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

i'm with you, only a light dose of weed for me. it's been 3 years now since i had my last drink. it's crazy how i almost have a wilder time now being almost straight-edge. going to bed early and getting up early feels luxurious and exciting to me, and like i'm not running away from my own bullshit thru partying so it's all just in my face all the time.

this isn't to neg any partiers, i'm broadly pro-party tbr

oh I'll be up at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning! Morning walks rule.

oh same, i am very pro-party, and I still drink but rarely more than a beer or two.

went to a friend's house party last night, i was friends with or knew nearly everybody there so it was super fun. got home around 1am which felt super late to me lol. i had a couple margaritas and glasses of wine, alternated with glasses of water/seltzer. feel a lil sleepy but not hung over today.

so we're currently being swept away by a very handsome and talented young artist. a whatsapp romance until he returns from lake michigan. i'm twitterpated, my husband is, the artist is. it's a nice feeling overall but i'm also kind of stirred up, this snow globe hasn't been shaken in years. *sigh*

That’s fun! My ex and I had an on-again off-again third party, he is and was a prince, always kept things interesting

My current partner and I celebrated three years together last night. We ate and drank and wore nice fragrances and it was terrific!

ah that's lovely - congratulations!

My Manchester hookup from early this year has finally given me a date for my Hi-NRG club night in Nottingham. Actually, it’s better than that: two club nights, both on Saturdays, a fortnight apart, and both five hour sets. It’s nice to be reminded that not all my hookups are wrong ‘uns.

my bf and i are growing a lot in this opening up process and we feel closer to each other than ever, which is awesome. this guy we've both been really into is coming over tomorrow. i feel amazing right now. very satisfied and ready to go to sleep lol.

Idk where else to say this but my one-year old Big Dog she is an extreme cuddlebug, like never wants a moment without being in the arms of myself or my bf. My bf and I have to order her out of the bed at night so we can get into a spooning position, and in the morning we allow her to sandwich herself between us, and she promptly rolls on her back and falls asleep joyously, snoring

I dunno if dogs are gay but I really love my dog

Aw. What's her name?

I returned a couple days ago from gay glamping. I hooked up with a Las Vegas dude whose husband was traveling: a terrific power bottom. It compensated for the miasmic heat.

i have spent the past few days at the mercy of my mom’s new dog (her first ever!), a bichon frisé/shih tzu mix who is adorable as the dickens but still very much a high-strung 7-month-old puppy. he still seems skittish around me and no doubt regards me as an interloper, scratches and claws at my legs no matter how much i tell him to stop etc, but when you can manage to pick him up and hold him he instantly goes limp in your arms, like completely quiet and defenseless. as difficult as he sometimes makes it, i wuv him ;_;

trying to think of which band needs to write a song called “las vegas power bottom”

John Grant obv

My dog’s name is Nora, she’s Swiss.

That means she’s a Grosser Schweisser Sennenhund aka a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog aka a Swissy; I just say she’s Swiss.

Las Vegas Power Bottom sounds more like the title of a gay-baity band’s song, like The Ark or something. Maybe a Lana/Troye duet.

Google just returned about 80 results for “mighty morphin power bottoms”

all this dog love is good to hear about. i'm doing daily, heavy excursions into cat land with our boy leo, a chunky orange tabby. he is 50% grumpy bitch and 50% lover boy. like me!!!

Maybe a Lana/Troye duet.

haha otm

rn i'm paying leo the daily chicken tax

i gladly do this because we have been housefly free since we got him 3 years ago.

our artist friend lent us a few books, including an andy goldsworthy one. i'd heard the name before but hadn't really looked at his work. it's blowing me away tbh.

LOVE Andy Goldsworthy. I’ve seen some exhibitions.

so beautiful. should i dish here about artist friend? i don't know. he's sweet, precocious, young and well-off. very bright. very very sweet. with an interest in some "dark stuff", kink, power. beautiful red beard. golden retriever eyes. wears a scythian coin as a pendant sometimes ("i got it off the internet so who knows if it's real but i think it might be.") finished at a fancy art school in the spring and will be going back to his job at a fancy art making place on the east coast in january. i like him, i want to see where this goes & try not to get too hurt, it would be nice if this turned into a close friendship. working on it. meanwhile i'm feeling closer to my partner & things are generally hotter in my life atm. wholesome stuff i promise lol.

