Joseph Levy Escapes Death. Rick Strassman

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       Rick Strassman invites us on a harrowing journey through the ordinary dangers we all face. Our hero, Joseph Levy, retains a clarity, humor and perspective through it all. This is a story that will leave us laughing at the absurdity of life’s twists and turns, while giving us a window into the faith that endures through challenge.

       — RABBI SHEFA GOLD, author ofAre We There Yet? Travel as a Spiritual Practice

       A good story told with much interior monologue, rich in issues such as health, relationships, and anti-semitism. Replete with medical and psychoanalytical overtones, and full of brilliant insights.

       — RALPH ABRAHAM, Professor of Mathematics,UC Santa Cruz

       A post-modern tale of Job, initiated by a toothache that spirals out of control to psychedelic depths of pain and fear, love and transformation on a pilgrimage to greater insight. Rick Strassman heroically offers this novel for all of us who suffer and will die one day. Bravo!

       — ALEX GREY & ALLYSON GREY, artists, co-founders ofCOSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors

       I’ve never read anything like it.

       — MERRILEE CHALLISS, artist,Co-Owner of BottleTree Cafe

      JOSEPH LEVY ESCAPES DEATH

      JOSEPH LEVY ESCAPES DEATH

       Rick Strassman

       REGENT PRESS

       Berkeley, California

      Copyright © 2019 by Rick Strassman

      [paperback]

      ISBN 13: 978-1-58790-472-1

      ISBN 10: 1-58790-472-1

      [e-book]

      ISBN 13: 978-1-58790-474-5

      ISBN 10: 1-58790-474-8

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931674

      Cover design by Merrilee Challiss

       www.merrileechalliss.com

      Cover text by Katie Thompson.

       [email protected]

      Author photograph by Twin Buttes Studios

      The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any reference to an actual place, any similarity to real people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      REGENT PRESS

      Berkeley, California

       www.regentpress.net

       To Lorenzo, Garza, and Gina Friends indeed

      Contents

       ONE

       TWO

       THREE

       FOUR

       FIVE

       SIX

       SEVEN

       EIGHT

       NINE

       TEN

       ELEVEN

       TWELVE

       THIRTEEN

       FOURTEEN

       FIFTEEN

       SIXTEEN

       SEVENTEEN

       EIGHTEEN

       NINETEEN

       ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      ONE

      “WHAT’S NEXT?” David Morales asks. He swirls the ice in his glass keeping cold the last drops of scotch.

      Joseph Levy shifts in his chair and looks over his neighbor’s shoulder, out the kitchen window toward the eastern sky. His distant stare doesn’t reflect back much. “There’s my tooth,” he says thoughtfully.

      Levy’s desk is clear for the first time in decades. He’s mailed his publisher the final draft of a manuscript, the end of a 16-year project. What is next? His entire adult life has been one massive, multi-year project after another. He’s finally free, and he blinks his eyes in the glare of the present.

      Levy says, “This might be a good time to take care of my pesky tooth.” Nothing that serious, but he doesn’t like that it’s gone on for several years. “Now that I’m back in Wheaton, I can see my old dentist in Phoenix.”

      His previous dentist, in Willowville, recommended a new crown, but Levy wanted to wait. The secretary scolded him for delaying. “You’ll need a root canal if you don’t let him replace the crown right away.” The tooth settled down soon enough and he forgot about it.

      “Sounds great,” Morales winces and chuckles. “Celebrating with dental work.”

      “That crown’s been a pain,” Levy says as he pours more mid-quality single malt scotch into his own and his neighbor’s glasses. He sees his own ice is gone. “It fell off right before a two-month trip through Europe in the 90s. The glue didn’t hold, and it came off again while having lunch that first week away.” Not that it was a normal lunch; rather, a five-course wine-drenched feast at Sandoz Pharma in Basel. The home of LSD. “A dentist in France put it back on, but that only lasted a couple of days.”

      “That is a bad tooth,” Morales agrees, frowning.

      Levy laughs. “That was a bad tooth trip. Another one broke the next week. We were eating cold soggy veggie burgers in Scotland in the rain.”

      Morales looks as if he’s remembering something, “It’s like one of those dreams where your teeth break and fall out.”

      Dr. McPherson, Levy’s old dentist in Phoenix, hasn’t aged noticeably over the 20 years since their last visit. He remains youthful and energetic, with only touches of gray in his mustache. The office lights reflect off his mostly bald head, as Levy remembers they did back then. His office is different, though. Three times the size of his previous one, it’s busier, more pressured. Levy wonders how much is due to McPherson’s