The first week of March 2021, the Oldest Storyteller, as I was working on a scene with him, appeared at my window in my Lower Fifth apartment.
“Brick,” he said, as if the view was lovely, Washington Square Arch at the end of the block. I had invested money with two friends who were no longer friends—it had gone awfully, in my opinion, with a secret, on top of it…that I didn’t even think about. One of them, who I’ll call “Button,” still helped me and apparently “loved me" but he also gave me a middle finger at a plant medicine ceremony. I was very confused by this person—and I simply wish that I was able to just communicate that.
“I don’t want you to go through any more pain…”
Maybe Button meant it positively? But what pain? He had called me out of nowhere some months before when I had left a job he had set me up with suddenly and justifiably.
I had totally forgotten about the money, and the Oldest Storyteller was the one who reminded me. This character was right. I didn’t even want to contact them—I was scared. It was time to get it back. There was nothing to be afraid of. I needed it, obviously. He was referring to this apartment: just to begin. It was the most money I had ever spent on an apartment for one. I was just asking for what was mine, back. It had been two years, he told me first, so I wasn’t in breach of the contract that he helped me to find faster.
After an amicable exchange, though the tension underneath the surface, I couldn’t explain. But that had to do with the fact that money was one of my mother’s tools, to begin with. In any case, at 5 AM—also a reflection of my early years—I received a threat through my website that my account at my actual bank was going to be shut down. I was already up working, and I had never received any message, practically, through my website before.
I received it physically in my gut, shocked by the sensation of a block of stone hitting against another one?
I hadn’t even thought twice about it having been from them, which was already indicative of a problem—why would I expect to be treated like that? I am obviously not the same person after this experience. I couldn’t tell anyone about it, because it felt so crazy. I didn’t want anybody anywhere near whatever this was. Don’t even get me started about the couple little signs I had started getting from “Dr. J” after I was on the cover of Vogue Italia. But why had I seen one of the two “Money Men” around the weird Instagram message?
Now, Dr. J, in my mind, was a diabolical mastermind. This person pushed that button, which was unique, but he had told me he could royally mess with a person if he wanted to, and people who knew him said: “you don’t want to get on his bad side.” Since the feeling-states that “symbols” contain are the most useful and applicable, I am using ridiculous names to divorce them from their real persons–they contained the most challenging feelings.
I felt my book was in danger, even, because of the type of problems that existed in my family. Yes, now I could have picked up a phone, but we’re talking about my baby years. I could have responded differently even to the idea that these Money Men had “really” sent me this “hollow threat,” you see, instead of writing “an apology email.” We’re talking my whole world shifting on a fundamental level.
I shared a psychologist with Button. I wrote her text messages as the situation with them got weirder—wanting it to go away, not able to voice how I really felt, because I couldn’t even believe what I was thinking it. A friend in common ended up calling me and receiving the money for me, not asking me why I was so scared, for example. That only made me feel inside that maybe they really had, and that, I couldn’t handle—at the time. On the phone with our shared psychologist, she said, as I was trying to asses what the hell was happening:
“What about you being a self-promoter?”
I had no idea how to respond to that.
Now, I would have said—why are you saying that to me? Who else but me? I could barely post a photo of myself on friggin’ Instagram.
But it wasn’t possible yet for me. I mean, who knows, it was just the way she had paused and came to that question.
No matter what—it was “crazy,” that was my parents. What was real, not real, true, not true.
Regardless of what was happening, technically speaking, by going inside and resolving the conflict internally, that should take care of anything going on outside of me. Now, I would come to learn a lot during this experience about how “the system” plays into that. It was not a small point, and I had already been understanding that as I had been going through a series of realizations through the writing of my story.
Between March and May, though it was wild, I had grabbed onto the reigns of my book like driving wild horses towards the finish line—I was headed to the end of the first draft of Christmas in Naples is a Sport—having worked so hard to get here, just a semblance of a form, the week of Mother’s Day 2021…not even knowing it. I didn’t want these problems, I didn’t want to look at it—whatever “it” was.
