Marrying George Clooney

madame reverend: psychic junkie part 4.

I am a firm believer that there are no coincidences in life. And I have plotted and planned more coincidences than I care to remember. Like my serendipitous ‘run in’ with a guy I had a mad puppy crush on: “Oh my god, can you believe that here we both are in an Appalachian village in rural Virginia at the same time? Is this not fate, is this not a sign?”

Yes, it was sign that I was cuckoo.

The Ansonia Hotel sits on a corner of 73rd street and Broadway. A massive gothic building that is known for its spook factor along with its famous and infamous residents. Everyone from Babe Ruth to Angelina Jolie has lived there. It was also known for both the Continental Baths, and Plato’s Retreat. And while nudity had absolutely nothing to do with why I was there, let’s just say when you’re visiting a clairvoyant there is a sense that they are in fact seeing right through you. This was in the 70’s, and along with the whole couple swapping, orgy, free love, Bette Midler/Barry Manilow gay baths scene, there was a whole other scene taking place: clairvoyant readings, psychics, tea leaf readings, séances, and astrologers. It was the place to go for any sort of spiritual craving.

My friend – who I dragged along – and I went to see Reverend Madame, a very tall, very large woman who wore a long white robe, and turban, and wore strands of heavy necklaces that would actually clank when she walked. She was very well known among the clairvoyant set, and very particular, and folks waited outside her apartment, in the hallway, where a take-a-check not unlike the one you find in a Bakery was standing, so that each of us would have a number when and if we were called, or plucked out of the line. Chosen. This was all a part of the scene, the mystique. She could only see – read, intuit – twenty people in one session. That’s it. No more. More than twenty would ‘fog’ her energy field and she couldn’t read, or see, or intuit anyone or anything. Her whole pricing plan was based on ‘a donation,’ because when you are a true psychic intuit clairvoyant reader, it’s a calling, and therefore one should not charge for it. But if you are paying rent, or have a mortgage, or wear a lot of jewelry, you need a little bit of dough to get you through the lean months. The minimum donation was twenty dollars. I gave the minimum, as did my friend, who begrudgingly placed the twenty on the ‘donation’ plate. I would wager that a good many of us waiting to see her made the decision to give up eating for a few days so that we could catch a glimpse of her brilliance and insight.

So, there we are, standing on a long, long line, with a bunch of other hopefuls. I felt like I was auditioning for A Chorus Line. And then my friend and I get plucked out, along with another woman who looks awfully familiar to me, like I knew her, or had seen her, but couldn’t place her. But she had that familiarity of a person long lost. We gather in a room, a living room, and candles are lit everywhere, very seductive, very moody. We sit in a semi-circle. A chair, a huge wooden chair – a throne type chair – is placed up front, facing the semi-circle. We all take a seat, and wait. We’re asked, by a small thin guy with a bad haircut, to be very, very still, Reverend Madame likes quiet and still, she needs quiet, if there’s noise it will unsettle and unravel her and then she can’t and won’t be able to do a reading. Uh oh. I can’t help it. It’s very hard for me to just sit. I am trying to be quiet, to be still. My friend is fidgety. Crossing her legs, uncrossing her legs, trying to find a place for her hands, and arms, folded, to the side, on her lap.

A few moments pass. The woman from the line, the one I felt this connection to sits directly across from me. She is very pretty, really beautiful, and there is something, something, I can’t quite pinpoint, but it just seems awfully …like I know her, or have seen her. I’m trying to place her. I ask my friend, in a whisper, if she seems familiar, she shakes her head, no.

Oh, the big moment. The lights dim, the candles flicker, and Reverend Madame walks in, followed by two very young handsome and shirtless men. Her concuboys. She sits on her throne; they kneel on either side of her. See this is what I want, I want a throne, or at the very least a big comfy chair, with two men on either side of me and they don’t need to be shirtless, they just need to be able to kneel. She says a prayer, a few things that are in tongues, and then the shaking of the head and a couple of body spasms, and then she says we can either write down one question on a piece of paper, and yes, a pad and a pen will be handed to each of us, or we can simply stand and ask our one question. I chose the pad and pen. I write my question. My question is:

Is my boyfriend Jonnie Brenner cheating on me? And does she see an Academy Award in my future, or any gold trophy?

I know, two questions. I was pushing my luck.

Here’s the money question: What do you think the chances are that two women in that room on that day ask the same exact question about the same exact guy? One of the women lives in New York City, the other woman lives on Long Island and their boyfriend; the cheating motherfucker lives out in Queens. What do you think the odds are that both of them are in the same building on the Upper West Side, in the same Clairvoyant’s living room, at the same exact hour, on the same exact date? Slim to none?

