Real love -- I'm, like, searchin' for that Queer Love -- LGBTQIA+ Love // A Thread for the Real Ones

so I have had my own idea for YEARS that I have told several ppl abt and have gotten a good response to and I think I am going to finally finally try to pull it off next year, I think I have maybe even talked abt it on here somewhere, but the song is this v inexplicable house remix of "Rubberband Girl" and the performance is a complete ripoff of UNZIPPED (1995) where it will be a fashion show and there will be all sorts of zany chaos and hijinks backstage but w like perfect immaculate runway walks the second they come out from behind the curtain, the performance has nothing to do w the music but maybe I'll get some LIVESTRONG bracelets made and throw them into the crowd idk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KII-OXV86c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFBc4rXKkTU

AERIAL is honestly the best Kate Bush album

also it is a bit $$$ (20 of them to be exact) but they are selling tickets for the livestream tomorrow night at 8:30! https://wl.seetickets.us/event/Night-of1000Kates/470113?afflky=UndergroundArts

stevie i still have that KB shirt you sent me! it's a lil snug on me atm but whenever i wear it ppl always ask about it

omg mine too is a lil snug, I forget which one I sent you but the one I have has her face on it and my belly makes it fold in half so that it makes her look like that one picture of Aphex Twin

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/da/Aphex_Twin_-_Syro_main_press_photo.jpg

you sent me the glow in the dark one (which amazingly still works after probably dozens of laundry cycles)

I just watched unzipped recently and it was so good. also did you know there's a sister documentary called catwalk that basically follows Christy Turlington all over the world?
pretty awful what's going on with Linda Evangelista. she just released the first body pics of her condition due to coolsculpting. unimaginable.

I was sad to miss Kates. Heard my friend Anna blew it outta the park, and saw the wacky inflatable Cathy and Heathcliff blow-up piece on film. Looked like a really fun time, but we had planned a dinner months ago with our gay friends, one of whom is going through a health scare...so it seemed more important to hang out with them.

I finished "Detransition, Baby," yesterday, and while I thought it ended much too quickly, I thought it had some really lovely moments.

hope your friend is hanging in there <3

xp y0ung?? she fuckin KILLED it (as per usual). I hope they post a recording of the livestream.

I've been listening to a lot of RuTH lately 🌄🌄🌄

yes Stevie, that Ann4

o boy what a life we lead really

so I'm not sure when the next time I'll "meet" someone is, let's call it, due to extenuating circumstances

do i care?

will i ever go out to a bar and pick someone up again? i had occasional game. all of a sudden I'd love to meet someone younger than me. i usually don't gravitate to that realm. i wonder what that's about

you will absolutely go out to a bar and pick someone up again, it is so inevitable

Date tonight. At a (rooftop) bar. I shoulda asked if he's jabbed.

first date? how did you meet? brown hair, big heart, bat eyelashes?

you know Stevie it's just at first it was pandemia, and then health stuff that's going to take another 6 months to settle. just didn't realize I'd be singing the same tune for the goddamn 3-year dark ages. but whatever i'm going to get so many beauty treatments when this is all through I plan on looking like Princess Jasmine meets Bella Hadid. mark my words.

also i quit smoking forever and it's truly something else. going on 6 months.

my new issue of BUTT just arrived!!!!!!!!!

omg i already read some of the poems
how is it at large?

is it large?

C'mon Simone, let's talk about your big "but."

I haven't read it yet bcz I got it at work and then *brag alert* went straight to my fuck buddy's house for a cute date and only just got home a few hours ago!!!

butts all around

butts rule everything around me

OK SO
I'm not a butt man and i keep feeling more and more alone
like American men are just obsessed with them
i feel like there's something wrong with me

Stevo you're killin it these days

don't care about the outside, it's what's inside that counts imo

like the way it feels?

yeah! i mean not to get too tmi or too cliche i guess but i just think anuses are this incredible part of us lol and i really like experiencing them.

