What's Your Sign?

What's your sign?
Do you know?
Let me guess,
you're a Scorpio.
What's your rising?
Where's your moon?
Scorpios, are pretty cool.
--Des'ree
"What's your sign?" from the album SUPERNATURAL

Things have been pretty crazy in the Second City lately. COMMON and I have been having cute non-sexual banter on the telephone. HAZELNUT and I keep playing telephone tag, and FRIEND keeps coming over to my apartment for dinner. All in all, I'd say I'm cool. But Bernard is not having "the sex". And I am pretty horny.

I got on the telephone chat line to arrange a meeting and started having this conversation with a brother. His stats were average and he seemed a little ashamed about what he liked to get into sexually. Like so many brothers he gave the vague, "I'm a freak, I get into everything," answer--yet when pressed, he made it clear that he wasn't that into anal sex. "I am not so sure I am into getting penetrated," he told me.

This situation is not new to me. I don't get frustrated anymore. I've come to expect vagueness and inconsistency. So I got direct with him, and asked him to tell me EXACTLY what it is he liked to get into, and he said,

Man, you are one direct brother. Not that it matters or anything, but what's your zodiac sign?

sigh

Oh my goodness, I met another one. For the life of me, it seems like I can't have a conversation with a brother today without him asking me about my zodiac sign. What is up with that? And you see it everywhere. Everytime I open the newspaper I see horoscopes, on the Internet I read profiles where guys express their signs, and even bloggers who discuss the importance of the zodiac in their life (see LoveHater's caveat, "Beware: Cancers can make you talk").

Do kats have to consult their astrological chart before deciding whether it is a good idea to get busy? Or is sex between a Cancer and a Pisces lethal. Or if he is a Libra, will kissing a Taurus keep his scales from rising in Virgo? It forces me to ask the question: Are we looking for the wrong signs?

Maybe we look for zodiac signs because we don't know what other signs to look for in a guy. We don't know what questions to ask (or things to look for) to gauge a man's intellect, compassion, sexual energy, or passion. So instead, we rely on pre-made cookie cutter categories created in Ancient Greece during the Hellenistic period. Who would have known that in the 21st century black people would be using Greek signs and determining mate compatibility based on what day they were born on. At best, it seems so high school.

I used to just get upset when guys asked me my sign. I'd scream at them, "What do you need to know that for?" I am an information junkie--and I know how to get information about people by looking at their clothes, birthstones, and asking seemingly innocuous questions. If you ask a guy's zodiac sign, (and you know his age), you have narrowed his birthdate down to a thirty day window. Call me a privacy paranoid--but it's me. But I soon learned that some brothas really take that shit seriously--and if I wanted to meet a guy for the hook up I had to come up with a less agressive posture.

So then I tried making a joke out of it. I'd say stuff, like "My sign is peach", or "sabertooth". But after a while brothas would press me, and I came off as evasive.

So now I just lie. Since Cancers are sensitive, Leos are leaders, and Gemini's are two-faced--I decided to just start telling people I am a Scorpio--because for some reason they are labelled the sex crazed zodiac. After the three-way heard round the world, ENRIQUE (the soldier), FRIEND and I were drinking, and ENRIQUE asked me my sign. When I told him Scorpio, he said, "I knew it. I knew from the way you dug me out that you had to be. I am too. Scorpios are them straight up freaks." I raised my can of cola and smiled, and as he looked away I rolled my eyes.