Pisces Rising (cont.)

I’m lucky, really. I have, in the past 45 years, met a considerable number of children who were named for the place in which they were conceived. Mostly city names like Dallas or Bryce. Doesn’t seem to matter if they were male or female. Why, on God’s Green Earth, would you name your child after its place of conception? First of all, children desperately try to avoid the fact that their parents have sex at all. We want them to be asexual. Our Puritan roots (and now our Fundamentalist majority) speaking, no doubt. But to have to be reminded of it every single day of your life! Lord Have Mercy!
It brings up some interesting diversions, though. Just think of the fun you could have with that if you were required to name your child—Place Where Conceived (insert last name here). Would the middle name be the date? Hmmmm . . . Nissan Sentra August20th Smith. What would I be? Some-Cheap-Hotel-Name June13th Kowalski? Fortunately, I only know that my parents were on their honeymoon and that I was born exactly nine months later. Despite the Pisces, she had some discretion. Or, perhaps, it was only discretion where it didn’t actually matter. But, I’ll get to that later.
The funny thing is that when I was thinking of being named about where one was conceived (God, I would hate to be named Bleachers or Lockerroom), it made me think of how lucky we are not to have the little indicator lights that our automobiles have. Think about it. What if we had little lights on our foreheads that indicated when we were . . . horny, frigid or PMSing? What if they let you know if you’d just had sex? Little red flashing light . . . oh yeah, so much for that quickie in the Xerox room or storage closet or . . . well, you get what I mean. What if they informed people whether you were a nympho or, what is the male version? Sexaholic? OK. Maybe that could be useful. Unless, of course, they were your spouse and you weren’t seeing any of that action. The possibilities are endless but you can see where I am going. Isn’t it such a wonder that we are able to choose our masks and live behind them; even change them, if necessary?
But yet again I digress. So far, you know only that I bear the name Pisces and that I was still a virgin at 18 (and a few other sordid facts).
What you don’t know is that whether it was the fault of my moniker or not, I am a textbook Pisces. But that will come up later. You’ve probably figured out that my parents were “not quite normal.” But, neither was the world I was growing up in. The world we were living in at the time—the early ‘60s—was experiencing mind-blowing change. From Vietnam, The Beatles, Communism and Cold War and Civil Rights (for women, too, mind you) to mind-altering drugs and the sexual revolution and well, I’m sure that even if you didn’t experience the 60s, you’ve heard plenty . . . and all against that aforementioned backdrop of Puritanism.
I am just one of millions of dysfunctional people who managed to be born when the world started accelerating madly. I wouldn’t be surprised if things haven’t changed more in the past 50 years than they have during any other 50-year period in world history—from lunar landings and unjustifiable wars loudly protested (I mean I’ve never heard of anyone demonstrating to stop the Crusades, for example) to carrying around palm-sized devices that can do just about anything. It’s all a little mind boggling, really.