So! My Saturday night date sold me out. I suspected trouble when I had to text him 15 mins before meeting: he was running late thanks to a "minor emergency" at his parents', whatever that means (what's a "minor" emergency?). Luckily a friend kept me company at the bar.

An hour later, date texts: "On my way, send location address plz?" That's the last I heard of him. For a while I thought he died -- until I saw a an Instagram post Sunday morning.

He's 24, a former student who emailed me four years after class to ask about getting a beer or coffee. On determining he was queer he gushed: he praised my self-assurance, brains, looks, etc. We might've met that night had I not plans already. It's worth noting I barely remember this kid in summer 2018.

I wonder if simply not showing up is a phenomenon of the young?

Anusii are a cliche?

that sucks. definitely hit next. it's been a phenomenon of the young and old as long as i've been dating tbh. xp

Yeah, I wanted to avoid generational generalization, but a few viejos noted The Vanishing has been more prevalent in the last four years.

I've ghosted more than my share, I should note.

I have never done this, to my knowledge?

me eiths it's dumb
I'm too polite though

wassup homieslice

good morning!

Mornin' sunshine!
What's on the platter?

I'm vegetarian tonight.

sexually or culinarily?

Lady Bracknell : Well, both, if necessary, I presume!

So, I’m in one of the only two gay bars in Marbella (southern coast of Spain) right now, and the thing here is that high heeled shoes are passed around, everyone tries them on, and then they take their turn swishing down what passes for a catwalk. Pleased to report that my boy got the loudest applause of the night. We make our own entertainment.

The bar is filling up because at 4am they close the doors, bring out the ashtrays, and everyone can smoke indoors.

We will be back tomorrow for drag queen bingo.

omgggggg jealous

Oh I forgot to mention the seventy something naked woman who did her catwalk turn clutching a large stuffed teddy bear.

stop

jealz to the max

Just ended a fabulous evening with j0rdan.

yesss. what did y'all do?

we went to a sports bar so i could watch basketball while we talked about madonna

...and Mariah Carey. And my terrible non-date last week.

fgti, did you tour internationally again with Hidden Cameras in 2004?

It’s possible— what city? I did the big EU tour in 2003 and a Swedish tour in 2004; may have done other dates as well. The singer and I soured our friendship extremely when I did all this arrangement work for him— by hand, in 2003/2004 I was very poor and didn’t have a computer— and he wouldn’t give me credit. I left the band over this issue and we didn’t speak for a decade. We’re close friends again now tho— he never apologized but I just sorta stopped caring as I got older

It was 8th October 2004 in Nottingham, only a few days after some gigs in Sweden: https://xrrf.blogspot.com/2004/09/can-we-be-candid-whole-heap-of-hidden.html?m=1

That's interesting re the arrangements, as I truly loved Smell Of Our Own and Mississauga Goddam, but was comparatively disappointed with Awoo. Bit of an "aha" moment there!

No, my last proper gig with that band would've been August 28th at Harbourfront Centre.

I could type a shitload about my experiences with that band but idk how interesting it would be. Joel and I are pretty close, now, I adore him-- but a lot of that has to do with how I frame his absolutely unbelievable personality quirks, his almost comedic levels of self-involvement. A mutual friend said, of Joel: "we thought he was the Morrissey of his generation, but as it turned out, he was just the Morrissey of our friend group."

Also, my arrangement work has/had no bearing on the quality of Joel's songs. I personally think the best Cameras album, arrangement-wise, is "Origin: Orphan", it's got some really brilliant writing and recording on it.

