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

I came out at the same time I discovered AOL chats in 1999. My first few hookups happened thanks to AOL.

Since then I've had several boyfriends I've met online, many of whom remain friends. Websites and apps gave me the confidence to eventually pick up dudes in bars, most recently in February.

Online vs live ain't a binary.

but i don't think i can use these kind of apps it is just a terribly unpleasant and unhelpful way to connect with people,

It really isn't. In 25 years of using them we've come back to my or his place...maybe four times? I insist on meeting at a bar or coffee shop. We usually have a puddle of interests from which we can draw conversation. If it doesn't work out one of us will call it a night; if it does, we'll make out and grope and maybe the next step but no more.

I don't know how old you are, but creating a version of yourself with which you can chat with guys is an essential part of the dating/hookup scene. Should things deepen, it's up to you whether you shelve that version.

I am with Deflatormouse, I think the apps have ruined dating and based on my own experience, they rarely deliver.

how were you hooking up in your early years? Picking up guys in person?

approaching and talking to complete strangers in central park would be a million times better than this.

yes, do it!

Since then I've had several boyfriends I've met online, many of whom remain friends

same! i've met a bunch of cool people on dating sites and very few duds, mostly ok cupid i think. that was a very different kind of environment with people crafting very thoughtful responses to the essay questions. there was a lot to sink my teeth into.

now i've installed tinder and a couple of similar apps, including one specifically aimed at meeting platonic friends. but it basically shows you tinder profiles, with everyone posting the standard issue dating app photos and revealing very little else about themselves.

it'a not an online/real life binary, no. i don't see myself picking up dudes in bars. there is too little ambiguity about what everyone is after there; i am bad at saying no.

i guess it's apparent that i want to slow things down. in fact i think that ultimately, what i want is to avoid having sex :)

but you seem to have intuited that i can't quite figure out how to create the version of myself with which i can chat. and want to bypass that part of interacting with others, i won't usually take to anyone online who doesn't cut straight to the deeper stuff. and you're right; it doesn't usually work that way.

by the way, i'm 40 and spent a year or two in my early 30's talking to strangers in new york through various outlets. it was pretty cool!

Listen, it took too many years for me to learn that no one holds a stopwatch, no one sets your rhythm to a metronome, and no one shakes his head. You set your own pace. The thought that I could've said when I was 25, "Well, no, I don't wanna have sex" would've blown my mind. In ways we are better than we were.

omg amen

i still suck with boundaries tho.
i've had some beautiful relationships with people who also suck with boundaries, it's amazing what can happen in those cases. but obviously it doesn't end well.

All my relationships began as irl meetings and were borne out of friendships (and returned to friendships afterward, save one). Except my current boyfriend! We met on Grindr in the middle of the pandemic, went on several no-contact dates getting to know each other, and eventually started dating properly once our respective pods approved of the union

The date where we first held hands under the patio table was thrilling in a Victorian sort of way

I thought of Kay Ryan's "Hide and Seek":

It’s hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.

i still suck with boundaries tho.
i've had some beautiful relationships with people who also suck with boundaries, it's amazing what can happen in those cases. but obviously it doesn't end well.

― Deflatormouse

not necessarily! i mean, it's not a _good idea_ in general, but i really do feel positively about my relationship with my now-QPP. we kind of modeled healthy boundaries for each other. that experience was what eventually led me to break up with her, because we weren't in a place where we could have that kind of relationship, but it hasn't been a disaster or anything. we're closer in a lot of ways for having broken up. she came over today to take me to urgent care this morning (i fell in the shower and gave myself an accidental lip piercing). saturday, on my five-year tranniversary, we went to a craft fair - she loves craft fairs, i love being able to support people in their personal interests, particularly if they're not interests i share. then we went to see "hundreds of beavers", and we had just such a great time. if we were still together it would _not_ have gone that well. tomorrow morning she's coming over and we're going out to breakfast, and she'll probably make me another pot of cold brew. it's really sweet and healthy and wholesome. overall she's not necessarily doing super great, she's got some challenges going on in her life, but we can still have a good time together, have a relationship that isn't centered around anyone's trauma.

i tried dating apps and got nowhere with them. i'm pretty rejection-sensitive. dating apps for me feels like filling out job applications. here's 100 people and maybe something good might come out of one of them, and i'm just swiping, swiping, swiping, and i'm thinking wow, here's 99 people i'm not ever going to get with. because i have to look at each one of them individually, right? if i'm at a party and i'm not interested in someone i don't think about it, i'll naturally gravitate towards the people i _am_ interested in, but a dating app, it'll be like "how about her, are you interested in her?" and i'm supposed to make that decision based on, what, three pictures and a joke about the last book they read? ick.

as far as bars go, i don't drink and i have auditory processing disorder, which means that i have a hard time differentiating between different sounds in social settings. it's dark, i'm disoriented, and since i have a hard time with eye contact i'm not really looking at the other person anyway.

