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

Hugs, map.

Xmas morning's a drag if you're single and your nieces are in Ohio with my sis' in-laws. I puttered uneasily for a few hours, went to my parents' for a drink and to collect a couple stray presents. A muy guapo Venezuelan bartender whom I've befriended invited me to his place for the purpose of testing the small bar area of which he was quite proud. Just six or seven of us, and we watched the drizzle over martinis and the chistorras he'd grilled. Then for the first time since 2018 most of my friends happened to be in Miami at the same time; we gathered at a buddy's mom's house with their wives and girlfriends and caught up. In bed by 1:30 a.m., wiped.

A solid Xmas then. But I understand the undertones of portent this holiday creates.

KATE how did the date go?

― ꙮ (map)

terrible, i fucking self-sabotaged again by telling her that she wouldn't possibly be interested in me because i'm old and traumatized

i'm trying to quit doing that, but i wasn't having a great day

on the plus side i managed to be open with the other lady about not being available to hang out because i wasn't driving anymore figuring she wouldn't ever want to talk to me again

instead she was like "oh yeah i got a relative with night blindness too, i could pick you up except i got my kids next week, maybe after the new year"

that was nice, that helped me really reorient my attitude... sometimes i get really down on myself and i've been really down on myself lately

-

in honestly unrelated news (because this lady and i are super platonic rn) my girlfriend got out of the hospital and she's come to the conclusion that she doesn't want anyone to go down on her until she is able to get surgery because of dysphoria

my girlfriend and i went to the movies yesterday though and spent the whole time cuddling, it was really nice. we haven't cuddled like that in a while.

anyway i'm going through a weird time, i'm asexual but i'm really missing girldick right now

so i'm thinking of hitting up this friend of mine who was just complaining about there being no-one local to fuck her

i kinda want to clean up my place first, it's gotten to be kind of a mess in the past week

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with my girlfriend having been basically unavailable since her relapse early last month, i've been trying to deal with a lot of stuff

idk if i've mentioned this but i've always sort of stayed on a subsistence dose of affection... i'm constantly starved but i have enough to get by, even if it means i'm pretty miserable

getting to a point where i don't have even that has kind of pushed me into dealing with stuff i haven't ever really dealt with

i was talking to a friend and she was saying how a lot of women transition and then the fetishes they had just go away and they have to figure out what they're into now that they're not into those fetishes anymore

that didn't happen to me. my big fetish wasn't anything explicitly gender-y, although there's a _lot_ of implicit gender

the big thing that embarrasses me about it is that it's something that's traditionally seen as "soft". like i talk about it and people roll their eyes and are like "oh that's cute."

it kind of makes me want to go all catullus 16 on them... it just makes me really defensive. for me this stuff isn't soft and fluffy, it's really hard for me to deal with. it's Serious Business, like they used to say on the internet.

been having a lot of nightmares about it the last couple days

i didn't have one last night, though, so that was good

i think it's because i've been writing stuff and actually talking to people about it. like, people who are into the same stuff.

idk, my whole life it's the only thing i've really been interested and i've never felt comfortable actually talking to someone else who was also into it until, like. yesterday.

and yeah this christmas has been _really fucking hard_ for me. like to the point where my girlfriend spent the week before christmas inpatient and i totalled my car a couple days before christmas and neither of those things were as bad as just... fucking _christmas_.

that's exciting re the kink! i'm still in the process of discovering mine. i want to try shibari. i even got some rope. tried the one-column tie a few times. on a cucumber. i was going to go to a class but i didn't, cuz our third asked us to close up. kinda weird to go from open to closed again. at first i was like no problem but now i'm not sure, there's some pressure i'm feeling around it.

xp ugh i'm sorry. it's not exactly positive but i am a little relieved to hear it sucks for other people too.

that's exciting re the kink! i'm still in the process of discovering mine. i want to try shibari. i even got some rope. tried the one-column tie a few times. on a cucumber. i was going to go to a class but i didn't, cuz our third asked us to close up. kinda weird to go from open to closed again. at first i was like no problem but now i'm not sure, there's some pressure i'm feeling around it.

