Did you ever do one of those natal birth chart thingies online? You know, the ones at the horoscope sites? You enter your exact birth date (January, 14th 1977) and time (1:07pm) and the city you were born in (Oswego, NY) and a little digital hourglass pops up while horoscopes.com's server checks its data base for your specifics and proclivities--who the stars meant you to be--which are subsequently listed via a little star graph comprised of dots and points within a circle flanked by zodiac icons (goats, bulls, chicks with water jugs). These are the clandestine planetary energies that pulled you into form the way vacuum-moulded Tupperware is made. These are the things that sucked you into you. When you were born, Mercury's moon was rising. That means shit-all to you, unless you carry an education in Astrology, but the list of character traits that go along with Mercury's moon rising are minutely you. They are fucking you.
"Oh Jesus, that's me," you say emphatically. Or, that's what I said, at least.
You don't have to tell me I'm a bloody romantic; I know. I like to, and always will, believe there's magic in the world, and gut instincts rank way higher on my priorities list than science. I recognize the folly in that. Yes, I did read that funny article about the famous seventies magician/skeptic who gave out a Virgo horoscope under the whole horoscope variety of listings to a convention hall's worth of students, the overwhelming majority of which thought their horoscope was dead-on--that they were all Virgo--when only 6 percent or so actually were. I also saw a horoscope specialist do a blind read for Hitler's natal chart on the History channel, and her consultations with the planetary energies of the past resulted in the news that this guy would have a really really bad time in 1945, but it's information via the History channel, so one must be skeptical. It is perhaps the best channel on television, but still a bad place to go for primary source material.
So I see how silly this all is, and how empiricism is really the way to go if you want to learn the world. The problem is, empiricism isn't sexy, and I like sexy. Empiricism is boring; it's without poetry. It's too linear for my tastes, and the root of the word--empire--reminds me of very unsexy things, world domination, the choking and disruption of native cultures and the sun never setting on the British empire. Again, it's silly. I know this, but I happen to think there's no justice in the world if dry dudes in lab coats who never get laid hold the keys to the universe. No, no. Hot spacey broads from Sedona who run naked in the woods under the full moon with big, almost merkin-like hippy pubises are the ones with the answers. I go to them, because I like sexy.
That's just the way I am--or so says my Pisces moon.
[Aside, and only somewhat relevant: I would swing from this dude's dick till the day he died if he let me. Big crush on him.]
So, not too long ago, I discovered the natal chart thing, and I ran one for myself. At first I didn't like what I saw, because the practicality-obsessed Capricorn in me is forever fighting to blot out the batshit Aquarian qualities of my conscious mind; Capricorn screams "HELLO! I'M HERE! GET A REAL JOB!" The Aquarian in me says, "Let's smoke a dimebag and go fuck that boy from Encino, and then lay around and think about the complexities of social dynamics in relation to religion." You can see that being an Aquarian is way gooder. I use interesting excuses to define myself as such. I'm on the cusp. The doctors induced labor. I was ripped from the womb too early. I just really, really want to be childish and immature forever.
But in the spirit of finding all sorts of reasons to smoke dimebags and fuck boys, I uncovered a neat tidbit, something of great interest pertaining directly to this story.
To sum: A child born on this date at this location will be a magnet for controversy. Strange coincidences will abound. This child will have great adventures that materialize out of nothing at an abnormal rate, and it will seem as if something is always "happening." There will be both good and bad adventures. She/he will have many stories to tell about them.
Read that again. Read it, and tell me that's not me. If you don't think that's me, you're bonkers, babe. You're more bonkers than chicks from Sedona.
Dusty was an atypical professional athlete, which is to say that he didn't suffer from a preponderance of ego. Most of the boys on Jamestown's little Single-A farm team had a neon green popsicle's chance in hell of playing for the Braves at any point in their future--Dusty included--but that didn't seem to quell their raging love of self. Dusty must have had good parents, the kind that supported accomplishments instead of narcissism. He had excellent manners and a sunny disposition. I used to call him my "remedial ball of sunshine," and he would smile and say, "Aw thanks, Bunny."
