I remember feeling trauma for the first time, about four months after being served. The pure shock of the lawsuit and tabloid treatment began to simmer down. I was experiencing actual emotions again. My previous, almost Zen state of shock transitioned to actual pain. I’d experienced the unfeeling state before, but never this long. Four months of torture suffocated by numbness crept in, through the throat and chest. My heart buried, like a coffin. Everything seemed to…

Just. Close. In.

I was no stranger to trauma, but this was on a new level I couldn’t yet comprehend.

My cousin Rob had just come to town and left me some very clean acid as a parting gift. I hadn’t touched the stuff in a decade and it seemed like it was time. I played it safe and took half a hit. I always believed in LSD as a therapeutic tool, when taken responsibly. Within a half hour it kicked in, I felt that familiar buzz and re-aligned. Enlightenment. I had been in this state before both with and without drugs. It was as if I was returning to myself, welcoming myself back home. I stretched for the first time in months, moving around the living room…slowly coming alive inch by inch. Standing in my strength. I felt unconditional love and acceptance for everything I was. Relief. I decided to take a nature walk and ran into my new neighbor on the front steps.

He was a handsome, tall, 20-something that frequently chained smoked on the building doorstep. I occasionally gave him a friendly hello, but never took him for someone I would actually get to know. I (unfairly) wrote him off as part of the new school demographic taking over the Lower East Side. I sized him up as fresh off the bus to party-town, but still always a pleasure to run into. I liked his energy.

Leaving the building, I felt an inexplicable need to sit down on the steps and officially introduce myself. His name was Zach. After being so laser focused on my legal troubles, feeling curious about someone else was a welcome distraction. Zach had that LSD friendly vibe.

I’d told my story hundreds of times, to anyone who would listen, in hopes of actually processing it someday. I decided it was Zach’s turn to listen. This time around, however, there was an addendum to all of this. I was feeling trauma for the first time and I needed to tell somebody. Thanks to the LSD, I described it in an observer-higher-self sort of state, while still communicating the sheer absurdity of it all, with some humor intact.

Looking up, I noticed the moon was like nothing I’d seen before. Zach said it was the super moon. (I later learned it was also a Harvest Moon, which made it rather unique) We chatted about the building, the shitty landlords and of course, my lawsuit. He appeared riveted by my story as I predicted he would be. Anybody could hear about this once and be entertained.

An endless stream of neighbors stopped by the stoop, as there was a synergistic vibe that night. I pointed the moon out to each of them, but only Zach seemed to respond to it as well. I silently asked my tripping self if the moon just looked cool because I was on acid? Was he humoring me, like an unspoken LSD chaperone? Either way, I was digging the vibe. Tiny trauma pangs would emerge midst conversation, I’d tap my heart chakra to channel the vibe back to clean, pure, self love. I did this repeatedly as I spoke, no one seemed to notice. I never was into EFT, but on LSD my instincts told me to tap, so I tapped. I eventually excused myself back upstairs to my apartment as I had to use the restroom. Zach had given me his business card, I friend requested him on Facebook. Later that night, I began the slow decline from my trip, wishing I had a joint. I didn’t.

Damnit.

As if he read my mind from four flights down, I got an instant message. It was Zach, asking me how the moon was treating me. I told him it was incredible and just…wow. He said it made him feel supernatural and did I have any rolling papers… “Let me check”, I typed…“Suspense…” He joked. I did. He asked if I knew how to roll, I said I’m somewhere between OK and pretty good. He suggested we smoke and go to the roof. Not only was the universe providing me with a weed fairy, but a cute one at that. I didn’t take his interest in me seriously, but I was excited for his company.

He brought up his grinder and I sniffed the goods like the connoisseur I fancied myself. I incorrectly guessed Sour Diesel. It was Kush . The Weed Gods had smiled upon me. I was stoked for this moment.

I rolled a perfect joint, gratefully inhaled, and we went to the roof.

The moon was pure golden power. I felt connected to it in every fiber of my being. I simply couldn’t look away, not for all the money in the world. I slowly felt myself transitioning back into the 3rd dimension, hyper aware of it for the first time in months. And I knew it was time to allow some sort of a connection. It was time to get my groove back, like Stella.

Staring at the moon, it all made sense in this moment, why this had happened to me. Zach listened, I realized I sized him up all wrong.

He simply got it. He really fucking got it.

I knew in my heart the viral thunderbolt of the NY Post article wasn’t over. It birthed something new, perhaps a calling. An abrupt change of direction and purpose. I was changed and not done speaking out. My DNA and brain chemistry literally altered, thanks to the summer of 2014. I got deep. He seemed game to talk to me on this philisophical level.