-

deflatormouse, i'm with you on avoiding sex. at the same time, it's easy for me to slow things down so much that it becomes kind of a "why bother?" situation. like, the major reason i broke up with my QPP was because we _weren't_ doing anything together, because she wasn't up for it, and even though it was nothing to do with me, it made me feel really inadequate. socially i feel like i'm doing really good. i got a good number of friends who i'm not interested in getting with at this particular time for various reasons, and that's nice. i love having friends who i can socialize with without that kind of "will-we-or-won't-we" tension.

it's also hard for me to talk about the stuff i'm actually _interested_ in, because there's so much shame, and i'm so afraid of rejection. particularly the stuff on the right side of the slash. stuff on the left side, i'm fairly confident about that, as long as i can trust the other person to respect my boundaries (because doms get to have boundaries too, doms get to say "no"), but on the right side? like, it's not the entirety of who i am, but it's important to me to _sometimes_ have interactions with other people where i'm submissive and femme, and my brain is telling that, you know, "every trans woman wants to be a submissive femme, nobody's going to want you that way". neither part of which is true - having put it down in writing it's really easy for me to recognize that.

i guess this is important because when it comes to building intimate relationships with people, there is something that i'm interested in, that can be done casually, where there's a potential to build something more out of it. it's just hard to talk about it though because there's so much baggage attached to it. it's the way i feel about rope, the baggage around that. for me it's like, you know how some people will just go out there and do nude modeling for painters? it's not a sex thing, people who do nude modeling for painters aren't doing it as some fetish. you know, to get good at something, it involves building one's skills. and that's one of the ways i'm interested in being a rope bottom, as a casual, non-sexual thing. that doesn't mean that there aren't other contexts in which rope interests me, just like someone who does nude modeling isn't only ever nude in a, like, artistic way.

the group i'm interested in around here, though, the assumption is that you're doing it to learn to tie and i feel really awkward about that, just like going up to some stranger and asking if they want to tie me up. i don't feel unsafe or anything, it's just really embarrassing and awkward and i'm kinda terrified of people just saying "no", like i'm reading the social cues wrong, which i do sometimes. i went to a new year's eve party that was kinda like that this year, people are all making out with each other and i don't know what the protocol is to start making out with people, like, do they know each other? are they all in a polycule together? and these people are pretty much all, for the record, just as fucking autistic as i am, which doesn't make it any easier. an allistic person might, like, see that i'm feeling awkward and left out and help me feel more comfortable lol.

like the thing is if someone's vanilla and cishet there's this kind of assumed mutual goal and you don't have to talk about "it", you just have to let "it" happen. which i'm not a big fan of, i think that's bad overall, but jesus christ i don't want to go up to somebody and talk about my fetishes on the first date. except if i don't, well, the relationship doesn't kind of work out.

like i got into the first relationship of my life when i was 33, i was in that relationship for the next 12 years, and eventually i broke up with her because _i had not ever actually been sexually attracted to her_. which apparently is not normal for a 12-year-long relationship? i don't know. like alfred said, the thought that i could have directly said "no" never occurred to me. nor did the idea that my never having said "yes", never having expressed any desire for coitus at all, might have some implications regarding the consensuality of the sexual activity in question. that shit isn't the kind of thing i want to talk about on a first date either. i don't know how to _deal_ with that within the context of a prospective relationship.