Just to add this due to the psychological thriller aspect of this event: a year later, on Mother’s Day, this year, I saw that I had been charged on IMDB so I went to cancel my membership. I had gotten it for the Barbara Harris project, but I maybe contacted one PR person, because I felt weird about it, so I never went on this site. I noticed that someone had added an IMDB credit in some Neapolitan film called The Vice of Hope, having been featured on a Vogue cover called “Hope,” about some girl named Maria who “trafficks surrogate mothers…” without any character name. In the words of my hypnotherapist, “there’s no one who has as many surrogate mothers as you do…”
It was so oddly applicable to my story, yet I didn’t know how to respond to it because “Maria discovers that staying human is more important than any revolution?”
He said: “It was your guides.”
And I have always had major spiritual support—spirit, to me, is real and never abandoned me nor “had an agenda.” Spirit would never lead you astray.
Courtney Hoffman is writing a TV show with me as one of the characters who has to contend with whether or not she’s really a spy, or her mother is.
“I think it’s your mom.”
At the end of this experience—Instagram would suggest that I block all my mothers accounts: there were a couple, one of which I was blocked from…which had a picture of the two of us: I was two years old. It’s just to say, these tiny things kept messing with me…and that could just be technology, though I had to process some things that were hard around that. Thus far, nothing else has happened since…except for one other weird message through my website about my first story on Medium from “Brandy Private.”
After Christmas Day, my Neapolitan cousins and I took a field trip to “visit the Oracle of Cuma.”
In the backseat, their youngest son and I had to answer every question his parents had about The Aeneid by Virgil.
Franco’s eyes appeared in the rearview mirror.
“Maria, do you know the underworld?”
“Excuse me?”
“Inferno?”
“Si,” he gestured outside his window.
“It’s just down there…”
I was heading to what I thought was the climax of my story.
I had a “waking up” moment at twenty-six years old—ten years before. On a train from Paris to London, all the questions people had asked me over the years began to land. “How did you start living with another family…for four years?” I grabbed a notepad and pen, and I started at the top of my story and just wrote down what I could remember: the facts, step by step. I suddenly realized that none of this was normal, that my mother had orchestrated the whole event, my father not even a thought, and I had visa issues which brought me back to the United States. Feelings started rising to the surface that I didn’t know I had—so, I went back to the “Zen Master Sybil,” who I had seen as an oracle. It just so happened that the middle name of this Zen Master psychologist was Sybil.
She wasn’t surprised to see me almost seven years later.
“Delusion,” that’s what the Zen Master Sybil said.
I didn’t know that Dr. J was my mother.
“She’s not really my mother…”
That’s what I was coming to realize at the time—Dr. J was/is my mother.
“Please,” I said, “do not tell me that I am dealing with my delusion!”
Now, I was on the page almost ten years later with “The Oracle of Cuma.”
I ended up flying to Los Angeles, my visa having gone through to go back to France, and showed up at Dr. J’s office in Beverly Hills unannounced with my brother, at the time, who was also in love with me. And he had just done something which mirrored Dr. J too closely—I had busted into the Zen Master’s psychologist that day with this information.
I dubbed him Ael the Archangel of the Wood, as in Inglewood. He was chiseled with a ponytail—a beautiful man—with colorful tattoos of Aztec Gods on his shoulders in a peach t-shirt.
Up La Cienega, if I wanted to get to Dr. J, I had to go through her escort first—of course. I had compared him to Cerberus my whole life: the three-headed dog of Hades, because of that. Now, people: for real.
At the end of these four years that I had spent in another family’s house from four to eight years old—used also as a toy in some “destroy the child molester” game—a mysterious man entered out of nowhere to save Dr. J from this fiasco which included bankruptcy and addiction, because “she was a genius.”
The first time I had met this man, I had been dropped off at my house, coming to realize it at the door, not understanding why I was there. I figure that the money was gone, Dr. J racking up quite a bill around town and this insane situation had gone on long enough—four years? The words “secret spy” came in an image in my head as his slacks came peppy down the steps as if they had always been there. Not that he was one, but that he acted like one.
