Approaching Perfection
Short story from my new book "17 Tales of Tragedy and Triumph"
Here is one of the stories from my new book 17 Tales of Tragedy and Triumph. It’s called “Approaching Perfection.” You can buy the full book and read the other 16 stories here, or here (Amazon) or here (Apple).
Approaching Perfection
I first heard of Kafapisi island when I was in Rethymno, Greece. I was staying at a hostel right off Zimvrakaki Street. This was backpacker country, and there were guesthouses and hostels dotted all over, alongside the street food stalls and makeshift markets. I’d landed in Athens only a day before, and after a night ferry to Crete the previous evening, I’d arrived at my destination. I was traveling with my best friend Jonathan, and we were both looking for something. I can’t say for sure what he was looking for, but I know what I wanted. I still want it.
I can clearly recall clicking the e-mail when it first popped up in my inbox with the obnoxious re: line “Click This You Loser, Before It’s Too Fucking Late.”
Why not, I thought. Why not, indeed!
The sound of Jonathan playing board games with a couple of young ladies from Australia drifted to me through the door into the hostel common room. My eyes scanned the page as I sipped from a glass of ouzo.
Is it possible to be truly happy in life?
Well, let me think about it…
Shut up. Seriously, just shut the hell up!
Only a low-vibration loser tries to be happy! Only a pathetic worm would sit philosophizing when they should be living.
To everyone reading this, I have a message for you: stop waiting to be happy and get what you want.
Stop waiting and do it. Do it now, friend.
I’m currently dictating this into my phone while watching the sunrise from my infinity pool at my primary residence on Kafapisi Island. I just had a breakfast that took my taste buds on an intergalactic journey, and I’m sipping freshly brewed kombucha that is making me buzz like a honeybee. One of my helpmates is sunning herself in a new ecologically-sourced, fair trade bikini that I bought her last week from a local vendor.
When I say namaste, I’m saying that from a place of grounded masculine authority. I’ve balanced and embraced my inner feminine. I’ve found flow. I’ve got shitloads of flow, and divine masculine, too.
So, namaste bitches!
I didn’t get here by accident, folks, believe me.
I’m going to keep emphasizing this mindfully until you actually hear me: life doesn’t change, you change. Life doesn’t give you opportunities, you seize opportunities and carve out a future with your two bare hands! Any happiness that just arrives on your doorstep is temporary, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Any life that’s handed to you is fake. Any future that just “happens” is a role, a spiritual straitjacket, a farce. Make life, don’t let life make you.
Get it?
Until you give a fuck and lay awake at night thinking and obsessing about what you have to change to have a reason to keep going, nothing is going to fucking change. Nothing. Not a single thing. You’ll stay broke. You’ll stay chasing women. You’ll stay making excuses, complaining, looking for validation. You’ll stay stuck in the kind of low vibrations that brought you to this dead-end life. To being broke, poor and unmotivated.
You’re not living your life, life is living you. It’s running you and stringing you along like a cheap hooker who tells you she’s in love with you. Hell, she doesn’t even like herself, friend.
Forget all of that shit. Leave it. Get real.
And join us.
Click here for an exclusive, all-access invite to the Dýnami Health Community on Kafapisi Island. This is us: a group of elite men and women who want to become their best selves and upgrade in every area of our lives. Tomorrow is too late. You need to do it NOW. The matrix is already closing in and weaving its digital tendrils around your heart and soul.
Do you want to be another victim or do you want to maximize your potential and be all you can be? Do you want to find your inner core and double down on everything that makes you you?
What is it going to take for you to stop being a low vibration loser?
I sincerely hope that it’s this e-mail.
Click here now.
Was this shit for real? This was like reading some missive written by a hybrid of Andrew Tate, Deepak Chopra and my uncle who’d joined the Moonies in the 1950s.
As a tech guy halfway through college for network design, I recognized the big money that had to be behind this much reach to get to my inbox. I’d never signed up for this guru’s advice, but affiliate marketing and information capitalism was a wild ride and I’d clearly gotten my contact info put on some far-out mailing lists by a third party. I closed the email and did my best to forget about it. I was here to enjoy Greece, not get sucked into some (admittedly nearby) bizarre New Age fitness community.
This was in the days before laptops, and I was on a ratty old desktop next to the Bob Marley poster in the common room. It showed him next to Jupiter and said “no human, no cry.” Lame.
