Out of work, taking shitty jobs, and not making enough money, Duke Seino was desperate. So he called the Psychic Reader's Network. But he didn't call for expensive and phony advice; he called for a job. Hearing that a friend of a friend was making 30 bucks an hour in the telepsychic business, Duke was ready to jump on the gravy train.
Because Duke couldn't describe his prerequisite "special talents" to the hiring person over the phone, he was told to read some books about tarot cards, practice for a month, and call back. He skimmed one of the books, started reading horoscopes to familiarize himself with the terminology, called again, and got the job.
Right away, tax forms, phone-use directions, and a script called the "preamble," arrived in Duke's Costa Mesa, California mailbox. The preamble was full of metababble like, "As soon as I heard your voice, I saw the most beautiful aura" and "You are very spiritually evolved and not afraid to explore the unknown" to greet callers with. With the script taped up to his wall, tarot cards shuffled, and a pack of cigarettes in front of him, he sat on his bed, called the toll-free number, and waited a second for his newly installed phone line to begin ringing.
All that minor preparation proved to be useless once Duke started taking calls, mostly from the Midwest and the Bible Belt. "When these people call, they don't want tarot readings. They could give a fuck less about astrology," explains Duke. "All they want are answers."
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GIRL TALK
This one girl who called was 19 and in a really screwed-up relationship with her girlfriend. I was talking to her, assuming that she was talking about a guy, and she said, "No, she's a girl!" I said, "Oh yes, I sensed that, but she's the more masculine of the two of you, right?" No. I said, "That's all right, why don't you have her move out and go back to her parents' place?" She said, "Her parents are dead!" I said, "Okay, maybe an uncle?" Basically, the whole situation was that this girl was living with her parents and her girlfriend although they broke up three months ago. She wanted to know if they were going to get back together. Judging from the negativity of the caller's aura, I said that her girlfriend wasn't the right person for her. |
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FATHER'S DAY
A man from Louisiana wanted to know if a kid was his or not. I told him it was his kid. He said, "Now wait a minute! Last time I called your network, someone said the kid wasn't mine." For a second, I thought maybe he was talking to a real psychic. Then I thought, "Naaah! He was talking to some other scumbag just like myself on another line." The mother of the kid was going to kill herself over everything because she had seen this other man but didn't want to lose the caller. So I convinced him that it would be "his" child if he raised it. |
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PSYCHIC PSYCHIATRY
My roommate Jamie was totally into astrology and started coaching me. I was on the bed chain-smoking, (first time I ever smoked a pack of cigarettes in 2 1/2 hours) sweating like Martin Short's lawyer character in "Saturday Night Live," and she's there saying, "Your caller's a Scorpio! Scorpios are very emotional people!" So, I bullshitted to the caller saying, "I sense you're a very emotional person. You're a fire sign, and I sense a lot of fire in you. But I sense a lot of light and positivity in your aura, too." Basically you're like a couch psychiatrist. Instead of using words like "projection" and "denial," you use "aura" and other mystical words, and they buy it. |
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GETTING LAID
This 70-year-old lady called wondering about her financial future. She told me she was stoked to be making 8 bucks an hour, but was worried about a shake-up at the company. I said, "Okay, this is what you do. You get in with the boss. Do you talk to your boss a lot?" She said, "Oh yes, I hang out with him once in a while." I said, "Good, I sense that you won't be losing your job in the immediate future. Just keep up the PR work at your job." I don't know if she got laid-off or not. I was supposed to give her my name and extension and everything, but I never gave anything out. I called myself Octavius and I didn't ever want to talk to these people again. |
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EASY ANSWERS
These people: you don't know them and you don't want to be their friends because they're total hicks. I'd ask them if they believe in God. If they said, "Yes, I do," then I'd say it was all part of a Master Plan. I'd say, "Your life is pre destined by God. There is a reason why you exist on this planet." |
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MR. CLEAN
I actually had some people call who wanted to be cleansed of their bad auras. I told them to take a shower, meditate in front of a white candle, make sure to wear white, and then I went off on Romanian Gypsy folklore about cleansing, throwing chunks of silver into the ocean, or whatever. I'd ask, "Are you near a body of water?" Then I'd tell the caller to meditate about the person that he or she wanted to be and throw a quarter into the water every fifteen minutes. "This is spiritual cleansing," I would say. |
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AN EXPENSIVE NAP
Another psychic friend was telling me how he was on the phone with this person who was drunk. The caller was concerned about whether or not his girlfriend would come back, and my friend was telling him why he should just move on when the guy passed out. My friend could just hear snoring. So he sat for a second, took off his headphones, went out, kicked back at the bar for a while, came back, and the guy was still snoring on the phone! He let him go the whole hour. That's as long as you can keep somebody on the phone legally. It's all about money. Like the Wu-Tang says, "Cash rules everything." |
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BLACK AND WHITE
This one lady called up who had a kid, was in the dumps, had a stupid jobs like flipping burgers, and wanted to know when she was going to meet her man. I told her, "I see a future in computers for you. I sense that you have an uncanny ability to do mathematics." "Yeah, I'm good at math. So when am I going to meet my future husband?" I said, "Okay, I sense you are going to meet him in a classroom." Then she asked if he was going to be black or white, and I said I couldn't see the color of his skin. I could just sense his inner beauty. "Well, I don't want no white man!" she said. I'm just like, whatever. If she didn't want no white guy, then she wasn't going to get together with one. |
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TWO FOR TWO
This one girl called up, and her birthday was December something, 1974. She was asking about a love relationship, so I asked for her mate's birthday. It was like 1954. So I went, "I sense that you met this person at work." "Yeah, that's right!" she said. No fucking shit! Where else is a 40-year-old man going to meet a 23-year-old girl? Then I said, "And I sense that the main concern you have is that you're worried that he's just using you for sex." She said, "Yeah!" No fucking shit! |
BACK AGAIN
Duke quit after two days because he received a few suicide calls and couldn't handle it. Telling the callers that they'd help someone out in the future usually did the trick, but sometimes that wasn't enough. Duke dug real low for one guy who had been screwed over by practically everyone he knew: "I told him the reason he had to exist was because if he died, these people would be in better situations. If he lived, karma would catch up with them and fuck them up the ass." The caller was so happy, he asked for Duke's extension. He gave a phony one. Both nights after work, Duke lay in bed, shaking and feeling evil karma waiting to take a bite out of him because he was feeding people false hope.
The friend who gave Duke the job referral has a different view. He believes that he's actually helping callers because they just want somebody to talk to, a reason to live. Callers do not want to be depressed and want hope for the future, so he goes on with the job, keeping callers on the line as long as possible. (Perhaps not coincidentally, this person has also become an alcoholic, who sometimes drinks when he's giving advice on the phone.)
"When you go on the phone with these people, you're not doing most of the talking," admits Duke. "They're blabbing and blabbing, giving their family background and everything, and you make assumptions off of that. It was a moral issue with me. I was lying to people and couldn't deal with it. I grew a lot wiser from this job. I found out something about myself: I can't be a liar and I can't make evil money. It was like selling crack to a 7 year old."
