When I say I had a medium, I don’t mean I occasionally perused tarot cards or had my palm read once at a party. I mean, for three years, I worked with a woman named Clara, who knew things she couldn’t know. Her insights shaped nearly every major decision I made, from my job to my love life. I have studied the occult and esoteric arts since I was a young girl. A gift of Claircognizant and sentient, I always read for others via tarot, though differentiating between my anxiety and intuition left me impaired to read for myself. When I found Clara, it was like being in therapy. I paid her in Paypal installments, the way some people pay for a gym or a yoga class: regular, discreet, and, to my mind, necessary. Until I steered so many friends to use her as their psychic, my sessions became free.

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I met her in 2011 at LA’s once beloved Bodhi Tree, that old spiritual bookstore everyone seemed to end up at eventually. My friend and I had gone in on a whim. Free Pet Readings. We both had cats, who we were obsessed with. Clara was the pet psychic. First time I ever had a reading scheduled that wasn’t for me. She said things about my cat that a stranger had no way of knowing; small, specific things — and by the time she moved on to my friend’s cat, I’d already decided I wanted to come back, just for me. There was comfort in how unglamorous it all was — no theatrics whatsoever.

Our sessions, once we moved past the bookstore, came through the phone. Clara had a soft, comforting tone. We read about many things — I asked her about my mother, who had passed. “I’m getting pictures of James Dean, like a cinematic projection. Does the movie Rebel Without A Cause mean anything to you?” I told her my mother would call me her Rebel … without a cause.

That sealed the deal. It’s the only name besides my given nickname that my mother used when I got into my teenage years. I’d never written it down anywhere, not even in a text. I never told anyone, I didn’t deem it important until then.

That was how it went, over and over, for years before I met Christopher.

It was Clara who told me to ask for more money prior to taking a writer/producer job at a then well known network. “Don’t accept their first offer,” she’d said, her voice gone flat and distant, like she’d stepped out of the room for a second — and then I’d hear the pen again, fast, uneven, taking down whatever she was seeing. I’d gone in, voice trembling, and gotten not quite double, but a hell of a lot more than I would’ve asked for. She was the one who, before a particularly fraught breakup, named the exact date my ex had cheated on me in detail — down to the hour. She’d referred, offhand, to “that night when he left you alone at the concert.” She had no idea he’d left me at The Wiltern while Massive Attack performed. My stomach plunged.

But the most remarkable part wasn’t Clara’s predictions. It was the images. She’d go quiet on her end of the line, and then describe whatever was forming behind her eyes, one picture bleeding into the next until she had the whole scene laid out. She talked me through it once on a call, live. I could hear the pen scratching, fast and jagged, while her voice trailed off mid-sentence like she wasn’t fully in the room with me anymore. Afterward she’d read back what had come through, word for word, before she’d even had time to make sense of it herself.

She described the scar on my chin that I’d gotten at age five, playing with soap in the bathtub after my mother warned me not to do so. It’s faint, but still there. Sometimes the accuracy gave me goosebumps or encouraged a gasp. I kept coming back, craving the weird adrenaline rush of being known so deeply and so effortlessly. Talking to her was the added cherry on top. She made me feel deeply grounded. We became friends.

It was the first time I ever heard about the technique of automatic writing.

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Clara encouraged my psychic ability. She knew I was intuitive in my own right. Before I revealed my studies in tarot, astrology, numerology, philosophy, religion etc… she already picked up on my ability the first time she met me. I was open to learning how to channel. A willing pupil. She talked me through trying it myself. I’d spend hours at my desk after that, pen pressed to paper, never lifting it, talking to a higher power, waiting for the words to come through.

I wish I could say the messages were always wise or poetic. Afterwards it looked like gibberish. Sometimes it started as journaling. Then other times, there was an energy connecting through me, a voice with a vernacular I didn’t use. The words were perfect, and devastatingly true. It’s something I still practice to this day, especially when I want to work things out with someone without direct face to face conflict. To not pick up the pen, or think about the forward momentum, gives insight and clarity with confidence. It also improved my creative writing. I would refer to it as a mental colonic. Instead of regurgitating out an orifice, I would purge through my hand and fingers using the pen onto paper.

Christopher did not know about my penchant for psychics or that I used one on an almost daily basis, only that I myself was a practitioner.