This is what happens: Reverend Madame closes her eyes, puts her hand in the fishbowl and pulls out a question. She reminds us to please stand up after she asks the question so that she can look directly at the person she is speaking to.

This is the question Reverend Madame reads from the piece of paper in her hand: “Is my boyfriend Jonnie Brenner cheating on me?”

I stand up, and the beautiful girl across from me, the one who looks so familiar, also stands up. We are looking right at each other. The Reverend asks which one of us asked the question. We both raise our hands. There is dead silence. Well, she says, I guess your question is now very clearly answered. Yes, he is cheating on you.

There are how many women in New York City? And how many of them have boyfriends that are cheating on them? Well, I guess that doesn’t narrow the field much, but what are the odds – like twelve million to one – that the two women who are being cheated on by the same motherfucker guy are in the same exact room, in the same exact place, asking the same exact question to the same exact woman named Reverend Madame?

And because this was not the era of cell-phones or text messaging, or caller ID, we – the two of us – go down to a payphone in the lobby of the Ansonia, standing nose to nose in a phone booth. She dials his number, because she knows it by heart, and when he – Jonnie Brenner – answers his phone, we scream in unison:

“You cheating piece of shit.”

And then we – the two of us – part ways. I mean, really, what do you say: Gee, you’re the one he was calling every fucking twenty minutes when we went to the movies and dinner, because he told me that his mother was very, very sick, and he was just so fucking worried about her? Nah. I don’t think so. You’re the one he was fucking when I was calling him and he wasn’t answering the phone for three fucking days, and he lied to me and told me that his frigging phone was broken and he was waiting for a repairman… for three fucking days? Nah, I don’t think so. And then I wonder what kind of bullshit excuse was he giving her when she asked the same exact questions? Nah, I don’t want to go there.

I went back to my apartment, she went home to Manhasset, Jonnie ended up in rehab for drug and alcohol abuse, and my friend, the one who I dragged with me, stayed for the rest of the clairvoyant readings with Reverend Madame, ended up having a torrid love affair with one of the shirtless men, and moved to Colorado, where they have lived together for over 30 years.

Un-fucking-believable.

Or not. Depending on how you feel about coincidences.

I wasn’t so much lonely, as I was choosing men who were really wrong for my life.

So not to embarrass anyone, I will stand up in front of the entire room and admit – bare my soul — with sheer conviction that yes I did call those 800 numbers, and the 900 numbers, the Psychic Connection, that’s right, the Dionne Warwick psychic connection hotline — and yes, I did dial a psychic for three bucks a minute and yes, I had a phone bill that was so astronomical – so monumentally huge – that my father almost had a coronary stroke. And I wasn’t even living at home, but when the bill came, I rushed to my dad’s office and declared: “Oh my God, if I don’t pay this they’ll shut it off.” “What in God’s name were you doing?” he asked me while turning deathly white. “Looking for love, pop, looking for love.” “What’s wrong with the Bowling Alley, some nice fellas.” “Yeah, I know…not the same.”

We made a deal with AT &T.

It creeps up on you, suddenly. You’re watching TV and then the “Hi, how are ya?” commercial comes on, and she tells you, all in a close up, that she knows all about your future, she has all the answers and she knows you’ve been heartbroken and sad and lonely and she can help you, she can mend you heart, reignite the flame, guide you, help you find financial security. These commercials usually start up at around 11 o’clock, the vulnerable hour. You’ve already, I’m guessing, watched your favorite TV show slash series, the one with the sad yet sexy cop and you’re drifting, floating in and out of the nightly news with it’s ghastly images, when you click through other stations and there she is: looking directly into the camera.

Hi. My name is Juanita. I can see your sadness and fear, that loss of job, that man who left you high and dry, the house in foreclosure, the troubled children and the hemorrhaging bank account. I can read your future and trust me, as bleak and awful as it is now, your future is filled with great happiness and huge benefit, and really it’s just around the corner. You should call me now at 1-800-FOOL, that’s 1-800-FOOL, and for those who only have rotary phones, 1-800-3665.

It’s tempting. This shit is tempting. Your boyfriend, or girlfriend breaks up with you, worse yet, does not return any of your phone calls, which by the way, in my book, is worthy of being tried and convicted without trial. A not returned phone call is a crime. Period. Anyone who tells you they don’t give a shit if someone calls them back is as full of shit as the person who is not calling. It’s rude, it’s unnecessary, and it’s just plain disrespectful. I’m starting a petition: No return phone calls, no daylight.

