Exalted, p.23
Exalted, page 23
“Lean into the sun a little,” she says.
I do as told.
“Chin up.”
I lift my chin and she snaps some photos.
“Oh my god, these are stunning. You’re such a natural.”
She shows me the photos on her phone. Models always think they are photographers, but these are actually good. “I’ll put it on my story and tag you,” she says. “Do you have a personal Instagram?”
“No,” I say.
“Oh my god, I love you!”
I don’t know what’s lovable about my not having an Instagram, but she is busy clicking away on her phone, so I don’t need to react.
“She’s amazing,” Thomas says, and I glare at him.
“Done!” Stella says, putting her phone down.
“So, I was looking at your chart with Thomas,” I say.
“Please read me to filth,” she says, then giggles, a breathy, lizard laugh. “I can handle it.”
“Okay, tell me what you know about your chart, and we’ll go from there,” I say.
“I’m a Libra,” she says. “That’s all I know. Indecisive. Flirty.” She touches my forearm. “A little scattered.” She giggles again. “It takes me twenty minutes to tell a simple story. That’s why I loved your meme so much.”
“Right,” I say. “Libra is ruled by Venus, the planet of beauty, so you’re drawn to fine things.”
“Yep,” she says, and spreads her arms to reference our fine surroundings.
“You are also blessed with a beautiful appearance.”
Thomas nods vigorously, and I glare at him.
“I’ve had some help with that,” she says.
I go on to explain to Stella the various aspects of her birth chart. The sun, the rising. Mercury and Venus. The houses, the conjuncts. Thomas occasionally adds something obvious and Stella ignores him. She asks a few questions, mostly pertaining to love. She keeps touching my arm. The yard turns golden and then a cool blue. At the end of the reading, Stella takes a selfie of us, pointedly excluding Thomas. Then she Venmos me $1,000 and walks us out. By the cars, she hugs and kisses me again and doesn’t touch Thomas. Then we are out the gate, back on the road, driving along the ocean, and then back on the 10, surrounded by dust and concrete.
“Was it just me or was Stella Shadid flirting with you?” Thomas asks as we pass the Capitol Records building.
“Just you,” I say.
“It was weird,” he says. “She hardly acknowledged me.”
“You aren’t Exalted,” I say.
“The whole thing was so weird.”
“You just aren’t used to being ignored by pretty women.”
“You ignore me all the time,” he says.
I ignore Thomas and look at my phone. More texts from Bo and my dad—my oppressive male relatives. Rachel was always screaming about the patriarchy, especially after the third margarita, and now I wish I could go back in time and yell along with her.
I open Instagram and look at the photos Stella tagged me in. In the first, my icy eyes are lit up by the sun. I don’t recognize the face as my own. I’ve never felt much of a connection to my physical appearance, especially when it’s “pretty.” My insides are not pretty. The next photo is a selfie of us both. I look ugly next to Stella the lizard woman. In both photos, Stella added lots of emojis of stars and moons and crystal balls. A more serious astrologer would be offended by the kitsch, but not I.
I have more than 900k followers now thanks to Stella. I notice I have a new DM from her, so I open it. Today was so fun. Thnx for the reading and for letting me photograph you. I’d love to hang out again (sans the boy). Butterfly emoji, sparkly heart emoji, shooting star emoji. I giggle. Maybe Thomas was right. I respond to the DM with a blue heart emoji, which is all I can come up with. I know in all likelihood I will never see her again. But for a second I like to imagine us falling in love. I remember the last time I fell in love with someone I didn’t really know, then shut off the phone.
“What are you smiling at?” he asks. “Brotherly love?”
“Shut up.”
As we near my house, I get nervous at the idea of being alone. “Do you wanna smoke and watch a movie?”
Thomas raises his eyebrows. “Netflix and chill?”
“No,” I say.
“Sure,” says Thomas. “I have nothing else to do.”
Thomas pulls up to a spot in front of my building, and I notice someone smoking outside the apartment. As we get closer, I recognize the person.