-

anyway the good thing is that i asked this group if they could do some, like, social stuff so i could get to know them in person before asking anyone to tie me up, and they're giving it a shot. god knows if it'll help. i'm absolutely terrified. i'm going to give it a shot, at least!

we met our current third on scruff. i've met a handful of keepers through it over the years, though i'm not in touch with any of them. i only ever met guys on that app if sex was the priority tbh. i had grindr for a minute but never liked it much. i agree that apps are generally a bad way to make good connections.

it's nice to hear from everyone. deflatormouse, i wish you luck.

i hope you guys don't mind if i share a little travelogue of our weekend in southeast utah.

we spent two days in comb ridge, a monocline or tilted slab of sandstone jutting up from the earth at about 15 to 30 degrees that runs north to south for 28 miles and is 2 to 3 miles wide. narrow canyons carve through the rock every mile or so down the length of it. here's an aerial image of it: https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/145000/145913/iss060e038053_lrg.jpghttps://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/145000/145913/iss060e038053_lrg.jpg

in almost every one of the canyons, there are pictographs, petroglyphs and/or ruins, left behind by ancestral puebloans and later groups. we went into two of them, fishmouth and monarch, and hiked to the rim and saw the procession panel, one of the most breathtaking pieces of art i've ever seen. we also saw the wolfman panel, a very foreboding "who goes there" kind of collection on the rim of butler wash right where it joins the san juan river. we saw maybe 10-15 other people the whole time, a huge contrast to moab, which was completely overrun and which we passed through to get there. exploring the ruins and looking at potsherds in shady canyon alcoves and then just sitting on a rock enjoying an enveloping and friendly silence, watching leaves shake and listening to flows of wind was completely sublime. at the end of the second day we decided to try going for a swim in the san juan river. we stopped at a popular boat ramp and decided there were too many people, then i used google maps satellite view to scout out a little dirt access road a few miles upstream. we got there and saw three cars parked next to the canyon wall and an awning was propped up, taking up the entire width of a small path carved out of the very dense tamarisk leading to the river. a woman was at one of the cars. she asked us if we were from there, we said no not really, we were just hoping to go for a swim. a navajo extended family were celebrating a daughter's birthday. they offered to let us walk through their spot into the ankle-deep river, but we opted to walk further along the canyon wall and see if any other paths broke through the tamarisk. it just grew denser and denser, so we came back and they told us they were heading out anyway. so eventually we had the spot to ourselves and we all swam and played in the river naked in the golden light until the weakening sun and the breeze chilled us too much. afterward we were grateful to find good if overpriced food in a gravel courtyard restaurant in bluff. the end.

not the aerial image i wanted to post, but maybe this one will work https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Bluff_UT_-_aerial_with_San_Juan_River_and_Comb_Ridge.jpg

lol that's big. the san juan river is running horizontally at the bottom of the image. butler wash runs down the front of comb ridge diagonally from top right. bluff is the little town on the san juan where the canyon at the right meets it.

no matches came up until i switched it to male. i live in manhattan around the corner from a major university, unreal... of course i am mostly getting messages from guys who wanna hook up

but i don't think i can use these kind of apps it is just a terribly unpleasant and unhelpful way to connect with people, will probably delete before the week is out. approaching and talking to complete strangers in central park would be a million times better than this.

how can those of you who use apps for dates and such even stand it? tell me tell me

― Deflatormouse

sorry i'm a little scatter-brained today... anyway uh. yeah idk, maybe it's being talked about on another thread, but there's that whole viral thing... where they asked women "would you rather be alone in the woods with a man, or would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear?", and we all picked "bear" (and yes there are plenty of jokes about bear-the-animal versus bear-the-whatever-gay-thing-bear-is). and yeah i like men and i'd pick the bear. i guess cuz like if the bear does something to me nobody's gonna say it was my fault. i mean i like men! i'm very attracted to men. i don't think men are inherently more dangerous than women, i mean, i've been hurt way worse by women than i ever have by men. it's just, like, if i'm into a guy i gotta be very, very careful, and if i make a mistake there can be some pretty serious consequences, and i mean, i make mistakes sometimes. i'm not perfect. so even more "reasons i don't date much" haha.

Alfred— I lived in Sam Francisco, which has the best cruising, gay bar, and public sex culture of any city in the US. I didn’t need a phone.

The ethos in SF for a lot of my formative years was “wait you met on an app? weird.”

Every single person I have dated longterm I met in person first.

I lived in Sam Francisco, which has the best cruising, gay bar, and public sex culture of any city in the US. I didn’t need a phone.

Heh -- Miami's no slouch in those departments.

Makes sense. I needed to meet dudes online to build the courage to cruise like I do now. I was a little older when I came out (25 y/o).

