Spirit In The Sky

The Fan Club is packed tonight. This great spot owned back in the day by actress and commercial star, Julia Meade - one of Ogunquit’s many claims to fame - is designed like a Japanese pagoda and perched high above and overlooking Perkins Cove. It was originally the Dan-Sing Fan. It’s a cool nightspot for the late-night playgoing crowd from the Ogunquit Playhouse or just for people watchers and gatherers like me and my pals. Sometimes there’s live music but no real dance floor. We dance anyway.

Tonight I’m hanging out on the balcony with some of the crew from my tour boat job while a sultry summer breeze wafts luxuriously through our hair when I decide to order a drink. I slip onto a barstool in the Japanese lantern festooned lounge and wait for the crazy busy bartender so I can order a Tom Collins. I don’t really drink much but businesses usually don’t open in order for you to just hang out so...yeah. Bee Gees tunes looping, “......night fever, night fever……”

Hi.

Soft and gentle male voice on my right. I turn toward it and have a rush of recognition - or something. As I order, the blue-eyed California surfer type sitting on the stool next to me smiles a radiant smile. I feel an instant connection. He is stunning to look at but, no, that’s not it.

This is a crazy scene here, huh?

Yeah, I guess. You’ve never been here?

My long and blonde-streaked brown hair is hanging like a curtain across my face. My face that suddenly feels flushed. His eyes and his spirit - definitely his spirit - pull me in. John Fogerty and Creedence are wailing out their version of “I PUT A SPELL ON YOU” in my head. What in HELL is going on?

No, no. I’ve never been here. I’m just traveling around.

“Traveling around” - wow! At nineteen and stuck in college, this epitomizes my ideal life. We talk of the meaninglessness of everyday life. Astral planes come up. We talk about the universe and past lives and, holy crap, this connection is profound. We sit staring into each other’s eyes and gobbling up each other’s thoughts and words like divine food for our souls. The noise and crowd of The Fan Club disappear; we are alone in a galaxy of our own.

Do you know about Eckankar?

Shit. New rock band? I’m rolling through WBLM’s catalogue in my mind. I have no idea who or what Eckankar is and don’t want him to know it but he sees and it’s okay.

Eckankar, he says, is this whole spiritual journey thing as a way to experience God and our souls. Astral plane travel is a groovy piece of it.

I’m ready to sing “Hu” to my heart's delight if it means I can hang out forever with this wildly familiar soul I am looking at. We leave the bar. We’re going to the beach; it’s like eleven o’ clock at night but I feel strangely safe and calm with Jeff. His name is Jeff. In the parking lot, I comfortably get into his car - a beige VW bug with an old metal roof rack and, of course, the unmistakable blue and yellow license plate of California. I eye him once more. He doesn't look anything like Ted Bundy.

At the beach we walk for hours and never stop talking. There is no physical requirement and sex seems entirely irrelevant while being with this fellow traveler in the universe. He does kiss me goodnight at my door, which is lovely. Really lovely. We spend two nights doing this same thing: walking the beach holding hands, feeling connected on some strange and new spiritual level - something I have never felt with any other human before this - and discussing everything spirit and otherworldly. He teaches me about Eckankar.

And, then, as fast as he appeared, he is gone. So weird. I don’t feel a hole in my soul. When I get back to Orono, I find a group practicing Eckankar and join immediately. Jeff’s spirit stays with me.

Make Me - Copyright © 2021 lisa stathoplos

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