It was right at this point that a gaunt man touched my arm. He looked like a worn out beige baseball glove with eyes, Mediterranean Michel Houellebecq on steroids. His wisps of hair blew whimsically around a bemused but dour expression.
“You like ‘dis place?” he asked, his blue eyes vacant.
“Yeah, sure. It’s good,” I said.
He nodded sagely, as if considering the aphorisms of Lao Tzu and then wiggled his eyebrows like a macabre puppet.
“You need some pants, guy?”
“Huh?” I asked, looking momentarily at the ruffled up Quiksilver board shorts I was wearing. Why would I want pants in this weather? Especially from this guy?
“Pants, my guy: black pearl, tar, guy.”
Apparently this place did deserve the three star rating. Was this their regular clientele? He wasn’t who I was looking for. I’d never even tried heroin or cocaine, and weed wasn’t my bag either, excuse the pun. In fact, I hated it. I was much more on the hunt for some B&B (beaches and bitches). My unwelcoming response didn’t seem to put him off and actually seemed to draw Med Michel closer as if I had a magnetic field emanating off me.
“What’s your name fren’ buddy?” he asked, shuffling closer on the shredded remains of some bright orange flip flops.
“François,” I said. “But actually I just gotta go meet my friend now.”
The man nodded sagely as if considering the aphorisms of Lao Tzu and then turned away, leaving me alone (at least for now). Hopefully there wouldn’t be an OD in the hostel bathroom stall this afternoon. I logged off the computer and headed to the back patio area.
Jonathan and the girls were congregating in the common room and talking about renting a car together and heading up the coast to see the sights. I “had to come,” apparently, and I could “explore Rethymno later.” The prettiest girl of the two, Elise, implored me with her intelligent and sensuous eyes, and I felt that a “no thanks” was very far out of reach. Of course I went.
We explored a beach with pink sand and Elise built a sand castle with my assistance. It was magical until the waves encroached and had their say. Jonathan seemed to be getting along very well with the other Aussie as well, Alice. We swam in an alcove off the main beach, laughing and everyone but Jonathan having a few Mythos beers that I’d helped port along in a mini-cooler. Jonathan had one, to be fair. By the time we all got set to head back it was getting dusky. Elise, who was very into fitness, got on her phone in the parking lot and asked us if we knew about the Dynami Lodge on Kafapisi island.
“That psycho fitness guy?” Alice asked.
“He’s not psycho,” Elise said, laughing. “He’s just intense.”
“I dunno,” I chipped in. “I got some marketing e-mail from him that was pretty bizarre. Really pushy actually.”
By now Jonathan’s curiosity was piqued. He commented that it couldn’t be all that crazy, since it had a good rating on booking and hostel sites and the community had never really had any serious issue. Just a few leaked footage incidents of people talking about Kweli’s sometimes over-the-top behavior, spiritual fanaticism and carb cutting bullying tactics. The price was also not too bad, which sounded good to the four of us.
“The swearing and that is just an act,” Elise said. “He likes to troll.”
There was still a sailing to the island in one hour and 45 minutes, and I felt myself lose interest in resisting. So be it. What was the worst that could happen? As Jonathan said, it was just some fitness and yoga nuts following a fake guru. We read the reviews of the avocado toast breakfasts that said it was incredible, and their vegan and gluten-free spanakopitas were supposedly “to die for.”
“Yeah, fine, let’s go,” I said.
We could always do the mainstream Greek tourist thing when we got back. Plus this could be a pretty great way to bond with Elise over fitness and healthy living.
We ate at a Greek seafood restaurant on the way, enjoying several more beers and then driving onto the departure point, which confused our GPS systems and led to looping around a number of times.
Eventually, we parked our car at the small dock and waited for our sailing time. The small foot passenger private boat took us over with no great fanfare. The captain was an elderly Greek man with a beard that looked like it was from prehistoric times. He waved us aboard as well as another young couple from Denmark who were dressed in multicolored hemp clothes that looked homemade.
Alice and Elise laughed quietly about the couple, commenting that it looked like they had gotten their clothes at the “spare trade” market instead of the “fair trade” market.
For all I knew, they were wearing $2,000 Ahluwalia or Purple Brand threads designed specifically to look carefree and run-down. The man’s girlfriend or partner was certainly striking, with golden blond hair and a piercing blue gaze. They knew how to make them in Denmark, that’s for sure, not that she was any competition to Elise’s wit and beauty.