I was too! (23)! I just dove into dick-hunting, making up for lost time.

honestly I think the apps vs IRL thing is a false binary, but also think that one can be more amenable personality-wise to one or the other. i am definitely more amenable to meeting people in-person, mostly because “chemistry” is something I cannot get from the apps. I also started resenting being ghosted and manipulated on dating sites, not to mention tired of going on dates with total fucking bores when I could have been doing something else.

Deflatormouse, do you do any like sports or physical activities? I have met a lot of nice homos while climbing, and I know a ton of queer and non-binary cyclists and runners here in Philly

i will say that i don't see there being a strict divide between "online" and "in person", particularly as someone who came out just before covid. for me that's not the "apps". the main way i connect with other people online is through discord, but even ilx, lately i've been connecting and meeting up with people online through there. that was how it used to be with usenet in the '90s. most of my friends were through newsgroups, and i'd meet up with them in person, even had a couple of... i wouldn't call them "relationships", but i got with a couple people that way and had a miserable time for reasons i didn't understand back then. i got bullied and rejected a lot, i wasn't like most people, and online was a way for me to connect with other people in ways that weren't socially acceptable in "mainstream" interactions. part of that was me being kind of an edgelord, part of that was me not having appropriate emotional boundaries with other people, but it was, like. just being able to express myself authentically. and then when usenet died i kinda lost that, got lost for a while, got with my ex-wife and tried to be "normal", got a facebook account.

when i came out i wanted, like a lot of the people around me, to have a "slut era". i was surrounded by people who were really hot and really thirsty and many of them were attracted to me. but it's all within this one small community. i've never been the kind of person who could do anonymous sex, and when you're getting with people you see socially on a regular basis... shit gets real complicated, real quick. a lot of the reason i broke up with my ex-wife was to slut around, but i was worried that it wasn't something i really wanted. it wasn't something i really wanted, turns out. my "slut era" didn't involve any actual slutting. like i was "poly" but had one partner during that time. at the same time i don't regret breaking up with my ex-wife, because going through that experience helped me understand what was really important to me. which was, like, not being dependent on other people for my sense of self-worth. that process involved a lot more trauma than it did hot sex, but i don't, like, feel like i missed out on hot sex. because if it's not gonna make me happy, you know, it's not worth it for me. i've had enough sex that was hot but made me miserable.

-

i'm pretty insecure about how sedentary i am. out here, you know, there are a lot of "hiking lesbians". my body can't do that, hasn't ever been able to do that sort of intense physical activity. i want to be fit, i want to have, like, a strong core, mostly because it allows me to do thing i couldn't do otherwise. part of the reason i wasn't able to do things with my QPP is because she just wasn't physically healthy enough for any sort of intimacy. i figure the more stuff i can do, the longer i can do it for, the more fun i have. but i'm in my late 40s, i'm dyspraxic, i can't bike or do long hiking. well, i do my best, at least! :)

i'm with alfred on this. i was thinking recently how formative communicating thru AIM as a teenager has been on my life ... when i think back on myself in high school one of the first images that comes to mind is me sitting in my room late at night talking w/ my friends thru instant messenger. so that method of communication has always been comfortable for me. in my experience if i have chemistry chatting w/ someone online then we will make for friends as well, so when i'm cruising online it's a filtration mechanism that works for me. my boyfriend and i were in the same professional circles but we "met" via instagram DM where we proceeded to talk for like 2 hours straight after first saying hi. it was a good signal to me that i should be taking the prospect of meeting this person very seriously

i would ofc 100% agree w/ the argument that cruising/filtering for partners online presents a number of pitfalls. there's guys i see in bars or clubs who i clock as someone i might not choose to hook up w/ if i just saw pictures but in person there is something that makes it all click. but the process of meeting people online has a good track record of helping me find guys i want to fuck who i also want to be around generally, it's led me to a number of longterm partners and friends

What surprises me more is learning how many men-under-35 have absolutely no experience with “picking up”. I recall telling a youthier man about my first Pride— I clocked a hot one, went up to him and said he was cute and did he want to walk with me? yes he did, and we ended up having sex that afternoon and never seeing each other again— and the youthier man was shocked that one could be so bold.

Every time I’ve loaded up Grindr, in comparison, there’ve been so many dicks flying at my face that I start to feel the same level of sexual interest as I do while watching this Instagram video:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6mTcgYOAIb/?igsh=MTFuOHNvZ2xzdmVmdQ==

The young are having less sex generally. COVID didn't help.

