making our way back: reclaiming queer space in the SPRING of 2021//LGBTQIA+ Vaccine ed.

I have a crazy four days: back to pre-2020. Happy hour on Thursday; another on Friday with a pal in town for the first time since '19, plus bar hopping and, uh, smoking later; backyard party with that pal and my hometown cronies. Still sticking with outdoor activity but we're all fully jabbed.

we want to have parties too but we live in a fucking trailer park lmao

I went to a club this weekend (I'm fully vaxxed, everyone in my house is too, I don't have any kids in my bubble, the CDC said I could, etc) and holy FUCK I missed being in a room full of varied homos putting up with a stale playlist in order to touch each other and vibe. didn't even drink anything, danced for hours and made out with the tallest femme there, felt liberated and fully alive in a way I hadn't in over a year!

(PS hi gays, used to post intermittently like a decade ago under my deadname, now I'm out as trans/gay, and back on ilx as a twitter methadone)

sounds incredible. hi nicole!

Hi Nicole! We had friends over this past weekend. They're a younger dyke couple. It was great, but I also cleaned all day Friday and part of the day on Saturday. Our house was *disgusting*.

I wonder how different it would have been if one of your poker buddies was out-and-proud gay.

lol yeah I remember thinking "if anyone wants to come out this would be a real good time to do it"

ultimately I'm just gonna leave it alone. perhaps he really is happier or more fulfilled this way. I'm worried that he's surrounded himself exclusively with weird religious people and he's just never gonna reckon with this and be unhappy forever. but what can I do?

NYT, hay!

what is that in reference to, Eric?

Also, it isn't public yet, but I just found out that my friend Kevin, aka Phatima Rude, one of San Francisco's most legendary drag performers, my husband's former roommate, and any number of other things, has passed away. Phatima was a very complicated person, as we all are, but was always very kind to me, and very approving of my relationship with Theo, my husband. Theo did many of his tattoos from his bedroom in the anarchist collective where they both lived in the Mission.

We lost a real one. As Kevin used to say, "Blessed be."

Here is a short documentary made about Kevin.
https://vimeo.com/98603600

ugh, table, my condolences

Sorry, I was being passive-aggressive about the NYT op-ed that's been making the rounds today on why the LGBT community needs to support police.

xp also, sorry to hear, tabes

sorry to hear, T ❤️

i no longer read the NYT if i can help it

I just read that Times piece. What utter shit.

Anyway, thanks for your well wishes. It's strange, as I haven't seen Kevin in some years— but for a while, we worked together, and s/he officiated my dear friend's wedding, and so on and on. I don't know what happened, but I hope s/he is at peace.

always enjoy a nice hola papi pep talk

https://holapapi.substack.com/p/i-think-im-ugly

um so idk if this is the right place but the whole kink at pride thing is flaring up again on social media and while i don't go to pride or want to do kinky stuff in public it's still a little disturbing seeing what feels like textbook homophobic rhetoric coming from so many (apparently) young gays online- claiming leather daddies are predatory threats to The Children and such. idk how common this sentiment is, it feels like the kind of wedge issue certain groups like to use against queerness in general but i'm sure some of it is genuine. i don't really understand who these people are, where they're getting this stuff, whether they have a point, i know this is an ongoing debate but it seems way more intense than usual for whatever reason

i don't know too much about it, everyone is publicly taciturn where i am and always has been, it's just ingrained here, the level of repression is to-the-eyeballs. i did see the guy who runs the local lgtbq rag say something like "i wonder if everyone screaming about too much corporate sponsorship at pride would actually do a parade themselves" or something though. and like, no, fuck parades haha. if i had a penny for all the brutal retrograde often self-directed and self-policing opinions i've encountered among the gays i'd have a couple of bucks tbh. something weird about this year, it was supposed to be a let loose summer but it feels like it already wants to sour. i guess what people really missed during the pandemic is punishing people with less power than them or something sheesh.

one thing that i will always hold on to if i can is the sort of free field of pleasure that opened up for me when i discovered my sexuality in my teens. it's so important to me, some times it's one of the only things that holds me up, you know? it feels harder and more complicated to access as i grow older, but when it's there, holy shit do i make a meal out of it haha. and fuck anyone who tells me i shouldn't.

