Groupie Sluts

Last Thursday I was in health class and we were talking about nutrition. We were at the end of the lecture when it happened. One of those new age junkies piped up and name dropped some author she'd just read. Some Doctor had some amazing solution to my wheat allergy AND bi-polar disorder all wrapped up in one book, and the kicker (as is always the case with new age hippy chick thinking) is that it can all be done WITH NO DRUGS.

It had been a long time since I had run into one of these chicks. As a massage therapist, I was constantly surrounded by them. They were like locusts. I attended of few seminars after I graduated from the Swedish Institute to make me that much more employable. The massage seminar circuit is a bastion for these women.

"Have you taken Bruno Chickly's class? I've taken all three of them. You HAVE to study with him. It'll change your whole approach to your private practice."

But these women attended so many seminars; at least one a month that I couldn't see when they ever had time to devote to their own lives. They seemed enamored with a different doctor every week. This felt familiar to me, this undying apostolic adoration for men they barely knew. And then I remembered my pre-massage therapy lifestyle and the kind of woman I was then, as well as the company I kept.

"I got back stage last night and look, Ronnie James Dio signed my tits!"

These are the kinds of conversations I would hear nightly in the dressing room when I was a dancer. We modern day priestesses in our temples of Venus never saw ourselves as the embodiment of the Goddess we all were. Rather we worshipped the boys who wore just as much spandex and hairspray (this was 1989) as we did. All the strippers and escorts would talk shop and share notes on Rick Savage and Joe Elliot, Don Dokken and Vince Niel. They knew who's album was coming out before it made the papers. They knew who had the biggest ... well you get the idea. They followed their idols apostolically.

Susan and Peggy and I exchanged phone number's and e-mail addresses back in health class, Susan went on with her outpouring lust for Dr. Mark Hyman. I tried to picture her not in her L.L. Bean winter jacket and Born winter slippers but with covered grays and big hair and in a red spandex mini-dress. Different monologue, but same demeanor and same intention.

She was undeterred when I tried somewhat unsuccessfully to get a word in edgewise and point out that yes, in fact I had tried,every other new age healing modality I could think of to heal my broken brain. I tried Jungian Dream analysis. I tried Craniosacral therapy. I tried Somato-Emotional Release Therapy. I tried Veganism. I tried a Macrobiotic diet. I tried Qi Gong. It tried Yoga. And guess what happened? Nothing. Guess what actually ended up working? DRUGS! GOOD OLD FASHIONED ALL AMERICAN DRUGS!!!!!!!

Unflapped, she went on to point out that I hadn't tried Mark Hyman. This crunchy granola hippy chick would not be out crunched. And at that moment I had the identical epiphany with Susan that I had had back when I was a dancer: I didn't care about out crunching her, just like I didn't give a shit about getting back stage at a Motorhead concert.

There are groupie sluts everywhere. We can choose to follow the false idols pop culture hands us or we can look at them as archetypes: pick up points to emulate and leave the rest. I'm going to stick with the Doctor who lives in my neighborhood. I'll fire his ass the second I don't see eye to eye with him. And the radio station in my car will continue to flip around depending on whether I feel like Terri Gross's apostle or Jimi Hendrix's. It depends on my mood and it depends on the day.