In my twenties I was an egregious clothing thief. It always started innocently enough — I would ask to borrow things, wear them around, maybe keep them a little too long. Once I’d established that borrowing rapport with my victim (usually a roommate), I would begin to steal. Always while they were gone for extended periods and worn minimally to mitigate the risk being found out. From there, if I wasn’t caught, things would spiral into total wanton thievery. As soon as a roommate was gone from the house for more than two hours I was in there, trying things on and squirreling things away, occasionally permanently. It wasn’t great. I’ve since lost the habit, but until recently hadn’t been able to put a finger on quite what changed. Then I watched the Netflix version of The Talented Mr. Ripley (the spartanly titled Ripley) and wondered if it wasn’t kind of a gay thing.
I didn’t truly figure out I was queer until 2020 lockdown. Since coming to that realization I’ve been doing a lot of fun unearthing and retrofitting of things to see if they fit under the Gay banner. Namely, for all of my twenties I was plagued by an elusive but looming paranoia that I was a completely unknowable person with no real center (right, girls??). Now, I think that might have just been an emotional response to large parts of myself being unknown to me. But at the time I felt invisible and strange, and also loooved having hot female friends with good style whose presence made me feel less obscure. The combination of the two meant I was doing a lot of pilfering.
The Tom Ripley of Ripley is a hard pivot from Anthony Minghella’s 1999 version who found shape in the bronzed, blonde, and blue-eyed Matt Damon. This 2024 Tom is played by a uncharacteristically dead-eyed Andrew Scott and shot completely in black and white, a hard contrast to the crystal blues and creams and golds of the Minghella film. Where Matt Damon played Ripley as boyish and fumbling with a sinister undertone (still sexy, sorry), Andrew Scott sucks all life out of Tom until he is a void seeking definition, a lumbering and bizarrely un-streetwise creep whose attempts to fit himself in with the upper crust are cringing and sad. This Tom really only comes alive once Dickie is dead and he’s wearing his clothes. Andrew Scott’s Tom Ripley was the kind of queer representation I needed — a sad, weird little guy who only feels real when he’s wearing the clothes of his much hotter friend. It’s after this point that Tom and I diverge, fortunately, as I have yet to murder any of my closet victims (ALSO the fact that I was enacting so many of my identity crises in literal closets is… potent).
This week Mars travels into the final degrees of Pisces where it conjoins with Neptune. Mars is the planet of direction, aggression, and will. Neptune is a diffuser; whatever Neptune touches turns to fog, or steam, or a cascade of glitter, becoming intangible and atmospheric. The two planets will lie in a sextile to Jupiter and Uranus who will have just completed their conjunction at 22º of Taurus. This alignment feels like Tom Ripley in new clothes. Neptune blurs the shape of Mars’ intention until the truth of a relationship, a dynamic, or an identity is lost completely and we can’t tell if we’re being swindled or seduced. Jupiter and Uranus as the great expander and the great reverser, respectfully, supply unquestioning support to that feeling of paranoiac confusion until suddenly, out of nowhere, it seems to have come into a lot of money. We’re being taken for a ride and it feels and looks pretty good. Gay, even!
NOTES FOR THE WEEK:
Thursday, April 25
A fated message arrives in the form of a lost and forgotten argument; the fog of war moves and shapes itself into a series of statements and instructions about surviving loss.
Friday, April 26
Shaking stardust from our eyes and allowing it to settle onto tools in our hands. Everyday tasks become magical and the magic makes them more difficult to accomplish. Gathering last minute items for an upcoming journey like a cosmic idiot check — you wouldn’t want to leave anything behind.
Saturday, 4/27
Mars conjunct Neptune in Pisces. It feels good to forget who you are and dream of greener grass instead. Getting big ideas from an acid trip and/or being poisoned by a toxic acid for getting too many big ideas. A whirlpool of a prophecy whose messages are important but too proliferate and beautiful to be fully deciphered. Being at the end of your rope and looking up to see that the rope is not attached to anything, and why were you holding a rope?
Sunday, 4/28
Practical and sober harmonies emanate over a day that feels impatient. It feels advisable to lie down in the grass but a nonspecific irritation makes it difficult to do so. You’re running out of time to be impulsive.
I’m thinking you’re probably one of the greatest humans on the planet…