Arriving at the island and docking at a small port, a hand-painted sign in rainbow colors with numerous vibrant birds and plants and flowers painted in the background greeted us:
Καλώς ήρθατε στην Κοινότητα Δύναμης! Καθαρή ζωή, καθαρή πρόοδος, and underneath in English: Welcome to Dýnami Community! “Pure living. Pure progress.”
The Danish couple cooed in bliss. Alice and Elise rolled their eyes a little but still shrugged. It was an adventure at least.
A slightly overweight man with curly red hair was standing on the dock and helped us clamber out of the boat. He had the look of a salesman in a Staples.
“Hi, welcome to Dýnami. My name is Dwayne. I’m here to show you around and make sure you feel welcome.”
“Dwayne? That doesn’t sound very Greek,” I joked.
“I’m from Topeka, Kansas. So yeah,” Dwayne said with a toothy, and clearly fake smile that looked like it had been directly lifted off a Ronald McDonald park bench statue.
“Again, welcome.”
OK…
Dwayne was studiously avoiding eye contact and proximity to Alice or Elise, seemingly uncomfortable with women. He led them up a rocky path to a cleared area about five minutes away with about ten large yurts, a trailer hooked up to a generator and a larger residence that looked like something out of Better Homes and Gardens and which was separated by a high brick wall.
“Do we get to stay there?” Alice asked, jokingly pointing to the villa.
Dwayne looked as if he’d seen a ghost. He shook his head as if banishing an evil thought that was trying to intrude.
“Oh, no…no. That’s Master Kweli’s residence. It’s invite-only, and special occasions like Ribbon Days.”
“Ribbon Days?” I asked.
“Yeah. When you level up in the coursework you get a ribbon pinned on you. Just ceremonial, and such. We’re all working on ourselves a lot here, under Kwe- Master Kweli’s guidance of course.”
He started telling us more about the local ecosystem and how they were working to use rainwater and improve their water retention when Dwayne’s croaky voice was cut off by what sounded like a sonic boom:
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!! Namaste! Friends, lovers, guests and comrades…it is time for our evening meditation! Please find your quiet place and seat yourselves. Let’s ascend together.”
“Oh, do…do we have to do that, too?” Jonathan asked, apparently a bit frazzled despite his usually unshakeable calm.
Dwayne shrugged awkwardly and asked to be excused for a second, seating himself next to a nearby bush in a lotus position and closing his eyes. We all looked at each other a little awkwardly and Alice mouthed “O….K…” with a hesitant smirk.
When we finally got to the yurt we were sweaty and parched. Water stood in a cooler in the corner of the yurt with lemon and hard futons lay on the floor. The price didn’t seem so great anymore, given the actual accommodations. There was a partition separated by a curtain where the girls went to get into more casual clothes. The bathroom was an outhouse a few minutes walk away from the yurt village.
Walking past a drum circle next to a small fire pit in the center of what I now termed “Yurt Town,” I saw a group doing jumping jacks under a string of Christmas lights in a small field. Another group of about a dozen was running laps on a field next to it.
There were chants and rallying cries, and I watched as an instructor suddenly grabbed a man mid-jack and shoved him to the ground, shouting something unintelligible and then pouring a thermos of brownish liquid on him. The man howled and I quickened my pace. I didn’t want any brown liquid treatment, and it seemed a good plan to stay as far away from it as possible.
Everyone I could see working out appeared to be a man. Where were the women?
After frequenting the surprisingly non-smelly outhouse (one of three in a field), I meandered back, avoiding the fields. I saw one of the yurts with an open flap and a number of women doing yoga who looked like they’d been lifted out of a Vogue magazine. They were all in purple yoga pants and had these doll-like, placid expressions that unnerved me a little.
Ethereal music was playing, and sounded live. Maybe there was somebody in there playing? Nobody noticed me and I walked on before almost bumping into Dwayne outside the mess hall, a makeshift wooden structure with long fold-out tables arranged inside.
“Are you and the others coming to evening teaching?” Dwayne asked. “Y’all are welcome.”
“Uh, what is it?” I asked.
“Ma-master Kweli shares his thoughts and insights of the day with everyone in the community. Guests are welcome as well.”
“Oh, uh. Well I’ll ask my friends,” I said.
“Y’all should try to make it,” Dwayne enthused, reaching into his cargo shirt pocket and taking out a granola bar. He peeled back the Greek-lettered wrapper with his undeniably sausage-looking fingers, biting into it with a sigh of pleasure.
