The Book of Formation, page 11
I: Do you get irritated by people prying into your life like I’m doing now?
MI: No, but I do think that the less people know about me the more successful I can be at my work. When making turns I need to push people in certain ways, and if they’re thinking about my personality, they might be distracted.
I: You say this, but then you date these actresses and models. I mean, clearly people are going to notice this. You could choose anyone, but you choose high-profile individuals, and you go on these late night shows, like you’re doing in a few hours, and all that draws attention to you.
MI: But that’s good. It creates awareness about the movement.
I: Your romantic life does?
MI: Everyone always wants to know how to make their p more attractive. It’s what drives most of the turns we make. If I have that powerful attractive p, they’ll be more likely to trust me with their turns.
I: Sounds like it’s a tricky balance between nurturing the public life and maintaining the private one.
MI: That balance, if you can achieve it—that’s being a true celebrity.
I: How does this balance relate to the recent accusations of sexual harassment? Did those upset the balance?
MI: No, it makes sense. I have to account for that. Because that’s what those guests had to do. It was a natural part of their personalities—to accuse me.
I: None of them took a full turn, right?
MI: That’s right.
I: So, if you could do it differently, would you want to give them full turns so that you could remove that accusatory aspect of their personality?
MI: Sounds like you’re describing a surgical procedure. But we try to avoid that image of dissecting personality. I know it’s been used before, but I don’t like it. And it’s also important to remember that turning is not always about getting better.
I: “Real Change Can’t Be All Good.”5
MI: Yes. Turning isn’t the same as improving. Medicine is both good and bad for you, right?
I: But why change if it’s not toward something good?
MI: You’re changing whether you like it or not. I just want to help you direct it.
I: But these guests, they didn’t seem to understand that. They feel like the experience corrupted them somehow.
MI: I’ll say this, everything happened just like they said it did. Some of their ideas about my intentions—I don’t agree with those—but that’s to be expected. The way I work, I like to be physically involved in the turn. It’s intimate. It has to be because it’s about intimacy. We’re hugging and rolling around together. I cuddle every guest for at least a half hour a day. My hands touch every point on their body at least once. Without that kind of work the guest can only take the turn so far. I truly believe that. The p is in the skin and nerves and muscles, especially the maxillofacial ones [running hands along his face] and the pelvic floor. It’s a real substance, p. It has a weight. So I have to treat it that way.
I: Talk’s not enough.
MI: The point is to stimulate the movement of p. It should be all over the body, and if it’s not, if it’s inert in certain areas, I want to move it and remind the body that it can flow through there. I can do this with aromatic salves in the armpit or touching inside the cavities. These are vulnerable zones, I know, but indispensable ones. All the guests know this is the procedure. It’s not a secret.
I: They knew what was coming.
MI: And during the experience itself these guests were very playful, joyful. You can clearly see that on the tapes. I spend weeks sensitizing myself to every aspect of their mood and body language, and I would confidently say that each of these personalities was comfortable and relaxed and satisfied as they took their turn. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have happened. I promise you. We never force it.
I: OK, but specifically, Shannon Lewis—what’s your account of what happened with her?
MI: Again, what she says happened is true.
I: But still, I’d like to hear you tell it, if you don’t mind.
MI: When Mrs. Lewis started taking her turn—I don’t know how much she remembers, but it was a violent process. The whole thing. She was bound to her personality. We’d watched her application tape and spoken to her several times, both at the studio and at her home in Greensboro [North Carolina] where we met her son and a few of her neighbors, and all of it made her seem like an ideal guest for the show. Receptive and excited. Even the optics of it were promising: such a stunningly beautiful woman with such a terrible skin problem.
I: Rosacea, right?
MI: Some people call it that. I don’t. But it had spread across her face and lips and eyelids. Certainly the most crippling case Mayah or I had ever seen. By the time we came to her she’d become somewhat of a shut-in. She had highly complicated issues around food, only eating certain macronutrients in certain orders. Carbs before fats before protein. And she wouldn’t even hug her son out of a paranoia that her disease was contagious, which, of course, it wasn’t. She’d been to all kinds of dermatologists, all of whom were unable to help. And that’s when she sent in the application tape.
I: You’d had success in the previous season with a similar case.
MI: Yes. Another man—Mr. Gorre—with severe yellowing of the epidermis. He was told by several physicians that the condition was caused by an allergy, but when he took a soft turn it utterly cured him of it. His new personality didn’t have the same allergy.
I: I’ve read a few documented cases of this type of thing with skin disorders, actually. Even people with multiple personality disorders display different physical symptoms from one personality to another. And you can see it right on their skin. One persona might have an allergy to dogs, while the other has none at all. There are even instances of scars from one personality that start healing once the other personality takes over.
MI: Right, and yet, despite all of this and how receptive Mrs. Lewis initially was, when it came down to the actual turn she was powerfully resistant. She fought against every move we tried. I don’t think she remembers much of this, but you can see it on the tape. She wouldn’t calm down. I couldn’t gently fingermassage it out, which is what I usually do—I had to pop it out with force. And this was when Mayah was off filming the Hawaii special and I was alone, other than hair and makeup and the tub manager. So I had to make that critical decision by myself.