Left, there's a whole generation of young people who know a lot about gender but nothing about kink or fetish culture, and they think that because they're more enlightened in the former arena that they have any insight into the latter. They don't, and that's fine-- I just don't think they should be making rules.

that makes sense. not saying anyone needs to like kink or that it defines queerness or that it's always unproblematic or anything. but it would be nice if these people would at least learn something about the history of the movement(s). and it's v sad seeing them (whether they realise it or not) sharing targets and talking points with the far right and the anti-trans crowd. even though i'm not explicitly the target in this case it's like part of a general wave of repression that seems to be coming from all directions right now, i hate it, i internalise it anyway

My thing is that I have always thought of Pride as being a celebration of sexuality and, as such, there will likely be things seen there that you may not be ready to talk to your kids about

My other thing is that I get irrationally angry at people who whip other people for pleasure in public because the main way that has impacted my ancestors has not been associated with sexy fun times and it’s gross to me that people are bored/privileged enough to want that done to them

I solve this dichotomy by not going to Pride

This is the most ghoulish conversation!

kink is weird, i probably don't get 90% of it. i've realized i'm pretty vanilla for the most part. someone loving my emotional side is my kink haha. i do get off on some power dynamic stuff but i switch that off pretty fast when sex is over. my fetish these days is the smell of cottonwood trees fruiting idk.

My fetish these days is smelling fruits.

i am troubled by some things about kink/fetish culture as i understand it but i do kind of want to be hurt in ways that i worry perpetuate the kinds of power dynamics i know should be dismantled and i'm unconvinced by the arguments that it's some kind radically free space where this stuff doesn't apply or is necessarily deconstructed or just make believe... at the same time "normal" sex whatever that means also perpetuates a lot of shit so idk where i'm going with this. i started off souding pro-kink and now i sound anti which i'm not really and i'm also worried about playing into the lines i was bothered by to start with from the anti-kink-at-pride crowd which seem to be in line with a broader repressive agenda (like how many of these people also support police action against sex workers i wonder). not that i care about pride myself but some people i care about do. i have confused myself now more than usual and this post doesn't make much sense probably i'm very drunk

Lol ♥️💙💜💗🖤

Well, I can get into some kink. It's embarrassing, it's like I become a totally different person. Of course afterward I'm ready to cuddle with my teddy bear and watch murder she wrote. I'm in the middle of a 20 year long identity crisis.

Speaking of being gay and abusing substances, I had a strange experience with coke recently. I hadn't done it in a really long time, and then I got some for a party and it was in my house for a while after. Well I quickly found out that working from home with coke in the house is quite eventful. I guess it got out of hand because for a couple of days I just wasn't really eating, and then one night I started drinking and getting drunk by myself and taking selfies. which was all fine until I woke up on my back in the street in front of my house shaking violently not knowing how I got there. I skinned myself all over and was bleeding but I recognized that I was at least in front of my building so tried to go in, as one does. Well then I found myself on my back again in the vestibule, shaking violently and clutching my phone which I had cracked on the sidewalk. Super trippy! Finally, my diner order got there because that was the one smart thing I did b4 I blacked out, except they forgot my donuts. So I guess I learned my lesson. Coke = no donuts. Anyway, dumb is as dumb does. Hoping i at least get some gnarly scars out of it.

No judgment, but I will say that coke is a nasty drug that turns people into nasty people, ime as both a former regular user and now observer...

There are problematic aspects of BDSM culture, absolutely. I just don't think that arguing with some 20-year-old enby whose never been in a leather bar is worth it, because they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Everyone's opinion is valid, but not everyone's opinion is worthwhile.

