#4: scorpio season (2023)

send me on my way

Nov 22, 2023

Hi! Thanks for being here. It’s the first day of Sagittarius season and I am tired from my travels but it’s a good day so far — I found out I didn’t actually have to work as much as I thought today, and even better, I was told that my judgment of someone was spot on and that I’m right, that person is like that. I knew I was right but I need to hear it from others sometimes.

Here are some takeaways and faves from Scorpio season this past month. You can find an overview of Sagittarius season’s upcoming astrology at the end of this newsletter. If you’d like to support this girl’s blog, you can subscribe and maybe even pay me at the link below, and/or like this post and all my past and future newsletters. Tysm 🩷

my travels

I rarely go places, but this Scorpio season I went on two trips and I had plans to go on a third until I was too exhausted by work and a rally to do all the driving it would’ve been in one day. Of the trips I went on, one was for business and one was for pleasure.

The latter: I got invited to go to the mountains by a friend of a friend, partly because she thought it would be fun to spend time together and get to know each other more, and partly because we’re into each other and we discovered that we have compatible kinks. (I actually received the invite only ten minutes after I sent a screenshot of a list I made on FetLife, and that’s the energy I want from people.) I was looking forward to a lot of things about the trip: time with her, getting to explore the city while she was at her conference, the gorgeous weather, the pretty fall leaves, a lot of socializing, driving her minivan around, and, of course, the hotel sex. I’m happy to report that none of these disappointed — or rather, all were well worth the anxiety that the idea of a spontaneous trip brought up for me.

During said hotel sex, I had this thought that I have during sober sex sometimes that’s something like I sure am sober right now. It doesn’t seem to have any correlation with whether I’m enjoying myself — I was! It’s more like an awareness that I am very much here and present and this is my body and that’s someone else’s and I am having thoughts and feelings and sensations and I’m thinking and feeling and experiencing them all, whether I want to be or not. Sex while sober is something that can really bring attention to just how much there, like, is, like all the time, but especially right then. To try saying this more clearly: sober sex can make you aware of all that there is to feel and to feel in any given moment, and when you’re used to numbing out and turning off your brain for even positive experiences, it can make you feel cracked open and raw. I’m almost into my fourth year of this and it still feels new and emotionally salient.

All that said, I really enjoyed the spontaneous mountain-hotel-sex girls trip. Putting the lust in wanderlust, ha ha.

And the former, the “business” trip: A week later I went to Denver to help my cousin who’s one of my best friends with her booth at a holiday market, and to see another cousin I’m close with too. I’ve been to Denver once before, years ago when only the latter cousin lived there, and I was violently sick throughout the last evening of the visit. I drank too much the first night and I vaguely remember drunkenly dancing in a cage in a gay bar, and then the next day we went up to Red Rocks and hiked around for a bit before coming right back down and going to a brewery in town. All of the alcohol plus the elevation shifts and barely drinking water absolutely wrecked my poor, disoriented body. My goal this trip was to not get sick, and aside from some dizziness and nausea the first two days I was fine.

Helping at the booth was fun! The days were long and very social, but it was sweet to see my cousin in her element and to help support her in being successful out there. She and I are both well cut out for customer service. I got so many compliments on my curls from the women I talked to in the booth, which reassured me because I was self-conscious about my frizzier hair up there in the dry air. It was great seeing my other cousin too and meeting her new girlfriend. I feel so blessed to have two queer cousins and I already miss both of them a lot.

I had a very surprising encounter while at the booth the second night — I was looking around at the people passing by, trying to draw folks our way with a warm smile, when I noticed that a customer in the booth across from us was a woman who I was hooking up with this time last year back home. I told my cousin and was marveling at how small the (lesbian) world is before I remembered that she’s from Denver. My cousin and I debated whether I should go over and quickly decided yes. I checked my hair, swiped on some lip gloss, then crossed through the stream of people to go tap her on the shoulder.

