Hey Jude — Bigger Than Christmas

The world needs more Lotties. I started finding my way to Lottie about 6 or 7 years ago when I shot a bunch of dope, took a bunch of Xanax, smoked meth and wound up totaling my car and two others on Magnolia Blvd. Thank God no one else was involved, and no one was hurt. I don’t think I’d be able to carry that. As it happened, I got arrested for a DUI and wound up back in the same rehab I’d left just two months earlier. I could only afford to stay for 3 weeks. My insurance was a mockery. But I knew the people there, and they welcomed me back. I’d been dodging bullets my whole life in the drug and sex addiction world, and finally, it all ended. I remember coming to and thinking very soberly that I should kill myself. I’d never really thought that before, but it seemed like nothing was left. My likely-to-be fiance had split. Who wouldn’t? I couldn’t work as I had to drive for work. And so I came to and just decided maybe I’d lived enough. But I couldn’t do it while my Mom was still alive. There’s no way I could do that to her. And what about the dogs? But I figured I could just give up and sit at home and drink until we all died. For some reason, I thought my Mom could make peace with that.

Jaymee, Lacee, Carson, and Chris often checked on me. We’d become close my first go around. I think it was Chris who said, “You should just go back to school and become a therapist. The clients talk to you more than they do us. They trust you.” That was preposterous. I was too old. Too broken. But he said something to the effect: “three years are going to pass no matter what. You might as well have a degree to show for them.” And then Carson, Carson the southern gentleman Deadhead, told me to go home after group and lie face down in the grass and just feel the earth. Reall hippy shit. But I was open to it, and so I did. I just laid there in the grass with the heat on my back and felt every blade of grass slither around my arms and cheeks and wrap itself in my long filthy hair.

And something happened. I had this image of my world being completely exploded, but it was a world of old dead, sandy rocks held in place with dried tears, and it just shattered, and when it did, this brilliant new light shown forth. Look, call me a hippy, call me whatever you want, but that was the moment everything changed. Well, not everything, I still have all my same vices and struggles and perversions and loopholes, but they sort of became contained in some manageable way. Within six weeks, I’d found the closest MFT program to my house and started classes.

These years have all sorts of silly and crazy stories within them, but I have to get to Lottie. I graduated and began the process of getting my license. California basically said fuck you. “You aren’t a good fit for this work” was as close as I can remember how they phrased it. “You’re not good enough for us because you have this DUI.” Now half of the therapists in CA are only therapists because they derailed their lives to such a state that all that was left was trying to save others from the same. But they said no to me, and it fucking hurt. Imagine having imposter syndrome about as far as you can take it, and then the State of California sends you a letter saying, “You're right. You are an imposter." I fought it for a year with a lawyer and ultimately just told them to fuck off. I'll just be a therapist without your asinine rules and controls.

Ultimately it's the best thing I've ever done. I'm a much better therapist for simply abandoning all their horrible rules. My ethics and respect for confidentiality are beyond reproach, but I want to be my clients' friends and share everything with them. That's very much frowned upon by the BBS, the CA office of who gets licensed or not

I wound up working with Jaymee and Lacee at a place they started in Santa Barbara. I'd go up on Monday, they'd put me up in a hotel, I'd work Tuesday and come home. No one does that for some unlicensed kid therapist. But I started a family group, and it took off, and they supported me like few ever have. All of them. Not just Jaymee and Lacee. But eventually, they left to do their own thing, and I lasted about 4 months and started drinking again. I couldn't handle the guilt, so I just left and got help. I up and left. I still feel pretty rotten about that. But, everything leads to some new thing, I guess.

Jayme and Lacee lived in Ojai (of course) and started their own private practice. We stayed in touch, but I never see them as much as I want to. There are simply not the right strings of letters in our language to describe the depth of love I have for these two.

A few months ago, they decided to start this Thursday night meditation/process group. Mainly clients of Jaymee and Lacee's and some friends like me. I loved it. I still do. I missed once to see Nick Cave. That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about how special this thing is to me. It's an odd assortment of characters who show up each week, and some come and go, but there's a core group. And we don't hold anything back. That's where I first met Lottie.

Most of my stories involve a her who I've fallen madly in love with and go all in on until the wheels fall off. And you know what? If I was about 30 years younger and about 700 miles closer, she'd probably be "her." But she not. She's just this young mother of two boys who seems so filled with the alternating beams of love and self-loathing that she blinds everyone around her.

