Marrying George Clooney

You will never find love.

Excuse me?

You will never find love.

But you said if I give you fifty-dollars you would tell me something amazing. You said that, you said and I’m quoting give me fifty-dollars I have something unbelievable to tell you.

Yeah.  That’s right. You will never find love.

I grabbed the fifty-dollars – three ten’s and a twenty – out of her hand, looked her right in the eye and said, “Hey, for fifty bucks you shoulda lied.”

I can’t leave fast enough.

She screams after me: “You’re gonna die.”

I scream back: “Yeah. Right. Eventually. We all will.”

Needless to say, I did not get out of bed for three days. Yes, I feared I would die, if not by natural causes, most definitely because this woman, this overweight, unkempt storefront psychic would put a hit out on me. She lured me into her psychic den by standing outside and as I was passing by, she said in a hush weird whisper, I have something amazing to tell you, I can see it, I can feel it, it’s your aura, I swear to Christ, I can see it. I of course being naïve believed that she was in fact reading my aura. Give me fifty-dollars I have something unbelievable to tell you. I want to state for the record that was all the money I had to my name, fifty and change. I had just cashed my unemployment check. I was looking at one hundred and twenty nine dollars. A good seventy or so was already spent on bills. But I was a sucker, and she was a suck-ette, and I walked into her psychic den where I should have known instantly – instantly – when out of the corner of my eye I could see OTB on the television in the adjoining room – which by the way, was only separated by a piece of day-glo velvet fabric – and in that other room, the “adjoining” room, was her husband, or perhaps her gigolo slash live-in lover slash hit-man, on the phone with his bookie.

I give her the cash – she counts: ten, twenty, thirty … fifty, and then she starts doing some weird shit with her eyes, and then she closes them or maybe they rolled back into her head and then she opens them. She looks at me, right at me. Then she takes my palm, looks at it, nods, ‘reads’ it, and then starts shaking her head, squeezing my palm. Then again with the rolling of the eyes and then announces: I need some more money, cash; this requires lighting candles and saying prayers, and ripping out the very bad aura that surrounds you.

Excuse me?

You will never find love.

Excuse me?

You will never find love.

Boy was she fucking wrong.

But just like when I lost my virginity, when I swore to myself, a personal private vow, that I would never, ever have sex again, at least not until I was married, I swore I would never, ever seek out a psychic ever again. And just like the vow I made after losing my virginity – which I did not at all keep – I continued seeing, calling, seeking out psychics, readers, clairvoyants, you name it, I sought it until I realized that I could have purchased a home in the South of France with approximately a hundred pristine acres, including a vineyard, for the amount of money I spent having many more crazy unkempt women and men telling me unbelievable shit that just was not true. And yes, yes, some that were spot on perfect, amazing, telling me stuff that no one – not a single soul – could have known unless they were in my skin, or tapping my phone line.

Yes, I was a psychic junkie. I was an addict. Readings. Horoscopes. Astrological charts. Birth charts. Clairvoyants. And I brought many friends – and yeah, a husband – along for the ride.

It’s been ten years, forty days, and thirty-seven hours since I spoke to anyone who claimed they could read my aura.