On Brat summer, Jupiter in Gemini, and finding god at the club
Hello goodbye.
Leave it to Charli XCX to inspire Venus Gays’ return from our hiatus.
Hello goodbye. How did Brat summer treat you? Are you loving the remix album? I’ve missed writing for all you little gay people in my phone. Sterling has been busy getting married and working; I’ve been busy readjusting to having a full-time writing job again (for an astrology app, though, which is pretty sick).
Here’s the big news: we’re hatching a plan to bring back Venus Gays for real. In the meantime, I wanted to share some thoughts on my Brat summer, a very Jupiter-in-Gemini crisis of faith, and learning about astrology through living.
Thanks for sticking around.
I had the privilege of experiencing Brat summer in peak brat mode: newly single, feral, and ready to party. And party, I did. For the first time in my life, I can earnestly say that I found god at the club. A pack of cigarettes burrowed its way into my purse. I bought three sets of cheap white tank tops so I could dance without fear of some stranger spilling their drink on my shirt and ruining it.
One night (morning?), I felt raw emotional wounds close over as I sat on my rooftop post-clubbing, bit into a Popeyes chicken sandwich, and watched the sunrise. I was alone, but I didn’t feel lonely. The serenity of this small moment moved me to tears. Post-breakup, time was, indeed, healing me—and passing by faster than ever.
On Brat, Charli follows an existential cut about contemplating parenthood with a club-ready bop about being a 365 party girl. I felt that. I also felt shame about this new party girl Sam who’d emerged from the wreckage of my old life. Historically, nightlife wasn’t really my thing. I care about my work, possibly too much, and I need physical and mental rest to do it well.
In between snatches of Brat summer bliss, I began to wonder if I’d lost the plot.
I often feel too scattered for deep focus, like my mental energy is being filtered through a prism and refracted in a bunch of different directions. It’s gotten worse under Jupiter in Gemini, a year-long transit that began in late May, right after my solar return. Jupiter is the planet of faith and expansion. My natal midheaven is in Pisces, a Jupiter-ruled sign. Saturn is currently transiting here too.
There was—is—so much left to learn. So much left to write. And so little time. Life is so fucking short, you guys. Charli and Bon Iver hit the nail on the head. How could I grow as a writer and astrologer if going out took up a not-insignificant portion of my mental real estate? Was Brat summer just a distraction, some frivolous, ego-fueled side quest on my real mission to do something meaningful with my life and career?
A counterpoint: embracing Brat summer taught me about astrology too. I made friends at the club (mostly air and fire signs, shocking no one) and talked to them about their birth charts on the fly. I danced under the light of the Moon at varying stages of fullness and began to honor how my body had natural rhythms like her. I re-attuned to the cultural zeitgeist, not to critique it but to observe it and draw astrological parallels.
What’s more Jupiter in Gemini-coded than Brat and the remix album, its “completely different but also still Brat” twin, defining the latter half of 2024? To me, both albums sound the way this Jupiter in Gemini story feels: cohesive despite being thematically scattered, each track threaded together sonically but also by some bigger, un-pin-down-able truth.
I get it now, why Jupiter struggles in Mercury-ruled signs like Gemini. Faith—in your creative vision, in the elusive ~process~, in your own timing—is a felt thing. It can’t be fact-checked or neatly summarized. Sometimes it defies explanation entirely.
A new core memory: I’m in the backyard of 3 Dollar Bill with E, one of my best friends. It’s the end-of-summer Brat rave. Cigarette smoke clouds the air between us, our chatter punctuated by brief drags. We’ve made a friend, a Libra with a kind smile and pupils dilated by god knows what. He follows us around like a puppy, presumably because his friend—a name-dropping LA gay who only looks me in the eye once I mention that I used to work for a major media conglomerate—kind of sucks.
The DJs don’t suck. This might be the best DJ set I’ve ever heard, or maybe that’s the alcohol talking. Charli fades into Beyoncé, into Chappell, into Sabrina. Across from me, E’s cheeks glisten with glitter and sweat. Drag queens materialize out of nowhere and form a runway on the dance floor like Moses parting the sea (just for a few numbers, and then it’s back to dancing). The night passes by in a Brat green blur.
Outside, though, I’m acutely aware of how late it is. Goosebumps dot my arms. My face hurts from smiling. I look up; Mars and Jupiter wink down at me, two glittering beacons in the night sky. Everyone in my immediate vicinity gets subjected to a stargazing lesson.
In my back pocket, a buzz: it’s a text from the person I’m seeing, the first person who truly excites me post-breakup. We’re in different timezones tonight, and here they are, thinking of me. My heart beats so fast, I think it might give out. In the moment, I genuinely think I’d be OK with that. What a way to go. But then I hear the muffled outro of 365, sound spilling out the back door of the venue, and I decide that I want to live forever, actually.
I know, inexplicably and with zero doubt, that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be right now. My Brat summer side quest-turned-main storyline. My faith in myself and my own timing, restored.
Above me, Mars and Jupiter keep winking. They’re both in Gemini, nestled between my natal Sun and Venus. I stomp out the last of my cig, snap a grainy photo of the sky, and head back inside.