That’s when things turned genuinely insane.
A tall and muscular black man with a trim mustache in a neon-green-and-pink-striped tank top literally leapt hyena-like out of some unknown hiding place and crisply smacked the granola bar out of Dwayne’s mouth. The half-eaten fragments of oat hung in Dwayne’s buck-teeth.
“Out yo’ mouth! Now!’
The man was standing stock still and ramrod straight and looked like he was witnessing the most disgusting sight of his life. To be fair, it was pretty gross. Dwayne looked like he was on the verge of tears. The granola bar’s remnants dribbled out of his mouth and his shoulders slumped roundly. His Ronald McDonald smile was nowhere to be seen.
“Every last piece of that disgusting item out yo’ filthy mouth! Now, worm!”
“I - I’m s-so-sorry, sir.”
“Report to detention! Now!” the mega fitness man intoned, leveling his eyes at Dwayne as if trying to vaporize him with a laser beam.
Dwayne literally ran, scuffling in a half-crouch and the jacked Eddie Murphy-looking man turned on his heel as if he’d completed surveying a military parade and walked directly away towards the villa on the opposite side. He gave no sign of recognizing my existence even though I was about four feet from him for the entirety of the incident. It was as if I, as a non-member, didn’t even exist as a valid entity. Colorful tank top muscle man disappeared behind a hedgerow and presumably entered the grounds of the villa.
What the hell was this place? Had that been Kweli?
Only one way to find out…
Jonathan didn’t want to go to the “Evening Teaching,” but the two young ladies and I reported for “duty” and sat in a circle of the members as well as the glowing Danish couple. The muscular black guy was accompanied by another man who looked exactly the same as him right down to the bushy mustache. The two walked out with no expression and placed a small wooden stage down in sections. Audio equipment appeared to have already been arranged, along with an extension cord running back to the mess hall.
“They’re former Nation of Islam bodyguards for Farrakhan,” I heard a girl whisper to her friend on the lawn.
Applause rang out as a golf cart zipped up and a light-brown-skinned vaguely Asian man in a light-brown monogrammed Gucci tracksuit turned the wheel sharply in a spray of dirt, hit the brakes and stepped out.
He made a Gandhi-like prayer gesture over his chest and waved down the applause in false modesty.
“Enough, enough,” Kweli said, smiling ruefully as if he couldn’t help how enthusiastic people got about his genius and charm when he appeared on the scene.
The two security guards or aides or assistants or whoever they were, were now dressed in dark blazers and, bizarrely, had caving lanterns strapped to their head.
“Silence!!!” they both shouted in unison.
Alice and Elise both widened their eyes. This wasn’t the peace and love commune Elise had hoped for, at least not the way she’d been expecting.
Kweli launched into a diatribe that sounded straight out of crazy guy at bus stop territory, ranting about “cancerhydrates” and “deadly legumes.” The “toxic agro industry wants us to be fat, lazy and dead!” He stroked his five o’clock shadow and slicked his medium-length black hair back as he paced the ten-foot stage.
When he got to gut health, Kweli was almost foaming at the mouth.
“They’re trying to take our gut health! To take our spiritual radar straight out of our fucking stomach! We’re living in a dysbiosis dystopia. Like, do you even understand? Our divine masculine and angel energies can’t integrate if our gut isn’t integrated. God…It’s so simple.”
He paced the small wooden stage and then hung his head as if overwhelmed by the world’s evil and trying not to cry. A few folks from the crowd cheered in encouragement. And one elderly black man in a fedora yelled “amen!”
“Thank you. Thank you Herman,” Kweli said. “You all know I’m passionate about this. This is our future. Of course I am.”
Kweli straightened up and affixed his dark brown eyes on the back row of the crowd which was about 80 strong.
“Now the corporate media, there -” he pointed at a ponytailed older man and two hunched over assistants by a tripod-mounted camera - “wants to portray us as some kind of extreme gathering. But we’re not the extreme ones by any means. We just want a brighter future for our kids, free of death by EMF signals and corn syrup…”
I tried to ignore the massive satellite dish protruding from Kweli’s villa in the distance and the cellphone that was visibly jutting out the side of one of the half-zipped pockets on his luxury tracksuit.
