Stonewall the QUEER SUMMER 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih9F5iPUGK0

appropriate there is a new thread to commemorate Stonewall

wish I was there

Knitting circles!

https://nypost.com/2019/06/28/50-years-after-the-stonewall-riots-is-nycs-gay-bar-culture-dying/

Stonewall the queer summer? More like bone all who're near summer!

i'm glad you're moving into comedy, honeybunch

I haven't gotten laid in like five days and i've had enough

loved this interview:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/06/jeremiah-newton-stonewall-interview-old-person-lgbtq.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwvQ-CPK0Z0

headed to this today: http://www.ifccenter.com/films/the-queen/

How was everyone's pride?

bcz i did not leave my apartment (except to buy food) until 7:20pm, great!

a few hours downtown followed by a trip up to central park - with a lengthy trip to Washington Square Park - strongly suggested a conflation of Pride with Carnival in a way I'd never seen before.

I've...never been to a Pride parade.

(Ours were a few weeks ago)

i sorta missed the parade this year but the streets were closed down and everything was shoulder to shoulder from downtown to midtown regardless

i'm a bit more of a Folsom Street Fair type, tbh. Pride often just seems like a bunch of corporate hooey and a lot of people getting way too fucked up. i find it depressing, and have felt this way even before i started really cutting back on drinking and partying.

(for reference to those who've never met me in person, i now drink approximately ten alcoholic beverages a month. i used to do that in the space of 48 hours, on a regular basis, for years).

There was an anti-corporate Queer Lib march apart from the big one, but I attended neither.

Folsom Strett East is two blocks long now... I did go to that a week ago, but just spectated for two hours.

the SF one was shut down in the middle yesterday for 50 minutes by anti-police /anti-corporation protestors

I don't go to Pride because I try to go outdoors in the summertime as little as possible.

yeah, heat + crowds + lots of music I don't need to hear again

spent about two hours in bar both Sat & Sun nights, that was my limit

i know about the protests at the SF parade. know one of the folks who was in that line.

but that disruption still won't get me near anything like a Pride parade. it's just not my thing— you can drag me to a party or something, yes, but a parade? fuck no.

I went to one once but it was in Berlin, just last year, as it happens. The Christopher Street Parade, they call it there. I had so much fun but I was extremely drunk and it was Berlin and was very ridiculous. I fell out with my friend who had decided to wear a dress but wasn't confident enough to be a guy in a dress so I had to supervise.

Actually, it was shit, apart from being wasted.

and I went into the Tiergarten after the parade ended and lots of men were cruising and that so it was interesting.

It was an experience.

see how bipolar I am.

i got excited reading about dore alley parties yesterday (i might go this year with my boyfriend) but i don't know. sometimes it's more fun to read about them, not go, and look at photos / listen to the sets later haha. i don't drink anymore so it's got to either have good music or good socializing. and not be at 2 in the morning. noncompliant is dj-ing. so is dj harvey. the harvey thing looks like a sex party maybe. i've always wanted to see him do his thing but i don't know if it's like too much work. i get tired at 10 every night lol.

xp jed i feel you, i always have the best and worst time at parties, alcohol dramatizes my mood swings.

and I know what you mean about being there or not but looking afterwards.

fuckin' hate parades
i stayed inside all day in the AC and tried to work on music

What goes less mentioned is that Stonewall was just two years old at the time, and when the first pride parade—then known as the Christopher Street Liberation Day March—was held the following year, the bar had already shut down after timidly limiting its drink selection to juices. The space became a bagel shop, a Chinese restaurant, and a shoe store until its current iteration opened in 1990. As much as Stonewall galvanized the gay community, that community navigated both its 1970s heyday and the apocalyptic throes of the AIDS crisis without it. Pride finds a way....

“Circuit parties [gay raves] and parades are thriving. Grindr isn’t killing them and Grindr isn’t killing gay bars. Boredom is,” posits Daniel Nardicio, an impresario of gay nightlife in New York who also runs his own gay bar and cabaret, Club Cumming, with actor Alan Cumming. “Ooh, you have drag bingo? Drag brunch? Drag karaoke? Stop. Give me something new, not just a rainbow on a bottle of Absolut or a retirement home cliché hosted by a drag queen.”

Even as gay bars have ridden the acclaimed historic visibility of television shows including RuPaul’s Drag Race and Pose, they’ve merely become “vessels for viewing parties” of those shows, adds Nardicio.

Gay bars are “stuck,” he says, and he has a theory about why.

“AIDS killed lots of artists and free spirits, but it also killed people who would’ve grown up to become mentors to everyone under 50 now. We grew up alone and without that sense of connection across generations. We lost them, and we’ve paid the price by slipping from the creative class to the consumer class. We went from radical to basic.” “Basic,” according to the Urban Dictionary of American slang, is one “only interested in things mainstream, popular, and trending.” Consider how derivative 2019 queer culture seems compared with 1967. Gay liberation pulls its punches....

