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I’ve been using my Substack to publish personal essays, but who says a personal essay can’t be a list? These past several months, my brain has been scattered. Everything lately is a short idea. An unfinished thought, or maybe even an excerpt of a thought, always interrupted by someone or some project that seems equally as pleasing, if not more. I’ve been deep into a design kick, coming up with new art for a trade show we’re doing in February in the city, working on the Queer Animal Deck cards, painting a giant portrait of our cat Muffine perched on top of a column. I’ve possibly become addicted to Stardew Valley, as it seems that every day that I come home from work I immediately put on pajamas and lie on my couch to play for hours at a time. In case you were wondering, My character’s name is Sfogliatelle and he’s wearing all yellow. I now have four chickens, four cows and two goats, and recently upgraded my house to have a kitchen. I was trying to get with Demetrius but I didn’t realize he had a partner already. I still give him gifts anyway. 

• What I’ve been doing this month instead of writing my substack

  • Playing Stardew Valley

  • Taping my manuscript up in our pink hallway

  • Buying new Adidas online

  • Re-watching Selling Sunset

  • Drawing cards for the Queer Animal Deck on the couch

  • Making out with my boyfriend

  • Putting my arm around my girlfriend’s shoulder

  • Taking a pole class

  • Telling everyone I need to figure out my substack this month and then not doing it

• A writing exercise I did earlier this month

  • Death is that little voice in the back of your mind that distracts you from cumming, where you can’t focus on what's right in front of you and it takes away from your goal of getting off with the girl in between your legs in her driveway. 

  • Orgasm is when your girlfriend has you pinned down in the driver’s seat of your car giving you head through your wide-legged shorts in the summer in the dark in her and her wife’s driveway and you can finally get there for the first time. 

  • Memory is a twisted retelling of what your body and your mind can’t agree on.

     

• Top 5 Fave sentences from my manuscript

1. There is an itch inside of me that seems like it couldn’t be fully scratched by one person alone. I wonder if it is the same for him, if he is just too afraid to admit it. 

2. It’s been four years since [Chess] came out, a little less than that since he got the [top] surgery. I watched him become a new person before my eyes, or maybe more accurately, the person who he was supposed to be all along. 

3. What was this? The prickly feeling shooting through my arms and my legs when they put their whole body weight on me, the sudden racing of my heart, my mind trying to keep up with my body? Am I into Z? Are they going to fuck me into oblivion? Are they going to be the one who will show myself the real me?

4.  I text Eliza from my couch and say, this might be crazy but do you want to meet me for a martini and then fuck me on your floor?

5. When I see how small our town really is from this photo of my boyfriend’s girlfriend cutting my girlfriend’s wife's hair, that’s when I know we’ve made it. 

• Things I’m looking forward to in December

  • My third and final workshop in my year long writing class

  • A western Catskills mini-vacation in a cabin in a field with a hot tub with  my girlfriend

  • Christmas Eve at my boyfriend’s girlfriend’s house with her and her husband

• Things I’m bracing myself for in December

  • My period

  • The stress of figuring out holiday gifts for people

  • Not being able to use our woodburning stove because I scheduled our inspection too late in the year

• Interesting “facts” I’ve heard around town

  • It makes other people uncomfortable when you’re writing in public

  • One out of every three siblings is queer

    • DISCLAIMER: these are not fact checked

• Things I can count on lately

  • Muffin coming to bed every night and falling asleep on my pillow next to me

  • Joe coming in once or twice a month to ask How’s the shop going?

• Everything I’ve done in my past relationships that I don’t need to do again

  • People with animal names

  • Anyone on a cruise ship

  • Boys that want to become cops

  • Women who grew up in Florida (there could be exceptions to this one)

  • Ghost hunters/conspiracy theorists

  • People from the internet

  • People who are more obsessed with me than I’m obsessed with them

  • New York City

• Questions I’m asking myself as I’m writing my memoir in my one-year class

  • What happens when you project your fantasies onto someone else?

  • Why do I crave chaos when things are going well for me?

  • What did we gain and what did we lose by opening up our relationship?

  • How do you know when you love someone?

  • What the fuck?

Okay, thank you very much for reading my very fun list-style Substack this month. I like writing. Okay, bye~!

<3, Ashley