Clara mentioned Christopher initially three months before I met him. “C,” she had said. “C is coming. He’s going to be a bit problematic, but you’ll be able to nail him down. Also, you won’t want to let him go.” At the time, it sounded like a horoscope, equal parts threat and promise. I filed it away, like on a sticky note added on a page of one of many journals I kept, specifically for my therapeutic sessions. I didn’t connect the dots at first. We’d already matched on Tinder, rescheduled our first date on and off for the better part of a year before it finally happened. I didn’t even remember when I initially slept with him. It came to me later, in the aftermath, when things sputtered and smoldered.

Perhaps I relied too much on her. Maybe years of outsourcing my instincts had made me less aware of my own red flags. Either way, by the time things with Chris started feeling off — I was calling her daily. It was no longer the occasional check-in. I’d tell her what had happened, and she’d go quiet, and then describe whatever she was seeing. One time I was trying to respond to a text. It was during our phase of wording in neutrality, when Clara interrupted herself, “I’m having trouble giving a response because he’s not being honest. I keep getting that he has a habit of taking other people’s ideas to make them his own.” I didn’t understand the latter part of what she was saying. Just that he wasn’t being honest. A feeling that would become a theme in our unfettered relationship.

I thought by being patient and acting like the “cool girl” meant Chris would eventually come around. That he would show up the way he did in the beginning of us seeing each other face to face, urgent and hungry. When he began to fade, I became anxious by the uncertainty of this stage of breadcrumbing. I waited for the other shoe to drop, for the inevitable revelation that he was married, or gay, a fugitive or worse, what I had my gut was telling me, that he was a liar. I tried to keep my head on straight, but the not-knowing made me restless, like I was living in the long inhale before a scream.

I had been a magnet for substance abusers for years. My “qualifier” for Alanon was my last ex boyfriend, who I spent three years with way before I met Chris. The only unlawful behavior was equated to a tangible source usually of identifiable by liquid in a bottle or a powder in a baggie. I had heard of a narcissist before, and a sociopath, as well as a psychopath. To label someone as a narcissist was yet to be a viral sensation. All I could equate it to was that my mind, and the three years of work I’d put into myself, was slowly unraveling.

I started digging, scrolling for anything she hadn’t already told me — then bringing it all back to her, so we could lay it out side by side and see where it lined up. I checked all his socials and found recent likes between him and one other girl. I mean, there were quite many but I was drawn to this chick specifically. The dates of their interaction existed slightly longer than our first encounter. My stomach knew he was double if not triple dipping. Still, I didn’t want to give off the vibe of a jealous lover . It would only take a couple more months that I’d be so fed up the only thing left for me to do was explode.

Meanwhile, my insides seemed to be made of trick wires.

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After my discoveries as a detective, I spent a lot of free time with tarot cards, pendulums, a journal or in some form of communication with Clara. I asked her to draft a text message asking Christopher what we were. Two sessions workshopping a single text message.

“I’ll help you do this but I really think it’s best to move on to someone who can be more direct with their feelings and you,” Clara stated — as she enabled me. A tone of non-judgement was how Clara kept you feeling safe.

However the level of irritation that brewed inside me prevented me from extending the same energy back to her.

“I’m not naive about any of this—not about what he’s doing, not about his ‘studio time.” I finger quoted as if she could see me through the phone. My nervous system was deregulated by the injustice of his actions. Blinded by his past success I kept using his back catalog as proof of his hard work. If he said he was there twelve hours a day. I believed him. “I was in Miami with him for that convention, Clara. I dropped him off with an Uber at one of the thirteen homes on Star Island.”

He didn’t have time left over to be seeing more than one person. I told myself that it was like armor. Like believing it made it protect me. It didn’t occur to me that a man could be successful and still have hours left over to entertain a variety of dinner dates. I built him a schedule in my head with no room in it for anyone but me. That was the first lie I benefited from believing. “You should just ask him, plain and simple.” Clara didn’t get it, I thought. In reality, it was me who wasn’t computing it.

“Clara, I had never asked a man if we were exclusive.” My pattern has always been simple as arithmetic—you talk, you date, you fall into bed, and the labels appear on their own like bird shit on a windshield.

I’d mis-ordered the steps. Several, actually. I was only now noticing how much a man could keep in his pockets without ever showing his hands.

I chose not to confront Christopher until after my birthday party. The three month line. A few days before the start of the year.

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After Chris left my house, my Tinder inbox was filling up.

Next up was Levi. He worked in music too.

He didn’t dance around asking me out either.

Friday. Drinks. Yes?

The text sat on my screen, and I tapped out my answer before I could overthink it. He was tall, cute — kinda like a teddy bear, broad through the shoulders, tousled brown hair, a beard he wore like he didn’t try too hard. Physically more my type than Christopher.