I call this Juanita person. I ask her the top tier questions: Is the guy I’m dating true blue, does he have an ulterior motive, is he working where he said he was working, and is this relationship worthy? And what does it look like for me in the job market? She says she needs to go deep in, have a moment or two of meditation – I could’ve sworn she said medication – and so I channel surf, while I’m cradling the phone.

On another channel, another psychic, with a crystal ball in the background, is offering – along with a reading – an herbal concoction that will help stimulate the sex juices. “We all can use a little extra UMMMmmph.”

While she was selling “ummmph,” my psychic was meditating, or maybe medicating, but she seemed to be gone for a while.

Juanita didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Not a clue, and there was a point in the conversation, mid way, when all of a sudden it was I who was giving her advice, and job tips, and helping her make some life choices and decisions. She tells me she misses her boyfriend so badly it hurts. I ask if he’s on vacation, or maybe, he’s away on work, out of town on business. No, she tells me, her boyfriend is serving time in prison.

Huh, I say, white collar?
Uh uh, no, she says, uh-uh, he’s serving life.
Life? I say.
Uh huh, she says, he murdered a couple of people he didn’t like.
Huh. Prior to this uh, killing murder thing, was he seeing a therapist?
I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. You think he really loves me? I love him so much. You think I should wait for him?
Well, truthfully, I tell her, I have a hard time waiting on line at Fairway, so I’m thinking I’m not the right person to ask.

Oh. Kay.

So, tell me, how does it go from my calling a psychic to find out if the guy I’m seeing is a psychopath, to the psychic telling me that her boyfriend, the love of her life, is in prison for murder.

As a friend of mine always says: crazy shit breeds crazy shit.

Gary didn’t much believe in the afterlife.

He didn’t.

He wasn’t a spiritual type.

He played the stock market, and often described events and people in ‘market’ terms.

He believed in living in the moment, being completely and utterly true to his word, and living life fully. He was cool and sexy and rode a motorcycle, and owned a hugely successful bar (actually two) in New York City and had a bunch of young and sexy girlfriends – as in ‘gold bullion digging’ young, sexy girls – who didn’t have a clue how lucky they were that they were with him, because, well, he had a wonderful big gigantic heart. They didn’t care much about that because what they saw was the long hair, and the sexy face, and the gorgeous eyes, and the Harley Davidson that was parked outside the Bar, and of course, they saw the Bar with the cash register that went ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching every single minute on every single night, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights when you couldn’t even get into the Bar because it was so crowded. I asked him once, while a few young sexily clad women were draped and hanging all over him, what it felt like to be Mick Jagger, he said, “Good, real fucking good. This pays dividends.”

Gary died in a motorcycle accident. But before he died in a motorcycle accident, he went to the Caribbean, where his boat capsized and he was all alone, literally, in the middle of the ocean, clinging to both his life for four days, and a new found God, and it appeared that God found him, and he, Gary, said he remembered so much while his skin was literally baking in the sun: every nuance of his life flashed in front of him. He begged for forgiveness, he screamed at injustice, he wept at his horrible relationship with his parents, he was pissed at himself that he let the one girl he loved get away, he was out-loud livid that two of his close friends screwed him out of money, he was grateful that he could build a bar, and refurbish all the rooms in his gorgeous townhouse with his bare hands, he was deeply appreciative that he was generous and kind and that he truly deeply loved life. And he also, while baking in the sun, remembered that a psychic told him that he would die before he was fifty, and that in fact his death would be categorized as two fold, because he would actually “die twice.”

“What fucking bullshit. No one can die twice.”

He swore that the psychic ‘broad’ was completely nuts, “a fucking fruitcake.”

So, while he was both clinging to life and the capsized boat, he made a deal with God, to let him live just a little longer so he can make sure that he said good bye properly to all the folks he loved.

He lived just another year or so.

And in that year or so he prayed everyday to God, he went to church, he became a born-again, he found peace and faith, he gained weight, and met a woman who was close to his age and had some poundage, and one could even categorize her as an Earth Mother, and what was most beautiful about her was in fact her spirit and her laugh and the lines around her eyes. I told him she was the sexiest woman he had ever been with. “Yeah,” he said, “This one’s a triple AAA rating.”

And in that year or so, he managed to tell everyone he loved that he loved them all dearly and with all his heart. And a few folks who screwed him royally, he told them to rethink their lives. And a couple of the girls who draped themselves over him, he managed to tell them to stop hanging on to men, stand tall, and don’t give it away to some schmuck who has a wad of money and no intent on ever getting married.