Regarding the song quality of Hidden Cameras material... on one hand, it feels frustrating to consider that Joel would write about fifteen of the best songs I've ever heard ("Smells Like Happiness", "Miracle", and on and on and on) in a stretch between 2000 and 2002, and then follow up with songs that comparatively felt dashed off and unnecessary ("In The Na" and pretty much everything else off "Awoo"). On the other hand, it was the early 2000s and "writing about gay" was an anomaly-- a lot of the press around that time, even the positive stuff, was extremely depressing to read, I experienced some crippling depression myself at "people's inability to have a 1:1 relationship with my expression of universal experiences, because I enjoy sucking cock"; all this is to say that I get that it might've been exquisitely difficult for Joel to find his songwriting voice once the band had an audience, and I view this "dip in quality" with sympathy rather than criticality

Understood, and I do think that Origin: Orphan was a massive step back in the right direction after Awoo.

Question for y’all: yr thoughts on age gaps? A 19 year old cruised me on one of the apps. In theory I am fine with it, and I definitely had sex (not paid sex, fwiw) with dudes more than twice my age when i was in my early 20s. But it feels different? Maybe it’s just that this is on an app and so it feels different than having some older fox buy me drinks and take me home?

(not meant to brag, just honestly curious and unsure)

theoretically fine w/ age gaps (we have a ten-year difference ourselves) but i agree the screen seems to throw something extra into the equation. i personally steer clear of anyone who can’t legally drink in a bar but that’s just me.

i canceled and deleted my scruff account today as part of a broader social media detox i’m doing for the lenten season. this one might be permanent tho - can’t remember the last time i met or even wanted to meet someone off of it. i really just no longer want to meet or talk to ppl this way, having the same non-starter convo over and over again.

i feel that. i've really grown to despise messaging / chatting. it feels like such a chore to me.

as far as age gaps go i think they're fine generally speaking. i don't really have any rules about it but imo there's a "not fully formed cerebellum" look that puts me off anyone younger than say 23-24.

my main issue w/ engaging w/ 19 year olds on apps is the possibility that they're lying about their ages. i think i find the idea of the sex hot as an experiment even if it's also likely to be not very good

Tabes, considering your occupation-- and this goes for Alfred as well-- I don't think you should be hooking up with men under 30 or 35, respectively. Musicians, poets, academics, journalists, our lives can be very-abruptly destroyed by an immature young person who has actively (even tenaciously) pursued you in the event that you don't provide them with exactly what they want (a relationship, i.e.). This advice may come from a position of personal experience, or a position of trauma recovery, or mixture of both.

theoretically fine w/ age gaps, personally wouldn’t want anything to do with a 19 y/o for various reasons. anyway, i don’t know the deets but wouldn’t take it as a given nowadays that a 19 y/o who cruised me on an app has any intention of hooking up in person (that is, even assuming they’re being honest about their age, which i absolutely would not). thinking maybe interaction through the app is all they want, and the tantalizing possibilities are fantasy fodder enough.

a lot is different now! i’d wonder how much time a 19 y/o today has spent unsupervised compared to us latchkey kids, i mean my parents had absolutely no idea where i was ever from the time i was 14 or so (username and post i know i know)

I would have zero (0) time for anyone under age of 35 and would vastly prefer if they were at least 40 aside from exceptional cases.

Like, never say never, but also never

thanks for your thoughts, yall.

to j0rd’s point: they’re located on a college campus— not the one where i teach!— so i invest some faith that they’re not lying about their age. that faith might be misplaced, though, so fair point.

to fgti: i understand what you’re sayin, but this isn’t from a dating app. it’s sniffies, which from my experience is mostly people looking to hook up, not find their next life long love.

and as far as DJP and fgti’s points go, that’s fine, but the pool of gay dudes in my particular age group whom i find attractive and who aren’t already partnered and monogamous is vanishingly low. that i tend to go for twink types— i married one!!— is also a thing.

Ooh I missed this conversation.