I wasn’t sure how she would react to seeing me because she was the one who ended things at the beginning of this year. She asked me to take care of her christmas cactus over the holidays last year when she went home, and when she came back and I returned the happy, healthy plant, she said she was going to be very busy now with grad school. I was supposed to get the hint that she didn’t want to keep sleeping with me. So of course when I saw her I felt hesitant to go say hey.

She turned and smiled and asked what I was doing there, in a pleasantly surprised way. I explained and we caught up briefly. I barely remember what I said because I was just surprised to be having a positive conversation — our first since she ended things — in a city in a totally different part of the country.

It was a wild coincidence though because I wasn’t even planning on being at the market that night, she happened to be home extra early on a break, she was at this random market on a Saturday night, and she was inside the booth across from me just long enough for me to pick her out of the crowd. It felt like a sign, and I love a sign. (My roommate called me out when I told her this last night: “You’re always seeing signs, but the sign is just that you and someone should have sex.”) I wasn’t going to text, but she did, in a closed-ended way which was a little disappointing. I responded, kindly and in kind.

Both of my cousins were trying to talk me into moving there and I’m not not convinced. It might honestly be worth it to be closer to two out of the only three members of my family I actually want to be geographically close to.

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I know this has been written about by people who travel a lot more than me (i.e. rarely) but I love the ways a trip can change you, if you let it. New and renewed connections with people, time and space with yourself and your thoughts during travel, new meal ideas, new articles of clothing or new outfit combinations with what you packed, a shifted mood or perspective. The way your adaptable body recalibrates to a difference of time, pace, altitude, or weather. Yes, I eventually feel like I want to return home when I’m on a trip, but when it’s a good one — like these two were — I feel sadness and longing even as I’m integrating ways I’ve been changed for the better.

faves ♡

💍 new jewelry

My cousin whose booth I helped with thanked me in beautiful new jewelry, a way in which I am very open to being thanked. One of the pieces is this dainty, beaded gold chain as a permanent bracelet, which, yes, you can wear in the shower — the question that every other customer asked. Another is this long, gold-filled chain necklace with a small, vintage bell on it that rings softly as it bounces around on your torso. It’s such a satisfying little sound, and listening for it as I walked over 3,000 steps through the Denver airport and then my local airport helped me feel less overwhelmed by the experience of navigating airports at the beginning of Thanksgiving week.

🎵 Anything You Want - Eliza McLamb

I needed to hear this song this past month and I’m glad that she released it for me, personally. I’m looking forward to her album, Going Through It, that’s out in mid-January, a time of year when I am typically– you get it.

🎶 Shaking the Can - Peach Fuzz

This was a last-minute addition, but I found this song last night and have been listening to it over and “over again, shaking the can.”

🎧 The Happy Couple (audiobook) - Naoise Dolan

I haven’t finished listening yet but I’m really enjoying this book. So many messy queers! I liked her book Exciting Times a lot and just reread it recently, so I was looking forward to this one coming out. I think I’m enjoying it more in audiobook form because the humor and syntax just sound better with an Irish accent. It was exactly the kind of book I wanted to listen to on my flights this past week — entertaining, engaging, and gay — and I’ve reached a point in my listen where I don’t want to stop because I want to know what happens next. Unfortunately due to a self-imposed newsletter deadline, I’m writing about it here instead of listening to it.

A quote that I went back to write down because it stood out to me, with regards to some dating experiences: “People say they hate being strung along, but they don’t really. They hate rejection. … They wouldn’t take any more kindly to an explicit ‘no’. Actually, I’d wager the same rejection hurts less when it’s implicit than when you’re told, in as many English words, that someone doesn’t want you.”

🎃 Halloween

It’s a holiday with some of the best vibes and candy at the best time of year and even if you don’t really do anything for it, as was the case for me this year, it’s still fun to get into the ~spirit~ of. On which note, I sent out a piece that I enjoyed writing.