I’ve got a cup full of love juice. It’s Dolly month. In a year of Dolly mania. She is everywhere doing everything. I’m recently back to my big lake and my pup Bat after two weeks in Texas. Endless walks and new creative ideas , new queerER online dating apps and lots of Dolly music, interviews, and gifts are coming my way pre Dolly’s 74th birthday party. All these things keep my cup full of love juice.
Yes Full Cup Love Juice. My annual end of year tarot reading with my southern friend Tacocat made the upright Nine of Cups “my card”. Hence, full cup love juice please and thank you 2020.
This month seems extra special this year. Winter is a stressor for me hence the very deliberate focus and celebration of one of my creative, spiritual, sexual/sensual, pleasure positive heroes. I’ve been a Dolly fan since I was eight years old. This equals Dolly Parton Ambassador (fan club) membership at age 10, 3 trips to Dollywood before I was thirty and now 22 Dolly bday parties later (mostly at roller rinks) I know this person offers me a full cup of love juice every time I plug in.
Most recently, with awesome podcast and Netflix series about her songs, access to extensive, brand new Dolly deets is easier + more satisfying than it’s ever been. My cup of love juice is So so full. And my stress bucket is quite empty. Just how I like it. I think that’s why Dolly is currently a draw for so many. Called “the Great Unifier”, she fills our cups over and over- with her music, love and zaniness.
Which leads me to marvel at how folx intentionally fill up love cups during this sinister season. We create exciting, queer, radical, new relationships with art and… sex. In his brilliant book, The Counter Sexual Manifesto (called “a performative literary text, and an insistent call to action seeking to overthrow all constraints on what can be done with and to the body”), author Paul B. Preciado offers a provocative, challenging new perspective on even the most radical claims about gender, sexuality, and desire. His ideas about sex and the rights of our bodies, so outside any box, are a full cup of love juice.
Let’s get intersectional here and sex up Dolly for a moment. Dolly ”disrupts feminism and queer theory”. She expands feminist sexuality and the nuance of pleasure. Her unique defiance of the male gaze/objectification= complete ownership of her body every second she’s in the public eye. The most recent podcast episode I listened to is about a homo-erotic interpretation of one of Dolly’s most beloved songs, Jolene. I cried- and laughed (even louder) at the gym while pumping iron, pushing my ear buds in place so I wouldn’t miss a word. I was filled by Dolly with queer love, social justice, body autonomy, creative license, and sexual freedom. As I was while reading Bad Dyke.
Author Allison Moon lays it all out on every page. I smiled and “YesSSSSsssSSS-ed!!!” my way through Bad Dyke. I felt my body awaken to all my kink. My Queer. My seasonally/regionally contested and repressed desires. Full Cup Love Juice! So fucking delicious. How is sexed fun so wildly invisible in Midwestern wack? So forgotten during this most frigid season? So insanely underrepresented in a MN nice=silence way?
Reminders to feel pleasure= Full Cup Love Juice. I’ve added another name to my “Yes yes yes! we must valorize sexual liberation together!” list of mentors. Allison totally understands that even the smallest, kinky queer “experiences can change you and show that following your cunt+heart is what’s most important, even if it makes you look bad in the eyes of others”. This is the best type of queer sex writing– the kind that makes you question a lot of things you thought you knew you wanted. And then demands you tune in to all you don’t even know you desire. Full Cup Love Juice.
Twenty four hours after returning from Texas, on the first night of 2020, which was warm and still and easily rejuvenating (shocking for Duluth in January), I spent hours on the beach starring out at Lake Superior and up at a silver sliver of moon. My mind cycled through endless thoughts about the trip, the contrast in north south cultures, my cravings for fab queer sex, and the new decade.
Like Dolly, demanding pleasure, honesty about wildly queer+kinky desires, our big lake is a big cup of love juice. Every time I’m down on Park Point I never forget to be amazed beyond cognitive mental capacity. My head and body still, wake up. I feel my breath catch rise fall continue. I see into endless water and forget how the bigLake boldly stretches into three states, intimately touches two countries. My brain will never comprehend all that is held in this basin, watershed, body. I don’t try to make sense of Full Cup Love Juice wonder. Just like the enormity of and mystery in Dolly Parton’s magic, a counter sexual manifesto to free us all, and shamelessly saying yes to kinky queer wild sexual desires Bad Dyke flavor, I let it be. This new decade stretches in front of me. Us all. A giant cup FULL of love juice. I’ll drink to that 2020. Happy new year.