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

I think that I’ve been lucky in this regard, in that my grandparents on one side were getting arrested at street protests well into their 80s, and I know a lot of older queer people through writing community— I mean, as much as someone like Dennis Cooper could be my dad, he is also my friend and colleague, and I know plenty of other queer people around his age who are living fulfilling, interesting lives well past their 60s.

For me, much of this is related to the heteronormativity that creeps into the consciousness of even the most strident among us— that’s not a knock, just a reality that needs to be acknowledged. Lord knows I feel it sometimes.

Part of this, too, especially for men who love men, is that so many people who could have been examples of alternative ways to live were killed for being who they were. With fewer living elders to look up to and learn from, it becomes more difficult to find examples that might work as guides for our own lives as we age.

thanks everyone for sharing where they're at, much food for thought.

i guess i've just been reflecting lately about what's important to me. which makes me think of ways i may not be living up to that. i still have internalized hetero desire like boxedjoy was describing on the one hand, on the other hand, what does thriving look like? how much do i really need? where can i scale back? things like that. balance is probably the main thing i've been leaning into lately. sometimes i feel like i need to shift my balance? maybe i don't need to do anything, and i'm just growing as a person.

to be clear, i'd love to own a home, the security of that sounds amazing, but i'd be terrible at it! because how my parents did it sucked ass. i'd have to learn so much. learning for me is .. a little goes a long way, haha, it's often overwhelming and exhausting.

I love that, table

I think I have had more "almost" elders in my proximity, people who do function as legitimate people to whom I look up, but haven't wholly taken on a "role model" place in my life. Most of the happiest queer elders individuals who I've met have had the advantage of a steady long-term rental or an early property purchase... they've been living in the same place for decades. Wish I could say the same! although my ex-partner has held on to our formerly co-habited unit for almost ten years now and I love to see that. Me, I can't even decide what city to put down roots

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.

― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table)

i don't see that anyone's saying anything is _wrong_ with those things, look, i don't want to do the diversity lecture but we are, like, all different. what works for you may not necessarily work for all of us!

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

― flamboyant goon tie included

hi, phoning in from the Lesbian Brigade here! as far as i'm concerned, the answer to your first question is "yes". i mean i'm much more "on our backs" than "off our backs", don't get me wrong. i also want to tread gingerly here because i know there has been some... disagreement in the past as to what extent asexuality is a queer identity, and my experience is that it very much is for me, in... a particular sense.

one will see in some cases feminizing HRT called "chemical castration", which is in a technical sense correct, but the _desexualization_ or even _unsexing_ inherent in that is something i really disagree with. estrogen and (particularly) progesterone horny is a beautiful thing in and of itself, for me it's a classic example of "quality over quantity", just going into this _space_ where _everything_ is charged with the quality of the erotic in some sense. being, like, a blackpilled incel isn't queer, but i do some _extremely gay shit_ even if i don't find penetrative sex to be particularly worth the time and effort involved. hell, even that... i mean look one of the major reasons i had the sort of genital reconstructive surgery i did was because the idea of being someone for whom PIV intercourse in _any_ fashion was biologically impossible was _very appealing_ to me. to me, that's pretty fucking queer.

as to your second question, being on a capitalist life trajectory i don't think has much bearing one one's individual queerness, but in terms of existing in solidarity with queer comunity it can cause certain problems in practice. like, caitlyn jenner is a trans woman but i don't really think of her as part of the Trans Community.

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

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

to me there's like this aspect of _homosociality_ that a lot of guys don't have, and i don't think homosociality is _queer_, normative womanhood is hugely homosocial to the point where it causes genuine problems for those of us who are also homosexual (the "sappho and her friend" thing), but as a queer person i find that homosociality is... i mean being trans i don't have a "retirement plan", psychological or otherwise, it doesn't seem particularly viable to me right now, but if i had the luxury i think homosociality would be a big part of it.

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.

― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table)

i don't see that anyone's saying anything is _wrong_ with those things, look, i don't want to do the diversity lecture but we are, like, all different. what works for you may not necessarily work for all of us!

you do a lot of reacting on here. just an observation.

growing a little tired of the shouting in a box mode a lot of people seem to be locked in lately, i do it a lot too. the thing that rubs is when i express interest in what someone else is saying and it isn't reciprocated. (probably not going to try again with that person.)

Well, it's a little hard to not be reactive or defensive when your post implies negative judgment on some elements of my own existence— like, sorry we own a house, I guess those years of being homeless and living on scraps don't matter much.

I also don't really understand the lecturing tone from kate— part of what I was getting at in my original post was that not everyone wants the same things, so merely repeating that back to me as if I don't already know is a bit, well, insulting?

fwiw it doesn't look like lecturing to me; she's in a sense reassuring you and her and the rest of us.

