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?

Having been a couple times the Reluctant Guy whom ceral's pining for, let me add to what I said earlier: be fucking careful. You can blame drugs and MH but he also might be (a) not into you beyond casual friendship (b) a cold fish. Changing his phone number, though, makes me pause.

haha what do you mean by cold fish? like, dry bussy or something else

I've had moments when I turn into an iceberg at someone's expressions of affection and interest

gotcha

thankf for all the replies! it really helps one out. I hadn't consired addiction but the difficulty keeping jobs does sound awfully familiar. I hope he's alright
https://imgur.com/a/b5HGgge
I kept the wrapping paper he made, i find it impossibly cute

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.