In contrast to broad LGBTQ acceptance by the mainstream, queer culture itself has fought and fractured internally largely along racial lines. The idea of a united gay community in 2019 is as much a fantasy as there ever was for a demographic group whose sole uniting factor is sexual preference and societal marginalization—not, say, age, creed, career, class, color, health, or regionalism, the identities around which Americans often coalesce. So as gay bars embrace bachelorettes and other straight audiences even as they tell trans women they “aren’t real women,” or assert that centering blackness too much is “not good for the businesses,” there is actually more of a need for more vulnerable members of the queer spectrum to have spaces that feel safe to them, and exclusively for them.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/the-american-gay-bar-is-down-but-don-t-count-it-out-just-yet

totally agree
so much basic
it's shit
i always say i wish i had grown up in new york in the 80s....without all the death.

gratified to seem some grousing about the gross corporate hedonism of pride parades, cuz I was starting to feel like a homophobe last weekend for having similar thoughts

are you kidding? half my contemporaries are morons, sorry ya shits

it's a miracle i found any gay friends in this city tbh

They don't come more basic than me, sorry to say.

waitaminit, surm are you in SF?!

you're high-end basic, dear

xp

omg no i wish! in NYC, sorry if i confused you!
and Eric i beg to differ. you have a big heart. that's p unbasic, shocking as that may be.

btw Happy Roundnumber Birthday, Eric!

The only thing I remember about the summer of '79 is I saw a double bill of Animal House and Putney Swope at my hometown theater.

Round number and rounder midsection!

all part of the otter to bear transformation

I'm having Jake over tonight
There's a real spark there!
He's adorable and sexy af and I'm a little bit pinching myself
!!!!

Jake Ryan?

Lol nooooo
Jake with the floppy hair who lives on my street and wants to watch horror movies with me!!!!!

damn, see what I miss by hating horror movies

:P he let me top and now I want a burger

Horror movies, topping and burgers?! Keep that one!

Omg right

hooked up with a dude at a wedding I attended -- Brooklyn's good for that sort of thing

Lol Brooklyn is so slutty. What did he look like?! Give us the deets

I don't get nuthin in Brooklyn

I feel lost that I haven't had my fill of Manhattan gays ever
Am I missing much?
This guy I was seeing recently gave me a dispassionate goodbye and I figured we came to parting ways but he texted last night
I'm gonna make him wait a few days before I respond.

I shaved my balls while listening to The Hidden Cameras this morning. Don't really care for the song that much but I really like the lyrics:

Hunting hair to find emotional grace
I am scared you'll see my body and know
That removing hair has taken over my life
And I don't know how to stop

I want another enema, nema, nema
Good waste is an oxymoron, moron, moron
My body is an exit wound, oh my wounds, oh my wounds
I want another enema, nema, nema

hairless balls make me sad

they also make you itch

I flip-flop on whether or not I'm a man who is crotch-hairy or crotch-shaven but usually it's just a once-a-year thing when it gets hot. I am rollerblading a lot these days, speaking of gay. I went 13 km yesterday, with my shirt off.

video or it didn't happen

when I had my stem-cell transplant my crotch hair fell out and frankly it was traumatic

Omg
That so is
I had a traumatic incident with hair removal last summer so this year I'm committed to being a total caveman beard and all

It doesn't need to be shaved to the skin for me, but I am no fan of a briar patch down there.

Ok admittedly I did trim yesterday

But like just the essentials

but Eric, it adds so much mystery

Save that bush for Jessica Fletcher.

Baahhhahhahhahahahhhhahahahahaha
She was (obv) just on my TV today

I find that pouring gin over the pubes causes them to gasp and self-immolate.

I love my boyfriend so much! We watched the pilot for Pose over dinner at his suggestion and it was weird and sad and beautiful and cheesy and I kissed him after dinner and it was so nice

We are going to Berlin for a vacation at the end of the month, what should we do? A friend is putting us up in Mitte

Yesss we have been watching pose too
It's a v strong show

you guys
i did not feel strong about my sensual encounter yesterday

Last night I watched the Press Your Luck reboot with my BF and it seemed like the right thing to be doing.

how long have you guys been together?

More than 3 years, somehow! (We were friends for 7+ years before that though.)

<3 :+) :+)

The real bummer about this set-up, and one which has set up a fairly big potential landmine up for us both, is that we respect each other too much as friends to actually go through with some of the fights that I think it's necessary to have with a significant other. (Not all of them; we have fought. Just not with the id fully unsheathed.)

necessary fights = why i have avoided having a S.O.

No Drama Morbama

You'll note I've started a tad fewer pointless fights on ILX these last few years.

i do know what u mean
conflict avoidance can backfire
but honestly sounds lovely!

Possibly controversial belief alert, but relationship fights, I think, are a useful tool in helping people better themselves.

they take a huge toll on me,
but admittedly
sometimes they have made me grow
(in a big way)
currently reading "why buddhism is true"
i like it!!!

i like to grow alone

lol
you can grow your own way!

Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness

like a heartbeat
drives u mad
in the stillness of remembering...

hey, i haven't posted this in years!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoEJQ6ZDzIo

What a mixtape we could all make.

