July, 2013. I fly to Los Angeles and spend a few days with family prior to meeting Mark back at LAX for our flight to Fiji, as per his instructions. I’m in line alone at the gate when he calls to inform me he missed the flight.

Overcome with dread, I board the plane, lock myself in the bathroom, and cry until take off. He gave me no direction to his ashram, other than the name of the island, and no chance to clarify the expectations before everyone else arrives for his two-week training.

Weeks ago, he told me I’ll guide some yoga practice and “write my ass off.” Then, a few nights back, he added that he wants, “whole body on whole body healing,” whatever that means.

Nine hours later, I barely catch another nausea-inducing flight from the main island to Taveuni, where a local cab driver offers to drive me down the one bumpy dirt road. Eventually, I spot the sign: HEART OF YOGA ASHRAM.

Mark told me to tell my parents this vacation house on a shady hillside is an “institution.” Now his manager shows me the back house, or “women’s dorm,” where she expects me to sleep on a mattress in the corner on the floor, and to cook and do chores for him.

He arrives the next morning with a bad cough, and asks me to pound on his back, as if to break up whatever is lingering in his lungs. As I oblige, he apologizes for not being able to have “normal human interactions.”

“I want this to be easy for you,” he says. “Do you feel loved?”

I feel the exact opposite, but can’t quite explain why, so don’t say anything.

Later, he introduces me to the group as his “slave.” No one laughs. I try to brush it off as my own misstep, like agreeing to come here … then again, agreeing to anything when it comes to him has long felt severely compromised.

Rather than sink into devastation, I go float in the ocean, and end up bursting into laughter.

A few nights later, Mark gathers everyone in the wet grass by the side of his house to gaze at the full moon. I stare at the moonbeam pouring through his long silvery hair as he towers in front of me, in perfect proportion to whatever lured me here, so I feel. He turns and asks me to visit him later.

In the corner of the one-room house serving as the yoga studio, I find him in bed on his back, motionless, candles burning, t-shirt pulled over his head to reveal his sun-stained chest. I hesitate before I lay myself down beside him.

“Love is powerful, huh?” he remarks a moment later, then asks me why I want to be with an old man. “You’re just a kid,” he goes on. “We should be finding you someone to marry and have babies with … I don’t want you getting attached to me … I can’t do this … do you love me?”

“If that’s how you see me,” I ask, “why am I here in your bed? The damage has been done … I didn’t sign on to be your slave.”

“I’m only saying most of this to hear your response,” he pivots again. “No one should be anyone’s slave.”

After another pause, wherein I contemplate my exit strategy, he exclaims, “You do love me!”

I turn to kiss him once behind the ear, on the neck, one more time on the chest, where I rest my head and we breathe in unison for a moment. Then he sticks his nipple in my face and I give it a reluctant suck. He doesn’t move.

I back off, embarrassed, and tell him I don’t know what to do with him.

“You’re intelligent!” he replies, and suddenly dry humps me, fast.

Repulsed, I struggle to believe that this is the same old man who not so long ago was declaring love to me like I’d never imagined. And now this?

He starts to outline his terms. First, if we are to become lovers, I must keep it a “secret.” Then, I’m allowed to “pounce” on him whenever I want. Finally, he wants “lifelong friendship” when it’s over.

“I don’t do that,” I declare, and roll out of bed.

He grumbles something about his impending demise as I bid him goodnight.

I swallow my dismay and head to the neighboring swimming dock, where a few of his other students have been waiting for me to join them.

One wide-eyed woman asks me, “Are you taking care of Mark?”

“Not that way,” I assure her.

“I’m glad he’s receiving loving touch,” she smiles.

I laugh, and wish I could afford the next flight home.

The next morning, his unmade bed lurks in the corner as everyone sits, waiting. He shows up late, places a freshly-picked flower at the top of my mat, and guides practice. To close, we chant shanti shanti shanti, or “the peace beyond understanding.”

He offers his translation of choice: “not provoked, not provoked, definitely not provoked.”

