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?

you can’t stop the sun from sinking, but you can celebrate loudly and demonstratively,

right. it feels good to do. fuck you sun, i'm alive and i'll sleep if i have to. the wave returns.

i'm glad to hear you're taking care of yourself well deflatormouse. will you have company? i hope it's lovely.

Last night got innaresting. I invited over a guy I'd made out with last year at my karaoke joint. He spent 90 minutes asking questions about queerness and his own inability to get hard around men as opposed to women, then we'd make out some more -- he would let me go no further and got especially nervous if I showed too much curiosity in his ass.

Cute slang for an unexercised anus: buttonhole

i love that. alfred that's hot!

There was a period where I used the phrase “pee poo” as short for “nothing sexual occurred”, as in, “my dick is for peeing, my asshole’s for pooping”. i.e.:

Q: how was your date last night?
A: it was a lot of fun, pee poo but we’re gonna see each other again next week

lmao

Sounds good Alfred. I’m all for asking questions, even if it’s awkward. I applaud it. Also I want this year to be about expanding my horizons.

i'm glad to hear you're taking care of yourself well deflatormouse. will you have company? i hope it's lovely.

thanks! it was nice, about a dozen people came and a few brought (living) pets. always wanted to have a party with more pet guests than humans but i thought the pets would be alive.
I found my dog’s old collar and leash and jiggled it around for a few minutes since that’s how I used to call him for a walk. it really felt like he was following right behind me, that was a powerful memory trigger. Even though “spirits” to me are more locally embedded and I don’t really believe in individual spirits of the dead. It’s still nice to create a space for remembering them quietly.

Yesterday I went to a Dia de los Muertos festival in the East Village with a beautiful ofrenda and an incredible mariachi band. And caught a play at Under St. Marks called Gore is for Girls, about a queer necromancy party :)

It was really, really gay. Could have used more glitter.

first thing i saw when i got out of my car at work this morning

https://i.postimg.cc/x0qnsYWD/kumho.jpg

otm

hitting the end of a long run of socializing. pee poo, in vintage fgti terms.

it's difficult for me. keeping track of my life often seems overwhelming, particularly socially. i don't do well at parties or in big groups. i don't drink. i have plenty of friends, and just continuing to talk to them feels overwhelming. not _too many_ friends. i'm just a complicated person and i talk to different people about different things - i don't have a "friend group".

i'm still trying to push myself to keep looking for work. applied for a job for the first time in five months this weekend. routine helps, but keeping a routine is hard when there are lots of things i have to do, but nothing i have to do at any particular time.

seeking out "pleasant and productive" social experiences is one of the things i need to do, and i've been doing it. i spend too much time around other people, though, and i stop caring for myself. i've been talking a little bit about the so-called "portland freeze" and how it's more that it's encouraged to cancel social obligations when we need to have time for ourselves. it's good but it definitely complicates socializing a lot. i overbook socially because i don't know who is going to cancel at the last minute. if nobody else cancels at the last minute and i'm still overbooked, well, i guess i'm the one who cancels at the last minute.

i value friendship more than intimacy. it's a lot easier to find people who will have sex with me than it is for me to find people who can have a conversation about something that isn't star wars, marvel movies, or lego. i'd rather be touch-starved than friendship-starved. all my friends complain about how hard it is to find someone who will get with them. i used to do that, and for me it's the opposite. my life is full of "ifs" - people who i could do things with if things were different. if they weren't twenty years younger than me. if they didn't have too much dysphoria. if they had been on HRT for more than, like, a week. if they weren't drunk all the time. if they didn't live too far away to spend any time with. if they didn't hate themselves. if we were remotely sexually compatible.

that last one is a big one. people around here complain about the "top shortage", and the truth is we don't have a "top shortage", we have a glut of entitled, demanding bottoms and subs. the longer i live a queer life the less sense "dom/sub" or "top/bottom" framing makes to me. it's more a question of how we ask for what we want, and what we're willing to compromise.

it's not gendered behavior, but because it is influenced by patriarchy, guys are often a lot more entitled. there are a lot of cishet guys who call themselves "subs" when what they really want is to be pegged, on demand, with no consideration for their partner. i'm a switch, but the bigger issue is that asking for anything is, like, the one things that makes me feel dysphoric, even though being entitled _certainly_ isn't an inherently gendered thing. i'm certainly willing to be there for other people, but a lot of times i don't feel like there's reciprocity or equity in my intimate relationships. i guess the natural thing to do would to be to tell my partner what i want instead of, like, leaving because i'm not getting my needs met. it's not easy. if i ask for something, the person will know what i want. knowledge is power. if someone knows what i want, they can use that knowledge to control and manipulate me. most people aren't like that, sure. usually the result of asking for what i want is just that i won't get it, nobody's fault, just the way it is.

well i guess i should go apply for a job or something. that's the thing - dating is the least of it. my life has been full of relationships of all kinds where i'm disempowered, mistreated, where my vulnerabilities are exploited and i'm taken advantage of, often by people who then tell me that it's all my fault. it's november 2025. i look around me and i feel like i'd be fucking stupid to _not_ expect that. except from my friends. i trust my friends. i'm very glad that i have so many great friends.

i had so much gay sex last night that it killed dick cheney and got zohran elected mayor