- So my friend and I are driving around Detroit,
looking for something to do.
And this is a problem
because my friend, Mark, is the kind of
person who will say to you,
"If you get a tattoo, I'll pay for it."
(audience laughs)
So...
that means all kinds of things
could possibly happen right now.
And while we're driving, we are on 8 Mile and Gratiot.
Those of you who live near Detroit
note the sound.
(applause)
Yes, exactly.
And we come across a gypsy fortune teller,
and we decide...
why not?
So we go in the gypsy fortune teller,
and I'm using that term over and over again,
because when you walk in the building,
there's like pictures of meat on the wall
because it used to be a butcher shop.
But moving on, so the gypsy comes out.
Gypsy comes out and looks at the two of us and says,
"You go first," and she points at Mark and Mark goes first.
And I'm sitting there, and I'm trying to figure out,
well, I should probably have a question, you know.
I don't want like random information about my life.
I don't live the kind of life
where I want to know what's going to happen.
It's probably best that
that just sneaks up on me.
(audience laughs)
So...
cause the stuff so far has been out of control.
So I'm sitting there,
and I think, "Well,
really the only question I have is am I ever going
to find love?
Because right now, I'm 28 years old,
and I'm not in a relationship.
I lost my virginity at 26.
And yeah, because you should sigh at that
because Mormons lose it at 20.
(audience laughs)
Okay, so I'm, I'm actually destroying the,
the sex bell curve for everybody.
(audience laughs)
So...
but sitting there I'm like, "Well, you know,
"if you're going to do this, you probably should be honest."
Okay, so I'm not really trying to figure out
if I'm ever going to find love.
It's a really broad thing.
I'm trying to figure out,
the question I have is "Will Mark
"ever fall in love with me?"
Cause let's face it,
I'm hanging out with him
because of that.
But anyhow,
Mark comes out of the door,
and the gypsy says, "Okay, you're next?"
And I stand up, and as I'm walking towards the door,
she locks me in a gaze and says,
"You're cursed.
(audience laughs)
You're cursed.
This is,
you're, you're cursed and never find love."
You're cur--
This is the worst curse I have ever,
your whole family's Cur--
this is generational.
This, I've never seen a cur--"
I haven't gotten in the room yet.
"I've never seen a curse like this in my life."
I get in the room.
She still, I,
I am floored by the level of curse
that's hanging on to you.
And no cards have moved, no cards have moved.
And I'm standing there and...
I got to tell you,
I'm pretty excited about this because all these years
I thought it was me.
(audience laughs)
I thought...
you know, it's like...
I'm 28.
I didn't lose my virginity until I was 26.
I thought I was too loud, too fat, too black, too, whatever.
But if I'm just cursed, hallelujah.
Yes, that means we can fix it, you know?
(audience clapping)
I am obviously a problem in search of a solution.
All right, here we go.
So she starts to talk to me.
She's taking the cards down and as the cards go down,
if anything,
the curse is going further back and getting worse.
Like it's, so every card that goes down,
she's just confirming what she's already said.
So she looks at me and she says,
"Okay, your uber cursed...
And...
I can fix it."
And I'm like, "Yes."
And she says, "We're going to get some candles together.
I'm going to light some incense,
I'm going to say some prayers."
Nice, I like how you're thinking.
And she's just starts to list all this stuff off.
And she says, "And I can do all of this for you,
but it's going to cost you $5,000."
(audience laughing)
Okay, now I'm mad.
Okay, because I'm from Detroit and
you are trying to hustle a hustler.
All right.
We do this game in the D every day.
And you think that I'm going to give you $5,000
to lift a curse.
I'm going to get right on that.
Top of my list of things to do next.
So we pay the gypsy fortune teller and we leave.
And as we're driving away, I'm thinking to myself...
"Yeah, but you know,
like 26, you might really be cursed."
You know?
But I don't have $5,000.
So I'm thinking all of this through,
and it dawns on me, well...
I'm going to have,
the only way I can lift this curse is
I'm going to have to do it myself.
And the only way to do it myself is
I'm going to have to become a witch,
there's nothing I can do.
There's nothing I can do.
What are my options?
If you can't afford a doctor.
You have to become a doctor.
What's your option?
(audience laughing)
If people could afford doctors, WebMD wouldn't exist.
What's your option?
(audience laughing)
Right.
So I'm like, fine.
I'll become a witch.
Now here's the thing about me.
I don't think that smart people are smarter than me.
I think they read a book I didn't read.
(audience laughing)
So...
(audience cheering)
This whole thing has got to be in a book, right?
There's got to be in a book.
So I start trying to find information.
And the first place you go is online, right?
So I've got the internet, I've got the Google, right?
So I'm typing in witchcraft, hex breaking, all of that.
And all this information is coming back.
But I don't understand it.
I can't seem to wrap my brain around how this works.
So I flashed back to college.
And in college, if you don't know something,
you take a class, right?
You take a course.
So I'm saying to myself, "Well, obviously I just need
to find like a witchcraft class.
Like, so how--
I'm in Michigan? How hard could that be?"
