The Psychic Tape Recorder


(From the archives: April 04)

I have been permitted access to the woman many of you have already heard of, found wandering near Harbin Hot Springs, who calls herself "Psytar," or, "Psychic Tape Recorder."

"You know why I'm here," I said, which I thought struck a balance between humor and respect when meeting a famous psychic.

She smiled and lifted her hands above her head, making some kind of symbolic gesture I didn't understand. But I repeated the motion as best I could. She said, "If you want to dance I'll put on some music."

I said, "No thank you," finding her eccentricity instantly charming. I told her that I had come to find out about the relationship between God and George Bush, and was wondering if she had tuned in and recorded anything.

"First the fifty dollars," she said. And that was fair. She'd made it clear after our first telephone conversation that she was trying to make her gift pay the rent. I gave her three twenties. I was feeling a little self-conscious because of the relaxed way in which she was sitting, and while it was my natural tendency to look, there is a counter balancing tendency to want some level of sophistication that doesn't instantly vanish in the face of shameless exhibitionism.

"I feel a struggle in you between two parts," she said.

"Yes," I agreed. "I think you're onto something." There was something eerie about the big red and yellow Macaw that was on the perch beside her. The damned thing wasn't talking normally. It was whispering to her, just out of my reach, and then laughing at me. When it would laugh she would appear outwardly calm but her eyes were beginning to spill tears from the emotion going unexpressed.

"The parrot annoys you," she said. I shifted my attention and the parrot dissolved into a multi-colored electric fan.

"What parrot?" Could she read my mind that easily?

"Paranoia," she repeated. "This guy you wanted me to record ..."

"The President."

"That's right, this is one of those two birds in one Bush."

"That's schizophrenia."

"I never keep those things straight. I'm not an educated woman, I just have this sensitivity." She laughed and set one finger spinning around her left ear. "Like a crazy woman but not so crazy because I am a tape recorder."

"Do you have any idea how it works?"

"Jaw muscles. I can tune in to anybody's jaw muscles."

"And that allows you to record what they are saying? Isn't that just one side of every conversation?"

"Sub-vocal speaking -- talking in the head -- it's all in the jaw muscles. So I record all of this talking talking talking in the head."

"And when you did the recording of Mr. Bush, was he, so to speak, talking to himself in one voice and answering in another, or something like that?"

"Did you know he has an overbite?"

She seemed to be completely uninhibited, and I had to assume it was part and parcel of her psychic powers, and that I should appear interested, and even entertained, but not seized by a quandary. As a journalist I try to find a bit of everyone I meet in myself.

"Ha," she said. "You just blushed violently!"

"I did not. It's allergies."

"No, I got you fair and square." She reclined backward on the tasteless fake fur divan, but I had to admit that cheap, black fur makes a nice backdrop for legs that long which appear to have never been in the sun.

"Is that how it works?" I asked, gesturing vaguely in her direction. "I mean, does it have an, ah, sexual, component?"

"Of course that's how it works. It's like the way the guy discovered penicillin, by accident? Well, I was doing the same thing I'm doing right now, except in a glass booth. And I'd get bored you know? And drift off into my head? And I kept hearing these conversations going on, but it was different. I knew they were registering directly in my head, and that I was hearing what people were thinking."

"What was your first reaction to this?"

"To quit that job. Have you ever had the shock of disrespect?"

"When I can afford it. But we're procrastinating."

"I know that, but I say you are all making this George Bush too big a man, and he is not a big man if you leave him alone and stop giving him your energy and attention."

"But I paid you sixty bucks."

"Okay, the truth is he doesn't talk to God. He talks to Dan Quayle."

"Come again?"

She raised one eyebrow and continued.

"Dan was George's inspiration, because he proved you can make it to a heartbeat away from being President and be dumb as a post. George was determined to prove you can make it all the way to the top with mediocre gifts. But somebody has to break that barrier."

"So, Dan Quayle was to George Bush what Christ was to Mel Gibson?"

"Exactly. Trenton New Jersey, June 15, 1992 was a defining moment in the life of George W. Bush. He saw a good man fall because he couldn't spell potato, when any fool could see that without the "e" on the end it would sound like po tay two."

"That's fascinating, but for sixty bucks I expected something I can't read in the newspapers."

"Well, George asked Dan how he could stand up under being watched so close all the time, and Dan wrote something on a piece of paper. He said, 'George, this has power to save you so long as you keep it secret. Every day it will change you, George.' And he handed him that little piece of paper.

"George put that piece of paper in a little locket shaped like a courier pouch, and to this day he wears it around his neck. And late at night, when Laura's asleep, he goes into the library and he takes out this little piece of paper, on which is written but a single word."

"And what would that word be?"

"Prey."

Posted: Fri - December 29, 2006 at 09:35 AM