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

So after all these years interacting with y'all in person or on these threads, I've an idea about your milieus -- generally, I suppose. Who forms part of your circle? Me, my group comprises cis straight males and their spouses, straight women and their spouses, some gays who flit in and out of the main group, and sundry acquaintances whom I hang out with less often.

Really fun to see this year's Pride month being met with an even higher level of anti-LGBTQ culture war hysteria.

Our small circle of good friends are all cis, mostly hetero, mostly female (plus, in some cases, their male spouses), diverse only in terms of racial makeup. Historically, the few close friendships I've had have all been with hetero men.

We've lived in our current city since 2015, during which we have only managed to make one really close new(ish) friend, another hetero male. Our social circle seemed to be expanding for a while, but the pandemic killed that, and we still haven't really managed to readjust to social life.

It is worth mentioning that I am just not a terribly social person; to paraphrase Fiona Apple: my dogs, my man, and my writing are my holy trinity.

I'd say my truly core group of friends is roughly 30-40% gay men. The rest is basically a straight mix, even split. My married lesbian couple moved to L.A.

my core friend group where i live consists of mostly straight couples (ie men and women in LTRs with each other, some of whom now have kids), one other gay couple, one lesbian, and us. i have maybe one or two close gay friends who i'm still in touch with from college, all my other good college pals are heteros. beyond this close circle, it's pretty mixed, some queers of all types that i'm on friendly terms with but not close to, and a good deal of str8s too. i’d say my husband's situation is pretty similar to mine.

i love my hetero friends dearly but i'm not gonna lie, when i see photos of groups of gay men who are all good friends hanging out with each other on socmed, having dinner or going on trips together and whatnot, i get a little jealous because i've never really had that in my life. i can count my close gay male friends on one hand and still have fingers left over. there's reasons for this i'm sure but i don't want to bore the thread with self-analysis.

I feel you, donna.

i'm an introvert i.e. it takes energy i don't always have to socialize, especially with people who have any kind of social status from my pov, which just adds feeling intimidated to the mix of social anxiety i experience. that being said when i'm relatively relaxed my social skills aren't bad.

djing again has forced me to be social and i'm surprised to find we're going to dinner with another gay couple regularly and there are two or three new gay men i'm friendly with.

we also had two guests stay with us over pride weekend, a longtime fb friend (gay man) and his friend (queer trans woman). they spoke a fair amount about being involved with a group here that provides queer people with community and often family substitute type relationships. it really piqued my interest and i can see myself becoming more involved with something like that. you could tell the trans woman was offering the gay man a bit of motherly protection and guidance. said gay man is suffering the trauma anyone raised in a conservative religious environment suffers and has been struggling the past few years. struggling financially but doesn't talk about it and creates abundance through their outfits etc which they jokingly called a "tr*** tornado". i have a hunch they might be on a trans journey but it isn't my place to say.

i can see myself being more motivated to be social with queer people who need family, because that's also me. i'm realizing that type of relationship is a very serious undertaking and not something that happens overnight, it also doesn't have to be "all in" every time with every person - you can offer smaller amounts of yourself that you feel able to offer when and how you can.

I've followed your last-paragraph advice when I deal with family. Conserving psychic energy is healthy!

Can I just say how baffled my teenage self would be by my life at 44: married (to a man!) but still existing with an overwhelmingly hetero social circle.

*within

I wrote my question btw because I've hit middle age and am surrounded by the most intelligent and loving str8 friends in the world in whose presence I often have to assert a queerness I don't often explore on my own other than in the form of hookups.

i have to say it's so nice to "girl out" with another gay man over dumb stuff, i don't need it all the time but god it's refreshing every once in a while.

Yes, outside of my husband, my two closest friends (a committed, non-married couple) are precisely for girling out, going dancing, etc. It's nice to have that on the outside.

Most of the people I hang out with regularly are straight. That said, I work behind a bar with a lesbian and a pansexual, mostly serving straight people, although we do have some LGBTQ customers. I know three non binary people locally, and a friend here has recently come out as trans. We do have a group of gay friends, but most of them are more casual buddies than inner circle. In my thirties and forties, I spent a lot more time with gay men, mainly because we were all going out regularly to gay venues, but that dissolved over time.

In my thirties and forties, I spent a lot more time with gay men, mainly because we were all going out regularly to gay venues, but that dissolved over time.

― mike t-diva, Wednesday, June 8, 2022

same for me

I love the lot of you.