“Oh god.”
“Fuck,” Thomas says. “You want me to tell him to leave?”
I feel legitimately grateful to Thomas for this offer and for taking my feelings seriously instead of mocking me.
“Just wait here,” I say. “I’ll tell him myself.”
I get out of the car and walk up to Bo, who doesn’t even notice me until I am right beside him. He is pacing and seems disoriented. I remember that he was once Thomas’s coke dealer.
When Bo finally notices me, he flips around and jumps. Yeah, he is definitely coked up. And probably drunk too. A lot of regulars at the Mirror Box are like this all the time. His face looks sunken and ashy under the harsh lights outside my building. There is a damp yellow stain on his shirt, probably a spilled beer. I suddenly can’t fathom how I ever found him attractive, and not just because I found out he’s my blood relative. He looks sick.
“I texted you,” he says. He throws his cigarette on the ground and stomps it out.
“I saw,” I say. “I haven’t been able to look. I’m still feeling pretty freaked out about the whole thing.”
He stares at me, tugs the bottom of his shirt, lights another cigarette.
“I’d appreciate it if you left,” I say. “You seem pretty fucked up.”
“Can we just talk for a second?” he asks.
I look at Thomas, who suddenly appears strong and protective in his Volvo, then back at Bo, who looks weak and pitiful.
“I’ll give you five minutes,” I say. I look at my iPhone. It is 6:45 P.M. “You have until six fifty.”
“You’re my sister?” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “I confirmed with my dad yesterday.”
“So, your dad is alive?” he says. My stomach sinks. Does he know something I don’t? I’m furious at my dad, but I don’t want him to be dead. Then I remember he’s been texting me all day and calm down.
“Yeah,” I say. “I went to his office, and I told him about the ChromoZone results. He said they were probably true.”
“My mom told me my dad was dead,” he says. “She’s a liar. I went to her shitty apartment and she was hungover and useless.”
I’m not sure why he’s dumping his mommy issues on me.
“My dad is alive.” I take out my phone and show him that he texted me one hour ago. I also note the time: 6:47 P.M.
“Wait,” Bo says. “You went to your dad’s office yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
“Doesn’t he live in New York?”
“No,” I say. “Riverside.”
“You’re from Riverside? I thought you were from the East Coast.”
“Huh?” I ask. “Why do you think that?” I am, of course, flattered—momentarily plucked from these deranged circumstances.
“I don’t know,” he says. “You just have a sort of New York City vibe. Like, I don’t know. You seem old money and like you’re rebelling against it or something.”
I smile, even though I know it’s a wildly inappropriate time to feel happy. Maybe all those hours of listening to Precious Starlets infused me with a sort of aristocratic je ne sais quoi.
“I wish,” I say. “You were born in Los Angeles, right?” I know this from his birth chart request.
“Nope, Riverside.” He takes a desperate puff of his cigarette. “Why did you think Los Angeles?”
“Because I read your birth chart,” I say. I don’t care if he knows I’m a loser now. “I’m Exalted.”
“Oh, wow,” he says. “Is that why you started following me? Because of my birth chart? And all my lucky placements?”
I nod unabashedly.
Bo lets out a sort of demented laugh.
I guess he lied about his place of birth in his chart request, not that it would matter, because the cities are in the same time zone. I don’t blame him for saying Los Angeles instead of Riverside. I make the same lie all the time. Nobody wants to be from Riverside.
“Mount Rubidoux,” I say.
Bo covers his face with one hand. I also understand why he changed his name. “Bo Webster” doesn’t have much star power.
“My dad teaches at Riverside Community College,” I say. “Since before I was born.”
I note the time: 6:49 P.M.
“Time’s up,” I lie. I don’t feel attracted to Beau anymore because Beau does not exist. I feel sad for Bo Webster and also repulsed by him. I want to get away from him, just like he wanted to get away from his mom. He smells like stale beer and sweat and cigarettes.
“Okay,” he says. And then he stumbles off. Once he is halfway down Winona, toward Hollywood Boulevard, Thomas gets out of his car and walks over to me.
