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

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.

ok well that sounds ideal (sorry for the delay how the hell do three days go by?!)

you know i saw Madonna's Mme X tour
she could still put on a show, i just wonder if it isn't time for her to maybe think about doing something else

we had dinner with Stevie last night!! and then he came back to our place and we plied him with amaro and we talked about sheryl crow and natalie merchant and celine dion and it was just a total delight <3

Amaro! Sheryl Crow! Sounds like my kind of night.

sounds like a blast

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

uhhhhhh i had no idea wallace shawn was in a chaka khan video lol

he's in everything!
also I'm pretty sure I've had that night before lol so fun xp ❤️

have you ever been to umm dallas texas

I lived there for a few months, visited a few times— I just found Chicago unfriendly, with a vastly overrated transit system, and a vibe that just doesn’t suit me.

I like Dallas, love Houston, hate Austin.

our pals whom we stayed with live in Edgewater, not far at all from the Granville Anvil lol. it’s a wonderful neighborhood!

never been to TX at all bar airport xfers but of the major cities there I’m most curious about Houston

Yeah honestly the “gotcha” stuff that people do about cities doesn’t work on me. I’d rather live in Richmond than New York. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was in Houston for a conference last year. The best part was meeting up with a college roommate for dinner.

Yeah honestly the “gotcha” stuff that people do about cities doesn’t work on me. I’d rather live in Richmond than New York. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

― out of the cradle endlessly party rocking (the table is the table), Thursday, August 13, 2026 7:23 AM (four hours ago)

but you live in philly!

I have the weirdest taste in American cities— I love LA but beyond that feel more enthused about a trip to Birmingham or SLC or Charleston SC than any of the “centres”. I have sighed and said “I could live here” about fuckin Milwaukee

I’m currently replaying Mutsumi FKA Mu lyrics in my head— particularly “Hello Bored Biz Man” which 1-2-3-4’s all my favourite lyrical devices all at once

Specifically the way she switches to a man’s voice for “what do you want?” but finishes the sentence in her girly voice “…me to do today?”

I’m copy pasting the lyrics from Genius into the thread right now because the number of ?s is so delightful:

Hello bored businessman
What do you want me to do today?
Take your ??? off
???
Should I tell you off
??? really for?
Listen to your bullshit
Complaints about your wife?
Listen to your worrying
About your children?
??? good girl
????

i've only ever heard good things about milwaukee, chicago people love milwaukee. i've never been and actually don't know a ton about the gay scene there, would be interested to learn more. minneapolis just decriminalized bathhouses!

LA is great i just find it to be an isolating experience. i was at a wedding in ojai last year and two people i know who get really good work in TV in LA separately and without prompting unburdened themselves emotionally by explaining all the reasons why LA is deficient and they miss NYC. great city to visit, but everyone goes home too early. if i had millions of dollars to buy property i would certainly consider southern california. however!

See— my LA hack is to socialize over breakfast and lunch hours. Late night is not the move. The gay scene in LA was too weirdly racially/class segregated for my comfort. I’m just lucky to have fantastic friends down there

I can’t imagine ever “missing NYC”, it’s like “missing your 20s”— grow the fuck up

a city that i've been to a lot that i don't particularly like and have turned down job opportunities that wanted me to move there -- nashville

kinda feel like a city needs to have at least .. 700,000 people in the metro area proper otherwise you just see the same people everywhere you go for years. my experience going anywhere in slc is that i will see all the people i met 15-20 years ago and decided i don't really like because they're boring and live here because of their boring family. flashback to when i didn't fit in with them and update: i still don't fit in with them. "hey how are ya long time no see" (internal: "wouldn't mind if it were longer").

so many good friends of mine live in boston, a horrible place. i like nashville ok but wouldn’t live there, austin an objectively worse version of the same thing. LOVE chicago but have only been there once and i never trust a first impression. philly is my favorite american city and i’ve been threatening to move there for a decade, but… i love new york. i would miss new york if i moved. there are so many things that suck and are stupid about it. but it’s my world. also pretty easy to have a gay time here

can you tell i love city chat

i’ve never been to LA except driving through it on the way to somewhere else, but i grew up in its significantly worse sister city las vegas so uh no real desire to experience it

I love Philly, Chicago; I've been to the latter enough in the winter not to wanna live there, lol.

L.A. is too much like Miami as far as vibe but not in weather and in how long people stay out.

