But show up I did, and judging by the rapidly parting waters of their upturned gazes, Eric’s fanfare had only just died down. Any thoughts of having to do a sales job on this crowd were quickly dispersed by the steady drip drip of intrigued questioning. These people knew their stuff, they just hadn’t experienced much of it. Eager understudies waiting for the stars to sicken. And guess who the star was.

Eric moderated the ensuing discussion without the least bit of talk show smarminess. Even fake humility was off bounds for the evening, and that surprised me as it was generally one of his star turns. And it didn’t look as though any of the ladies present had proofread any of his hammy lines. “A humble boy is a happy boy”, he always used to say at parties.

Clea asked if I’d done any past life regressions, and upon hearing my shy demur, offered to conduct one. For free. Two or three nodded encouragement, but Eric wondered if maybe I didn’t already have enough on my plate. Of course my birth sign came up, and when I recalled the hour of my birth, someone in a dark green shawl opened a notebook and started scribbling away.

Ted, one the younger men, perhaps twenty-five, seemed a bit miffed. In a lull between rounds, when a couple or four were off at the loo, he quickly launched into his regression. Things were finally falling into place apparently.  Those medieval foot soldier lives had culminated in some kind of captain of the horse extravaganza, complete with a chorus of swooning damsels and swaggering duels, after three of which, victories naturally, he’d retired to a monastery to contemplate the clouds.

No, I am not the maker and poker of fun, those were his exact words, contemplate the clouds. Eric chuckled so I felt safe in following suit.  Further discussion seemed to suggest that this was the general ball-park attitude: a bemused ambivalence to one’s own past foolish pride. There was no point getting attached to it Eric ruled, just see the patterns and learn from them. Ted and his buddy Derek agreed. Clea, rejoining the group, emphasized the cartoon qualities of our old conniptions, and said we were only doing the best we could with the knowledge available at the time. We were not, I understood, to beat ourselves up in remorseful self-recrimination. The horse being flogged seemed ever so much like our old pal guilt, but as everyone seemed so much hipper than I, I decided against clashing with the consensus reality.

I wound up driving Clea to a small and slowly deteriorating bungalow in Port Credit, one I had actually eyed with a reno and substantial resale in mind. We idled outside as she explained her current dilemma. A bisexual husband in Barbados with his boyfriend, a teenage son with gender identification problems and a nutty housemate with five cats and a cholesterol fixation.  The money from the divorce would come through eventually, but till then things were tight, so if I wanted a regression eighty bucks would do the trick. We arranged for Sunday morning and parted the best of friends. She wished me luck with my lucid dreams and begged me to call her if they needed any interpretation.

I smiled a gratefulness only slightly tinged with lust, and drove north on Mississauga road wondering why any of my experiences needed interpreted. Weren’t they downright strange enough without adding the weight of human intellect to the pot? Sure she meant well, but one Eric was enough. I didn’t need any more navigators for now, but her green eyes and short honey blonde hair looked like they could hoist flags any day of the week. Maybe I’d enjoy saluting them at dawn, who knew? I mused on the therapeutic value of the ritual as Eric’s ‘surely you’ve got enough on your plate for now’ raised a few half-hearted hackles.