Trashley: Forty-Seven

Dragon's Blood

When I discovered Ashley was back on dating apps, Michelle and I created Fake Aimee to catfish her back. Because when Ashley went low, we went lower. I’m not proud of it, but I wanted to see if Ashley was still lying or if she had changed at all. 

After nearly two days of talking, I got my answer. 

If I didn’t know better, I’d believe I was talking to a well-read, nerdy, eccentric woman who valued kindness and monogamy and quite possibly had a gambling problem. And she would believe I was an adventurous, sporty British brunette who was emotionally available despite going through a recent break-up. 

We were both lying about who we were, and I still couldn’t understand the appeal.

If a man financially abused, cheated, gaslit, and abandoned his pregnant wife and child while love bombing his mistress and then prowling for his next victim on Hinge, every single woman in the world would light a torch and take turns burning him at the stake. He’d be exiled from society, and no one would ever have sex with him again.

I needed to remember this any time I felt sympathetic towards Ashley. This was her character, and just because she was born with two XX chromosomes didn’t make her actions any less devious.

I issued an alert on the local lesbian emergency hotline, and news of Ashley’s catfishing spread through East LA like the Omicron variant. All the gay girls were instructed on what to do if they encountered Ashley in the wild: do not look her in the eyes, back away slowly, and then haul ass in the opposite direction.

There wasn’t much left to do except hope Ashley would get bored of LA and move back to Minnesota or Bakersfield. If she continued to catfish women in Los Angeles, she’d eventually be chased out of town by an angry mob of queer women.

I was eager to get back to my regularly scheduled life as a newly single scamp hussy.

Scampy girl summer.

Now that Ashley was gone I had my bed back, which has always been my favorite part of being single. My least favorite part of being single was noticing a dark energy lingering inside my once bright and cheery apartment. 

The first time I saw it, I bolted awake at three in the morning. It appeared as a black swarm of energy clumped together in the dark corner of my bedroom. The second time, it grabbed my ankles while I was sleeping, crept up my bed, and hovered six inches over me while I laid there paralyzed. There was so much negativity, drama, and chaos over the previous weeks that I didn’t even notice a shadow creature moved into my apartment. I needed to get rid of it immediately.

This was a job for Whitney Blanks. 

I first met Whitney because we had a few mutual friends. She was an energy healer slash witch from Santa Monica, and I knew she was legit because she did all the Real Housewives energy cleanses. Whitney didn’t know any of the details of my breakup, only that it was bad enough to need her services. 

She squeezed me in the next day.

I helped Whitney carry several large suitcases up my stairs. 

“These things are so heavy. What all do you have in here?” I asked.

“Feathers, gemstones, crystals, sage, lava, moon soil, driftwood, dragon’s blood, a mason jar full of whispers, and a bunch of rocks and sea glass,” Whitney said. “But you’re an earth sign, so I probably won’t need the sea glass.”

Creating the perfect potion.

Whitney unzipped the suitcases and started sorting through the ingredients.

“Have you had your energy cleansed recently?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “the last time I had it done, I was living in New York. It must have been in early 2012, right after I moved into my new apartment. An actress was tragically murdered in my building. And I felt her spirit as if she was sending messages through electricity. So my friend told me to call a guy named Milou and have him talk to her.”

“Do you have any personal items you consider lucky you’d like to surround yourself with?” she asked.

“Yeah, I have my lucky baby woolly mammoth tooth and a few bones from the Pleistocene era. I also have my lucky wolf. A gold miner gave it to me after accidentally hitting and killing it with his truck. It’s been with me for twenty-two

years.”

“Perfect, get those and follow me into the bedroom,” Whitney said.

My lucky bones from the Ice Age.

I put my lucky bones and wolf on the bed.

“Great, now lay down directly in the center.”

I lay down, and Whitney placed gemstones on all of my chakras.

“How long does this usually take?” I asked.

“I have no idea. It could be an hour, and it could be the rest of the day. It all depends on what you have trapped in here.”

She lit a protection candle and placed it next to my bed.

“All energy cleanses are different, but the way I do it is to let the higher spirit enter my body. They use they/them pronouns, and I will serve as their vessel.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Once they’re done, you’ll need to write down everything they tell you. Because when they finish using me, I will return to my vessel with no memory or knowledge of what they told you. Does that sound good?”

“Yeah, I’m ready, let’s do it.”

I closed my eyes and a breeze swept through the window above my bed, even though it was closed.

Whitney quietly chanted as they waved sage above my body.

“Chy-chy-chy-ya…” 

The chanting faded off into the distance. I heard Whitney light match after match as they wandered through my kitchen. I had no concept of time but they must have spent at least twenty minutes there.

“Chy-chy-chy-ya…” the chanting got closer. 

I opened my eyes to take a peek. Whitney was sprinkling red dust in the doorway connecting the bedroom to the living room. 

They walked over to my closet and stood directly in front of where Ashley kept her box of secrets. Whitney grumbled deep in their throat and started maniacally waving the lit sage.

They spent nearly an hour cleansing the area in my closet where Ashley hid her fake math notebooks, letters from the IRS and debt collectors, and secret phones.

