Sunday, September 23, 2007

The Psychic Fair?



The Psychic Fair?

I knew I was in trouble the moment she said, “Are you busy Sunday?”

The Mrs. rarely asks me this sort of loaded question and when she does I can expect an unusual request to follow. “What,” I grumble, “do you have in mind, exactly?”

She stands in front of me with a load of fresh laundry clutched to her chest, her knees slightly turned in, the posture of a wife who needs a favor. “I just thought you might want to go down to the Psychic Fair with me and have a reading done,” she says brightly. She had coaxed me into attending one of these events years prior and my lack of instant enthusiam was showing.

At that time, a million years ago, we were dating and in the interest of keeping her interested, I was a much more suggestible person. Now that I’ve hardened to all sorts of fun things like flower shows, George Clooney movies and exercise equipment, it was easy for me to decline, at first.

“But my friend the astrologer will be there,” she pined as she dropped the laundry in the basket and draped her long arms around my neck. I’m a weak man when it comes to this kind of personal negotiation tactic and I caved instantly.

Fortunately, this particular Fair was close to home and the admission fee was only five bucks per reading. At the previous Fair I got roped into, the psychics must have known I was coming. They lightened my wallet by about 100 bones by the time we schlepped out the door with some incense, personal rune stones and a ‘kirlian aura’ photograph in hand.

But at least they had some style. One standout was ‘Cassandra’, a large white-haired grandmotherly type who took one look at me and the wife and said, “Yer gonna have twins!..yep, yep,” she said, swaying her head from side to side, eyes closed. “ Runs in yer family..long, prosperous life, lotsa kids...that’ll be $15.00.”

The next lady we ran into there was a past life regression expert. She had some little shiny rocks she called ‘rune stones’ and she moved them around with her long, elaborate jewelry-adorned fingers and told me, “ You were a doctor...in africa,” she did the same closed-eye, head roll and included,
“you worked with monkeys and blood.” This was about the time that AIDS was on the front page of the paper nearly every day, so the connection seemed a bit dubious.

I forked over another fifteen bucks and we moved to the last booth, a ‘kirlian photographer.’

This is a deal where you give them ten dollars and a grumpy looking guy has you sit in front of a white screen where he takes a picture of you with a big box-style camera complete with a big black cape that covers the whole unit, him included.

You have no idea what he is doing, unless you happen to notice the box at his feet where he deftly exchanges colored gels between subjects. I heard him snap a gel into the frame in front of the lens, looking like a confused grim reaper getting dressed in the morning, he says, “ Ok.. SMILE!” and he clicks the shutter. It’s a polaroid insta-matic and the picture pops out the side of the shrouded set-up.

He grabs the picture and hands it to his girlfriend/assistant who does a mini-reading of the result. “ Ohhh.. you have a very cool disposition,” she says wide-eyed as she hands me the print. It’s me alright, except I have a big bluish halo around my head. The same thing happens for Mrs. A, except the grim photographer has installed a red gel this time. The assistant proclaims her to have ‘a fiery personality,” and we shuffle off to buy some incense.

In all, this is a harmless kind of diversion. No worse than going to a casino or carnival, although I would have enjoyed trying to guess Cassandra’s weight.



I was still reflecting on the lost weekend of a previous Psychic Fair when we arrived at the new Psychic Fair. This was a place I’d been to before, having dropped the Mrs. off for some sort of herbal reason. We walked in to see the usual assortment of interestingly dressed individuals. Barefeet, long dresses, guys with shirts open to the navel and odd looking jewelry adorning everyone. Incense is a pre-requisite as a mood setter and, lucky for me, there was also cake and cookies. The Mrs. signed up for a reading with her astrologer friend as I pondered the list of services.

“Reiki Master, Medical Intuitive, Astrological Reading, Runes, Cranial-Sacral, Massage Therapy..” Behind the counter a moon-eyed girl was lighting more incense and swaying to some new-age music trickling from a boombox. Mrs. A disappeared around the corner with a man wearing socks and sandals. I decided that the only thing I was curious about was my health.
Having a bad back is a pedestrian malady, but it was the only thing I have to complain about, so I handed moon-girl a five-spot and signed up for the Medical Intuitive.

I was perusing the bookshelf and some shiny power rocks when someone called my name. She was an imposing figure, a substantially built woman with a wild mane of reddish hair. I followed her through the corridor as she used the whole thing up getting to our destination, a small darkened room lit by good-smelling candles and with two chairs and a card table. We sat and introduced ourselves.

Madame Tonya got quiet, closed her eyes and tilted her big head back. “ Ahhh.. I’m sensing something... about ....your teeth.” She opened her eyes and widened them, waiting for a response from me. “ Well..” I began, “ I think they’re doing alright.” Tonya squinted at me, “ Hmmm.. do you grind your teeth, there’s something about the grinding of teeth..” she grimaced at me, baring her own strangely smallish teeth for emphasis.

