Actually, queerful dearest, that's not quite true. The last psychic I saw, who was eerily accurate in many ways, told me, "Real estate would be a great career for you."
Please, no! Don't make me sell the houses! I can't even find the houses! I'm not a 'houses' person!
But honestly, I love a good psychic, and I've been lucky enough to have some powerful readings. A psychic from the amazing Mystic Moon in Provincetown was so accurate that they even predicted I'd soon be signing legal papers. Just a week later, there I was, signing a financial power of attorney.
Boom!
More recently, I went to a reading at In Spirit in Northampton, where as soon as I entered the room, the mystic looked up and said, "Wow! In terms of health, you're entering an entirely new cycle." Just like that! And you know what? I'd just started my menopause, which seemed to be improving a health condition of mine. For several days before this reading, I'd been doing a Snoopy dance about this.
But that psychic also said the real estate thing. Plus she referred to she and I as "women."
I get why people make the assumption that I'm a cis woman, not least because I tend to present femme. Our whole world is one big gender binary, right? I remember an old friend who loved meringues and was worried about eating them in public. No, really. He thought meringues were kind of feminine. It's sugar and egg, dogdammit! But yes, even dessert gets gendered.
It makes me feel sorry for pavlova.
Anyhoo, when even the psychics can't see who I am, it makes me treasure my they/them pin, which is super-useful (except when the cashier in Whole Foods glares at it, then treats me frostily. People should remember that they/them pins have pins. "Don't offend people who have sharp, pointy objects," is a decent rule to live by.)
Still, I wasn't wearing my they/them pin when I was with the psychic. Painful as being misgendered is, psychics can't be expected to see everything, I guess. Some, of course, see very little. I learned this when I was a teenager:
Sometimes, when my parents went out and left me home alone, a psychic wearing a floral dress and crystal necklace would ring the doorbell, selling crocheted cushions and blankets. When I answered, this person would start telling me about my life—all that was soon going to happen to me. The predictions were general, but seemed scarily accurate, and it freaked me out so much that I'd sometimes hide when the doorbell sounded, fearing this psychic was "after me" again. I once even bought a cushion, since I thought it would stop them from cursing my future.
Understand my mother had told me terrible things about psychics. She had a serious condition that my father insisted wasn't a condition. She believed a man in France was controlling her mind through the electricity in our house, and my father, a Christian Scientist who was against medicine, accepted what she was experiencing as fact. Pyschics, my mother thought, could permanently damage your mind, hence the trigger.
Anyway, one day when the I decided to get brave. When the doorbell sounded, I answered and went along with the psychic's spiel, but I began to modify it. When they said, "You've got a difficult family. I can see that," I replied, "I know! It's because of my great grandma. She's just so angry all the time." (I had no great grandma.)
"Exactly," said the psychic. "And she's difficult. Causes no end of problems, doesn't she now?"
"She does," I said.
Continuing in this vein, I ended up with:
A troublesome sister,
A dead dog,
Divorcing parents,
An allergy to nuts,
A birthday in June.
I had broken the spell!
That said, if the psychic could have told me, "Non-binary people exist!" and " Your mother does have a condition and she does need medical help," I might have bought seventy cushions.
Because whether or not psychics can see the future, isn't it marvelous when they can see us?
I love you dearly, queerful dear,
Star
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