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

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

i used to love working in the library in college. I would sit in the stacks in the basement, or the art stacks which were the super cool ones. but I had no place there TBH

I miss my college library all the time.

The cops caught the arsonist of the queer bar in Bushwick. Scary story of what happened.

Not gonna lie, my queer friends, but I really am getting a lot more worried about some things, like whether my marriage will be recognized in a few years.

wait i didn't hear about the bar. deets? how did i miss that. was reading an article about a gay couple last night just filed a precedent setting suit RE being denied infertility coverage for IVF. glad for the action.

so just now i'm served an ad on facebook for customized wrestling singlets that's just an image of hairy pecs bulging out of spandex (the co is t4ked0wn sp0rtswe4r, in case you want to google it and have the ads follow you around everywhere). and i notice that it has likes and loves. so i click on the loves because i have a premonition. about ten gentlemen come up, and i open each in a new tab, and am beguiled by ten miniature portraits of gay american men.

wrestling fetishists have surprisingly good taste in memes

sorry busy week! how creepy! honestly the sanitary side of wrestling alone counteracts how hot it can be don't you think? u know how many skin infections those guys get? gross.

so I'm going to fire island in Aug and i have to figure out my look. last year was health goth. I'm kind of feeling club kid this year???

HI
wtf is up

hello gays

hiiii!

we spent nearly four hours trying to put up two bookshelves yesterday. stupid drywall!!

Got laid in New Orleans last week with a Napoleon House waiter.

i'm gay. not much else up tbh. hi kate!

Gay meter low thank christ for this thread

There is one (1) gay bar in town and it is a municipal landmark for being the first local gay watering hole

See? They don't need anymore!

wait hoos i thought you were in dc?

that is very cute :)

(i copy and pasted the image link in a new window and it came through.)

Yeah, I cosign all of what has been said, ceral.

Hell, my husband broke up with me for a month and a half in the first year of our relationship because he got cold feet!

a personality trait i find fascinating in people is being scared of emotional intimacy -- that's not to invalidate or question it, it's just something that is very foreign to me. meeting someone and being into them and wanting to dive headlong into a deep pool of emotional intimacy is such an intoxicating feeling, i never have felt my mind body or heart slam the breaks at a certain point along the path in a way that it does w/ some people when they experience such feelings?

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 9:54 AM (eight hours ago)

so speaking for myself, i am definitely afraid of emotional intimacy, _because_ it's such an intoxicating feeling. i feel deeply and strongly and sometimes i do things that aren't really good ideas for me to do simply because i'm so overwhelmed by my emotions. i was really afraid i might hurt other people, i was afraid i might hurt myself. it's taken years, but mostly now i'm just afraid of getting hurt. i don't actually have any control over whether or not i get hurt, but avoiding intimacy gives me the _illusion_ of control, and that's, just, like what i need sometimes. particularly if this guy deals with chronic SI... i had a lot of guilt and shame about having SI because i know how much it hurts people who care about me. i'd get overwhelmed and be afraid that if things went wrong i might hurt myself and pull back because of that. it's that old REM line, "oh no i've said too much, i haven't said enough", that's kinda how i'd feel when i would get worried and start pulling back, i'd worry that i'd fucked things up and i needed to run away.

the thing i'd say is that with someone who acts like that, you can worry about him and you can try to support him as best you can but ultimately what he does, how he behaves, is his responsibility, whether or not it's something he has a lot of control over. so that's what i'd say. if he does ghost you... you can do what you can to try and help him feel safe around you, but when he ghosts like that, it's not a reflection on you, it's a reflection on him.

i had a habit of ghosting people in the past for reasons related to my mental illness, and i don't blame myself or think i'm a bad person for that, but i've worked pretty hard to stop doing that, because it's a shitty way to treat other people, and i got tired of, like, people not trusting me. so that's what i'll say, this guy ghosting you, for whatever reason, it's a shitty way to treat you, and i don't think it helps to assign _blame_ for that, and i do think it's important to recognize that it's not super cool to make a pattern of it, whether or not one does it on purpose.

i have an interesting situation going on right now with emotional intimacy. i still have some deep and sad caves within me left over from my first 3 decades on this earth that were hollowed out by horrible treatment, that i wanted the people who i ended up in relationships with to fill. that wasn't love of course it was codependency. i've been legitimately able to fill those caves over the last two years but occasionally this young man that we're still close to and in a wonderful relationship with (it's going well) ... it's like the love i feel sometimes touches a nerve and releases a reservoir of sadness. idk it's hard to describe. it isn't a problem or anything it's just interesting.

on the subject of ghosting... i got caught up in a little situationship for a month or two earlier this year. one of those people who you, as the cliche goes, just aren't that into. eventually i told the guy that i was just too busy to keep in contact. well i run into him at the sex party on saturday night. i say hi it's nice to see you, sorry for ghosting you. he looked shocked and said oh you didn't ghost me you're just busy right? i'm like umm oh yeah i'm busy for the foreseeable future. and there we were in the dark room and i moved on.

