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?

but is it eco fash too?? don't leave me hanging

i kid i kid

That’s so interesting— I find jeans to be extremely comfortable, and slacks to be sharp-looking enough to be worth the slight degradation in comfort level. I only wear sweat pants to the gym or on weekend mornings and I always feel like I’m in pajamas when I do so

As I've gotten older I've gotten used to wearing shorts, like, everywhere.

i support that. i'll admit to caring more about my gym outfits than my work outfits. it's a little bit of a fantasy space for me. i have many gym clothes. sometimes i lay them out the night before an early morning. i settled on "military-adjacent crossfit tough guy" 8 years ago, and i'm still the reigning "shortest shorts in the gym" title holder with the ranger panties 🩳 🏆. it's feeling a little played out and not representative of who i am though. i wish i could graduate to a fur cape and a loin cloth - only slightly kidding. garish knowing 80s-inspired stuff doesn't appeal to me. i never liked bodybuilder fashion anyway. i'm into outfits that say "i compete in a sport or do a physical thing other than this". fight shorts. jiu jitsu tights. football jerseys. i wish singlets were more acceptable. they're very sensible for the activity! and they're obviously the hottest.

i don't watch football and don't plan to anytime soon BUT i do follow the "sports beefcake" group on facebook, which is basically the same thing right? i'm amazed at how many full-relief cocks and balls are visible in bright daylight under lycra, no underwear these days. it's a pain in the ass to find porn online anymore but dicks are proudly displayed on every football field in the country.

― map, Thursday, January 22, 2026 5:14 PM (yesterday)

i fucking love your fashion sense

one of the things that challenges me as a lesbian is the notion of making myself into an object of desire. it might seem weird but seeing your love for doing that as a gay man feels validating, gives me confidence. sexuality is complicated and all that and i am genuinely attracted towards men.

i think a little bit about the old "fag hag" stereotype. and i find it interesting because i'm kind of half fag and half fag hag. i like queer guys cuz they can do things, feel things, experience things, that straight men are shamed out of admitting or embodying. queer guys can make themselves into objects of desire. i've been reading a lot about heteropessimism lately - talia bhatt's takes on substack and just this morning i was watching avelo's video on "why we love hot evil men" - avelo refers to herself as a "former gay man". a lot of heteropessimism, for me, is understanding that a lot of what attracts me to men... isn't something heterosexual men are _allowed_ to express under patriarchy.

in other news my phone has been out all fucking week :(

That’s so interesting— I find jeans to be extremely comfortable, and slacks to be sharp-looking enough to be worth the slight degradation in comfort level. I only wear sweat pants to the gym or on weekend mornings and I always feel like I’m in pajamas when I do so

different strokes!

i have also resented having to wear anything for the sake of “decorum” or “propriety” for most of my life, so it sort of tracks that i am a 41 year old who prefers sweats but isn’t a slob about it

it might seem weird but seeing your love for doing that as a gay man feels validating, gives me confidence

this makes me happy to hear :). and it makes me want to keep doing it. i really appreciate the affirmation. i think that masculinity removed from a lotta rules and prescriptions (patriarchy, capitalism) becomes more like a flavor that exists in a balance with all of the other flavors a person can take on. i like to .. accentuate and celebrate the masculine but i think it can cross a line pretty easily into "forcing it". so much depends on motivations. it's subtle but can be kind of dramatic i think, why people are gendering, if the "why" is clouded with a lot of pain or disconnection. i'm trying to give a lot of .. charity towards myself when it comes to all my "gender stuff" haha.

i won a harness at drag bingo this week, my lesbian friend had to demonstrate to me how to put it on correctly lol. i am almost certainly never going to wear it in any context but nice to have just in case i guess

i'm currently harnessless but i have a vest, an arm band and some wrist bands and a hat as far as leather goes. a few years ago i spent way too much money on some horse leather wesco engineer boots. all this plus a jock = my outfit at the monthly sex party. i like having a reason to wear it all.

Note to parents: we teach girls how to respond to men flirting with them. We don't teach boys how to respond to other boys flirting with them. In 2026 I still talk to guys in their 20s and 30s who turn into idiots when they realize they're being hit on.

My cousin sent me a pic of a Polaroid I’d mailed her— it was taken 23 years ago— half a lifetime by my current age— from my first European tour, with The Hidden Cameras in 2003. I had an H&M tote bag that I sewed a felt shark on to it, and was wearing an orange hunting hat, I look ridiculous.

I think I get too depressed too easily these days. Feeling nervous and wrong-headed about my plans-made to spend my year recording and programming the new solo material— my friends and label all encouraging me to do so, my brain wanting to do so, but my brain also outfitted with such a malignant sense of self-loathing that I can’t even conceive of making my material and body “marketable” enough to cover the costs and not be evicted by this time next year

I’ve been doing the score for a documentary about my one-time half-a-lifetime-ago lover-turned-closefriend Patrick Wolf. It’s practically unpaid, which sucks, but the documentary is really beautiful, documents Patrick at his absolutely worst, the nadir of his depression, bankruptcy and drug addiction. It is bracing to be writing to footage of somebody I adore so much, seeing him in such a rough place— me wishing I’d known how badly it had gotten so I could’ve diverted my own path to help him when he needed it.

Patrick talks about something that pulled him out of addiction— a memory of being bullied as a child/teen. “This is what they want, the bullies,” he told himself, “for your gay as to be broke and drug addicted and lifeless.” I am, myself, familiar with spite as a motivator. I don’t know if I can rely on spite wholly to carry me through the next few months of creative process.

In addition to this— seeing ICE resistance get focused on the murder of two visibly-upstanding white people (Good and Pretti) has my now passed-on Pinoy-American friend Anthony returning in my head to re-explain to me why Clintons continued to get a free pass for so many years despite their terrible acts in Latin America: “Americans literally do not give a shit about brown people.”

Seeing that Geologist has made an album and I read the press release and saw it making lofty claims (the track couldn’t come close but it’s nice enough). And I thought of Ned posting on occasion the press releases from hell that turn up in his inbox and I was thinking, like, “the writing is just as bad even on PR for boutique Drag City records, the points of reference are just more obscure.”

To end this post on a purely joyful note I guess I have to pivot entirely: my dog has energy and athleticism for days and so it’s been a pleasure to get my body, this month, in the rainy-but-temperate Vancouver “”winter””, back to running 5k every other day, with her eagerly bounding alongside me, no issues. Health is wealth.