I’m going to Berlin next week, any recommendations on specific places to visit?

nice!

*pencils in Nice, France*

Anyone else?

(We are going for a 50th birthday celebration for the guy I did a German exchange program with in high school; he brought his whole family here this summer and went up the east coast sightseeing and we got to spend some awesome time with them in DC with my whole family, including my kids. This trip is very much for the adults though, as I understand it the party is a joint one with two other people and will be large)

that’s really sweet that you’re still in touch! afraid i haven’t been there in many years but the pergamon museum and hamburger bahnhof are both worth the visit if you wanna see some art

oh wow @ your friend’s dark sexy energy map. hope everything works out!

think i may have a gentleman caller stopping by today :x

Oh yeah the Pergamon is absolutely on the itinerary; my first visit there remains one of the most mine lowing experiences of my life

In Berlin we did like the (LGBTQ+-oriented) Schwules Museum as well as some more obvious museums (the Wall one and realising just how old the Nefertiti bust is I had to see it in the Neuemuseum). Definitely take a river cruise. A nice casual bar for food in Kreuzberg is Südblock. A good and little fancier restaurant in the north is FREA (it's vegan but as a non-v I dug it).

xp i hope you meant mind highing! i very much want to go to berlin someday. that sounds very exciting to do it with someone you have a seasoned connection with.

lil update on our friend. we've all basically confessed our love for each other. experiencing a little vertigo tbh! i'm trying to be careful but it's just totally exhilarating tbh. my boyfriend told me last night "wow, i guess someone has the keys to your heart." he knows that he does too but maybe not every chamber, i got different keys for different wings. kind of giving this guy carte blanche to the whole place. i hope i'm not too broken up when he alights to europe for a month in october and moves back to ph1lly in january. best i can hope for is a few trips to ph1lly next year. a part of me thinks i should cut back sooner rather than later to save myself too much heartbreak but it's too late and why the fuck would i do that? i'm such a fool.

lol that was meant to be “mind-blowing” but my fingers and phone had other plans

haha of course. i can hardly operate my phone these days tbqfh.

truly getting tired of educating the straights on the jazz thread.

a part of me thinks i should cut back sooner rather than later to save myself too much heartbreak but it's too late and why the fuck would i do that? i'm such a fool.

i don't wanna detract from the thrilling moment you're living, map (i am much more happy for you than i am worried for you fwiw). but do the queers of ilx have thoughts on how to navigate this stuff generally? feels like i've been all too eager to hand out keys to folks who had no idea what to do with them in the past. whereas others just intuitively know the codes. been unpacking a lot of heartbreak lately, it's prob tmi and "too out there" even by my standards.

ahh i hope you share. i feel you. i think maybe we just get more cautious, reflexively. & develop more armor. this guy is great but he's def on a different life path from us.

Our strength and our weakness is succumbing to impulses -- maybe it's our instinctive anti-capitalism or something.

i get the idea that he might know what to do with the keys but he isn't ready to really use them because he doesn't even know what he really wants yet. too young. i guess i'm hoping for a not-too-rough transition to admiring from the sidelines. tho i may overestimate my ability to keep up a relationship on diminished returns, especially when i already have a very loving primary. the past two weeks have felt really elevated and inspired, i know that. the next two weeks have the potential to be the same. after that, who knows. maybe the occasional whatsapp exchange or call after the move is enough, or more than enough. very much trying to throw out expectations in this case. my partner said "one day at a time" and i think those are wise words.

i don't think it's ever occurred to me how having a supportive, loving primary must make it so much easier to take these kinds of risks, having someone to jump in with you and propping up each others' confidence and having your combined strengths etc. i could write a little more sometime in the next couple of days.

<3

back at ya :)

i'm just super fucking lonely. my ex caught covid a week ago friday and i haven't seen her since then. which would be bad enough if we were monogamous. we're not, but she's my only partner.

succumbing to impulses. that's what i _want_. i wish it could just be simple. that i could get intimate with someone... i mean, no, _someones_... without worrying about them falling in love with me, or telling all our mutual friends i'm a narcissist, or both at once.

i have friends who use casual sex as a substitute for self-esteem. that's kind of a strong drive i have, though with intimacy, not sex, and one i actively resist... i want to be able to love myself as well as loving other people. i'm so starved for touch right now, though.