He was killed in a motorcycle accident. Coming home from Long Island on one of those long crazy summer weekends.

He would tell you, if he were alive, that yes, that was in fact called two fold, and the first time he died – clinging to life on a capsized boat – that in fact it was he who saved himself, but he gave all the credit to God, because he made a deal, and Gary never reneged on a deal.

I am a firm believer that there are no coincidences in life. And I have plotted and planned more coincidences than I care to remember. Like my serendipitous ‘run in’ with a guy I had a mad puppy crush on: “Oh my god, can you believe that here we both are in an Appalachian village in rural Virginia at the same time? Is this not fate, is this not a sign?”

Yes, it was sign that I was cuckoo.

The Ansonia Hotel sits on a corner of 73^rd street and Broadway. A massive gothic building that is known for its spook factor along with its famous and infamous residents. Everyone from Babe Ruth to Angelina Jolie has lived there. It was also known for both the Continental Baths, and Plato’s Retreat. And while nudity had absolutely nothing to do with why I was there, let’s just say when you’re visiting a clairvoyant there is a sense that they are in fact seeing right through you. This was in the 70’s, and along with the whole couple swapping, orgy, free love, Bette Midler/Barry Manilow gay baths scene, there was a whole other scene taking place: clairvoyant readings, psychics, tea leaf readings, séances, and astrologers. It was the place to go for any sort of spiritual craving.

My friend – who I dragged along – and I went to see Reverend Madame, a very tall, very large woman who wore a long white robe, and turban, and wore strands of heavy necklaces that would actually clank when she walked. She was very well known among the clairvoyant set, and very particular, and folks waited outside her apartment, in the hallway, where a take-a-check not unlike the one you find in a Bakery was standing, so that each of us would have a number when and if we were called, or plucked out of the line. Chosen. This was all a part of the scene, the mystique. She could only see  – read, intuit – twenty people in one session. That’s it. No more. More than twenty would ‘fog’ her energy field and she couldn’t read, or see, or intuit anyone or anything. Her whole pricing plan was based on ‘a donation,’ because when you are a true psychic intuit clairvoyant reader, it’s a calling, and therefore one should not charge for it. But if you are paying rent, or have a mortgage, or wear a lot of jewelry, you need a little bit of dough to get you through the lean months. The minimum donation was twenty dollars. I gave the minimum, as did my friend, who begrudgingly placed the twenty on the ‘donation’ plate. I would wager that a good many of us waiting to see her made the decision to give up eating for a few days so that we could catch a glimpse of her brilliance and insight.

So, there we are, standing on a long, long line, with a bunch of other hopefuls. I felt like I was auditioning for A Chorus Line. And then my friend and I get plucked out, along with another woman who looks awfully familiar to me, like I knew her, or had seen her, but couldn’t place her. But she had that familiarity of a person long lost. We gather in a room, a living room, and candles are lit everywhere, very seductive, very moody. We sit in a semi-circle. A chair, a huge wooden chair – a throne type chair – is placed up front, facing the semi-circle. We all take a seat, and wait. We’re asked, by a small thin guy with a bad haircut, to be very, very still, Reverend Madame likes quiet and still, she needs quiet, if there’s noise it will unsettle and unravel her and then she can’t and won’t be able to do a reading. Uh oh. I can’t help it. It’s very hard for me to just sit. I am trying to be quiet, to be still. My friend is fidgety. Crossing her legs, uncrossing her legs, trying to find a place for her hands, and arms, folded, to the side, on her lap.

A few moments pass. The woman from the line, the one I felt this connection to sits directly across from me. She is very pretty, really beautiful, and there is something, something, I can’t quite pinpoint, but it just seems awfully …like I know her, or have seen her. I’m trying to place her. I ask my friend, in a whisper, if she seems familiar, she shakes her head, no.

Oh, the big moment. The lights dim, the candles flicker, and Reverend Madame walks in, followed by two very young handsome and shirtless men. Her concuboys. She sits on her throne; they kneel on either side of her. See this is what I want, I want a throne, or at the very least a big comfy chair, with two men on either side of me and they don’t need to be shirtless, they just need to be able to kneel.  She says a prayer, a few things that are in tongues, and then the shaking of the head and a couple of body spasms, and then she says we can either write down one question on a piece of paper, and yes, a pad and a pen will be handed to each of us, or we can simply stand and ask our one question. I chose the pad and pen. I write my question. My question is:

Is my boyfriend Jonnie Brenner cheating on me? And does she see an Academy Award in my future, or any gold trophy?

