Page 88 of Sort of Seeing Someone

I take a seat on a chair in the corner. In her Reiki room, the lights are dim, the incense is burning, ambient chanting is playing through the speakers, and candles are lit in every corner. This, by all accounts, is Ollie’s worst nightmare. But for what it’s worth, her set-up is legit.

“Is there anything I should know before we start the session? Anything bothering you? Any chakras you want me to pay specific attention to?”

“I don’t know what achakrais,” he says. “But…I want to. Could you narrate what you’re doing throughout the session?”

“Typically we don’t talk in a session. The room remains quiet so I can focus on your healing.”

“Well, you said this is just practice, right? Can you bend the Reiki rules a tad bit? Ireallywant to understand how this stuff works.”

I’m not shocked Ollie’s pushing Angeline for information. That’s just how his engineer brain works. Hopefully she’ll oblige because I can tell this is a bone Ollie doesn’t plan to drop.

“Fine. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. I’m going to get started here in a moment,” Angeline tells Ollie.

I see his chest inflate and fall three times as Angeline does the same—a few cleansing breaths, we called those in the yoga studio.Have I mentioned how much I miss that place?

“I’m going to start with the root chakra,” she states, hovering her hands over Ollie’s genitalia.

Of course that’s where she’s going to start.

“If your body was a house, this is the foundation. When it’s in balance, it’s sturdy. Yours is somewhat blocked. I can tell it wants to be stable, badly. In fact, there’s an anxiety within you about this. A dire need for it. I’m going to do my best to unclog it, but some of this is going to have to be conscious work on your part to slow down. It’ll come in time.”

Angeline has already earned an A+ in my book. Ollie has mentioned his nest egg to me on more than one occasion. I know he’s saving for that house in North Park—a house he’d move into yesterday if he could.

“Okay. We’re moving on to the second chakra, the sacral chakra. It’s just above your pubic bone.”

The wordpubiccoming out of Angeline’s mouth makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I know she’s going in order of the seven charkas but I have a feeling she just likes keeping her hands near Ollie’s goods. Same, girl. Same.

“Emotion. Passion. Pleasure. That’s what lives here. And yours…yours my friend is on fire. It’s wide open. It’s flowing. It’soverflowing, actually.”

Could that have something to do with two orgasms in three hours last night?

“It’s definitely aligned. There’s no work to be done here. I just…I can’t get a read on how strong it is. A piece of straw is straight. But it would blow away in a bad storm.”

Ollie asks: “How can you tell if it’s a straw or a…”

“Steel rod?”

Again, I have a feeling Angeline lives for moments where she can shoutsteel rodinto a quiet space.

“No way to know. I’d say if you have low libido, it’s a sign it’s weak. Do you have a low—”

“I think you can go on to the nextchakra,” I suggest.

“The solar plexus is next.”

Angeline moves her hand upwards toward his chest.

“This one is about your sense of self. Self-esteem, authentic self, things like that. Let me get a read. Take a few more deep breaths for me, will you?”

Angeline looks to me and mouths, “Muscles.”

I mouth back: “I KNOW.”

“Okay, well you’ve got a good sense of yourself, kid. You’re not very blocked here. If anything, a little overactive. A bit of an ego problem here and there and a wee bit power-hungry.”

“Guilty,” he says, as I think back to the first few interactions with Mr. Zetterlind. “So how do we fix that?”

“If you could quiet down a sec, I could work my magic.”

---