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

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

omg I've always wanted to go to Seattle

btw i love "basic" middle aged ladies - always have, sure there's a lot to unpack there!

Green jacket is a+

Yes, the green jacket is my favorite piece of the ensemble.

well it's the risk, everything is a risk calculation for me. is this going to be genuinely healing and help me further build resilience and an inherent sense of self-worth, or am i going to be retraumatized? i mean, you know why i hate cops? i hate cops because i have to fucking _be_ a cop. i have to protect myself and the people i care about from people who are a threat to me, and that includes a lot of people who say, and might even believe, they want to protect me. i'm ok with being vigilant. vigilance is good, vigilance is important. i'm fucking tired of being hypervigilant. it's exhausting.

So like my job is literally to prevent intruders from breaching a boundary (although in practice, this mostly amounts to not falling asleep and keeping the lobby clean). But I think I feel the same sense of responsibility to "be a cop" in my personal life that you're describing, to "defend against robbers", I guess.

The thing is, I find it very easy to be on guard and to regard people with suspicion. I've lived most of my life in NYC- not just NYC but specifically Manhattan, where there are about 100,000 other people in my immediate area. And their activities are often grating and disruptive to me, I mean not having any personal space whatsoever tends to make people very neurotic. Myself most certainly included! Everyone here is pretty on edge all the time. And living in a city with 8 million people is, I think, the most isolating thing. In a way, it's liberating to be able to disappear in plain sight. But it doesn't really foster community when your goal and that of the others around you is to avoid making eye contact with each other (by the way, donna rogue, you have beautiful eyes). In the little village where I used to live, when you see another person, you say "hello" to each other - that changes everything.

The *challenge* of being vigilant is one of extending empathy to people I'm afraid of, people who appear to pose a threat. Letting my guard down is vigilance, tolerating disturbances is vigilance in that sense. I'm aware that I say this from a position of male privilege (because I'm male-presenting, more or less). But anyway, Kate, you seem like you would be really good at this. People just don't always know how to speak and act in a way that makes their good intentions clear. Because I agree with you about mixed and pangender bars (I'll admit that I leave my house just often enough to have noticed the sea change). One thing about the changes in the ways we think about gender- it makes it very hard to cling to those comfortable assumptions about who people *are*, let alone what they're after. The best thing in the world, to me as a queer, is to be able to go to a queer bar and to be keenly aware that I can't tell anything about who anyone is by looking at them. This is what makes me feel welcome and included, ultimately.

I mean, I can infer, at best. But I can;t assume.

Yes, the green jacket is my favorite piece of the ensemble.

that's fucking wild to me because it's just my standard rain jacket. i bought it, like, seven years ago, it's a university of oregon jacket. it was cheap. i have no feelings at all about the ducks.

The *challenge* of being vigilant is one of extending empathy to people I'm afraid of, people who appear to pose a threat. Letting my guard down is vigilance, tolerating disturbances is vigilance in that sense. I'm aware that I say this from a position of male privilege (because I'm male-presenting, more or less). But anyway, Kate, you seem like you would be really good at this. People just don't always know how to speak and act in a way that makes their good intentions clear. Because I agree with you about mixed and pangender bars (I'll admit that I leave my house just often enough to have noticed the sea change). One thing about the changes in the ways we think about gender- it makes it very hard to cling to those comfortable assumptions about who people *are*, let alone what they're after. The best thing in the world, to me as a queer, is to be able to go to a queer bar and to be keenly aware that I can't tell anything about who anyone is by looking at them. This is what makes me feel welcome and included, ultimately.

― Deflatormouse

i'd say that i've developed a certain skill in de-escalating, in large part because i'm a highly sensitive person and have had to work really hard to self-regulate. unfortunately it's not really a _differentiated_ form of de-escalation. i feel like intimate encounters inherently involve a certain amount of tension, of risk, and i find that i'm always fucking de-escalating, whether i want to or not. :(

anyway it's not a problem i'm trying to solve here, mostly just venting :)

I can relate and my instinct is usually to want to postpone unexpected encounters, which obv doesn't work.

that's fucking wild to me because it's just my standard rain jacket. i bought it, like, seven years ago, it's a university of oregon jacket. it was cheap. i have no feelings at all about the ducks.

the photo is missing a lot of that information. I like that I can't really tell what it is, but it seems like it might have a certain mojo to it.
makes the outfit whole imo.

