“Learn, in witchcraft, thou must ever return triple.” –Gerald Gardner
“I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation.” –Joan Jett
I was at work this past Sunday, and I overheard a clutch of customers — all members of the same social club — gossiping in stage whispers about an upcoming leather competition. According to their breathless take on the situation, one of the contestants was allegedly “demanding” that other people fill out his application for him. (Intrigue and impropriety!)
In retrospect, I probably should’ve just kept my mouth shut. But since I happened to know the contestant in question, I elbowed my way into the conversation and explained that all he’d actually done was reach out to a few acquaintances, hoping that someone would be willing to look over his application before he submitted it. And I added that in the end, I was the one tapped to review it. This didn’t sit well with the cowhide-encrusted Heathers on the other side of my counter, but it was in fact the truth, which they could either accept or deny.
Apparently, they chose the latter. Yesterday morning, I got a phone call from one of my own leather brothers, who filled me in on the latest development: The contestant was now being accused of cheating on his application. And I had been named as the person helping him cheat.
Well, gee. I wonder who started that rumor.
Never leave a paper trail, y’all. This is my sage advice to you.
Overall, I can’t bring myself to be too concerned with what people say about me. I mean, if someone needs to paint me as a villain in order to feel better about themself, that’s really more of a “them” problem. I am, however, extremely protective of my friends, and, under normal circumstances, this is the part where I’d be breaking out the bottles and black candles and dank herbs that smell like consequence. But this time around, I don’t have to lift a finger, because the chatterboxes are deep in the process of hexing themselves.
A hex is the occult equivalent of a head cold — it won’t take anyone down permanently, but it does need to run its course. Unlike curses, which stick around until broken, hexes tend to be temporary, or else they’re one-shot, bringing about a specific unfavorable outcome. Like, the hex is designed to cause a bad thing, the bad thing happens, and after that, the hex peters out.
So, for instance, if I were going to hex the dudes slandering my friend, I would get hold of three figural candles shaped like snakes, dress them with appropriate oils and ingredients (blackberry, brown mustard, red pepper), light the first candle, then light the other two off of that one. It would be analogous to the Hydra in Greek mythology: For every rumor they spread, two rumors would spring up about them.
Or, since they’re so invested in contests, a classic binding would be a good option. I could print out their profile pics, decorate them with the symbol of Saturn, tie them up nice and tight with some knot weed and valerian, then bury those bundles at a crossroad. And any competitive endeavors they attempted would be crossed with restrictions, delays, and bad luck.
But I don’t have to do any of these things, because they’re doing a fine job of besmirching their own characters without any assistance on my part.
Reputations within subcultures are hard to scrub off, and from the moment these particular leatherettes swept onto the scene, spilling tea and spinning untruths, they were marked as mean-spirited drama queens. And that is what now precedes them. And while their carefully handcrafted rumor is certainly spreading, it is not doing so in the way they hoped: I made some investigatory phone calls of my own, and what’s currently flying around the national leather community is variations of, “They’re just stirring up nonsense again.” (Or, my personal favorite, “Wait. Didn’t one of them compete last year? Huh. I guess someone’s still bitter.”)
And y’all, it would tickle me fuchsia to be able to take credit for the misfortunes about to befall them. After all, they tried to hurt my friend, and as Mary Stuart Masterson stated so eloquently in Some Kind of Wonderful, “Break his heart, I’ll break your face.” But in this situation, there’s not much I could throw at them that they’re not already manifesting. They’ve made themselves known as backstabbers and troublemakers, and they will be written off and forgotten sooner than later. My friend, on the other hand, is presently known as someone who rose above the petty haters trying to pull him down to their level. And come the competition, he will be remembered for that.
And that really is the takeaway here. There are times when hexes and curses are warranted, and the targets of those spells undeniably deserve everything that is coming to them. But there are other times — especially if the asshats involved are hobbled with overconfidence — when we as witches can skip our chores, slide out of the way, and allow the trash to take itself out.
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