I: And so, how was she being violent?
MI: It started when I was leaning over her, checking her breath with my finger under her nose. I’d put a dab of vetiver oil on my hand to get the p aroused—this is something I do all the time, to everyone—and as soon as she smelled it she sat fully upright and stared straight at me, which is a response I’d never seen before. She was leaning into me, pushing on me. At first I thought she wanted to smell the oil on my finger but then she opened her mouth and bared her teeth and tried to bite me. And when I pulled my hand away, she threw off her robe in protest and stomped around the room. She climbed into her bed and kicked off the pillows and blankets, which is when I knew something had shifted, since up until that point she’d been quite fastidious about keeping her bed made. She knocked over a few bottles of her fluids on her bedside table and crushed the glass with her bare feet and started bleeding. She started making inorganic moves, refused to look me in the eyes—it was bad.
I: She was in some kind of liminal state.
MI: The thing was, she wasn’t a problem when she was down, but a guest needs to sit up, move around, keep the blood chugging to all four limbs. You’ve got to arouse them a little or the muscles can’t learn their new moves. Usually, after the first session I’ll put a guest upright and walk them around the room, have them try a few things—sit in a chair, use the toilet. Basics. And this is when you can see all the little pockets of new p in them start to open up. That’s how it usually goes. But Mrs. Lewis—when I pulled her awake with the oil, she was like a coiled snake, all jammed up with anxiety.
I: Had you ever seen a guest like that before?
MI: Not exactly like that, no. So that’s when I helped her across the room and asked her to bend over her tray table, keeping her back straight but her shoulders relaxed, and I placed a small, conical pillow under her sternum, right on the ileocecal valve. It was a position where she couldn’t see me, what I was doing, which was important. She was overreactive. Her senses were fuming up. I wanted her to just feel, not to see.
I: How’d you manage to calm her down enough to do that?
MI: I just had to explain it to her.
I: In the tape it’s hard to tell what’s going on at this point. She relaxes pretty dramatically in a matter of seconds.
MI: I think there’s always a way to explain the situation, and in this case, when a person is in that kind of state, it requires a familiar language.
I: Like what?
MI: It would sound silly if I started saying these things here, now. It’s more about how I speak than what I say. It’s very soft and sweet, the way I do it. I’ll usually use some family talk, too, to keep myself as friendly as possible. Words you’d only say to family.
I: Like how you’d talk to a baby or a pet?
MI: It’s such an attractive sound that people can make.
I: This phrase “pelican little.” I’ve read that’s the name her husband called her when they were intimate.
MI: Yes, family talk.
I: Is this the kind of talk you used to calm her down?
MI: Yes, but I only did so with her permission. That’s important. She and her husband showed me their private language. They were happy to. They used it in front of me, very openly demonstrating when and how they spoke, what gestures went along with what words. We never trick anyone. I’d like to make that clear. And this is also why the case was eventually dismissed. Even if she felt we somehow deceived her, it isn’t true. We record everything and can rewatch all the preliminary meetings and you can hear us directly state all of this to her before she signed the contract.
I: Do you ask this same intimate information from everyone?
MI: For full turns, yes. Mrs. Lewis wanted to take a full turn, and you can’t do that without being fully vulnerable. It just won’t happen.
I: And “button”—I’ve heard that word used.
MI: It’s already gotten out, yes. This is what her husband called it when he tickled her bottom.
I: Her anus.
MI: Yes.
I: And he had her bend over, like you did, when he did it.
MI: Yes.
I: So can you walk through what you did? This seems to be the moment in question.
MI: Yes. I began by walking my hand up and down her spine until she relaxed. Then I moved to her button, just making the tiniest possible circles on the pinkest, most sensitive part of the skin.
I: This is his technique?
MI: Yes, he taught me.
I: So you had her over the couch and her robe was pulled up and she was what—was she in a kind of trance?
MI: She was very pleased at the time. And I knew she would be. You have to understand that I wasn’t inventing this situation. I knew what I would do and she knew what I would do. Her husband told me what to say and showed me his moves and explained how she’d react. This is all documented on tape. I knew everything. How she splayed her fingers in a certain way so that her nipple would fit right between them. How she’d squeeze in quick little pulses. How she shook her hips and sighed.
I: And so what did you say to her?
MI: I said [in a lilting, cheerful voice] “Pelican Little. C’mover here and let me push on that button.” And she came right to me. That’s all I had to say. Exactly how we’d rehearsed it.
I: That voice—is that how he says it?
MI: Yes.
I: Were you sexually aroused at the time?
MI: Yes.
I: Is that normal?
MI: Yes, I felt aroused. If I hadn’t, that would have been problematic. And false. And inauthentic. Which is the worst way to bring a personality into this world—though I realize that everyone does not agree with me on this point. Her experience, however, wasn’t sexual. She wasn’t aware.
I: I just think people expect emotional distance from practitioners of any kind.
MI: I was doing this for her. Remember that. It’s not exactly what I might enjoy doing myself. It’s what she liked. And I couldn’t be sincerely engaged in this act if I had no arousal. That would’ve been false. It would have been acting. But that’s not what I do. I’m not an actor.