― ꙮ (map)

oh i love shibari so much. there's this book that the local women-and-gender-expansive rope group sells at their workshops but i haven't been to an in-person meetup in ages. i've finally just accepted that i'm a total rope bottom.

i feel a lot of pressure to not bottom, even as a switch...

can i just say how much i hate the way the terminology is used? "bottom" vs. "sub". like i read "sub" as implying a d/s dynamic, and "bottom" as implying sex, and getting tied up isn't necessarily either for me. it's just getting tied up, which can cover a number of different experiences. anyway the local nomenclature is "rope bottom" so that's what i'm going with here.

the thing is that the place i live at least is notorious for its top shortage. i don't know if it's that way everywhere. maybe it's just a transfem thing. people transition and all of a sudden it's "oops, all bottoms". it genuinely hasn't been that way with me. i was always a switch, i was just...

ah, you know, it's low self-esteem, you know? whether it's guys or trans women, there's just a surfeit of subs. "why would anybody want me when there are so many more beautiful/more fit/younger/more experienced people to choose from". that shit. trying to tie knots doesn't give me a sense of mastery (in the sense of accomplishment, not, like, dom-type mastery), it's just frustrating and stressful for me.

my experience as a rope bottom is limited but i do tend to think i'm probably pretty good at it. i'm very communicative in rope. i'm pretty patient and i give good somatic feedback. i'm happy to make suggestions but the rope top is always the one in charge - i don't top from the bottom. honestly i do think i'm good at being tied up. this isn't something people necessarily think of as a skill, but it absolutely is.

fortunately for me the place where i live is a pretty big rope town. there's a lot of stuff i don't feel comfortable with in the local kink scene, but rope has always been something i've been interested in.

really what i need is more regular rope tops. my girlfriend is enjoying learning to tie but it's not something we do regularly. it's definitely something i need more of in my life.

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i'm not sure i could do a triad at all, particularly not a closed triad. i just have a hard time conceptually making sense of it... the main reason i broke up with my ex is because our ideas of what intimacy looked like were fundamentally incompatible, and she had a hard limit around me being intimate with other people. i can't imagine ever being in relationship/triad/polycule/whatever where the intimacy is so fulfilling that i'd feel comfortable saying "right, i'm not going to be intimate with anybody unless they're already part of this relationship". not only that, there's the whole idea of reciprocal expectation. it is an active source of joy to me that i don't have to meet all of my partner's intimacy needs. if they want something from me and i don't really feel like it, i can just say "go find somebody else to do that with". could they fall in love with that other person and dump me? sure, but it's not like you need to have sex with someone in order to fall in love with them!

kate, i've been thinking about the last part of your post, and how to describe the dynamic of my throuple (is that word annoying or annoying-funny? maybe i should use 'triad') as a response to it, but i don't think i know how. i generally agree with what you've said about sharing or restricting intimacy. i think a couple of factors make my case different. i also think that being exclusive with someone can be a 'tool' at a certain stage of a relationship. ultimately i don't think it should be a permanent state though.

i also think that being exclusive with someone can be a 'tool' at a certain stage of a relationship. ultimately i don't think it should be a permanent state though.

otm, i was going to comment something to that effect.

"annoying-funny" is otm as well.

kate, i've been thinking about the last part of your post, and how to describe the dynamic of my throuple (is that word annoying or annoying-funny? maybe i should use 'triad') as a response to it, but i don't think i know how. i generally agree with what you've said about sharing or restricting intimacy. i think a couple of factors make my case different. i also think that being exclusive with someone can be a 'tool' at a certain stage of a relationship. ultimately i don't think it should be a permanent state though.

― ꙮ (map)

oh god the last thing i'd want to do is pass judgements on other people's relationships lol, everybody has different things that work for them. and hell, i might find myself in an exclusive... throuple or whatever... at some point!

my only issue with "throuple" is that every time i read that word i think of the troupple king from shovel knight. which isn't that much of a problem, really, there are worse things to be reminded of than the troupple king.

lol. i didn't think you were passing judgment at all fwiw. i think i was trying to square my feelings about openness in general with this particular situation, and using your thoughts about it as a jumping off point. i didn't mean to imply that the difference there was like zero sum or anything.

holidays are trying.

my lifestyle differs from others in my family. i have a smaller footprint than most people. i don't drive, i only and always buy secondhand stuff. i cook everything i eat from scratch, and carry the groceries home on foot. i don't have a capitol-C Career. but the big one is i don't have kids. i feel like i'm being squeezed out of the frame by the others with their ballooning circus wagons and their neediness. like the more they expand, the more i need to contract in order to make room. it reached a point yesterday where i felt like screaming into the void.

