Got A Light

"I have a Scorpio moon. I thought you liked the Scorpio moon," my son said.
"I love the Scorpio moon, sweetheart. It's my favorite. I have no problem with the Scorpio moon. It doesn't mess with my Capricorn Mars or Virgo moon. I'm just talking. I'm just frustrated."
"Sometimes a person can be in a bad mood and the moon has nothing to do with it."
"You are so much smarter than I am."

For years I cried on the shoulders of boyfriends and flings. "Misti...please don't cry," the man I almost married last December told me as I sat across from him at the table in his travel trailer sobbing. He never held me whenever I cried but that last time he handed me his blue bandana. Rhett and Scarlett. The poster of Vivien Leigh in Clark Gable's embrace hung in my teenage bedroom where I strummed my acoustic guitar and ate my heart out over Beatles records and the "Pretty in Pink" soundtrack. The night we met at the bar on Broadway when I was supposed to be baking Christmas cookies with my son I asked him what his favorite movie was and he said,"Gone With The Wind." But Rhett adored Scarlett even when she was sobbing. I was never under any delusion that the man I serenaded with Billie Holiday's "My Man" in a South Padre karaoke bar ever had anything but lust for me. The Catholic wedding was my idea even though the only god I believe in is Gary Stewart's vibrato (especially in "Ten Years of This"). "We'll take it day by day," he said. He's a Catholic. Then my Baptist grandfather died and he gave me shit about riding to the funeral with my ex-husband and our son and when I called him it went straight to voicemail so I drove to his place that night, left the key inside the barbecue pit. A few months ago I checked up on him at Facebook, saw him slobbering all over gorgeous women in their twenties. They have really big smiles. I don't think they're fake.

The drunk blonde from California invited me to sit with her and her wife a different night in a different karaoke bar when I had decided to treat myself to a solo honeymoon at the Menger. I walked to Morton's in my black dress and black heels, the imitation pearls so classy around my neck. M.A.C. Ruby Woo expertly applied. "Right this way, Ms. Rainwater-Lites." Yes I was quite the classy bitch that night, spending over a hundred dollars on a steak dinner with champagne. Then I changed into my Nikes and headed for the Riverwalk and I was the first person onstage that night. "And the sky was made of amethysts." I always assume that I frighten people. I'm more witch than anything else. But the drunk blonde said,"You shone up there. You have this amazing light. I told my wife we had to meet you. How old are you?" I told her I was forty-two. She told me I looked like I was her age. Thirty-one. "I'm going to be honest with you. I'm going to tell you what I see. I'm psychic. It's bullshit, the way you've been living your life. You're so much better than that. You can do so much better. Look, I have an art gallery. Here's my phone number."

The moon mocks me in Scorpio the moon mocks me in Pisces and the men are all ghosts and I have three exes from 2016 alone and one of the art professor's parting shots was,"I don't always like the way you look." He had pursued me with the fire of at least one sun and I'd acquiesced because I was hungry and he took me to Mexico for one of his art shows. But I sat across from him in the Mexican restaurant and said,"I'm going to be honest with you. You have terrible breath." I told him that one other time. He didn't like me enough to invest in SCOPE. But there were nights when we painted side by side in his studio playing Amy Winehouse and The Pet Shop Boys and that was magic enough that was sun enough, hygiene and heart stuff and orgasms be damned. I still cry although not as often missing the Catholic Capricorn, Rhett Butler to my Belle Watling. The Gemini ex mocks me with "Happy Friday!" texts. Stamps are not a priority. But I remember the drunk blonde in the karaoke bar and I marvel. "I've got something. I've got some damn kind of light. She said so."

"Most mothers don't love their kids as much as you love me," my double Scorpio son (he turned ten last week) told me last night. See, he's the reason I cried on so many different shoulders. Hating myself because instead of tucking my son in I was with some interchangeable man who wasn't really invested in whether or not I lived or died. I've given so much away. For nada. For nada. But something returned to me, finally, when my son spoke those words in all his beautiful innocence. 

I watched "Close Encounters of The Third Kind" with my son on a big screen this year. The last time I'd seen that movie had been at the drive-in in Seymour when I was four. "Richard Dreyfuss is one of my favorite actors. He's a Scorpio. Did you understand the bit with the mashed potatoes when he said,'this means something'?" My son guessed. I feel assigned to translate the world for my son. That's what I'm here for.

"I love that scene because I can relate to it so much," I told my son. "His family didn't know what the hell he was going through. They just thought he was crazy. But he was having a profound experience. No one understood and he was so alone. But then, at last, he wasn't."