Five songs in: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5HSbx72tmvR7QNK2233wcs?si=GcIkMYT-RlOmbuAEosXLPw

excited!!! now if only spotify's web player would work

When it does, it's a collaborative playlist so add whatever gives you life this summer.

so amped, i will work on it from my phone too

can you add to it you're on free spotify? i stopped paying for it recently because i rarely used it.

anyway, someone add this on my behalf, please

https://open.spotify.com/track/7815vygbItI6iQg8DTkofq

I'll Do It Again gets such a wild response.

That's not the Steely Dan track right? (Link isn't working.)

https://open.spotify.com/track/7815vygbItI6iQg8DTkofq?si=DR8mu7jGTY6M_y9kCliM8g

I'll Do It Again by Omar S.

Added!

it's a good 'un!

Thanks Eric x

Not going to put it in the playlist, but this was the song I was listening to the most during pride month this year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXmmWBzS-_o

^^^ what a jam

Not terribly queer tho, tbh.

Just added a slew

I need to get laid this weekend

Do u ever think about sex and it becomes really weird in your mind? Like you can't believe it exists? And you've been doing it for all this time?

"Somebody Else's Guy," perfect choice!

Do u ever think about sex and it becomes really weird in your mind? Like you can't believe it exists? And you've been doing it for all this time?

― surm, Saturday, July 13, 2019

That's how I think about people generally.

I usually can't believe it exists while i'm doing it

Lol
Thank u Eric!!!!

I had gay sex this morning! It was terrific, highly recommend. We listened to "Erotica" afterward and danced around the kitchen in our underwear

Pose is so sad, I can't believe I'm watching it and crying the whole time. I must admit I generally avoid AIDS-centred books and movies and TV and plays (still haven't seen Angels Of America, i.e.) after I had nightmares for a month after reading The Line Of Beauty.

No gay sex for me today, and I feel like I'm in the masturbatory equivalent of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

my hair down there fell out during radiation, and tbh i kind of don't mind that it's coming back much thinner... fine with crown and some ball hair, but my shaft we pretty hair and now it's not, so...great!

you will have a gnarly renaissance, tabes

also the barren parts of my scalp are showing signs of hairy life, kinda like the Genesis planet at the end of Wrath of Khan

my keyboard is obviously having trouble..."fine with crown and some ball hair, but my shaft was pretty hairy and now it's not, so...great!" was how that should have read lol.

<3 u guys. you are both amazing men.

so i met someone on grindr who is like totally beautiful...we were sexting for like 8 hours yesterday. but he's kind of out of my league. i'm p nervous to meet him what if he thinks i'm a shmo? oh also he's bi!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hiiii. In recent news, my boof and I are splitting up after 18 years. In the famed words of Brenda Cushman, bye bye love, hello pop tarts.

Oh no! I mean, I'm sure it's a complex situation that can't really be answered in words like "oh no" but I'm sure it's not easy.

Wow!! Congratulations on such a long relationship! Hope you both adjust to singledom smoothly

You don't sound sad, sure, so let me freshen your mug with a sparkling wine. We're hitting the town tonight.

in other news: seeing/quasi-dating a bi man has had few of the disadvantages I've been told. It helps that he lives on the west coast.

i think unless you own a Lear jet that's not really "dating"

wishing u well surm

💙💚💛🧡💜🖤

yeah, good luck surm! <3

There are days where I palpably miss being single, more days than I would say I expected, but the upside is I may be getting a new Frenchie puppy soon!

Cuuute

I love my boyfriend and love our dog

My dog does this thing now where she hops into bed with me and sits on my computer and forces my hands off the keys with her muzzle when she is bored and wants to go for a walk. I guess this is cat behaviour? My dog weighs 90 pounds tho

So like
Thanks everyone for the kind wishes
I have to be honest that I already have a shortlist of eligible bachelors in town
But my friends are like girrrrl wait a minute, can u learn to exist as an individual for a second
Which I think is a good point

So jealous of your dog btw xp

Also there are a lot of thing I'm gonna miss obv. Nighttime cuddles top of the list, that will suck. And you know going out for a beer on a whim. Watching our favorite shows and our private listening parties. But keeping my gorgeous huge apartment in one of the most eligible neighborhoods in brooklyn is going to be a major silver lining. Sleepovers whenever I want!!!!!

when i moved to chicago many years ago i resolved to go on dates after only hooking up with guys in college. the first guy i went on a date with i ended up dating for almost 6 years. after we broke up (this was at the end of 2017) i resolved to be single for the first time in my adult life. about a week later i went on my first date after the break up--i ended up seeing that guy for 6 months until i moved back home for the summer after my panic attack. (i refused to call us boyfriends but we were essentially dating but in an open relationship.) he said when i came back to new york that he wanted to be my boyfriend for real and i said no, that i wanted to uphold my vow to experience life as a single person, that i thought it would be a way for me to grow as a person. about three weeks after i returned i went on a date with a guy who was only living here for one month... he's now my current boyfriend and i plan on being with him forever. so i was essentially a complete failure as a single person... but i don't really have huge regrets about it at least right now. follow your heart.

also my ex is still one of my best friends and in many ways our relationship is much healthier and more rewarding now than it was when we were together. our relationship had gotten so sour by the time we broke up that we agreed we didn't even think we would be friends if we weren't together. we basically couldn't even remember what we liked about each other. it turned out that breaking up was a release valve of sorts that allowed us to do away with some of the things (physical proximity, sense of obligation to the relationship) that were making us dislike each other. (well, made him dislike me and me resent him for that.) we never really took any time off of being friends but we were able to reconnect in a way that i think is more genuine now. obv two decades is a whole diff ballgame in a sense surm but i wish you guys luck if you're gonna try and stay friends.

