I have said before that I am a Gemini Wood Tiger.
Chinese astrology is a 12 animal/year cycle. Dragon being the luckiest and Pig being the worst apparently. According to this I get along well with people in signs of Dragon, Horse and Pig. I’m not compatible with Ox, Snake or Monkey people.
The year of our Lord 1998 I turned 24. T’was the year of the Tiger for the second time since I was born. Probably coincidentally but it was a really good year. I recall my 12th year on the planet to have been a rather pleasant one as well. Not sure if this is a thing, but it felt like it. The year I turned 36 wasn’t so shit hot, but I feel like if I look back it was probably the best of the 7 surrounding it. I’m not going to look back. I was married then and everything sucked huge monster balls. I think that was the year I left hubby for the Ninja and spent time away from the farm, so…ya, better.
I am looking forward to 48. I have a good feeling about it, just like I did with 42, and I have not been wrong.
I have also stated that I am not overly comfortable writing about my current relationship, and yet I do. I think about him a lot and my brain spills easily and frequently onto my keyboard.
In an attempt to stop this, I started thinking back…way back.
I have had some weird shit happen to me in my day, and I find that sometimes, in here, I tend to focus on the negative. Not the really cool, bizarre movie moments.
I say with great frequency when dragging the lake of my past, you can’t make this shit up. I also say I am not the girl I used to be. Both of these things are true.
So here is a little story of the year I turned 24.
To tell it I have to start at 22.
Once upon a time I met a boy on a bus.
I was traveling with my then one year old son. Kidlet was fast asleep and I snuck off the bus for a smoke. Said boy gave me a light and we got to talking. By Christmas we were dating, by Valentine’s Day we had broken up.
I was a little shit. I really was. I was also crazy insecure and boy crazy. The only way I felt any self-worth was by being wanted.
I still speak to said boy. We have remained friends, which is a testament to how amazing he is.
I pulled a dick move, one of many that year.
We were sitting in a coffee shop at a huge table full of his friends. I felt warm and welcomed. A friend of his showed up and pretty much the entire table saw the lightning bolts of lust that passed between us. I held fast for a period of time and then ya…I cheated. Ended up dating the second guy for the better part of a year. We moved in together. Long story short that didn’t work out either.
He moved out on Halloween. I’d had my eye on another satellite friend. He wasn’t part of the group, but kinda floated in an unpredictable orbit around everyone. Made cameo appearances at varying functions.
Second boyfriend had failed to transfer the lease to my name and me and my new roommate had to do a midnight move to another apartment on Halloween. We were poor and didn’t have much stuff so it was easy enough. Afterwards we went to a going away party for one of the core members of the original group.
‘He who orbitted’ pulled me into his lap and asked me what I was doing for the next six years. When I said I didn’t know he replied ‘being with me I hope’. The embers hadn’t stopped smoldering form the last funeral pyre.
What he failed to mention is the extreme game of come here go away that would be played for the next year…yep my 24th.
I’d like to find a better way to put this, but I can’t. Truth is I stalked the fucker, from Halloween till my birthday. So 7 months. It was a tiresome time. I’d wait till he got drunk and follow him home from the bar. I’d get laid, then a foot in the ass and cab fare home.
Then this boy named Mark came along. My Gemini twin, also my roommate’s obsession months prior. I ended up hooking up with him for a few weeks just to have the Satellite crash back into my bed. The night I dumped Mark he ended up getting shitfaced at a bar, picking a fight and having his lip split open. In a strange turn of events, years later I found out it was ex-hubby who knocked him out that night. Stranger than fiction. Or on par at least.
Roommate stopped speaking to me and stopped paying rent without my knowledge. 3 months later I opened the door to see my landlord taping an eviction notice to the door. I paid the balance owing in cash and kicked her out in one deft motion. I decided to move anyways.
Then along came Jesus. Who my friends called Mount Matt. He saved the day when my movers showed up drunk by strapping my futon to the roof of his Ford Taurus and helping me lug it up the stairs to my new place.
Everyone was so sick of the Satellite and his bullshit they were conspiring to get me and Jesus together, anything to get me out from under the other. And it worked. I was ready to leave Satellite for Jesus but he wasn’t ready for me.
So, brief recap. In the same area of town, the same coffee shop really, within the same extended group of friends I had now slept with/dated 1. Bus boy 2. Second boyfriend 3. Satellite 4. Mark and now 5. Jesus.
One crisp fall afternoon they all played basketball together. I was on the patio at said coffee shop and heard about it shortly after. Apparently it was fairly vicious. Satellite had some rather substantial road rash when he met me the next day. Turns out he saw Jesus as a threat and it was finally time to lock me down. Almost a year to the day after he’d began the world’s longest game of hide and seek.
So that’s my story.
I look back at that girl I was with the same nostalgia reserved for old sci-fi movies with their outdated special effects.
Seems silly now, but at the time it was magical.
