Signs & Wonderment
"Yalla! YALLA!” – Nala
What I love in any visit to New York is the journey in. Usually a car ride at odd hours. On tonight’s, Wednesday, April 24th, the radio plays “Dance Monkey” as background noise to an Italian family of 9 arguing. Soundly I will tell you, having learnt it from my first relationship, that with Italians you’re always somehow part of the family – tears and tempers, tension and all. Even without nationality: “travel” is “travel” in any language. And traveling with family on late, long, delayed flights means that a youngest daughter will be scolded by a father and seek comfort from a mother. Stepping up to my seat I’m unaware when the offense first came, even less aware of what it is, but the tone patriarchs use to table it once a stranger comes in earshot is unmistakable. Last to be picked up: I sit in the front. First to be born, I understand from his tenor to mind my business. Allora. I’ll try my best. Her mother goes, there, there, my dear child. And I, tranquilo, tranquilo, my dear passenger. Worry not.
We’re both too late. By the time I finish buckling, the daughter has capitulated to gasping sobs. She needs more air to mount her defense. An uncle, three rows back, sympathetic to her parents’ silence, chimes in with a smoker’s cough. (At least I pray that is the ritual, since this ride takes 40-minutes and I have come to New York to fill up – not empty my guts over the side of a friend’s couch and into a trash can. “Boot-and-rally” is to be deployed only as a last resort.) Re-fueled, the daughter resumes. I’m mesmerized. Her pinprick turns from third-act telenovela pleas to rapid-fire informative rebuttals. She even throws in a laugh or two, switching to comedy while connecting with fellow castmates/forgiving jurors/family members. My familiarity with her range stems from the few Italian operas I’ve half-sat, half-slept through. True to the medium, time passes, songs play, yet she remains undeterred. Inexhaustible. Our actress pleads her case well past the famous skyline coming into view, and for the trial to last this long is a kind of punishment for both parents. We round the final bend and the fact remains that I’ve never seen her. Dare I look? But why ruin the magic of her performance, break the illusion of her persecution, with a face? Bored, an uninterested older sister (cousin?) hums along to “Everytime We Touch”. Lip trills matching the muzzled synthesizer.
The driver pulls over. It’s around the time Manhattan enters that cradled quiet of summer nights resting from workdays. You know, when the heat hushes the craziness of 6th Ave, pressing a damp finger to a yellow cab’s lips. The family unloads outside the Marriott on 38th. “What if there was no offense?” Just a first break-up or a missed pet. I’ll never know. Deeper in the evening lull, I exit at 2nd & 28th with the thought “Maybe this is an omen?” crawling up the steps beside me. “What if you run into your ex on this trip?” Naaaaaaaah fuck that shit.
At an airport three weeks later, I did.
Now would be a good time to tell you where I’m going with this poetic-ass preamble. It’s got to do with the second thing I learned from that first relationship: my Sun, my Moon, my Rising.
Give me a little credit! For 20 years I managed to evade the question of “What time were you born?” Not, too, just for the eye-rolling angst of feeling boxed into an identity but because African parents possess a particular talent for putting the horror into horoscope, Halloween, and Harry Potter. We do not play with gods where I come from – no matter how much grace they fall from. (For our Caucasian readers, Michael Scott might help translate the sentiment; I’m not superstitious but I’m a little stitious.) I came up back when folks were really ‘bout dat astrological life. They would rush the closest newsstands for the latest Olympus dispatch, dying to know what planets ruled their lives that week. Though wary I refused to trivialize their religion. I mean what else could you call fear and faith and fate commingled like this?
Before P, everything I knew about signs lay at the crossroads of being held hostage at college parties to conversations with the wrong girls and being an active listener. Plus since I’m a Virgo (man), these were not choice lessons: they were indictments. But P stuck with me. She held me down, she questioned, she cared, and she loved me long enough to get a time to put into CoStar after five months of asking. To each Samson a Delilah. That was the first time I let an app draw a line between my love and the stars, and once drawn, the curtain opened to all manner of Pandora’s bullshit1.