Whitney sprinkled dried organic rosemary on me as they walked by the bed.

Next, Whitney headed for the bathroom. They closed the door but the chanting got louder and more intense. I knew they were picking up some evil energy.

They walked out of the bathroom and returned with a giant black piece of Obsidian. They put it on the counter next to several lit candles.

Whitney left the bathroom and stood at Ashley’s side of the bed. 

“CHY-CHY-CHY-YA…” They chanted louder than they had up until this point and started waving around sage as if they were harnessing the shadow to come out of the dark and into their grip so they could take it far away from me.

They walked to the end of the bed and held onto my feet. It looked like they were in a power struggle with an evil force. They chanted towards the sky before snapping their neck back and looking at me.

“Write this down while I’m in this vessel.”

They spoke quickly and I frantically opened my phone and took notes.

“Something bad happened in the kitchen, it is a hub of negative activity. I opened all of the drawers to draw it out. Keep the window above the sink open for seven weeks. It will gone by then.”

That checked out. It’s where Ashley went for the knives.

Airing out the negativity.

“The top right shelf of the closet is filled with someone else's pain. It’s prickly but you had to touch it.”

Cecelia’s pain.

“A lot of secret conversations were being had in the bathroom. It was also used as a hiding place. I left sage to burn because it didn’t feel good. I sensed the shadow covering up in the corner but it will not be able to move past the obsidian.”

I could have sworn I heard Ashley talking quietly in the bathroom a few times but I figured it was with Cecelia and about the kids. No doubt that’s where she talked to the women she was catfishing.

“Your bed is a division. The ick and secrecy from the bathroom leaked into the bedroom and crawled up this half of the bed.”

Everything they told me made so much sense.

“Then there’s the tar. It did not want to let go of you. I lured it out through your feet, there was a lot of resistance and a power struggle. But I was able to remove it and fill you up with white light.”

I could already feel the white light running through my body.

“You need to put something in the walkway from the bedroom to the living room in order to take back your power. I’d suggest burning citrus and peppermint first. It will call in the right people.”

I can’t wait.

“I filled your room with personal power and dragon’s blood. Your guides are here with you. They never left. Use Perci as a compass. Trust him to take you in the right direction.”

I took notes of everything they told me. 

“And be more mindful of who you connect with.”

Copy that.

Whitney shook their head and returned to herself.

“I’m back. Did you get the answers?” she asked.

“Yeah, wow. Everything they said felt so accurate.”

It was a lot to take in.

Whitney started packing up her supplies.

“What do I owe you?” I asked while pulling up my Venmo.

“This one is on me.” she said, “But you can take me out for dinner. I’m drained and starving.”

I bet.

I saddled up Perci and we all walked down to Sunset, where we grabbed an outdoor table at the Black Cat.

Recharging at the Black Cat with the white dog.

Extracting the shadow from my apartment already made me feel lighter. Before the energy cleanse, I could feel it trying to seduce me into the darkness.

Whitney and I had dinner along with several rounds of margaritas. We stopped by my friend’s going-away party and had a few more drinks. By the time we got back to my apartment, it was late, we were drunk, and we were ready for second dinner.

Whitney opened a bottle of Cabernet, and I ordered a pizza from Tomato Pie.

I sat down, and Whitney followed. She straddled me on the couch, and we started making out, blurring the line between energy healer and client.

Still got it.

I did not predict my night ending this way but it was like an energy cleanse for my body, and then Ashley wouldn’t be the last person I slept with.

It was a good reminder that being a lesbian is so fucking awesome, and in that moment, I felt bad for anyone who wasn’t gay.

I’m also pretty sure someone stole the pizza.

The next day, I told Cecelia and Michelle about the energy cleanse reading, how accurate it was, and how it’s really important to have a good witch in your contact list.

I’d been texting with Cecelia and Michelle so much that it felt like we had all known each other since middle school. Ashley did target a specific type of woman, and it was no surprise we all got along and had similar traits and humor.

Cecelia was the center of the group, and Michelle and I orbited her like her moons. Our little group felt therapeutic, a safe space to talk about what we had been through and process it together.

The three of us got along so well that we decided to meet in person. We looked at our schedules. It was mid-May 2022. Cecelia was about to graduate from two grad programs, and Michelle was flexible enough to take time off work and drive to Minnesota. My MTV job was wrapping up the fifth season in a few weeks, so I was about to be free, too.

We agreed to meet in Minnesota on June 18th and stay with Cecelia.

In the weeks leading up to meeting in person, my conversations with Cecelia ventured into non-Ashley-related territory. We had a lot in common, we liked gardening, plants, Tracey Chapman, and had an unhealthy obsession with Fran Lebowitz. We also shared a mutual love for reading, and in the most lesbian friendship way possible, we started mailing books to one another. She sent me a copy of Braiding Sweetgrass, and I sent her Bird by Bird and Dusk Night Dawn by Anne Lamott.

The silver lining in the Ashley saga was that I formed new friendships and could still watch their children grow up, but as Cecelia’s friend and not as Ashley’s mistress.

Gay friendship is mailing books to each other.