What surprises me more is learning how many men-under-35 have absolutely no experience with “picking up”

me!! basically

I mean, what wonderful times were had? My first trip to SXSW, I wanted a “gay break” from the band I was in, so I went to a place called (I think?) “Boys Cellar”, participated in an amateur strip contest and came in third. I stripped to “Milkshake” and used a book and my glasses as props

I went back a second time and got picked up by a dude who lived south of the city. He drove me back to his and we had unsatisfying sex. He had an expensive guitar in his living room and confessed he’d not played it even once. As he drove me home he talked to me about his job— that he was a developer, and the moraine we were driving through had been blocked for development by activists, but he’d recently got the city on his side. I considered jumping out of the car as we sped down the highway. I emerged from the vehicle and the band I was in was chilling on the patio of the vegan co-op at which we were staying. “Where were you?” they asked. “In hell!” I replied

Top three best blow job of my life was from a Dubya guy.

some of us grew up in the shadow of george michael's arrest and constant media panic about the gays corrupting the youth by being too sexy in public

I'm not a man but I can dress up like one well enough and I wouldn't have a clue how to even start picking someone up in public

there are enough ways to arrange sexual encounters online these days but part of me does wish I could just be having anonymous encounters in parks or wherever if I wasn't terrified of assault and/or criminal charges

xp that's obscene

ha, i really like the term "gay break"

A hatefuck in 2004 xpost

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/16/33/e8/1633e807e56a83d1e60e39fb8270b58f.gif

she came over today to take me to urgent care this morning (i fell in the shower and gave myself an accidental lip piercing)

oh fuck! I'm sorry :( how are you feeling?? happened to me once when I was like 11
my idiot friend dragged me to laser tag and some aggressive idiot several years older than us smacked me in the face with the gun & split my lower lip practically in 2
NOT FUN

I'm not a man but I can dress up like one well enough

I am not experimenting with presentation a lot at this stage so most people just assume I am male
my gender identity is invisible to others most of the time unless I make it a point to tell them which isn't great
because I feel negated by the invisibility, when other gay guys just regard me as a gay guy because it's easier and convenient and I can say by the way my pronouns are "they/them" but it doesn't really change that perception.
so then when an app makes me revert to my received gender to match me with anyone, that sucks
like it undermines the work I've done

ughh just getting started here. I'll pick this up overnight when my shift dies down.

it's nice to hear from everyone.

OTM <3

indeed

that was an awesome post Kate tho I had to google a bunch of the terminology. the estranged bestie I ran into was a lot like a QPP! we didn't really share the same interests. the thing we had in common is we are both very kid-like. it was based on mutual affection. we knew each other so well and cared about each other really deeply... and that hasn't changed, actually. But we were all too willing to do things we didn't really want to do for each other out of kindness, or an instinct to support. neither one of us was any good at saying no until we'd passed a breaking point.

we had a group of friends then where none of us shared the same interests. and that’s what I want! one of my big frustrations socially has been that music is still too big a part of the social fabric for something that's been a secondary interest (at most) for such a long time... because a lot of my enduring friendships developed out of playing music with people or nerding out about music, I mean my god there is so much social currency in it, and so much tribal bullshit… and I'm sick of having these expansively referential conversations about music, where if I change the subject it always comes back to that. it's numbing. but I miss having those lighter, more sensual kinds of friendships that aren’t burdened by some shared media hyper-literacy. Where’s the nearest currency exchange?

if i'm at a party and i'm not interested in someone i don't think about it, i'll naturally gravitate towards the people i _am_ interested in, but a dating app, it'll be like "how about her, are you interested in her?" and i'm supposed to make that decision based on, what, three pictures and a joke about the last book they read? ick.

^^^exactly
But it’s not just any 3 pictures, it’s *the same* 3 pictures, it’s a format. Everything is so standardized, there is basically nothing to differentiate one profile from another. And then when someone messages me it’s something really nondescript and generic like “hey what are you up to”, because I mean of course, what else are you going to say to someone if the only thing you know of them is the same 3 pictures everyone else has?
What am I supposed to derive from this, except a sense of the likelihood (or not) that I might be physically attracted to the person in the 3 pictures? And then I end up swiping left if anyone has written a sentence or two about conversations or empathy, because at least it’s something, even though it’s really not enough.
You know what though, I will always pick the ones who post the most lethargic selfies, or like if they only have 2 pics which are terrible and they are wearing the same shirt in both of them, anything that screams ‘idgaf’

Having said all that, Alfred sized me up very quickly and accurately. It’s not hard to understand my position as a kind of stubbornness.