“ Do you gooo to the dentist?” she said, somewhat accusatorily. I felt a defensive reply welling up, but stifled it, “ Every six months... no cavities!” Tonya leaned back in her metal chair, “That’s strange.. oh well.. I think..I sense something about...your LIVER!” I nearly chuckled at her groping investigation. “ I do enjoy my beer.”

“Ahhh..” Tonya toned, “ You need to drink more water!” She seemed satisfied at this, but I hadn’t heard a word about the reason I had signed up. We sat not talking for a few moments, the ticking of her egg timer the only sound as we sized each other up. Psychic or not, I figured she needed a clue. “You know, I was wondering about my back, it gives me a bit of trouble and..” Tonya’s face softened and she giggled, “ Now we’re on to something,” as if she’d ferreted out the information on her own.

She leaned forward again and closed her eyes. Abruptly, she straightened up and looked me in the eye. “ YOU... need to go to a gym.” Again, I stifled a chuckle. But when she got to the part about me lacking discipline, I had to let it out.

“ It’s true.. I’ve never been much of a gym rat.” I disguised my mirth about the pot calling the kettle black and Tonya went silent again and then said,
“ You know… maybe this message is for me.” That pretty much tore it. It was all I could do to NOT ask HER for five bucks, seeing as how I’d done most of the accurate psychic-ing.

The egg timer dinged and I thanked her and made my way out through the bead curtain. The song ‘Fortune Teller’ by the Who was running through my head as I signed up for the astrology reading. I was nonplussed by the inexplicable medical intuitive, but because I have read my daily horoscope in the paper for years, I figured the astrologist might be worth a shot. More than this though, I was checking up on this male figure that so interested my wife.

I was just admiring some fairly accomplished water colors of scantily-clad goddess figures when the wife returned. “You signed up for Wallace too?... Oh..he’s good.” Wallace was just coming out of the Meditation Cave. Socks and sandals; not a good sign at any kind of fair. I tried to withhold my judgement as I shook his hand. Wallace was a kindly looking guy, about 55, dimples creased his tanned face, a gold-lined tooth popped out of his smile, his long gray hair slicked back like George Peppard’s during the ‘Banacek’ era.

I followed Wallace back to another little room while the Mrs. chatted with a woman in a long peasant dress. Wallace’s set-up was impressive. A brand new lap-top with a neat astrological map on the screen graced the little table, an ink-jet printer sat next to some thick books covered with horoscope figures. Wallace asked me my birthdate, including the hour of birth in a soft-spoken voice.

He punched a few keys and grabbed a pencil to use as a pointer. “Here’s your saturn house with virgo rising..” he thumped the eraser on the table, as he flipped open a book. “ The confluence of these two planets here indicate a good month for you..” How could I argue? So far so good.

He tapped on the keyboard and a new screen popped up. “ Ohh.. ahh..this is Mercury ascending into the house of Uranus.” I didn’t need to be an astrology devotee to not like the sound of this, “You’ll feel some frustration, some uneasiness around this time.”

I was already feeling some uneasiness, so I asked him, “Can you pin down particular dates?”

“Oh sure.. just pick one,” I wanted to know about the predictions the Mayans made about the end of the world on my birthday in the year 2012. “Ok..let’s see..” Wally didn’t flinch. He tapped away at his keyboard and a big round map came up on his screen. “ It says.. ‘you will go on a long journey.’... but you need to have your spiritual house in order.” Wallace added. He frowned and furrowed his brow.

“I don’t think the earth will end..” he assured, “Let’s hope the Mayan’s calendar was a misprint.” I think that was supposed to be a joke, but I was still thinking about who to believe more, this man who sat in front of me with all the latest gadgetry full of the products of ages of refined theories, or the prognostications of a long dead culture of mexican indians who, really, had nothing to prove to anyone in the future.

Wallace didn’t have an egg timer, but he stood up and offered his hand again. He seemed ok to me, and his message was inert enough to have been at least as good as the stuff I read in the Times.

I grabbed Mrs. A just as she finished plunking down the cash for an ornate aromatherapy diffuser and escorted her past the coterie of be-gowned women and slickly dressed men with piercing eyes and stone jewelry.

Safely in the Van on the way home, I did damage report on our wallets.
“Well, I’m down only fifteen bucks..how about you, hon.” The Mrs. thumbed through her pocketbook and hesitated, “ Oh..I guess about...twenty...twenty-eight..thirty-eight..” before she could finish, I bailed her out, “ Don’t worry about it, sweety, as long as you enjoyed yourself, it’s better than going to the casino.”

She agreed and I thought about the comparisons. They both alleviate you of cash, and they’re both rooms full of smoke, but at least when you leave the Psychic fair with your money gone, it’s not the end of the world.