By August, the mania had receded a bit, and the things that were more my character--the results of planetary pulling in January of 1977 in Oswego, NY--reared up. Weakly and without true gusto, for the Paxil still had a grip on me. I continued to rise at dawn and ride my bike for hours, but I was daydreaming more while I did it--thinking, thinking, thinking--in my usual, Paxil-free way. One morning, I dreamed myself right out of New York State, sort of "coming-to" in Northern Pennsylvania. I didn't like that feeling at all, for Normals didn't daydream. If they did space out, it was only a slight departure, not four hours of oblivious wandering, considerable dehydration and a desperate payphone call: "I'm in some place called Sheffield and my legs don't work anymore. Can you come pick me up?"
I was beginning to be moral again. I had feelings, and one thing I felt with actual gusto was shame, for I had done bad things. Candace was a nice girl, and I had dropped her. Dusty had a serious girlfriend back home in Minnesota, and I was an accessory to cheating. I had colluded in wrongness and bad juju, and though none of the other girls who were seeing Dusty stopped seeing Dusty, I stopped seeing Dusty. It was the right thing to do, and best for both of us, for the reemergence of old, depressed Bunny had brought forth with it a greater desire for interesting conversation and stimulating argument than wanton sex and drug use. I longed to learn from someone, and though Dusty was sweet and super fun, he had conveyed to me everything he knew in three hours' time. He wasn't much more than a Bull Durham type fantasy to me. He even fucked like he pitched, "sorta all over the place."
[When Atlanta released Dusty, he settled down with the girlfriend. They have kids and are happy, so that's nice, but then so is Dusty.]
I continued to bike, work and sun myself, waiting in contemplation for my next opportunity in life, and it was in late August that I ran into the opportunity, literally and figuratively--five feet, nine inches of well-educated opportunity--also out for "a jog" (he called it) with horrendous, heel-striking, bent-over running form. His name was Troy. He was the athletic trainer for the baseball team. I had met him through Dusty at The Rusty Nail one evening and together we had an interesting--albeit drunken--conversation about stress fractures, an injury I had been truly plagued with. He gave me great advice. I found him to be cute and interesting, with a sexy smile, and because he was much older than me, he exuded the confidence and self-awareness that people at the apex of their physical beauty--their twenties--do not naturally possess, the kind of confidence that makes thirties sex so much better, deeper. Multidimensional. I wanted to have stimulating conversation and multidimensional thirties sex with Troy.
"Hey there," I said.
"Hi."
"You have horrendous running form."
"Really?"
"Yes. Let me show you how to run."
Troy and I had post-run, hot and sweaty sex in the training room on a counter, which led to a wine-drenched, pleasure session at his apartment I remember quite fondly. It was my first thirties sex. When I currently consider the effortlessness of the pickups, like this one, and the others from my happy Paxil summer, I'm almost compelled to take the drug again. I have never been good at pickups. My focus is too scattered. Nothing is easy about them, but with the numbness Paxil brought, I could own my desires and focus them from a self-centered place I don't by birth possess, and this focus was met with great results in the working world of Normals. I ran the most effortless game during those months, coercing whomever I wanted into whatever lascivious position I desired with shocking simplicity, and it was because I totally dug myself. Why shouldn't everyone want to have sex with me? That was the energy I exuded and it had a power of persuasion akin to catnip. Like Normal-nip.
I also began to realize this curious thing about Normals: so long as your body is hard, your brain is numb and you don't concern yourself with things like the betterment of the world, deep thinking or other people's feelings, Normals will find you "irresistibly-mysterious", "intelligent" and a person of "tremendous character." I was beginning to doubt the Normals' thinking processes. I was also about to use my natal adventure-magnet, for I had unwittingly set into motion an odd set of future circumstances that colluded into the making of one of the more enjoyable and entertaining weeks of my life; a zany event, the meeting of my preposterously blonde soul mate and a warehouses' worth of cheesecake were heading my way.
And here I thought I was just seeking out some sexy to pass the time.
Posted by The Bunny at 5:07 PM