“Why you never bring boyfriend here to meet me?” he asked now.
“I did, Ketut. Really I did. And you told me you liked him.”
“Don’t remember. He a rich man, your boyfriend?”
“No, Ketut. He’s not a rich man. But he has enough money.”
“Medium rich?” The medicine man wants details, spreadsheets.
“He has enough money.”
My answer seemed to irritate Ketut. “You ask this man for money, he can give to you, or
not?”
“Ketut, I don’t want money from him. I’ve never taken money from a man.”
“You spend every night with him?”
“Yes.”
“Good. He spoil you?”
“Very much.”
“Good. You still meditate?”
Yes, I do still meditate every day of the week, slithering out of Felipe’s bed and over to the
couch, where I can sit in silence and offer up some gratitude for all of this. Outside his porch,
the ducks quack their way through the rice paddies, gossiping and splashing all over the
place. (Felipe says that these flocks of busy Balinese ducks have always reminded him of
Brazilian women strutting down the beaches in Rio; chatting loudly and interrupting each oth-
er constantly and waggling their bottoms with such pride.) I am so relaxed now that I kind of
slide into meditation like it’s a bath prepared by my lover. Naked in the morning sun, with
nothing but a light blanket wrapped over my shoulders, I disappear into grace, hovering over
the void like a tiny seashell balanced on a teaspoon.
Why did life ever seem difficult?
I call my friend Susan back in New York City one day, and listen as she confides to me,
over the typical urban police sirens wailing in the background, the latest details of her latest
broken heart. My voice comes out in the cool, smooth tones of a late-nite, jazz-radio DJ, as I
tell her how she just has to let go, man, how she’s gotta learn that everything is just perfect as
it is already, that the universe provides, baby, that it’s all peace and harmony out there...
I can almost hear her rolling her eyes as she says over the sirens, “Spoken like a woman
who already had four orgasms today.”
Eat, Pray, Love