I know, two questions. I was pushing my luck.

Here’s the money question: What do you think the chances are that two women in that room on that day ask the same exact question about the same exact guy? One of the women lives in New York City, the other woman lives on Long Island and their boyfriend; the cheating motherfucker lives out in Queens. What do you think the odds are that both of them are in the same building on the Upper West Side, in the same Clairvoyant’s living room, at the same exact hour, on the same exact date? Slim to none?

This is what happens: Reverend Madame closes her eyes, puts her hand in the fishbowl and pulls out a question. She reminds us to please stand up after she asks the question so that she can look directly at the person she is speaking to.

This is the question Reverend Madame reads from the piece of paper in her hand: “Is my boyfriend Jonnie Brenner cheating on me?”

I stand up, and the beautiful girl across from me, the one who looks so familiar, also stands up. We are looking right at each other. The Reverend asks which one of us asked the question. We both raise our hands. There is dead silence. Well, she says, I guess your question is now very clearly answered. Yes, he is cheating on you.

There are how many women in New York City? And how many of them have boyfriends that are cheating on them? Well, I guess that doesn’t narrow the field much, but what are the odds – like twelve million to one – that the two women who are being cheated on by the same motherfucker guy are in the same exact room, in the same exact place, asking the same exact question to the same exact woman named Reverend Madame?

And because this was not the era of cell-phones or text messaging, or caller ID, we – the two of us – go down to a payphone in the lobby of the Ansonia, standing nose to nose in a phone booth.  She dials his number, because she knows it by heart, and when he – Jonnie Brenner – answers his phone, we scream in unison:

“You cheating piece of shit.”

And then we – the two of us – part ways.  I mean, really, what do you say: Gee, you’re the one he was calling every fucking twenty minutes when we went to the movies and dinner, because he told me that his mother was very, very sick, and he was just so fucking worried about her? Nah. I don’t think so. You’re the one he was fucking when I was calling him and he wasn’t answering the phone for three fucking days, and he lied to me and told me that his frigging phone was broken and he was waiting for a repairman…  for three fucking days? Nah, I don’t think so. And then I wonder what kind of bullshit excuse was he giving her when she asked the same exact questions? Nah, I don’t want to go there.

I went back to my apartment, she went home to Manhasset, Jonnie ended up in rehab for drug and alcohol abuse, and my friend, the one who I dragged with me, stayed for the rest of the clairvoyant readings with Reverend Madame, ended up having a torrid love affair with one of the shirtless men, and moved to Colorado, where they have lived together for over 30 years.

Un-fucking-believable.

Or not. Depending on how you feel about coincidences.

Years ago, there was an article in New York magazine all about past life regression. This was right up my alley. With an entire past life roadmap I get to a) find out how I came to be who I am in this lifetime, and b) why I make the same mistakes over and over and over again. It seemed like an awfully good way to spend both a major amount of money and a good solid five hours. A few ‘past life readers’ were referenced, but I decide to call and make an appointment with the one who came highly, highly recommended by the author of the article. A French woman, who miraculously had an immediate opening because someone had “just cancelled,” and tells me, in a lovely accent, that she takes cash. I ask if I can write her a check, she says yes, but cash is preferable. I like cash, she says. So do I, I reply.

For those who don’t know anything about a past life regression, you are under hypnosis, hypnotized, but not really. It’s sort of like you’re awake but awake two hundred years ago. Does that make sense?

I’m going to call this woman Francine. This is not her real name, but it’s the only French name I can think of right now. Francine lived in a small apartment that would have made the Collyer Brothers proud. She had newspapers and cardboard boxes piled up so high that I actually wondered if she was getting all her ‘regression’ information from all the front page headlines lying around. It seemed to me she had newspapers from the early 1900’s.