I also started resenting being ghosted and manipulated on dating sites, not to mention tired of going on dates with total fucking bores when I could have been doing something else.

Rings a bell… i had a few experiences like that which I tend to forget, and thinking back on those makes me feel like ‘yeah fuck this’. maybe it’s selective memory, but also I was more inclined to go out with people if they seemed interesting or kind, even if I thought it unlikely that I’d be attracted to them based on their pics. I’d think, it’s worth a shot, and it was sometimes! Even though it was probably very unfair of me to do that. But I learned right away that body types don’t actually matter to me at all when it comes to sexual attraction, which is pretty cool & good to know.

Deflatormouse, do you do any like sports or physical activities? I have met a lot of nice homos while climbing, and I know a ton of queer and non-binary cyclists and runners here in Philly

Yes! I like open water swimming especially, I might have mentioned this once or twice ;)
I like most water sports a lot actually! And I really like shooting hoops, even though I’m terrible at it and wouldn’t have the stamina to actually play basketball for real.
But omg I HATE bouldering!! I wish I loved it because you’re right, most of the people I’ve known who are into bouldering are super cool. So cool, in fact, that I even took a few private lessons to help get caught up. it just didn’t take. I generally love outdoor physical activity as long as I don’t have to climb anything but it’s more of an outlet for my schizoid/avoidant tendencies. as map has also said I usually only enjoy nature when there are few or no other people around.

i'm pretty insecure about how sedentary i am. out here, you know, there are a lot of "hiking lesbians". my body can't do that, hasn't ever been able to do that sort of intense physical activity. i want to be fit, i want to have, like, a strong core, mostly because it allows me to do thing i couldn't do otherwise. part of the reason i wasn't able to do things with my QPP is because she just wasn't physically healthy enough for any sort of intimacy. i figure the more stuff i can do, the longer i can do it for, the more fun i have. but i'm in my late 40s, i'm dyspraxic, i can't bike or do long hiking. well, i do my best, at least!

You know, I never wanted to visit PDX because, I guess, the Decemberists annoy me, and so do the Dandy Warhols, but recently I saw pictures of Newoskin Beach and I WANT TO GO, really badly, it is like my top bucket list destination in the contiguous states. If I ever make it out there YOU ARE COMING WITH ME. Right? It doesn’t have to be strenuous or intense or anything like that.

Map, that aerial photo is Chinese to me but I googled the places you mentioned and it looks really special. I like knowing that you’re doing things like this when you don’t post here much.

I was too! (23)! I just dove into dick-hunting, making up for lost time.

Yes, I was over 20 and hungry for it, but a couple of things held me back (specifically: relationships, shame). I wish I had really gone for it.

i got bullied and rejected a lot, i wasn't like most people, and online was a way for me to connect with other people in ways that weren't socially acceptable in "mainstream" interactions. part of that was me being kind of an edgelord, part of that was me not having appropriate emotional boundaries with other people, but it was, like. just being able to express myself authentically

i'm with alfred on this. i was thinking recently how formative communicating thru AIM as a teenager has been on my life. when i think back on myself in high school one of the first images that comes to mind is me sitting in my room late at night talking w/ my friends thru instant messenger.

ha, i really like the term "gay break”

Yes, fgti posts are full of these gems, I loved that story, hell indeed.

Top three best blow job of my life was from a Dubya guy.

Dubba Dubba Dubya
https://media.tenor.com/QEKTXklXwaQAAAAM/michigan-frog-happy.gif

Alfred, I’m kind of vaguely under the impression that you prefer short term relationships, but you’ve never expressed this, so that’s probably wrong?

hey so this thread kinda fell off my radar which i regret, a lot of times i feel like i'm thread-killing particularly when i make a long post haha.

had kind of a heavy week. spent most of the week stressing about this social event friday, which didn't go great, but in a way that's, like. not necessarily _bad_. just trying to process my relationship with the Greater Portland Polycule. The Polycule, I'm starting to call it this week.

in theory it's a really good idea. we got a whole town jam packed with hot thirsty queer sluts and we know each other socially and we know who can provide what and kind of have a good time together. from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs, you know?

