From: david.j.worrell@gmail.com

Mike Sager | Scary Monsters and Super Freaks | Thunder’s Mouth Press | December 2003 | 85 minutes (21,125 words)

The Teachings of Don Carlos [Part 2]

***

There was a knock at the door, and Margaret Runyan smiled quizzically at her gentleman caller, a handsome Jordanian businessman she’d been seeing almost daily for the past two weeks. “Now who could that be at this hour?” she sang coquettishly,
setting down her cup and saucer, patting his knee, rising from the chintz-covered sofa. Though she’d lived in Los Angeles for nearly fifteen years, her voice still carried the demure, lilting cadence of Charleston, West Virginia. She’d grown up on a
dairy farm, the eldest of six children, her daddy’s favorite, a sickly little
bookworm with jet black hair, Coke-bottle glasses and startling, gold-flecked blue eyes.

["Startling, gold-flecked blue eyes."]

It was January 1960, Margaret had just returned from dinner with her wealthy suitor at a fancy Middle Eastern restaurant, They’d sat on the floor on pillows, eating with their fingers, watching the belly dancers, drinking copious amounts of red wine.
She was resplendent, as always, on this mid-January evening in 1960, dressed in
a clingy black knit cocktail dress with a scoop neckline by the popular designer Clair McCardle. A cousin of the writer Damon Runyon, Margaret was 39 years old, with
porcelain skin and Cleopatra bangs, a short strand of pearls around her neck.

["With porcelain skin and Cleopatra bangs".]

Though she considered herself unattractive — owing mostly, one would guess, to the thick framed glasses she wore — Margaret was tall and lithe with an ample bosom. Men were all the time telling her, in the parlance of the day, that she was “really
put together.” She lived rent-free in an apartment building owned by her aunt, a dress designer. Margaret herself had been bitten at an early age by the
fashion bug: she spent much of her paycheck on clothes, many of which were handmade by a South
American seamstress. Years earlier, she’d come close to marrying pulp-novelist Louis L’Amour. He penned beautiful love poems to her but lacked
an automobile; they went everywhere by bus — she wrote him off prematurely as
a failure. As it was,
Margaret had been engaged several times to rather eccentric men, and had been married twice, first to a poet and then to a mafia-connected real estate tycoon. Both men insisted she quit her job as chief operator at Pacific Bell and become a full-time
housewife. Neither union lasted more than six months.

An odd combination of career gal and man’s woman, Margaret was an early prototype of a postmodern Feminist, who believed in paying her own way and. making her own decisions, living a life unbeholden to anyone. The great failure
of her life, she would
later come to figure, was thinking she had to marry a man in order to sleep with him. She was also an early prototype of another postmodern character, the New Age Seeker. Margaret had a keen interest in what were known at the time as the pseudo-sciences �
�� numerology, astrology, parapsychology — and was well-read in philosophy and religion and literature. Herman Hesse and Aldous Huxley were among her favorite writers. Her favorite historical figure was The Buddha. She was also an avid student of a
popular mystic from Barbados named Neville Goddard. A spellbinding lecturer with legions of followers, Neville believed that a person could alter the future and achieve personal goals through the manipulation of their dreams, something he called “
controlled imagination.” Goddard’s self-avowed personal goal—promoted through paid seminars, a weekly television show and a popular self-published book called The Search—was to shake his disciples out of the dangerous ruts of their ordinary, real
world perceptions: to help them, in his words, “To Go Beyond.” Goddard believed in erasing personal history, awakening the untapped portions of the imagination, cutting ties with friends and loved ones. He preached something he
called the I AM, an
invocation of the God-like within all of us. Goddard was also said to be imbued
with special powers. Sometimes, when he lectured, his face appeared to glow. On
several occasions, he was spotted simultaneously in two different places; he claimed to have
the ability to generate an “energetic double.”

Margaret clicked across the hardwood floor in her sexy black pumps, peered through the peep hole in the door of her fifth floor apartment. Standing in the
hallway in the dark olive suit she’d bought him was the short, nut brown, South American
anthropology student she’d been dating for the last five years. He called himself Carlos Arana; he was enrolled at UCLA as Carlos Castaneda.

They’d had a falling out just before Christmas. She hadn’t seen him since. From the appearance of the cozy scene inside her apartment, she hadn’t been crushed by his absence. She opened the door about eight inches, stuck out her face. Her blue eyes,
framed by her bangs, magnified by her glasses, appeared enormous, “Carlos!” she exclaimed, somewhat abashedly. “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“I’d like to meet your friend,” Carlos said calmly in his accented English. He was a slim man, five foot five, with the broad nose, high cheekbones, ample chest and short legs of a high-country Indian. A curly lock of brillianteened black hair hung
down roguishly over his forehead, His eyes were large and brown; the left iris floated out a bit, giving the impression that one eye was always looking at something beyond. Though not handsome in a classical sense, Margaret found Carlos to be wildly
charming, incredibly magnetic. He called her Margarita or Mayaya; it sounded so
exotic when he whispered into her ear. Sometimes, he would listen intently while she spoke, riveting her with his deep eyes, drinking in her soul. At other times, it was if
he was alone on a stage, in a spotlight only he could see, riffing brilliantly,
passionately, manically for hours at a time, speaking of his life, his art, his
dreams and fears and desires. Though he was shy around people he didn’t know,
he came alive
in more intimate settings. He had a gift for storytelling and an earthy sense of humor, and he was so present, so absolutely directed, that social intercourse with him was a palpable, exhausting experience — like being drenched by successive sets of
huge waves of pure energy, energy directed only at her.