We all need to take a deep breath in this thread. The last 48 hours have been bizarre, certainly the surliest it's ever been. I'm not sure why we're assuming the worst from posters who've been on ILX in some form for almost two decades. We should start with the assumption that "no one here tries to be an asshole."

xp i think it's awesome that you own a home. i want to own a home.

realizing my post was the problem, it wasn't clear. i was trying to point to the kind of suburban homeownership lifestyle that boxedjoy articulated much better.

You want to do well at school so you can go off to uni so you can get a good job so you can save money so you can buy a home so you can raise a family.

that being said, it feels like with being sheltered in the us you're either on the losing side (renters) or the winning side (owners). of course i want to be on the winning side, i want that for people i care about. but it seems that being on the winning side means you're participating in that game in some unavoidable ways. i mean maybe you make up for that by being a yimby or w/e.

xp thanks alfred

Of course renters are on the losing side, but I want to make it clear that in the city that I live in, one year of rent on a decent 1br is the equivalent of a down payment on a house— neither me nor my partner are rolling in cash, but we had a modicum of savings and the time seemed right a few years back. What I'm trying to get at is that like the diversity of desires and needs among all of us, we're also very geographically spread out, and so the path to homeownership and etc in a place like Portland or Miami or New York or Salt Lake City is not remotely similar to the path it is in a place like Philly or Pittsburgh or hell, Cleveland.

I also want to apologize for being so reactive and perhaps stirring the pot a bit much on here. I genuinely like all of you, and know that if I ever act like an asshole, I really don't mean it personally.

xp huh, i hope that's true. it kinda seems like everywhere is expensive now, but maybe that isn't as true in other cities. are you referring to still 'undesirable' urban areas that are still affordable? i was under the impression that you had to start considering somewhere like omaha nebraska to find them, but i'm not basing that on anything. it's worth a look, rather than starting with a baseline 'i'll never be able to have price-stable housing' assumption.

just a little about where we're at - my parents stepped in and bought us a trailer, but the land is rented to us by the property management co. for about 75% of what a 1 bd apt costs to rent here. significantly less per month for the space, but still a fair amount.

i really like everyone in here too, i'm sorry for starting with hostile assumptions about people's motives far too often.

It depends on what undesirable means! Can I buy crack cocaine within a block of my house? Yes. Can I also buy a $5 pour-over and a vegan donut? Yes.

Have you tried combining them?

Love everyone itt

Loved your responses, too, rushomancy! It got me thinking about how gay identity seemed at times intractable from “sexual viability” when it didn’t/doesn’t need to be

This has been a really interesting conversation to follow. The main thing I have to add to it as relatively newly-out bi man in a committed same-sex relationship is that one of the things my partner really liked about me and has really leaned into is that I have kids and a reasonably generous custody arrangement with my ex-wife that has them up with us multiple times a year and a significant chunk of the summer. It’s very much a positive for me that he’s so happy to support my parenthood and help when the kids are here and it really didn’t cross my mind as being a strictly heteronormative thing in our relationship.

DJP nothing brightens my day more than sunny updates like these :)

I love heteronormative dick!

I love heteronormative dick!

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

like, in a platonic sense or...?

thanks for that pov on parenting djp. i'm glad to hear you have such great support.

when i close my eyes and think of myself in the future i see me and my (current) boyfriend, in our 60s, in a house somewhere, in the country? i think that last part is just tech/social media exhaustion, idk if i could hack it out in the country. anyway, maybe that's not queer in the general political sense but it is, by definition, gay, which i think is enough for me. i've actually never thought all that hard about what our social circle would look like... maybe it's not that important to me. i've always been someone who gravitates towards a person as opposed to a social circle, even in platonic relationships dating back to adolescence.

but as i get into my mid 30s i find my social interactions to be more intentional, people aren't just... around the way they were when i was 25, i don't go to random parties and run into ppl as much anymore. i feel more like i'm building a constellation of friends piece by piece as opposed to just picking and choosing from what happens to be around me, or glomming onto other groups that i find myself overlapping with socially. i've lived in new york long enough to have had plenty of friendships fall by the wayside in favor of real, bedrock decade-long relationships with people who are integral parts of my life. and frankly only during this process have i started to think a lot about gay friendships, gay spaces (the pandemic also exacerbated this, i felt the absence of gay acquaintances and strangers very acutely for the first time in my life). i started to think about where and who i'm spending my time with less thru the lens of career networking and more thru the lens of what makes me feel happy and fulfilled as a mortal being. but that also reflects a shift in me thinking about my identity as a person not thru what i do for (or with) my work but who i am as a human. we've lately found ourselves hanging w/ a lot of gay couples... i like that. spending time with gay couples makes me happy, seeing that kind of love, considering their interior lives in relation to my own, thinking about how gay people in longterm relationships at this age grow together, how they spend their time, what makes them happy, how we mutually fit into each other's lives in that way. some of them have sexual tension (not [yet?] consummated), some don't! i also enjoy spending time with single people (alfred) too :) i think i feel less cool in a superficial way now but more whole generally.

lol am I your only single friend

no i’m just shouting you out specially!

i feel more like i'm building a constellation of friends piece by piece as opposed to just picking and choosing from what happens to be around me, or glomming onto other groups that i find myself overlapping with socially.

