Derek’s Delancey reading

How a first date turned psychic.

A couple weeks ago my friend Derek came up to me unannounced at a happy hour gathering. He was a couple drinks deep and very excited to share something. He pulled me aside, “I went to a psychic”, he said, “she knew everything. She knew about Grace. About my exes. It was pretty wild.”

I was surprised, Derek is a relatively closed-off guy who (to my knowledge) does not engage much with spirituality of any kind, let alone even therapy or counseling. I needed to know more about his experience. How had he ended up not only getting a palm reading, but actually believing and buying into what he was told?

A couple weeks later I sat him down to hash it all out. Here’s how it went.          

S: Okay Derek, set the scene, how did this all go down:

D: “Alright; first date, hinge chic. Nicole. We get a bottle of wine (red of course) on the LES, some wine bar. Things are going well, we start talking about psychic readings, we’re talking about how many there are in NYC, and then we’re like let’s go get one. So, we talked to a few people to try and get a good recommendation- asked a few bouncers. People sent us all over the place.”

S: Wait, so- you asked random people where to go? Why?

D: “So, we originally looked it up on google maps and went to the location and it was just not there.”

S: Interesting, so who suggested the one you went to.

D: “One of the bouncers gave us the place we ended up at. We go, we walk in. There’s this girl who’s a little cross-eyed.

S: Haha, cross eyed. Okay, so paint the picture. What’s this place like?  

D: “It’s street level, a tiny room, but there’s a room in the back and her whole family’s back there, there’s like a kid back there in a crib.

S: And the psychic- what’s she like?

D: “She’s white, blonde, early thirties maybe. She’s wearing standard clothes, nothing special. Right as we walk in, she comes out and tells us the offering she provides which went all the way up to like 200 dollars. We chose the most basic one. Basic palm reading. Forty bucks.

She said the only condition is you have to do it separately. So, my date goes first, I go outside while she does it. Took like ten minutes. She comes out and I was like how was it? She’s like good, it was great, it was very introspective, whatever…”

S: Okay, so it’s you turn now, what happens?

D: “So, I go, in sit down, she’s like let me see your palms. She immediately says ohh you’ve got a long (something) which means you are going to live a long healthy life. She goes you’re going to live to be toward the late eighties. So, pretty good ya know.

“And then she asked me how’s your love life, I said it’s alright, it’s decent-- I didn’t reveal anything. Then she says, ‘someone recently hurt you in some way’. And I was kind of like, woah, okay, maybe she’s onto something here.”

(Derek was recently cheated on by his longtime best friend turned girlfriend)

“But anyway, she didn’t focus that part that much but she focused more on saying like ‘hey whatever it is, it needs to be in the past’. She said, ‘there’s going to be multiple girls in your past who are going to reach out to you but the best thing you can do is stay away from them’.”

(This was before Derek actually did end up meeting up with his Ex-Girlfriend Rachel after she reached out to him)

“But she mentioned I was going to find love soon, but only if I stayed away from the old hoes, so, we’ll see how that goes.”  

S: Okay, and how did you feel about those answers?

“Honestly, she didn’t give me much. My date found out she was going to have 3 kids which I was pissed about because she didn’t say shit about my kids.”

S: Did you feel your reading was accurate?

“Maybe yeah. It was accurate but also could’ve applied to basically anybody. Like, saying ‘you’ve been hurt’, yea, everyone’s been hurt.”

S: Was it worth it? Would you go back?

D: “It was worth it for the bit. I’d do it again for cheaper.”

         A few weeks after the reading, Derek was much tamer in his recollection. Though he still recognized the parallels between the readings and his real life, he was more inclined to acknowledge the potential universality of the psychic’s comments.

         Derek’s experience is perhaps what most psychics bank on—someone who’s a little drunk, having some fun, maybe has been hurt recently and wants to believe in something.