Not surprisingly, in retrospect, no apologies ever came from any in the community about the mistreatment of Sam's parents. Far from being ashamed of their behavior, Mabel's partners in crime stood their wrongfully held ground, proudly claiming that they had done their part in the fight against "patriarchy". In this, we would learn later, their Politically Correct peers saw much to admire.
What should have really made an impression on Sam at the time, and didn't, was discovering later on that "Mary" had assumed that he had walked out with her to the park because he had sexual designs on her at the time. Following her outburst, few thoughts could have been further from his mind. But this assumption, that any sort of relationship between a man and a woman must be a sexual or romantic one, and that any gesture of concern on the man's part must be a part of some scheme to lure the woman into bed? Where does that come from? And what does that say about the norms of the place one finds onelf in? Sam didn't think about that. Maybe he should have, and the rest of us with him.
Now that we're done with that subplot, let's go back a few months again. It's been a few months since "Sam", our publisher, had that strange encounter with "Mary" (the Gemini-hating treehugger) out in Wicker Park. He has passed Mabel, who will be bringing such joy into his and his family's lives in the months to come, and sat down. And .... Scene!
In walk the actors for our soap opera. Our dazed and confused future publisher goes to sit down, but where? Everywhere he looks, he is told "this seat is taken", even when the table is half empty and nobody is coming. Glancing in the mirror, he is glad, at least, that nobody has planted a "kick me" sign there. Yet. He wonders if he has made a mistake by coming, when a mysterious and pretty young woman offers him a seat. How can he refuse? Of course he sits down, soon to be even more bewildered than before ...
Our publisher found himself talking with "Lucy", who opened with "are you that creepy guy who was following people around, at the last summer solstice?". Sam was taken a little aback. Pointing out that he had still been a practicing Conservative Jew at the time, he said that this seemed most unlikely. "Well, if you say so. OK, then", she said, suddenly bursting forth with the news that she was having trouble meeting men because she couldn't find any who were willing to tie her up. Although she did meet a lot of men at her job as a telephone operator at an escort service. But they didn't tend to be her type, "johns" being so creepy, most of the time, and they'd probably want her to do something weird.
Her one man audience stared at her for about half of a minute, as he tried to remember how to blink. "Yeah. Well, hi, my name is Sam, and yours would be ..." Welcome to the community, son. Be sure to disinfect after you leave.
And leave, he probably should have, Sam admits, but he didn't. To be sure, he said, she was a little peculiar. She was not the kind of woman he dreamed of waking up next to, some day. But, she was not without her virtues. She did seem fairly sweet in her own off-kilter way, and fairly intelligent. And, he would add, he was a relatively young man, and she was more than relatively pretty, and he was but flesh and blood. There is something pleasant about talking with a beautiful and charming woman even if one knows better than to pursue her. Why not be friends?
Perhaps, because the concept would seem to be lost on her? These meetings began at 8 pm, so, once again, the evening had worn down in a poorly lit and shadowy neighborhood, and the streets were empty. Sam offered to walk Lucy out to her car, just as he had offered to go with Mary to that park a few months earlier. This must have made some impression on Lucy, or maybe something else did, because just as she was about to get in her car, she pulled a card out of her purse, and wrote down and gave Sam her number on the spot, giggling nervously, saying that she "never did this". Sam took the card, and turned it over. It offered the bearer a discount for vampire fangs from "Dark Gift". Great. Sam was a little startled, not expecting such a response to what only seemed to be common courtesy. Normally, he would have been pleased, but this was a little awkward. How does one tell somebody, at a moment like that, "I like you, but not in that way".
In Sam's case, by burying himself in his work and letting things cool off for two months. Easily done, as his thesis was getting done at a very pleasing rate, the pages just pouring out, and he would have found it hard to tear himself away from his desk, anyway. Not that there was any reason for him to, given the nature of his interest. Friendship is important, but it's not urgent. One doesn't have to worry that the person will be "taken" when one does have time, and under the circumstances, Sam hoped that Lucy would be when he saw her again. Given her considerable charms, this hope did not seem an unreasonable one.