based on my experience with emotions and often being swamped by emotions that debilitated me, i crave someone who both feels things as wildly and deeply as i do but who has also developed or is developing a fluency with emotional naming and regulation and bridging. this guy, our third, has both of these things! it's wonderfully exciting.

he's also been acing a real-life crash course in navigating a somewhat open relationship over the last year, showing calm and enthusiasm for our encounters outside of the three of us on a level of "i'm happy that you're doing what's bringing you fulfillment and realizing that it isn't affecting the quality of our relationship in a negative way." i think he's noticing that his acceptance is actually bringing us closer.

i have an interesting situation going on right now with emotional intimacy. i still have some deep and sad caves within me left over from my first 3 decades on this earth that were hollowed out by horrible treatment, that i wanted the people who i ended up in relationships with to fill. that wasn't love of course it was codependency. i've been legitimately able to fill those caves over the last two years but occasionally this young man that we're still close to and in a wonderful relationship with (it's going well) ... it's like the love i feel sometimes touches a nerve and releases a reservoir of sadness. idk it's hard to describe. it isn't a problem or anything it's just interesting.

― dream mummy (map), Tuesday, April 28, 2026 6:37 PM (yesterday)

yepp i have a kind of extreme version of the same problem. i've been through some shit, i'm _going_ through some shit, and i carry around a _lot_ of grief. i know it doesn't help me to carry it around with me, i know the toll it takes on me, but i just don't have the opportunity to put it down right now. i'm inspired a lot by looking at queer history and knowing that i'm, you know, not alone in being alone lol. radcliffe hall's "well of loneliness", "the boys in the band", it's something queer people have always had to navigate, the way we get treated. and we still get treated that way today, all of us.

ok i'm gonna expand on that and i'm gonna do it behind a cut, just for length.

i'm really lonely and i crave healing and i just don't have that opportunity. because it's not just me that's gone through bad shit, that's going through bad shit, it's everyone in my community. another historical thing that inspires me looking at the aids crisis, how it affected cis gay men. it's not that we're literally sick or diseased. it's the fact that we're _suffering_, we're _dying_, and nobody seems to care or notice and when they do notice, a lot of people, they blame us, they say we deserve to suffer and die. and of course that's an evil, wicked thing to say and damn it's so hard to care for people in a community where the people you love most could one day just be... gone.

yeah i'm surrounded by people and i'm still very lonely. i really desperately want the kind of love and healing it sounds like you have with your partners, and i'm so happy for you that you're getting some of that healing. you deserve to be loved like that. we all do. i don't have that right now but i know what i deserve, and in the meantime i'm... learning how to grieve. because grieving is a skill. it's not about how _much_ i grieve, because god, to really grieve for all i've been through and seen... i doubt i have enough time enough left on earth for that. it's about _how_ i grieve. for so long i buried my emotions. i started e literally because i wanted so badly to be able to cry, i was so sad, and i just couldn't cry. and god knows i can cry _now_. the challenge is that sometimes i can cry in a way that isn't healing, where i just cry for hours and at the end of it i don't feel better, i feel exhausted. so sometimes i'm afraid to cry, but i have to cry, sometimes, not to _heal_ exactly but just to, well, survive. it's a survival skill.

the thing i've learned about my emotions is that they're something of a matroshkya. beneath the numbness is anger. beneath the anger is grief. beneath the grief, well, that's where the joy is. so to really feel that joy, i have to be in a place where i feel safe to express the anger, express the grief. and because my anger and my grief are so intense, because i've seen how it can affect other people when i express those things _even when i do it in an emotionally healthy manner_, i have a hard time trusting people to be able to sit with those feelings. it's not a matter of "if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best". i've spent so long learning how to express grief and anger that.. i'm not perfect, of course, but when i feel those things that _is_ me at my best. not everybody can deal with that, and that's not a judgement on _them_, there's nothing _wrong_ with someone for not being able to sit with my feelings. but if i express my feelings to someone who can't handle it, well, a lot of the time i wind up getting hurt. so i have a hard time trusting people, trusting them enough to express my feelings. i mean you see my posts. i'm the same way in real life. i'm a lot, and as much as i try not to suck up all the air in the room i have a lot to say and i don't know _how_ to be more succinct in saying it.

Well, I got all my work stuff finished and delivered, now it’s Time To Break Up. I have a four day move scheduled. Absolutely zero plans for anything gay in my future, why I want more than anything is a full night of sleep in my own bed and a full day of being able to do naught but look after myself and my needs.

There’s definitely a couple men sniffing my butt these days, both of them super hot (and both of them like “established artists” which would be a nice change) but I’ve been feeling like Tarzan swinging from relationship to relationship these past ten years and I think it’s time for some cloistering

There’s definitely a couple men sniffing my butt these days

are we talking literally or...

good look fgti. i remember donna rouge giving me advice on this thread a while back after my last breakup to take it easy. it was good advice so passing that forward.

err luck but look too why not.