That sounds very familiar to me, J0rdan. Many of my closest friends are people with whom I was intimately involved in some capacity. Most of them, the friendship is better than the relationship was.

I don’t think I’ve ever been single, really, for longer than a few months at a time. I don’t have a taste for casual sex. Even when I was using Grindr and people would ask “what you into” I’d be like “spooning all night and making you breakfast”. I’ve had one person told me this was a failing but I don’t think it is.

It's hardly a failing.

“It’s like Ready Player One for gay men” - a friend describing the MOULIN ROUGE musical

— Richard Lawson (@rilaws) July 24, 2019

forewarned is forearmed

thx for the advice J0rdan, i appreciate you

<3 if you ever wanna gab over a drink hmu

would love that, i think it's about time. i'll hit u up!

There's a survivor's guilt after the dissolution of a relationship that results in unexpected outcomes: bachelorhood for a while, jumping into another relationship. It's not a case, in my experience, of being a no-relationship guy vs I-need-relationships-all-the-time guy.

I intend to take any potential future breakups as a sign I need to not be in a relationship for awhile.

^my attitude since i dated a guy for maybe 2 months in my early 30s

That's ... a pretty long while tho.

what was it like living under Prohibition?

Clyde Fitch, though you may not think it, was well before my time.

I'm going to smack your large heads together, dearies.

but gay men basically don't like me, smart women do

we've been together for eight years, and i tend to think that we'll be together for the rest of our lives.

my only issue is that he is *much* more content on the east coast. i want to up and move after all this health shit is over— i miss California and my friends and community there. but we're going to cross that bridge when we get to it.

I have to move too to stay in this relationship, and tho I’ve lived here long enough to know that Minneapolis is my DNA, I’m also curious for another spot. At least once in my life, I’m ready for a chance to give it a shot.

Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pit?

I want a boyfriend who will move to Salt Lake City with me

Or: a boyfriend who owns a car and lives in Salt Lake City

i'm totally down with that fantasy

if i were independently wealthy i would definitely just up and move
like get the fuck out of dodge
i really wanna do that one day
right now i'm too tied to that good ol' salary but like, the future's my oyster

I am now trapped in NYC, at least til I become more helpless

wait are you employed???

i dunno, what would you call $25/hour? (medical expenses about $900/month)

a start!!!

well i may be finished before i start. the math is ugly.

they told me when i signed up for homosexuality that we were all rich!

For a time!

I think gay men are statistically most-likely to "not plan for the future" and spend their 40s and 50s confused and self-destructive until we all live out our old age sad and lonely. At least, that's what I was taught!

My landlord tried to persuade me to buy in on a condo yesterday, as an investment. I always felt like I was "doing pretty good" considering the precarity of my industry, but when I crunched the numbers it was laughable what an impossibility the proposition was.

I literally think my plan is just to move someplace cheap when I'm 50 and get into being alone and meditating a lot. I mean, I (half) grew up on a literal farm in the middle of nowhere with an outhouse, well for water, wood stoves and a wind generator, in lieu of friends I went exploring the wilderness for days on end and read my dad's Ian Fleming novels, I'm sure I will be able to get back to that place of happiness again

I own my condo, have since 2005, and at least twice a month why I bothered in a swamp that the sea will reclaim in less than forty years. I'm a natural hoarder who feels guilty after dropping money on dinner + drinks, but besides travel what else would I spend my money on? I have savings. Otherwise my dough feels good to spend on piddling things.

ILXor mookieproof is taking me to a ballgame tonight, so for poor Americans it helps to have friends w/ pro connections.

Nice one, mookieproof!

hi everyone! long time no post. specifically, about three posts total in the past two years?

anyway, here are all my big life updates:

- started a new job in june 2017, still there, still liking it, wishing i were full-time but oh well
- got enGAYged in 2018 to my bf after six years of dating
- got gay-married in may of this year, on an uncharacteristically (for socal) cold and rainy but incredibly lovely day
- honeymooned in june (omg italy omg)
- father passed away three weeks ago after being diagnosed with cancer in november (side note: fuck cancer)
- didn't do anything at all pride-related this year due to above three items on list
- coming up on the beginning of my 10th (!) year in LA, this september
- been taking weekly boxing classes for over a year now and trying to commit to regular personal training sessions, feeling at my physical peak tbh!
- currently trying to find a good therapist and piano teacher

nice to read posts from all of you, tho it seems to be a rocky time for some of y'all so <333

