What’s Your Sign?

I walk into the bar and find an empty stool. Next to it sits an attractive woman that doesn’t seem to mind my presence. She has even started to become curious about the man beside her. In an effort to find connection she asks the only question that I have no desire to answer: “What’s your sign?” Immediately I know there will be no love connection between us.

It’s not that I don’t know the answer. I do. I know the date, the month, the neat little box I’m supposed to fit into. The problem is that the question itself tells me everything I need to know. Not about her, exactly, but about the system she’s already decided to use in place of thinking.

I don’t respond right away. Silence after this question is revealing. People show how invested they are by how uncomfortable they become when you don’t participate.

She waits, smiling. Not impatient. Not embarrassed. Confident. As if she’s asked my name.

“What’s yours?” I ask.

“Gemini,” she says instantly, like it’s rehearsed. “So if I talk too much, you’ll know why.”

That’s when the disinterest arrives. Immediate and complete.

Not because she believes in horoscopes. Plenty of people casually believe foolish things. The issue is that she’s outsourcing judgment. She’s letting an aesthetic, myth-based sorting system do the work of discernment for her.

“I don’t care about astrology,” I say.

“At all?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “I think it’s stupid.”

The word lands harder than I intend. People rarely like it when you name the thing they use to feel safe. Astrology isn’t protected because it’s accurate. It’s protected because it’s useful. It offers conclusions without effort. It allows dismissal without curiosity. It gives identity without introspection.

She laughs, defensive now. “It’s just for fun.”

That’s the shield. Fun. Nothing labeled fun is required to make sense. Fun excuses incoherence. Fun protects bad ideas from scrutiny. I can tell by the deck of tarot cards on the bar in front of her she doesn’t truly believe that.

“It’s not fun,” I say. “It’s a filing system for humans.”

The bartender sets a drink in front of me that I didn’t order. I accept it anyway. Systems don’t wait for permission once they’ve decided where you belong.

She tells me astrology helps her understand people. That it explains patterns. That it’s eerie how accurate it can be. She lists former partners by sign, each reduced to a predictable flaw. Emotional. Cold. Self-absorbed. A parade of men flattened into stereotypes neat enough to absolve her from deeper reflection.

I listen. Not because I’m persuaded, but because I recognize the structure. This is what certainty sounds like when it’s built on laziness.

Astrology doesn’t predict. It categorizes. It retrofits meaning after the fact. It relies on vague language and lets the human brain do the rest. Humans are excellent at that. We are meaning-making machines with very low evidentiary standards.

“The constellations aren’t even real,” I say.

She frowns. “They’re real.”

“They’re drawings,” I say. “Imaginary lines between stars that aren’t near each other. The sky has shifted so much that most people’s signs don’t even match anymore.”

She stares into her drink, deciding whether this makes me insufferable or intriguing.

“And even if they were real,” I continue, “there’s no mechanism. No force. Mars doesn’t affect you more than a parked car. It’s just symbolic language.”

She tells me I’m taking it too seriously. That no one believes it literally.

But people do. Quietly. They let it guide decisions without admitting it does. Who they date. Who they avoid. What behavior they excuse. “That’s just how I am,” they say, pointing upward instead of inward.

Astrology teaches that personality is fixed, destiny inherited, and self-examination optional. It turns description into prophecy and coincidence into confirmation.

We talk longer than expected, circling the same disagreement. She insists it’s harmless. I insist systems don’t need to be violent to be damaging. They only need to be convenient.

Around us, the bar hums. People pairing off, recalibrating, trying again. Everyone using a framework. Apps. Types. Labels. Shortcuts. Astrology is just the most decorative one.

At some point she says, “You’re not what I expected.”

Expected according to what? A chart? A narrative prepared before I ever sat down?

She asks my sign again, softer this time.

I tell her. It doesn’t matter which one. The moment I say it, I watch the shift. Her shoulders loosen. Her face settles. She nods.

“That makes sense,” she says.

Nothing has changed. But something has closed.

The system has done its job. Reduced uncertainty. Contained complexity. Given her permission to stop paying attention.

I realize then that this isn’t about belief. It’s about effort. Astrology exists because knowing another person is hard. Because attention is expensive. Because uncertainty feels like failure in a culture obsessed with efficiency.

I finish my drink and stand. She looks disappointed but not surprised. The system accounts for this too. Some signs just don’t mix.

Outside, the air feels sharper. Unsorted. Unexplained. No symbols offered. No destiny assigned. Just the uncomfortable freedom of not being summarized.

Astrology will continue working exactly as designed. It will keep offering certainty instead of understanding, labels instead of intimacy, and shortcuts instead of thought.

It won’t collapse.

Systems like this never do.

They just make it easier to avoid thinking.