The man and mini-crew who were capturing proceedings were Jim Leppman of TIME and his helpers as I would come to find out. They were doing some web-only documentary about the health and fitness industry combined with stories of expats who’d left their homelands in search of greener pastures.
Onstage, Kweli was becoming emotional:
“When my mom got diabetes I swore I’d find out why. I was just a teenager, heavily involved in my local high school basketball program and trying to meet girls. I had other things on my mind. But that mission took over. And I’m not built like the midwits and sellouts like most people. I’m built different.
Because I found the answer: I found many of them.”
He began picking up popular food products, including a box of granola bars, cans of pop and beer, bags of chips, pastries and loaves of bread and throwing them as hard as he could against the ground, grinding his black Versace bootheel against the remnants and spitting with apoplectic fury.
“This. Fucking. Shit! This. Fucking. Bioweapon Poison!”
Cries of encouragement rang out from the crowd as a can of Miller Lite hit a rock wall nearby and fizzed all over like a spastic liquid firecracker. A can of Campbell’s soup was set on the wall by one of the security men, who then stepped back. Kweli withdraw a Magnum .357 and after aiming for a moment blasted a spurting geyser in the side of the can as a loud cheer rose from the crowd. He fired two more rounds for good measure, sending the can into smithereens and splashing a woman about eight feet away with a hefty measure of chicken corn chowder.
It was lucky she hadn’t caught shrapnel, I reflected.
“Look at our youth, our people! The young are pasty and sickly, wandering like zombies and talking like mentally handicapped retards,” Kweli was emoting from somewhere deep in his animal soul now.
“The old are bloated tubs of toxins souped up on meds and stimulants! We invade countries with our fake fiat currency-funded armies and the first thing we do? We put in a fucking McDonald! We’re drowning in fucking corn syrup and seed oils… And me? I’m just here to say no more! No more!”
The crowd took up the chant, a trio of yoga pants-clad young women rising to their feet and leading the cheer. They seemed straight of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad with their looks and energy.
“No more! No more! No more!”
I found myself almost wanting to join in. Elise and Alice seemed transfixed, their eyes on Kweli as if both repulsed and attracted at the same time. His energy was undeniably raw and infectious.
“We’re here to build something more, something better,” Kweli said loudly into the mic he was holding. He banged the mic with an open palm and began another chant. “Something more! Something more! Something more!”
His hand was trembling and rivulets of sweat were running past his aquiline nose.
“Make whatever documentary you want, media. Do your worst. We’re building something truly meaningful here at Dýnami, and we’re not here to sugarcoat it for you or dumb it down to your corporate level.
Leppman ignored the barb and conferred with his colleagues.
“We’re here to win! We’re here to tell the truth! We’re here for true progress and to escape the left-right false paradigm! We’re here for strength and victory!”
He emphasized the last word with a flourish and spat once more on the ground.
“Gimme 50 comrades!”
Everybody in the crowd dropped like marionettes into a plank position and began doing pushups. I honestly didn’t know if I could do 50, especially after the three or four beers and large meal I’d had earlier.
“Count us down, Cheryl!” Kweli yelled. A bouffant-hair blond lady began counting from 50 as grunts and groans issued all around.
People were yelling “More! More! More!” and it sounded more than vaguely sexual. I felt somewhat awkward and began to wonder if people were looking at me.
I caught Leppmann’s eye under his faded Boston Red Sox hat. He subtly shook his head. Thank God. I rested on the ground and indicated to Alice and Elyse that they didn’t need to do it. Elise ignored me and began doing pushups anyway. She got to the low 30s and then looked around to see if anyone was watching (I was) before dusting off her hands and saying “50” with a satisfied huff.
Somewhere in the frenzy of physical exertion, Kweli disappeared. He dropped the mic, turned on his heel and sped away in the golf cart. The people looked after him with a sense of loss in their eyes. They were all in love with him. Or afraid of him? Both, I realized with a start. It felt like an exact 50-50 split.
I went to sleep that night dreaming of the yoga class. Except in this class I was leading and they were bowing down to my vibes and listening to what I said. I was finally seen for who I was and at the end of the day I went back to the villa and got a massage (and more) from a private masseuse named Ivana from Colombia. Then red scorpions started to crawl up from nowhere and sting me. I yelped and the masseuse laughed. Then she took her bowl of massage oil and dumped it on me, burning my skin.
“We gonna ha’ lobster tonii!”
