O Gemini season! When I started studying more deeply for my tarot practice, I found comfort in the nuances allowed to Gemini by different tarot traditions that I don't always see in zodiac discourse. While the Eight, Nine, and Ten of Swords are not always easy to encounter in a conversation with tarot cards, I *have* always felt a real sense of hope and determined curiousity from witnessing images of the Gemini symbol as a creative survivor of--among other things--systemic entrapment, night terrors, and the acutely personal process of total surrender.
When I first came across the correspondence (one of a multiplicity of possible interpretations) of Gemini with the Lovers card in the major arcana--and noticed that each of the Gemini minor arcana cards is willing to make space at the table for topics that include, among other things, danger and suffering--I started asking a series of questions that includes:
- What does self-defense have to do with love?
- When do knowledge and curiousity become adversarial forces in relationships?
- If I could more intelligently predict the outcomes of my relationships, how would that change how I give and receive love?
Content notes: This story contains emotional abuse, relationship anxiety and despair, existential isolation, and online dating.
This year, I am writing a short science-fiction/fantasy story for the Sun's journey through every 10 degrees of each tropical zodiac sign. Below is a story for Gemini 1, the first decan of the mutable air sign. In the tradition that I practice, this decan corresponds with the planet Jupiter, and with the Eight of Swords tarot card. If you would like to know more about the heart of this project, you can read more here.
I am thankful for the below works by the below writers and artists, all of which significantly influenced the writing, thinking, and feeling of this story:
"Six Months, Three Days" by Charlie Jane Anders
Black Mirror--Season 4, Episode 4--"Hang the DJ"
Brenna Hayes's Gemini season tarot letter--sign up to receive letters here!
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"Bind me and release me and never let me go"
by Lois Mei-en Kwa
The magician had an OkCupid profile, on which he made it super clear that he was only using the site to find potential customers. However, based on the looks he'd given her when she took her seat across the table from him--the first indicated Sudden Definite Interest--the second suggested his efficient arrival at a conclusion regarding Her Attributes--and the third signaled that she had just been casually dismissed as A Potential Romantic Prospect--Q suspected that he routinely made certain exceptions to his business policy.
He lifted the lid of the slender wooden case he'd brought into the coffeeshop. Q pulled her mug closer, self-conscious of the possibility that she might spill coffee all over the gemstone rings and engraved amulets nested in the case. She had never owned precious jewelry before, and now, looking down at the gleaming rows of talismans, Q regretted asking for the meeting.
But the magician immediately selected a matched pair of bracelets, each a plain leather braid with a metal clasp. He handed them to her with a knowing tilt of his head. Q had been very direct in her messages about what she was looking for.
"Predictive amplifiers. Outcome manifestors. Certainty generators. Call them whatever--with these on, you'll have no-o-o problem perceiving the most apparent conclusion of any relationship you are about to begin."
She rubbed her thumb over the braids, doubtful. "I'll be able to see the results right away?"
"Hell, you won't be able to avoid seeing the writing on the wall if you tried."
She felt the sudden, embarrassed urge to explain herself, her need for help, this whole thing.
"I've just... I'm just a little too in love with love, you know? I have a hard time seeing what's right in front of my face. Thinking clearly. Making good decisions. You know."
"Oh, okay," the magician said. He was tapping all of his fingers on the table, very lightly, very quickly. He hadn't ordered anything to drink, she realized. "That will be two hundred and fifty."
She would be short on rent, or groceries, or both. She noticed that he was wearing a similar set of bracelets, the braids much wider that those she held--over a dozen strands woven into a wide leather cuff on each wrist. She unlocked her phone, Venmo'd him the payment.
"Cool! Good luck out there!" He was already unfolding himself from his seat, the case shut tight and tucked under one armpit. "You should check out my Etsy store, too."
He pulled a white business card out from somewhere on his person and slid it across the table. Q peered at the single line of text. It flickered a little in the light--a holographic effect, or something. It was his linktr.ee address. By the time she looked up, the magician had vanished.
