To be fair, I wasnt exactly paid this time- they were just given to me.
The FIRST time... hold on this one is pretty long and I'm used to telling it orally.
The year is 2019 and me and my girlfriend have been accepted to vend at a queer-focus pop culture convention in NYC. But the story isnt about NYC, it's about Ohio.
We need to raise funds to get there and one of the girls I worked with at the flower shop says that theres a show coming up and the guy running it says vending is free. It would make decent funding for the trip. The girl, Cadence, will be there doing her fire-swallowing act with her troupe of misfits.
It's at a bar. And drunk people love tarot readings. So I go, set up my table and my deck of cards and my sign and I wait for someone to bite.
My audience is a majority of regular bar-goers. It's a little slow. The entertainment begins. It's a comedian whose entire schtick is that he's from Cincinnati and he smokes weed, which isnt really funny or interesting or novel. Like the worst thing you can be as a comedian is mediocre and he got dead center of it.
So they get him off the stage before he hurts himself trying to be funny and brings on Cadence's band of misfits. Her fire act is usually the finale and they have one of the other performers (a drag queen) warm up the crowd with:
Audience Participation
I'm bored as hell, so I volunteer for the drunk games.
"We need one more volunteer from the audience!"
A hand shoots up and a woman in a long black ballgown bracketed by two men in Marine formal uniforms wobbles up onto the stage.
"And your name," asks the drag queen.
"Christine!" A chorus of woops and hollers from her friends in the crowd.
And now we have even teams for the game, which is the drag queen balancing a bowl on her face and us trying to land little plastic army men into either the bowl or her mouth.
So anyway, after the game I went back to my card table waited for the night to end.
Christine swishes her way to my table and says
"Oh my god you do tarot!!!???"
"Tarot me up, baby!" She is so very drunk.
She gets the World card, the two of coins, and I forget what else, but it was generally a good sign. And I told her my interpretation, which was that shes on the right track in life, she just needs to take some time for herself.
This is the most benign reading I have ever done in my life.
"Oh my god,oh my god, you are so right," she begins. Does she stop? She does not. "You are so so so so right. I come from a long long line of supernaturally sensitive people and when the sun and the moon are out at the same time it FUCKS with me! I am so in tune with the stars and shit, you dont even know! But lately I've gotten this feeling that I real FEEL people, you know? I really FEEL them. And I know in my heart I'm on the right path. And I was at this military ball just now-"
Ah. That explains the dress and the marines.
"And I had this epif... epif.... epifff-"
"That one! I had one of those that should become a life coach!"
She's kind of yelling. One of the marines walks over to make sure she's okay, and to give her her cigarettes. She holds his hand for a moment. "Dave... Dave... this person says I should become a life coach."
I look at Dave. Dave looks at me. I choose not to correct her. He has decided that I am not a threat. He leaves.
She rambles for a bit longer, about the sun, the moon, the stars, and multi-level-matketing. Slaps 5$ down on my table and says "ugh. Best 5$ I ever spent."
My rates are a but higher than that, but I'm not going to correct her today. But as shes leaving I notice she left her smokes.
She twirls around, completely spooked.
"How did you know my name??"
"Uh... magic. You left your smokes."
She softens. She sits back down. I'm afraid shes going to go on another rant. She pulls out two cigarettes and presses them firmly in my palm. She then grabs my face and says:
"You're beautiful."
Well. I'm flabbergasted. I say nothing.
"You know what, you're right. If you're gonna give someone two smokes you might as well give them four." And gives me two more.
She finally leaves. I have four cigarettes and five dollars and a lot of questions that wont have answers.
The man running the show comes to check on his vendors to make sure we're all doing fine. In his hand are two cigarettes. He sees the four sitting on my card table.
"I presume these are yours."
"No," I said distantly. "No, I think I just got paid in cigarettes."
"You know somethin', Matt?"