Garbage-throwing Mike

When you have an active transit of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto to your personal planets (which are sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars), one of two things happens.

1. You meet people who embody the energy of the outer planet.

2. People you already know temporarily change to embody the energy of the outer planet in question.

Usually it's both.

Once upon a time, I had Pluto sextiling my Venus by transit. A sextile is a nice aspect, and Venus represents your love life, but Pluto is Pluto, and Pluto is intense. So at the time, it was easier to meet Plutonian people, and existing people in my life changed into Plutonians. Plutonian people are secretive, obsessive, emotionally extreme, rage-y (on a bad day), driven, and occasionally diabolical. Pluto--> Venus makes love interests and relating to people occasionally diabolical. Here are a select few things that happened:

• I had a love interest that didn't work out.

• A friend of mine asked me to have an affair with him, and later suggested we just run away together. (I said no.)

• I met garbage-throwing Mike, the perfect embodiment of Plutonian energy.

Picture this: I'm out to drinks with the aforementioned "friend" from the second bullet, telling him about my drama with my love interest, and he suggested that he and I have that affair and flee to Europe. I pretended he was joking and begged him off, then realized I was very, very late for a party at my next door neighbors' house. I arrived at the party, already pretty flustered, as you might imagine. At the time, I didn't know my neighbors well at all, so I did my best at socializing. There was this dude present who was visibly very impressed with himself who started challenging everything I said, seemingly for sport. His name was Mike. If I said "grass grows on the ground" he'd find a way to argue with that fact. He was staring at me like he was trying to bore holes into my soul (this is a dead giveaway that someone is Plutonian, btw). Later in the evening, Mike, having learned that I lived next door, would lock eyes with me and then throw whatever he was holding in his hands over the fence and into my yard. At first, it was grapes. Later in the evening, he graduated to glass bottles. I did not get less flustered as the evening wore on, since I was surrounded by strangers and being antagonized by one in particular. Eventually, I gave up and left.

My actual neighbor was up first thing the next morning sweeping the glass out of my driveway, profusely apologizing for Mike's behavior.

The day after that, an Amazon gift card was delivered with an apology from Mike for his behavior.

Later, my neighbor told me that I was apparently a ringer for Mike's ex-girlfriend.

I saw Mike a few more times after that. My neighbors got married—that party I'd been at was an engagement party—and at the wedding, they seated me at Mike's table, because apparently my neighbors really wanted to invite more drama into their special day. I stress-ate all the bread at the table. Mike glared at me diabolically.

On a different occasion, the same neighbors had a party on one of those trolleys you can rent, but the neighbors didn't pick a specific destination, so it drove aimlessly around Chicago. I was bored out of my skull, trying to force a conversation with a dentist from the far suburbs and his wife, when Mike boarded the trolley on Michigan Avenue. I took one look at Mike, thought "fuck this," found a way to sneak off the party bus without anyone noticing, and then took the train home.

Months later, the neighbors had another backyard party and I had a horror movie moment of looking up and realizing Mike was staring at me from inside, through a window.

Pluto moved on. The male neighbor later invited me to travel with him to Florida. It was unclear whether his wife would be present on that trip. I didn't take him up on the offer. The neighbors moved away. Mike hasn't been seen since.

XO,J