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

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 ❤️

wassup docs
it's eighty goddamn degrees here today
too soon yo

lovely haiku

it's only about 70 here. we've had some random bursts of heat over the past few weeks though.

next week i will be in seattle, where it's gonna be 50 and rainy no doubt. i forget, are any of y'all based there? would love recs on things and places to do/see/eat/drink there!

Wish I had more Recs than go to PONY and the gay Karaoke bar on Cap Hill, and also you simply must visit the main public library, it is everything a public library should be imho

85 degrees already

That was always my impression of Miami until I actually went there, had drinks with Alfo and saw the city’s vibrant counterculture and arts scene

It’s not NYC or even Minneapolis but there is a lot of amazing shit going on, would totally live there except for the fear of underwater

Why would you worry about underwater when you have bat shit politicians living above ground here?

every time I go outside I pass by hundreds or thousands of people who are visibly struggling. just moving through their daily grind with their heads down. how much worse could it really be?

I mean, it could be way worse obv
I meant how much worse could Miami be

"hundreds or thousands of people moving trough their daily grind with their heads down, but more than half of them are fascists" would be much worse

i always liked Miami but there aren’t enough rocks to climb

That'll be my motto tonight at the gay karaoke bar

How many of you lead a majority or completely gay existence?

I ask because most of my local friends are women and straight guys. I dwell among often. When I've introduced younger friends or tricks to them, they tell me they're surprised or are visibly uncomfortable, which is strange to me (but which I understand).

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

i _like_ straight people, but being around them is pretty exhausting and stressful. it's not anybody's _fault_ but i am under tremendous amounts of pressure to be a "model minority". i feel like a lot of cis allies aren't in a place to accept the reality of what a lot of people in america are going through right now. and even those of us who do... i mean what's happening to trans people is a drop in the bucket of what's going on, i do think it's important to talk to and be around people who aren't like me, and i just get preoccupied with my own shit, with my own community, so it's tough for me to reach out and support immigrants, for instance, or other people who are being oppressed by the administration.

i do feel like i'm living a "dual-role" life, even though it was the last thing i wanted. people in my community, a lot of us are very traumatized and behave in ways that... i mean i have to put up with a lot of bullshit from people in my community. i have to be a pretty supportive person to other people, because everybody around me needs a lot of support. i don't need as much support myself, but i do need support. and i don't get as much support from the people in my community, because i'm doing _better_ than most of them, because i'm not in crisis. the people who are most important in my life are, like me, carers, and those of us who are carers, we don't value ourselves. the friends i'm closest to, the friends i care most about and trust the most, are frequently people i don't see too often. because i say "how are you doing, do you want to hang out", and because they can be open with me they tell me how they're doing, that they're spending all their time supporting their friends who are in crisis, that they'd love to see me and... and i stop them there, i say look, take time for yourself, it's no good to spend all your time caring for other people. if that means we don't see each other for a while, that's ok.

i guess theoretically i could talk to people outside my community, but if i look to them to support, if i try to talk to them about what's happening, they're horrified, they fall into despair. that's not helpful to me, if i talk to people and they feel miserable and awful and feel all this guilt and shame about what america is doing to queer people. that's not really the support i'm looking for. i mean it's better than the denial, i guess, the people who can't accept that what's happening is actually happening and want to tell me that i'm being too negative, that things aren't that bad. or who want to give me pep talks and cheer me up. i don't need that because i am actually a pretty positive, upbeat person. i try to keep a fundamentally healthy attitude on these things. i just don't think that denial is a fundamentally healthy attitude.

i talked to a trans friend of mine yesterday... she's having to leave her white collar job. this is, again, something i don't really know how to talk about to cis people. working conditions are terrible for everybody, and because of the "allostatic load" of, you know, being a targeted minority, trans people get hit harder and earlier than most people. it's not like anything that's happening is fundamentally different from what anybody else is going through. this stuff is going to hit a lot of other people as hard as it's hitting us, if it's not already.

i had to quit my job a couple months ago because of the working conditions... and three months later, i'm almost to the point where i can respect myself as a human being. a job, though? i try applying to places, but you have to apply to a _lot_ of different jobs to get a single callback, and most of the jobs out there aren't that great. the friends i know who have jobs are all in government jobs, because that's the only way they can get tolerable working conditions. government jobs, disability, medicaid, this is how my community gets by. we do what we can.

i mean if you want to know where i run into "straight" people the most often it's ilx, lol. it's not the same as meeting people in person, but it is good. it helps me center myself, get myself out of the shit that's going on in our community. i wish i could spend more time around people who aren't like me... the marginalizations, the systemic lack of resources, it just means that there's so much pressure to fight over what little there is.

not saying this to be a downer. i'm actually doing really well the last couple of weeks! i have a lot to celebrate. it's just balancing that out with the more difficult things that's a challenge.