Mosquitoes feast on my flesh as I resolve to not let any of this provoke me, slightly preoccupied with thoughts of old Brando in Tahiti and Persephone in the underworld.

Amid his usual lectures about “breath, body, and relationship,” Mark digresses into a diatribe wherein he claims, “men have always used their power to explore with young women.”

From where I sit, exploit feels more accurate.

Unable to tell if he is trying to justify my presence, his past, or both, I start to feel like a looming stain on his artificial divinity, but only a few of the others seem suspicious as to why he has me around. More seem to consider me lucky to be in such a position.

I escape to the ocean, and soon enough I see him tramping down the steep, green hillside to the rocky beach below. The next time I look to shore, he’s naked.

“In nature, as nature,” he later calls it.

Face to the clouds, I stay in the water and breathe until he wades out to me. I stand and give him a slightly amused glare, thinking I could have him arrested for this back home in the city.

“You’re quite lovely,” he smiles. “Has that registered yet?”

He wraps his arm around me, presses himself into my side, and looks down my swimsuit. I try not to react, and trace my fingertips over the surface of the water, eyes averted.

“Are you in the natural state?” he asks. “Are you not in conflict with anything?”

I shrug, and caution him that one of his other students has come down to the beach and seen us. Mark doesn’t seem to care. Apparently his rules about “discretion” from last night only applied to me.

Deeply annoyed, I head back to the house, anxious to demonstrate that I did in fact come here for reasons that had nothing to do with being his lovely, unconflicted sex slave.

Days later, after I ask him several times, he allows me to guide practice. The group seems to take to it, and Mark starts to covet me as his “goddess,” “blooming.” I cringe, and pass it off as humility.

Counting the days to departure, I avoid him as much as possible, teach every day, and get to know the others. I confide in select few as to how I ended up here. They admit it’s “messed up,” but tell me I’m “fine,” and Mark is “not well,” otherwise I’d see how “head over heels” he is for me … why don’t I “separate the teaching from the teacher?”

As I continue to drift from everyone else’s reality, where he embodies sacred genius, I feel forced to cling to his profane idiocy like a flotation device so absurdly unspeakable, no one hears me when I try to speak. I’d rather sink into oblivion with the rest of them, and deal with the truth I can hardly grasp myself later.

When Mark catches me alone, he asks where I’ve been, and tells me I’m “too sexy” — he’s “trying to behave” himself.

I look at him blankly and say nothing.

At the end of the course, one of the others happens to mention Mark’s girlfriend, also his student who worked on projects for him, and less than half his age. The revelation explains so much of his scheme, I feel relief more than anything else.

When I tell Mark I didn’t know about his girlfriend, he says, “I knew it would come up eventually … we are in transition. I want you to be a haven for me.”

I sigh, and remind myself that I’m not alone, not sleeping with him, and only a part of his captive audience for a few more days.

On the last night, he has the place, and me, to himself. We stargaze down on the dock, where he rubs my feet, feeds me compliments, and asks if I could “be with” him.

I remind him, “I don’t do things that need to be kept secret.”

He agrees that he doesn’t want to be with me if it has to be a secret, and later whisks me into his bed, where I roll away and fall asleep with my back to him, finally under a mosquito net.

The next day, while he and I wait in the airport, he complains about not being ready to leave, and calls me a “lady” — I can only guess because I never “pounced” on him.

“You seem remarkably easy-going,” he continues as we board the plane. “Most people when you get to know them are irritable and fucked up.”

“Like you?” I smile.

In between the legs of our trip back to LA, I notice him send both his girlfriend and the woman who told me about her the same text: “You are Everything.”

The pretense for this exhausting ordeal waits, almost forgotten, until our plane lands in LA and Mark asks if I can write God and Sex.

Dazed, I wonder why it should come as a surprise that he would neglect to inform me the book he somehow had me working on hasn’t been written.

My mother picks me up outside on the curb, where he gives her a hug, and comments that it’s just like hugging me.