The average age of my hookups is between 22 and 35. I have not hooked up with a man anywhere close around my age in years. As table points out, many of the gay men around my age are settled. I am not. I go out to bars, restaurants, concerts, what have you. The gay men who like those things tend to be younger.

yeah, the complicating factor for me is that i don’t really drink any longer, so the going out becomes more difficult. i will be making more of an effort come spring, when my schedule loosens ever so slightly.

if it were a relationship i was looking for, fwiw, i would feel weird about an age gap, similarly to what fgti and DJP are saying. but i have a relationship. i just want to worship some twink hole, i am relentlessly horny and my husband’s sex drive can’t match mine and… oftentimes “masturbation’s lost its fun,” as Billy Joe Armstrong sings.

like i do it because if i don’t i walk around getting turned on by everything lol

i also pretty rarely hook up with anyone over 40 (i’m almost 38 now, boys, just for the record), esp off the apps. most guys i hook up with are between 27-35 i’d say, i’ve found that to be a good sweet spot where the guys are mature emotionally and good at sex while still having some of that ummmm youthful energy

i will entertain the advances of 21-24 year olds bcuz i find guys that age hot but you have to go into those interactions knowing that there’s a high likelihood that the guy will flake altogether after making plans, will block you after hooking up, will then contact you later from a new profile then block you again etc etc. like — i hooked up with this strapping baby faced 6’ 3” 24 year old last year off sniffies & it was some of the hottest sex i had all year. every once in a while since he has messaged me, from an anon profile, while pretending to not know who i am. the first time this happened he was sexting me and i was like, “well yeah dude i came over a few months ago” and he was like “oh right haha” and then continued the convo referencing aspects of what happened when we hooked up. but then the second and third times this happened i kinda just played along as if we didn’t know each other? there’s some sort of like anon bro role play context that is foundational to how this guy uses sniffies & while i totally get how someone would have zero patience for such a scenario, i kinda found it fun half from an anthropological perspective and half from a horny perspective. but sometimes guys that age have certain hang ups where it just really isn’t worth your time & you just have to cut off the communication. but then again that’s also true for guys in their 30s sometimes

one thing i will say is that i am always kinda lowkey surprised at how fluent 18-21 guys are in talking about fetish, kink etc. i list some stuff on my sniffies profile & sometimes i get messages from young guys where i’m like, you shouldn’t be talking like this at 19 lol. i was so far away from that kind of sexual self actualization at that age. i was explaining to a hook up in his mid 20s recently that while guys my age obv had access to more internet porn than any generation prior, we weren’t exposed to conversations about sex, kink, fetish etc the way kids were/are via platforms like tumblr, twitter, reddit etc. you had to really search to find text that built out the connective tissue between what you might be feeling latently, what you might be consuming/learning via watching porn and what your thoughts/verbalizations about those things might be. but now those kinda convos, text etc is very front and center/accessible on social media

one thing i value about IRL cruising is that it does break you out of boxes you put yourself in to find matches online. and relevant to this convo, at any bathhouse i’ve been to the percentage of guys older than me vs younger than me is heavily slanted towards the former and i have had fun sex with older men in those contexts that i probably would not seek out otherwise

i’ll also say that i present as a top on sniffies (when the app is genitalia forward you kinda choose which fighter you are via profile pic) and so i get lots of messages from guys asking to suck me off, service me etc & i’ve learned thru experience that guys in their mid 20s are typically quite bad at just being dick suckers. that is a skill that requires some on the job experience, and so sometimes an older man is what is needed. you gotta know which kinda person is gonna give you what you want

tabes, my caution offered toward you includes (especially) hook-up apps

And yeah— I tend to date younger, my two serious boyfriends since my “divorce” have been twelve and fourteen years younger than me. For me, it’s exactly as Alfred describes— most men my age are already taken, or have their vectors figured out. Even since I’ve been partnered I haven’t met a single gay dude my age that seemed viable.

I don’t do bathhouses but I have gone cruising, and it is generally a mixed bag— hot older men yes, but also young chem folks. I like it! the older men, that is. One 55 year old guy I sucked off is the most frequent visitor to my active masturbatory inbox. But I’m happy with my home sex life.