My heart raced — half excitement, half something hungrier — as I recalled that Libra men often made better friends than lovers. I tossed my phone onto the couch, but anticipation kept pulling me back to it.

Meet you there.

Even if he was born under one of the most indecisive signs of the zodiac.

The bar sat tucked beneath street level in Downtown LA, the kind of place with exposed brick and Edison bulbs that made you forget which coast you were on.

I burst through the door forty minutes late, breath catching in my throat, eyeliner undoubtedly smudged into the corners of …

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The acts of Sisyphus.

Various failed relationships.

Your WILL wants a break.

Shut off notifications on your phone.

Stop checking email once it becomes an accumulation of spam.

Another mailbox ignored, until you feel like cleaning.

Keep your ringtone on silent.

Volume low.

Until one day “do not disturb” becomes the norm.

Skins shedding lifetimes of tumultuous— joy.

No room for more,

or new,

or continuation.

You went over your limit.

Seclusion,

from anything or anyone that could affect your mood.

And then it stops.

The noise.

The requests for your expertise fades.

Friends become like ghosts.

Your level of unwillingness to participate equates to the stall of communication?

It was just armor.

No pings,

No rings,

No invites.

The noise that once electrified your anatomy is now deafening.

The eternal warmth. The phrase a “cold world” now makes sense.

No pets,

No plants,

No home.

Bare naked and strung upside down like The Hangman in limbo.

How do you work forward — wit…

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2013.

Downtown Los Angeles was in its renaissance era. The Arts District was resurrected with a constellation of breweries, galleries, cafes and restaurants. They were breaking ground on new condos and museums.

Gentrification was spreading. East Coasters flocked to the Pacific Ocean for better weather and more bang for their buck. The era of inexpensive rent was about to change forever.

The energy was electric. Theaters that had been dormant for decades were finding new lives as performance spaces and after hours clubs. Bookstores, raves, gallery openings, loft parties — the kind of city that rewards the curious and punishes the sedentary. I was living two lives simultaneously. One foot in film and television, the other in the visual art world, and DTLA was the place where both of those worlds collided after midnight.

I was flourishing. The kind of flourishing that only happens after you’ve been hollowed out and had to rebuild yourself from the baseboards up. Which, if you know me, means …

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We’d done MDMA before. That wasn’t the catalyst. This time was different: I was unattached for the first time in almost four years. Adam invited me to a warehouse party where two of the biggest ’90s techno house DJs were playing. I said “Yes,” without rehearsing it — which should have told me something.

A strange insecurity surfaced whenever he asked me to go out. Sometimes the way he framed the invitation felt like a challenge.

“This party goes till five,” he said once, as if I couldn’t last—as if I hadn’t lived before. It felt odd — that he, six years my senior, was still a regular at the warehouse parties, clubs, and raves that had defined my life.

I hadn’t done an all-nighter in almost a decade.

Later I understood. He fed off after-hours energy, constant stimulation, and being surrounded by people—things that had begun to drain me. I hadn’t expected that a few weekends would cost me three weeks in bed with the flu.

The night stayed playful longer than expected. Music, bodies, heat. Fa…

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I met him through my friend, they’d connected on some obscure dating app, the kind you wouldn’t recognize after a night of endless scrolling. There was something in his presence, as if my heart responded to a familiar rhythm, making me instinctively drawn to his vibe.

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Normally, I’d view that feeling as a red flag. To me, familiarity often whispers danger. Men don’t usually capture my interest; they’re the ones who claim they’re captivated while I keep my distance. But this guy flipped the script, he intrigued me like no one else had before.

Adding to it, he pursued the same scientific career path as J—my San Francisco boyfriend, both carried an aura of unspoken security; even separated by space, they felt like home.

Visually though? Worlds apart. Adam wore his weight differently, a bit heavier, and while physical appearances aren’t my primary concern (I’m haunted by memories of losing fit parents to cancer and heart disease), lifestyle is essential. Yet with Adam’s dad bod and soft stom…

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“There once was a woman lying in bed with her lover’s head upon her shoulder

and when you ask, I’ll always sing you a song ‘bout a girl who tried to live inside a dream…

“My sheets were cold tonight, had to leave them for a dying fire, burn up time for dreams

Lovely soul, you’ve gone to sleep, silence empty house I cannot breathe, you’ve said too many nice things

Can I keep spinning to your turns

can I just fall back in your open arms

and when you ask, I’ll always sing you a song

bout a girl who tried to live inside a dream…” ~ Wildlight & The Polish Ambassdor

Buy Me A Cafecito

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Send A Kiss

I didn’t plan on learning anything this week; certainly not about men, certainly not about shame, and definitely not about the strange choreography of blocking, unblocking, and pretending not to look while looking.

