From a far enough distance, there isn’t anything special about a black hole—gravitationally at least. It’s still a menacing and ominous hole in the universe, mind you. But you can orbit it just like any other object. Gravity is pretty cool like that: from far enough away, two objects will interact with each other as if all their mass was in a single point at the center of each object. You don’t need to care about odd lumps or bulging equators when computing the effects of gravity. Just total mass and distance.
