddenly heightened as I watched, transfixed, feeling what Cutter had talked about: James Dean was wounded and wild, sexy and sensitive, passionate, courageous, honorable, daring and romantic. He was unlike so many men I'd known who had been taught to hide or suppress their feelings; every emotion was visible. His vitality poured out from a realm of captured time, radiant tubes, and electrons, his living presence filling the room. It filled me. I was electrified by a pulse-racing desire, as if I was falling in love.

I could feel my own numbness being stripped away by his intensity, and like Sleeping Beauty awakened with a kiss, my slumbering heart awakened as he wore his on his sleeve. Somehow, as the images and the energy aroused my heart, the fairy tale on the screen became increasingly real. I was between the worlds, or in a waking dream, and yet it was all so alive, more real than reality. The film ended as Jim became a man and a new day dawned over the planetarium.

Unwillingly, I turned off the technology that had become a portal between realities, resting my hand on its hot surface. I was afraid the connection had ended with the film and that it might never happen again. All I wanted was to continue the night's journey - with him. I listened for the voice, his voice. But he did not exist outside that brief and strange medium of light and energy. He was dead.

It was dawn as I stood at the window, watching the garbage trucks bellow and gobble. Wondering what had happened, realizing that somehow, something extraordinary and erotic and very alive had surged into my life, I climbed into bed and disappeared into dreamless sleep. When I awoke, I had less than an hour before my afternoon class. I rushed into my clothes, grabbed my books and raced to class; I took notes, asked questions, did my reading and research at the library, all the while wrapped in an enchantment that made the invisible visible and the dead live.

When class ended, I left the building. Somehow, I expected to turn a corner and see him standing in front of me. I found a table at Café Reggio, across from the law school, and sat, resting in a luminous space of interconnections and messages and longing. I knew I had experienced something far more than a simple coincidence. The explanation I'd been searching for came to me - Cutter had said it last night: synchronicity. It was Carl Jung's term for the coincidences that go so far beyond the ordinary flow of events that both instinct and common sense demand we pay attention to them. They are circumstances that reveal the deepest, and often most hidden, truths about ourselves and, perhaps, reality. The reasons for certain kinds of coincidences are not found in normal notions of cause and effect, but in an entirely different realm of being where other laws of nature rule. And in that realm, according to Jung, we are the causes of these amazing events, the source of the mysteries is deep within our psyches, our souls. But, I wondered, could that be true even for someone as skeptical as I am?

I'd been raised to believe that the irrational was illusory, even dangerous. But Jung's was another educated and respected point of view that, though meaningless to me when learned in college, now explained the inexplicable. The events of last night had tapped against the iridescent screen that separated and united two worlds - the over-rational in which I was a particularly gifted resident, and another of passionate mystery. In fact, last night had shattered the boundary between those realms. A portal had swung open and an evanescent visitor had climbed through. Why was James Dean calling to me, pulling me in?

Or had I somehow called him?

"Well, he's not my dream come true. I mean if Billy Joel walked in here and proposed, I'd say yes before the last word was out of his mouth. God, I used to have such fantasies about him." Gail pulled another dress from the closet, held it in front of herself and looked in the mirror, then tossed it on her bed. "I still do. But Billy's not calling and David's fun. Besides, I don't want to get serious with anybody." She was getting ready for a date with a guy she'd met at the post office.

"That's an understatement." I sat with my legs propped against her bedroom windowsill."I don't know how you can stand being so serious with Eric - all the time. I mean, dark and moody may've been sexy at first, but it's boring already. You need to get out and have a good time." She held up another dress, studying herself. She picked the shortest one.

I shrugged. "Sometimes love is serious." I walked out of the bedroom as she began spraying Halston perfume with her usual abandon. She followed me into the tiny living room and plopped onto the couch. I tapped a little food into my fish tank and put the tip of my finger into the water waiting for my favorite, a large black and silver angel fish I'd named Joe, to swim up and nibble on me. Watching the fish was my highly effective, low-budget therapy when I came home stressed out from class. Gail started filing her nails and I tucked myself into my study chair, the black leather Eames chair my mother had bought for me during college.