Two months and several hundred pages later, Sam found enough time to go to another meeting and enough boredom to make him want to go. There was Lucy, which was a pleasant surprise, and she was still unattached, which was not. Sam and she spoke for a while, her "all smiles and laughter", when for no apparent reason she asked Sam what his sign was. Carelessly he revealed the dark secret out of his past that he had been born a Gemini. One could have heard a pin drop. Sam's worries about letting Lucy down gently were clearly over.
Yes, she told Sam, this was a problem, and that she didn't wish to speak to him any more, any more than did the others nearby. She was visibly angry. Having but recently departed Judaism, and having enjoyed the dubious pleasure of having spent much of his adolescence Jewish in Klan country, Sam knew that look. The seething of a bigot, offended by one's very existence.
Of all of the things to be stigmatised for, especially considering the location! Consider who had already found acceptance there. There were those who had criminal records, had worked in the sex industry, had a variety of psychoses, and the group seemed to be so open and accepting that these issues, which would have been real social liabilities elsewhere, were calmly accepted. But, apparently, having been born in early June was too much of a scandal for more and more who heard the shocking news. On having heard of Sam's secret astrological shame, more than a few either stopped talking to him, or started seeing negative character traits that had never seemed to catch their eye before. Lucy, included. Lucy, especially.
Sam, for his part, continued in what might seem to the reader to be a simple and inexplicable faith in the sanity of the community. But, most of the community had put on a good show to this point, paying lip service to what common sense should have placed beyond debate while in Sam's presence ... but only in Sam's presence. Without naming anybody other than Mary, whose reaction everybody had already known about, Sam asked how reasonable the abuse he had been getting really was, jokingly asking
"Hath she not cooled my friends and enflamed my enemies? And what is her reason? I am a Gemini. What of it? If you cut us, do we not bleed? Hath not a Gemini hands, senses, auras, chakras, as a Libra does? If you spike our coffee, do we not puke? If you burn too much patchouli, do we not wheeze? If you turn off our heat, do we not die?" (*)
"That can be arranged", Lucy is said to have remarked, having overheard this. As some of Sam's non-pagan friends clapped and cried "author" and Sam took a half-bow, Lucy began to gather supporters to avenge this imagined wrong. Soon, she and her supporters, too, spread the word of Sam's diabolical attempts at iambic pentameter, as more and more started calling Sam's ever more upset parents, and Sam too, now. Sam, who would have stopped coming at that moment, had he known, but didn't, because the callers never explained the reason why they were behaving the way they were. Understanding on that point would have to wait until Mabel's calls had been traced and Sam, confronting the coffeehouse crowd, would find a smug and prideful gloating where common decency would have demanded remorse.
"He's after me, you know", Lucy would say, unfazed by the fact that Sam still had that card, and had never called. "I sensed that he would be like that, Lucy", said one of the women.
A few months passed, as the usual frigid spring turned into the long awaited summer, and then came the time for the solstice celebration. Lucy had come to the spiral dance at the Sacred Grove's that year, in a simple homespun dress that somehow made her look even lovelier than before. So much so, that the men in the group seemed to be gravitating toward her. At this point, she uttered the immortal words, that struck fear into our very hearts.
"Watch what you say about Prozac".
It was a defining moment for the community. Sam walked away, more than a little disappointed with the direction events had taken, wondering if there were any well-adjusted women left alive, and if he'd ever meet one. Maybe Aphrodite heard his thoughts. A very sweet and beautiful young lady made a little conversation with him that night, and there seemed to be some compatability. Nothing serious came of it, but at least it lifted his spirits and reminded him that women were not, in general, as much of a lost cause as the ones he had been meeting in the community. John Bohac, who drove him home, seeing that he still seemed a little discouraged, was kind enough to cheer him up a little. It would be the last act of kindness he would ever see out of that community.
(*) Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene I, sort of.