As a twenty year old college sophomore I didn't really believe in the occult, magic, psychics, or ghosts. However, my good friends Candice and Bernice apparently did, and caused a kerfuffle when I resisted going into a fortune teller's tent at a carnival one Friday night near the end of a semester. "Come on Amy, live a little, take a chance, experience something new," were some of their loud taunts as they tried to drag me toward Madame Esmeralda's lair. I finally relented just to get away from all of the stares and guffaws of other carnival attendees triggered by the commotion Bernice and Candice were causing.
Believe it or not there were two other suckers in line before us, so I tried backing out although without success. "If that goddam Bernice wasn't an Amazon on the crew team," I lamented to myself, "I might have a chance to break her grip." However she was on the crew team, six feet tall with biceps almost like a guy's, and with a death grasp on my forearm, so I suffered in silence.
When it was our turn "at the table" I chuckled inwardly at the ridiculousness of Madame Esmeralda's outfit and manner. It looked like she had searched "Fortune Teller Wardrobe" on the Internet and adopted everything that it recommended.
Madame Esmeralda wore bright colors, mostly purple, red and gold. Her top was a peasant blouse with puffy sleeves with a drawstring at the neck, and her bottom was a full skirt with many layers and hues and a multicolored sequined sash that tied on the side. She looked like a walking garish jewelry store advertisement with her big chandelier earrings, bead necklaces, fake gold strands, silver bangle bracelets, and big clunky rings with obviously phony rubies and emeralds on at least four of her fingers and her left thumb. The piéce de résistance was a long scarf low on her forehead with her long brown curls extending downwardly from it, her heavy makeup with an obviously bogus beauty mark, dark smoky eye shadow, and matte red lipstick.
I started to giggle but Candice's blow to my ribcage cut that short.
I couldn't believe it as Candice and Bernice forked over $20 each, and made me contribute two sawbucks myself, with their tongues hanging out of their mouths they were so excited.
My incredulity was ramped up even more as Madame Esmeralda started her act as she dealt out tarot cards with a line that she must have gotten from some Grade B movie:
"Fear is dangerous, not the tarot. The tarot represents the spectrum of the human condition, the good, the evil, the light, and the dark. Do not fear the darker aspects of the human condition. Understand them. The tarot is a storybook about life, about the greatness of human accomplishment, and also the ugliness we are each capable of."
I fake gagged but Candice was too engrossed in what Madame Esmeralda was saying to deliver another blow to my ribs.
Madame Esmeralda proceeded to provide happy horseshit to both Bernice and Candice telling them about their future husbands, children, and careers, what pitfalls to avoid, and which of their dead ancestors were watching over them. Once she had imbued them with all of the drivel that she could conjure up she turned to me and said "So Amy – you are the skeptical one, aren't you?"
The fact that Madame Esmeralda could see skepticism on my face didn't surprise me at all – however it did surprise me that she called me "Amy" because I thought that I didn't give her my name, and neither of my friends called me that in her presence. I recovered quickly, however, assuming that I just must have forgotten. Then staring into my eyes she continued as she moved the tarot cards out of the way on the table and held my hands:
"The tarot is not for you Amy Williams..." that freaked me out because for damn sure we didn't give last names, "but your aura is strong and readily discernible. You are impetuous and will make six major mistakes before your thirty first birthday. You will dodge the bullet five times, but the sixth will bring you great heartache."
"What the fuck?" I said to myself. "Madame Esmeralda tells Bernice that she'll have five kids that will all get full athletic scholarships to Ohio State, and that Candice will become a U. S. Senator by the time that she's forty, and she tells me that I'll be a fuckup?" I almost asked for my money back as Madame Esmeralda released my hands, bowed her head, and said "My clairvoyant abilities have left me for the evening," as the way of dismissing us.
As we left her tent Bernice and Candice thanked Madame Esmeralda profusely while I mumbled very unladylike swearwords under my breath.
"Wasn't that like, I mean like, really amazing," Candice giddily spouted out.
"Stop your fucking valley girl act with your 'likes' and 'amazings' Candice, you moron," I snapped.
"Just because you didn't get a fortune that you liked don't spoil my fun," Candice pouted.
"You better watch your actions in the future, Amy, Madame Esmeralda sure seemed to know what she was talking about," Bernice chimed in.
