Venus and the Grim Reaper

Astrology and Tarot change the course of my life; while Death is the understudy waiting to seize the lead role as soon as the star obligingly breaks her neck.

I am flailing. Sinking. It is astounding to me now that apart from my time at the American Academy and a semester at NYU, I will never go to college. That just doesn't happen to Jewish people of a certain class. It is an impenetrably idiotic decision, based in my sense that college is frivolous and fun, and so I should embrace the misery of my climb to success.

Or some shit like that.

I just stay in New York, waiting tables, falling into a fantasy life of how I will be Discovered, so I don't need to waste my time going to school. I've lost too much time already, the years being forced to live with my father, and I want to live my real life NOW. The fact that there is nothing at all real about my relationship to life doesn't occur to me. Yet I always seek solace and solutions, often in unorthodox places.

My friend Pam, my partner in the crime of fantasy, is the one who will pay the bill when it comes due. She hears about an astrologer and Tarot reader who's supposed to be fabulous. We both decide to go. I know he will tell me how rich and famous I am destined to become. We make our appointments separately. I go to see him first. He is on the Upper West Side, in a filthy, pack-ratty apartment covered with cat hair.

My reading lasts six hours.

This man knows every goddamned thing about my life and he scares the hell out of me. Abusive dad? Gotcha. World travel? Ditto. But it goes so much farther. I am convinced he can see into my soul. I also get the feeling he wants to date me, but that seems a little beside the point, even though it could be construed as undercutting his principal bombshell, which comes when he asks me what I think is the most important thing in my life, the one thing I can't live without.

I say success.

He shakes his head, getting very, very serious and telling me that it is imperative I understand this: loving and being loved is at the very center of my entire existence, and that without it my life will come to tragedy and early death.

Well. He goes on to say that I currently have a small window of vulnerability in the wall of emotional defenses I elaborately constructed as a young child - that if I don't break through these defenses, if I don't find a way to be closer to people; to my mother, to myself, to someone who will love me unreservedly - if I don't accept what he is saying fully, take it in, truly accept it - if I don't do this - I might never have another chance. Ever.

I am terrified. Particularly since if my life ends in tragedy and early death, that probably implies I won't become rich and famous.

But I know what he says is true. I know he is telling me who I really am. Not who I want to be. Who I pretend to be.

Our schedules keep Pam and me apart for a few days, during which time she has her reading. When we get together and I excitedly tell Pam all about me reading, she is terribly jealous. We both paid the same fee. I got six hours and a life changing experience. She got one hour with a lot of questions about depression.

She doesn't know that her understudy is getting impatient.

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