*most people in my family

also not to imply any kind of martyrdom (barf) or ideological grounds for my lifestyle. it's just what i settled into as a burnout or w/e

I know what you mean. In my case that squeezing lessened as the kids aged. It's much better now.

thanks for giving me hope <3

the thought of the kids growing up makes me positively giddy atm and i love kids.

deflatormouse, i relate to so much of what you said. "just what i settled into as a burnout" - yeah. yep.

my feelings about kids are like ... cryogenically frozen at this time.

i received a christmas card from my mother yesterday. it was almost comedically nasty. full of put downs and judgment. and that thing she loves to do of offering a spot of praise or a possibility of love and then revoking it, twisting the knife. i know very clearly that it's just more from the sad cul-de-sac of her abuse, and my no contact status with her, which i reiterated to her via an email message (she's blocked so i don't see her reply), has built up a lot of protection for me, so i'm mostly ok. the weird thing is that all my siblings seem to trust their children around her - i've witnessed first hand that she issues her poison to these little kids. i can't bear that; i'd rather have no part of their lives than have to witness it.

so, kids. my only hope is that one or more of the nephews end up thoughtful or queer (or both lol) and one of them reaches out when i'm old. but i'm not counting on it.

map, I'm sorry about those developments. My only hope is that you seem to have created a healthy community apart from the blood relatives.

I had many moments a decade ago when birthdays, christenings, baby showers, First Communions, and so on seemed designed to press me into a corner -- the response of a narcissist, obviously, but as much as the organizers held me close out of a genuine sense of inclusion there was the gay part of me that wished, briefly, I had a boyfriend to bring to these events as a way of putting my stamp on them, to make my presence felt.

Despite clenching my stomach when I visit my parents or relatives -- I'm the only non-rightist among the old people, remember -- it actually has improved. They understand I don't have to take it and will walk away without a backwards glance -- because I have! Having myself created a community of friends whom I regard as family has helped immeasurably too.

Seeing my nieces grow up rejecting their father's bilge has too. I've let them know that they can be whoever they want around me in a way that doesn't undercut his authority.

Shit's hard!

i received a christmas card from my mother yesterday. it was almost comedically nasty. full of put downs and judgment. and that thing she loves to do of offering a spot of praise or a possibility of love and then revoking it, twisting the knife. i know very clearly that it's just more from the sad cul-de-sac of her abuse, and my no contact status with her, which i reiterated to her via an email message (she's blocked so i don't see her reply), has built up a lot of protection for me, so i'm mostly ok. the weird thing is that all my siblings seem to trust their children around her - i've witnessed first hand that she issues her poison to these little kids. i can't bear that; i'd rather have no part of their lives than have to witness it.

― ꙮ (map)

oh god my mom's christmas cards, they're masterpieces of pass agg

it's always nice to read about how my year has been, as explained by someone i don't actually talk to

i genuinely don't think the _see-through glass angel with her ball gown filled with a spray of roses_ tree topper is necessarily aggressive. i get pretty defensive based on her past behavior... at first it seemed like this whole "oh, you're a GIRL now, huh? Well, here's the girliest damn thing I can think of!" - but thinking about it that genuinely is her aesthetic. i don't necessarily think of her style as thomas kinkade, but i gotta admit it's at least kinkade-adjacent.

oh god i made an accidental pun, didn't i

i genuinely don't think the _see-through glass angel with her ball gown filled with a spray of roses_ tree topper is necessarily aggressive.

lol

I don’t know how much of my family dynamic is shaped by being in a hetero relationship for 26 years and having kids from it but my entire extended family, including my brother’s in-laws are extraordinarily welcoming and supportive of my partner and me, to the point where the fact that it’s a same-sex pairing reads as legitimately incidental to me. It’s not something I expected given how overtly Christian my extended family is, but it’s also a good reminder that not every Christian is THAT kind of Christian, and also not every Black family buys into the culturally stereotypical homophobia easily found in entertainment and social media.

(I do think it being 2023 rather than 1993 helps immensely, to be clear)

DJP and his partner have contributed to my delinquency by introducing me to a cocktail called Jasmine.

It’s a fantastic cocktail, I don’t make it nearly often enough

I mix it once a week. My parents dig it. Reconciliation is possible.

thanks for the sympathy alfred. my community is small but truly loving. it includes the purring kitty next to me. djp, it makes me so so happy to hear you're surrounded by so much love.

