Tracey Flagler, duly inspired by her favorite star, Oprah Winfrey, reached for the stars, and now she is gone, we know not whence, perhaps to become a star herself. I caught my first glimpse of the young woman out of my bathroom window over my bathtub two years ago as she was chaining her bike to the railing of the outside staircase that runs up to her apartment. She was a tallish, relative attractive, fit brunette of thirty, with a withdrawn, spiritual sort of demeanor. When my next door neighbor Lawrence moved out, she cleaned out his apartment for the landlord because she was in arrears on her rent. She wanted Lawrence’s big bed, so she knocked on my door to ask me to help her move it. We hauled her lumpy mattress into the alley, and then lugged Lawrence’s heavy Sealy mattress and platform down my building’s flight of steps and up hers. I had a coughing fit, and nearly fainted from the exercise, so I joined a gym the next week with good results. She promised to bake me a batch of brownies for helping her out.

Tracey’s studio was packed tightly even before the installation of the big bed. She had a huge stuffed chair and an enormous couch; hence the only running room left was for her big, fluffy cats, Ginger, Pepper, and Splenda. They tore about the place from the top of one thing to another when I entered carrying one end of the bed, and then settled down on high to stare at me. The scene reminded me of the movie, Bell, Book and Candle.

Since the day I helped Tracey install the bed, I glanced into her front windows whenever I showered. She eventually got herself a cheap but beautiful pole lamp with yellow, green, blue and red shades around its bulbs. A few days later it appeared by the dumpster out back, smashed to smithereens. I encountered Tracey in the yard, and I mentioned that I once had had a lamp just like it, when I lived in downtown Kansas City. She said her kitties had knocked it down, and that my brownies were finally ready – she was sorry for the delay, she said, but had been working double shifts at the restaurant.

The brownies were not that bad nor were they very good. I had already been spoiled by my friend Helene’s Palm Beach brownies. She lived down the street, and she often gave me coconut macaroons and brownies out of the large batches she made. Her macaroons were much too salty, but the brownies were truly scrumptious. Helene feels enormously inadequate no matter what she does, so I did not mention the salt. Like many other women of her age conditioned by Twiggy-consciousness, she thinks she is too fat, when in fact jogging like crazy and boxing a few times a week offsets the sweets. Indeed, her curvaceous body gave me occasion to virtually drool from time to time. One evening she remarked on her fatness. As if my desire were not insulting to her Victorian sense of propriety, I said that slightly voluptuous women turned me on. She yelled at me, insisting that I had called her fat, the very thought of which might cause her to panic and revert to the anorexic way of life. She ordered me out of her apartment, saying she could never trust me again. I went slack and exited with a bag of brownies in my hand.

I knocked on Tracey’s door the next day and gave her a half-dozen of Helene’s brownies. I would not have done so if I had known that she was even more plagued by feelings of inadequacy than Helene. While rummaging through Tracey’s stuff after she passed away several months later, I came across this entry haphazardly scrawled in one of her confessional notebooks:

“Walter gave me some of his girlfriend’s brownies this morning. I tried one and was utterly humiliated. Her brownies are so much better, much richer than mine, I said. He was nice – he lied and said they weren’t better, just different. But they were better, a lot better, that I know and won’t lie about it, because nobody will see this so I don’t have to lie. I just cannot excel in anything I do. I’ve been crying all night. The brownies brought me back to this thing that something is wrong with me, that I don’t have what it takes to be successful, that I’m only happy with simple things, that I’m weird and slow and inadequate, so inadequate that I hate myself, and I wish I were dead, but (illegible) bring myself (illegible) because I’m too inadequate to….

“I have known joy, and I don’t want it all to be just about feeling joy. I want to do great things, like make great brownies and do stuff, to have real stuff, real people and real, lasting situations, but I feel bad about everything I feel like a bad daughter, a bad girlfriend, a bad person. All I wanted to do was to be normal, to have some fun, to relax, to fit in. I want to believe that I’m brilliant, and that even my weirdness is part of my brilliance. I want to believe that that I can handle anything, to make really great things, to be a leader. But I hate being on the leading edge, being (illegible)….

“What is it all about? I know it is supposed to be all about joy, all for joy, so I want to know joy in human form and in forms that help me focus and feel and live as part of humanity, but (illegible)…(expletive) inadequate.

“It seems stupid that we are eternal beings, and that it goes on forever and ever and we are not supposed to get it wrong yet we never get it done right – why do anything then? I want to be an eternal being born a human being, have those beings complement one another, and not feel that one cancels out the other or makes it inadequate, or feel that I am only one of them. I would like to find my balance in these things, and to have (illegible)….

“No one taught me this crap as a kid, taught me why I’m the one who is weird and why the others are normal. It pisses me off that I’m the one who feels weird, that I cannot even make great brownies like normal girls do!  If I died this week what would have been the point? What would my purpose have been? I feel so uneasy, so anxious all the time, I feel (illegible) the inadequacy is (illegible) I feel so (illegible) my (expletive) brownies are inadequate like me….”

It occurred to me that ambivalent Tracey might have better chosen Martha Stewart as her model than Oprah Winfrey, at least for the sake of making scrumptious brownies. In terms of knowing joy and having fun, so-called hash brownies used to do the trick for those of us on the leading edge, the cultural avant-garde of the sexy Sixties – we were the sex buds of our era. The secret to making dynamite brownies was to bake the buds at a very low temperature for a few hours to bring out the oils before chopping the buds up and adding them to the brownie mix.