This summer I was back on my bullshit. Redownloading The Apps in all their tedium and remembering why Bumble brings me the most joy. Not for the success rate: it is the hardest to navigate, socially, with the most treacherous Holland Tunnel of Who-The-Fuck-Are-You?s Every time I come back to Bumble, she has a new face. What a delight! Such aggressive reinvention! Them bees love to redo their UI more than the WASP women they attract change hairstyles in a crisis. Here is a hive buzzing through a myriad of updates and features – and contradictions over its premise – hoping its latest flower entices users long enough for them to be picked in real life. Or, at least, to justify the acquisition price. At the moment they’ve gone all in on the Zodiac, prompting users to divulge their “Big Three” in exchange for ChatGPT-generated, vague but pseudo-insightful, two-and-a-half sentence descriptions as a reward. In effect, bailing out every girl who’s no good at bios. Oh, how the mighty have fallen…
I see it now as a game – tying affection to astrology. A bit of harmless deduction where once you know the rules it becomes about how to apply them. An algorithm. There are elements and attributes. Positions and weaknesses. And I’m tempted to pull up a Pokémon type chart as reference, but fear I’ve already offended too much.2 Instead, let me cause fresh offense. Here are the signs I tend to watch out for…
Scorpio
A Scorpio will wear struggle on their neck like it is their biggest, brightest chain. They will wear it with the capital “S”, too, because it is the S-on-their-chest (read: chip-on-their-shoulder) that makes them feel invincible. Whenever I have entertained a Scorpio, implying I had time on my hands and an ambivalent curiosity about their rumored sexual prowess, I have been met by their persona. They will speak to a life that they are not about, but secretly, if you pay attention, wish to become about, as if they are already there. Some lucky few succeed and do crossover to the image they near constantly project.3
Addendum: I get the feeling every Scorpio is driven by a strong sense of values they feel lightly. They wish a clear right and wrong to living. When pressed, this desire most often returns to their egos. “Justice” for them rarely has a positive but rests closer in the answer to who’s deserving of the venom in their tail. A real as for me and my house ring to it. Except the house is a one-story villa built on the coast of a sinking Florida. Check back in a few months: they’ll have moved. In summary, I have never dated a Scorpio who hasn’t stung.
Libra
Leave it alone.
I’m too practical for their triflin’ ways. I’m a flirt, but I’m not really about the game like that. Like this. I “love love” but I do not love motion sickness. Simply put, I have not the patience, nor the dandelions, nor ever the time, to sit down and pluck out all the She Loves Me and Love Me Not’s these girls will go through. A Libra will wear her heart on her sleeve the way a magician will pull flowers from the same place. Only to turn those feelings back into velvet straps when she rescinds her affection, and delivers you some sort of backlash.4
Aquarius
bell hooks. bell hooks. bell hooks. All I heard for a weekend straight was “bell hooks”. Always from Aquarius Black girls who’d taken gender, sociology, or sexuality studies as a minor/course in college; always with the protests at how she shaped a generation. I do not disagree. bell is immutable. As is the fact that every romantic interaction I’ve had with an Aquarius woman of colour can be boiled down to me asking, simply, every day, “What flavour is the weather of the month?” I have never seen a species so capable of holding two minds at the same time, so fully, and hating both.5 But whenever I’m at an impasse these are the women I turn to with my troublesome, meddlesome self. bell was right. I’m guilty as charged. We pray I find the will to change…
Leo
…but before I do, it needs to be said: Black Leo Women deserve worshiping. They are kind of the whole point without being about it.
Taurus
There has been a consistent stream of Taurus women in my life whose exits neatly coincide with The Running of The Bulls. Coincidence? I think not.
It would be nice to be able to blame things on the stars instead of being left with the wondering of what went wrong. That goes as much for me & P as it does any of the women who’ve led to these categorical, absolute, serious, and completely unbiased findings. When P & I broke up, I had the eerie feeling CoStar might have been right. And till this day, whichever you’re reading it, I still wonder what that Italian family was fighting about. Entertainment has only helped soothe the latter. He granted us subtitles and two amazing shows to watch them with. Extraordinary Attorney Woo & Snabba Cash.
