[In late summer 2004, a couple weeks before I left Zendik Farm, a dog named Apache ripped a chunk out of my left calf, while I was diving into the pond. This scene, in which I reckon with the bodily aftermath of that attack, didn’t make it into Mating in Captivity. But I do so […]
In Chico, California, in April 2005, I got my first and only tattoo. It looks like a voluptuous “W,” with one end curving around the mole on my left forearm. It comes from a Zendik “mind-tuner” called The Psychic Compass; it’s linked to the following message: Do you dream of another, a higher reality? The […]
Since beginning work on my Zendik book, more than ten years ago, I’ve read dozens of cult memoirs. (In 2008, on a train from New York to Seattle, I binge-read maybe seven or eight.) Many are terrible; some are decent; a few kick butt. The terribles fall into two categories: self-published exposés with a side […]