Oh, those were the good old days when everybody of note was supplied by the not-so-secret source, the legendary Pusher Man. A Vedic hymn of the ancient Hindus called him Soma, a god in his own right as well the plant and the drug extracted from it. Whosoever partook had the power to fly beyond the limits of heaven and earth, and felt strong enough to pick up the Earth and carry it about wherever he wanted. We sincerely believed life was supposed to be fun, that we were entirely free to create separate realities and to be and do anything we so desired. Indeed, forty-five minutes after we swallowed our soma, we did not feel we should have to do much more than think of something for it to become, lo and behold, materialized.

It was as if we were omnipotent, immortal gods in those days, especially when we were higher than kites. Of course we had been naturally spoiled by our permissive upbringing, and believed that all we had to do was ask in order to receive, just as the world’s greatest magician had advised two thousand years ago. Good intentions were good enough for us. Heck, we thought the whole purpose of life was to have joy and to be joyful. Joy is that wonderful feeling of unmitigated freedom that allows one to love oneself everlastingly in the infinitesimal Now, to live in the Now without impedance from without, to live harmoniously without interference from any other point along the infinite line that circled back to each and every one of us. After all, how could points interfere with one another and still be points? For if they touched they would overlap, and then there would be only be one point; wherefore the entire universe would be collapsed at that point.

Forsooth there was seemingly nothing without to restrain us in those paradisiacal days, for we lived in harmony; we felt free to be free with our feelings as our guide, and individuals differed only in the quality of their emotions. If a body did not feel good, if it stood in the way of joy, it was a merely a rag to be tossed aside painlessly with the help of an overdose, for the assumption of another form at will.

Our era was a pipe-dream that went up in smoke. Our joy was short-lived. We copped out and got steady jobs working for the Man. Many of us just said no to the drugs that made us feel so powerful. Withdrawal from our version of mass delusion is still a bit painful, we may never fully recover, but we do not feel very inadequate, for we had a great deal of fun in our moment of fame, and the most of us survived the joyful rite of passage. Besides, we are getting old now; the pangs of inadequacy are felt more keenly by those who believe they might live forever and fear the boredom of failure forever will drive them mad.

Love is no longer free. Money is the power-drug today, more potent even than the sex that may be purchased with it. The oldest profession is a noble undertaking in South Beach: the prostituted look is in. According to the latest survey by the Miami New Times, a struggling fashion model might charge $500 for a single night, or rent herself out as a girlfriend for $12,000 month until she achieves fame and fortune.  Money will supposedly buy anything including heaven. War not peace is the watchword. The competitive war of all against all is the universal religion. The winners are rich and famous, and most liked are those who started out in rags. After all, what makes America great besides its military might is that a few poor people have a chance of getting filthy rich, an incentive that keeps everyone contributing to the gross national product instead of beheading the winners. Oprah Winfrey is a great person because she was once poor and is now worth over $2.5 billion – she has an extraordinary gift of gab, but most people could care less how she got her fortune, and that must make her a little sad at times.

Of course the dream of greatness is nothing new; it began on that prehistoric day when someone stood on their two hind legs and pointed at the stars. Every life would endure forever if it could hence life craves power in one form or another. Great powers are greatly appreciated by all who crave power, who would be loved by the whole universe and therefore would be irresistible. We naturally feel inadequate when we behold the great models worshipped by society. It is no wonder that people feel inadequate when confronted with by the celebrated stars they both love and hate.

“What is greatness?” Tracey asked herself in a little note. “I am seeking greatness through the alignment of my desire with my belief. Who are great people? Famous people, because they are rewarded by society for what they offer. Greatness is when I am a famous person. I feel like something is wrong with me. I hate that. I hate being alive. I want to be alive but it sucks to be alive. I hate it that I’m not famous. I hate alcohol and drugs. I hate this culture that bases fun on what I have. I hate Abraham. I wish I was dead and I wish he was dead so I could stop loving him. I’m trying to tap into true love and the humans that have it. I know in my heart that I’m so great. Have I had fun here? Do I want to be here?”

That she did not want to be here became all too obvious to me when I found her remains. I knew something was wrong when a waitress from the restaurant where she worked showed up and banged on her door three days in a row, pleading with her to come out and go to work, but to no avail. I grew increasingly worried by her friend’s anxious pleadings. She said Tracey had not come to work nor had she called in. I told her that I had not seen Tracey at all. It was unlike Tracey not to go to the beach in the morning and do yoga, ride her bike in the afternoon, and go to work in the evening. Her blinds were pulled day and night, although there was a light on within, which was highly unusual. And I had not seen that handsome brown fellow come by for some time – I gleaned from her diary that he was the “source” named Abraham, the fellow who apparently had shared “the secret of the universe” with her. I climbed her steps and banged on the door one fateful morning – nothing. One of her windows was unlocked. I pushed it up, called her name again and again, and then climbed in the window.

And now I have my regrets. I wish I had not frustrated her with Helene’s Palm Beach brownies. If only I had known about Tracey’s secrets, about her connection to the source, about the book she was writing, I would have done my utmost to befriend her, and by my example prove that nothing exists and is perfect. But such was not preordained. My remorse is assuaged, however, by the fortune I found in her apartment, a fortune worth far more than the million dollars she wanted to buy her freedom with. Certain metaphysicians have consoled us with the doctrine of metempsychosis – it is best not to die while eating a ham sandwich lest one return in the form of a pig. Perhaps Tracey’s soul will transmigrate to a higher form. Perhaps we shall meet on the Oprah show once I have cashed in, in which case I shall hand her a million dollars with my best wishes.