Conscious Choice: I Was a Psychic Friend

March 2002

I Was a Psychic Friend

No, Really, I Was!

by Michael Hansen

A few years ago, for about five months, I told the future and read minds over the phone. Yes, I was one of those "qualified psychics" you see the talking heads pimping on their commercials. I’m not particularly proud to admit it, but at the time I felt I had no choice. And I have to say it was one of the weirdest jobs I ever worked.

I remember sitting one night on the couch in my underwear at two in the morning, unshaven, surfing the graveyard wasteland of TV. While watching some celebrity I’d never heard of touting the wonders of a particular phone psychic service, I got the bright idea of trying out for the job myself. You have to understand, I’d been taught tarot cards as a child and was very knowledgeable in them. I’d done them for money before; there was even one phase of my life when I was homeless that I was the in-house reader at a strip club, telling the dancers what they wanted to hear in exchange for room, board and other favors.

That was the key, you see, telling the mark what they wanted to hear. I have carnies in my family, and I hung out with some Armenian gypsies for awhile growing up. I was taught to know the cards, but to know the customer even better. Still, it’s scary just how often those cards would actually reveal hidden truths to me, truths I had no other way of knowing. Some of the old scoundrels that taught me even said I had a gift.

One night I called the number and asked the reader how to apply for a job. She gave me a number in Florida that I called. My job interview took place right then. The supervisor had me give him a card reading over the phone and I was hired on the spot.

I was given a number to call when I wanted to work, and a login code to get on to the system, which would rout callers to my home phone when they called the number given on the ads. It turned out I got the most calls on the graveyard shift, right at the time people are at their weakest and most vulnerable, when the demons are clamoring. That was when they called me.

The cards were a lot less useful here, I quickly found. I’d glance at the deck for a hint or two, but mostly I clung to the customer’s voice like a lifeline, trying to read what they wanted to hear, what they needed to hear, trying to keep them on the line as long as possible. I’d advise and cajole, flirt, talk dirty, chat about pretty much anything at all.

These calls came from all over North America, from Quebec and Texas, from Miami and Oakland. I would get drunken cowgirls wanting to talk about their pickup trucks, housewives wanting some stranger on a phone to let them know they were still attractive, old people eating cat food and wondering if their Social Security check was coming the next day or not.

Those were the ones I cut short: the ones where it was obvious they didn’t have the money. People telling me they were getting evicted and wondering if their dead spouse had hidden any valuables in the house. Single mothers on welfare with no food in the cupboard, wondering if their ex was going to feed the kids soon. I’d blow them off fast.

So many calls were about money, or boredom, or loneliness. A lot of lonely people just looking for someone to talk to. Sometimes I’d just talk with a customer for hours, like two dear old friends gabbing away. But the meter was always ticking in the background.

A lot wanted to share a secret with a stranger that they knew they’d never meet, knowing there’d never be a comeback over it. I talked with runaway teen prostitutes, male and female; drug addicts; the suicidally depressed. I heard enough sordid tales of adultery and embezzlement and sheer human moral weakness and vulnerability in action, that sometimes I felt like the underside of a bench where everybody’s stuck their snot after picking their nose.

I was a dumping ground, a confidante, and a totally unqualified therapist. I had a call from a guy (we’ll call him Joe). He was no rocket scientist, but he sounded like a decent enough sort. Joe was working two jobs to support his family. Joe’s wife had moved another guy into their house. She told Joe she no longer loved him, she loved this guy who was sleeping on their couch, home all day alone with the wife while Joe ran back and forth from job to job. The guy was watching TV in the next room while Joe was talking to me. I told Joe the cards said for him to kick this punk’s ass and dump his belongings to the curb. I got him as psyched up as a football coach working his team before the championship game then sicced him. From the sounds I heard on the other end before I hung up, I’d say Joe followed my advice.

A Cuban girl called me from a motel room in Miami. She’d just ripped off some major coke dealers, some pretty awful dudes; this major weight of coke was sitting right in front of her as we spoke. The trouble was they knew she was the one, and they were looking for her. She’d peeked out the blinds of her room, and seen flunkies working for the dealers she’d burned, cruising endlessly up and down the strip trolling for her. She was trapped in this scuzzy little motel, surrounded by neon-lit kill zones, and she wanted to know what to do. My first thought was the cops, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I looked at the cards for this one, and they were not good, not good at all. So I told her that it was all going to be fine, that she’d make it out okay. Just change her appearance as much as she could there in the room, and make a break for it when she thought the time was right. Oh yeah, and that the cards didn’t think calling the police was that bad of an idea. Some of my customers called me back, but she never did.

The one that really sticks in my mind, the one when it really stopped being fun, was when this woman in Oklahoma called and asked if she’d ever get together with her daughter again. As we talked, I discovered that her daughter was dead, murdered. Her real question was: would they find her daughter’s head in time for all the body parts to be buried together. Apparently the coroners of several counties had the various body parts, and they were being less than cooperative with this poor mother in her time of grief. I’ll tell you, it was pretty humbling. I mean, I felt absolutely powerless. Here was this woman in what was probably the darkest hour of her life, and the best she could muster up was me, some faceless schmuck on the other end of a phone connection that was siphoning $4.95 a minute off of her phone bill. I can’t remember what I said, but I stayed on the line a long time, just talking softly like you would to a wounded animal, or someone standing on the ledge of a very tall building.

Eventually I got a "real" job, and I was able to stop being a phone psychic. I was just as happy to quit: the moral aspects had been leaving more and more of a bad taste in my mouth as time went on. We were basically taking advantage of people at their weakest ebb, those who could least afford the exorbitant fees. In exchange, they got to talk to people who (at best) were totally unequipped to help them with their problem, and (at worst) would keep them on the phone as long as possible to make sure they vomited as much cash as possible. And it was exhausting to boot. Strange that talking to total strangers about life and death matters for hours on end could be so tiring.

In my life, I’ve had some strange jobs. I’ve been a bouncer, a taxi driver, a jarhead. I’ve worked flea markets and sold door to door. But being a phone psychic is definitely one of the strangest. If you’re interested in a weird, wild ride, I recommend trying it some time (a very short time). If, of course, you can swallow your moral compunctions.

This article previously appeared in Whole Life Times of Los Angeles, California.

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