hiiiiiii happy weekend fuck

celebrating by eating a lot of tortilla chips

omg i have a new favorite snack - tortilla chips and CHIPOTLE DIP

big fan of the dips

sometimes i get 'bitchin sauce' to go with my chips but tonight it was hummus. what are you up to tonight hun?

hiiiiiii happy weekend fuck

otm
I am going to work in a few tho :(

TO BE HONEST IM STILL WORKING ON YOU KNOW WHAT SONG

i've realized i'm literally never going to tell anyone a project is finished until i've road tested it at least a dozen times with weeks apart in the last 2-3 times (you know shit ALWAYS sounds different with time)

which is ALSO WHY i haven't had a chance to play with ANY OTHER MUSIC so expect an update from me on that, i have NOT forgotten about your work (but of course understand if it's off limits by now)

i really do think you're going to be happy with the final product though

i tried bitchin sauce recently! also deflatormouse that means you have an income tho so that's pretty cool. ugh why i am such a silver lining person.

also just to say i gave the fella a good long kiss the other night because he had long been away and i can FULLY confirm that absence makes the heart grow much fonder (and the boner grow bonerer)

i would say i felt weak in the knees but literally i felt weak in my whole body! i did not know this was a thing, i think i just thought i could not meet someone quite so kindred, cut from the same cloth. it's truly a whole body phenomenon i've not been privy to. so better late than never i guess and superbly, overwhelmingly grateful.

on Sunday i go to my current best bud / ex boyfriend's wedding - woosh it will be interesting! watching the whole thing with his family will be awks but life is awks right?

Got home five hours ago from a quiet happy hour with my boy only to be joined by his boyfriend and his friends. We walked to a bar a couple blocks away for some dancing. I ended up making out quickly with the boyfriend, who for months had been jealous of me.

Good morning!

nailed it

I’m in a cab coming back from a fantastic week in Porto.

btw if you can figure out any way to swing a trip to Porto, DO IT

what did you like about it? we were all talking about travel destinations the other day and about how friends recommend portugal but were unsure about the specific reasons why. like compared to spain or italy?

i don't like traveling by plane but there are 2-3 places overseas i would like to experience eventually. japan, italy, basque area of france / spain.

oh england and scotland tbh. so i can meet some ilx pals :)

1. The old town is not believably picturesque. Portal is known for tile work and most of the buildings sport amazing designs.

2. The touristy stuff is actually good. We didn’t hit all the spots but we did see the contemporary art museum, which was hosting a retrospective of the life of Yoyai Kusama, and the national museum, which had a deep dive into the development of Portugal’s fine art scene. We also saw a fado performance that was absolutely stunning (3 guitarists, 2 vocalists), did a tour of Taylor’s port that was awesome, and did a day long boat ride down the Douro River that was gorgeous where they served us a real lunch cooked on the ship in a fully-appointed kitchen rather than microwaving a prepackaged meal.

3. Food is surprisingly cheap (compared to Boston). We splurged since this was a honeymoon trip and went to two Michelin-starred restaurants (dinner at Elemento, lunch at Casa de Chá da Boa Nova) and yes, they were very expensive, but especially Elemento would have been twice as much had it been in the US. Most of the normal restaurants averaged out at $30/person for appetizers, entree, cocktails, and an entire bottle of wine.

4. The street musicians are INSANELY GOOD. Like, 95% of them should be signed artists. My favorites were the three-piece band that was just unbelievably tight and this woman with a beautiful voice who would play the bridge to the songs she was covering on trombone.

We didn’t come close to seeing everything; we just would pick a direction at the start of the day and enjoy whatever we came across sight- and food-wise. We also were told about a monthly gay expat meetup where we met and hung out with some very friendly gentlemen who invited us to Thai food afterward (this did lead to an awkward “ooh sorry, we are not interested in a nightcap” moment but overall it was a fun night).

My one regret is that I’m now too old to party all night the way the city wants to; we took a car to the airport at 3:30 AM this morning and people were just leaving the nightclubs.

Oh fuck this phone. Remove “not” from bullet #1 and “Portal” is obv supposed to be “Porto”

very cool, thanks for the scene report.

No problem! At some point pictures will go up on Facebook so you can get a better sense of what we did

Thanks! I'm going to Lisbon and Porto next June.

jealz - i really am thinking Berlin is where i'll need to go as my first solo international trip, i just need somewhere where it's easy to go out and very "for dummies". it'll be cool cuz i can "work from hotel" during the day then just live the life.