Lifegasm Book I: Marshall's Promise Evelyn Wallace

*I Am A Strange Loop* EXCERPT: This saga started two full summers ago, when I saw the writing nook for what it really was and heard Maestro, who had just died, say from behind me, “it’s always been a book.” No, that’s not right. It started in the autumn of 2016, when Marshall left us and cracked the universe open on his way out. Or maybe it started in 2001, when I spent a weekend in Yosemite with my girlfriends and flirted with a strapping young ranger in uniform. Or, come to think of it, let’s start  in 1981 when I went from inside to outside. Or what if it started indulgently at the beginning of time, when energy became matter and zero found its way onto the fulcrum of our miraculous, impossible scale? Right, then, let’s start with the Padgetts. 

*To All Things A Season* EXCERPT: Let me be clear: I was not pretending there wasn’t a loss to be mourned. Transformations come with growing pains. My fifteen-year marriage was ending; this ending was correct and necessary, and it was extremely uncomfortable for (what felt like) unbearably long moments. And yet, just as my heart kept beating after the excruciating discomfort caused by Marshall’s death, I knew my heart would keep beating after the turmoil of divorce.
DISCLAIMER: You will hear a bleep in this episode. That was a deliberate choice on my end. Please know the duration of the bleep is not equivalent to the duration of the words it alleges to hide. That bleep would have been too long to be practical.

*Self First is NOT Selfish* EXCERPT: In walking the walk of my shifted value system, in following the constant call of my deepest divinity, in prioritizing the needs of my own heart and spirit, I was often accused of acting selfishly. My mom certainly seemed to think so. Others who had never expressed one iota of concern for my or my children’s well-being were now suddenly reaching out to offer the unsolicited advice that everything would be okay “as long as the kids [came] first. But I will announce here in stark and bold terms: the kids did not come first. (Collective GASP!) No, sir. For the first time in my conscious, animate life, I came first. And I was proud of myself for prioritizing radical self-care.

*The Goddess Chakra* EXCERPT: In those early months, my learning curve was steep. I learned that sexual needs represent an appetite that is just as legitimate, important, and unattached to shame as hunger. I learned that men weren’t the sex machines I’d been falsely conditioned to believe they were. (As it turns out, men are people, too!) I learned that meeting new lovers and checking the multilayered categories of compatibility takes a lot of energy (i.e., cost), and sometimes my body wasn’t so hungry as to warrant all that work. I learned that you can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the bowl but that there will always be some people who don’t like peaches.

*The Spiritual Road Trip* EXCERPT: When I arrived in Utah, I was surprised at how many people were milling about the public park who seemed, by their appearances, to not have reliable shelter. It’s hard for me to call people homeless, because then it becomes their identity, their title, their permanent truth; this same inescapable labeling tends to happen with anyone who has worked as a professional dancer at a gentlemen’s club, which is why all the women I know who have been employed as strippers are exceptionally private about sharing that information. AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE PERMANENT IDENTITY WE ASSIGN TO ANYONE WE'VE CATEGORIZED AS A CRIMINAL! But yes, what I’m trying to say is that these folks in Salt Lake City would probably identify as homeless. I thought the Mormons took care of each other and that a fundamental tenant of their belief system was service? How was it that so many of God’s children, right there in that religious capital, seemed to be without a roof? I knew it wasn’t just a Utah problem, of course. So why were we as humans failing so terribly at ensuring the basic needs of our species get met? Why did we drive past heaps of human people under tarps and tents and think “not my problem,” while simultaneously bemoaning the “homeless problem”? *****

*Broken Promises* EXCERPT: It’s challenging to explain my level of hunger, because I was many steps away from starving to death. But there’s a wide swath of human experience that lands somewhere between feeling fully satiated and dying of starvation, and while I was never worried that I wouldn’t have enough, and I’m certainly not complaining, I was more grateful for the miracle of food than I ever had been. I loaded up my plate with cheesy eggs, hash browns, and grilled asparagus, go figure, then found a table outside on the veranda. I even took a picture of myself and my full plate lest I someday come to suppose that manifestation was make-believe and that this moment was a figment of my imagination. Then I tucked my phone away so I could put my full attention on the textures and flavors of the food. Breakfastgasm! When my body gave me the signal that it had had enough, I loaded up Peaches the Prius (newly-minted), queued up Peaches the artist, and readied myself for another seven-hour day in the car.
 
Then my phone rang.