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Sunday, November 23, 2014

"I should warn you, there's a severed hand on the wall."

So, last week my work had a mandatory meeting at eight o clock in the fucking morning, outside of the office. One of my work friends lives considerably far out from the city, and so she asked if she could stay at my place. I said yes, because I quite like her and because I had access to an air mattress. Only after agreeing did I then have the moment of, "...aw, shit, she's going to see inside the house. SHE'LL KNOW."

The guy who sits next to me at work seems to think I'm a Satanist, but I think that's probably because of my Baphomet tights and the fact that he's maybe not the brightest man alive - I overheard him say that the pyramids aren't that impressive because they are just "shit stacked on top of other shit."

Duh, dude.
Most people are aware that wearing all black all the time just means you have terrible taste in music, and I like to think that I present a relatively normal face to the world. This facade crumbles once you get inside my apartment, because my apartment is very small and so even if I were inclined to hide my shit, there is literally nowhere to do so. Normally I don't care, because the only people crossing that threshold are people who are weirdos themselves. Oh, and Arnt, but he dates my sister so he's used to this bullshit already anyway.

But normals, you guys. The burlesque community has quite a few pagans and witches in it, and I've actually come to expect the nerd community to be either left of centre on spirituality or total atheists. I live in Vancouver, for fuck's sake - there's a lot of hippies here. So I sort of forgot that no, not everyone is down with the eye of newt.

I've had a few conversations with a friend lately that had me sitting there going, "you DO know what I am, right?" and then coming to realise that it was possible she hadn't pieced it together yet. There's also ample evidence that alternate spiritualities are NOT a thing she's researched, which of course baffles me but is possibly quite normal? I don't fucking know anymore. I assumed everyone close to my age had a high school coven, or went off to college and started telling everyone god was dead.

Anyway, as a result of these conversations, I was a bit nervous once I realised the woman staying with me was married to a Mennonite. Not because that's fucked up or anything, but because I honestly was concerned she'd be creeped out by my dumb house. Which was silly. Just because my one normie friend was scared of witches didn't mean ALL of them were. ...Right?
Pictured: Subtle clues.
Actually, yes, right. Here's the anti-climactic ending: she loved the decor, including the Hand of Glory on the wall, we stayed up chatting slumber party style, and like all polite adults she didn't say shit about the bookcase. Seriously, I can wind myself up over the dumbest things.

The moral of the story is this: nobody cares, and that's exactly as it should be.

Also: if your cat is a goblin, it will shove its gross goblin face into your guest's at some ungodly hour of the morning.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Tarot for Tips

Friday night I was lucky enough to be invited to read cards for donations at the Neil E Dee Danger Thrill Show at Lana Lou's. The venue is actually really nice, and has the bonus of having booths in the back so that I could give readings in a fairly private environment.

The crowd was super fun, friendly, and generous. Not gonna lie, I was expecting to make enough to maybe pay for my drinks, but I walked away with enough to finance a little shopping spree and also two free glasses of wine. The evening was almost totally enjoyable.

Almost because of this one fucking guy.

So, a surprising number of people got their readings done with another person present - friends, partners, whatever. This one lovely goth chick came in with her handsome fella and I did as I do and asked her which deck she would like: the Rider or the Thoth?

Her fella, I realised, was quite drunk. He reached over and tapped the Thoth deck. "That one. That's the real one."

She seemed happy with the choice so I figured, fuck it, not going to ask what the fuck that's supposed to mean. I did ask him if he were a magician, thinking maybe this was some sort of metaphysical dick-swinging contest because he was an OTO freak or some shit, but he said nope, he wasn't.

All night long, I'd been doing Celtic Cross spreads with additional cards thrown if the client had additional questions. This is because when reading for strangers, I tend to read pretty fast - 90% of them do not give two shits about what the symbolism in the cards means, they want to know if they're gonna get laid or make it rich. So I laid out the cards and I realised the dude was frowning heavily as I turned them over.

"I don't do reversals," I told them. Which is true - I don't. The fella voiced his opinion that he believes cards fall rightside up or not for a reason, and I smiled and said that that is totally valid, but it's not my method. I've used reversals before in my fifteen-plus years reading, and to be frank I find they don't really offer a lot to a reading provided you're using a decent spread. His girlfriend sort of brushed him off and he subsided... but then proceeded to roll his eyes and make noises for the duration of the reading.

I've read for a lot of people. I've read for genuine nutcases, people who don't believe in divination (this actually happens more than you'd think), and the cataclysmically wasted. But I honestly don't remember ever having someone so aggressive sitting at my table before... and it wasn't even his reading! Throughout the entire encounter I tried to only focus on the woman, and stay as friendly and open as I always do. But holy bejeebus was it hard. One of the cards he was pissed I had flipped around I actually turned upside down for his benefit and said, "okay, so if we read this reversed it means this..." which considering the position, was basically what I had fucking said in the first place anyway. I figured if I played nice maybe he would back off and let his lady enjoy herself, but no.

When the reading was over, the woman went into her purse. Her fella looked exasperated, but thankfully got the fuck out of the booth so I could lean over and tell her NOT to give me money because I was thrown off and consequently felt that I had done a shitty job. She told me no, she was going to pay me if only for my patience. I actually have a feeling she overtipped me because she was embarrassed. At the time I would rather have had her keep her money, but whatever, it means today I got to buy a sweater so I guess it all worked out in the end. Dude probably didn't get laid that night either, since she seemed pretty pissed.

I'd been slammin busy all night, but I got lucky and had a few minutes to chill out and get back in the right headspace by drinking a little more wine and focusing on the High Priestess card for a bit.

I got home around one thirty in the morning. I probably could have stayed later and made some more money, but I was frankly exhausted by that point. Saturday I kind of slugged around too , still feeling drained. I slept in today which helped, and tonight when I go to the gym I think I'm going to make a point of visualising sweating out the icky vibes, then come home and do a proper cleanse. (Catching up on my blog reading I see Deb has a timely post regarding that.)

Overall though, I would totally do the event again. I just might ask dicks to wait outside next time.