so ok, point one is a practical one - nobody wants to top. that's not to say nobody tops. i top. i'm very dommy and very willing to dish it out. i'm not a top, though, i'm a _switch_. like you know, three is a supply and demand issue. you got two kinds of people in the kink economy - you got switches and you got bottoms. you don't got people who only top.

by the way the nomenclature around this is very squishy (not as in the ace meaning of the term "squish"), queer language is in constant flux, trying to negotiate our way collectively around things there aren't adequate words for. words like top and dom, vers and switch, bottom and sub, these _aren't_ interchangeable but they're fluid enough that reading any specific meaning into them other than positionality, in a broader sense, isn't something i can do. which is why people have the dreaded Spreadsheets. not just to keep track of one's social calendar, but to try to communicate one's ability and needs meaningfully. though admittedly we're also pretty much all autistic as fuck.

anyway the thing is that even though i'm a switch, due to the "top shortage" topping starts to feel like a burden. i'm on strike, actually, i refuse to top unless i get some on the right side of the slash. that's not uncommon, a lot of actual play is transactionally negotiated between two switches.

for someone like me The Polycule is, honestly, more of a burden than anything else. i'm a huge fucking slut in certain senses, but none of that matters too much unless i can get my intimacy needs met on an individual level.

i can't just, like... if i date anyone here, i have to take into consideration their relationships with people in the extended Polycule. not just the people they're currently in relationships with. their exes. the exes of their partners. the partners of their exes. this seems like a good time to repeat that we're pretty much all autistic as fuck. most of us are in tech and can do calculus, just not _this_ kind of calculus.

you don't have a big happy family here. you have a lot of people with complicated personal issues and complicated relationship issues. one doesn't get to go no-contact with anyone here, no matter how badly they hurt you or how badly you hurt them.

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so when i talk about feeling like i've "rediscovered monogamy", that's kind of what i mean. navigating The Polycule is so far above my current skill level that i'd much prefer to get involved with someone outside of The Polycule. i'm not jealous, but monogamy is a great way to render polycule calculus irrelevant. since i'm single now, i guess that's irrelevant.

i really do wish i could get my needs met with casual sex. like i said, though... complicated personal issues. "dating" for me is going out looking for someone who will pretend to kidnap me and keep me in their basement. even by the standards of gay sex that strikes me as being kind of risky. like, in practical terms, i guess it doesn't matter _that_ much, in terms of... sexually assaulting trans women is a free action, anybody can do it at any time for any reason and larger society will hold the victim responsible (and to be clear, being sexually assaulted isn't my fault _even if I literally asked for it_). just personally though... i've learnt well the lesson "you can get what you want and still not be very happy". i can be kind of skittish.

or more specifically i can go to a kink social event, break down in tears, and have to leave early. which was me last night. i felt pretty bad about it until i went on fet and realized that...

here's the thing, if i'm gonna ask somebody to kidnap me and keep me in their basement, they have to be someone i _respect_. and when i see how members of The Polycule behave on a regular basis, like, nothing against them, but i kind of have a hard time doing that. you know what i respect? people who like and respect themselves. you know who've been taught their whole lives to be ashamed of themselves, to hate themselves, to think of themselves as monsters? queer kinky people. it's kind of important to me that people i date _not_ think of themselves as monsters. i mean i read _mother night_. maybe other people would think of doing the stuff i want people to do to me as monstrous shit and i, like, don't? Problematic, absolutely. if other people think i'm a monster, think the stuff i'm into is monstrous, that's on them. it's not wrong or bad or evil for me to like the things i like and want to do the things i do, as long as, you know, it's got the "risk aware and consensual". for me, that means i don't play with people who think they're monsters.

which is to say that i'm very lonely a lot of the time. which puts a huge amount of pressure on me. i'm under a lot of pressure to do emotionally unhealthy things that will leave me feeling bad and gross and disgusting. if anybody here doesn't know what _that_ feels like, well, God bless.

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anyway look just because i'm 6 am sadposting doesn't mean everything has to be all doom and gloom. i want to talk about something more upbeat like my recent facial injury. it's starting to heal up a bit and i've decided that i am, in fact, actually looking forward to having a scar. i think things like that add character. i don't get by on being classically beautiful, i get by on being _interesting_. i haven't decided if i'm going to tell people that i got it from getting my lip pierced at a mall kiosk or if it's a dueling scar. maybe i'll split the difference and say it's from a duel at a mall kiosk. that seems like a very 'me' thing to say.