Q pulled one bracelet tight around her wrist and snapped the clasp shut.
* * *
Three days later, Q got home from her lunch date with a ridiculous full-body emotional high. She had never been so excited to know that she would never see her date again.
The bracelets worked.
Over tea and toast, Q and D had spent their first hour together breezing through the top four life topics they had agreed, in three-paragraph text messages exchanged online, it was totally rad to have in common. Q smiled, D laughed, they traded light-hearted confirmations that each thought the other looked cute today, and when she got up from the table to go the bathroom, she found herself thinking that this was really, really nice.
In the bathroom, she dried her hands, adjusted the bracelets on her wrists, and glanced at her reflection in the mirror.
The outcome flared, bloomed, and receded so quickly that she spent a full minute blinking back tears as she processed all the information from the vision at once. Scenes flashed through her mind and body, images lapping over each other all at once like a film she did not need to watch to recall. She and D would get along well--their many shared interests and social habits would create an immediate foundation for a camaraderie that both would describe to their close friends as really nice. Six to ten months later, both would realize that their conversations and investment in each other lacked both depth and passion, and neither would feel particularly motivated to do what it took to change that. They would break up, and there would be real sadness between them, but also a sense of relief.
When she opened her eyes, Q felt that relief echoing in her chest. She felt this outcome to be in complete accord with what her instincts had been telling her during her time with D, and now that she had seen their future in this light, it seemed inconceivable that any other could be possible at all. Q she could see the sum of the whole--she could see it clearly, and from a distance that gave her the advantage of survivor's luck. She could see the days of the impending failed relationship blurring together like the spokes of a wheel careening downhill. She could not see who would leave the other first, but for the first time, she didn't need to know. Look, here she was, leaving the bathroom with an unfamiliar determination, heading back to the table to take care of her future.
She told D as soon as they left the restaurant. He was visibly disappointed and obviously taken aback, for which she once would have felt a gnawing, low-grade guilt for days. But it was suddenly an easy thing, to let it go, to release herself from the anxiety of wondering if she was being silly, being unreasonable, if she had just made a huge mistake. No! There was nothing to wonder! She would never again have to wade through the uncertainty that had swamped her path with shame and regret. She had just saved herself--and D!--six to ten months of their precious time. He might not know it, but some amount of thanks was actually in order.
* * *
A late night dinner, arranged after meeting at a friend's gallery show in Northside. Q and M leaned across the booth table, gesturing excitedly at each other, wearing out their welcome at a restaurant that served a minimal amount of food and a torrent of beer. The table between them was littered with dented cans and uncapped rainbow markers and three different sizes of notebooks. M had wanted to meet tonight to discuss a collaboration--of work, of art, of careers and community--Jesus, of their deepest dreams, really--their whole goddamn lives. At the gallery, they had quickly realized that their individual artistic practices were so strangely similar and so wildly different that it was as if Q and M had always been speaking to each other--no, fucking singing together, across space and time without ever having met. Not just that--when they spilled their guts about what they each considered to to be the true work of their hearts--the unshakeable values and yearned-for destinations and secret ambitions filled their deepest creative fantasies--when they shared their most vulnerable, excited thoughts, Q and M found that they were on almost exactly the same page.
It felt only natural--no, inevitable--that they would have dinner together, that they would start a conversation about what a working partnership might look like. They both had at least one back-burnered project that needed more hands to lift off the ground and into the world, and they had both assumed these projects would be forever dormant. M had told their spouse, K, about Q, and K--a community organizer who loved M's art but did not participate in its making--had been almost as excited as M for this meeting to occur.
Q burst out laughing when she and M finished each other's sentences for the second time. She realized how badly she needed to pee, and left M to flip tipsily through their notebooks as she stumbled happily to the bathroom.
Q could not meet M's eyes when she returned to the table, cash in hand for her share of the bill. She shoved her supplies into her tote and mumbled something about an early morning, said she'd text soon, and walked out the door and immediately into the Lyft she'd called from the bathroom.