<3 you dr

hi dr, so sorry about your dad. <3

I want a boyfriend who will move to Salt Lake City with me

Or: a boyfriend who owns a car and lives in Salt Lake City

― flamboyant goon tie included, Thursday, July 25, 2019 5:33 AM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

is this a real desire? i live in salt lake city and don't recommend it tbh. i moved back in may because i met someone i wanted as my bf. and now we are bfs and it's great, the best relationship i've had to this point, and it's been worth the move but we definitely want to get out in a couple of years. i mean it's affordable and laid-back but the air quality is horrible and having grown up lds the church presence still rankles.

so i'm having to deal with my bf's ex who keeps texting him, has shown up at his work with gifts and has repeatedly not respected my bf's requests for time and space. my bf wants to be nice and friends with him if possible but the ex is apparently not capable of respecting boundaries; the only thing that worked was for my bf to let his therapist know he needed to leave him alone for two months. anyway, bf showed me a text convo they had the other day (one day less than two months after bf contacted ex's therapist) where the ex opened with 'i love you so much' and sent him a bunch of shirtless photos. i've been kind of hands-off about it until now but this time it got my goat and felt intrusive. anyway i told my bf i couldn't deal with continued conversations, that he needed to make sure the ex doesn't contact him again until my bf reaches out. so he said he would send the ex's therapist another request. idk i wish he would just block him on his phone! but apparently that is like anathema for him. so i hope however he deals with it works. i think i'm fairly open to exes as friends but the relationship has to undergo a redefinition, this guy doesn't seem capable of doing that, and i really don't want him anywhere near my or my bf. he was also a serial cheater and pushed my bf into an open relationship situation he really didn't want to have. anyway, just needed to unload somewhere.

Feel free to share the shirtless photos here.

lol

mormon-super-daddy.jpg
car-mechanic-works-with-his-hands.jpg
hiking.jpg

Seriously tho, that sounds like the behavior of my boyfriend's ex too. Very "people collector"-ish. Even if your BF doesn't wish to block his number, he does at some point stop responding entirely or the behavior will never stop.

thank you!

did your bf have a hard time dis-engaging? mine can't not respond to someone, he considers it an extreme sign of disrespect. i couldn't disagree more lol but it's just a difference in communication styles i guess.

Oh no, he didn't have any problem drawing up boundaries at all.

obviously we've been keeping track of each other DR but love you, hi.

Hi donna rouge, congratulations on all the great news, so sorry to hear about your father <3

map, that sounds like a nightmare situation (with your bf's ex-bf). I don't really know what to type. I hate when people don't respect boundaries. Thanks for the types on SLC, I mean, I just love my family that live there, and wish I could be closer to them is all

I am in Berlin and I stupidly ate a brownie last night and have felt very cloudy and incoherent all day today. My boyfriend is with me and we are disagreeing as to whether or not we should respond to the extremely transparent suggestive behaviour on the part of our host, a tall and blond man who is slightly older than me. (My bf wants to, I myself would prefer not to).

An Air bnb host or someone you know?

either way, if you'd prefer not to then don't.

He’s a friend who is putting us up. There’s always been sexual tension between the two of us but nothing I would desire to act on. Too good of a friendship to let that sort of activity colour it, you know?

sounds best to sit this one out then.. hope your boyfriend is supportive!

mine told his ex not to contact him anymore yesterday morning and is going to send an email to his therapist with the same request. it made me really happy and relieved he's being decisive about it. and overshare alert, we had great sex afterward.

a little embarrassed to say too much, but this one is really really good for me and i love him to pieces.

That’s great news

Yeah it sounds like definitely a “get the fuck outta there” situation, yours, map

My situation is fine, bf just wants Teutonic Wang, he already wants to move here

lol

Going over to see Taylor Mac in October. Can't wait!

I saw Teutonic Wang open for Rammstein

hey Donna! i'm really glad to hear things are going so well. congratulations on your recent union!!! i hope your Dad was happy to have left you in the hands of love.
miss and love you all, it's been a busy few days or so
citizenship exam is finally around the corner on Aug 8
let's see what happens with that.

Well, I went to a gay sauna for the first time in my life yesterday. I have never had a predilection toward casual sex, maybe five Grindr hookups total in my life (if I’m being generous?) At first I was kind of put off, like, why would I be intimate with any of these strange men? It felt very objectifying or something. But then I met a really cute nice man and we had extremely satisfying sex. Bf did some stuff independently and gave the sauna experience an 8/10 overall.

He wants to go back tonight and I’m filled with the urge to... practice my violin and finish this libretto I’m working on. I’ve felt far more moved by my hangouts with classical-music people, and proposals for collaboration, than any sex adventures.

Are group chats good or bad?

I've only been in one significant group chat and it kind of blew apart a few years ago, many participants are not friends any more at all. The entire dynamic was marked by certain participants being pathological semi-liars-- misrepresenting things that happened in their lives in subtle ways to make themselves look better, like they were using the group chat as a place to delude themselves into believing they were better people than they actually were?