Also, correct me, please, but am I the only regular gay ILXer still single? That matters too.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

well, define 'gay' i guess. i do think of myself as "gay" (along with a whole bunch of other labels haha) and i'm single.

I def find friendships that are *not* based on shared interests more emotionally rewarding. When they are, I try very hard to steer conversations away from nerding out.

― doe on a hill (Deflatormouse)

hmmm. it's hard to say, really. most of my friendships aren't built on _specific_ shared interests, simply because, well, most of my interests are incredibly niche. i have this autistic thing where a lot of my most rewarding friendships involve taking turns infodumping over our shared interests. i genuinely enjoy listening to people talk about their special interests, _particularly_ if it's not something i know anything about. people talking about what they love and telling me _why_ they love those things, i'm here for that. gardening or cooking, as long as there's not an expectation that i'm as interested in the topic as they are, i'm happy to listen.

i will say that i'm kind of different from you in that i do try to make time for superficial conversation. i have this tendency to go super emotionally hard on anything i talk about. emotional connection can be so powerful and profound, and i'm at the point where not every human connection i have needs to be deep or profound. i'm the kind of person where... i listen to people and don't judge and so what i have happen is that people come up to me and tell me their deepest darkest secret the first time they meet me, cuz they get the sense, correctly, that i won't judge them for it. at the same time, girl, we just met, i don't want to hear about how you shot a man in reno just to watch him die, tell me about how you're preparing your garden for the coming heat wave, not because i want to hear about your garden, but because it's not a topic i feel like i need to get emotionally invested in!

i'm training two gay friends at the gym on saturdays and i've realized part of the appeal for them is i'm a muscle daddy. i mean, i'm me, but that's my look. and i'm ok with working that a little bit, i like it or i wouldn't look that way. but like one of them is kinda putting out "i'm interested" vibes and i'm just not. it's weird it feels lonely when you're looking for a deeper connection and guys just want to get in your pants. i realize i probably sound annoying complaining about such devastating problems lol.

― five six seven, eight nine ten, begin (map)

it's a legit queer problem! in multiple senses. sometimes there are people i like as friends and they make a play for me and i'm not down for it. sometimes there are people i like as friends and i make a play for them and they're not down for it. and everybody i know is very rejection sensitive, including me. then on top of that i have a _whole bunch_ of friends who i would definitely get with if we had compatible kinks or were in compatible life situations or compatible _schedules_ (i'm not a nite owl or party person). a lot of times the easiest way for me to get along with people is to say "ok look we are not going to get with each other", that way there isn't the sword of damocles thing going on. because if i get with someone and we break up then we continue to see each other regularly, like, forever. there just aren't that many of us, even in PDX.

I’m tired of infodumping, i just find it exhausting now. If someone asks me a question about a niche special interest they do not share, i just try to give a non-answer. At least irl. if they ask a follow up question i might elaborate slightly but inside i am shouting ‘oh god, why must you persist??!’ I find it hard to prioritize information. Everything seems important and i don’t know how to cut what other people probably consider extraneous detail. It’s just exhausting to think about in real time in the presence of a friend or friends. I don’t want to get caught up in it and miss opportunities to be present and offer support.