There was no denying the chemistry they had shared, nor the smile she had seen crumple on her face when she looked in the mirror and felt the immediate, imploding weight of the likely future: decades spent wrestling her creeping resentment, decades drained by fights over the true ownership of the ideas they'd brought into the world, decades sunk into arguments with herself about the rivalry she would deny feeling towards M--and then, at last, the cold battle for a coordinated business separation that would leave them both technically compensated, if not whole. Lawyers. There would be lawyers. She had never imagined herself needing one before tonight.
She kept her eyes closed during the entire car ride home, heart pounding from the booze, the regret, and the relief.
Q slept until morning stabbed its way through the curtains, angling right for her eyes. She rolled over to protect her hangover from exposure to sunlight. She brought her hands up to cover her face, and blinked in surprise. Her bracelet leathers had multiplied--each braid held four strands now, woven in a new pattern that was as beautiful and unsettling as the new project she and M had started outlining in her sketchbook the night before.
* * *
R was thirty minutes late to their first date. She texted Q ten minutes after their arranged meeting time, when her delayed train emerged from underground and she got signal back on her phone. Q had had ten long minutes to frantically review each line of every message they had exchanged over the dating website and to assign every phrase R had used to one of several increasingly unlikely cases supporting the likelihood that R was "just one of those people"--too beautiful to rely on, and too good to be true.
She tried to put her panic aside for the sake of keeping an open mind, especially when she received R's distraught mid-transit apology. But by the time R finally speed-walked into the coffeeshop--she looked even more beautiful in person, despite being completely frazzled, a fact that actually made Q feel more anxious--they were both vaugely worried, vigilantly ginger towards each other, already haunted by preemptive disappointment.
Q didn't bother to take a bathroom break--she didn't need a mirror to see which future she hoped to avoid, here. They parted ways with a half-hug outside, too tired to hide their sadness from each other before they turned and walked in opposite directions.
* * *
Throughout their friendship, Q had always said to herself (when alone) and to select others (when drunk) that she loved K way more than K loved her. When they finally got together, Q stopped saying it out loud. It seemed offensive for her to think a horrible thing like that, let alone to give it a voice. She and K's love seemed both more irrevocable and more fragile, now. If she broke their romance by doubting what it carried in its core, she would never forgive herself. She put her fear into a corner of the basement of her heart and threw herself back into bed, back into K's arms.
K was white, and Q was not. The first time they went out and some awful drunken bro flirted with K as if Q wasn't even standing right there ordering their drinks and holding her hand, K tensed, ignored the man, then took her and Q's drinks to a wobbly table in the corner of the crowded dive bar. She leaned in close and put her lips to Q's ear.
"You're so lucky you've never been pretty," she said.
Q excused herself to the bathroom and clenched the sink with both hands, staring hungrily at her face in the mirror for the first time since she and K had become a couple. It had been almost two years. She had been avoiding her reflection everywhere she went, afraid of what she might see. The joke was very much on her, it seemed. Now that she had finally faced herself in the glass, desperate to catch a glimpse of the truth she feared was there, all she could see were dark clouds, a silent wall of fog that roiled without dissipating. The confusion in her eyes, at least, was plain to see.
"I'd see it if there was a problem," she said, and said again and again, holding her head in her hands. Over time, the bracelets had continued to grow without her permission, secretly and confidently as a forest floor in the dead of night. The braids were thick, cloistered around her wrists, soaked with her sweat.
K left a few months later, with little ceremony. It was hard to stay angry at K, and it was hard not to. Q swung wildly between numb, fractured relief, and missing K so badly it felt like her bones were screaming her name.
She threw herself into volunteer work with an animal shelter and refused to make eye contact with any of the other workers. She learned how to knit, and forced herself to hand-write a gratitude list when she couldn't fall asleep, and deleted every dating app on her phone six hours after re-installing them.