What she did, they did, after this—I do not know.
The reason why I asked Ael to come with me?
The last time I had seen these people, her escort revealed that he used to work for the government after some story of running his vehicle into some fountain at some house outside of Rome where a UN was, or something like this, at sixteen? I promise you, I couldn’t believe it based on the image that came into my head. It was even a joke between my friends. There were many government jobs—what was up with this “secrecy?”
“What did you do…for the government?”
A perfectly normal question to ask.
He would rather not talk about it.
When he got up to go to the bathroom, I snapped at Dr. J, whose gaze was floating, to attention.
What was that?
“Double life,” Dr. J said in a red wig du jour, rubbing her index fingers together.
It was the only Christmas I had ever spent with her after four years old. I didn’t take the bait, though she kept going about him being a secret spy…she just did her work, shushing herself like a good girl, telling me that he trains people. But things weren’t going so well anymore because he was getting older and couldn’t “climb those mountains” anymore. I wasn’t responding to her or asking any questions…in the “reality” that “the government” might be listening, my communication was clear.
Since I wasn’t getting it, I guess, Dr. J said “Osama.”
She said that he was searching for Osama Bin Laden—at the Continental Hotel in Paris, France.
Who wasn’t looking for Osama Bin Laden at the time, and everybody had a theory, so what was theirs?
“Pakistan,” she said.
This is madness, people.
Then, once again, she had suddenly, inexplicably, stopped talking to me. I could never pick up the phone and call her and ask her what was going on. It was one of the questions that the Zen Master Sybil had driven into my eyes, pulling herself forward in her chair. “What about fuck you? I care?” Oh, I couldn’t say that. “Why? Why? Invest, you have to care to invest,” she had communicated that it was my problem.
I saw her so few times, but I was still, regardless, in a relationship, though there was none.
I had just woken up to the simple thought that I was here.
So, I was going to stop by her office…what was strange about that? I had never been there. But given the song and dance about the government—climbing mountains, a secret spy? I wasn’t going to deal with these people—alone—who thought they were secret spies telling some girl at some hotel lobby about it. I would think, truly speaking, that a spy would…not conduct his affairs so casually, there was no reason to tell me this information. And what was my mother? The accountant for the CIA? Or? Truly.
“Why do you have a house there?”
I had asked him…
“Family property.”
Easy, I did it for him.
Do you see what I mean? “I used to work for the government…”
I hardly saw these people.
In the car, on the way over, I told Ael that he was going to want to interfere, and he didn’t understand that. He couldn’t “help me.” I had to go through it, even if I was struggling. It took me twenty-six years to ask one question…to the escort since Dr. J wasn’t there.
“You know,” picking up his slacks, right before he sat down, he fired.
“You really ticked off your mother last time…”
The “Osama Bin Laden” time.
Across the way of this nondescript foyer with two 8x11 photographs of me at four years old on empty shelves out the corner of my eye—that’s it and this guy in a row of chairs.
The phone rang, which Ael remarked when it rang and then again, as being strangely perfect timing, when the escort answered.
“Dr. J…you’ll never guess who’s here.”
Hanging up the phone, taking his time, the escort took his seat once more.
She wasn’t coming to see me, a driver suddenly crossing the foyer—Ael’s face—or who was this man?
Of course, Ael began breaking down over the course of this “conversation.” I could feel that, and I was struggling. What the escort threw on me was absurd, but he did say one thing that would have significance during this event I was about to go through.
“Why won’t you let her see her mother?”
Now, it was a response to a situation that was more complicated than that: Dr. J was a pathological victim.
The escort then noticed Ael: he hadn’t up until this point.
“And who are you?”
The scene escalated—Ael rose to his feet with the chest of a triathlete.
“I’m her brother…”
The escort didn’t know how to even take that information.
We shifted onto negotiation territory.
“You leave, she stays,” the escort said getting increasingly agitated, demanding that he leave.
It was a flat-out “no.”