I am again down with nonverbal hangs tho. 3 or 4 years ago i hosted a silent supper, that was such a relief. I got the idea from my stuffed animals. Just enjoying their silent acknowledgement. And playing with my niece before she could talk. Such a relief, truly.

i'm the kind of person where... i listen to people and don't judge and so what i have happen is that people come up to me and tell me their deepest darkest secret the first time they meet me, cuz they get the sense, correctly, that i won't judge them for it. at the same time, girl, we just met, i don't want to hear about how you shot a man in reno just to watch him die

That’s an excellent point, and would admit the reason why it worked so well with “strangers” was that we were all, as you put it, in “compatible life situations” and that bursts the bubble in a way. Though i really do think that if someone showed up who was desperate we would have rallied around them.
The kind of interactions you’re talking about, which i also have attracted at different times in my life, I would consider that to be “crisis management” rather than friendship. 90% of the customer-facing work i did at the occult store was crisis management. Oracle readings and etc. and i think that’s my preferred venue for doing this work. Because i can never offer the kind of remediation they’re looking for when it’s just me. When it’s just little Yugi, without the cards.

sometimes there are people i like as friends and they make a play for me and i'm not down for it. sometimes there are people i like as friends and i make a play for them and they're not down for it. and everybody i know is very rejection sensitive, including me

Yeah, i think it’s good if the plays are not too obvious. so the players can save face, and the recipient can feign cluelessness to soften the blow. And there’s always the possibility they just didn’t hear you, though you know better. That’s probably controversial and maybe i only think this because it wasn’t at all the case where i used to work.

Yeah, i think it’s good if the plays are not too obvious. so the players can save face, and the recipient can feign cluelessness to soften the blow. And there’s always the possibility they just didn’t hear you, though you know better. That’s probably controversial and maybe i only think this because it wasn’t at all the case where i used to work.

― doe on a hill (Deflatormouse)

that's the approach i would prefer. honestly, though, it doesn't really work for me, speaking as both an autistic person and a lesbian. i feel like i've learned a reasonably good grasp of social cues, and a lot of the people around me, uh, really don't. example:

person: "i'm really unattractive, it makes sense that nobody's interested in me."
me: "i'm interested in you. i think you're really attractive."
them: "oh that's so sweet of you."

same person, five minutes later: "i'm really unattractive, it makes sense that nobody's interested in me."

i don't think these people are feigning cluelessness. it's just such an internalized thing among lesbians in particular, this idea that we're undesirable, to the point where a lot of people aren't even consciously doing that kind of thing. pre-emptive rejection does also "soften the blow" - in the short term. honestly, i do think i probably engage in that behavior myself, i reject people and push them away without really knowing it consciously or meaning to do it. i myself have definitely internalized the idea that other people aren't going to be attracted to me, that they're "out of my league". as far as i can tell this is a common thing, this belief lesbians have that every other lesbian in the world is "out of their league". the lack of self-confidence is astonishing. honestly, other lesbians do tell me that i have a better sense of self-confidence than most of the people they know, and sadly enough, they're probably not wrong. for instance, my response to the scenario above... yeah it feels shitty, but my overall emotional takeaway is "damn, i dodged a bullet there, it would not be good for me to be with a person who treated me like that" - which i can say because, uh, all of my relationships thus far have been with people who treated me like that! it feels shitty to be in a relationship with someone and flirt with them and get "oh, you don't really want me" as a response. both of my last two exes were convinced of their own unattractiveness to such an extent that it made intimacy difficult.

I am again down with nonverbal hangs tho. 3 or 4 years ago i hosted a silent supper, that was such a relief. I got the idea from my stuffed animals. Just enjoying their silent acknowledgement. And playing with my niece before she could talk. Such a relief, truly.

oh absolutely, this is really important to me. spending quality time in person with someone, not even doing the same thing. again, very much a neurodivergent thing - parallel work/parallel play. it really relieves a lot of the stress i feel around socializing with other people.

I’m tired of infodumping, i just find it exhausting now. If someone asks me a question about a niche special interest they do not share, i just try to give a non-answer. At least irl. if they ask a follow up question i might elaborate slightly but inside i am shouting ‘oh god, why must you persist??!’ I find it hard to prioritize information. Everything seems important and i don’t know how to cut what other people probably consider extraneous detail. It’s just exhausting to think about in real time in the presence of a friend or friends. I don’t want to get caught up in it and miss opportunities to be present and offer support.

see, i just look at a situation like that as a chance to practice my conversation skills. like you, i don't always know what's important and what's extraneous detail. i also don't know what's "common knowledge" that will come off as condescension or "mansplaining" if i try to explain it, and what's esoteric knowledge that will come off as elitist if i don't explain it. i'm not perfect at it, but i feel like i'm getting better at talking about my special interests in a way that will allow me to talk about the things that are important to me while keeping the other person engaged in the conversation. this is the kind of thing that seems to come naturally to neurotypical people, and i'm not as good at it, but i think it's kind of cool to treat conversations as a sort of lab where i can try and figure this stuff out. i'm self-critical, sure, but less in the sense of "well this is clearly the Worst Thing Ever" and more in the sense of being able to apply the framing of "these are the things about this album that work, these are the things about this album that don't work" to myself.

if i miss opportunities to be present and offer support, well... i'm not the only person in the world who can support them, and sometimes i just get burned out on spending time being there to support other people. sometimes i want to just talk to other people without it being such hard work.

jeez, I open the thread and -- wow.

