I wandered into a crystal store to buy some rose quartz, a stone renowned for its heart-opening capabilities. On my way to the rose quartz shelf I noticed a rotund psychic, sitting in the back of the store, casually texting and lounging on a chair in front of some mystical books. As I approached, she closed her eyes; I assumed she was entering a deeply meditative state, or she was just dozing. I stood in front of her, waiting, until her eyelids shot open, revealing two bulging eyes. We made contact, silently agreeing on our next move. She led me to a room in the back. Its walls were pale yellow.
As we sat down to begin the reading, I set my intention. I would ask about love. It’s a topic I haven’t broached in a while because I’ve been taking some time to work on myself. As she tuned in to her third eye and the infinite beyond and probably a bunch of other crystals at this store, I realized that I would have to tell her everything if I wanted to get some . . . answers.
After I spilled my guts, she jumped in to reassure me that a relationship was on its way. Then she said the pronoun: “He.” I glared at her, and so she backtracked. Obviously the guides had given her the wrong pronoun.
“Oh, actually I don’t think the person is a man,” I said, dryly.
“Not a man,” the psychic said, reassuringly. “But someone with male energy.”
She smiled as she said this last sentence, as if she knew all along that I wasn’t interested in men, and that this was all just a joke. I imagined the buttons of her too-small blouse bursting off, zipping through the air and snapping me across the face as if to say that the joke’s on me. Regardless, we continued the reading, a pleasant and productive use of $25 on a chilly-for-LA Wednesday afternoon. Soon we meandered away from relationship discussions, instead settling on comedy; she saw a future for me as a standup comic. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. She turned off her psychic guides and we laughed, and the reading finally started to feel real. But by that time, the reading was over. We departed casually; she returned to her lounge chair, and resumed her texting, meditating and dozing.
Right before I went to the crystal store for this casual psychic reading, I found myself sitting in a room filled with strangers who were sharing personal struggles and seeking spiritual solutions to their problems. I was in the mood to listen that day, not really feeling chatty — I just needed to clear my mind. I was trying to concentrate but kept getting distracted by a guy who was sitting next to me. He was glued to his iPhone, rapidly switching from a Tinder profile to a text message he had going with someone named “Erin,” to his phone’s photo album and then back to the text message conversation.
When he saw me looking, he shoved the phone in his pocket. As soon as I turned away he was back on it, gazing hard and longingly, concentrating, and probably ignoring the spiritual messages that circulated in the room. I spied on his screen, thinking that I might catch a dick pic or at least a salacious text. Unfortunately, I saw no such dpics or sexts. But I figured that at some point during the time we sat next to each other, he must have been sexting, an activity that I enjoy as much as anyone.
There was this guy I used to text with named Jonathan. We were friends; there was something really queer about him that I liked. He was shorter than me, wore white v-neck t-shirts, chain-smoked Marlboro reds, and always looked like he had a boner. He was soft-spoken and sweet. I liked him. We’d sit together at this coffee shop on Sundays with our group of friends, and I’d think about what type of d-pic he might send. After all, he was a great photographer.
One evening, Jonathan and I were casually texting as usual. It was late and we both had work the next day. The convo was getting emo so I threw in a sext to see what might happen. We were both single. He seemed taken aback, but responded that he was into this, and so we switched to sexting. In my mind I liked him but would this work in real-life? A few weeks later, he tried to initiate an in-person version of our sexting. I tried to visualize it but I couldn’t, so I suggested we just keep sexting. He didn’t take me up on that virtual offer; instead, we went out to dinner and ice cream just to make sure this wasn’t real.
Crystal Paradise is a weekly column published every Tuesday by Los Angeles-based writer Alicia Eler that navigates the naturally occurring weirdnesses that spark at the intersection of art, technology and travel.