Friends, what movie should I show this year for my Pride movie morning. I've done this for like 7 years running, inviting friends late Saturday morning (the highest non-drunk energy of the weekend in my experience) and shown a movie and given a nourishing brunch. Previous years' attractions included:

PARIS IS BURNING
DEATH BECOMES HER
TO WONG FOO
BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER
TOP GUN

... and a couple more I'm spacing on. The point is to find a movie everyone can talk through even if they haven't seen it before. Here's my current shortlist:

SERIAL MOM
CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC
THE WIZ
DRESSED TO KILL
CLUE

A milkshake?

Friedkin’s The Boys In the Band, as overwrought as it was, still feels fresh and is a film I think can be watched in a glancing manner

It's older than the ones on your list, though. Also, I haven't seen the recent version and don't know if that negates it for people today

The recent Boys in the Band is grotesque.

I don’t remember much about Parting Glances (1986) except that I really liked watching it at the time. I have been meaning to see it again. It is probably really dated. Does anyone else remember it?

Not dated at all except for the grotty budget. Buscemi is warm and cute and queer in a way he wasn't again.

I have issues with both versions of TBitB, but the original at least has Leonard Frey in one of the all time great queer roles

Parting Glances is lovely. It totally holds up.

Frey is terrific in the original Boys, which only makes Zachary Quinto's unconvincing take on the character all the more ludicrous.

We have a few gay friends— three fag couples, two dyke couples, and about five straight couples that we see on a regular basis. The fag couples are the ones we see the most, no surprise there.

I have no RL friends. Not sure if I want any until I get into a place and a life where I can be openly trans and queer. As for my online acquaintances...it's been a bizarre situation, at least to me. It's something I'd like to write about eventually, but if I write about it here it will be on 77.

Friedkin’s The Boys In the Band, as overwrought as it was, still feels fresh and is a film I think can be watched in a glancing manner

― Dan S.

I gotta say my recent experiences have given me a lot more understanding of the whole "Boys in the Band" thing, the whole "self-loathing gays" thing seemed so weird and overwrought until I transitioned. Now it's more like "Oh, yeah, shit-tons of trauma, we're all gay disasters. Got it."

Almost all the people I hang out, aside from co-workers, are trans, gender-diverse, genderqueer, something along those lines, these days. I'm not consciously doing the "trans separatist" T4T thing Torrey Peters critiques in "Infect Your Friends And Loved Ones". It is still a thing, in that people still do it, but I'm really skeptical that a community made up entirely of severely trauma-damaged people is going to be anywhere near utopian. There's just a shit-ton of us around where I live, and a lot of them are people I wind up liking. There's also just like a lot of misconceptions about trans folks in general and it's nice to hang out with people who I know won't be weird about it when, for instance, I say I'm a non-binary trans woman.

It's also only been about three years for me, and I'm not going to say for sure my social circle might not change in another few years. Honestly I'm still going through some pretty intense personal changes that make hanging out with cishets not terribly practical a lot of the time.

I am schizoid and have gradually withdrawn from social situations starting in my mid 20's, reaching the point of 'social isolation' probably in the last 4 or 5 years. I keep in contact with a few close friends who I occasionally see, almost always one-on-one at this point. But I can quite happily go months without speaking to anyone.

Previously my main friend groups had been "diverse only in terms of racial makeup". And I remain on friendly terms with most of the guys I've dated but I've really only had one close platonic friend who is a gay man. He is very involved in his local bear scene and his main social group consists entirely of gay couples (all male).

When I was a witch's apprentice there were a lot of gay men around, and I received a lot of unwanted attention. One former apprentice in particular was relentless. Either I'm really bad at making it clear when I'm not interested or idk. I spent the day with them once and unwanted attention was a problem. And actually, it was a problem too when I was a witch's apprentice. One former apprentice in particular was so relentless that I stopped going. Either I'm really bad at making it clear I'm not interested or idk.

I was also friendly with a younger (by 8-10 years) gay couple in my neighborhood in my early 30's, very soft boys who were really the most fun, even though there were tensions in their relationship. Hanging around with them was just like an hours-long giggle session every time.

sorry, that's a mess.

(It's probably in part b/c i'm very bad at reading social cues in general, and tend to be totally oblivious unless somebody is really forward and unambiguous)

Following up on the social circles convo from yesterday, I just realized, having watched both Fire Island and the first season of Somebody Somewhere in the past week, that my own queer existence is much more like the latter than the former.

Most people’s is I bet

Depends on age range. From 25-27 or so, my life was much more Fire Island, but yknow

I had a memorable week on Fire Island in the 90s - White Party, drugs, beautiful vistas, deer on the beach, an anonymous blowjob in the meat rack, and a sexy guy I got to spend the night naked with, without having sex, which made it all the better. I met David Geffen and thought he was kind of creepy

I'm sure I will never go there again

good story.

gay youth is so idealized, i wish we had a more fulfilling place for queer elders in society other than homeownership, interiority and fleeting connections with nephews and nieces. what i've seen of palm springs does not appeal tbh.