So...
I'm driving around one day after work
and this commercial comes on and it says,
"Metaphysical bookstore...
classes, Wicca 1 O cla--, Wicca 101 classes."
I'm like...
"Perfect!"
But I don't have a pen.
I can't write it down.
So I drive over to the building to sign up for Wicca 101.
For those of you
who are familiar with the hero's journey,
there is always an obstacle.
I'd like to describe to you my first obstacle.
So I walk into the bookstore,
and...
sitting at the counter
in this metaphysical bookstore,
is what--
I really can only describe him as Satan's valet.
(audience laughing)
All right.
This guy has
jet black hair,
that goes to the top of his head
to the back of his knees,
except...
for an inch of hair from the part
here, which is silver.
Apparently, magicians can't use hair dye.
So he is wearing Benjamin Franklin sunglasses.
He is wearing what I will refer to as
the theory of a sweater,
because it really wasn't enough yarn in it to be a sweater,
but he thinks it's a sweater and
I'm in no position to argue that.
And...
and this is my favorite touch to everything about him.
He is drinking
what I will later discover is Cognac out of a Hogwarts mug.
(audience laughing)
Now my family is Baptist, right?
Not up here baptist where people get out of church in
less than eight hours,
but like Georgia Baptists, like...
every day in church Baptist, right?
So I look at this guy and all I could hear on my uncles who
are all preachers, beginning with the wages of sin is death.
That is death before you I'm like, "This is true."
Okay.
And this guy scares the hell out of me and I'm going to
leave, and then the voice in my head says,
"You were 26.
(audience laughing)
And you don't have $5000,
and I'm not waiting another 26 years.
All right, well, there you go, motivation.
So I get to the counter.
I say, I want to sign up for the Wicca 101 class,
Wicca 101 classes.
He runs off, grabs a pen, signs me up.
And I start taking these classes.
I ask him, you know,
"Hey, is there a book I'm supposed to read or anything?
And he sort of recommends a few now, you know, few books,
most of them are arcane knowledge that to this day,
I don't understand.
But one book sticks out
and I began to hang out with the community and I began
to do spell work, right?
So the purpose of Wicca,
if for those of you who don't know and
I'm sure that's probably...
all of you.
(audience laughs)
The purpose of Wicca is to know thyself.
So it's not really about doing magic
to change this out here.
It's about changing you.
That's the purpose.
So instead of doing all this magic
to make the world accept me, I start doing.
the work to accept myself.
And I'm doing spell work for that.
And one of the spelled piece of spell work I do
is to be open to love
in all of its forms,
no matter what form shows up in, just be open.
Right? So...
it just so happens that as I'm working with the community,
the author of the book that I,
that finally made me understand Wicca,
is doing a fundraiser, right?
Pagans have...
fundraisers.
Okay.
Churches have fundraisers.
Guys who golf have fundraisers.
We have fundraisers.
But there is a difference between, you know,
like a fundraiser.
You know, I don't know,
here in Ann Arbor where people have money
and a pagan fundraiser in Downriver, Michigan,
probably the thing that you need to know is that nobody in
this room at this fundraiser has any money,
but you don't know that because they're all dressed like
Gandalf the gray.
(audience laughs)
They're wearing so much stuff that you're like,
"Well, obviously you have some cash to buy that."
I mean, that tree you're walking around with a loan,
has got to be like a hundred bucks.
Also...
These are not, these are all my friends.
I love them, some of them are here tonight.
And...
but they're not the most financially savvy folks
in the world.
These are the kinds of people who won't pay a gas bill
because they need a new hat.
So fundraisers can be challenging in the pagan world,
but I'm at this fundraiser and I'm sitting at a table and
I look out and this woman
is walking
across the room
and all the lights seem to go out.
And all the people in the room seemed to disappear.
And all I can see is her.
Now...
this could have been a romantic moment,
except that voice in the back of my head says,
"You're black.
You're a woman.
You're a pagan.
Are you sure you're going to just add lesbian to that list?"
(audience laughs)
Like...
You know, like this isn't,
you know, like this isn't Pokemon.
You ain't got to catch them all.
(audience laughs)
You know?
But I keep looking at her and I'm thinking...
"Yeah, I'm probably going to have to
add lesbian to that list."
And I'm also thinking this conversation
about being gay with this conversation
with my mother is going to top
the pagan conversation
(audience laughs)
by a country mile.
Easy, easy.
So this incredible woman sits down next to me and starts
flirting with me...
which I'm shocked by.
I flirt back.
Bell curve.
I'm super shocked by that.
My flirting is working.
I'm terrified by that.
And the whole time that I'm sort of talking to her,
but trying to talk myself out of talking to her,
the spell work that I had been doing pops up
and the spell work was
be open to love
in all its forms.
So you might as well be open.
So 10 years later...
I'm not too anything.
I am married...
To that woman that walked across the room.
(audience cheering)
At no point
did it cost me $5,000.
(audience laughs)
And believe me, when I tell you.
I can lift one hell of a curse, thank you.