Even If This Doesn’t Relate To You, It Still Kind Of Does
How many baby ravers fit into one smallish two bedroom apartment? I think there were at least six or seven of them living in the rave cave I knew about. The one who seemed to be the most dedicated raver tribesman was named Fun Brian. He was a big guy dripping with candy jewelry who carried an endless supply of small fun toys and stickers and stuff that lit up around in the pockets of his enormous pants. We thought that Fun Brian was maybe the one on the most drugs of all of them, but as it turned out, he was a twenty-six year old straight edge kid who was just Like That Naturally.
After the jump, Loren Hunt continues to suss out your life, on Monday mornings, when you need it most, but it’s probably too damn late anyway.
ARIES: One day when I was maybe sixteen, my Upper Black Eddy friends and I drove to the nearest big city, which was Doylestown. We were sitting on a bench across from Siren Records, and I can’t imagine that we were not really stoned. It was around twilight in the summer. Anyway, this group of well-dressed middle-aged people were strolling up the street toward us, looking very satisfied with themselves. They’d probably just come from dinner at Paganini’s; that was the direction they were coming from. One gentleman in particular looked almost unbelievably satisfied with himself, puffing on a large cigar and hardly breaking a sweat in his natty sports coat despite the heat. It wasn’t until he had passed that my friends and I all realized at the same time that this man was not wearing any pants. He had dress shoes, socks, a button down shirt, sports coat, and all the other usual articles of man clothing, but instead of pants he wore some very tight boxer brief style underwear. They were black. He looked pretty good for an old guy; he probably was the type who called riding a bike “cycling.” My friends and I were looking at each other like, “Is this really happening?” and laughing uncontrollably. The guy was courting this kind of reaction so there was no need to feel like assholes. We eventually decided that he’d lost a bet. If you lose any bets this week, Aries, you should take the Pantless Man of Doylestown as your totem. He had the right idea.
TAURUS: Guess who else is a Taurus? Bob Saget! Best known as beloved television dad to the tiny young Olsen twins and later as the corny host of America’s Funniest Home Videos, it came as a surprise to the world when he started doing stand-up comedy and everyone realized that, really, he was a gigantic pervert. Surprising, and hilarious. Especially when said world realized that they’d already kind of had Danny Tanner sussed out as a secret perv all along.
GEMINI: Being a Gemini is kind of like living out a Pynchon novel. The symbols are writ large, but end up not meaning anything; everything is connected but not with any particular significance, and every character is so colorful and over the top that they all just start seeming like normal folk after awhile, even while hunting albino sewer alligators and living out a death fetish. Still, you are plagued with the constant worry that you are doing a lot of work and getting nowhere and that everyone you meet is just a little bit weirder than you are, which is terrifying because you know exactly how weird you are. The thing that’s interesting about this is that Pynchon’s a Taurus, writing out a nihilistic fantasy that he seems to hope is his alone. You, meanwhile, are over there in the middle of it, bopping your head around to some music and saying what’s up to people and generally enjoying yourself in varying degrees. There’s this weird symbol that means the underground postal system but also some stuff about death and being outside of society, but what else is new?
CANCER: In the market for new luggage, Cancer? Check this shit out. It looks like you to me.
LEO: How many baby ravers fit into one smallish two bedroom apartment? I think there were at least six or seven of them living in the rave cave I knew about. They were mostly high school runaways from Jersey and spent their days sleeping, fighting with each other, and cooking up Special K with vanilla extract which, of course, would make it Super K. They were like these small colorful toy people who were always looking at you like they were seeing you from the end of a long, rainbow tunnel, and for awhile, it was like they were their own race of little glowing tribespeople completely distinct from the rest of humanity, protected only by their yellow plastic visors. The one who seemed to be the most dedicated raver tribesman was named Fun Brian. He was a big guy dripping with candy jewelry who carried an endless supply of small fun toys and stickers and stuff that lit up around in the pockets of his enormous pants. We thought that Fun Brian was maybe the one on the most drugs of all of them, but as it turned out, he was a twenty-six year old straight edge kid who was just Like That Naturally. The lesson here, Leos, is that myopic anthropological assumptions are often completely meaningless if not just outright wrong. You and I have no idea what people are really up to, even if at first it seems obvious.
VIRGO: This website says, “The tea ceremony is a very special event in Japanese culture. The host spends days going over every detail to make sure that the ceremony will be perfect. There are various styles of tea ceremonies, and it is recognized that every human encounter is a singular occasion that will never recur again in exactly the same way, and so every aspect of the tea ceremony is savored. The ceremony takes place in a room called the chashitsu. This room is designed and designated only for this ceremony. The room is usually within a teahouse, and is located away from the residence in the garden.” That sounds nice and civilized, doesn’t it? I sort of feel vaguely bad that this is not anything I will ever pull off. But I am filled with appreciation that you probably could, Virgo.