She was a petite, older woman, both very thin, and very stylish. I recall a string of pearls and a lovely large cocktail ring. I also recall that she was in her late seventies, early eighties. She asks me if I’ve ever done this before, I tell her, no, and she is delighted. She leads me to a leather chaise, which is surrounded by more newspapers. She tells me to please lie down, and make myself comfy. She then explains that most issues and problems, including medical and sexual, can be traced to an event or an experience from the past, and can be completely transformed and even eradicated through understanding the initial cause to alter the effect. Even a person who committed a crime, she says, like a crime of passion, or even a serial type killing. Cause and effect she says, but long ago causes, and ‘brand new’ effects, that appear in this lifetime. Like, she says, when you throw a baseball a hundred years ago and it comes back now. Huh. That’s sort of interesting. I know about cause and effect, although and I hate to admit it, I am not at all a baseball fan, so the analogy goes right over my head, literally. She asks me if there is any area in particular I would like to work on, or is this a general regression? I say general because there’s too many areas I would like to work on. It’s usually just one, she says, people have a specific area they want to work on. I don’t know what to say. So, we begin the journey. I am told to close my eyes, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…slowly … and now imagine that I am floating on a white pillow made of clouds, a cloud pillow. I need to really concentrate, I need to breathe, I need to really envision this white fluffy cloud, and that I am sitting happily, and joyfully with not a care in the world. And she starts counting backwards from like a thousand… nine hundred and ninety nine, nine hundred ninety eight, and weaves some kind of regression ritual into the
counting backwards, and I need to really focus and concentrate on the white cloud pillow, and I need to notice what it is I’m wearing, she says, starting with the feet up. What do the shoes look like that I am wearing? What century? What century, I think? Bergdorf’s, Twentieth. This is all very confusing to me. I’m not sure how this is supposed to work because I am not seeing myself on a cloud pillow, and I can’t see my feet, but as I breathe in and out, I can smell old newspapers. I open my eyes and call time out, and ask her to please, please help me get onto the pillow. I need your help, I tell her I can’t get up on the pillow by myself – I don’t know if it’s supposed to be a cloud pillow, or be a pillow in the clouds. She is now exhibiting frustration toward me. It’s a pillow, she says, a large white cloud pillow, just like a pillow I would buy at say Bloomingdales in their linen department, except it is up in the clouds. Okay. Okay. Okay. I can imagine shopping at Bloomingdales. I close my eyes and I imagine buying a pillow, a big white fluffy pillow with my credit card, and then I imagine the salesperson putting the pillow in a big Bloomingdales shopping bag, and then …then I imagine sitting on that pillow, and try to imagine being in the clouds on that pillow and to tell you the truth I got so exhausted from trying to envision this whole fucking scenario, I think I might have dozed off. Needless to say just like a Valium high. I was woozy, and giddy. I ‘recalled’ about ten past lives, all very strange and weird; one involved a murder, and another where I was a lyricist living in Ireland where my husband held me prisoner in what looked like an outhouse until I wrote lyrics for him because he told everyone in our small Irish village that he was the lyricist when in fact I was the lyricist. Which made me completely understand my issues with ‘giving away credit, as in my own credibility’ in this lifetime. And in another lifetime I was a man, and possibly gay (of course, perfect sense, look at who I was married to prior); and in another I was about to be guillotined, which explains all the arthritic pain I have in my neck in this lifetime, Weird, whacky and quite amazing stuff. And of course, one cannot, I repeat cannot, have a past life regression without having been someone utterly fabulously famous in the past, so it was I – me – who lived in Versailles, although there is no documented proof that it was I – me – who was in fact Marie Antoinette. This is the past life space I occupied on my white fluffy cloud pillow. And it was while I was “living” in Versailles, minding my own business, staring out one of the gazillion windows onto the perfectly manicured garden slash maze, that I began to hyperventilate – in French no less – because for one brief moment when I was both in the past and in the present – which by the way, is a very weird, strange place to be – I thought, “Holy shit, what if this woman – this regression woman – has a heart attack and dies, and I am stuck, literally, in the past?”

Who would I be? Would I be Marie Antoinette, but be in my present body? Would I start wearing long puffy dresses and wigs, and take the subway to work? Would I have a clue how to get back to the present? Would this become a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer playing me, playing Marie Antoinette? Or maybe, just maybe Robert Zemeckis would sue me for stealing Back to the Future and retelling it from a feminist point of view?

Needless to say, I manage with great difficulty to work through one more past life, this one taking place in the Wild West, where I was working and living in a travelling circus– not unlike the recent HBO show Deadwood – except my entire family, all twelve of them, were all midgets. But not me, I was the ‘normal’ size one.

And for this I paid two hundred and eighty dollars… yes, in cash.

