I've read myself with The Gothic, I've read people in the Reading Exchange, in the Seeker's threads, but I've never read someone who was present with me at the time of the reading... until tonight.
I've tried reading my mother, but she didn't like the deck and it never went further than that. My best friend spent the week-end in town with her husband, and she came to see me tonight. She's seen The Gothic before, told me it was pretty, but she was never read with it. She likes dark stuff like me, I was sure she was going to like it, and tonight proved it.
At first, she wasn't sure if she wanted to be read with The Gothic though, she just went through tough times: her and her husband just bought a house, they didn't have much furnitures and they had to buy some, so they have lots of debts, and she just lost her job. She was worried the dark deck would come up with dark readings, and she just wasn't in the mood for that. I told her to give the deck a try, she said OK.
I made a general spread, and came up with just one bad card in the reading. It put a smile on her face while I reassured her the dark deck came up with a good reading. She started liking the deck, and told me she wanted more readings, but not about the future, so I went looking for my book packed with spreads.
The first spread in it was about past lives. She was very enthousiastic about the spread and the cards, and she was surprisingly good: she's more into cartomancy than tarot. What I love with her is how intuitive she is, how much she participates in the readings, we always end up discussing about the cards, which we did tonight. And better, she clicked with The Gothic. We did the spread many times, and when her husband showed up to bring her back to his parents' place, he became our guinea pig. The readings were really good. She's not into tarot though, but into cartomancy, her knowledge of tarot is limited compared to mine, but she liked so much The Gothic that she said she was considering buying it, and getting into tarot, which she already knows a little.
What an evening!