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

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?

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?

― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

christ, alfred, that just gives me all the feels

i don't get them so much nowadays, but earlier in puberty i would get these incredibly intense crushes. when they were for people across the country, it was fine, but when i started getting crushes on local people, i was like, what do i even do with this? what do i want this person _for_?

i envy people who are good at things, who are successful at things, that i'm not. even if the people themselves aren't necessarily happy about those things. women who are tall and athletic and have great midriffs. people who are great at art, people who have experience with academia, people who orgasm ten times a day, people who _want_ sex, people who are really good at ropework, people who have been doing queer shit since they were, uh, let's say 18. envy and desire, they get so mixed up in my head. god, i'd love to be able to borrow other people's bodies, just for a little bit. to feel what they feel. i have such a deep longing for that.

that doesn't mean i don't want to be me! i like being me. being me is wonderful. i'm just really curious. madonna is... complicated. gender is complicated. i always wanted to know, though, what it feels like for a girl. now i know, and that _is_ enough. absolutely. more than enough, it's everything, everything to me. doesn't stop me from being curious. not just what it feels like to be a girl, what it feels like to be this person, to be that person. i know that i can't have that, that it's impossible. i want things i can't have, sometimes.

shit, i still don't even know what sex _is_. sometimes things turn me on, and it feels good, but a lot of times it feels just as good when it _doesn't_ turn me on. asexual people have all these words for different feelings and i don't know which ones are _mine_, which ones are right for me. i'm emotional, i'm sensual. i want to be able to hold people, to touch people, to cry on people's shoulders without having to say why. that's what feels _good_ to me.

i have this thing called a magic wand and sometimes i use it the way most people who have one use it and it feels good. it feels like work, but it feels pretty good, i guess, for a couple minutes, until i get bored and stop. you know what feels better? using it on my back. like, i mean... i'm expressive like that lady at katz's in "when harry met sally". that kind of expressive. it's not _sexual_, i'm not _turned on_. i'm making the noises, though, to anybody listening it sounds extremely dirty, because those kinds of noises are primarily associated with erotic pleasure. my body feels _good_ when i use my back massager on my back. i feel just a tremendous sense of relief. and it's that way for a lot of things. i remember going to a place in indianapolis that had unusually good oysters, and how embarrassed my ex-wife was at my making the noises i did in public. "please, deadname, there are children around". if i could control it, i guess i'd feel embarrassed, but i can't control it, and i'm not doing anything dirty. if other people disapprove, that's on them.

my girlfriend came over last night and it was pretty great. we held each other and told each other how proud we were of each other and how happy we were to be with each other. it's been a hard couple of weeks. we're both working hard to be our best selves and to have healthy boundaries with each other, and that means that we don't necessarily see a lot of each other in casual situations. we have strong emotional feelings about each other, strong enough that we both have to work really hard to make sure that our connection is healthy, that our bond isn't a trauma bond. being with her - not sexually, just literally _being around her_ - gives me a long-lasting, secure feeling of emotional joy that i don't get from anyone else, that i've never gotten from anyone else before. it's not important to either of us to have sex with each other.

we do kink occasionally. haven't done it in a while. i'd like to do more, to have more kink partners. i went to a trans halloween party at a local kink club last sunday. haven't been to that club in more than a year. lots of shit has gone down and i've been working on other things. one of my friends was doing "tastings" and tied me up for a bit. i'm really exploring what that means to me. i'm finding that even though it _can_ be sexual, most of the time it just isn't. it's sensual. again, here i am in a kink club getting tied up by someone i find attractive and i'm just not turned on in the slightest. what i feel is a deep sense of just... peace, relaxation. i have a really hard time relaxing. i'm hypervigilant a lot, on edge. particularly in social situations. i was pretty stressed and nervous going there, but when this person put me in a pretty simple tie all the worry and stress just kind of melted away. it's that sense of _relief_ similar to what i feel when i use the back massager on my back. that's important to me. when i say i'm a slut - which i do, which i am - that's what i'm a slut for, that feeling. erotic stimulation with a partner just isn't very important to me.

My bf is telling me that the theatre he works for is doing Angels In America. There’s a bit of a kerfuffle amongst the admin because only one of the actors is queer, the rest are straight. My feelings were neutral-ok about that and I said so. My bf asked me why? And I said, “because queer joy belongs to queers and queers alone, but queer grief should belong to everybody”

You reminded me about Andrew Garfield starring in a recent Broadway production.