"i wish we had a more fulfilling place for queer elders in society other than homeownership, interiority and fleeting connections with nephews and nieces."

yes

i think about that old dead fingers talk song a lot.

ok wait the band is named "dead fingers talk"

I read that as Dead Ringers.

I’m not sure I get yr drift— like of course there should me more representation of older queer people, but what do you have in mind?

Also not really sure what the hell is wrong with homeownership or doting on ny friends’ kids. Not everyone wants to party and have anonymous hookups until they die.

good story.

gay youth is so idealized, i wish we had a more fulfilling place for queer elders in society other than homeownership, interiority and fleeting connections with nephews and nieces. what i've seen of palm springs does not appeal tbh.

The thing is that there are fulfilling roles, it’s just that they’re invisibilized— so the problem seems more about representation than about what actually happens in queer circles.

Finally just to say that I’ve been with my husband for 11 years, and in the circles that we run in, our relationship is seen as a model, not as some sort of decline into normativity. And our circles are radical circles.

I had a moment around age 35 where a subplot involving “my then-boyfriend’s affair” was causing me gay confusion, like, existential stuff. Feeling like every other family member was speeding toward grandparenthood, second home ownership. Was confused about the long-term implications of queerness, not of “dick in bum” forever, but more like, “what is the meaning of queerness when the basic features of it dry up and/or become less important?”

Like, are you queer if you’re not having sex? (Conversely, are you queer even if you embrace a capitalist life trajectory?)

I invited a dignified actor friend over for dinner, guy is in his 80s and if I told you his name you’d be like “ohhh HIM?” (Google Sissy Boy Slap Party). I wanted to pick his brain about “growing old gracefully as a gay” and see what he had to say. I didn’t preemptively let him know I desires to discuss this as a topic.

The entire dinner, he was loudly reminiscing about dicks and asses and Fire Island— it was a bawdy summation. His term for a penis was “a pee-pee”, and he’d bark it loudly at the end of a punch line. “And when I turned around… he had pulled out his PEE-PEE!!!”

I remembered a little later about Gore Vidal in his dotage sadly saying to a friend, “hey, why don’t we invite [x] over? Remember, he had a dick as big as a baby’s arm” and the interviewer noted that [x] had been dead for years

Anyway, all this is to say that there hasn’t been much luck in the “devising a long term model for gay men’s psychological retirement plans” over here. I definitely think turning to writing seems to be a recurring thing though

“Gay men’s psychological retirement plans”?!?

Please elaborate, because I am absolutely lost.

Honestly this has been a major factor in my depression adventures— feeling like most of the gay dudes I know have just grown MORE depressed and MORE alone as they age and age. The “well, what the fuck do I have to look forward to?” question definitely informs my own periods or lethargy and wantingtodie-ness

I'm having less sex but my friendships are growing profounder. Maybe that's queerness at its best.

tabes idk if it’s deliberate but I always feel as if you respond in such confrontational ways toward my posts and it’s been going on for years. If it’s unintentional then I guess there’s nothing really to say about it. I’ve had side convos with other boarders like “am I crazy? Is his tone always so hostile toward me?” and I’ve been agreed with, idk. I know we never had a bad hookup because I can count the names and faces of every dude I’ve hooked up with, all twenty-five of them

Anyway

I’ll explain what I meant by what I typed later I want coffees first

I’m truly not trying to be an asshole, but I have to say that if your gay male friends are getting more depressed and alone as they get older, there is the distinct possibility that you need to find new friends.

My best gay friend is a trans faggot who is ten years younger than me. These are the kinds of queer friendships that are sustaining and bring me hope, because he has friends who are a few years younger and I meet them, too, and know that there are plenty of weird queer young folks running around.

If this is about not being able to run with the young folks anymore, then it seems more about gay mens’ hangups about youth.

fgti, I just think our experiences are so diametrically opposed that I have a hard time understanding where you’re coming from a lot of the time.

But truly, it’s nothing personal— I’m just often baffled by the things that you post, particularly in the queer threads.

That said, I’m sorry and I’ll be more mindful of how I interact with you here. I like many things you write on other threads and admire your art.

Thanks for that, and I mean it. Sorry if I come off as baffling.. I feel somewhat invested in this topic and wanna type more when I’m not on my phone

No need to apologize— your experience and how you make sense of it is your own!! I think that one of my biggest faults is that my own bafflement comes across as aggro and investigatory, like I’m cross-examining or something. It’s not a good look and I appreciate being called out on it.

I’m also deeply interested in this topic, happy to continue conversation whenever.