“Ahhhhhh!!!-”
Then there were hundreds of other people dancing around as Ivana shouted about lobster, chanting a chorus from some top 40 song, Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus…
“Putcho hands up! Putcho hands up! Putcho hands in the air!”
I woke up gasping. That dream had started off pleasant but quickly veered into decidedly unpleasant territory.
“Now!”
I rubbed my eyes. There was a heavily-armed black-braided woman in a tactical vest in front of me holding an automatic weapon. Shouts could be heard outside the yurt, along with somebody making demands on a loudspeaker for people to line up and sit down on the ground with their hands folded on top of their heads.
I did as I was told.
“Go outside and sit down with the others,” the woman demanded in a strong Greek accent.
I stood unsteadily. I was in boxers and lowered my eyes at an embarrassing case of morning wood. The agent’s steady visage betrayed no hint of humor and she ignored the unspoken question of whether I should dress before heading outside.
“Go!”
I shuffled out to the field of scantily-clad community members. There was barely any talk or discussion as the people sat there as the early morning heat began to bake the island. Leppman was shooting footage like mad, his assistants manning the boom mic and scrambling for still photos and additional camera angles. He was probably the one who had tipped off the authorities - better content for his feature piece, especially the shot now coming into view which was a handcuffed Kweli demanding his lawyer and spitting sullenly as he was frogmarched through the center of the community area.
The rest of the day was a blur of confusion and miscommunication. We were told the boat would be back to pick us up. We were interrogated, then apologized to. I had no idea what was going on, but I watched as furniture, laptops and various items were carried out of Kweli’s residence and members of the community were questioned. There was some skepticism by the one English-speaking Greek police officer about our status as merely day visitors. He said we could go back soon enough, but that the lodgings here would remain open as people arranged their transport back to Crete.
By late afternoon the camp still had plenty of people. I saw Leppman over by a lot of young ladies in sundresses talking to them as his crew dangled the boom mic. What a fiasco.
Alice and I walked over, with Elise sitting by the fire talking to another young lady from Canada. Jonathan had already arranged to go back on the first boat in the morning. I told him my intentions to stay a few more days and he said I was “nuts.” Probably true. But Kweli had been right: why head back to the cancerhydrates and MTV?
“All OK over here?” I asked, passing by the gaggle.
Several of the young women looked at me with something like a “please help!” expression in their eyes, and Leppman’s attempted shooing motion to me didn’t exactly endear me towards the guy. Fuck him.
“I’m here with the transitional arrangements, we actually have to get going,” I said.
The words had just tumbled out of me somehow. My polo shirt and khakis didn’t look overly official, but I could be from some efforts to organize people, sure. Leppman made a frustrated sound and shook his head as the crowd dispersed and the young women asked who I was and greeted me warmly.
I heard many snippets of “Kweli said” and “when Kweli is back.”
“They can’t make us leave this island, you know,” a tall auburn-haired young woman said. “It’s still Kweli’s private property.”
“That’s true,” I said. “I actually have a background in law. I’ve been studying Kweli’s model for a while now and he’s exactly right.”
I saw Alice roll her eyes and begin sidling away from the group. A dark expression came over her face as I continued talking, ingratiating myself with the gaggle of girls. When we came past the first yurt, Elise noticed us and stood up smiling.
“New friends?” she asked me.
I introduced everyone to Elise as I saw Alice wander off and talk to Jonathan near the mess tent where Dwayne stood cramming granola bars in his mouth like a human centipede. Most of the police had left by now and only a few stood around watching with little interest except for eyeing the behinds of the young women. Technically this was Kweli’s land, and until the legalese could be figured out, his guests wouldn’t be evicted.
I found a golf cart sitting next to one of the yurts and turned it on, driving up to where Kweli had set the stage earlier. The girls gathered along with a crowd of others.
“You’re friends with Kweli or something, right?” shouted a buff young man with ray bans. “His lawyer friend?”
I didn’t deny it. In fact, I gave a thumbs up. I could do this. I saw now how my whole life had been leading here, actually.
I flicked on the microphone and thwacked it with my forefinger to check it was working. There was a hush in the field as the 60 or so remaining community members leaned forward.
The young women looked up at me with real trust and hope and the men were eyeing me with hesitant trust and evident interest. They were finally paying attention. Even Elise. Her eyes were looking at me with something very close to desire: definitely respect.
This was where I belonged. I spoke into the mic at close range and my voice came through strong:
“Here’s the plan…”
