DOES THIS QUALIFY AS A GIFT?
by Elizabeth Penn Payne

I quit smoking not long ago. This is the part where you’re supposed to clap. Thank you. My friend, Caroline Corday, had always nagged me about quitting smoking, and when I did she was very pleased. Caroline Corday is like so many 38-year-old women in Los Angeles: long and lean dressed in $300.00 jeans and Christian Louboutain stilettos, still beautiful but worried. Subsequently she’s developed a fascination with raw foods, manifesting workshops, and the healing power of crystals. Caroline doesn’t believe in putting anything inorganic in her body except for Botox.

As she is fond of saying, “sometimes natural isn’t enough.” Why she sounds like a cross between a surfer chick and the Queen of England is beyond me because originally she is from Fresno, California. In Caroline’s universe cigarettes not only kill a person but more importantly they ravage one’s skin and yellow one’s teeth; the advantage of cigarettes’ use as a weight control aid is trumped by their liability as a youth and beauty thief.

About 3 months after I had actually stopped smoking Caroline gave me a gift certificate as a congratulatory present. I was very excited because Caroline has a great job. She is a spender of her sugar daddy’s money. I had visions of a gift certificate for something like a day at the Burke-Williams spa or shopping at Fred Segal. But no, it was more mind blowing than that. It was a gift certificate for a high colonic. If you don’t know what that is, it’s an enema that costs $95.00. Thus my question: does this qualify as a gift? Caroline was so excited.

“Do you like it?” she asked, “I thought this would help you cleanse.” I stared at Caroline as she swept her newly highlighted tresses from her shoulders. “Once you try it. You are so going to love it.”

All I could think was, “Are you retarded? I’m a W.A.S.P., Caroline. You might think that that stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but actually it’s We Are Sphincter Pinchers. There are certain things you do not give as gifts. For example, you know my friend, Rei? She is very ‘au naturel’ with her body hair. In a bathing suit it makes quite a statement. However, for Christmas I’m not going to give her a gift certificate to my waxer because I don’t favor the ‘pubes down to the knees’ look.” But I didn’t say any of those things. Instead I pecked her cheek and thanked her for such a carefully considered present. Like I said, W.A.S.P. – When Appalled Smile Perfunctorily.

I didn’t rush right out and use my gift certificate. But six months later I received a wounded voicemail from Caroline, “I am very hurt that you haven’t used your gift certificate. I thought a lot about what would help you heal yourself. You shouldn’t judge things before you try them. I am telling you this because I need you to acknowledge my feelings.”

So in a grudging gesture of friendship and open-mindedness I made an appointment at the Brentwood Wellness Institute. Or as I now affectionately call it . . . Raging Waters. Caroline kindly fixed me up with her very own Internal Environment Specialist, Ablutia. Ablutia is a psychotically peppy Australian woman with a thick salt & pepper braid, piercing blue eyes, and a ruddy- I hike a lot and eat whole grains- complexion.

In our pre-session consultation Ablutia asked, “Is this your first time love?” I was so nauseous that I couldn’t speak. I merely nodded weakly. “No worries,” she soothed, “by the time I’m through with you you’ll be Hooked on Colonics.” A loud guffaw erupted from her. “Scuse me. I use humor to relax my patients,” Ablutia explained.

I felt my chest knot up. I was wearing a hospital gown that, of course, opened in the back and nothing else. The treatment room was a small, windowless cubicle containing an exam table and a microwave sized machine with tubes coming out of it. The room was done floor to ceiling in white ceramic tile, which struck me as an ill-considered choice.

“Alright love, I’m going to need you up on the table on all fours,” Ablutia instructed. She proceeded to unwrap a plastic tube. It was about six inches long and a quarter size in diameter with a smooth rounded tip. She then got out a Costco sized vat of KY jelly and slathered the tube in enough lube to get Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock through their honeymoon. “Now love, I want you to take a big inhale. On the count of three I want you to exhale and relax,” Ablutia prompted. “I’ll slip this right in, and we’ll be ready to go.”

I was not clear what would happen next. I thought Ablutia would run some water into me, and I would adjourn to the privacy of a bathroom to allow nature to take its course. But that’s not how it works at the Brentwood Wellness Institute. Why go to the bathroom when you can poop with a pal. Ablutia began to fill me up with water until I felt like I was going to explode like a small, thermo-nuclear weapon. She then performed a deep tissue massage on my gut; I could hear the water squishing around in my colon. After about two minutes I thought I was going to faint or vomit or both. When the pressure became too great to bear I had been instructed to yell out, “release.” Ablutia then flipped a switch on the high colonic machine, and it sucked the water back out of me causing me to convulse ala The Exorcist. I would just like to remind all of you that this was a gift.

If all this wasn’t horrifying enough the high colonic machine had a window through which I could see the contents of my “exit water.” According to Ablutia, proper colon hydrotherapy etiquette dictates that one not only rid oneself of environmental toxins, but one must also examine and analyze said toxins.

“Oh, look, there’s a big bit. That’s probably been impacted for years. Lovely. Lovely. We’re getting so much out. Ooh, there’s another good one.” Based on Ablutia’s gushing one would have thought I was crapping $100.00 bills.

I was feeling so lightheaded I didn’t want to see what was coming out of me, but Ablutia was insistent. I turned towards the machine just in time to see something float by that looked like a mucousy piece of kelp. That’s the last thing I remember.

When I came to Ablutia was patting my forehead with a cool cloth and had removed the hose. She suggested I go to the bathroom to collect myself. Half an hour later I emerged shaky and dehydrated. I resentfully tipped Ablutia, and left.

As I drove home, I shouted at Caroline’s ghost seated next to me in the car, “Gee Caroline, what a great present! I just feel so sorry that I didn’t splurge for your birthday and get you a pap smear.”

I was furious at Caroline. I hated her for her stupidity in gift selection, for her naiveté in thinking that colonics would do something more than expurgate a few pounds of water, for her fear of aging, for her fear of losing her looks, for her fear of not doing the latest “it” thing. As I sat in standstill traffic on the 10 listening to Dixie Chicks’ new anthem of outrage, “Not Ready to Make Nice,” I began to weep. Most of all I hated Caroline for what she reflected back at me. No, I didn’t get colonics or arrange quartz crystals on a mirrored tray to focus energy. But I went to Pilates, counted carbs, plucked, waxed, or dyed every hair on my body in an attempt to just be seen in the L.A. landscape. I too was afraid that the further time pulled me from the gold standard of “21-year-old hottie” that I might just vanish, tossed out on the crone scrap heap.

With every beauty treatment, diet, and clothes purchase I made there was that little voice I tried so hard to ignore asking, “Am I young enough? Pretty enough? Clean enough? Am I worth loving?” I knew that voice bounced around in Caroline’s head, probably spent most of it’s time shouting that if she didn’t get sugar daddy to marry her she might not be able to land another one. If a monthly colonic shut that voice up maybe it was worth it.

I called Caroline from the car. “Hey,” I said. “ I just had it.”

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“I’m not sure it’s my thing.”

“Oh,” Caroline pined. “I so wanted you to like it and feel like you had totally detoxed.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I know that you gave it with nothing but love.”