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

omg did i tell u i have been obsessed with indian food
i wrote an embarrassing review on the restaurant's website confessing to them that i cried over a plate of their food

hahaha

leaving good reviews for neighborhood businesses is very wholesome and i fully support it

most of my money goes to food, climbing gear, books. i did Dry January and have only had a few drinks since and feel better than i have in years, and that is also reflected in my wallet…

i am having a day, as i am getting a colonoscopy tomorrow— just maintenance, nothing scary— and that means i have to fast all day today. given my penchant for climbing and training for climbing, this means that i am fucking starving and still have 20+ hours before i can eat anything. i am distracting myself by grading and reading.

i also love Indian food, but we don’t go out much— we’re both so cheap lol.

my sympathies, i did a colonoscopy last winter. the prep was tedious and i hated having to take a break from my routine. ime indian brunch buffets are a good way to get an indian fix for half the price. we haven't gone in months though.

ugh i'm sorry :-( honestly i would take a long nap. bodies are pretty annoying.

fuuuuuun

i cook a lot of Indian food but haven't quite perfected the spice alchemy. there was a guy from India who stayed at the hotel where i used to work for like 3 months, in a suite with a kitchenette and brought his own personal chef. The chef offered to give me cooking lessons for $30/hour. I passed. Always regretted that, the food smelled amazing

i'm ridiculously tight when it comes to "buying stuff" and prob too spendy on "experiences". services = hell no, i DIY everything always.

there is one service i dream about being able to afford one day and that's a biweekly cleaner, because i hate cleaning and suck at it. my spending vices atm are pricey workwear and bodybuilding supplements.

i have an in-law from kerala and his wife cooked us some good stuff. said wife is my partner's sister. her son just came out! :) they are supportive.

i should cook indian more. we’re usually good about cooking all our dinners during the week but we tend to go out on the weekends, which is probably why we have barely any savings :/

never had a colonoscopy but they seem pretty rough. partner had his first one last year, had no idea they were such a process! hope yours goes smoothly T

I've considered experimenting with abstinence, but books, films, food, drinks, and vacations are my only vices :/

i don’t want to do total abstinence, but moving from drinking 3-5 days a week (and often drinking multiple drinks) to 1 day/week (with a single strong beer or cocktail) is my kinda thing right now

I been dry and wet alternately over the past few months, and have been noticing the wet has been WET so I’m going dry more and more. Three drinky nights this month in an otherwise dry February and I think I’m sticking w dry from now on

pricey workwear and bodybuilding supplements.

uh, hellooooo map :D

i regularly go months at a time without a drink, will have the odd one socially but mostly like to get good and sloppy by myself. what you'd call a problem drinker basically.

saving up for galapagos trip and hoping to add siloli desert but then i start thinking i should also add costa rica and where do i draw the line

that sounds amazing! wow. i hardly travel.

i don't drink MUCH during the week but i can def hang with the best of em if i'm in the right mood. lately i've been having a hard time figuring out what my drink is tho, i was a Manhattan rocks guy for years but i need to change it up.

yeah i never travel. i think the reason i'm trying to cram so much in is idk when or if i'll take another trip.

yeah i also don't have a regular drink order, depends on the place.

was thinking about "gaydar" and how i used to be much better at reading into subtle ambiguities and i feel like it's no longer a thing? is it just cause i've stopped looking or is gaydar obsolete now due to growing mainstream acceptance, dating apps or something else?

I ordered gaydar in 1999, was told it was on back order, still hasn't come in.

'gaydar' is a pretty funny word

haha, yeah it was always framed as like a sixth sense, there is probably a bad psychology today article on 'demystifying gaydar' that breaks it all down

was a Sunday piece at Pitchfork iirc

it has 'wacky 90s sitcom' energy

dm that sounds like an amazing trip!

i also don't travel much, at least by air, but i like to spend a few days in the utah desert every month or so if i can swing it.

maybe ppl know this since i feel like i've said it a bunch but i'm no-alcohol. it's just what i gotta do and it's no stress at this point.

i hear that, i can never take another hit of weed again myself and i don't miss it

googled utah desert pics, wow, i thought this place only existed in roadrunner cartoons. do you camp overnight? the sky must be incredible.

in 20 years i've been to london and socal once each to see fam, that's it. this trip is actually terrifying

'wacky 90's sitcom energy' is otm, maybe it's due a resurgence, like cargo pants.