“You okay?” he asks, wrapping his arm around me.
I lean into his chest for a quick second, take a sniff of his detergent, then break away. “I’m fine,” I say. “Let’s watch a movie.”
Thomas refuses to watch anything by Roman Polanski because of his exhausting performative wokeness. He says I should be paying more attention to female directors and then says, “I love Claire Denis.” Then he tells me I need to watch a movie by this woman called Greta Gerwig. He puts on something called Lady Bird and it is insufferably twee, so I take out my phone after about thirty minutes. My DMs are filled to the fucking brim. One hits my eye, from JessLovesMatcha.
GIRL wtf I saw you on Stella Shadid’s Instagram!! I knew you were a STAR!!!!!
This makes me overwhelmingly depressed. I rest my head on Thomas’s shoulder and eventually drift off.
The next morning, I have an email from my editor at Vice. He loves the article and has “hardly any edits”—magic words to moi. And he wants it to grace the cover of the winter edition of the magazine. I’ve never been published in print before. Astrology-related articles rarely end up in print. Astrology is more of a digital art, I think, then remember it’s one of the oldest belief systems on the planet.
I don’t really care about being in print. My life is still shit. And isn’t print dead?
Nor do I care about having nearly a million followers on Instagram thanks to Stella Shadid. A bunch of people recently tagged me in a RadarOnline post about how I’d been “doxed.” So dumb. I was never hiding! I just don’t believe in crafting an embarrassing online persona like everyone else my age. I see the internet as merely a tool to exploit. There is nothing to find if someone googles my name, other than that gynecologist in Tampa and star volleyball player in San Antonio.
I have a DM from Stella: Sorry for exposing you bb. ;( The press is a nightmare.
I write back, RadarOnline is hardly “the press.”
Then: Also there is really nothing to expose! Ur fine.
She responds quickly with two (2) hearts and seven (7) sideways crying-laughing emojis. God, everyone is so dumb.
My other notifications stare at me—from Cinnamon, from my dad. The voice mail from my therapist. I try to envision telling my therapist that I’d accidentally fucked my brother because my dad had a secret affair when I was a baby. Any therapist would probably be thrilled to hear this information, a Freudian wet dream. It would puncture the typical monotony of baseless inferiority complexes and mundane romantic dramas and provide some “real work” to do.
My therapist always said my parents had “crushed my spirit.”
She had no idea!
I don’t call her back.
I don’t call my dad either.
Instead I call Cinnamon.
“Thank god,” she answers. “You’re alive.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” I say.
“Same,” she says. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s been the same record on repeat with the professor. It’s like Nirvana or something, and we all know how it ends.”
I am happy she is talking about herself, her own issues, and alluding to suicide.
“Should we get a drink?” she asks.
“Do you wanna just come here?” I ask. I still have some weed left over from Thomas. “I’m too depressed to leave the house.”
“Perfect,” she says. “Text me the address.”
Like Thomas, Cinnamon laughs when I tell her what happened, which is frankly a relief because I was worried she would be disgusted and never talk to me again. She also says something unexpected.
“This is exactly what the professor is writing his book about,” she says.
I am packing my bong to the brim. “Incest?”
“Yes!”
I take a big hit and exhale toward Lydia, who dances in the smoke.
“It’s called the Westermarck effect,” Cinnamon says, “or reverse sexual imprinting.” She takes the bong. “It was invented by this Finnish anthropologist—Westermarck. He argued incest is taboo because when people live in close domestic proximity during the first few years of their lives, they become desensitized to sexual attraction.”
Cinnamon lights the bong. I watch it fill with smoke as she sucks. She removes the carb and, whoosh, the smoke disappears into her lungs. I imagine the smoke tickling her chest.
“I never lived in close domestic proximity to Bo,” I say.
“Right,” she says. “Westermarck argued that when this ‘critical period’ does not occur—say, where brother and sister are brought up separately—they may find each other highly sexually attractive when they meet as adults due to genetic sexual attraction.”
