FLIGHT FROM DESTINY

Robert Eznik was the first Frenchman I knew personally. He was unkind to no one, but he was continually abused by those closest to him. And I've never observed a man so accepting of misuse. He was a durable victim, reverting quickly to original form no matter how badly he was bent, folded, or spindled.

Robert was 5'6", medium weight, with a hawk-like nose, and a beaten-down demeanor that made him appear older than his 35 years. His mother was French, his father Turkish, and he was a man of contradictions. Neatly combed and oiled brown hair did not settle with the sprinkle of dandruff that never left his rounded shoulders. The playful sparkle in his dark chocolate eyes belied the pallor of his fleshy face when he smiled, which was often, a smile that seemed always on the verge of laughter. He was said to be very shrewd with numbers, a CPA, but he worked as an agent traveling through western Europe with his only act, J.J. & Sam. He came from "money," but during our six month business relationship he wore only a badly frayed black suit, always with a white dress shirt similarly frayed, narrow black tie, black hose and wing-tips. Black wool scarf and leather gloves were sometimes included, but no overcoat even in winter.

When in Paris, Robert lived in his mother's apartment off the Champs Elysees, and rarely spoke to his father, whom his mother loathed. I met her once. She was several inches taller than her only son and stick narrow. Long white hair was swept on top of her head in a loose knot secured with an ornate jeweled comb studded with stones that appeared genuine. Her face was bare of cosmetics, giving her translucent skin a slightly blue cast. She wore a black taffeta dress with a lace hem topping her ankles. A white silk scarf was around her neck.

Robert introduced us, and she looked through me, her features unyielding, neck stiff, without responding to my polite, "Bonjour, Madame Eznik." He apologized while she continued to stare at a point over my left shoulder. It wasn't me, he said, she treated all his friends that way, because they were his friends.

Their ten room apartment was well appointed but smelled of loneliness. In Robert's walk-in closet, there was hanging only a single change of clothes identical to the black suit ensemble he wore everyday; spare black hose sat alone on a shelf.

He saw the look on my face and said, "Madame burned my clothes, all except these." The flourish of his gesture took in what he was wearing and the items in the closet. "She was angry at my father at the time, because ... well, they were arguing long distance, and he hung up on her."

Madame was also a vegetarian who permitted her son to consume only steak cooked medium rare, potatoes, and red wine. When someone asked Robert why she wanted him to eat meat when she didn't, he smiled and said, "I do not know. Perhaps she is trying to kill me."

Robert wanted to make a good impression on our band, Flight From Destiny. It was our first gig, and his first chance to portray a new, less fallible self, but all he could do now was cast his glance away, trying to conceal his embarrassment, trying to react in a way that said what was happening wasn't as bad as it looked. The burly club owner, taller by fully two heads, leaned close into Robert's face as he berated him, punctuating groups of words by slamming his open palm into the smaller man's chest. Each blow danced Robert backward, closer to the half-wall separating the lobby from the bar and dance floor. The owner's long unruly hair swished anxiously over his forehead and around his shoulders. I spoke no French, but no language skills were necessary to interpret Long Hair's rage. We were late--Robert had been showing us the city--but I didn't think that could be the source of so much anger. Robert responded to the assault in small apologetic murmurings, neck craned forward staring at Long Hair's feet. His gaze floated as high as the open shirt collar exposing a monkey chest of hair, before surrendering to the feet again.

Tension spawned in my stomach as I watched. "How much of this s--- are we going to let Robert take before we help him?" I asked the six musicians gathered behind me.

"Whoa baby, slow down. I'm sure the man knows what he's doing," Cole said. At 23, he was the oldest and the band leader. "We just met this guy," he said, and came to stand close to me, placing his trumpet case on the floor and hugging me to his lanky body. We had met our freshman year in college and had been living together for three years since we dropped out of school. He was a tall, striking black man with buttermilk skin, light-brown eyes looking out of thick horn-rimmed glasses, and a remarkable widow's peak topping his forehead. A native New Yorker, he had been a child prodigy, played four instruments, and composed.

At 21, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but one of my favorite games as a child had been playing "office," so I agreed to be the band's business manager. I enjoyed the company of musicians and other show people--they had many faults and were often self-centered, but their spirits were generous and their hearts free of prejudice--and I had too much ego to be a groupie.

