Dark Star: Confessions of a Rock Idol Read Free

oldest brother, Endora said, was the loyal one in the family, the model child. That would be Howard, still residing in northeast Ohio with a wonderful wife and three delightful children—and still taking care of my mother, Doris, who now lived with Howard’s family.
    Next, Endora spoke insightfully about my only sister. “This one has chosen to travel a different path,” she said. “I’m feeling you are bothered by this new direction she has taken.” After a moment of silence, she smiled. “But do not worry. It’s going to be okay. Good things lie ahead for her.”
    Mary was four years older than me. After raising two boys and steering through an ugly divorce, she had become, in her words, a “born-again Christian.” And yes, I was concerned. Every time I talked to her, she quoted the Bible to me. She wrote letters loaded with Bible verses. We argued about religion. She insisted Jesus Christ was the only way to heaven. I thought she had joined a cult.
    “I’ve traveled the world, Mary!” I would yell into the phone. “I’ve seen more religions than you’ve seen movies. You can’t tell me that the people I’ve seen worshiping their gods are going to hell! It’s too small, Mary. If there is a God, He’s got to be bigger than the one you’re describing.”
    “Let’s not argue, Everett,” she would say. “We have such little time to talk.” I was always traveling, and she had a new life in a small city in southwest Ohio. It was good to hear Endora tell me things would work out well for Mary. She was a kind person, and I hoped the best for her.
    When we neared the end of that first session, Endora’s countenance became disturbed as she tapped her long, black fingernails on the table between us.
    “There is a dark cloud that, unfortunately, still hovers over you, Everett,” she said with her eyes closed. “I sense something…missing in your life. I feel a heart, beating fast—very fast. Hoping. Wishing. Trying… There is warm water; it is dark and perilous. You are fighting to get through, to find what’s missing…”
    A tear actually slipped out the far corner of Endora’s purple-shaded eye. And with that, BAM , it was over. She raised her head quickly and opened her eyes, as if to draw a line to stop what was happening. To separate herself from the emotion of it.
    “That’s enough,” she said coldly, shaking slightly, and beginning to rise up as she spoke. “We’ll cover more next time.”
    From that moment on, the forty-eight-year-old redhead named Endora Crystal became my personal psychic. I started her out on a retainer of twenty thousand dollars a month, plus expenses, to be at my beck and call. She traveled with us as often as possible, and when she wasn’t touring with our entourage, she was within reach by phone.
    The combination of my secret insecurity, constant drug abuse, and Endora’s profound knowledge about me, my background, and my behavior led me to lean on her daily for encouragement. I trusted Endora, and soon she became kind of a spirit figure to whom I could run with all my problems.
    If I was uptight after a show, drunk, empty inside, mad at the world, or bitter about the past, I would call her, no matter what time of day or night. Often, I would wake up in the morning with an aching feeling in the core of my stomach, and I’d phone her before my feet even hit the floor.
    Endora had a way of drilling into my head that I was more than a rock star. She believed I had been sent “from the gods” to lead millions of people to the truth about life itself.
    “The fact is, dear Everett,” she said to me on many occasions, “there are many gods. I believe you have been chosen to reveal to society that all gods are good. It’s obvious you yourself are a god. And people must be free to choose whatever god they want to serve: Apollo, Zeus, Buddha, Athena, Everett Lester—or even themselves!
    “This truth will allow people to live freely. Do you see, Everett? No more