getting this out of my system

I got a phone call from a dear friend yesterday. She was upset, boy troubles. 

"This unhappiness you feel now, it's just a symptom of the limitations of your body, the crass demands of the physical on the mental. Being mired in perspective causes this sadness, but, oh, it's so hard to transcend these things."

"Are you high?" 

No, I told her. I lied.

I wanted very much to cheer her up. Having failed to do so with words, I decided to do the next best (better?) thing; buy her a present.

On the way to Reckless Records, I saw a crowd of people gathered around some thing. I shifted myself through the crowd, braying 'excuse meeee' in a low pitched voice to suggest something was wrong with me, but not exaggerated enough for someone to call bullshit. 

Sitting there on the sidewalk was a sad looking gypsy woman, next to her a sign that said 'ASK ME ONE QUESTION' and under that '10¢', next to '5¢'. I felt a drop of sweat travel from my armpit to my waistline, slow and steady. The day felt oppressive, as if the sky had concaved towards us, and the sun hung mere yards above that Chipotle across the street. 

A bloated woman with an eyepatch sat sobbing by the gypsy woman, the gypsy woman holding her hand and patting it. Each time her hand came down on the bloated woman's hand it seemed to say "There, there, hush now baby." I wondered if this gypsy woman had some sort of hotline or e-mail address that I could refer my dear friend to. I wondered if the bloated woman's eyepatched eye/hole/nothingness was crying too. I know very little about the anatomy of tear ducts.

The bloated eyepatchioed woman got up thanking that gypsy woman, breathlessly, like a mantra, "Thank you so much thank you so much thank you so much"

"You think that's bad, you shoulda seen her before the surgery!" I shouted, having thought that I had just thought it in my mind. This is a terrible thing I do, I do not know why it happens. It starts as a fierce tingle at the bottom of my spine, and it zips up to the base of my skull where it rests, gathering force, and charges it way around my jaws and tongue and lips and emits itself as a horrible utterance. It's as if my body must forcibly eject these statements, usually really embarrassing or rude, as if my body, if it were, was too full of bullshit and stupidity, and to contain it a moment longer would be to risk a total meltdown. I wish though, it would choose more opportune times for these forced ejaculations. 

The crowd was positively tittering, down right pissed at my ungentlemanly behavior. Luckily, the gypsy woman saw through me, I guess. She waved her hand in a queenly manner and beckoned me towards her. 

"You look like you have some things on your mind. I am not a very smart person, but I have a skill that very few people have, something that allows me to truly know sadness and happiness. I can read minds."

I kinda laughed at this, and she winked at me. Then she tapped her little basket which had dollars and coins. I took out a dollar and dropped it in. 

"I only have one question, you can keep the dollar."

She was much different up close, vaguely familiar, like a grade school teacher I had once.

"What is it honey?" 

She closed her eyes, looking like some stupid New Age lady.

"Well, I have a dear friend, and she's very upset. I'm going to go buy her a present, and I'm not sure what to get her. What should I get her?"

The reflexity of her answer was disappointing, anticlimatic. I'm not sure what I was expecting, her hair to start floating and sparks shooting from her fingers, her eyes open dramatically and they are stark white, and she states her prophecy in cadence, like a sibyl, no it wasn't that. But still, I wanted my dollar's worth, I wanted a show.

She opened her eyes, which were the same hazel as before, and she said unto to me:

"At the store you're going to, there will be a Smokey Robinson and the Miracles vinyl album. It will be under the 'New Arrival' section, but it will be out of order. It will be between two Tom Petty albums. Buy this Smokey Robinson album for her. All women love Motown. It reminds them of being a little girl."

"Ha ha ha, really?"

"Really. Now get out of here you fine swine you, there's a line." She slapped my buttocks, not hard, but enthusiastically. I thanked her and left.

Well, sure enough it was there, right where she said it would be. I bought it and wrapped it and sent it to my dear friend, with a little note. I know what you are thinking, you are wondering if I feel different since then, suddenly conscious but uncomprehending of powers that operate outside of human understanding, that maybe the way I saw the world was limited, and that maybe miracles can happen, and we can never truly get everything, if I am religious now, if I am happier or more doubting or more forgiving or if I learned some valuable lesson about life. Well, the answer is nah, not really.