And yeah, @ tabes, my “bad experiences”, and those of fellow gays who’ve had bad shit happen, have not been with “dating” but with casual sexual experiences, hookups, or even just random meetings with people. I read about you hooking up with a 19 year old and my brain immediately becomes a siren.

But also, in my experience, when I’ve offered caution to people about hooking up with the under-25 (or even under-30) set, they’ve rolled their eyes, said I’m speaking from a position of trauma, and the general vibe is like “oh what happened to you would never happen to me”— which a part of me gets offended by, like, you actually think I didn’t behave 100% respectfully? you think I may have done something to deserve the stalking and harassment that followed? It’s a shitty painful thing to talk about, but seriously— if you’re a prof or a teacher or a creative or a public figure or in any position where your job could be “rocked by a scandal”, I strongly recommend you keep your hookup range above 30.

i accept your words of caution but honestly probably won’t follow them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I've gone (mostly) app-free for almost a year. My hookups have happened at bars and such, a considerable boost to my confidence.

I should also note that I count about nine or ten former students as friends, a couple of whom are fairly close to me and one of whom is an intermittent fuckbuddy.

which has nothing to do with me doubting you, fwiw, and more to do with me in a mode of not caring and being frustratingly horny for the past like five years

and that fuckbuddy is happily married to his husband haha xpost

Ya Alfred— I felt a twinge of shame in having mentioned you in this convo without explanation. I adore you. But you had previously mentioned hooking up with a former student, and another alcohol-induced closet makeout with a young man. Sirens, my brain is sirens. The number of gay people I know personally, or have read about, who’ve had situations like this blow up in their face and become life-altering, it’s considerable.

And tabes doowhatchulike ❤️❤️ just be careful

Thanks, boo. No shame taken.

i definitely exercise a certain level of caution when talking to younger guys on apps. one easy way to prevent a certain level of entanglement is to say no to connecting on snapchat, guys that age fuckin love snapchat. idk, i try and take the approach of “i have to be okay with anything that is said or shared in this conversation being used against me at some point in the future” in all online conversations with men, but certainly with boys of a certain age. i personally have found, thru sniffies — which is a more closed off app compared to grindr, which has things like shared photo albums, ability to link profiles to social media etc — that you can, via conversation, exercise a bit of quality control, and i think that goes for guys of other ages too of course but it’s more front of mind with younger guys. i like sniffies in particular bcuz the functionality of the app requires some level of conversation, and i think even in those exchanges you can weed out people who instinctively don’t sit right with you. which isn’t to say you still can’t find yourself in a certain situation, there are crazy people out there, but i do think that facilitation of conversation helps

i definitely think a lot about my previous life/career as a journalist and the way that put me in the public eye in a way i found somewhat intoxicating in my 20s but which i now find mostly alienating, at least in some part because being a largely anonymous record label employee allows me a sexual freedom that i don’t know that i would be able to access if i was more of a public figure. which isn’t to say that i don’t exercise caution when talking about my work now, because i do, tho it’s more to weed out clout chasers and networkers than it is, i think, blackmailers

Yeah, it became "policy" after a bad experience in my mid-30s to refuse dates to anybody who even had a passing familiarity with my creative work. My current boyfriend heard one of my songs on the radio and said to me "so you're Temu Kate Bush, OK" lol

my main issue with hookups these days is time! i have my full-time job, my partner and cat (domestic evenings at home are treasured by us bcz we're both on the introverted side and just need a lot of recharge time). a rigorous workout schedule. personal training friends on saturdays. and we are back in the orbit of our third who we "broke up with" last spring but are having the same relationship-via-whatsapp that we had before because we're hella in love. i have a muscle worship guy who is extremely low maintenance who i meet up with every few weeks. monthly sex party. attendant std testing and treatment stuff (time and money). and now this other guy who i can tell wants more from me (weekly phone calls, dates, that sort of engagement). i'm full up! and i'm thinking i need to tell the new guy i just don't have the time for anything right now. i can only focus on two or three at a time lol. and also while my libido still hums along albeit at a slower rate than 10 years ago, a lot of times my favorite thing in the world to do is just close the door and jerk off haha. i am good at giving myself good pleasure! which relates back to jordan's comment about cocksuckers - good ones are rarer than i really realized - i've had good luck in the past i think.

