"I should warn you, there's a severed hand on the wall."

So, last week my work had a mandatory meeting at eight o clock in the fucking morning, outside of the office. One of my work friends lives considerably far out from the city, and so she asked if she could stay at my place. I said yes, because I quite like her and because I had access to an air mattress. Only after agreeing did I then have the moment of, "...aw, shit, she's going to see inside the house. SHE'LL KNOW."

The guy who sits next to me at work seems to think I'm a Satanist, but I think that's probably because of my Baphomet tights and the fact that he's maybe not the brightest man alive - I overheard him say that the pyramids aren't that impressive because they are just "shit stacked on top of other shit."

Duh, dude.

Most people are aware that wearing all black all the time just means you have terrible taste in music, and I like to think that I present a relatively normal face to the world. This facade crumbles once you get inside my apartment, because my apartment is very small and so even if I were inclined to hide my shit, there is literally nowhere to do so. Normally I don't care, because the only people crossing that threshold are people who are weirdos themselves. Oh, and Arnt, but he dates my sister so he's used to this bullshit already anyway.

But normals, you guys. The burlesque community has quite a few pagans and witches in it, and I've actually come to expect the nerd community to be either left of centre on spirituality or total atheists. I live in Vancouver, for fuck's sake - there's a lot of hippies here. So I sort of forgot that no, not everyone is down with the eye of newt.

I've had a few conversations with a friend lately that had me sitting there going, "you DO know what I am, right?" and then coming to realise that it was possible she hadn't pieced it together yet. There's also ample evidence that alternate spiritualities are NOT a thing she's researched, which of course baffles me but is possibly quite normal? I don't fucking know anymore. I assumed everyone close to my age had a high school coven, or went off to college and started telling everyone god was dead.

Anyway, as a result of these conversations, I was a bit nervous once I realised the woman staying with me was married to a Mennonite. Not because that's fucked up or anything, but because I honestly was concerned she'd be creeped out by my dumb house. Which was silly. Just because my one normie friend was scared of witches didn't mean ALL of them were. ...Right?

Pictured: Subtle clues.

Actually, yes, right. Here's the anti-climactic ending: she loved the decor, including the Hand of Glory on the wall, we stayed up chatting slumber party style, and like all polite adults she didn't say shit about the bookcase. Seriously, I can wind myself up over the dumbest things.

The moral of the story is this: nobody cares, and that's exactly as it should be.

Also: if your cat is a goblin, it will shove its gross goblin face into your guest's at some ungodly hour of the morning.