Thanks, map. I think my situation should be the default for all families and I hate that it isn’t.

Creating our own families by choice -- by necessity -- is our superpower.

We had a nice visit with my parents on Xmas eve, and were very explicit with them that we were going to be spending Christmas Day with a few of our queer friends who don't have family close by, are estranged, and/or are Jewish. That's what we did! We ate tons of Chinese food, got exceptionally gay girl stoned, and made each other laugh non-stop for most of the day. Bless chosen family.

haha! so heartwarming! LOVE "gay girl stoned"

https://i.imgur.com/frheJQE.gif

my seven fishes dinner on Xmas eve was a success! (all told it was more like 12 fishes too!) only had one small moment of panic when guests started arriving but i quickly learned the key to not melting down is to let people help you make stuff. on Xmas day our houseguests (friends of ours, another gay couple) and we went on a short hike and then we had Chinese for dinner. went to a sauna yesterday with our friends - one of them got lucky in the steam room lol. now we are at tampa airport waiting for our luggage.

oh also i got that job - i start late January :)

oh wow that sounds marvelous dr! and way to go on the job - i imagine you'll be ascending to archivist royalty where you belong in no time flat!

Congrats on both job and seven fishes! That is huge

I’m at Christmas with the in-laws.

Aunt D’Arcy: “merry Christmas! If you can even call it that. You know Jesus wasn’t even born on December 25”

Me: “Council of Nicaea, 8th or 9th century iirc”

D’Arcy: “that’s right. Competing with the pagans. Jesus was born in September or something. We should move Christmas to September. September 11th! That’d show ‘em”

Tell your aunt that I don't appreciate how Billy Corgan treated her.

Yeah canning Aunt D'Arcy was a crime. That space rocket bass sound was monumental.

She seems super happy and has nothing but nice things to say about “William”

spending Christmas Day with a few of our queer friends who don't have family close by, are estranged, and/or are Jewish.

We ate tons of Chinese food,

got exceptionally gay girl stoned

made each other laugh non-stop for most of the day.

that sounds so perfect, i love it, can we plz POLL these? i vote laugh non-stop for most of the day

Awful to hear about the nasty christmas cards. Fuck. It makes me wanna send random people some really fun and unexpected mail. My mother and brother are really warm, loving people. They're also very stubborn & domineering and uninterested in other people's ideas. Just utterly impenetrable. Everything falls on deaf ears. My sister in law is an unwilling mother & has checked out, so the thing my nieces are going to need is someone who will hear them out. Can i give them that?

I worry sometimes that maybe i'm like my mom and brother, impenetrable. But i think i'm just really slow and so not always good at listening in real time. I have to take time to process things alone. I absorb things but there's a delayed onset. I'm not the best candidate, but it might be me just by default. i need to work on being a better listener.

I do really feel for you, map. Even though there's no one to hear me out in my family, i can turn to my brother to support me in a moment of crisis. To be decisive under pressure, which he's very good at. To bear much of that load.

My dad was more of a space case like me, and my mother completely dominated him. She's in constant contact with me and i've been pushing her to communicate less. She means well but has a way of shrinking me down.

my insatiable need for alone time has slowly alienated most of my friends. those who still call have learned not to call often. i love them and want them in my life, the problem is i never seem to wanna hang out right now, today. as i write this i realize it's just selfishness.

Alfred, you're a sweetheart and your nieces are lucky to have you.

and yes congrats on the job DR

Deflatormouse, sending you good feeling, but also just to say that wanting alone time isn’t selfish— people have different needs when it comes to that sort of thing, and taking care of yours isn’t wrong!

Me: “Council of Nicaea, 8th or 9th century iirc”

― he’s an adventurer (derogatory) (flamboyant goon tie included)

lol, this confused the hell out of me for a bit, i didn't even realize there _was_ a second council of nicaea (in the late 8th century), though that one was mainly about putting an end to all that nasty "iconoclasm" business

sorry, i can get a little nerdy about early christian history lol

aunt darcy is my new hero for this: "We should move Christmas to September. September 11th! That’d show ‘em"

guns blazing

Yeah I need to look it up, it’s been a while. I thought the Council of Nicaea was “dealing w Arianism, also let’s set a date for Christmas”, but it’s been a long time since I took those courses. I used to be able to list all the significant heresies and why they were problematic and what happened about them. Not any more, I just remember Arianism and Monothelitism and John Chrysostom. I re-read a bunch of Origen this year! that was amazing, I love early church history.