He wasn’t going anywhere.
“We’re leaving, that’s it,” I said.
There was nothing for me here—that’s what I was facing.
The escort by the door—all fell silent. Ael was just looking at him, who was on the edge, not afraid of this guy.
We’re leaving.
Silently, as if drawing the tension along a line, Ael and I pulled the escort into the lobby. Ael didn’t look away.
They took their sides and I—wishing that the elevator would come—was against the wall between them in the middle.
Ael couched down, by the elevator, crossing his buff arms—he was chill. He didn’t break eye contact—no emotion. It was irritating the escort who began to snap, bark. What are you looking at, why are you looking at me like that?
Shrugging, barely, Ael was “just looking at him.”
And it fired up the escort who threatened to smack him.
Laughing to himself, against this wall, Ael brought himself to full plumage. He had purposefully made himself smaller so that he could do that. Calm and grounded, he demonstrated that this wasn’t the place to do that. They could though, they could take it outside, he didn’t see “any problem” with that. Ael had been in fights before, you see.
I stepped in.
The escort came right up to the elevator doors.
As they closed, on the page, my body in a panic that I wasn’t in back then, Hades appeared in Ael’s place who I no longer speak to.
His eyes rattled the walls now covered in mirrors.
My mother’s office was above a luxury car dealership…
I had already thought about it—he would be necessary for this kind of trip and would I meet him?
HADES: So you found me…
MARIA: (amazed)
HADES: You’re not the first…
(In light of all cultures involved in my family life, Hades had an accent, and he laid it— thickly. He could do whatever he wanted—a statesman, first)
MARIA: I don’t understand…
HADES: (tenderly) You don’t have to…
MARIA: I’m not out…
HADES: (laughed) No.
(He took a look at me and the décor this time around)
HADES: Hell, there’s one for everybody. More than one, truly, too, this is true. I must confess this is my favorite part… (gentlemanly) when it happens.
MARIA: What do you mean…?
(In my body, I was coming to realize hard things…)
HADES: It’s your lucky day…
(I’m not attached to masks, but he was in the mask if Gennaro first as he had always reminded me of a Hades. He was the eldest brother in the Neapolitan family who had reminded me of the only male in the Brazilian-Jewish household. In other words, Hades was a composite character: an older brother who appeared in the place of Ael to become a real one for me…also a father, but the Oldest Storyteller I thought had his own conceit and Hades was an offshoot also of that character).
MARIA: (with tears in my eyes, coming to realize…)
What do you mean, Hades?
(The elevator doors open—Hades gestures.)
(I don’t know what to do. Do I follow this?)
(Down the corridor, we peer, together, Hades suddenly close to me)
HADES: (considering me) Oh, I’m so scary…
Well, you don’t expect me to go ahead of you, do you?
(Pausing, I was confused)
Who else do you think escorts you to the exit?
MARIA: (mouth drops)
HADES: (he assured me) This I always handle myself.
MARIA: (of course he would…)
HADES: (out the elevator, turning his finger around)
Sure, why not…I have made small steps for Man, okay?
(He showed me the steps!)
Little man steps!
(He signaled me to give his steps some praise!)
HADES: (turning towards the hall, I was suddenly four years old)
The Maleficent Forces!
(This was a joke by my “four-year-old” in my draft about Dr. J—”I do not need to explain to the Irish what the maleficent forces mean”)
(Fist rising into the air—earnestly, this was true)
Let us battle them together down the hall! One last time! Meri! We will defeat! Defeat the Maleficent forces!
(We went charging down the hall—I was laughing so hard in my adult mask, Hades pushing the play further. The invisible forces were really swooping in, all around us. Hades was getting into action. We were cornered, ambushed, he hugged the walls…moving me down the hall as if it were life or death).
HADES: Shush! Shut up! SHUT UP!
(I was laughing so hard; I got a crick in my neck.)
HADES: NO! Get down!
MARIA: I can’t move! Not yet…
HADES: (suddenly concerned)
Are you okay?
MARIA: (I cried for a moment) Thank you.