You know, I never wanted to visit PDX because, I guess, the Decemberists annoy me, and so do the Dandy Warhols, but recently I saw pictures of Newoskin Beach and I WANT TO GO, really badly, it is like my top bucket list destination in the contiguous states. If I ever make it out there YOU ARE COMING WITH ME. Right? It doesn’t have to be strenuous or intense or anything like that.

look nobody i know acknowledges the existence of either the dandy warhols or the decembrists. if there's any rock band at all people here acknowledge it's dead moon. i've never actually heard dead moon, though (don't @ me), so even if you don't like them it's not a problem. how do you feel about fucked up trans girls with synthesizers and black metal side projects? because that's portland the portland music scene. theoretically i should be getting with some of them because we have shared special interests and that's how you get into an autistic person's pants, but none of them even _have_ basements. hell, half of us don't even have homes.

here's my point absolutely yes come visit pdx. there are a couple people here who have met me and can i hope speak well for me. although i'm not sure how many of them are on the queer thread. i'm very open-minded, i have heterosexual friends.

You know what though, I will always pick the ones who post the most lethargic selfies, or like if they only have 2 pics which are terrible and they are wearing the same shirt in both of them, anything that screams ‘idgaf’

hmmm. that's interesting. see for me like... it's like i said earlier, i'm into people who give off a vibe of liking and respecting themselves, and i mean. my selfie game is weak, i don't look hot at all in selfies, i look like someone's mom, but i'm hot and i do actually care about my appearance... it's really important to me to have a partner who thinks i'm really hot. i've gotten into too many unhappy relationships witih people who have really low self-esteem. mind you sometimes people feel the need to look gorgeous _because_ they have low self-esteem. i'd say there's, like, a middle path there.

my gender identity is invisible to others most of the time unless I make it a point to tell them which isn't great
because I feel negated by the invisibility, when other gay guys just regard me as a gay guy because it's easier and convenient and I can say by the way my pronouns are "they/them" but it doesn't really change that perception.
so then when an app makes me revert to my received gender to match me with anyone, that sucks

i don't know if it helps but i feel like when it comes to looking for intimacy i get treated like a gay dude a lot. like it doesn't matter that i pass, the second someone finds out people's brains just go "dude". not even consciously, it's not even, like, a question of whether someone's individually "transphobic", we were all programmed that fucking much to think "trans woman" = "dude looks like a lady". i'm not super happy about it honestly, but fuck it, there's nothing wrong with gay men, gay men are awesome, if people are gonna think of me as an f-slur, i don't have a problem in principle with it. i'm just not going to get with people like that. being treated like a guy in bed makes me feel super gross.

with guys it's complicated. i'm really attracted to guys and honestly i vibe more with gay guys with straight guys. i'm a woman and i'm attracted to men but in an extremely gay way, and either people don't believe it or just go "huh?" like it doesn't make logical sense, and that's what "love is love" means to me, none of this shit makes any kind of sense at all, just do your best to treat other people well, own your shit, and fuckin' go with it.

admittedly i don't necessarily "go with it", unless "going with it" means crying and leaving a queer social event early. i'm working on it.

Alfred, I’m kind of vaguely under the impression that you prefer short term relationships, but you’ve never expressed this, so that’s probably wrong?

― Deflatormouse, Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Or none at all!

For Alfred the relationships are less about length, more about girth

"Girth, that is!"

https://i.imgur.com/YKDH4dP.jpg

my life in a nutshell
i went out for brunch and a girl gave me her phone number
i mean maybe nothing comes of it, and if so that's fine. last night i was mooning over how nobody could ever possibly be interested in me and this morning a girl starts up a conversation with me and my (monogamously married) friend and hands me her phone number. it helps keep my spirits up, you know?

I got a work email informing me that today is the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism, and Transphobia, or IDAHOBIT

It is wrong that my immediate reaction to this is “you spelled hobbit wrong”, right

Sméagol hates nasty IDAHOBITs!

calling tater tots “Idaho bits” from now on

anyone else here try some idaho bits? i sure have

kate did you end up texting that girl?

yeah we're doing brunch tomorrow

she's bringing me a pothos

i got a brown thumb but i figure hell with it, i got plant hangers in my apartment

she also has sourdough starter that's over 100 years old

hell yeah

met an insanely hot marxist poet from glasgow tonight

I would love to meet an insanely hot Marxist poet from anywhere.