I Have Decided to Become a Witch

If you write in to this column, I will hex your exes for Halloween

“The Witch” by Andy Warhol, 1981

In accordance with the season (spooky) and apropos of my current mood (desolate and capricious) I have decided I am going to become a witch.

I am not important enough in the witch hierarchy to claim an entire cardinal direction, like the Wicked Witch of the West, for example. I will simply be the Wicked Witch of This General Area. The Wicked Witch of the Street Corner. The Wicked Witch of Somewhere Down Yonder by the Crick. The Wicked Witch of the Parking Lot Next to the Bodega. The Wicked Witch of the Neighborhood. Cut Price Rates.

I don’t truthfully truck with magic (or magick, with a “k”, its fancier cousin) but I can and have offered hexes for a wide range of people’s exes (some, even, in Texas). I find myself falling into the rhythm of Yiddish curses when I do so. May all his teeth fall out except one and that one has a toothache is a good Yiddish curse; so is May he have a luxurious house with a hundred beds and never get a good night’s sleep, or, in a similar vein, May he be rich as Caesar and spend it all on doctors. Or I hope you have a sweet death—getting run over by a truck full of sugar. Or May he live like a chandelier—hanging by day and burning by night.

The curses are piquant, and often carry the idea of the accursed one receiving something that should bring them happiness or prosperity and suffering from it, or suffering in pointed and peculiar ways (May you grow like an onion with your head in the earth and your feet in the air; salt in his eyes and pepper in his nose; may he marry the daughter of the Angel of Death.) I would like to specialize in judicious cursing, ideally accompanied by a luminous sea of candles. Enormous black candles that make my chin look pitted by flame.

Witches of Discworld

I’m not sure how you contract a wart, but I’ll do my best.

My hair is already pretty suited for the job.

Crazed-looking lean-to cottages with sinister herb gardens have gone up appallingly in price, so my magical solitude will have to be more internally cultivated; the housing market is really destroying my vibe. I could always squat in a mostly-vacant office building; there’s something delightfully creepy about abandoned commercial real estate. It’s like licking up the ooze of failed dreams full of money.

As a witch I would have a rat familiar, and his snout would be the pointiest, and he would be able to fetch all manner of things. His name would be something like Sylvester, but whenever you try to pronounce it your tongue gets too slick with saliva to speak. I would collect quartz nodules of astounding size and daggers with engraved pommels, but all the engravings are obscene beyond measure. I would cultivate an air of mystery by only speaking in a gravelly whisper.

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I would also have a dog the size of a small horse and a genie in a light bulb (confusion abounds in the djinn community over the modern definition of “lamp”) and I would consort with demons without my trousers on. (I would still wear boxers though, I have standards and it’s hard work out in the cold.) I would finally understand the Zodiac, and to me the whole world would be a rising moon. Cold and cratered and orbiting me. I would also have a bell that rings good tidings and tolls bad ones, so I can strategically play the market via the resonance of its pattern of sounds and my friend Tim who is a day trader.

I would like to tactically retreat from human society while also making a tidy profit from the anguish, lust and ambition of my customers. I will eventually be killed by a band of scrappy and heroic teenagers, although I suspect this will be the case regardless of whether I take up witching.

I will hex your exes for Halloween if you write in to this column and publish them next week if you like; you must specifically request your ex by name and enumerate as much of their hexworthy behavior as possible. Names can and will be censored; I will offer their true syllables only to the tentacled god and the seven wraiths. I will only pour their true letters into the sea. I will drown them in myrtle and creeper-vine. Then all your sorrows will transmute into the red satisfaction of vengeance.

“Medea” by Frederick Sandys, 1868

In all seriousness I do believe in the power of words—I bandy them about for a living, after all—and sometimes saying something that feels good and luscious and full of mischief has a power of its own; sometimes it feels like an unshackling of the id, and other times, the severing of a tether to a time and a place where you were held under dark water. We all have people who’ve hurt us, some worse than others. Sometimes it takes a curse to cut that cord. Sometimes it takes a witch to give you the words.

The truth is I sat down to try to write and felt my thoughts scatter like salt on a table. I have an entire book to revise and my body and teeth hurt and my thoughts are fleeing little grains that will dissolve in any water or on a tongue and be the dissolved substrate of any sea going. There’s a war and the weather is bad and I’m lost in my own head. Sometimes the weight of the words you can’t get out of yourself are heavier than what you manage to get out. I always want to dazzle and delight you, astonish you, make you sorrow where I sorrow, bring you into the circle of my delight at what I learn. I am so lucky to have you. I never want to disappoint you; I want to give you my whole heart in one big draught. So I offer you curses to the ones you hate because I love you. Because I think I would make a good witch and I am tired of job applications.

If you would like a hex (with addenda of rite and ritual upon request) I can be reached at talialavinwrites@gmail.com.

Yours truly,

The Wicked Witch of the Midatlantic/I-95 Corridor