"i'm really unattractive, it makes sense that nobody's interested in me."

running interior monologue when i'm pmsing

but tbh [gestures at history of romantic failures] rarely is anyone making a play for me. at least i and my ex-girlfriend think i'm hot

you are hot

person: "i'm really unattractive, it makes sense that nobody's interested in me."
me: "i'm interested in you. i think you're really attractive."
them: "oh that's so sweet of you."

same person, five minutes later: "i'm really unattractive, it makes sense that nobody's interested in me."

Look, i'm telling you, if society was run by horses we wouldn't have these kinds of problems #indefenseofhorsegirls

My boss and I were chatting about AI coding tools and he was telling me about a working prototype he had whipped up for an app that came out of a conversation he was having with someone about how devices had removed small talk icebreakers like “What time is it?” and “How do I get to this place?” He was calling “Pokémon Go for humans” where you could see other users in your vicinity and see interesting information about them and chat with them and so on and so on and I really struggled to keep from saying “you just invented Sniffies”

lmao.

well, two young men have pinged me on Feeld— one is “heteroflexible” but is certainly gay, and the other is gay and has a look that is different for me.

we don’t talk about this much here, but i tend to go for more fit types— not necessarily muscle gods, but trim, toned, sinewy, whatever you want to call it. T is pretty fit, even if his penchant for mayo and french fries keeps his six pack in the cooler. he’s strong.

well, this second young man is the epitome of another type i occasionally go for, and that is chubby. but he’s chubby in a way that doesn’t seem like “an extra bit of weight,” (which is fine, just not my thing), but instead it suits him and his frame. it becomes him, so to speak. it’s a weird differentiation and i am always afraid of coming across as a fatphobic or something, but it is something that one notices.

anyway, he lives in the next state over but is in Philly for work quite a bit.

going to this sex party once a month has pretty much killed my desire to be on any apps. just to jump in the water of social without having to be on a screen first. and yeah it's surprising to me who i end up talking to, who i end up having chemistry with. towards the end of the night this really hot kinda like emo skater guy in his late 20s propositioned me and i was super awkward haha.. it's a good party, something that slc sorely needed. the party runner i admire quite a bit, he's lived a fab gay life.

i had a nice pool kiki with two gay friends on sunday. it was fun, positive, really sweet. they both like me a lot and i like them a lot. it was at friend A's condo complex. we went inside their place first to chat. i realized after the fact that the reason A had asked if we wanted to do it somewhere else was because he and his partner V were fighting lol. so they were a little icy towards each other. but it was good to see V. A. told us later that it's more stuff in line with how A. wants open and V. is struggling with it. they've been together for .. 8 years? we chatted for a while in the pool area - no kids came out to join us thank god - it was very golden girls special episode. i cried a bit about my breakup. D, the other fella there, I feel like I'm closer to him now. and he brought gazpacho.

he brought gazpacho

Good on him -- the universal palliative.

he's from miami!

puerto rican background, not cuban tho

i’m not sure i’ve ever had gazpacho? love a good pool kiki tho! doesn’t happen often enough in my life.

lol DJP

lol DJP

Somewhat tense over here leading up to this big move. In brief, we are both slobs, but I mitigate my slobbiness by keeping an austere living space, making it functional and easy to clean. He is a hoarder, filling our living space with tchotchkes and needless objects and endless piles of thrifted clothes. I have tried reasoning with him over the past few months but it hasn’t been working, recently it’s been ultimatums and anger instead.

He kept saying “does something like this already exist” and I was sitting there going “welllllllllllllllllllllllllll… yes, but not in the chaste space you’re describing and I doubt your app will remain chaste for very long”

I'm on tonight
You know my dick don’t lie
And I’m starting to feel it's AI