All of these groups are done via Zoom. One night she mentioned something about making music, and I sent her a private message asking to hear some of it. That led to text conversations and innocent exchanges of music we liked. Truly innocent. Now make no mistake, she's gorgeous. But I wasn't going down that road. I really felt like I had found a friend. A real friend who just happened to be beautiful.

One night I told the group that I wished we could all meet somewhere and spend the weekend together and then get snowed in for a week, and we'd have to just really get to know each other. I'd still love that.

A few weeks later, Jaymee asked me if I'd be into letting Lottie and her friend crash at my house because they were driving to LA to see some sort of Buddhist type music deal. God only knows what that is. And I said, of course. And the hour came on a Saturday afternoon when this car pulled into my driveway, and these two little pixies popped out all nervous, and we met. I was totally unprepared for how little they were. Not weirdly little, but just pretty little girlish-type creatures. They came in, and we immediately just started talking like we'd known each other for, well, for at least more than 6 minutes.

Both had been brought up and had somehow escaped the whole Warren Jeffs polygamy/underage sex predator deal. They weren't tight-lipped about it, but that's where they were formed. You could smell the trauma on them. And sometimes, trauma doesn't smell so bad, I've learned. I made them bread, and they went off to their concert and Ubered back. It was one of the purest weekends of just friendship I'd had in years,

I've grown to really love Lottie. She's a beautiful person and an amazing mom. I often text her to see how she's doing, and I can tell she's making it seem better than it is for me. I can sense the pain in her. She is one of those people that come along every now and then who you just want to shake and make them see themselves the way you see them.

I believe someone referred to her two sons, aged 8 and 6, as two little saints, always looking for something to do to help Mom out. One night I Venmo'd her 100 bucks and told her to get them all pizza and ice cream. At first, she was not ok with it. Not mad but just underserving. You know that feeling. But, what could she do? Once I sent it, she couldn't send it back. She sent pictures of their time at the pizza place. Or somewhere. There was definitely pizza involved.

So what's my point of all of this? Is it just that I'm some old creep who has latched on to some young beautiful girl states away? And no. It fucking is not that. The point is that she's a truly good and beautiful person who needs help from time to time, and who am I to talk about love this and love that and not try and help?

And then I saw the video. The video of her and her son singing Hey Jude. And I wept. Look, I cry a lot. Fuck it. I feel. I cry. But this was something wholly different. It's such a beautiful moment, and you can see the love between the two of them.

The world needs more Lotties. The world needs more women who have endured and escaped unspeakable trauma at the hands of heinous motherfuckers who should all be shot in the face slowly over the course of a day or two, somehow keeping them alive while they endure the pain. And after all of that, to raise two beautiful little boys who don't seem to have an ounce of "what about me?" in them. And I'm sure they do. Kids are kids, but these boys don't turn out half this good without a Lottie in their life.

The other day she sent me a package in the mail. It had four bags of coffee from the roaster where she works. It also had a long poem she wrote giving a name to all her pain, and it referenced a little book I made called "Johhny Hotdog" that she found the weekend she visited. She loved it, and so I gave it to her. It also had a painting in it, which she's been holding onto for years, refusing to sell until she realized and admitted during last Thursday's group that
"It was Mike's painting."

I'm having a hard time ending this because it feels like it’s just the beginning of a long friendship with her. I still want the whole group to come hang out here for a weekend and just lay around and cook and camp out in the backyard. And I want her sons to come. I guess what I'm trying to say is that some girls, no matter how beautiful, transcend the mundanity of sexual attraction and all the bullshit that goes with it. I want to be making bread for her for decades. I want to see her sons turn into the saints they seem to be. Or maybe the devils. But I want to be there with them.

And all of this is because I shot too much doped, ate too much Xanax and smoked too much meth and got behind the wheel of a car. There is no Lottie without that. Every second. All the good and the bad leads up to this moment. Every awful and beautiful thing I've done put me in front of Jaymee and Lacee and then across the zoom divide of a Thursday night meditation group where I sent Lottie a message. Which, by the way, I was sure she would think was some creepy come on. But Lottie's the real deal. We need more Lotties.

I just wish she could see herself the way I do. She'd rule the world if she could, and it would be a pretty nice world I bet. I love you Lottie you sad, bright little pixie.