This is what I was trying to express here yesterday morning. I've added several excellent friends in the last year, one of whom is gay; the rest are cool straights, younger than me, still apt to go on long bike rides to Key Biscayne beaches or for swimming in backyard pools on long weekends and having good conversations.

I've almost made my peace, though, with being the one who instigates hangouts even with my closest chums. Most are married with children or coupled. I get that I'm not the first person on their minds. COVID has increased my desperation for contact; I've realized that while I'm introverted and can go a few days without seeing anyone outside my job I also need banal/intense conversations over drinks, especially after a day of writing and teaching. So I don't mind taking charge when the rewards are considerable. I'm at my highest level of intimacy with several close friends. Reading Sarge's post, I realized, shit, I've been buddies with this guy for 12 years, has it been that long?

One of the weirder things is that I’ve yet to meet either of you irl, despite our being on the queer threads for what feels like the longest?!? I’ve met a lot of the other queers here.

I was also thinking the other day: What happened to Je55e? I know Corey is down in the panhandle, married, and seems to have a quiet and peaceful life.

Been too overwhelmed with other stuff these last few days to meaningfully contribute to this conversation, but I just want to say that DJP's post makes me extremely happy, and the rest of your posts are giving me plenty to chew on. This is a great group of queers!

Over the years I've lost touch with a lot of friends, gay and straight, because they've had kids, or they had to move out of the SF Bay Area for financial reasons or other job opportunities, or they have chosen to leave, some to Palm Springs but also to many other places. One of my best friends is moving back from NY, which I’m ridiculously happy about. I have also lost touch with some extended family members I really like. I know it is important to reach out to people to maintain contact, but I'm not an extrovert so it's been hard for me.

The friends and family that remain in my life are spread out over the world, but I feel comfortable enough around them that I am determined to stay close to them. For me this is what it has boiled down to.

today's convo just inspired me to send an e-mail to friends i haven't spoken to in awhile, thanks gayz <3

hung out with my oldest, closest gay friend yesterday and had a lovely time. we went to a big pride dance party and then had dinner together, the first time in awhile it's been just him and me without our partners. he teaches in a smallish college city on the east coast but moved out here in 2020 to be closer to people he knows during the pandemic, not wanting to feel isolated in a cold climate where he only really knows other faculty members. shortly after moving here he met his very sweet now-boyfriend and they've since moved in together. he has to go back to the east coast this summer and his bf's going with him (the bf has never lived anywhere else aside from here so this'll be a big move for him). i'm honestly gonna feel pretty sad about it when he leaves - lockdowns robbed us of a lot of potential hang-out time, but i loved being in the same city as him again and generally just feel lucky to know him and still be friends with him after 15+ years. sorry to be a sap but good, close gay friends really are precious.

that is a really nice post donna rouge

One of my best gay friends is going through cancer right now— we’ve been friends since 2004. It’s a damn good thing he lives close by and I can pop in with nice things for him and get some quality time in.

thank you dan S :) and i'm glad you feel determined to stay close to your people

xp sorry to hear T, but it's great that you're close enough to visit him regularly, and i'm sure your visits mean a lot to him

This thread is a good thread

Isn't this a lovely thread? The gay thread. What a lovely, clever name. Where the elite meet. Never have I seen so much elite.

ok fuck off

I suppose the sell-by date of All About Eve quotes has expired, Dan. Eric and I've been using them since the Bush II years.

and remember what I said upthread about cooling off and stop assuming the worst of posters?

I don't assume the worst of you Alfred at all, but that post was very condescending

(the post about the gay thread)

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, hon, was like that.

My long post seven hours ago makes clear what I think of this thread.

"Isn't this a lovely thread? The gay thread. What a lovely, clever name. Where the elite meet. Never have I seen so much elite."

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 13, 2022

I feel like I'm in sync with you for the most part Alfred, but that is an awful post and is not representative of you or of this thread at all

and I don't even exactly remember my comments about All About Eve, just that I didn't think it was as great as Sunset Blvd. It's depressing to think that you were mocking me about those comments

i’m kind of cracking up at a spat breaking out after everyone posts how wonderful this thread is… but i don’t think we need to derail the thread over this

Shut up J0rdan S

Just now:

Him: “the white mugs would be cleaned better w baking soda”
Me: “that sounds fascinating and maybe you could demonstrate by doing the dishes once in a while”
Him: “or you could do what my mom does…”
Me: “fuck your dad?”

It's depressing to think that you were mocking me about those comments

I wasn't -- I was quoting AAE, as usual. I'm sorry, though.

We all need to take a deep breath in this thread. The last 48 hours have been bizarre, certainly the surliest it's ever been. I'm not sure why we're assuming the worst from posters who've been on ILX in some form for almost two decades. We should start with the assumption that "no one here tries to be an asshole."

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 13, 2022 12:05 PM (