metal toxicity in their body. I figured I would try it to really get to the heart of the book and figure out what the author was trying to accomplish. I clipped a small chunk of hair and sent it to California. A note came back saying I hadn’t cut the hair properly, hadn’t supplied enough; I had done it wrong. So, I cut another larger chunk from the back of my head and sent that in. The results came back, and some numbers were high according to the chart and some were low, but honestly, I didn’t have a clue what they meant or how to interpret them, so I did nothing.
Later, while I was having my hair blown out, the stylist put the hair dryer down, got serious, and said, “You don’t have to tell me, but I want to let you know you’re in a safe space if you choose to. You have a very large chunk of hair cut from the back of your head. Is your partner abusing you? Cutting your hair to demonstrate his power?”
I thanked her for her concern and explained it was a self-inflicted hack job, executed all in a day’s work.
Writing books is enlightening, and I’m always learning something new. Twenty or more books into this second career, after discussing sex tapes and drug sprees (my clients’, not my own), I had to write something for a scientist who studies sex as medicine. The first time I met with her at her corporate-looking office, I was clearing some space for my computer and moving a few things around on a desk, including some gadgets with wires coming out of them and clips attached. I mindlessly shuffled stuff around and then I froze.
“Um, what are those things I just moved?” I asked.
“Anal and vaginal probes,” she said casually.
“Clean, I hope?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could.
“Sterilized.”
I’d never worked with a matter-of-fact scientist before. It was already shaping up to be one of my stranger, though more fascinating, book experiences.
As we worked that day, we spent a lot of time going back and forth on how to practically apply some of her notions. It was challenging. Most protocols, for lack of a better explanation, could be handled on one’s own, shall we say. But there was one specific concept that required genital stroking by a partner in order to work properly.
Having written many proposals previously, I knew this question would be raised by potential publishers.
Up next on things you don’t expect to be debating during work hours when you wake up that morning:
Me: “So, what about single people? We need an explanation for them in this section. Who will stroke their genitals?”
Doc: “It doesn’t have to be a romantic partner; they can get a friend to do it.”
Me: “Um. I honestly don’t think that’s a good option. There’s got to be a solo way to handle this.”
Doc: “There isn’t. They can just call a friend to come over and follow the protocol.”
Me: “There’s literally nobody I would ever call to come to my home in a pinch to stroke my genitals.”
Doc: “I could actually think of at least two people who would help me with this.”
Me: “I can actually think of a dozen single friends living in NYC who, like me, would not phone a friend to work over their private parts as a favor.”
The doctor did eventually explain an excellent and viable solution we could write about and made the point that there were legitimate organizations that would help address the issue of not having a stroker, as well as a way of making single people not feel weird.
When I take on a client with a self-help, health, or wellness premise, I practice the author’s diet plan or their personal improvement regimen. I really live it, so I can assess it. If it’s a workout or journal ritual as they would prescribe it, then my experience with it helps me explain the hiccups experienced along the way. (NB: I did not take this approach with the aforementioned sex book, meaning no probes were inserted in my person for the making of that proposal.) Instead, I asked single people I knew who they would call to stroke their genitals. Nobody. Even a coupled-up friend was clear: “I don’t think I’d even ask my boyfriend to stroke my genitals for science.”
The sex book was the anomaly. The rest, I lived. Simply put: The more books I wrote, the more books I fully experienced. I lived them all. Deeply. Occupational hazard: The more books I wrote about fixes, the more and more holes in myself I found that needed plugging.
As I started a new career, I began growing increasingly susceptible to the fix-me brigade. Life in general, plus all the entirely different set of anxieties that come from working for oneself, made me vulnerable. My self-employed friends and I refer to those stresses as “freelancer’s syndrome”—a constant state of heightened anxiety, based on the misplaced certainty that nobody will ever contract you again and that you will starve to death while living in a box on a street corner.
Still, betting on myself gave me more power to avoid living in that box. People who got laid off in 2008 got laid off again and again in the wake of that economy.
Later, as I was writing this book, I asked one of the authors I worked with—also one of my favorite humans—Dr. Ramani Durvasula, why we flock to the fixes and the books. She said there are multiple reasons. We don’t like uncertainty, so we call upon psychics to give us some answers. And when we go through struggles, we want to know we’re not alone. If there’s a self-help book out there offering to fix an ailment, that means perhaps 100,000 other people are feeling what you’re feeling. Therefore, those books got popular because they provided a collective belonging we all crave.
That resonated with me. I was never a fan of the unknown, and it was true, as I wrote and as I read, it was nice to know that what bothered or challenged me challenged a lot of other people too. And that it was all okay to discuss, or even ponder.
It was suddenly my job to live self-help. Upgrades, classes, coaches, books—tax-deductible research! A new mission emerged in my life—learn it all and then fix it all. Halfway, or moderate, is not a speed on my gearshift. I was getting paid and I was basically getting boatloads of free advice.
But my need for a stronger self-help high eventually ballooned beyond the one-dimensional pictures of a vision board or the words of my clients. So began an insatiable craving for multiple fixes, such as juice-fast retreats, coaches of all kinds, full weeks spent Marie Kondoing my house, journaling protocols, psychics, workshops, and a range of books. The world was force-feeding me spiritual seminars, specialists, and life-altering reads, and I grabbed at them all, hoping for, well, some monumental change that would make me better in every way humanly possible. It was coming at me hard. And all the fixes offered up were incredibly radical, too. No small steps; instead, massive overhauls were promised with a few weeks of effort. They wouldn’t be pushing these major remedies if I didn’t need them or if they didn’t work, right? That’s what I told myself.
Voilà—a career based on self-help was born.
And so was my new habit.
dating
By the time I reached my forties, it became painfully clear that dating had become like shopping at Marshalls or TJ Maxx. Everything was picked over. The inventory was low and discounted for a reason. All that was left on the shelves were the seconds—damaged, flawed, and ill-fitting. The stuff on the racks was there mostly because nobody else wanted it. At first glance, it was hard to tell what, exactly, was wrong with the goods, but there was always something.