I've since tried to start up some group chats but I just don't have enough friends who are both a. online all the time, and b. I'm close enough to to feel comfortable opening up to. None of them have really got off the ground. I generally prefer this format for online socializing, anyway, I think

i'm in so many group chats... i cherish almost all of them, altho i have experienced changes in relationships due to things that happen within them

in nyc it seems like a lot of socializing is done thru group chats... sometimes i come home from work and do basically nothing for 2 hours except text in group chats, and it reminds me of being in high school and spending all night on AIM trading gossip. i am in one group chat that includes several ppl who were strangers to me when i joined but it's been going for a few years now and i consider everyone in it a friend.

I don't really know what they are. *surprise*

i’m in a slack channel with some of my closest pals in LA and it’s very sweet. it’s paradoxically led to all of us in the group hanging out more frequently in person, and just generally knowing what’s going on in one another’s lives. also i like our chat being in its own messaging app because group texts drive me absolutely nuts

also thanks for the lovely comments above, everyone ❤️

don't do the group chat thing, but keep tabs on people and talk back and forth via IG quite a lot.

I've got a couple group chats going, never visited more than a couple times a day, mostly to trade wise cracks.

i have one going on IG! but like, we're all v close IRL. i miss AIM.
i've never tried the sauna bathhouse thing, but one of my friends is obsessed. i just really don't know that i'd have the right countenance for it.

fgti i feel like you could write a song about this
Outrageous images from Classics Illustrated Junior

I wish I was in a really good group chat. I had a really good one with a couple of snakes in it and it fucking blew up hard. Then I was in a not-as-good one with a couple of really great people in it (Hi Stevie!) but it also blew up extremely hard.

I'm trying to do one now but I'm just too depressive these days. I need too much emotional support. I should start a group chat with [redacted] and [redacted]. Just sit around complaining all day? Sweet.

Anyway I just don't like the following things about group chats.

1. The feeling that my social circle is a part of one (they are) and that they have excluded me (they have, non-deliberately, I'm just not around as much, but it's hard to ask to join) and that I've been left out of a lot of basic social functions like birthdays as a result (I have, very much).

2. The feeling that my boyfriend is sharing private jokes with his irl circle of friends, who are also my friends, and that I'm missing out on key gossips, and generally feeling left out

3. The feeling that my boyfriend is complaining about me in his long-distance group chat, misrepresenting me when recounting arguments we've had, portraying me unsympathetically, and generally doing so to just "blow off steam", but now I feel like there are six random people in other cities who think I'm the biggest asshole ever

(If I ever seem like I'm complaining about my boyfriend here or elsewhere, please no, I love him he is the literal best, we have issues but we're blissfully happy and he's a deeply good person)

Also

Yeah

Sex clubs and gay saunas are really not my thing. Why would I have thought they would be? When I was on Grindr, people would ask me "what are you into" and I'd reply "I'll do anything you want me to as long as you promise to spoon me afterward and have breakfast with me in the morning"

I just don't understand how people can relate to each other sexually without any actual.. conversation? Or something? Reducing one's own body to being just a physical function, and another's body to fulfilling a physical function, idk, it feels like Patrick Bateman or something. That's what it felt like. A Bret Easton Ellis sex scene. I literally don't get it.

I went by a store called... Gear? I think? They had all these shirts with words on them so you could broadcast your kink. "Police". "Sniffer". "Daddy" etc. I think I need to get one that says "Breakfast". I really like waking up to a man and making them breakfast. Kinky af.

that's so hot
you know what's interesting is that these days i've gotten so comfortable with asking for cuddles and breakfast that there have been times when i found myself getting TOO intimate
and after i was like... woah that didn't feel good either, like too fucking baring my soul is the only way i know how to put it, like emotional vomit
weird right? i went to the extreme and it's backing up on me

for the first time in my storied life I've enjoyed three successive erotic dreams, they were fun

erotic dreams are so fun

better than porn that's for sure

One of which starred a close friend.

*bows*

don't you mean *blows*?

surm!

i have thoughts about kink and i have a weird relationship with it. i'm definitely in a non-kinky phase of my life atm. i also have thoughts about the appeal of bathhouses and saunas lol. my first sexual experience was in one and for years i gravitated towards them (and cruising). for me the appeal has/had a lot to do with growing up in a conservative, repressed, patriarchal culture. at this point i'm pretty much over all of that though.

fgti i know the shirts of which you speak, they're so bad. i have no idea what clothes to wear these days. i work from home so i don't have to care.

also fgti the thoughts you're having about your boyfriend sound crushing and if i were in your situation and i wasn't dependent in any way on him i would ditch him asap. you deserve to be supported. that's like an entry-level requirement lol.

In the first dream I'm in the back passenger side of a full cab, my friend pressed against me. He massages my knee, arm, neck, says I'm cute. He's on molly, I think. Then he gently massages a pill between my lips. "You asshole!" I said. "It IS molly." He assures me it's a small hit.

