Page 96 of The Moon Also Rises
“Or even the DJing,” I add in a low voice. There’s a twist of something sharp in my chest and I don’t know if it’s at the thought of Jake overhearing me or just because I’m still lying to him about this huge part of myself.
“Why haven’t you told him about that?” Mom’s question sounds innocent enough but it lands with me loaded in guilt.
“Because it just hasn’t come up in conversation. I will fill him in eventually but just for today we want to be with you and Radia and Roxie and enjoy all your good food,” I say forcing a smile in my voice.
After another pause, my mother says something that kicks me in the gut. “I don’t like lying to people, Rami. It never ends well.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. But it really will be just today.”
A silence stretches on and on. It lasts so long I pull the phone away from my ear to check the screen. We’re still connected.
“Okay, Rami. I trust you,” she says eventually and although I am relieved, it feels like a lot more than I deserve.
*****
Despite the usual extra shot in his second latte, Jake falls asleep within minutes of us leaving Euston station. I try to rest my head back against the seat and fall asleep myself, but it doesn’t come. Although my eyes stay closed for a few minutes, invariably I find them opening to roll up and down Jake’s sleeping body, pausing on his face and the way his mouth hangs slightly open and how his eyelids flicker in a dream. His head is resting against the window and I envy the sheet of glass, wishing it was my shoulder he was leaning on.
When I finally admit that sleep isn’t coming for me, I pull out my headphones and stick them in my ears. I scroll through my playlists waiting to feel inspired but nothing grabs me. That is until I see the same playlist I put on for Jake when he was getting ready in the ensuite bathroom of our hotel room at Lionel’s wedding. I smile to myself, then shake my head, clueless at how I can feel nostalgic already even though that day was only a few weeks ago. It’s then that I realise just how little time has passed since I met Jake, and yet how well I feel I know him. No, that’s not quite right. How much Ilikehim.
Because I do like him and not just in the way where I want him to be my friend. It feels greedy to admit it but having him only as my friend would feel inadequate now. I don’t want to be friends with Jake. I want more, but I’m pretty sure that’s wanting the impossible because that would require Jake to know things I haven’t told him yet. Things that I’m not sure I want him to ever know, as selfish and impossible as that may be. As I chew on this conundrum and find it curdles my stomach and creases my brow, I am relieved at the interruption that is my vibrating phone. I pull it out of my pocket and see a message from Radia.
I grit my teeth.
She sends back with the face palm emoji.
I clarify.
I ask, desperate to move on to something else.
How can I tell her that I didn’t learn that in therapy but in… the cult? The cult that started off like something resembling therapy, a wellness movement, no less. Founded by two people who I do believe at some point thought they were improving others’ lives, Gee and Michelle weren’t uninformed – they were both sponges for information, reading books and studying several Eastern philosophies that centred the body and our natural energies – but they weren’t professionals either. They were self-taught at best, and reckless rookies, amateurs at worst. And somewhere along the way, they got lost. Or at the very least their priorities did. Because nobody who wants to charge their so-called friends thousands upon thousands of dollars to “remix” your life, to “weed out the bad and nurture the good in your soul”, is actually doing that when they’re wiping away people’s life savings, retirement plans and investments.
I’m only lucky a constant flow of royalties kept me more than comfortable. I also had a decent chunk of money tied up in the house that Michelle and I owned together, a property that I didn’t agree to sell to put the equity into RemiX. That had been the first of many red flags.
Not that it was all about money. The real pain came when I realised how comprehensively I’d been manipulated, and it was a double-edged sword because like one therapist told me in the week of rehab I did do, there is no brainwashing in cults, not really. People do not join cults blindly. They want to believe whatever the message is. And I know I did. I wanted to believe life could be simpler, calmer, more fulfilling than the treadmill I was on when my DJ career was at its peak. That part of the equation I have no problem understanding. I was burnt-out, overwhelmed and on the cusp of a physical and mental breakdown. What I struggle to understand is why I turned to Michelle and Gee, and eventually the retreat, no, the commune, we established in the Mojave Desert. Why didn’t I come home to the UK? Why didn’t I turn to my family? Why did I cut off Dev and all my other friends? Why didn’t I seek out real professional help?
Was I really that proud? Was I really that susceptible to the wrong kind of influence? If not brainwashed, was I really that blinkered to what was good for me? And if the answers to these questions are yes, then what kind of man does that make me? Is that the kind of man who is worthy of someone like Jake?
Desperately not wanting to answer those questions, I switch my focus back to Radia’s text conversation.
