I was a devoted premie living on the east coast and I decided to visit one of my oldest, best friends, a devoted premie on the west coast. He lived in Malibu, and over a number of years had wiggled his way into quite a nice position around the residence. He had a girlfriend who was one of Marolyn's best friends. He and his girl friend dabbled in many "healing arts" which were a conglomeration of new age practices that they shared and used with Marolyn and other important PAM's (person around maharaji-basically, premie VIP's). I don't think much of that stuff actually did much in terms of real healing, but they dabbled in it and got to see Marolyn, some of the kids and rawat himself, sometimes in intimate settings with just a few PAM's. He had himself a nice gig, that's for sure! And it took him and his girlfriend many years and lots of inside premie politicking to get there!

So, my first night out there my friend says to me "let me introduce you to my girlfriend and we'll all go out and eat dinner at someplace nice". This sounded good to me, and a few hours later the 3 of us were dining at a restaurant in Malibu.

The problem was that they were both "X-rated" (meaning they know inside stuff that others don't) while I wasn't. My friend's girlfriend assumed that I was X-rated. (I wasn't and had no idea what that was, or that there was a need to be x-rated, because I thought maharaji was a "squeaky clean" family man).

So, the girlfriend proceeds to tell this story from the night before when maharaji returned from a long trip and had a party with some local PAM's. She tells, in great detail, how maharaji got stinking drunk, was falling all over the place, slurring his words, making a fool of himself, and eventually had to be literally carried upstairs by a few premies who placed him in bed to sleep off his drunken stupor. She is telling this in great detail, while my friend is squirming around and trying to signal to her to shut up. I'm sitting there wide eyed, hearing this x-rated tale for the first time. She also talked about how common an occurrence this is with maharaji.

A few awkward minutes later, the girlfriend gets up to use the bathroom. I'm sitting there, eyes as big as saucers, and I simply say to my good friend, "What was that all about?" After pretending that my question never happened, avoiding any eye contact with me for what seemed like an endless amount of time, he simply replied, with a sheepish grin, that "someone popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the trip, and maharaji got a "little tipsy", because he never drinks. He then showed someone something upstairs in the bedroom.

That was it.

I sat in stunned silence. I knew what I heard the first time.

The girlfriend returned, and my friend encouraged us to talk about something else, like art, for the rest of the dinner. Art. Something none of us knew anything about. But it took our minds off the previous topic.

It was a drip. A big drip. But it still took a bit longer for it to all to sink in.