i love to travel, but also am cash-poor a lot of time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i love weed

i'm a spoiled baby who stays in motels when i go to the desert now. i used to do more camping. i don't have much gear atm. i'd like to do a backpacking trip with someone who enjoys it and knows the ropes. maybe a class or something. the sky is very good there yes.

i'm really getting into the rock art sites. i used to not get it, because i am a fool in a world of fools. young pine is an artist who is also into them, so we went to horseshoe canyon and hiked to the great gallery a few weekends ago. about 7 miles round trip. very deep desert wilderness. we didn't see anyone else all day. the panels and the journey to them are just overwhelmingly beautiful. really high on my list of aesthetic experiences and incredibly romantic too :)

map, my god, I love backpacking, I would go on a trip with you any time. husband and I have taken many backpacking and camping trips, nothing more than a few weeks, but it's legit one of my favorite things to do.

i am also a little bit more of a princess than I used to be, tho— i like a shower and an actual bed.

but i think we are planning for something this summer, which rules.

that's awesome tabes. backpacking with you fellas sounds like it would be great fun, good vibes, not to be missed. i'll be sure to check in with ya about your summer plans.

i mean send me a postcard with like a perfume bottle from the gift shop at the end of the trail or something, cuz you know the only backpack i carry is to the mall :D :D :D

It's called musk, Swen!

i also love camping but yeah need a "guide" who brings the gear and actually knows what they're doing. Dated such a person once and it was a blast. i HATE rock climbing though :D
never done more than a few days but used to fantasize about living in the wilderness forever. Harriman State Park near NYC is really nice, has glamping sites too. the desert makes me goofy, it's romantic as hell for sure. Never seen rock art in person, that's wild.

used to make art & i was sorta serious but felt i needed w33d to access the voice so yeah that got ugly lol

what desert have you been to, dm?

Joshua Tree National Park with my brother. We just went for a weekend and did a couple of day hikes. No camping.
Siloli desert has a little rustic hotel for the tourists and guided Jeep excursions, so I'll be more tethered out there, too.

siloli looks incredible. i still haven't been to joshua tree! gotta fix that.

Copland told Bowles to work hard through his 20s. “If you don’t work hard in your 20s, who will love you when you’re 30?”

― a hyperlink to the past (flamboyant goon tie included)

i think a lot about this old song by dead fingers talk called "nobody loves you when you're old and gay"

i don't think the premise of that song holds up to fact-checking but i am really self-conscious about my age

been thinking a lot about relationship stuff lately what with my girlfriend having her own thing to do.

today what i'm missing most are role models, i need people to look up to

five years ago when i started out there were plenty of people to look up to, plenty of people i admired, plenty of people where i said "oh my god i wish i could be as cool as her"

somehow i am the elder, i am the person people look up to. i've been doing this for five years. i have no idea what i'm doing. and five years is longer than nearly everybody else, and 48 years is older than almost everybody else, and i pass and i've had _bottom surgery_ and i have a _job_

and what am i doing here? what the fuck am i doing here? people act like portland is queer paradise, and well there sure are a lot of queer people out here. traumatized, fucked up, hanging on by our fingernails. i was telling my girlfriend... one of the reasons i held to my marriage so much was because having a Cis Partner was so important to me, because all of the trans people i know... it's the allostatic load, trans people have to deal with this shit that other people just don't. i wish she hadn't been abusive. i wish i hadn't had to leave.

my emotional judgement is that trans people are all fucked up, all of us, "boys in the band" style. i try to fact check that and i can't successfully challenge that judgement. what am i gonna do? i'm trying to not be fucked up in a sea of fucked up, traumatized people. who can i talk to? who can i socialize with? who can i cuddle with, do kink with? what options do i have for _community_?

i'm coming up blank. everywhere i go i see people doing fucked up shit to each other, fucked up shit to themselves. there aren't a lot of people here i trust not to hurt me. not after what i've seen.

i'm thinking of leaving. there's nothing keeping me here anymore. no spouse. no house. a job i hate and am trying, without success, to get out of and which, more importantly, i can do remote, i can do from anywhere. there's my girlfriend. she wants to leave too, after everything that's happened. she said i got her blessing if i decide to leave, which does mean a lot.

what am i doing hangin' round? there's got to be something better than this. doesn't there?

was thinking about "gaydar" and how i used to be much better at reading into subtle ambiguities and i feel like it's no longer a thing? is it just cause i've stopped looking or is gaydar obsolete now due to growing mainstream acceptance, dating apps or something else?