We argued for a bit more as we walked, finally got distracted by some hot guys at one of the "games of skill," and rode the Ferris Wheel until we almost puked.
Aside from pissing me off as I fell into an uneasy sleep that night, I didn't give much more thought to Madame Esmeralda's bullshit until much later.
***************
The first semester of my junior year I must have had a brain fart because I totally missed an assignment for an economics term paper that was due two days after it was brought to my attention by one of my classmates. The professor who taught the course was known to be a hard-ass-bitch who wouldn't give an extension unless you were in the hospital with a communicable disease, and who was well known for ferreting out the type of crap that I normally used (along with my feminine wiles with male professors) to get extensions. I really needed a B+ or an A in that course if I wanted to get into a good graduate school, so I was frantic.
I didn't know how to deal with my mistake when a thought suddenly occurred to me. Julie, one of my best friends from High School, was an economics major at UCLA, about two thousand miles and many conferences and associations away. I called Julie up and asked if she had anything close to a paper on franchise theory. She had written one for a course in her sophomore year that she had gotten an A on and was willing to email it to me provided that I made substantial revisions. Julie told me that it had been submitted to a plagiarism-checking software database but also what the shortcomings of that database were.
When I reviewed the paper it was near perfect for what I needed. I added a few quotes from sources that Julie didn't use, revised it to defeat the plagiarism-checking software, and was finished an hour before it was due. I put it in pdf format and emailed it to the professor and got my confirmation a few minutes later. When I got the paper back a week after submission it had an "A" emblazoned on the top and "Great job," in the margin.
I called Julie up and thanked her profusely. "You dodged a bullet on that one, didn't you Amy; don't make that mistake again," was her chuckling reply.
That was the first time that I thought of Madame Esmeralda since the night that I left her tent. I shrugged it off.
*****************
My senior year in college I was very friendly with a safety on the football team named Winston. While we weren't actually dating, we had a mutual interest in sex and could be considered good fuck buddies. Winston was well endowed, treated me nicely, and could get it up three times a session, so what was not to like? I was on the pill and not worried about an unwanted pregnancy, and he assured me that he was "clean," and that I was his only friend that he fucked without a condom.
That is I considered Winston a good fuck buddy until I got a certified letter from the college's health center: In relevant part it read:
"Mr. Winston Biles had identified you as a recent sex partner. It is necessary that you come in immediately for STD testing since Mr. Biles has been determined to have a communicable disease."
I called Winston's cellphone and got voicemail. I used every swearword in the book in the message I left, letting him know in no uncertain terms that I'd smash his balls into paste if I ever saw him again.
Since the letter didn't specify what the STD was, and since I couldn't get to the health center the next day, for twenty four hours I was certain that I would die of AIDS. I was a slobbering ball of self-pitied protoplasm when I finally did stumble into the health center, letter in hand.
At least there was some good news – it wasn't HIV that Winston had but Chlamydia. However, that was only minor good news because Chlamydia can cause serious, permanent damage to a woman's reproductive system, making it difficult or impossible for her to get pregnant later on, and can also cause a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy.
As a precaution the health center immediately started treatment because it took five to seven days to test for Chlamydia. The antibiotic that I was given would eventually cure me of the condition if I had it, but it would not repair any damage that had already been done. I had been fucking that bastard for four months so I could already have permanent damage to my reproductive system.
It was hard to concentrate in school until my test results came back six days later. I was required to go see a nurse to get the results. Pleasant elderly Nurse Nancy Hines came into the examination room with a big smile on her face. "I don't know how it's possible since Mr. Biles had Chlamydia for several months and according to our last interview you had unprotected intercourse with him ten or twelve times in that period of time, but you didn't contract Chlamydia from him. Since you never had the disease there can be no damage as a result of it."
I dissolved into tears of relief, and Nurse Nancy hugged and comforted me. I finally regained my composure and thanked Nurse Nancy. As I was walking out the door she chirped "You dodged a bullet this time, Amy – but please, don't make the mistake of unprotected sex again."
I thought of Madame Esmerelda once again – but only fleetingly since I was now preoccupied with revenge on that bastard Winston. Before I could even hatch up a suitably diabolical plan, however, I saw Jennifer Crimson crying outside the library. I stopped to comfort her and find out the reason for the tears.
