Ghost of a Gemini

Don't date a Scorpio, they say. Pisces men are bad news. Virgo men? Controlling assholes. There are accurate descriptors I could conjure about why the men born under each Sun sign are best avoided. But the true danger lies in the Geminis.

I dated Matt when I was 25. We met on Hinge in February 2019, more than six years ago. We dated for less than two months, and then hung out as friends until December of that year.

His birthday is June 6, which he loved because of the symmetry of the numbers. 6/6. I never met anyone who was obsessed with number and letter symmetry like me. Gemini Sun, Scorpio Moon, Libra Rising. I hardly knew anything about astrology back then. Today I see the glaring red flags, but then all I saw was a cute guy who was nice to me and had a cocker spaniel named Lady and lived alone and was smart and paid for everything when we went out.

I recounted our story to my narcissistic abuse therapist during my intake inventory. I started seeing her after getting out of a three-year abusive relationship with a narcissist in August of last year.

I tell her about Matt as I'm recounting the wild, booze-fueled days of my first year living in Los Angeles. I refer to him as my favorite ex-boyfriend. She writes something in her notebook.

I tell her that every time we went on a date, I would get a text the next morning saying "I had a great time with you last night, you're awesome. Do you want to go out again this week?"

I tell her that he was smart, and he liked that I was smart too. I tell her that we never stopped talking when we were together. We talked about anything and everything. That's a Gemini thing, I guess. I have a Gemini moon. He took me to a concert for a band neither of us had heard of at a venue neither of us had been to. And then another. I brought him as my guest to a VIP Oscars party (extremely just-moved-to-LA activity).

After one of our early dates he sent me a picture of three engagement rings and asked which one I liked best. I just about fainted.

When I moved out of my sublet and into an apartment in Hollywood, he came over and assembled my bed frame while I baked chocolate chip cookies and then he ate me out on the kitchen counter.

He was exceptionally unavailable. He did something sooooo important involving sending all of human knowledge to the moon. He attended Elon Musk's flamethrower party back when that seemed so cool and told me they served caprisuns and goldfish crackers. He missed my moving-out-of-my-sublet party because "Russia hacked them" which I knew even then was a lie. I spent the whole party upset and listened to Taylor Swift's The Moment I Knew on repeat and drank wine and cried the entire next day.

But he would say sorry or ask me to hang out and I would be right back in it.

My therapist tells me that he's a narcissist. That his sweet messages were love bombing. That he pulled back to draw me to him more. He made himself scarce to get me addicted to his validation. I finally block his number after our session.

I ended things with Matt in early April. He had told me he was going to Vegas for a work trip on a Friday and would be back Sunday. On Sunday I baked cupcakes and sent him a picture. He said "yum! I would come have one but I need to leave for my trip tonight." I said "I thought you left Friday?" and he said "we got delayed."

All I could think about was how excited I had been for him to get home, how much I had wished we could hang out that weekend. And he was in town the whole time! I went out to dinner with some friends and then sent him a long text about how his lack of communication wasn't something I would put up with and that I didn't want to see him anymore. He responded with some nice words and then I cried more tears than I knew I had in me.

A few days later he sent me a text that said he hadn't stopped thinking about the way things ended, that it had really fucked him up, and that he wanted to get lunch and talk about it more. I agreed to a lunch that Friday.

And from there, we were back. Now that we weren't dating, weren't kissing, weren't sleeping together, we hung out constantly. I'm talking 3+ times a week. I wanted him desperately. I hoped so badly that spending so much time with me meant he wanted me too.

One night we had been out drinking at my usual haunt, Melrose Umbrella Co, and he was walking me the mile back to my apartment. We made it two blocks to the European Cars Collision place when I stopped and told him I wanted him to kiss me and if he didn't want to I couldn't do this anymore.

He said no. I called an Uber. He begged me to let him walk me home and talk more. My Uber pulled up, I kissed his cheek and said goodbye and got in. We were both crying. I could see his face in the Uber's side mirror as we pulled away. It was just like a movie. I loved that shit.

My therapist tells me that he reached back out to me after I broke up with him not because he wanted me back, but because narcissists hate when other people impose boundaries on them. Me crossing the boundary I had set was what he had wanted, and I gave it to him.

We still hung out after that night. I was an alcoholic and he was a great drinking buddy and he still paid for all my drinks when we were together. He had a crush on a woman who worked at a tarot shop so he was always buying me little crystals and trinkets as gifts so he had an excuse to go see her. I couldn't stand when he talked about her. If he wanted to have a crush on someone, I was right there! I clung to those gifts like a lifeline.

One day during lockdown he texted me and referenced a fiancée while I was day drinking in the park with some friends. I left immediately and walked home and cried like a baby all night.

We would talk occasionally in the intervening years. He had moved to the east coast with his girlfriend (NOT fiancée... Geminis are often pathological liars under the guise of being "storytellers"). I told him about my new boyfriend back when things were great. I said we would probably get married because I really believed it.

On paper this seems like an objectively bad situationship with a narcissist. But my mind mostly remembers the Gemini magic of it all. Two brains swirling with endless thoughts, finally finding someone to share them with who had just as many things to say. Two people acting out their own movie through each other.

I'm a lesbian, but I still dream of him. I'm writing this because I dreamt of him last night. It still excites me. It still lights me up.

I read all of Carl Jung's work on dreams because I needed to understand why. I do want to be free. I wrote down everything he's a symbol of. His archetype.

Someone who's nice to me. Someone with good money who pays for all our dates. Someone great at eating pussy. Someone whose intelligence I respect and who respects my intelligence in turn. Someone who's always up for an adventure, but not in the hiking sense. Someone who gets me little crystals and trinkets. Someone I can talk to forever and never run out of things to say. This is what I missed most at the silent dinner table with my ex every night, trying my hardest not to touch my phone. Someone who is a willing actor in the movie scenes of my life, who makes things exciting, who has a vision.

The Gemini. Once you start, you'll never be able to stop.