yeah my new years resolution this year was to find a better balance for my free time between sex with new guys, working out, and ummm... the rest of my life. there is a social component to meeting new men that was scratching an itch for me but in a way that facilitated slacking on my actual friendships, my relationship etc so i've had to be more intentional about balancing all of that. part of it is understanding what kind of sex w/ new men is actually enjoyable to me and likely to produce feelings of "this was worth it" vs sex that is just there to be had. learning experiences :)

i will say that i'm really grateful for our monthly sex party. it's awesome. you just show up, start flirting and get down. a quick natural way through all of the time consuming potentially misleading stuff you have to do on an app. (not to mention the logistics of the actual hook-up). i've learned that my chemistry with someone is only distantly related to their body type and age. it's how i've been meeting people and having fun for the past several months now. scruff doesn't even work on my phone because it's too old lol.

i have the opposite problem that you do j0rdan in that i have to be intentional about putting myself into "meet new people" type situations more often. i've been pushing myself in that direction and happy with the progress. i used to show up at the party and get so fucking overwhelmed with social anxiety. one time i actually left and then came back haha. but the last few times i've gone, last time especially, something has switched to where i'm "doing it". relaxed. smiling. eye contact. small talk. which meant that i was basically devoured all night and met like 3 new guys. it was great!

ok another thing that has been happening to me lately is that i've been fantasizing about women?? i used to just totally tune women out at the gym but lately i've been noticing them especially when they notice me. and anyway there's like a whole weird shelf or closet of my psyche that feels kinda newly potent related to that and i feel like i might have to do more with a woman at some point, or a trans woman. i'm guessing there are apps for that. but lord i'm not sure how much i want to start exploring that in my current city, i might have to save that for when we move somewhere a little less patriarchal overall.

Go for it!!

ok another thing that has been happening to me lately is that i've been fantasizing about women??

welcome to the club

Kinsey fluctuation is real

I still identify as bi but I’ve been very guy-centric over the past 6-7 years

i definitely have to put myself out there more— the period when i was really going for it last spring, before emergency surgery and the summer being mooted, was yielding interesting results.

also tho, husband has been more sexual recently, but that tends to come in waves and i clearly still need another outlet. case in point: he works from home, and on his lunch break today he came up and gave me a big close hug and grabbed my ass. i could feel him through his pants. but when i asked whether he wanted something more, because i was certainly turned on, he said “maybe later.” that’s fine, but i definitely could have used a little something myself!!

it's nice to hear that you two still have that spark.

it is nice! 15 years together this April :)

it's taken a few years of trial and error but i've landed on a regular kind of trip i like to do - basically trail running vacations. my next one came together pretty quickly this morning. it's gonna be gayer than usual so i thought i'd blab about it here haha. mainly because it looks like i'm staying with an old hookup for two nights. we were fuckbuds when i lived in moab. he was an arches park ranger at the time. now he's with red rock conservation area outside of las vegas. so i'm looking at quiet resorts off the strip on the west side of town closer to red rocks, where i'll stay for the first two nights. there will be a strip-adjacent bathhouse visitation but that's all i plan to do downtown. and for once i can eat out and eat well -- usually these trips are to small towns with terrible restaurant food. and i'll be able to lift at a real gym. i'm kinda surprised by the apparent quality of desert and mountain trails west of vegas. a lot of options and they look beautiful. can't wait to do something a little different. love the idea of mixing nature and hopefully solitude and real-deal wilderness with social at the end of the day.