well, since i don't do sex, succumbing to impulses isn't as easy. i hear the local bathhouse is great, i have friends who love it, they're super trans-friendly, but... what is there for me there? i hear people talk about cuddle piles, but i've never actually seen one in person. i got invited to one, got invited by someone i like, someone i'm attracted to, but...

why do i succumb to my impulses? because if i don't, a week a bunch of fucked up stuff will happen and it will no longer be possible. get it while you can. that's how it has to be. they who hesitate are lost.

i look at someone and i'm cautious, reserved, i listen to closely to what they say and who they say it about. some of the ways people i'm attracted to act... they remind me of ways that i used to act, ways in which i'm trying to not act. as intense and dramatic as my relationship with my primary often is, it's... it's not stable, but it's _metastable_. which is all i really want, honestly.

i'm too reserved, sometimes. i hate doing things by myself. i could have gone to the rope jam today, gotten somebody else to tie me up. i just didn't want to go alone. there aren't a lot of things i do socially with my partner, but that's one of them.

it's not that people aren't interested. i draw some pretty rigid boundaries. i don't get with my metas. i am not going to get with my primary's roommate. these are healthy boundaries. i have good reasons for them. when i don't enforce my boundaries, when i don't advocate for myself, i get hurt. i'm just shaking from withdrawal. starving for touch.

i'm really sorry kate. you deserve touch - uncomplicated touch even.

my partner and i are in the most incredible love triangle and i just want to yell about it. we spent the weekend together at a forest ranger guard station. i bottomed for both of them and cried afterward, lying on the forest floor in the sunlight in a union suit. i haven't bottomed for anyone in years. is it some kind of truism that another person can't solve a couple's relationship problems? because the magic of this guy is literally solving our problems. greasing the sticky spots. lol. he's going to europe for two months. i thought he was moving back to philly in january, but that isn't until may and he hasn't even set an official date yet. i found this out on our drive home and omg i was so happy. i can't believe this is happening, it's fucking crazy.

i miss hearing from ilx queers. i hope there are updates to share.

this trio thing i've been on about is still burning. probably stronger in spite of it entering month 2 of a long distance stretch while he's on a travel scholarship. he and i have spent almost every afternoon video chatting for hours over the past two weeks. he was traveling alone, in ireland and then spain, and i have a nothing-y work from home job. on weekends when my partner hasn't been at work, we've all chatted. he and my partner also have a strong bond, which is crucial to the whole thing. now he's staying in tbilisi with a good friend and friend's extensive and well-off georgian family. so i expect he'll be busier for the next four weeks. it's only been two days since we last video chatted but i miss him and feel a little crazy about it.

needless to say i'm pretty smitten. i also feel pretty blue sometimes because i know i'm a crazy old fool. he's young and rich & we're old and poor. the likelihood of pain and even heartbreak is substantial. yet i'm doing it anyway. maybe i should take my inclination to have some faith in spite of the odds as a good sign--that i'm still fully alive. the hard part is going to be when he moves back to philly next summer for his job. he doesn't expect to be there permanently, but a few years is a long time of course.

Speaking of trios: last week I had a straight male bartender and his straight female friend, a little drunk, hit on me.

Woman: I wish you were straight!

Bartender: I wish I was gay!

map, the lust and the pain are part of the attraction. I was gonna say "hope it works out!" but how would it look like if it does?

haha i have no idea!

your friends must have seen you from across the bar and liked your vibe i guess :)

i'm on ilx largely for the queer perspectives at this point, but missed your last updates, map. not online much lately but i haven't dated in donkey's yonks and never update, all i can do itt is roll up dragging my lil wagon full of ghosts.

speaking of, how was everyone's halloween? i have a daily, ongoing dialog with the i ching but do an "annual long-range forecast" for myself at midnight every halloween. this year i ended up doing several readings on various "major life direction" topics- i mention it b/c one thing that came up repeatedly is i'm carrying a lot of dead weight, that i hold on too long to everything i love, and need to learn to dispose of what's run its course. moving on is hard!

"he's young and rich & we're old and poor." so the implied risk would be that he has years of exploration and discovery ahead of him whereas you are... settled and set in your ways? yeah, that doesn't sound like you at all. like, the picture i get from your posts cumulatively is of someone who is coming into his own and using that new mastery to go out into the world and try new shit, so like... the thing that's exciting about being so smitten is you're all going to be altered by this, if it ends then when it ends all of this is going to be part of you, you're going to be changed by it and so is he?