At War With a Mystic: The Set Up

Friends,

On my birthday, I went to The Psychic Gallery because psychics have always interested me, but it's not exactly something I whole-heartedly buy into. But, also, it's not something I can't completely disregard either. I mean, if I can believe in God and "signs" and such, then there's no way I can look at a psychic and call total bullshit on it because that wouldn't be consistent with my hodge-podge spiritual beliefs. Though, I understand the amount of hokum that goes into this because a part of it is being able to read people, and know what their body is telling the world that they don't know. So, I have this hard time with the idea, but I'm curious enough to go just the same. Anyways, I go to this one in particular because Diana loves, loves, loves her.

So, Emily and I arrive at her secondary location, which is pretty much a house with a paved over front yard for a parking lot across the street of the Middleton bowling alley. We maneuver around the pumpkins clogging up the sidewalk and go inside. We are welcomed by some leather love seats, hardwoord floors, drop ceilings, a huge flat-panel high def TV playing one of those true murder shows from A&E (it was about that one serial killer who offed Versace) with a Playstation 3 on a Bombay Company table in front of it, and some lady hanging out on the couch. Overall, it feels sparse, like someone had just moved in and hadn't quite got all their stuff inside...but there was a couple interesting, mystical looking statues on a mantle, nothing overbearing. But there was no incense burning, or strange silks lying around or anything overtly gyspified, like I expected. This was suburban, one-car garage, mysticism.

We sit on a couch that's pretty much right under the flat panel TV because the hanging out lady, who I assume is waiting for a friend, is sitting in the on the couch with the best view of the TV. And, let's be honest, it'd be a little weird to cozy up to a complete stranger on the leather couch of a psychic. Taking the middle seat on a couch in just a friend situation can be awkward, but complete strangers in a mystic's house? Well, that's just not going to happen. And because it's a love seat, I wind up cozying up to Emily quite a damn bit, where probably if you saw us, you'd think something strange was going on because, you know, people don't need to sit that close to one another, not even in-love teens.

The psychic comes out with another lady who is just beaming. The lady clearly loved her reading, and her and the lady on the couch vamoose. The psychic turns and invites me back. She looks nothing like the photo on her website. I was expecting someone a bit more like Jhumpa Lahiri, not Lisa Lampanelli. That's not really here nor there in terms of psychic ability, because as you see as this tale unfolds, she got game, but it still surprised me, made the whole show seem a little flim-flammy right out of the gate. With that said, she's remarkably nice, spunky, and I understand entirely why Diana loves her. She's moxie in flowing clothes, really.

I go back into her reading room and sit at a red velvet draped table, no crystal ball, but a cordless telephone on one side, and this large oddly large-seated chair that's a little uncomfortable with its deep ass-groove. She asks me what I want, and I say psychic reading. She was shuffling tarot cards at the time, so I should have took the hint, but nope. I knew what I wanted. She told me that the credit card machine busted, but as luck would have it, everyone who came brought cash today. Now, of course, a wiser-assed man would have said, "Aren't you a psychic? Shouldn't you have seen that coming?" but I did not.

She asks me how I heard about her and I gave the whole truth, because that's what I do, so I say something along the lines of, "A friend of mine, Diana Joseph, you probably don't remember her. Her thing, a compulsion kind of, is psychics. She found this place in Denver with psychic horses and she's dying to go. Anyway, she came to Madison a while back, visited every psychic in town, and she liked you the best, so...here I am." She nods, and then gets into divination mode. She tells me not to get upset at her for what she sees is what she sees, and she'll be telling the truth, so it's not on her.

Here is where I start battling the hokum of the scenario in my head because, part of me is thinking, yeah, makes sense. Don't want her to unload all this bad news just to have the person freak out. And, another part of me is saying, "She's just saying this for the illusion of bad news" because it's not believable if bad news isn't part of the equation. Just like how it's hard to believe in heaven without a hell, things can't be all good, that's not how we people process things.

Then, she asks for a personal item that I have on me at all times. I slide off my wedding ring because I think that's a little more personal than my car keys. She tells me that she's a real fast talker, and I should stop her if she's going to fast, and now we are off and running.

end part one ...

... by the way, I'm not doing this to tease you, it's just that this is going to be a long, discursive blog post, so I figured it would be best to break it up into chunks so it's not overwhelming. Part 2 is coming tonight....and, hey, someone, please, tell Danielle & Clisbee good luck with the reading tonight, and they had better read something with sex in it.


viva el mustache