My bf is telling me that the theatre he works for is doing Angels In America. There’s a bit of a kerfuffle amongst the admin because only one of the actors is queer, the rest are straight. My feelings were neutral-ok about that and I said so. My bf asked me why? And I said, “because queer joy belongs to queers and queers alone, but queer grief should belong to everybody”

― meaner stinks meat bake it cone (flamboyant goon tie included)

OTMFM

i missed the last few posts until now, they were a pleasure to read this morning - thank you. happy holidays to all the queers here. i really do love ya even tho i'm a bitch sometimes. i'm working on that.

the throuple is still burning strong. we spent yesterday afternoon into this morning together and i legitimately think it was one of the happiest times i've ever experienced. just delirious laughter and happiness.

he's going to kind of disappear into a family wormhole for the next week and a half. it's a very light thing, i'm happy for him, but there's that nagging thought of "christmas is for legitimate families, not mine." his mother has expressed interest in meeting me and my partner. i hope that happens. it feels like it should. it's delicate but i think there's a path forward. his parents truly seem like decent people. if i survived mine i can handle just about anyone's.

I love a functioning polycule!

Polycules in my life have been the best of the times and the worst of times— and when they’re bad, they’re life-destroying; I won’t ever get into one again, me.

I went a couple nights ago to see the local Queer Orchestra. Their annual Christmas concert is (no hyperbole) the best concert of the year. Beverly Glenn Copeland sang with his wife, US Girls sang a Christmas Carol she wrote (“Santa, Stay Home”), one of the Baroness comedians read a monologue, my buddy Thom sang a Blossom Dearie song (“Liz and Ralph and Calvin”). It just ruled. Best night of the year

i legitimately think it was one of the happiest times i've ever experienced. just delirious laughter and happiness.

this is so nice to read

aww map <3

that night sounds fun fgti! i went to a marionette performance of 'the nutcracker' over the weekend, not particularly queer but very delightful all the same.

my big life updates:

- still waiting to hear back about a job i'm up for, mentally checking tf out of my current job even though it's not 100% certain i'm getting this new one, tbh i just generally feel over it already anyway

- i recently became a dues-paying member of an italian-american society whose headquarters is across the street from my apartment. they have monthly pasta dinners for the general public with wine and dancing and also some members-only events. everyone i've met through it is incredibly sweet, it's lots of people my age, younger, and much older, and i'm certain there's some other queers in there too. i'm planning to play WFH hooky one day this week to play bocce with some retirees and i'm very excited for it

- on that note, i'm hosting a seven fishes dinner on xmas eve, having never done one before. i'm not sweating it too hard as i've asked our guests to pitch in a bit and nothing i'm making is super labor-intensive, i'm more just anxious about being able to procure all the ingredients i need in time. also generally thankful that i'm not traveling before xmas this year (we're going to florida to visit my in-laws a few days after tho)

what part of Florida?

about an hour east of tampa. while we're there we're also stopping at homosassa (best place name ever!) for a (not-homo) wedding, and one night in downtown disney to meet up with my family (my brother and his gf are running races at disney)

oh fer fuxsake

this is my queer life

i totalled my car last night trying to drive onto a meridian, because i have no night vision, which is kind of a problem on the longest day of the year

the tow truck i got to tow my car put it _in front of the only door to the garage_ of the place i towed it to

i have a coffee date today at 1 pm

and the girl i went out with a month ago who ghosted me just texted me out of the blue

and no i am not going to cancel that date, are you fucking kidding me? i haven't been on a date in a month, and my primary partner is in residential for the indefinite future

KATE how did the date go?

christmas eve we drove to wendover, nv to get edibles. wendover is in some serious desert wilderness, which we ventured into for an hour or two, long enough for me to do a very exhilarating run, holy shit it was cold out there.

then i kinda had an emotional breakdown on christmas morning, just like out of the blue! past loneliness and family grief just busting up through me like a vent. sent a long, sad message to our #3. i took a nap, did some yoga, and settled by the evening. i'm fine today but the meta-effect of, like, "i'm still not stable" ripples out for a while. hoping i'll feel buoyant again soon. my job sucks. applying for something else this week - at the department of corrections. tells you how much my job sucks.

i still do not like christmas one bit, but i'm starting to imagine ways it could just be normal and happy for me. traveling is a great idea, which i say every year, but the money isn't always there. needed to post a little mope. how was everyone else's holiday? what did you all get up to? any drama??