OUIJA

Man, I don’t know if the Ouija board thing was Patsy’s or Amanda’s idea —- hell, I can’t even remember which stupid Astrology sign is which, know what I mean? You come up to me and ask me my sign, I’ll despise you right off, that’ll do it —- that shit makes me crazy. Likely as not I’ll answer: yep, born on the cusp of the hammer and sickle. I love it when the wacko’s stare at me with that blank look, like, man, what the fuck sign is he?

Same with this Ouija business, I mean, here we were, revolutionaries by day, doing our little part to bring down the imperialist system and shit, and then, what do we do? Sit around at night trying to hook up with dead people? No no no, mama, not this baby boy. My only excuse was the weed, you know, I mean, I don’t wanna sound like a pussy, but if you get me high, I will follow you anywhere.

Anyway, this one night, something happened. It was just the five of us, as usual, nobody else really knew, so you fucking better not tell. Dinner was over and we’d toked up and opened another bottle of red. One of the chicks, oops, hey, I mean women, don’t start with me, ok? They pulled out the Ouija and I started in with the jeers and the wisecracks like I always did: gimme a break, here we go again, hey, did your aunt Mabel get laid last night on the other side, you know, and they’d sneer and make fun of me, Look who’s talking Mr. Big-Time Revolutionary from Big-time Louisville Kentucky, so I let it drop.

Linda set up the board and Amanda would drone out this incantation that she always used: “Oh, world of spirit, a world beyond us, tell us your secrets and tell us no lies.” Oh, my God. The first time I heard that, I nearly gagged. “Oh Christ-on-a-crutch, this is rich,” you know, I just couldn’t contain myself.

Anyway, I had only been the driver on this Ouija thing twice, both busts you know, I guess those spirits just don’t like cynical bastards like me. But this one night in question, Amanda kept bullying me into doing it again, bullshit like the ying-yang energy and she could tell they wanted a man, really, you’re making me vomit, Amanda, cut this shit out. I swear I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for the superior bong hits with some kind of hash Bruce had found the day before, so there I was: fingers lightly touching the little hockey puck in the middle of the board with the stupid swamy pictures and the numbers and alphabet, you’ve seen it, I know you have.

Let me cut to the chase here, I mean, I do not, repeat NOT want to convey the idea that I put any stock whatsoever in what happened, no matter what you may think, OK? Anyway, Amanda is like coaching me, and telling me to breathe and to close my eyes, and I kinda do, and I’m grooving along with the hash buzz, and then, well I dunno, really I guess you’d call it a trance. OK…watch it, baby, I’m just here to tell you, I like went someplace, and everybody in the room kind of went there with me. All I know is that when I snapped out of it I was covered in sweat and I was as cold all over as I had ever been, which was really not that easy —- it was summer in Washington DC, you know, you just don’t get that cold, right?

I looked around at skinny Patsy and fat Amanda, and beautiful Linda and scraggly Bruce, anyway, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz — you were there, and you and you and you. Linda had like a pad of graph paper, and she’d put little letters into the little boxes. She was grinning at me and waving the pad of graph paper. What the fuck happened, I asked. I want to tell you, I was more than a little freaked. Did somebody lace that hash? They were all kind of laughing, and patting me, and Patsy handed me some wine.

And then Linda asked, was I ready? And then she read the little words off the graph paper:


WILD ELK BALTIMORE CHARLES BETTY ASK FOR BETTY THE BOOK THE BOOK


OK so here’s the wierd part. The next day at work Patsy comes to me, this was before we started sleeping together, but we were already warming up to the idea, and she like knew how prickly I was about this Ouija stuff, and she said, hey Nick, are you ready for this? Ready for what? I sez. Well, sez Patsy, We looked up Wild Elk in the Baltimore phone book, and then she shoves the yellow pages in front of me.

Wild Elk Occult and Spiritual Books, it says, right there in print, with an address on Charles Street. So…I’ll spare you the detail, OK? Yes, we went up to Baltimore that Saturday, and we found the fucking bookstore, and this wierd guy behind the counter sold us this book, it was indeed, called The Betty Book, you can check me on this. It was a whole thing about seances, some guy and his wife from the other side back in the 30's. Not exactly Das Kapital, OK, and all summer the girls read from this book, and there’s more, but I’m not going into it. I swear, I’ve tried all these years to forget this shit, and you’d better do the same.

It is really not relevant, that’s what I think.