But life has a way of dropping lessons on your doorstep like stray cats.
You open the door and suddenly you’re responsible for the whole damn creature.

So here it is. The creature.
The truth.
The thing no one warns you about when the emotional smoke hasn’t even cleared.

This is for every woman who’s ever been left staring at a phone, wondering how someone could go from warm to gone in a single breath.

Spoiler: it’s not you.

It’s shame. That loud, invisible monster perched on their shoulder.

What Shame Does to Men. The part they’ll never confess.

Shame is not soft.
Shame is not silent.
Shame is not logical.

Shame screams inside their heads until t…

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First, thank you—for reading, waiting, and trusting me to tell these stories, even when they arrive slower than either of us planned. Some stories spill out easily; they burn fast, bright, and loud—all pulse and flame, my fingers chasing the words as if they were an uncontained fire, spilling heat across the page.

Those stories are fresh, raw, and eager to be born.

But About A Girl is a different kind of story. It’s one that’s been thirty years in the making, and with that age comes a certain weight. Sometimes, to write a memoir in fragments is to dive into the oldest corners of memory, to unearth the patchwork of scars that shaped the now. It’s not always a gentle excavation. It can feel like whitewater rafting without a paddle, with the reader watching from the shore, iPhone in hand, as I navigate the rapids of the past.

So, I’ve chosen to pause About A Girl for a little while—not as a retreat, but as a way to honor the process. Some stories need more time to unfurl. Others want to fl…

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People often say that trauma can stunt your growth, emotionally speaking. Despite years of therapy, I can relate to that sentiment. At forty-six, I still feel like my sixteen-year-old self, suspended in the chaos of becoming.

So much happened that it’s hard to write a linear timeline of events, so I won’t.

I was in eleventh grade when I found out my mom was sick. She was only forty-seven and battling an aggressive form of colon cancer that eventually spread to her liver and kidneys. My father did everything he could—sought the best doctors, arranged several surgeries—but the disease spread. She stayed at home under hospice care until my dad finally moved her to inpatient care a few days before she passed, ten days short of her forty-eighth birthday.

I won’t delve into that yet; I’ll save the real tragedies for another storybook.

But life doesn’t pause for grief. It just shifts the scenery.

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What began as curiosity, laughter, and the harmless chaos of our crew would soon slide into darker waters—where loyalty blurred, desire took over, and innocence cracked for good. What I didn’t know then was how fast the lines would blur. Desire doesn’t stay harmless. It festers. Trust slipped, innocence cracked, and the chaos we craved began to own us.

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Prologue

For any reader who wants clarity: I’m pulling from a trauma-damaged brain, trying to recall events that happened more than thirty years ago. Memory doesn’t always keep a straight line. It stutters, skips, sometimes dissolves, but the weight of what remains is undeniable.

Sebastian was my first true love, even if we were never official. We were companions until the end. Sex wasn’t our love language — togetherness was. We were best friends with rare benefits, carrying each other through relationships, engagements, breakups, and addiction. What began as a crush became an unconditional thread woven into my heart, a presence that lingers even now, twenty years after his passing.

There were seasons I was silenced, scapegoated, even outed — and still, I was his mother, sister, friend, and the untitled girlfriend-wife we never named. In our twenties, we practically lived together.

Until now, I don’t think I ever grieved his absence. Not really. Not since the night I saw his body, cold in…

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Our Small Universe (Tender Late-Night Moments)

There were nights when the chaos quieted, when tenderness was the only language left between us.

J was a really good guitar player, and occasionally lulled me to sleep. Always cradling me. My small body felt like I was next to a savior, wrapped up in my mother's energy on occasions. And he felt like my soul twin when I would be the big spoon. Always listening to his heartbeat and breathing to comfort myself.

Even tenderness became obscene, the way two bodies clutch at each other as if love itself might vanish.

Read the unrated excerpts below by subscribing ~ End of Series. For Now.

With Breath,

Franceasca

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The last of my items were in his carport storage.

I'd been asking J. for weeks to schedule a time for me to pick them up, but I only got excuses, so it was put off until my last weekend.

I had friends helping with various aspects of my move. Still, I expected to handle this last part alone. My memory is fuzzy, blurred by his phone call that felt unnatural yet real. A familiar PTSD pulse washed over me, and I trembled, unsure if I was going to cry or punch him. My heart raced, my throat constricted, and every cell braced for impact.