The Johannite Comma and implications of Trinity versus “other structural God-like shapes” has become a major inspiration on new songs I been writing. I love this stuff. It feels like peeking into the writer’s room as they make decisions about Star Trek

Yeah I need to look it up, it’s been a while. I thought the Council of Nicaea was “dealing w Arianism, also let’s set a date for Christmas”, but it’s been a long time since I took those courses. I used to be able to list all the significant heresies and why they were problematic and what happened about them. Not any more, I just remember Arianism and Monothelitism and John Chrysostom. I re-read a bunch of Origen this year! that was amazing, I love early church history.

― he’s an adventurer (derogatory) (flamboyant goon tie included)

that was the first nicene council, the one in the 4th century. after constantine doing his "in hoc signo vinces" thing, the point where christianity ceased being resistance to imperial repression and instead became a tool of imperial repression. the aftermath of the diocletianic persecutions. the first nicene council also fixed the date of eastern, not christmas, which was set on the feast of sol invictus by tradition a few decades after the Nicene Council. (i'm just getting this from wikipedia, i don't actually know this stuff off the top of my head.)

the first nicene council under constantine _tried_ to renounce arianism, but constantine backslid and got really into arianism towards the end of his life. so arianism thrived for a little while after that, particularly in the East (which from the start was a very different community from the West - fish (the wordplay only made sense in greek) vs. cross (subtextually a very different thing).

anyway that did get resolved but then you get into the nestorians (aka the "church of the east", not to be confused with eastern orthodoxy), and god this shit is like reading those wiki articles on estrogen, except i actually understand this:

Nestorian Christology promotes the concept of a prosopic union of two persons (divine and human) in Jesus Christ,[4] thus trying to avoid and replace the concept of a hypostatic union. This Christological position is defined as radical dyophysitism,[5] and differs from orthodox dyophysitism, that was reaffirmed at the Council of Chalcedon (451).[6]

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what the hell is the name of that book? i read it a long time ago. there were three different accounts of a medieval conversion out in the east, told from the perspective of three different religions - jewish, christian, and muslim. in addition there were separately printed "male version" and "female versions", in which the only difference was one paragraph buried deep within the middle of the book. i can't remember what it was called. that one really interested me.

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anyway the idea of _multiple perspectives_ within christianity, not as heresy but as _orthodoxy_, that fascinated me. trinitarianism, but also the four gospels. i see people saying that the gospels aren't internally consistent, and to me that's not even interesting, like yeah if you had an internally consistent narrative you'd only need one gospel? but they have four gospels that tell four different stories like some fuckin rashomon shit. and they tried to make one gospel out of them but it was the heresiologist and church father irenaeus who seems to have come up with an excuse for having four, on this justification:

Irenaeus of Lyons went further, stating that there must be four gospels and only four because there were four corners of the Earth and thus the Church should have four pillars.[1][57] He referred to the four collectively as the "fourfold gospel" (euangelion tetramorphon).[58]

like i think he goes beyond that, he talks about there being four winds and four seasons and has all of this fascinating philosophical reasoning that is completely divorced from, like, evidence-based arguments. so much of the early church is built on stuff like this, it literally reads like the monty python explanation for why someone is a witch, and people can make fun of it but it's also brilliant. the thought process. even though it's completely wrong. like with the 17th century jesuit athanasius kircher, who was one of the most brilliant minds of his age, made many new discoveries, and just happened to be completely and totally wrong about everything, so hardly anybody knows or cares about him these days.

sorry. i'm just a huge fucking nerd for this kind of shit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_openly_LGBT_heads_of_state_and_government

Acquainting myself with queer political figures. Didn’t know until today that Latvia elected a gay prez last year, that’s fun

feels like kind of a cheat to put Jim McGreevey in there, considering he had to resign when it came out that he was gay :(

yeah, i'm still mcgrieving that one

JM reportedly looked at a house for sale on the same block my mom lives on shortly after his fall from grace

xps thank you for that, table

omg it feels great 2b back

reason: lost job / got new job / losing home / getting new home / etc /
--> life i guess is a thing ?

so happy to see the lot. i'm going to FLL soon with a bud for a "girls weekend" - haven't done that in ages / kinda cute!

hi Swen!!