He gave me a moment—I really wanted to be out of this.
I don’t know, it was the idea of writing roles, characters, that had truly enlivened me beyond my wildest dreams, actually. Hades had no problem with that—good. He was a great pick. He appreciated my perspective on him—I was correct, cruising into this luxury car dealership. This was a God character, so he had no issues with scope, praise, multiple realities at once, okay?
It was time to “clear” up some things about “health care,” and we would be “very clear.”
(He was facing forward)
These were all his cars in this mythological reality and we were most definitely in his house—in my cultural framework.
(Did he need keys—cars beeping)
There were obviously others…
Do you think…
(He could get close with a face, making sure I type what he said even mouthing it)
We’re in different paradisos or something?
His voice echoed in this constructed reality, fully acknowledging it as not being real, playing that he isn’t real…none of this is real. It’s all made up.
No wonder!
You prayed to the Gods!
(He got low, sincere, Hades was first this)
Meri, do people want the truth? Is this what people want? Is it all in your mind, Meri…is it? Do I exist? Conceptually speaking, Meri, tell the people.
Getting into a sports car of his choice, he was “curious” about the dramatic nature of Man, tossing me a bag of Mocerino nuts—which really exists in Naples. Turning the music up-—we had a couple songs, specifically—we were about to turn right on La Cienega. I began to realize that we were a straight shot from my old house: 20 minutes.
Fast—Hades was an aggressive driver. He had neat tricks up his sleeve. He had never been “more,” interested in a person in his entire life.
HADES: (eating red vines) No way—no way.
Up the tree-lined boulevard—we passed boutiques, silver hydrants, tennis courts, a park, happy little trees, a church, tower, a synagogue, dealerships, advertisements, billboards, chakra temple, simple condominiums of canary and burnt yellow, Versailles; Cuban food. Hades was tempted. We passed 18th street, palm trees, I remembered in feeling so much with Hades: crying, laughing, in kind a lot of pain.
HADES: Do you love it? Smart and final…funny little trees like fountain, or sighing bird, no?
(Ominous clouds clustered in the near distance—his head, his eyes, his concern)
Uh oh…uh oh, it’s the freeway…
(We ducked from the shadows of the overpass. We crossed Venice Boulevard—speeding so fast)
AWKWARD EXPANSE! Curving streets! Succulents!
CULVER CITY!!!
Round the boulevard—past See’s Candies—at the point that La Cienega became an open highway at a curving incline—he stepped on the gas. We crossed Rodeo, but not the one in Beverly Hills. With a roaring engine, we flew through Kenneth Hahn Park; the Japanese garden. We skipped across the lake, all the while, never leaving the car. Through it, through it—Windsor Hills— there were no turnoffs and no places to pull over. The trees turned into oil rigs tipping up and down across dust and patches of green at sunset. Up and over where the azaleas pink crawled up the highway, the houses turned modern and pristine; Inglewood on my left, Ladera Heights on my right.
A line of oaks vanished to a point—a green light up ahead.
We made a right onto my street—Fairview Blvd.
Palms trees grew, azaleas flourished, and down the boulevard of bottlebrush trees, I saw Hades. He didn’t give a shit about the vehicle…We were walking towards one another; he was moving for me. It was my lucky day! Down the sidewalk, I cruised passed in a pink corvette, in the window of a red Cadillac, the Yukon, the Cutlass Supreme, and in a flash of images caught in a mighty wind, Hades marched towards my old address.
HADES: (close to it) 5344. Not everyone has one…
He opened the gate of the white box with stripes vertical and horizontal.
Birds of paradise up the steps, we moved through my front door.
MARIA: (sincerely taken with the exit being home)
HADES: As if you didn’t know where we were going—focus.
His foot was on the first step of my stairs. He took in—in a blink of an eye—the whole concept, construct, details, what was there and what wasn’t.
HADES: The labor, the labor, the labor, what a word…your story is completely insane, okay?
In any reality…how many realities are there, Meri? Tell me. Is there one? The one, Meri…