I haven't touched the stuff in more than a decade, nor have I ever lusted after this friend.

i'd much rather dream about Adam Dr*ver than anyone i know, but that never happens

I've never dreamt about Jake :(

@ map, we have been having a weird month, some adjustments being made, but as I said, we're blissfully happy and he's a really good person :)

This week has pushed me closer to contemplating if not accepting the end of this relationship than I’ve been for years.

To put it bluntly, I’ve been listening to the Eagles’ “I Can’t Tell You Why” damned near constantly these last couple days.

It must be pathological then

Yeah, we're both basic dumb bitches

best kind

(w/out the Eagles)

We're def both melancholy types

I admire the bravery of anyone plunging into an intimate relationship

And this is the longest we've spent apart since being together, so ...

Ry is asleep on the couch before he comes and cuddles me for one of the last times before he moves out of my house

Every moment is really special, there are no hard feelings, just a love that needs to change, and it will be miserable when it hits me

But for now it is what it is

sending love and late-night golden girl hugs to everyone in relationship transitions

Yes I will need the girls no question

Wow, booze definitely helped take me there last night. Embarrassed.

What happened???

you guysss i'm finally getting my tennis game back, like a little

Fuck August really is quiet
Ok who's got a life update cuz I got a lot

I cut back on the drinking considerably since the lake, partially because it was getting out of hand, and also I'm getting a new puppy!!!

(Provided he survives cleft palate surgery.)

I got nothing, just domestic bliss and a lot of music writing. Swimming every day, too.

I'm eating a sandwich and reading Typee, the latter queer enough.

Interviewed for a teaching position this morning that we frankly need if we are going to keep our house. Did recently get an article accepted for publication, though.

wow, congratulations

Thanks!

medical treatment being rejiggered, gonna be a copay September

so much for getting a staff job somewhere, as i continue to bleed money

going to lots of films while i still live in New York

Obamacare sux btw

I will take u to ifc anytime morbs

I got too drunk last night, but I managed to grope and lightly make out with a theoretically straight boxer.

No "but" needed, the one follows the other

like a hangover

a boxer! Goddamn. It wasn't Oscar de la Hoya?

a lightweight in many respects

lightweights are cute

i’m a welterweight myself

i'm glad you are boxing! i would be too if my bones weren't, you know, made of chalk.

ha, have not technically sparred yet, just glovework with classmates/instructor, but i really love doing it and i’m definitely improving! (also most of my classmates are queerz, which is pretty rad)

i really love my boyfriend, like a lot. the end.

Yay

And same

I think I'll keep him.

i really love my boyfriend too but he's very far away from me. every day is excruciating.

"i'll be alright, it's just a thousand cuts" -- taylor swift

it must be, u can't even answer emails

John Cameron Mitchell otm

You said in an interview that you don’t so much identity as gay any more or certainly not as strongly. Why not?

MITCHELL: Gay has become a marketing niche. Like “top” and “bottom,” “man” and “woman,” and “comedy” and “drama.” You slice and dice so you can sell or be sold to — or to decide what show belongs in which Emmy category. Life has no niches, it’s a complex continuum with nuance and surprising juxtapositions. I don’t like to be marketed to and told what I am or should like because of my gender or sexual preference.

You’ve talked a lot about empathy, queer folks’ special skills at it, empathy being the opposite of “cancel culture.” Can you explain?

MITCHELL: The gift of being “other” is having empathy for the downtrodden and oppressed. “Woke” without empathy is just another form of control. Here’s an example. If you believe in prison reform and rehabilitation then you can’t cancel people. We, as queer people, have been canceled for centuries. Let’s make folks accountable and safe but let’s not co-opt our oppressors’ bullying ways.

https://www.gaycitynews.nyc/stories/2019/18/john-cameron-mitchell-podcast-2019-08-12-gcn.html

Very otm!

Hello! Glad to hear all the updates. Morbz where r u looking to move?

Boof is packing up today and leaving by Friday, just had a good cry in his arms and banking on a few more. Hoping to figure out in what ways we will remain in each other's lives sooner rather than later. We'll seeee.

anywhere that's cheap as possible, surm :/

agh New York will not be the same without you!

Where will you end up, though, Morbs?

Regret to inform I'm still obsessed with "I Can't Tell You Why."

where we all end up, Eric

Canada?

:)

Regret to inform I'm still obsessed with "I Can't Tell You Why."

― Pauline Male (Eric H.), Tuesday, September 3, 2019 11:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

where we all end up, Eric

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius),

well, yeah

id say 'beyond salvation' if I knew what that was

"Beyond the clutches of Don Henley"

just feel the need to drop in here and say fuck straight people. can i get an amen?

are you ordering us to fuck straight people

as soon as i posted that i thought 'alfred's going to make a joke about fucking straight people" so i'm cheers-ing you with my 32 oz iced coffee

https://media.giphy.com/media/QOguDFeEaJxw4w07sT/giphy.gif

I mostly hang out w/ the str8s

lol alfred

We all mostly hang out w/ the str8s tho

if anything the straights get their jollies these days by flirting with diffident us.

