Now. In September. Also August. My sexuality rides Equinox/Mabon too- and into the early darker months. Balance bliss and harvest delight. We as a community look the most alive on the bigLake. Yes, this season my/our sexuality sparkles. Easily connecting and connected. Thieving touch before the brightness disappears and we start to layer stifling wool under too full of itself down.
Every year, after birthday month adventures, I return, rejuvenated from east coast directness- sexy, smooth, and simple. Schnazzle in the speakEasy. Folx telling me what they want. Risky creativity (as in pleasure inducing intimacies expressed) decorates friendship, family, the familiar five generations deep (as in, laying my body down on my great grandma Alva’s and great great grandma Mathilda’s graves-covered with uncountable amounts of different lichen). Yes my family once was groundcover. Color over substrate. Swedish immigrants stretching from corner to corner of Sampson street. Ancestral magic feeds me on a soul-deep level. So much poetry! So little plot.
I’m back from the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area (BWCA)- schimmer shammer of six to ten hours on the water everyday. Paddling paddling play paddling. Shared a trip with six queer Californians who laugh like their hearts can hide only under cotton- twelve months of the year. So much poetry! So few plans.
I’m my best self right now. I am summer poem-ing. I’m a sparklySexual.
Last week over moan-inducing delicious froYo with a new friend, we discussed relationships for the first time. She said she’d tried it once, was too painful and messy, and now she opts out. Ace and Aro satisfied. I paused, my pink plastic spoon in the air. I loved her confidence and clarity. Romance and sex -for now- in her book- have a big “No Thanks” stamped over both options.
Yes, how we do relationship is a choice. Our generation is one of, if not, the first to try on intimacies and queer up closeness by decentering on this scale the now stale yet still prevalent social norms of “compulsory monogamy/couple centric” love.
We’ve queered how we connect, clothe ourselves in labels as liberatory as demi sexual, pansexual, eco sexual, etc. The list goes on and on. And I’m introducing another. SparklySexual.
As a sparklySexual, I’m as open and receptive right now, close of summer, as I’ll be all year to romance and sex. The wilds and I echo desire, we’ve erupted in color and can barely contain ourselves. We sparkle. I adore every spicy summery flavor of the intimate. Before we settle into sexualities that center solitude.
Louder than ever, I say I love the consciousness that comes with this much living. I can admit (recognize) my sensual and erotic desires change by and with the seasons. Summer Fall and Winter I want intimacy and romance with other humans, Spring not so much. My writing and erotic ethic shift too.
With words and risky creativity, I find community in the naming and claiming (again, queer fluid, identities exist in the now). This is why I started the Sex in My CIty blog six years ago. To hold my Queer Intimacy with Place and Erotic Ethic close, explore how I am/we are shaped by season, culture, co/re/un-learning. Our bigLake. So I’ll sparkle beside her/you as long and hard as I can- and then find other ways to communicate all that is alive, season by season.