My debatable status as a libra

The year I was born, it was a late Libra year. The sun was not even 24 hours into Libra when I came on the scene. So am I a Virgo or a Libra? Not to sound like "a flippin' astro-star-gazin' tripped princess-pot-head" (to quote Daniela, who has a tendency to put it exactly right) but here I go (sounding like a FASGTPPH, complete with chart and mugs!)


As a kid, I'd get those astrology gifts...you know, mugs and shit that have the "you're a libra!" announcement written in scrolly gold letters over a list of traits (always good of course) that erode quickly even in the days before dishwashers. It was the 70s, remember?

And I'd read them looking for some sense of self definition, you know, like a kid does. Or is that just me? Anyhow, I was chronically disappointed, left thinking I wasn't a very good Libra. Diplomatic? Ah, no. Charming? Definitely not. Unreasonably attractive? No. Possibly still, but definitely then, I was one of those kind of odd looking people who had too long a face, pale skin, sunken eyes with dark circles under them, no or strange at best fashion sense, and a tendency to openly visually inspect people in a way that was disconcerting and uncomfortable. I thought of myself as a sullen peevish person prone to fits of unreasonable outbursts of anger. Combine that with my pallid unsmiley and slightly creepy countenance and you get something that is far from the coffee mug's insistence that I be a curvacious, cuddly, and cute being who need only smile and twirl her fashionably coiffed locks to have people falling all over themselves to please her.

Rather than question the authority of dimestore coffee mugs and key chains, instead I developed this theory that I was a Libra imposter.

When I got older, I actually looked things up....got an emphemeris and shit. Turns out I am barely a Libra sunsign-wise. To further muddy the water, it turns out that by one account, I am a Libra with Libra rising. Given the excessive cuspiness of my time and day of birth, I have tended to assume (when such assumptions are motivated) that I am either a Virgo with Libra rising or a Virgo flavored Libra with Scorpio rising (my rising sign is also on an edge, given the time of day I was born).

Of course, there is the whole astrology is a load of shit theory too. I realize that I am a skeptic, really I am. But I am also a pragmatist and I find any one way of categorizing and describing personality about as useful and "true" as another. So whether it's a coffee mug, a key chain, any of the various "type" surveys, or the DSM whatever, there will always be stuff like illusory cause kicking around the edges. Therefore, to me, they all have about as much functionality and applicability as the proverbial (and enormous) grain of salt allows. Which isn't to say none, but it certainly isn't something I'd set my watch by (how d'you like that mix of metaphors? Perhaps we should add lack of rhetorical skill to the "not a Libra" list).

And without further ado, here are a few of my Virgo traits that are completely not in accordance with the coffee mug prescriptive astrological characteristics of a Libra:
- I compulsively clean, we're talking mops and dust rags and shit. The night before my wedding, my friends had to stage an intervention to get me to stop cleaning the bathroom (which I had innocently started doing while washing up for bed).
- I can't abide squishily made plans. I don't need an iron clad itinerary but I need structure.
- I think the phrase "it's all good" when used to explain someone's flakiness and carelessness with my time is damned near criminal and on a bad day it makes me want to smack (the shit out of) the person who uttered it.
- I have a tendency to think that if I do something well, it should be simple enough for everyone to just do it that way....because that way is so obviously the best way of doing it for the situation.
- A quick wit is incredibly attractive to me. Much more so than a dazzling intellect that cannot be articulated or a moron wrapped in a pretty package. In high school, when the boy I had lusted after from afar for three years finally asked me out, he was just so fucking stupid I couldn't bring myself to actually fuck him. His discourse on the matter turned me off so thoroughly that I couldn't even make out with him afterwards and I ended up calling it an early night. That evening should have been, by all accounts, my total dream date. Valentine's day, we went to a dance club on an all ages night, I looked good (in a 1980s kind of way), I got to be seen in public by lots of people with this cute guy, and he had even asked me (in advance) to the junior prom. But he was such a fucking IDIOT that I lost it. (btw, a dollar to whoever can come up with a good term for this...something like whiskey dick but, well, as it applies to losing all semblance of sexual arousal based on the realization that the person with whom you are tangled in a steamy teenaged lust level embrace is a fool of the most stunning and unappealing proportions).