I don’t say anything (there is nothing to say), but I am comforted hearing about my personal tragedy in such dry, academic terms. Sleeping with your sibling you don’t know is your sibling is, as it turns out, a real phenomenon with a real title coined by a Finnish anthropologist.
“Dang,” Cinnamon says. “I never thought I would have use for this knowledge.”
We both laugh.
Then I let Cinnamon monologue about the professor. While she talks, I wonder why the professor is writing a book about incest. Maybe he made the same mistake I did. It’s probably way more common than I think. Considering this makes me feel better. But mostly I feel relieved that Cinnamon didn’t judge me for my dark secret.
After we’ve exhausted the professor drama, I project Girl, Interrupted onto my ceiling. Cinnamon puts her head on my chest. She starts calling me Susanna, and I start calling her Lisa. After the movie, we chat at the plastic stars on my ceiling, then fall asleep giggling to Kid A.
DAWN.
I am drinking Cook’s in Steph and Beth’s backyard when Bo texts me for the first time since he confronted me at my apartment. Steph and Beth reconciled. Lesbians are always breaking up and getting back together in the most dramatic ways. I don’t ask too many questions, but I hope they at least consummated the reconciliation. I still don’t love Beth, but Steph is happy, and that’s all that matters. Also, it is nice to have access to Beth’s backyard, because we are experiencing a heatwave and I desperately need some color. Beth is out of town at some conference.
I met my dad is all the text says.
“You okay, Dawn?” Steph asks.
I guess she still thinks my finding Paul’s driver’s license was a dream because we haven’t discussed it since. I don’t bring it up.
I remember that Steph and Beth’s is roughly a block away from Paul’s. Is Bo there right now? Is my son just a block away?
“I’m good,” I lie. I think about all the secrets I have from Steph right now. Exalted said it’s my Scorpio moon. That damn moon seems to be the source of a lot of my problems. I wish I had a Leo moon. I wish my chart was all Leo, the best sign. Pierre jumps up on my lap. “Bo just texted me.”
“Aw,” Steph says. “How is my little angel?” Steph has always adored Bo, especially since she doesn’t have any kids of her own. And Bo likes Steph too, perhaps because I’m not super close to my family, so Steph is like his aunt. He calls her Aunt Steph. At least he used to.
“He’s good,” I say. “He got a new job.” That isn’t a lie. Bo told me he got a job waiting tables and that information crushed me. My biggest nightmare was always that Bo would become a waiter like me.
“Good for him.” Steph looks at her phone and starts giggling.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Exalted did ‘Leo Bingo.’”
“Oh my god,” I say. “What’s on there?”
“‘Great hair,’” says Steph.
“Obviously. What else?”
“‘Outdoor voices,’” she says.
I laugh.
“‘Drama.’ ‘Gold jewelry.’ ‘Pride.’ ‘Gossip.’”
“Yep, yep, yep, and yep,” I say.
“‘Attention.’ ‘Bossiness.’ ‘Bragging.’ ‘Loyalty.’”
“That’s us,” I say. “What else?”
“‘Practices sexual reactions in mirror while humping bed.’”
We both laugh.
When it gets dark and chilly, Steph and I go inside. We are both pretty tipsy at this point. I plop on the couch in the TV room, and Steph disappears. She returns with a bottle of tequila, two shot glasses, and a bag of white powder.
“Look what I found,” she says.
“When Beth’s away the mice will play.” I pour myself a shot.
“Are we too old for cocaine?” Steph asks as she pours the contents of the bag on top of a coffee-table book on French bulldogs.
“Hell no,” I say. But I’m not sure if it’s true. We’re almost fifty. Steph and I had a serious coke phase in our early twenties, when Bo was just a boy. Bo seemed to love me when I was high, giggling hysterically at everything I said. Tara didn’t like me doing it, so I stopped for a while. I feel too old to buy it at this point, but I am excited that Steph has some. “It’s not like we do it all the time. It’s a special occasion.”
