I was high above downtown Chicago when the rapture struck. I’d just been pleasantly surprised by a tall blonde masseuse bearing an expensive bottle of Dom Perignon. She introduced herself as Helga, and informed me, in a charming German accent, that she and the champagne had been sent up to the Presidential Suite of The 8, the Windy City’s hottest five-star hotel, courtesy of my excellent hosts. Delighted, I stripped down to my lucky red speedos and hopped onto Helga’s table.
It was while Helga’s Teutonic elbows beat and kneaded me into healthy spinal alignment that it hit me: I, Manray Mothershed, was a certified, first-rate, New York Times bestselling, mother-humpin’ star.
In two hours I would step onto the stage at the UNIBANK Coliseum, to address a sold out crowd of fans. Well-meaning seekers of “Self-Activation” had come from all over the world – and paid top dollar – to hear the gospel according to Manray.
A surge of affirmation propelled me off the massage table. I grabbed a lush terrycloth bathrobe from the bed, then I grabbed the startled Helga and swept her into my arms. Finally, I grabbed the bottle of champagne and waltzed them both around the suite.
“Are you alright, Mr Mothershed?”
“Nie besser, Helga,” I sang, in flawless Deutsche. “Never better!”
I grabbed Helga by her muscular shoulders and looked her in the eye. She was two inches taller than me, so I had to look up.
“Are your parents alive, Helga?” I said.
“Pardon me?”
“Your mom and dad… living or dead?”
“Dead,” she replied, warily. “They’re both dead.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Were they good people?”
“They were excellent pupils. My mother studied at the Sorbonne and my father–”
“No,” I prodded, gently. “Were they good people?”
“Oh! Sorry! My English,” Helga laughed. “No, they were shitty people.”
“Hah!” I said. Then I lifted the champagne bottle and popped the cork. Helga squealed as champagne sprayed out of the bottle, wetting us both.
“A toast!” I said, handing Helga the champagne. She held the bottle at a distance, trying to avoid the foamy liquid as it drizzled past the cork. “To shitty parents!”
Helga giggled, shrugged and swigged from the bottle. “But I don’t understand,” she said. “Why are we toasting shitty parents?”
“Because we’re here, Helga,” I cried. “We’re living our dreams, helping people… We survived!”
I grabbed the bottle, and ran out onto the balcony.
The city of Chicago lay before me, her charms adorned by the late afternoon sunlight. I held the champagne bottle over the railing and poured a blast of Brut into empty space, offering a silver stream of effervescence to christen the city below.
“You’re wrong, reverend,” I whispered, eyeing the falling liquid. “I win again.”
“Hey!” Helga said. “You’re wasting it!”
“Keine angst, Helga,” I said, handing her the bottle. “Fear not. Enjoy.”
As it always did whenever I was feeling really good about myself, my father’s voice weighed in from the Great Beyond.
Idiot. Why don’t you drink that bubbly instead of wasting it?
I kept pouring. If only the bastard had lived. I would have saved the champagne and flown him to Chicago just to make him watch me pour it down the talking toilet.
I tipped Helga generously, let her have the champagne and shooed her away. Then I walked into the center of my suite and faced my reflection in the full-length mirror I’d requested from the SAMSpeak organizers. I dropped the lush terry-cloth bathrobe, stepped out of my speedos and drew in a slow, cleansing breath.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Manray?” the man in the mirror sneered back. “Look at you standing there, naked as Lot’s daughter, for all the world to see. What have you got to say for yourself?”
I grinned back at the man in the mirror. His teeth shone white and perfect, which was understandable since I’d spent a fortune on them. Half-turning, I checked the rearview: my butt was tight, legs toned from my four-times weekly regimen of squats, lunges, free-weights and my Mini Iron Man Personal Challenges. Skin tone was excellent; firmer and healthier than a lot of other transplant recipients I’d met. Muscle tone was also good, although the pectorals looked a little droopy. I clenched my abdominals and noted the ripples of flab that had gathered around my middle despite all the changes I’d made since the transplant.
Better work on that.
But, all in all, I liked the man in the mirror. I liked him a lot. And I wasn’t alone.
Originally touted as a conference where “Science, Art and Metaphysics” merged, SAMSpeaks were a hot ticket; an ongoing series of self-enrichment talks that had taken the world by storm via the worldwide web. The Mothershed Method, my latest bestseller, had galvanized the self-help industry like a lightning strike, and tickets to my first SAMSpeak had sold out within minutes.
I had refined the Method over years of education, experimentation and entrepreneurial stagecraft. By the time the lecture circuits and talk shows came calling, it had been rendered down into easily digestible, ethnically adjustable, gender-neutral smartbombs. After seven books, dozens of lectures, podcasts and talkshow appearances, The Mothershed Method had proven powerful enough to topple any temple of self-suppression my global community of devotees desired, as long as they believed. And oh, how they believed. More and more of them were filling my private inboxes every day: heartfelt testimonials of lives changed; ancient conflicts resolved; marriages saved or mercifully ended; potentials realized and destinies secured, and all thanks to me. Yes, I was at the top of my game.
Then again, there was the scar.
I ran my forefinger along the ugly ridge of brown scar tissue that extended from just above my sternum down to the top of my belly button.
Three hundred and seventy-seven days since you were born again.
One year and twelve days after an emergency heart transplant, I was healthier than any of my doctors could believe. I was stronger than I’d been before my first heart attack. I was drug and alcohol free and I’d made peace with my demons. Richard Simmons, Eckhardt Tolle and Les Brown were on my speed dial and even my temporary death hadn’t dimmed the wonder that was Me.