I: Her claim was that, she said she would have never let you do those things to her if she were conscious.
MI: It’s true. Once she saw the tape, she wouldn’t allow us to show the footage to the audience, which is something we always do. Mayah and I both feel that the more we show people what real experiences with p look like, the more people will understand. Even if it’s complicated to watch. But I believe in culture. I believe that people know what to do with this information. But we didn’t screen it. She took a copy of the recording for herself and that was it. It was only her later allegations that forced the tape out publicly and spread it around the Internet.
I: And it—the tape, it’s missing the sound, which is half of the information, right? When you used her husband’s voice a few minutes ago, I realized that I had no sense of what was said in the video, or how it was said.
MI: Yes. And the video doesn’t allow you to smell the coriander or hear the deep C sharp frequency vibrating the floorboards through a pair of woofers. And that’s all a part of it. But alas, we live in a visual world.
I: Speaking of visuals, I don’t know if this is odd for you, or if I’m overstepping some kind of boundary here, but I brought in my chart with me.
MI: Here?
I: Yeah, if that’s OK. [removes papers from bag]
MI: When did you complete this?
I: After our last talk. I spent a few weeks on it, and I wonder if you’d just take a look with me. Maybe walk me through your reading of it. I thought it might be useful for the interview. To help readers learn how a chart is read.
MI: Sure, sure…[looks at the chart] So…OK, I haven’t looked at one of these in a while.
I: You don’t read these?
MI: I have. I can. It’s just not what I normally do.
I: Oh, well, if—
MI: But let me give this a shot. [pause] It’ll be fun. I think I see what you’ve done here. So from this it looks like you started experiencing p at about eleven or twelve years old.
I: Yeah, exactly. That’s a pretty average age, right?
MI: And it was public…
I: Oh, for sure. I would say that, at that age, that was the first time I could really assert any kind of personality, and I could only do so when other people were around. It wouldn’t happen with my parents or when I was alone.
MI: And it looks like it was a slow process for you.
I: Right. And where it happened, over time, was in the classroom, at school. I wasn’t really athletic or smart or dumb, or any of these categories that kids start getting fitted into around junior high. I was just blank. I was always that way, I guess. But I’d definitely noticed that other kids had developed, personality-wise, and I remember thinking that I’d probably just always be that way—neutral. And I’d never have the kind of electricity that all these other kids had. But then, in seventh grade or so, I noticed that I was starting to act differently. Almost like I was possessed by a spirit. That’s how I thought about it. And I found myself raising my hand to answer the teacher’s questions.
MI: Yes.
I: Which was something I’d never really done before. Not that—I wasn’t shy, I just wasn’t particularly outspoken. And I started answering every question the teacher asked, even if I didn’t know what to say. Usually I didn’t even have the right answer, and sometimes I wasn’t sure what we were discussing. So if we were in, say, history class, I wouldn’t even have a sense of what era or what country we were talking about, and if that was the case, I’d just crack a joke. A funny one. And it was great. I just wanted to talk. I had something to get out.
MI: You couldn’t control it.
I: I couldn’t. And part of what I liked about it was just dropping myself into a situation and seeing what would happen. I started getting in trouble with the teachers and I started studying, and I remember thinking, Oh, this is me, finally! This is who I am! It felt like I’d found my role. And I just remember how good and warm it was to soak up everyone’s attention. Whereas before I thought of everyone as strangers.
MI: So people reacted well to how you were changing.
I: Oh, yeah, that was the whole thing. I realized that these people around me thought I was amusing. And what’s better than that? I think most people would agree that the feeling of someone laughing at a joke that you just invented, in that minute, in your mind, as a reaction to the situation you’re in—that’s one of the great satisfactions in life, right? You’re seeing your environment in a way that has real value to people.
MI: Were these new people you were surrounded by?
I: No, not at all. Same old kids I’d known most of my life, but something changed and I started seeing them differently, like they were my audience. And they started seeing me differently. I’d jump onto my desk and do a little dance or I’d start singing in the middle of class just because I felt some kind of primal urge to do so. And everyone loved it. I knew what to do. I was well liked without even trying to be.
MI: Naturally.
I: And I remember, this is the time when I started getting this feeling like I wasn’t the only one looking through my eyes anymore. I imagined everyone in my class could see what I saw, all the time, and I had to act in a certain way all the time. Like, even when I was at home, alone, I wouldn’t masturbate or look at myself naked or even pig out on crappy food, because I didn’t want them to see me like that. I was performing nonstop.
MI: And you liked that.
I: I loved it.
MI: But looking at the chart, it seems as if this were just temporary.
I: Yeah, it was as if I was on some kind of drug for that period. It lasted about half the school year, but then summer break came and the kids all went off for summer, and when I came back to school in the fall, I didn’t feel the same way. The energy had dispersed. The momentum was gone. I’d still think of jokes, but they would seem forced and embarrassing, and I’d end up keeping my mouth shut. Even when the kids would prod me to hop on my desk or make a joke, I couldn’t do it.
