For seniors during Halloweekend, the only thing scarier than ending the night at Sign of the Whale is the realization that graduation is less than a year away.
Faced with this existential dread last weekend, I decided to visit two D.C. psychics to seek insights about my future from the other realm. I’ve never been one for the mystic arts, but I was lured in by signs across the District advertising “$5 palm readings,” so I called up the closest psychic as soon as the sun set at 7 p.m.
Foolishly, I booked an appointment for that night over the phone with a psychic in Dupont Circle before asking the prices. When the psychic told me a palm reading was $50, I instantly tried to back out.
She responded that she “sensed” I was having financial concerns, to which I admitted that I’m a broke college student. She offered a discount of $25 for one palm while still on the phone, and, with my editor breathing down my neck about writing this story, I accepted and set off for Dupont.
The psychic was located on the third floor of a building tucked beside Decades and Rosebar. The elevator door, decorated with a depiction of a meditating being that looked more alien than human-reaching-enlightenment, opened to the psychic’s office. Religious and spiritual iconography covered every surface — an eclectic set of everything from angels to a sphinx — and the tables were littered with meditative objects like a Tibetan singing bowl.
The psychic, an early-middle-aged woman dressed in an outfit not far from what my own grandmother would wear, beckoned me into her palm reading room, which was only slightly larger than a closet with bare walls and dull overhead lighting lacking the charm of the mystical knickknacks in the lobby.
I stretched out my right palm, and she began moving her finger over it, reading the wrinkles and calluses for glimpses of my future.
After about 30 seconds, she asked if I was a musician, saying I had a musical soul. I’m not, but I said my girlfriend is, to which she said I clearly have an appreciation for the musical arts. One look at my Spotify Wrapped — filled with half the Oppenheimer soundtrack, Lonely Island songs and the best of Hans Zimmer — would confirm her reading, so she seemed off to a good start.
She brushed her fingers over the bottom of my palm and said I have strong creative lines. She said my current job doesn’t meld with my creative soul — I guess my Hillternship isn’t the most artistic pursuit — and I will eventually find a more creative pursuit. But she didn’t tell me to quit the job, instead saying I should stick with policy because she sensed that my craft still needed “some work.”
I’m a writer at heart, so she was right in the sense that I was honing my craft — she just didn’t realize I was doing it by writing about this very prophecy. I’m nowhere near the writer I want to be, but it still hurt to hear that the mystical realm agrees with my inner critic.
With my post-graduation career plans solidified — my creativity won’t take me anywhere just yet — she moved on to my romantic life. She said she saw two major relationships in my life, the second of which will lead to marriage. She added that I’ll be a father of two.
She then warned me that my heart, mind and soul are not aligned. But lucky for me, she said she has other aura cleansing services for the low price of $120 an hour. I politely declined, knowing that a handful of sessions would leave me bankrupt and likely more soulless than if I had just kept my cash.
Two days later, I decided to go to a second psychic despite my financial woes because my editor demanded a juicy story. After calling several psychics in Georgetown and being scared away by their prices, I found a candidate in Dupont Circle that seemed to offer affordable forecasts.
A sign that promised “$5 palm readings” stood in front of her building on Connecticut Avenue just a block from Kramers, so my friends and I walked in with about $20 in cash that we thought would cover all three of us.
We walked up four flights of stairs, with walls almost as antiseptic as a hospital except for one office’s Halloween caution tape and a diagram of the psychic mind, before reaching a door marked by nothing other than a Ring doorbell. We rang, and the psychic’s mother answered.
She beckoned us inside and knocked on her daughter’s door to ask if $5 was the correct price for a palm reading. The daughter opened the door, actively on a FaceTime call with someone who seemed to be her boyfriend, just long enough to tell us that it was actually $20 for one palm.
Two things were clear from our two seconds upstairs: our four $5 bills weren’t going to cover much, and the space doubled as the family’s apartment. Reluctantly, the psychic’s mom said they accept Venmo.
The psychic’s mom sat down on a chair in the living room facing me and said she was going to be handling the palm readings tonight because her daughter was busy (I suppose I support her dedication to rizz). Trusting that mystical powers must be genetic, I followed her directions and laid my hand flat on the coffee table and outstretched my palm.
As she dragged her finger gently across my skin, she told me that I was an old soul, meaning that I had been reincarnated hundreds of times. Of all the prophecies I’d heard up until that point that weekend, this one felt the most relatable to me: My mother always suspected I was either an Egyptian pharaoh or a velociraptor in a past life. I suspect I was just an extremely odd child who should have spent more time watching SpongeBob like a normal kid instead of the History Channel.
She then told me that my career was very important to me and that I have a paycheck coming in November. I guess the benefit of being paid biweekly instead of monthly is that this prophecy works twice a month.
She agreed with the first psychic that I was destined for a long life. Then, her focus turned to romance. She said I would be a “daddy of two,” like the first psychic. But they disagreed on who the love of my life would be. The second psychic said my current relationship will keep growing. She then said she sees me moving in with my girlfriend in a year, which would have been a correct prophecy a year ago. Since my girlfriend moved in this summer, the only way she’d move in again next year is if I kick her out now. I have a tough conversation ahead of me if I want to abide by the prophecies.
After my reading ended, my friends decided to get their own readings and coughed up their own $20 Venmo payments, but neither ended the session convinced of the psychic’s powers. One friend had a reading mostly focused on his career, which will apparently be law, despite his lack of pre-law affiliation. But my second friend seemed to throw the psychic for a loop.
She attempted to guess his sign three times before finally giving up. She then said the love of his life might be the “short blonde” that just entered his life.
There was just one problem with the prophecy:
“Blondes aren’t my type,” he said as we walked away.
