Tarot Card Interpretation: Two of Cups

The Two of Cups: Nothing Happens Without Touching

Bullshit love is what he called it, my psychic friend originally from Istanbul. We were sitting in an upper east side coffee shop in NYC—the kind with ratty sofas, exposed brick, and downtempo music. He practiced his English and I tried to get a handle on my erratic love life as he read my tarot cards.

We’d huddle in the back corner and lay the cards out on a rickety coffee table. This was back in the year 2000, the heyday of the tv show, Sex and the City, and both he and I were living our respective versions of it: he was like the male version of Samantha with a revolving door of new loves weekly and I was more like Carrie, searching for big love while writing my adventures in my journal.

"This new guy you met…It’s bullshit love because look," he said, brandishing the two of cups card in the air like a magician, "the cups are touching, but the people are not."

"You have a point," I said, remembering how my latest crush didn’t even try to hold my hand at the movie-theater.

"Remember the episode of Sex and the City last Sunday night?" he asked. (My friend and I would meet regularly at his apartment every Sunday night since he had HBO and I did not. We’d eat some pasta, drink some wine, and marvel at how our lives seemed to be eerily paralleling our favorite tv show.)

"Yeah. The one where Carrie met that hot furniture guy, Aidan."

"Bullshit love."

"Wait—so how is it bullshit love if the two of them are going on a date?"

"The dog likes her, but he does not. Aidan only talked to her because of the dog."

"So you’re saying because his dog ran up to her and started humping her leg, that’s the reason he noticed her. So it’s like he had to go over and talk to her?"

"Congratulations!" (My friend loved using this word as an affirmative.)

"But Aidan took Carrie’s hand and made her feel how soft the leather was on his chair."

"Exactly. Before that, bullshit love. Nothing happens without touching," my friend said, taking a sip of his coffee, one eyebrow raised dramatically, a signal he was about to reveal some deep wisdom. "My father says he can tell certain things about a woman without touching her, but he always insists on a tango. You got me?"

"I got you."

"No tango, no love. It’s pretty simple," he said, then asked: "Anything else you want to know?"