Diffident, firm, yielding us.

thank God I can never tell when someone's flirting

i'm debating whether or not to befriend more straight men
sometimes i like them
i dunno

happy almost fall!!!!!
I'm quite enjoying having a bachelor pad I mean, I can basically do whatever I want whenever I want it
IT'S NOT BAD

This dude I dated for a few months before we decided to be friends instead, I love him so so much
Today I spoke to him on the phone, he was expressing some body image issues
And I told him that, in fact, he was so beautiful that it felt cruel
He liked that!

aw that is so sweet
i think i would really like to hear that if i were in his shoes

congrats on your move surm

thank you!!! you know, i actually kept the apartment so while it wasn't a move, it really feels like a brand new home with just me there. i have to do a lot of redecorating soon....

The new Azealia Banks mixtape has gotten a lot of weird ire online but I just listened to it twice through and it fucking rules

I don't know where else to put that statement

<3
i can't stop listening to Kelly by Kelly Rowland
like over and over

packed house at Lincoln Center last night to see Lily Tomlin & Jane Wagner

lots of women, gayz, couples

a line I'd forgotten from The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe is "What's the point of being a hedonist if you're not having a good time?"

Oh yeah a friend of mine was at that thing and posted about it on Facebook
My bf saw the update and said "I do not understand a single word of this Facebook post"

There were superfans rushing the stage for selfies with Lily at the end. What the hell is wrong with people?

tbh i have a limited number of people i would want selfies with but lily tomlin is one of them

i might too, but not in the middle of a scrum.

no, agreed; that's always a bad look up to and including the most famous of people

I have a photo of myself with Lily but it wasn’t a selfie and I hadn’t planned on asking for it - on the rare occasions I meet Very Famous People I don’t usually ask for photos. But she was very nice about it.

so liiiiike
i'm getting together with a guy tonight who's super into this dom sub stuff
like i think he wants me to slap him around which don't get me wrong, i'm totally into
but it's been a hot minute sooo i just hope i haven't lost my touch
also i have a 4th date with a reallllly nice and handsome guy on Friday. he used to be a runway model so i have no idea what he's doing with me but I'LL TAKE IT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOMvs_1UFCk

:P :D :D

I
Just
Took advantage of the "open" nature of my relationship for the first time in a year-and-a-half. It was a total surprise! A friend came over for lunch, he lingered, it was clear he was interested, I offered, he pretended to act surprised, etc.

I wasn't especially attracted to the guy? But I like him a lot personally? But it was weirdly, still, the best O I've had in a long, long time. It was really hot and the dude was clearly very happy about it too.

But then, of course, after he left, I became Lady Macbeth, scrubbing the condom smell from my hands, laundering literally everything in the house, showering shaving making dinner basically had an extended domestic explosion in response to this

I get it but I don't get it, really. Monogamous Sex That Is Just Fine is so perfect, problem free, reliable, easy, I am still so confused by this dynamic.

well, that is a very domestic goddess dynamic

“I learned to cook this good because I was always cheating on my boyfriend”

yeah p much

it's also like a primitive thing tho
sex with strangers, in terms of evolution speaking, is not as safe as the one you know
it makes sense that after he leaves you would want to expound upon the safety and tranquility of your home

not that your friend is a stranger but you kwim

Pro-tip: if you're gonna have sex with one of your closest friends, be sure it's at least good sex and not mediocre sex like I endured Sat night/Sunday morning.

mediocre is often good enough.

not ready to start a fall thread yet (maybe cuz it's 89 F in NYC today) but i can't think of a good title.

fuck. so ready for 65 degrees.

ummm also Alfred that's a really good tip

xp from my own post in the "nobody goes to the theater" thread but i love this musical and wish everyone would give it a listen so:

The OST for the outrageously good and crazy wordy "A Strange Loop" came out today - described by the Liz Phair loving playwright/composer as a musical about a black, fat, queer, effeminate theater nerd searching for meaning by writing a musical about a black, fat, queer, effeminate theater nerd who writes a musical about a black, fat, queer, effeminate theater nerd searching for meaning - and it's great.

Author is Michael (r) Jackson, so he names the lead of his roman a clef "Usher" and he's an usher at a Disney show. Highly recommended!
https://open.spotify.com/album/7vlAmEdZEOVdRUsB4fgrvC?si=1MkKwKxrSPKsLgS_qkobmg

"Inwood Daddy," in context, is fucking devastating

Ahhh hahahah that sounds so awesome!!

i think you'll love it fgti, kinda has your name on it; would love to see you and jackson collabo.

so i just started getting furniture in my bach pad
feels so gooood

including the waterbed?

ha that would be the day

summer is over, queers

THANK GOD

Do not accept.

are you saying we need a new thread morbzy?

i have a really unpopular title ready, so beat me to it

No please share.

Hurry up and make the thread I have sumthin to say

https://66.media.tumblr.com/d1b2b986c8e1ef88e9f1f57f29725a01/tumblr_p542ecSrAK1tstd16o2_250.gif

Oh no, I was posting that in a Jazmine Masters voice

--- - Oop

Canceling Ellen and the NFL: QUEER FALL of 2019