I will also say that it is rich that these sorts of arguments are taking place around an event that has been so thoroughly corporatized that it is essentially toothless. Afaic, if you can't take some dudes dancing around to bad house music wearing leather and flashing whips during a parade, then I don't give a fuck who you are, you need to grow up. (I think DJP's comments and those of people like Bersani against aspects of leather and BDSM culture are the most salient, whereas the often younger queer's argument follows the logic of safe spaces which has been shown to be so easily recuperable as to be dangerous to subversive behavior and thinking)

yeah i don't know why this has troubled me so much, it's not really my thing and pride at least here is now thoroughly commodified, a celebration of capitalism imperialism etc none of which is threatened by BDSM or anti-BDSM sentiment i guess i feel an irrational affinity for both parties here in an broad sense in as much they can be called parties. way beyond the pride context or BDSM context. and maybe i am more like 20 year old enby more than i am 50 year old leather daddy which gives me some cognitive dissonance here, like maybe enby has legitimate reasons to be wary. including of the notion of invoking 20 year old enby as hypothetical kid who doesn't know shit. even (especially?) if they don't in this or any case. because niether do i

drugswise i have no right to advise shit but would gently suggest to go easy on the coke it sounds a bit scary. however i am coming up on edibles and mushrooms and i do appreciate the ♥️💙💜💗🖤 they are very nice thank you. in fact i can repeat them ♥️💙💜💗🖤♥️💙💜💗🖤♥️💙💜💗🖤♥️💙💜💗🖤♥️💙💜💗🖤 and it just goes on like that forever

do i need a therapist to tell me why i never come on the queer thread sober

surm i'm just glad you're ok tbh.

i have the impression that bdsm / kink people are generally more experienced / better versed in establishing consensuality than most but i'm sure it varies enough irl to not actually hold true.

i feel like part of the discomfort with kink is that a lot of it (though not all of it) is essentially patriarchy or colonialism fetishized (dom/sub stuff, daddy/son, master/slave). the reality is that stuff has a huge affect on desire imo. when people discover that i think they're like wtf which is understandable. but i think a more powerful take is that like there isn't any pure, scrubbed-clean desire, like it doesn't exist. so exploring and playing with it, giving it articulation and space can be really liberating and healing imo.

like, do i want to exploit and make people miserable irl without their permission? hell no. do i want to enact the thrill of being someone's god in a context of mutually expressed pleasure? hell yeah. doing the latter can help eliminate the draw of the former imo. just my two cents.

i definitely think kink has pitfalls / drawbacks which is why i don't really latch on to one "scene" or another. there is too much object attachment and literalism going on for me in a lot of cases.

I definitely think repression is far more dangerous than allowing oneself to indulge in fantasy behind closed doors.
And yes absolutely RE edibles and shrooms. Got both in the spice cabinet RN. Shrooms r maybe the one thing I'v found that help with my social anxiety.
It may sound dense, but it took me years to figure out that some of my self-destructive tendencies had a direct correlation to my sexuality or the way I grew up. I don't like crutches, but I have found there is some truth to that. Sometimes helps to clarify things. but that isn't to say that I shirk responsibility for occasionally being a straight up moron.

we exist in a world that tells us as non-heteronormative people: that we are unacceptable, that we should be constantly vigilant of our own safety, that our narratives of struggling for peace and tolerance are so common to be entertainment tropes, that we are not worthy of being taken seriously or affording respect towards. I don't think it's self-destructive to feel challenged and defeated and nihilistic as a result of trying to navigate through a world that sometimes seems designed to set us up for failure.

Very much agreed. Lately I have been thinking about self respect, and what its ties are to one's experience in life. If u didn't go through life with the knowledge that you deserve respect and a fair shake, what is that journey like? How do you find your voice? I guess for me it's finding people "like me". I feel happy to have found some of those ppl in NYC, which is why I moved here in the first place. But it was years until that happened. Like 35 years. Which, u could say, is the origin of this thread, seeing as its first iteration when Dr Morbs was around was "I have like, no gay friends in town" IIRC. cycle of life. And I'll make sure to pour one out for Morbs tomorrow.

Y'all got coming out stories? I'll share mine.

I came out to my dad the night of my grandfather's funeral. His whole extended family had converged at my grandparents' house, and we were allotted a space to sleep on the floor.

He said, sympathetically, that he'd always worried that I might be, but hoped I wasn't. Because it meant that I was going to have a very difficult life.

I didn't know how he'd react. He was a volatile, moody and temperamental guy who could be incredibly tender at times. On other occasions previously, he'd told me that he always wanted me to have a difficult life. He'd also given me reason to think he'd take this particular news very poorly.