* * *
She had thought that a new friendship would be less frightening than a new romance. Outside, C waited at the picnic table while Q hyperventilated in the public park restroom. C had reached out on Facebook--there were both in a community gardening group, and he had posted openly about wanting to make more of an effort to meet new friends. They had just hiked three miles together, past tawny shale outcrops and chattering waterfalls, through the sparkling silt of the creek, alongside wacky vanguards of daffodils pushing through the loam. Now, alone in the park bathroom, Q paced back and forth on the sour-smelling concrete. Her sweat sealed her bracelets to the insides of her clammy wrists.
She shook out her hands, eyes shut tight. There was no way to avoid the outcome that had flooded her senses when she caught a glimpse of herself in the hazy, pollen-dusted mirror. She had seen her friendship with C blooming: rapidly, joyfully, deepening until they began to call each other brother and sister, the family each had never had, each thriving in the shade of a love that demanded no terrible sacrifice. She had looked in the mirror and felt the true impact of the joy they could share: so profound it made her want to fall to her knees in the wet grass and cry out with happiness, fingers plunged ecstatically into the mud and decaying leaves.
Then--the distance, growing between them, a slow, imperceptible rooting of nervous, numbing uncertainty as their paths forked in two. No one person to blame--just the reflexive branching motions of two people who would no longer see the other waiting to greet them above the horizon as the world they had once explored together turned mercilessly beneath their feet.
Somehow, being able to glimpse this knowledge, even for a minute, made everything feel so much worse.
She calmed down, enough to meet C outside and finish their hike. Back at the parking lot, he brought up a couple of ideas for other events they might enjoy together, and other friends he would love to introduce to Q. Q's car keys were already clutched in her hand. She managed to smile and nod just enough to make it through goodbye.
* * *
Q and S did not make it past the phone screen. After she finished reading his most recent letter (a four-paragraph response containing detailed information about his life, an invitation for her to share more about her interests, a flirtatious tangent, and an invitation to meet in person), Q dropped her phone on the bedroom floor and ran to the bathroom, where she clapped her hands over her mouth an screamed into her palms. She watched herself blinking tears away in the mirror. Something that S had said in the message--in her panic, she could not recall what, exactly--reminded her immediately and intensely of the last person she had gone on a date with before she had found the magician online. The date had been horrific. The next day, she had considered herself lucky to have have made it home, lucky that they lived across the state from each other, lucky that her lease was up in two months and she would have a new address.
Even though some part of her mind thought it was irrational to bind S to the shape of this previous date's shadow, another part of her knew that she had many good reasons to recognize a familiar shadow when it fell across her path. She might be wrong about how this would turn out, but she might be right.
Q could no longer tell which fate would be worse.
She shoved her face up against the cold glass. She stared herself down. In the tear-streaked hollows of her face, she saw the painful messes of the past radiate out and in through time and space until they became indistinguishable from the hopeless disasters of her imagined future. She held her body rigidly still, as if she could ride out the collision of possibilities raging inside her, as if--what if she could prevent herself from taking even one incorrect step, or ever again making a wrong move--as if no matter what choice she made, the tragedy of having chosen would split her heart in two.
She picked up her phone to block S and delete all the apps again. Then she crawled back to the bathroom, avoiding the mirror on the wall, and curled up against the side of the bathtub and wept for a good long while.
"Just stop," she sobbed. "Just stop it. Stop trying, stop trying, stop trying."
* * *
Q explained about the bracelets, which were thicker than they had been when the magician first handed them to her: eight strands deep, each a miniature river of knots. R had asked about them right after they sat dodwn, and Q had asked if she would be up for listening to a long story.
She started from the beginning: when she had first messaged the magician. Before she even got to her first date with D, however, she paused, frowned. R waited patiently for her to continue.
She started from the beginning again.
She told R about the last person she had been in love with before she asked the magician to meet. She told R what love had been like before that relationship. All those years, each like a sword in her heart. She had carried them all this time. She didn't talk for long--a few minutes--she hated describing her life, and so many of the stories she had to tell made her feel ashamed to speak them aloud. But when she was done talking, it felt like she had just walked hand in hand with R along the edge of a canyon that brimmed to overflowing with the darkness of night and the brightness of stars.