I had a heart to heart with Zach about the constant shaming that women are made to feel. The intensity it gets with age. Fifty One percent of the population sold the notion that their value deteriorated with passing birthdays. What I endured in the press was symbolic of the single biggest problem in the world. Respect for women should just be a given. Fix this and a large portion of the worlds problems are taken care of. He really listened and got it. Few things are more encouraging then speaking to men who understood this.

I knew the moment I decided to trip, something profound would go down. I knew I’d break down barriers and walls with in myself. I just didn’t predict a 6’5, accidental shamanic guide as my sounding board. I realized I wasn’t crazy, just insanely sane for someone who had just been through what I had. It became clear, in that moment, I had a responsibility to the world to speak up. I experienced first hand humanitarian issues that needed to be discussed immediately. The legal system and media were two cesspools that claimed countless victims and I now had a platform to speak about this.

We spoke of the media machine. The endless brainwashing. How I was sucked into it and used as a tool of propaganda against women. I got a front row behind-the-scenes look at the daily, often profitable business of shaming. Grown adults convening in boardrooms, marketing flaws to us that never existed in the first place. Carefully calculated. I was sold to the world as ugly and a joke, despite looking completely normal. I was a pawn to keep the machine going, papers selling and profits rolling.

“When the judge sees how beautiful you are, the case will get thrown out”, he said.

Giggle, giggle. He had game.

The Universe sent him to help me wake up and rejoin the party. I then mentioned how incredibly annoyed I was by the new Nicki Minaj video and how pop culture has turned into people playing with each other’s buttcheeks, what the fuck and how did it get to this? This is not what I moved to New York for twenty years ago.

“We’ve had this conversation in other lifetimes and Nicki Minaj has been famous thousands of times before.”, he said.

I felt a past life vibe with him too, but it was totally possible he just wanted to seal the deal, if you know what I mean. He seemed like the kind of guy that knew what to say to make the panties drop. Either way, I dug it. We went back to my place, smoked some more, listened to Radiohead “Kid A” while I pulled up some old school episodes of Lost in Space for visual. I told him a story of dropping E by myself on New Years Eve, playing Kid A up until the saxophone solo, only to keep going back to the beginning to do it again and again.

Then I decided that I would like to play an acoustic concert of Kid A. Just me and a guitar.

I had mentioned my shoulder injury. Within minutes, I was getting a back rub. I could feel again, not just trauma, but serenity and pleasure. I felt empathy in his touch, as if his fingertips understood my emotional journey. Thom York sang about sucking on a lemon in the background, while 4 months of shoulder knots just melted . Sweet Jesus.

I’d been celibate, by choice, for 2 years working through some of my issues with past heartbreaks and childhood trauma…which was amplified tenfold when the lawsuit hit. I was wondering only hours prior if it was possible that I would never feel close intimate touch again. Being introduced to the world as old, ugly and bad at what I did for a living certainly wasn’t exactly a catalyst to propel me back into the world of intimacy. Part of why I initially felt so comfortable talking to Zach was that it didn’t occur to me upon first meeting we would have that type of connection.

He mentioned wishing he had oil, but I wasn’t taking the bait. (Looking back, I should have taken the bait.) So he played me a couple of Indie bands on my computer and I stared at the Lost In Space episodes.

He left my place at 5AM, I looked at him and said “I really needed that, thank you”. He looked right through me and said “So did I’’. It was clear at that he had something of his own he was processing. I was too wrapped up in my own pain to notice his, until we locked eyes.

The next day I transitioned back into living, feeling, and being a part of the world again. I would love to say it was a smooth transition, but it was a slippery slope. It was like learning to ride a bike for the first time without training wheels.

The following week consisted of several late night text messages from him, me resisting. I ended up losing my keys to my apartment, room mates were out of town and the rest is history. Our fling was short, and sometimes not so sweet with a touch of drama one would expect in a brief game of naughty neighbors. It ended abruptly. Zach fell in love with a girl soon after (or possibly before or during our crossing of paths) and I started therapy to finally process what had happened to me this year. I gave him the cold shoulder for a while, but later told him he was a major part of what was probably one of the most important days of my life. It was scary to admit that to someone after parting ways, but I decided in my path of healing it was time to start speaking from the heart, unconditionally. Or at least give it a shot. There was now a whole new world of romantic possibility out there for me when I was ready.

Weeks later, Zach’s girlfriend moved into his apartment, at times he felt like a complete stranger. They would hang out for hours on end at all my hangouts. She seemed to have an intense awareness of me although we had never spoken. We had a couple telepathic conversations and it was understood that I was to stay away.

I knew at some point I would have to forgive Chuck for putting me through all of this, but I was not there yet by a long shot. This was going to take time, and I knew I was just going to have to let myself go a little bit crazy.

Time to feel. To process. To hurt, heal, fight, cry and scream. Eventually, to let go.

I woke up.