My anxiety tangled with confusion over what I was hearing. My chest tightened, breath short, stomach dropped as if I’d been pushed off a ledge. Rage simmered beneath the panic, survival mode kicking in like muscle memory. Instinct took over, and I looked at my best friend: “I can’t go there. It can’t be me.”

A voice ins…

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It had finally hit him — what he'd done — what he'd lost.

Who he overlooked.

He started texting more. Less bravado. More pauses.

I could feel the shift.

The regret, lacking apology, showed itself only in frequency.

Then, unexpectedly, J. called, his voice wavering as he started a conversation that carried the weight of overdue recognition.

With a tone full of real remorse, he said, "I wish I could undo everything I did. I don't know why I treated you so badly."

His words trembled with panic, revealing the vulnerability he'd hidden.

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There was a place of warmth where I escaped to go heal. It wasn’t the warmth of the weather I speak of, it was the warmth of the family I made over the course of a decade.

I froze, which led me to a cold, distant, unfamiliar place. A place I have loved for two decades. In the beginning I felt supported by a strange way of living in community rather in my sunny comfort zone which I called home.

I moved what was left of my life including my beautiful 19 year old kitty.

Now - exactly one year later, I miss the warmth of the life I led - even when times were tough, and there were many.

I miss the warmth of the friends I met in those years and the friends I have had since elementary school who have always shown support.

I have led a life in survival for nearly 4 decades : deciding to bury trauma and burden aside in return for success and acclimates.

…

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It was a chilly night in January. He came by to pick up a gift and to “sort things out.”

I made a plan to be sweet and to keep my distance.

A month earlier, I ordered his Christmas Gift which arrived late.

It was a custom-made constellation map of the night we first met.

June 9, 2019 at 9:13 PM

We stood over it in stillness, pretending we didn’t feel what it meant.

A timestamp of the magic from a stage we’d ruined.

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🎙 “What if your clothes could hit you like a piece of art?”

Victor Wilde—performance artist turned fashion disruptor—founded The Bohemian Society to make fashion that provokes, moves, and tells stories you can wear. From Tokyo to LA, his work is as unapologetic as the city he calls home.

IVictor Wilde | The Bohemian Society
Experiential artist and provocateur, Victor Wilde, began by pushing boundaries in experimental video and public performance art—turning city streets, galleries, and concert halls into living stages. His interactive fashion performances have lit up the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Somos Gallery (Berlin), Tokyo Fashion Week, Walt Disney Concert Hall (LA), LA Weekly’s Artopia, and the OC Center for Contemporary Art.

In 2003, from the creative pulse of Downtown Los Angeles, Wilde founded The Bohemian Society—a fashion label born from art, rebellion, and storytelling. Every piece is designed to provoke, inspire, and feel like wearable performance art. Emotional. Timely. Enduring. A reflection of something raw and essential about the world.

Sex, Magick & Dessert Podcast is Listener Support. We Invite You To Be A Part In the Creation of Our Vibration. Visit, Subscribe, Share.

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I had been quite vocal, perhaps even overly so, about my desire to relocate back to Los Angeles. San Francisco, consisting of tech bros and a seemingly dead art scene, was not my cup of tea.

It wasn't until the pandemic provided me with some much-needed time for introspection that I truly began to understand the profound emotional impact my frequent discussions about relocating back to Los Angeles had had on him. I recall him making several comments about my expressed enthusiasm and the anticipated timeline for my departure, which, in retrospect, now carries a different weight.

I received a call from LA to co-produce a three-day multimedia event focused on art and women’s health, at one of San Francisco’s established galleries.

The opportunity arose unexpectedly. I received a call from Los Angeles, extending an invitation to co-produce a three-day multimedia event. The event's central theme was the intersection of art and women's health, and it was to be held at one of San Francisco's …

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November 18, 2019

The reason I brought up me staying here vs going to LA with you was in hopes that you would be able to come up with a solution for us together. That was the reason I included you in the conversation, If I didn’t care, I would have left without consulting you.

I want you to understand what a difficult situation this is for me, not only physically, financially & emotionally but also because you’ve been so kind recently & loving and regardless of the time we’ve known or been together.

At a certain age we make choices that don’t only benefit ourselves, they benefit the ones we care about. I know both of us have gotten it wrong in the past, and don’t want to repeat patterns, I know that this is complicated and I know that we both are still not 100% sure about where we’re heading.

Despite you uttering the words “I love you,” you tell me what you love about me everyday, it’s more than i have ever said. I say I love you. I show you but you show me more than you’re aware of.

Not…

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