"You'd better listen to your man and just stay out of it," Mark said, backing Cole up as usual. He placed his tenor saxophone case vertically on the floor and carefully seated himself on top of it, balancing his feet on either side. He was tall and moved with deliberate slowness, shoulders hunched, even when in a hurry. An easy going farm boy from Iowa who'd practiced afternoons in an unheated barn with peeling red paint, Mark saw life in simple terms. He'd come to The Big Apple to be a professional musician; after just a year he was touring Europe. In his mind he'd already made it. His left hand strayed to his chin where he began to pick absently at a new pimple, while he watched Long Hair manhandle Robert. Numerous pea shapes marred the brown skin on his neck and lower jaw.

"I ain't goin' to risk my life for no honky, 'dat's for sure," Hal said, in a voice as high as a woman's and deeply seasoned with Jamaican patois. Seated at a glass-top table, he was tapping out rhythms with the drum sticks he always carried in his right back pocket. Ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta; ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta. Tall, hyperactive and handsome, he had a Julliard degree and classical training like Cole. "Anyway, 'dat club owner look like he can kick him some serious a--."

"So you're saying if Robert were black, you'd help him? You're unbelievable, man. If he were black you'd think up another reason not to fight, 'cause you're a wuss. Got nothing to do with racial pride." That came from Ralph the bass player. Bear shaped and chubby soft, with a big afro, deep black skin, extra spaces between small front teeth, and a gentle nurturing manner, he prided himself on being unrelentingly color-blind.

"I tell you what. Your a-- is black enough." Ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta. "Go 'head ova' 'dere and see if I come help you." Turning to Jim, Hal added, "You a honky boy so why you don't go ova' 'dere 'an help your brudder?"

"Screw you. Ain't no damn honky, I'm Italian," Jim said, and drops of laughter pattered through the group. Seated across from Hal, he was playing finger piano on the same table top. Born and raised in the northeast Bronx next door to Ralph, Jim was jockey-sized with long sandy-brown hair. He had blue eyes set in a pixie-like face with a long, upturned nose, and a mere slash for a mouth. At 19, he was the youngest and my right-hand man; I couldn't imagine managing those animals without him to help me ride herd.

In 1994, I had an accident and lost four pints of blood in a 16 hour period. Four days later when I got to an emergency room I was still conscious although very weak. It took 12 hours to type my blood and receive the transfusion. In that time doctors and nurses kept stopping by to ask me what kind of life style I led. They told me it was surprising for someone to lose that much blood--going from a blood count of 13 to a 6--in such a short period of time, without slipping into a coma. They commented that my level of awareness was remarkable for my condition.

Over the next couple of weeks, I thought about what they had said. Suddenly, I had an epiphany and realized why I hadn't slipped into a coma--that truckload of vitamins I take every day. It also hit me how much knowledge I had accumulated, knowledge known only by me. I got a chill thinking what a waste it would be if I had died before I could tell people what I know. I accepted what I saw as a duty to help people understand and accept what I have discovered. That you don't have to be sick.

When people ask me how I figured out how to heal the body with supplements, I tell them that I owe a debt of thanks to Albert Einstein. I have always been fascinated by his theories. I believe the reason Einstein was able to stroll along the beach or sit in his rocking chair and extrapolate correctly about a faraway universe was that he relied on an instinct that the universe was constant. Not absolute as Isaac Newton had posited for so long, but constant. So that no matter where you went in that universe e would always equal mc2: energy would always equal mass times the speed of light squared.

I treat the human body, the interior universe as it were, similarly. The remedies in my book are based on a belief that the human body is a single interactive universe where the same physical laws pertain, no matter where in that universe they are applied. That is why a clog or blockage anywhere in the body will respond to essentially the same treatment. From the outside looking in, it appears that someone suffering from a blocked artery or heart valve is very different from someone suffering from stiff and fused joints; and chronic lung congestion looks completely different from high cholesterol, which doesn't seem to have anything in common with fatty liver deposits, sinus problems, or gallstones. However, go inside the interior universe of the human body, applying Einstein's correct understanding of a constant universe and you see that they are not actually different disorders, but merely different manifestations of the same disorder: failure to process and eliminate toxins which accumulate as fats and other organic debris. That is why one supplement--Lecithin--is used as the primary supplement to treat all of the abovementioned problems. Without sufficient Lecithin in your system, oils, fats, and other organic compounds can clump together, solidify, and clog up your arteries, joints, lungs, liver, and other vital areas.

It is my hope that Vitamin Remedies That Really Work! will stimulate enough interest so that trials can be held to substantiate my theories. Healing with supplements is so easily done that it seems obscene what we do to the human body in the name of keeping it healthy. Some medical treatments are so gross and despicable that people opt for death rather than face the treatment! It has to stop.

I graduated from Columbia University, New York City, in 1983, with honors in Political Science. I received my Juris Doctor from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1986.