The Energy Healer and the Drunk Carpenter

For a while I was going to see this energy healer. Every time I had a big performance I’d go get a healing from her, so I’d be at my best. She’d lay me down on her table and put her hands in my aura and try to get my chakras spinning in the right direction again.

“Oh, they’re barely moving at all,” she’d say. “Your energy can’t even reach past your skin.”

“I know,” I’d say. “Life just seems to grind me down to a standstill sometimes.”

Then she’d wave her hands around and pick out pieces of invisible darkness and toss them aside like a mime. Soon I’d start to feel very energized and want to talk and laugh and love everything, even the ferns, even her cat I was allergic to, even myself.

“Thanks,” I’d say and pay her $75.

“You’re welcome,” she’d say. “I’ll see you later tonight at the show.”

“Great!” I’d say and then be ready to give a top-notch performance.

For a while I was driving cab in the daytime, and I’d often give rides to this one drunk. He’d always get picked up at a bar some time in the daylight hours, sometimes to get a ride to another bar, sometimes just straight home so he could pass out. But he was a nice guy who always asked me how I was doing and always tipped huge.

“Hey man,” I asked him once, “how can your drunk-ass afford to tip me so huge?”

“I’m a carpenter,” he said.

“Like with hammers and nails?”

“Yeah, and wood.”

“And you get paid a lot?”

“Yeah, I own the company.”

“And you can do that drunk?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

One time I picked up the Drunk Carpenter and the Energy Healer was with him.

“You two know each other?” I asked.

“Yeah,” the Energy Healer said, “We’re lovers.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” they said.

I’d picked them up at one bar and was taking them to another one. The Energy Healer was trying to give me a complimentary healing from the backseat.

“Your energy is good but flickering,” she tried to say, but the word ‘flickering’ sounded more like ‘flgrng.’

“Are you drunk?” I asked her.

“Haha, yeah,” she said. “Howz potree bin gun?”

“What’s potree?”

“Potree. Pot-tree. Pot-a-tree.”

“Poetry?”

“Yeah!”

“Oh, it’s been going good. Recently a girl was sexually attracted to me because of it.”

“Pllvr righnow!” the Energy Healer suddenly shouted.

I swerved over to the curb and she flung open the door and started puking right on the full traffic street in the middle of the day. It didn’t seem to be very energy healthy, and it confused me.

“What did you do to her?!” I asked The Drunk Carpenter.

“Having a blast!” he said.

The puke continued to pour out of the Energy Healer. Brown and splattery with chunks of things hanging out of her mouth in strings. There was so much, all of her chakras probably came out with it.

“Hey,” The Drunk Carpenter said to me with his hand rubbing her back.

“What?”

“I seen you read poetry.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, I never been to poetry before, but she took me. You were good. I liked it.”

“Okay.”

Then the Energy Healer was finally done puking and she got back in the cab.

“I’m alright,” she laughed.

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

Then the Drunk Carpenter pulled some napkins out of his pocket and wiped off her mouth.

“Thank you,” she said and nuzzled him.

And then they were ready to go to the next bar.

What a romance, I thought.

– March 2014, Boulder, CO