I’m going to call her Mary.
Mary was not her real name, but she was, for a period of close to two years, my personal psychic slash adviser. A friend of a friend had seen her, had a reading with her, and said she was so spot-on perfect, so unbelievably accurate, that it was downright scary. And…and… she was a psychic to ‘the stars.’ That’s always a big major plus. Not only do you want her doing a reading for you, but you also want to get real buddy-like close, and have her spill all the juicy gossip about all her famous clients. I call her; we set up a ‘in person’ consultation and psychic reading. She comes to my apartment, an apartment I was sharing with a friend on the Upper West Side, and because it was a one bedroom, every month we switched off sleeping arrangements. It was my month to sleep on the pull out sofa in the living room. Mary walks in – she is very short (five-foot, five-foot one maybe), very tough (a tattoo with a dagger on her forearm), no mincing words (fuckin’ this, fuckin’ that), and has a noticeable limp. She looks around the living room, takes in everything, turns to me and says: “You are destined for greatness.” Wow. Oh. Wow. Destined for greatness. I ask her if she is sure she doesn’t mean my roommate? No, You (emphasis on you) are destined for greatness. I wanted to pick up the phone, call the guy who had just broken up with me and scream into his phone machine, “Guess what, you are so fucked, I, me, moi, am destined for greatness and you are such a fucking asshole fool.” But before I could even finish the fantasy, Mary tells me that a man with the first initial B, as in Bob, Brandon… Brian – BINGO was his name-o – was lethal to women, lethal, and was so lethal in fact, so incredibly fucked up, that she could see him, as in a premonition, in prison, serving time for tax evasion, and – and – not only would he cheat on his taxes, but she was pretty sure, had he not broken up with me, he would cheat on me.

Hey, I think, how does she know he broke up with me?

I spend an hour and a half with Mary and I am convinced that she is a genuine true blue intuit. This was before Google, so in fact there was no way she could have possibly known half the shit she knew about me. I ask her how often people consult with psychics; she tells me with an accompanied shrug and facial gesture some of her clients call her weekly, some every few weeks, but most every month. It’s very important to maintain your psychic relationship, and she offers me a special deal. For every visit, I can get a free phone consultation. I agree, and tell her that I will now have to get a full time job so that I can afford to see her and consult with her so she can tell me, because she is a psychic, when to quit the job because my big gigantic break is coming soon. She tells me I will make a lot of money being funny. Being funny, I ask? Yeah, like a comedian, like a funny comedy writer. I ask her how much money. She says a boatload. I ask her how big the boat is, she says big. I leave it at that. Some things you just want to be completely surprised about.

Mary and I see each other frequently, and talk often and when I feel unsure or want to know what’s going to happen, or could happen so I can be well prepared, I call her and she advises me. I now have a jump start on my future. Sometimes our conversations went like this: “Will he call me?” “No.” “No?” “No. Never.” “Why?” “Because he doesn’t like you.” “Why?” “You’re not his type.” “What’s his type?” “Blonde, blue-eyed, big tits.” For a rather small-cupped brunette that was not encouraging, but she saved me from myself enough times, and she liked me enough to keep me on the phone when she could sense I was unsure, or lonely, or feeling vulnerable.

She became a friend.

When my dog got lost, and he was gone for over a week, she knew exactly where he was. When I was let go – okay, fired — from my waitressing job, she knew the restaurant was going to call and re-hire me, when I met another god-awful wrong man who I absolutely believed was Mr. Right, she would tell me with ‘great patience’ that he was so fucking Mr. Wrong even a blind person could see it. When my mom had a minor heart attack, she saw it, she felt it and she called me, telling me she saw my mom’s ‘heart was blocked,’ but I shouldn’t worry because she will be fine. And sometimes she was just utterly and completely wrong, and boy oh boy did she hate being wrong. She hated being told she was wrong, and I was thoroughly convinced that she would put some kind of reverse psychic spell on it so that she could make it right.

