I have this thing with Leos. A sense of familiarity, a strange attraction, a comfort level. My dad is a Leo, and I’m a Daddy’s Girl. My Daddy is my Cowardly Lion. He’s got more courage than he thinks he does.

Did you know that Max Hardcore is a Leo?

The boy who gave me my first kiss at 15: Leo.

My first lover. Not a Leo. He’s a Scorpio. That’s a whole other world I won’t get into now.

But my rebound guy after my first lover, you guessed it: Leo.

Sam: Leo.

And sweet Liandre.

Liandre was a boy who called me every night when I was 14. Our maid, Nana Cion used to sneak me phonecalls by announcing that a girl named Andrea was calling. We’d talk for hours. Who knew what it was about. Just a boy curious about me as I was curious about him.

One day he said he would come over for a visit. I had lost my voice that day after singing too much. It was midafternoon. I sat on a bench in our backyard, not knowing there was a small hive of the meanest yellow jackets in a nook under the bench. What Liandre found when he arrived was me screaming, “Putakti! Putakti” in a deep scraggly voice that sounded like I was possessed by the devil as I ran past him indoors and under a shower of cold water. It’s up there as one of the most embarrassing moments in my life.

I never saw him after that. Think I scared him?