I don't think we ever discussed it again. A couple of years later he had a massive stroke and lived the rest of his life in a compromised state.

That night he was on the tender side, which was a huge relief.

I don't even know if i'm gay anymore, or wtf I am. Not that there is any interest in the opposite sex, more like I'm schizoid or something.

Not to diminish the struggles of others, which I've also shared in. But when I think of what my dad said, I feel like gay would have been a lot easier than whatever the fuck this is.

💜 I'm so glad you're posting here
I too have no idea where I stand on the sexual meridian anymore
Going single and getting started on the first years of my life as an independent and reinvigorated adult only to be sequestered off to an isolated existence while my x moves into the Brooklyn equivalent of a mansion with his new boof, while at this point old news, has put me in a limbo of sorts with sex, identity and whatever approximation of self actualization in supposed to be fighting for
You're not alone 💙

anyway, i know i'm among the youngest on here but....

any suggestions for coming out to the 'rents? within the next few days it is happening, and while i'm not too nervous at this point, they aren't the most...fag-friendly people around.

― the table is the table, Saturday, October 20, 2007 4:21 PM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

why in the next few days?

a) sick of them asking if i've met any nice girls
a1) sick of tip-toeing
b) it is fall break, and i happen to be at my parents' house for a few days

the thing is that my parents are very loving, wonderful people in a lot of ways, and i'm certain things will be fine within a few months. it's just that there were some...uh...'struggles' when i was younger about being gay, and we haven't talked about it since because i've been afraid of upsetting them. now i'm not. (i also figure that telling them last fall that i had been seriously thinking about killing myself was the upset of a lifetime). given this fact as well, i'm confident that they won't display too much upset for fear of upsetting me? who knows.

― the table is the table, Saturday, October 20, 2007 5:41 PM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

an update:

post-dinner, i told them. and after the expected conversation ("at least it's easier now," "you need to be safe," "how do gay people have kids," etc), we all went outside and smoked cigarettes and made jokes. and i was the only one who cried.

― the table is the table, Tuesday, October 23, 2007 5:48 PM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

so in other words, it was much better than i could have ever anticipated.

:-)

― the table is the table, Tuesday, October 23, 2007 5:49 PM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

it took me a long time to find that thread, but I did.

In any case, I didn't really need to come out to my friends. It was really my parents I was worried about.

I do think my mom still holds out hope for grandkids.

But T and I have been together for ten years, we own a house together, we have two dogs, under most metrics we're pretty "normal," lol...

WELCOME

I'm not a big fan of the concept of "coming out" in that it implies once I've done it that's it complete. Every time I start a new job or similar, I need to do it, and for all it's not fraught with anxiety and tension the way it was when I was 15, it's still something I'm cautious around. I might be secure in my own identity and I might know rationally that I should be telling anyone with a problem with it to simply fuck off, but there's always that element of risk that it's going to alter the way I'm perceived and treated.

When I started at uni, I became quickly aware that for like 90% of people I met, I was the first real-life gay man they had ever encountered. I was quite casual about it - I did all my horrible awkward stuff years before that - and learned to quickly treat as "oh by the way I like men" as opposed to making it a big deal. But... it still has to be done, doesn't it?

On my 17th birthday my friends gave me some joke presents and one was a copy of a gay magazine. I got home and tossed it under my bed and didn't think anything of it. My stepdad found it a few weeks later, hit the roof and threw me out for two days. I came home after my mother calmed him down. My parents stayed together for another year after it. He basically told me that I could be gay but not "in your face," to tone down my mannerisms and not to ever be seen with a guy or bring anyone home to meet them. He was more concerned with the embarassment of what his friends might think than any of the pain and shame and fear I felt. My mother stayed with him another year, I hated him even more than I did before and cemented my plans to move on as soon as possible. I'm nearly the age my parents were when this happened and it's only really as I get closer to it I realise just how shitty this whole thing was, I try not to be bitter and angry but it's a struggle.

I'm not a big fan of the concept of "coming out" in that it implies once I've done it that's it complete.

It does? No snark intended, but I know no one who thinks this way (even if the month enforces it).