I am in Los Angeles for five days. I am here on ‘screenwriting’ business, seeing friends, and it is Valentine’s Day. I am on a date with a guy I met through work, he being a television Producer. He takes me to some fancy-schmancy restaurant up in Malibu Canyon, and I’m on my second glass of wine, having just finished my frisee and pear salad with bleu cheese, when the headache starts up again. Pounding, pounding, pounding – it feels as if my head is going to split open and explode. I have been having horrible blinding headaches for about a month, and they keep getting worse, and here I am experiencing a god awful blinding headache, and this time, at this restaurant, on this first date, it comes back in a fury. I am trying to act normal, until I can’t any longer, and I tell this guy, this guy that I hardly know at all, that I’m awfully sorry, but I think I need to be rushed immediately to a hospital NOW, as in this fucking minute. I stand up, and ask him if he would like to take me to Cedars Sinai, or… or, and I would completely understand if in fact he didn’t want to, I could have the restaurant call me a cab. He offers to take me, but asks if we could just wait a few minutes, so we could get the food we ordered to go. We don’t have the time, I tell him. At this point, I am convinced that I am dying, and I don’t want to dilly-dally. Although, I don’t tell him that, it feels like too much information to share on a first date. He throws down a wad of cash to pay for a meal that is costing an arm and a leg not to mention a piece of my brain, and we make a mad rush out of there. He drives directly to Cedars Sinai in Beverly Hills, and we proceed to push our way up the queue in the Emergency Room line. This being Hollywood, I notice a couple of B slash C movie actors in the waiting room. Now it’s my turn with the emergency room nurse and she asks me what’s wrong. I tell her that I believe I have a brain tumor. My new friend turns absolutely white, “A brain tumor.” he says/asks. Yes I say, a brain tumor. I don’t think he wants to see me anymore. I think he wants to leave, and go back to the restaurant and try to pick up the cute waitress who was flirting with him, who, by the way, appears to have a very long life in front of her. The nurse gets me a semi-private room within the emergency room area, and my friend tags along. We wait for what feels like hours until the attending Emergency Room physician makes his way to see me. Long story short – they take an X-Ray, there’s a small tiny cluster that appears on the X-Ray, and I am now officially unofficially told that I have what appears to be a brain mass, or what is commonly known as a brain tumor. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.

They put me in a private room, where handwritten on a board directly above my head, it reads, “Brain Tumor.” My friend stays with me, and we get to know each other, because, well, clearly I don’t have much time left. We chat. He’s a Pisces, and loves Opera; I’m a Sagittarius, and I love the Rolling Stones. He loves algebra and calculus, anything and everything mathematical, I like none of that. He loves watercolors and ink drawings, I love sculpture and modern art. He loves Betty White. I don’t even know how or why that came up. I like romantic comedies, thrillers, and 40’s film noir; he likes sci-fi and musicals and loves, with a capital L, game shows. Clearly, this is not a match, not even close. But he stays, and I think he stays because he has no-where else to go, and for that I am grateful, but not grateful enough to engage in any sexual activity as a thank-you. Another attending doctor comes in, a small wisp of a guy, and asks me if there is anyone, a family member or otherwise, I would like to call. The specialist brain tumor doctor will be in first thing in the morning, to take a look at the X-Rays, but in the meantime, they’ll give me some pain medication to ease my pain: Percocet, percodan, and/or codeine. And again, asks me if there is anyone I would like to call. Yes, I say, I want to call Mary. “Your sister?” “No. My psychic.” If I wasn’t convinced enough that my new friend’s eyes glazed over with the brain tumor line, this certainly clinched it. I dial Mary’s number, I’m pretty sure she’s asleep – it is three hours later in New York – but, she answers the phone. I tell her I am in a hospital, I’ve just been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and… and…I knew it… I knew it, I just knew these headaches were life-threatening, and she stops me mid-sentence, interrupting me, telling me point blank, “It is not a brain tumor, whatdya fuckin’ kiddin’ me, who the fuck told you it was a brain tumor, they should have their fuckin’ medical license taken away, you wanna know what you have? You wanna know what’s wrong, you have sinusitis.”

Huh, I say. Really?
Yeah. Sinus headaches. It’s that time of year.
But I never had this before.
I never had a weight problem, but I have one now. You don’t have a fuckin’ tumor.

Well, she’s not always right.

My new friend asks, “So, uh, what did your psychic say?” with enough cynicism that I knew – it was all in his tone – I knew that he wasn’t a believer.
“It’s not good,” I tell him.

I spend the night. The nurses and attending physicians tiptoe around my room, treating me like the terminally ill patient I am, with kindness and the occasional handholding and the big toe grabbing. And then morning comes. My friend has also spent the night, having fallen asleep in the chair. The specialist comes in, a very lovely older gentlemen with a shock of gray hair and a lovely smile, and he introduces himself and says, I hope you didn’t call your parents because that little cluster that the attending emergency room physician read on the X-Ray was in fact the sinus cavity, and it appears that you have what is commonly known as sinusitis.

He then gives me a Claritin, which I can now buy over the counter at any pharmacy or drug store.

My friend asks me if I would mind terribly taking a cab back to my hotel room. Shortly after our date, he left the television and film business, moved back to Vermont, where he owns and operates a “Welcome to Vermont” tchotchkes store.

And according to another psychic, someday I will run into him, and he will avoid me like the plague.

And yes, I have sinusitis every year, right around Valentines Day.
And I still on occasion believe it’s a brain tumor, or brain cancer.

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.