Here is a very embarrassing but hopefully entertaining romp. It is meant as a diversion because I think people could use one. I wrote this in about 2002, because I am a fool. It was posted on this blog in 2006. Here you go:

Here is a Jupiter / Sagittarius / Travel story for pure amusement. It’s true of course. Jupiter rules the truth! Jupiter rules storytelling for that matter. And travel, planes, what you believe, bluntness etc. all of which are prominent in this bit, which is clipped from the middle of a much longer story…

I was working in an old man’s bar. I met a man from out of state who was in town for the summer and we took up in passionate fashion.

He was a guy who liked to go so that is what we did. We went here and we went there. He was a hip guy so I was a hip girl at least for the summer, in a Jim Morrison sort of way just by standing next to him. Two months passed in a whirlwind and then he left for home and there I was.

I always knew he was leaving. I’d never lost sight of this. The old guys in the bar were protective of me and did not let that happen but I was still 19 and there was some drama and a fair amount of angst and in the end?

Well he went home to Michigan and after he did, we spoke on the phone. We wondered if we should take steps to be together. We spoke a few times and he had been home a few weeks when he called and invited me to Michigan to visit him and meet his family. He’d told them about me and he said he wanted me to move there to be with him. His whole family did.

Michigan, huh? Well, I’d never been on a plane so I was both exhilarated and scared.

“That’s a long way to go for a piece of ass, Elsa.” That’s what the old guys at the bar said, but what do they know?

My boyfriend was 26. Time to settle down! He said the word “married” which was pretty fascinating to me in a fairy tale sort of way. What 19 year old girl doesn’t like a fairy tale, anyway?

And he was going to buy my ticket which sort of flipped me out. It seemed this incredible amount of money at the time. It was just an overwhelming sort of gesture in my mind. Me? Me, the little desert rat on a plane? That’s the kind of thing I thought. I really didn’t think I belonged on a plane but in the end, my innate desire for adventure and sex won out. I told him that I would come, but it wasn’t easy.

See, I’ll tell you how poor I was. The ticket cost more than I made in a month for starters! But when the old guys told me to pack a sweater…well, this is when I really started to sweat.

“A coat?” I asked. “Bring a coat?”

“No. It’s summertime. But you’ll need a sweater in the morning. Or when you go out
in the evening.”

“A coat?” I repeated.

See, I didn’t have a sweater. I was so poor and all. I was supporting my mother and all that. I was totally in the land of Goodwill clothes and a sweater, like a purse, was not a must-have item. If it was cold I put on a coat. If it was kind of cold, I either put on a coat or just felt kind of cold. I didn’t know any different from this.

“No. You don’t need a coat but you will need a sweater. Don’t you have one?” asked one of the old guys.

“No,” I said. I felt like I was going to cry.

“Well you’ll have to get one.”

“Are you sure?”

“That you need a sweater in Michigan? Yeah.”

“Okay. Okay, I’ll get one, then,” I said.

I believed them but I wondered how I was going to pay for it. I crossed my fingers and hoped I could find one for three or five dollars. I hated Goodwill. I hated shopping, period. I sure as hell didn’t have the money for it.

I wondered if I should write my boyfriend and tell him that I couldn’t go but that’s not what happened. What happened, is I got a sweater for three dollars and I got on the plane.

Skip to part 2 - Moving while moving and meeting my seatmate.