Somehow, over the five years of their association, in his very odd, very intense way, Carlos had made Margaret feel like she was the only woman on earth, the only person in the whole world who mattered, who could possibly understand — except for those
frequent periods when he would disappear, often for weeks at time. It was the tradeoff of being with Carlos, she had come to learn. In certain respects, it made her feel terrible: Margaret really and truly loved Carlos, more than anyone before. He didn’
t have to give her anything or do anything for her, she was just happy to be with him. When he was gone, she felt as if something very important was missing. In other respects, however, his erratic attentions suited her just fine. She’d always had a
problem with commitment. If he could be independent, then so could she.

“I don’t want you to come in,” said Margaret, speaking through the partially opened door. “Please go away. We’ll talk later.”

“No,” Carlos said. “I just want to come in and say hello, speak with him a few minutes.”

As usual, Margaret’s will was no match for Carlos’s. Since the first time she’d laid eyes on him — a brief, chance meeting at her dressmakers’ house — she’d been deeply smitten. The second time she saw him — she’d called the dressmaker
and insisted on another fitting, hoping the dark stranger would be there again — they’d spoken for a bit. He told her he was a painter, a writer, a sculptor. He said he’d love the opportunity to show her his paintings, to do a bust of her in terra
cotta, his specialty. At an opportune moment, when the dressmaker’s pretty daughter was out of the room, Margaret slipped him a copy of Goddard’s book, The Search, inscribed with her name and address, which she’d just happened to
bring along to the
fitting.

From that night on, Margaret practiced Goddard’s techniques of “controlled imagination,” hoping to summon Carlos to her side. Every evening, before she fell asleep, she’d lie in bed and concentrate on her personal goal. Goddard taught that the
sleeping state sealed instructions given to the unconscious mind, that dreams could become reality if properly nurtured. Six months later, at nine p.m. one Friday evening in June 1956, her goal was finally realized. The doorbell rang and Carlos walked
into her life, picking right up where they’d left off acting as if they’d met only yesterday. Their involvement would span the next decade and a half.

Ten years younger than Margaret, Carlos was a sophomore at Los Angeles Community College, majoring in psychology. He told her he’d been born in Italy on Christmas Day, 1931, the product of an illicit union between a 16-year-old student at a Swiss
finishing school and a visiting Brazilian professor. Shortly after his birth, he said, he was taken by his maternal aunt back to São Paulo to be raised. At 15, after being expelled from a prestigious private school, he’d begun traveling the world,
studying art in Italy, Montreal and New York before coming to Los Angeles to continue his education. He also said he was a veteran of U.S. Army Intelligence. He was vague about his service, mentioning both Korea and Spain; a long ugly scar that stretched
from his abdomen to his groin was the result of a bayonet wound, he said.

[Notice how Carlos is already lying about his 'personal history'
BEFORE he supposedly meets 'don Juan.]

Carlos and Mayaya seemed a perfect match — two passionate, keen, eccentric minds who’d been lucky enough to cross paths. Though Carlos had very little money — to support his studies, he worked variously as a cab driver, grocery stock clerk, a
liquor delivery man, an artist for Mattel toys, an accountant in a tony dress shop — Margaret was comfortable and generous. They attended concerts and plays, lectures and readings and art openings. They frequented the beatnik coffee houses that had
begun to spring up along Hollywood Boulevard, rubbing shoulders with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Gradually, Carlos’s interest in painting and sculpture began to fade; he took to carrying a three ring binder with him everywhere, filling it with
romantic poetry and prose. One of his poems won a contest and was printed in the LACC student newspaper.

Carlos had a particular fondness for movies: Ingmar Bergman classics, B-grade horror pictures, Russian films. He was fascinated by all things Russian, particularly Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who had recently taken power in Moscow. In Carlos’s
eyes, Khrushchev was a determined leader who had come up from the bottom rung of society to grab the reins of one of the most powerful countries in the world. Over time, Carlos developed the fantasy that Margaret would one day meet
the great man. To this
end, he encouraged her to take her college entrance exams, then helped her enroll in a night-school Russian language course, which she continued for several years.

A dapper man who favored fedoras and pastel Don Loper shirts, nicely pressed slacks and highly polished shoes, Carlos cut his own hair, tailored his own clothes. He’d add months of wear to a shirt by removing a frayed collar, turning it inside out and
then sewing it back on, a skill he learned either in the Army or while living with a band of gypsies in Italy — that story, like many, frequently changed. He was partial to Mexican food, Chinese Dim Sum and pizza, long walks on the beach, nightclubs,
fine department stores. In a university community populated overwhelmingly with
Caucasians, he seemed insecure about his height, his thick accent, his dark skin. On occasion, for reasons Margaret could never fathom, he told people he was a Hasidic Jew.
Another thing she could never fathom is why they never had intercourse together. Though Carlos avidly enjoyed giving her pleasure orally, it went no further than that.

Having been exposed by Margaret to her favorite writers — Huxley, Hesse, Goddard and the behaviorist J. R. Rhine — Carlos became an avid participant in bull-sessions with their like-minded friends, holding forth on subjects ranging from astral
projection to trance running to ESP. The cozy spirited gatherings, usually held
at the apartment of a friend, would run into the wee hours, fueled by Carlos’s favorite wine, Mateus Rose, which he jokingly referred to as “my most valuable teacher.”
His favorite subject, by far, was Huxley’s experiments with mescaline and alternate realities; he chose the topic for a term paper for his second year English class at LACC.

[His most valuable teacher, Mateus. Hmm. :) ]


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