Philly rules, full stop. Also stevie is there so it rules by default

My only issue with LA really is that it’s ground zero for what I describe as “expensive friends”— friends with whom one maintains a friendship more because of the status/id of said friend rather than any actual brotherhood/sisterhood. People who end up costing you time and money but you keep up the friendship because “he’s [redacted name]”. You don’t get that so much in Canadian cities, or cities that aren’t LA or NYC

come to Miami again!

we took a short detour to milwaukee when i was in chicago to see a friend who lives there. didn't see too much of it but i enjoyed walking around the downtown area, and the new art museum building is kind of breathtaking. also cheese curds (fried or otherwise) are a thing of beauty. would like to go back! (did you guys know UW-milwaukee has the second largest collections of maps in the US after the library of congress???)

philly just rules, so many great people there and i'd consider moving there too. i do miss nyc sometimes (sorry!!!! jk not really), i feel, idk, comfortable there in a way i've never quite felt in other cities, even the one i've now lived in coming up 16 years, but i also grew up near it so maybe that's why, and i don't regret having left it.

still never been to miami, we keep talking about heading down there for a night or two when we visit my husband's family but we've never managed to make it work. i've come to really enjoy st. pete tho, have to say.

And please yes Boston sucks, wowsers. I fell in love with Austin at the right time— 22 and crashing at a vegan co-op making out with random gays from San Antonio. Houston has some good food (and hideous architecture and urban planning) but otherwise didn’t show its face to me. Dallas was strip-mally, Denton seemed cool.

I used to enjoy NOLA but it’s kind of a booze town for alcoholics, no? It feels like a cruise ship or something.

I haven’t been there in a while but I LOVE Atlanta. And Savannah. And Charleston SC. And the tri-city. I dunno if I’d live there tho— however a Southerner feels about snowsuits, I feel the same about bug spray

And yeah Alfo I guess it’s been twelve years since I hung with you in Miami— far too fucking long if you ask me

re: LA - that particular type of person is easy enough to avoid here imho. it helps that i'm not in the entertainment industry (or at most very tangential to it) and neither are most of my good friends

a city that i've been to a lot that i don't particularly like and have turned down job opportunities that wanted me to move there -- nashville

Fukkin truth bomb

There are a surprisingly high number of hot guys but it’s not worth the endless bachelorette parties

I love Hello Bored Biz Man

US city ILX gay fap!

What do you want...

...me to do today?

(xp)

On some healing news-- things remain "feeling slow" but are "progressing quickly". I'll be driving again, soon. Just today I received some docs in the mail I'd signed just a couple weeks ago. Seeing the difference in "my penmanship", like how much my right hand has recovered in the past two weeks, was shocking, shocking!! And yet the days pass by with such tedium and I'm still sleeping 10-11 hours out of 24, sheesh

great news

And yeah Alfo I guess it’s been twelve years since I hung with you in Miami— far too fucking long if you ask me

― brb (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, August 13, 2026

what a time!

I am glad we all agree that Boston sucks. Honestly it sucks so much that when people I know say they love it there, I think less of them!!

i feel that way when people say it about slc. "oh we aren't gonna vibe." "oh cool you are one of those people." there are the dyed in the wool mormon whites. but among gay or more liberal people they're either very embedded in family (who are often dyed in the wool mormon whites). which, i just don't relate to at all. or they moved here to get ahead. from california / texas / indiana or wherever. usually another conservative state or the conservative part of cali. often in some kind of health-related field. the health scam *ahem* industry is the biggest game in town here, behind mining oil and gas, with outdoor rec far down the list somewhere. houses are (or were) cheaper here. so it's a market move. these people tend to only care about making more money. there are a lot of them in this city. for a place with such a weird religious rep it's very materialist. the taste though is not for "expensive and finely made", it's for "expensive trash." slc wins when it comes to the amount of money you have to pay for access to abysmal culture and aesthetics.

what i love about.. nearly any other city i've been to is that there is a fair amount of people you see on the street who are obviously marching to the beat of their own drum, who never "grew up and bought a house in the suburbs". maybe they're poor, maybe they're doing well for themselves, but for whatever reason they are living a colorful life and being somewhat more true to their authentic selves. in slc the people you see walking downtown are either commuters working their finance job at jp morgan chase or houseless. often it's the houseless people who are actually displaying authenticity. a fair amount are obviously in pain but not all.