I’ll be honest – I don’t have many reference points to Korean culture beyond a few choice friends, my editor’s love of K-pop, a Home Ec. project that introduced me to kimchi, this one phrase I memorized in high school6, and half a lecture during Global Entertainment on Hallyu. Even altogether, it barely makes a constellation. But the “K” in this K-Drama means keeping me going. For ten days straight during the August of 2022, Extraordinary Attorney Woo was my sole consolation from a horrendous advertising job. I would get up at 6. I would be online at 7. I would get off, if I was lucky, at 9. Depleted, and stuck in the window before responsibility forced me to face the next day, Park Eun-bin and her bright, charming, neurotic energy recharged my batteries and faith in humanity. The premise: a high IQ, autistic lawyer (played by a neurotypical actress) navigates law, life, and love armed with an abundance of whale facts. On the other side of each episode you’ll find “some difficult social and political realities” laid bare, and that it’s “a very good drama”. I’m not being trite. I just get a little teary-eyed, a little treacly even trying to summarize the wholesome vibes.
Maybe the placement is unsensational; its timing, however, is perfect. About a third of the way through episode 13, another simple song hovers over luggage handling and erupts on the car ride into vacation. Reason for traveling? Stiff and studious Sr. associate Jung Myeong-seok has co-signed Woo Yung-Woo’s whim to take on a case that’s next to rare dolphins. Under the guise of networking, a much-needed break, with as good an excuse as any, and a dash of food tourism. To the rookie associates his choice seems like a breach of character. To the audience it’s welcome relief from witnessing Myeong-seok’s workload spiral him into illness (*Cough Cough*). And when he arrives at the airport, everyone can see that he’s here to have fun. Director Yu In-sik, too, who flips Myeong-seok’s ear-clearing drone into a three-part acapella of Choi Sung’s “The Blue Night of Jeju”. A performance for none but fun! Fun which continues in it’s belted reprise from the back of a mini cooper – top down, of course. I find the lyrics as telling as any love song: We no longer wish to be tied; to newspapers, to TV, to paychecks.
I am 90% positive the word for “stress” in Sweden is pronounced Snabba Cash because I can’t name a more stress filled show. Okay, false. CALIPHATE is verifiably insane – and Swedish! I could also mention how I’m one episode behind on season three of Industry, or have yet to watch Squid Game. Though that’s beside the point. Which, if you’re wondering, is to be making money: the easier the better. Save, easy money being quite hard to come by. For the protagonists in this three-pronged story – a She-E-O start-up founder, a dejected/neglected teenager, and “a charming mobster” – nearly fatal. Fair warning this is one of those “you finish it the same day you start it and have a love-hate relationship with whoever told you about it while texting them your reactions to every major plot twist” kind of shows. This is work that wakes Hollywood Executives in the middle of the night to make them mutter, “I wish I’d thought of that first.” The narratives flow in parallel towards the shared goal of getting rich. Stitching, snitching, and intersecting at intense junctures. A single camera breathes over the shoulder at every bad decision with framing as claustrophobic as the situations the leads get trapped in. It’s gritty, and too good to be on Netflix. Think 48 Hours except it costs twelve and what’s lost alongside your peace is any allure the Nordic countries (or founding a start-up) previously held. And I’ll say it: Evin Ahmad is really putting respect on that MILF name.
Time is money so I’ll keep this short. Hustle. Swedish Rap. Film Photos. Black Hoodie! God, I love this intro.
How did I get here? (This post. This topic. This foolish…) I could blame a sibling discovering their love of Percy Jackson - Disney doing a fine reboot - and point at Spring. Or I could go further, to the late 2000s, and examine the seed Class of the Titans7 planted in me with the line “Is my enemy's enemy my friend or my enemy?” delivered in true camp(e) fashion. From both these shows I know how hard one’s celestial lineage is to trace. Most demi-god journeys start with elevated stakes that lead through whichever domain your Papa or Mama god governs, the resemblance acting as sole guide. Mine ends with the certainty I am a son of Dionysus. (“Bacchus”, to the Italians.) It’s also why I’m sure Dua Lipa’s “Anything For Love” will be synced, probably in a satirical montage, possibly before the credits in a Star-studded RomCom. Regardless, the song’s worth all thirteen houses and every time I’ve replayed it!
P.S. Worry not.
It is worth clicking on that link purely for the drag: “...although blaming a woman for all the evils of the world is definitely more Greek than Mesopotamian.”
But seriously if you can put together a team to beat the Elite Four, you can understand what a woman means when they say retrograde.
Fake it till you make it, I guess.
Netflix supports my theory. See Human Resources, Season 1, Episode 8, for the sublime example that is Sonya and Claudia’s dysfunctional, illegal, intoxicating relationship.