LIBRA: Every Libra I’ve ever known has been super-into walking around, talking, and looking at stuff for hours on end. Except the one from New Jersey, and he liked to drive that way: For fun and relaxation. Find a buddy and get mobile together this week. It’s your shit.
SCORPIO: This is what an article called “How To Pick Up Any Sign at the Gym” says about how Scorpios like to be seduced while working out: “Scorpions love to commiserate. A good conversation starter might be, ‘Wow, this class is grueling!’ or, ‘You’ll have to excuse me if I start gasping for breath. I’m known to black out while changing my socks.’ Scorpio will be happy to meet someone who hates working out as much as they do. Whatever happens, never tell this sign to smile while he or she is working out. Their stony stare will prompt you to change gyms.” It also says that you’ll be wearing black and generally look like you are working off a prison sentence. Is any of this true? Don’t ask me, man. I can’t even get past the idea that people would want to be picking each other up in gyms according to zodiac signs in the first place.
SAGITTARIUS: One day Socs, my Sagittarian birthday twin, called me up in a tizzy. There was this thing she had to show me. We met at The Last Drop and she took it out of her purse. It turned out to be a Fresh Jive ad ripped out of a magazine, depicting an enormous white woman in a diaphanous muumuu sitting on a toilet and straining hard while a small, solicitous Asian man held her hand comfortingly. Socs, while not enormous, was indeed in a relationship with a small, solicitous Asian man who would probably have no problem holding her hand while she sat on the toilet if ever called upon to do so. She was all, “What if THIS is the rest of my life?” I was laughing too hard to console her much. The Fresh Jive ad had sprouted its own elaborate meaning in her head and was now a potent symbol of quarterlife terror. Turning into Cloris Leachman’s character in The Last Picture Show was a bit closer to my own personal quarterlife terror, but the point is that these things can at least be partially named and therefore dealt with. This is a good week to do some fear spelunking, Sagittarius. The mood is objectively cheerful, yet philosophical, as though the lights have been turned on, enabling us to look the monsters under the bed in the eye and be like, “Hey, you’re kind of funny.”
CAPRICORN: I have a Capricorn friend who carries this piece of paper around in his wallet that says, “COPE.” You should all make yourselves versions of this if you don’t have something like it already. There aren’t many people who are better at coping than Capricorns, but you never know what secret reminders live in your wallets.
AQUARIUS: My littlest brother Andrew is an Aquarian in a family of three Sagittarians and a Taurus. Growing up, my middle brother James, another Sag, and I marveled at the way Andrew always got away with stuff that we could never pull off. Andrew would be like, “I’m taking a walk down the street” which might as well have been saying, “I’m going to smoke some weed.” And my parents would just be like, “See ya later!” He’d tell them he was going “out” and when they asked him what time he’d be home he’d say something like, “Four, four thirty. Or maybe I’ll just sleep over somewhere.” Parents would say something like, “That’s nice, have fun!” What the fuck? So James and I started calling him the Child Of No Rules. Andrew was pissed that we were blowing up his spot, a spot that he had been clever enough to secure for himself almost effortlessly after watching James and I butt heads with our parents over every tiny privilege for years. We called him shady and made fun of him about it mercilessly. But we were just mad because he was smarter than we were. You guys are masters of figuring out ways to accomplish things using very little effort. You will be doing a lot of that this week and the big brothers and sisters of the world are going to be jealous. Try to be flattered. No one ever notices when you’re pissed anyway.
PISCES: Cacharel’s enormously popular 1978 perfume Anais Anais was recently reviewed in Luca Turn and Tania Sanchez’s Perfumes: The Guide as one of the most influential fragrances in history. It’s image, as can be seen in this fairly recent Kate Moss commercial, that has historically depicted groups of young-looking blondes and is said to “appeal both to a vaguely dykey camaraderie and to the voyeur instincts of the opposite sex.” It smells like hotel soap and dry white cotton panties. I have some and I keep wearing it while thinking of you, Pisces, purely because of the “vaguely dykey” tag. All of you are vaguely dykey, even the boys. The perfume doesn’t smell like anything you’d wear, or even like. Rather, it represents this perverse 1970s summer camp kind of vibe that I feel you might appreciate aesthetically. Kinda like we’re all lined up at a big communal sink wearing tube socks and underwear and spitting out toothpaste while gossiping and casually looking at each others’ boobs. The Kate Moss commercial isn’t quite right. It’s more like Little Darlings.
Loren Hunt is a writer living in Philadelphia who has channelled your spirit animal through a mixture of high-grade medical marijuana and khat, the drug that has brought Yemen to its knees. More of Ms. Hunt’s writing can be found here; please, she does not want to be disturbed. Direct your queries regarding your horoscope to tips[at]philebrity[dot]com and they will be duly forwarded. Ms. Hunt’s horoscopes shall appear each Monday on Philebrity.