“I’m wondering when you’re going to pull your head out of your ass and make something of yourself,” the man in the mirror snarled. “Don’t just stand there with that shit-eating grin smeared all over your face! Answer me!”
I deployed the Three Cs – the empowering tactic I developed after a college internship on Wall Street that would become the guiding principle behind my first bestseller, Go Fund Yourself… Investing in the Future You. I Collated the negative legacies of my parents, Confronted my fears and Counter-attacked with my famous battle cry:
“The past is gas… blow it out your ass!”
Psychically reinforced, I glanced at the old-fashioned clock on the wall over the mirror and checked my timeframe. Sixty minutes before I was due onstage at the Coliseum: time enough for naked yoga and then a short nap.
Twenty minutes later, I was halfway through a sweaty Sun Salutation when someone knocked on the door.
“Boss? It’s me.”
I hopped up from my yoga mat to open the door, and greeted a familiar face.
“Lev!” I cried. “Get in here, you married son of a bitch!”
Leviticus “Lev” Cohen had been my personal bodyguard for the last three years, ever since he’d saved my life in Tel Aviv during a roundtable debate at Barbra Streisand University. The topic up for debate was “Faith vs Narcissism.” I had just scored a huge laugh from the audience when one of my fellow panelists, a Conservative rabbi with a lisp, pulled a meat cleaver and lunged at me. After security officer Cohen tackled my assailant, I was declared the winner by default. I’d hired him on the spot.
We traded small talk for a while. Lev had requested some personal time to enjoy a honeymoon with his beautiful Italian bride, and I’d given him two weeks’ paid leave as a wedding present. I was catching him up on the SAMSpeak details when I noticed that the normally gregarious Lev was unusually quiet.
“Hey, Lev… you look like shit. Everything OK?”
“Sorry, boss,” he mumbled, scratching at the dark stubble peppering his granite chin. “Big trouble with the wife.”
“The wife you just married?”
“That’s the one.”
“What is it, pal? Talk to me.”
Lev shrugged his immense shoulders. He may have been saddled with an accountant’s name, but at six feet two inches tall and two hundred thirty pounds, Lev Cohen was pure Israeli killing machine. Now, however, he looked like a confused first-grader.
“Veronica’s been acting so crazy,” he sighed. “Talking weird, dressing like a mekhasheyfe…”
“Sorry… a what?”
“A mekhasheyfe,” Lev said. “Sorry. It’s Yiddish. It means… like… a witch.”
“Got it.”
I ticked off a mental note to add Yiddish to my Mother Tongues Rapid Language Mastery program.
“I think she’s going nuts, MM.”
“Maybe she’s pregnant?”
“Christ, I hope not,” Lev shuddered. “My mother’s still in shock from having to sit through a Catholic wedding. I’m definitely not ready to be a father.”
“Well… maybe she’s sick.”
“Sick?”
“She might have picked up a virus or something,” I volunteered. “I hear there’s a weird bug going around LA.”
“I don’t think it’s a medical thing,” Lev said. “It’s more like… like…”
“Like… what?”
Lev looked up at me. He was pale, unshaven, his expression haunted.
“It’s like she’s become a completely different person.”
Then the man I’d watched dropkick an angry rabbi covered his face and began to cry.
“Hey,” I said, stunned. “Hey, Big Levinsky… it’s OK.”
“I just don’t know, Manray,” Lev sniffed. “This morning, I called home to tell Veronica I’d landed in Chicago. When she answered the phone… I could swear I heard another person whispering in the background.”
“Whoa… was it a male person?”
“I couldn’t tell,” Lev said, shuddering. “It was this crazy… whispery voice. It was like… hissing.”
“Hissing?”
“Yeah,” Lev said. “When I asked Veronica what was going on, she said, ‘I’m leaving, Leviticus. I’m moving to Helsinki.’”
“Helsinki? As in Finland?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Lev cried. “What does that even mean? Is it American slang? I’ve been Googling ‘moving to Helsinki’ all day, but I just get ads for fish oil.”
“Jesus, buddy,” I said, eyeing the wall clock. I loved Lev but he was throwing me off my program. “Hey, I know exactly what you need.”
“You do?”
“A little yoga. Come on, I’ll stretch you out.”
“I don’t think so, boss.”
“Why not? I’m certified. You’ll feel better.”
“No. Besides, you’re naked… and stuff.”
“Hey! ‘Love your body, love yourself,’ my man.”
“I know,” Lev said, rising to his feet. “Thanks, but I’ll pass. Anyway, it’s time to do my pre-check with the team.”
“OK. See you after the show?”
“You bet.”
Lev got up and headed for the door.
“Lev? Hold on a minute.”
“Yes, boss?”
“I want you to know that I’m here for you,” I said, in English. Then I switched over to Hebrew to drive the point home. “I’m not just your boss, Lev. I’m your friend. We’ll get through this thing together.”
Lev’s eyes grew shiny with tears. He sniffed and looked away, as if he’d been caught off guard by the intensity of his own emotions.
“Thanks, boss.”
Then he shut the door.
I checked the clock; I’d spent thirty minutes with Lev. After a quick shower, grooming session and twenty minute trip to the Coliseum, there would be no time to finish my sun salutations, no space to meditate and center myself before the SAMSpeak. I’d have to go in “cold.”
And there he sits, friends! My fine young prince, Manray Anderson Mothershed, bumbling through life with his head wedged firmly up his backside.
“Son of a bitch.”
I ran for the shower.