"So who's your dream guy?" Gail asked without looking up.

James Dean. My bedroom wasn't filled with posters, I didn't have a picture of him taped inside my notebook cover, and I hadn't joined a fan club. I was too old to have a crush on a dead movie star. But we all have our idols - what is it that they provoke in us? Are they just some ideal that we try to find in mortal form? Or is it something more? Certainly ever since that night I couldn't shake the unwavering desire he'd aroused. My longing now had a face, a name, but no body. "Passionate ..."

"You mean moody."

I shot her a look. "Someone independent, who doesn't toe the line ..."

"Moody."

"Jeez, if you're going to keep interrupting ..."

It was her turn to shrug.

"Someone who wants his life to mean something, who wants to make a difference in the world. I want a guy with principles, with integrity. Maybe a union organizer or an activist. Eric shares those values with me."

"Moo - "

I cut her off. "Don't even go there. What's wrong with wanting a guy who actually has some ideals and some feelings? And can express them? I mean, all these guys you go out with just want one thing, they get it, they're gone."

"We want the same thing and they're not gone ... This is the third time I've gone out with David."

"As long as you're happy." I shrugged again.

She blew the powdery filing dust from her nails and held up her hand, studying it. "I am. Can you say the same?" She began filing the other hand. "When was the last time you had sex that really did it for you?"

"A one-night stand doesn't do it for me. I need more. I don't want to have sex. I want to make love. I want to feel it in my heart, not just my body. Maybe I just need ... the One."

Gail stopped filing. "You really believe in that, don't you?"

I nodded. "I do. As sure as I know I'm alive, I know there's a man out there meant for me."

She shook her head. "Well, I hope you find him. Personally, I like having a long line of men that are meant for me." She finished with a flourish and blew another cloud of dust into the air, picked up a bottle of red polish, gave it a hard shake and started painting. The smell of better living through chemistry filled the small space and I could feel the start of a headache snaking in through my nose.

"I'm not criticizing." I softened my tone. "More power to you if it's what you want. But I want a man to build a life with, who has the courage to fight for what he believes in, who'll lay it on the line. Someone who shares my dreams and who'll stand by me." "Yeah, you want a hero. They're a dime a dozen on every street corner. But what about the important stuff - what does this rebel with a cause look like?"

I laughed at her choice of words. She was more right than she knew. I did have an ideal in terms of values and principles. But James Dean had somehow triggered a very physical, erotic image. He'd aroused an undeniable hunger to be kissed by a man with that kind of fire, loved with that kind of sensuality. "Sometimes he looks a lot like James Dean, but with dark hair and dark eyes. Sometimes he's a little more like ... Gary Cooper. And the way he moves - earthy, you know, really in his body." I tried to bring the blurry vision into focus. "And there's something about his hands ... He knows what it's like to work with his hands, to struggle and to win. Not spoiled and soft like all those silver spoon babies at school. A man who knows who Tom Joad is."

"What's that - some kind of code?"

I laughed. "I guess you could say so. Doesn't ring a bell?" She shook her head. "Well, then I guess it's not you."

"I'm so relieved." Gail looked up at me and grinned. "Anyway, what's wrong with a silver spoon? How much fun is no money?" We were increasingly on different tracks - all she wanted was the in-house legal job waiting for her at the paint company where her father worked, and a mink coat. And I wanted a world where everyone could afford a mink coat, or at least a decent life. Recently, she'd started what she referred to as "big game hunting," pursuing boys with trust funds and Roman numerals at the end of their names. I'd dated that crowd in college and was bored to tears.

Copyright © 2006 Phyllis Curott

About the Author

Phyllis Curott is the author of Book of Shadows and Witch Crafting, which top 100,000 copies in combined U.S. sales. She was named one of the Ten Gutsiest Women of the Year by Jane magazine and receives extensive major media attention. New York magazine described Curott as one of the city's hippest and most intellectually cutting-edge speakers, and she regularly lectures and teaches workshops throughout the United States and internationally. A graduate of Brown University and NYU School of Law, she is also a practicing civil liberties attorney.