― O Fundo Escuro de (Deflatormouse)

it depends on the context

out on the street here i got no idea about anything. this guy passed by and my girlfriend complimented his kicks and i complimented his "protect trans lives" sweatshirt, which my girlfriend thought was gauche, well, i guess it was. his sneakers had _snails_ embroidered on them! like ok i don't know from "gaydar", but if you have snails embroidered on your sneakers you are queer. full stop.

reading into subtle ambiguities is a fraught topic, because when you're doing it with trans people, that's "clocking". it's incredibly gauche, to say the least, to clock someone, even if they're blatantly out, even if there are no significant social consequences, even if they have _snails embroidered on their high-tops_. i'm incredibly self-conscious about it, because the expectation was that one would transition and become invisible, pretend to be cis, ignore one's past life, and to me that's death, invisibility, silence, that's death. and it's a huge struggle to continue to be visible when nobody's going to acknowledge my transness, when acknowledging my transness is considered rude and offensive. and sometimes it seems like the only way to continue to be visible is to let my gender identity define my life which now that i think about it really gets in the way of being gay. if i spend all my time communicating who i am than i don't get to spend any time focusing on what (or who) i want!

but i do it. i clock people, cis people, straight people, i read into things sometimes that aren't there, because i _want_ everyone to be queer. i mean more than that i just kind of assume everybody's queer until proven otherwise. it's a pretty safe assumption around here.

the main thing is that i am loudly out pretty much everywhere i go. doing that i find there are a _lot_ more queer people than most people would recognize. i'm not a good role model in a lot of ways, but i do talk about how queer i am all the time, and it's not just because i'm proud of being queer, not just because of how fucking hard i had to work to be this fucking gay.

gaydar isn't obsolete. mainstream acceptance is a lie. dating apps are trash. i just gotta be more discreet about how i judge others and less discreet about how i present myself. is all.

all this heavy stuff about being old prompts me to quote my favorite recent lines on the matter, from television's "1880 or so":

A face that glows in a golden hue
No one in this world knows what they do
I take my oath and I make my vow
For the tender things are upon me now

In the fragrance sweet of the evening air
I could leave this world quite without a care

map, I love you for quoting a song from what is probably my favorite Television album

I am going to be real and say that I look better and feel better than I did 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. Sure, I shit in a bag now, but otherwise— I am happy with getting older.

The issue is that maintaining one’s emotional and physical well-being becomes more work as one ages, and I don’t deny that this is true for me, too. It’s hard to find the time. But I have found that if I make the time to do one, the other is close behind.

Yeah, I'm way proud of my health and physique like I wasn't even five years ago. Age is everything but a number.

ok i am gonna be real and admit that i didn't know Television made more than 1 album

That third album got a lot of press in 1992, is legit good to great, and made me go backward.

i'm thinking of leaving. there's nothing keeping me here anymore.

i'm in the same boat. 30's were my best decade, i was able to feel a lot, find meaning in everything, become human. in the last year or 2 it's like everything i've learned to value no longer enriches me. i'm eager to break out of established patterns, but so far it's very unclear what i ought to replace them with. i am living in a ghost town honestly.

i'm stuck on autopilot though. i either don't have the discipline or the motivation to change anything.

sorry, this is too much.

the way you describe Portland is really how i always imagined it, based on, i have no idea, maybe Elliott Smith lyrics

i'm sorry my framing of that was so gay male-centric. I'm starting to better understand everything you're going through. i mean i'm clueless, i had to look up what "clocking" means.

i had a talk with my mom a few weeks ago where i said i'm not sure what my gender is, she rolled her eyes at first but then when i said i think i might need counseling for this she 'got it' and turned very sympathetic and supportive. wow, i was not expecting that. for my friends it's more of a political stance i think. we'll call you whatever pronouns you want, even when you're not here .

i am in the worst shape of my life, physically. i was a 29-30" waist size at the beginning of 2020, now i'm 33-34". what's that, 40 lbs?? i feel gross. it's encouraging that you all are in such great shape. if i moved out of the city it would sort itself out without my really doing anything. but that isn't going to happen.

i need something to disrupt my routine, make it impossible for me to sleepwalk through another day. that's why i'm going to South America