"Oh, wow," R said, letting her head fall back against the couch. She stayed like that for a moment, looking up at the ceiling. The coffeeshop was chicken-themed. Roosters painted on the blades of the ceiling fan, espresso shots served in pale blue egg cups. Q tried to focus on the absurdity of the decor instead of her nervousness--she had been determined not to let her anxiety get the better of her. She had been talking herself down every day since the morning R ran into her at the animal shelter and asked her out again.
But goddamnit, it was unnerving to sit in the silence.
Just when Q started to tip over into the early stages of a moderate freak-out, R reached out and touched her hand. "I'm happy we ran into each other again," she said.
Q laughed despite herself. "Yeah. Me, too."
"So, with these bracelets. It's kind of like you've been living your life out of my Google search history."
"What?"
"Like, there were these two years that were super dark for me with relationships. After, I was so scared to trust myself, I couldn't even say Hi to any new person without running to my laptop and googling stuff like How can I tell if my new friend is a sociopath? or Is it my intuition or is it PTSD?"
Q burst out laughing and swiped at her cheeks. She had, apparently started crying a little.
"You're nodding like you know what I mean. Anyway. It sounds like that's how you've been living twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five."
"What kills me is that I'm, like, aware that this is Not A Good Way to Live, but it feels like... I can't afford to stop. What if I take them off, and I miss something really obvious, and the worst possible thing just happens again because I wasn't careful enough?"
R made a teeter-totter motion with one hand and said, "Ehh!" Her hands, even when gesturing randomly, were really beautiful. "Who said you have to take them off? I don't think the talismans are going to write your whole story. They might be magic, but you've got magic, too, you know."
Q was grateful that R was looking at the roosters going around and around on the ceiling fan again--she could feel how deeply her face had flushed.
R continued: "I don't know what it's like for you, but look. That googling thing was helpful at the time. I learned a lot. But I also learned that it's not the most helpful thing for me to complete a dissertation on that stuff every time I talk to another person."
"Like, at some point, maybe we can close some of the tabs and pick up some new reading material?"
"Yeah! Or even just put new questions into the search bar. I mean, those questions seem important, don't get me wrong. How can I protect myself better than last time? But I started thinking--what else do I want to know? What am I here for? Is it to get locked down? To look good in the eyes of my mother figure or whatever? To find my next adventure? To get to have one awesome, magical day with an awesome, magical person and maybe do it again tomorrow if we're both into that idea?"
Q had been working hard to listen to R while also watching in delight as the other woman moved--R had been waving her hands in enthusiastic flourishes as she talked--so Q was unprepared for R's next question.
"So--what are you here for?" R waggled her brows playfully, then belted out a laugh, as if she couldn't believe that she had made that joke in the first place.
Q took in a deep breath. Her fingers flew to the metal clasps at her wrists.
"Wait," R said. "What are you doing?"
"I'm afraid of what I'll do if I know too much," Q said.
"That's fair," R said. "It's definitely your choice, but you have a choice, you know? If the only reason you want to take them off now is out of fear, maybe you can wait and see how you feel about it later. Like I said, those talismans aren't the only magic working this room right now. " Q flushed again. "And those bracelets have got nothing on you when it comes to, like, how to say it--cultivating a sense of mystery or whatever. And that's pretty awesome."
"I feel the same way about you," Q said. It came out trembling, like a question, which mortified her exactly as much as she had known it would, but she had wanted to say it, anyway.
"Let's say you keep them on, and maybe at some point, you see something tough and scary come up. If that happens, maybe we could--talk about it? And maybe go from there?"
She stared at R, mouth open. She very badly wanted to say the exact right thing, but she could not utter a word. She felt that R had taken her breath away. She nodded, instead, and squeezed R's hand.
They laughed after that, to tears, and beyond.
THE END
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