Love Letters for Fall: LGBTQIA+ // 2020

So! When's the last time you single people had sex? For me, it's FDR's third term.

Right around the time Bathsheba toweled off.

Good to see some old familiar names here, btw!

Right around the time Bathsheba toweled off.

― On average, this critic grades 8.3 points lower than other critics (Eric H.),

Eve, this is Addison.

So! When's the last time you single people had sex? For me, it's FDR's third term.

I guess my new goal is sometime in 2021 for both seeing friends and meeting guys. Hopefully we don’t need to keep this up until 2022 because by then I may be expecting my cat to answer me instead of just talking to it.

All of my single friends irl found people on dating websites within a few weeks of lockdown, quarantined appropriately, then moved in with those people. Not advisable, necessarily, but I thought it interesting.

lol oh god what a recipe for disaster

Dis azz ter.

idk if I have mentioned this (probably?) but the incredibly silly and fun shoestring-budget drag queen slasher that my boyfriend's film festival programmed is screening online again and it keeps winning awards at every festival it plays at and even got an AV Club writeup, it's really fun and you should all see it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0xO1q4UQA4

https://xerb.tv/channel/sacramento-horror-film-festival/virtual-events/740

https://hyperallergic.com/596290/loving-a-photographic-history-of-men-in-love-1850s-1950s/

I've had more/better sex this year than ever, in my life, tbh.

It's hard to describe what I'm about to describe. I think COVID has created in people-who-aren't-having-sex an immense resentment toward people-who-are-having-it. Meanwhile, people-who-are-having-sex are beset with the same universal awful anxieties that COVID is creating-- loneliness, financial precarity, loss of family members, etc-- and so the sex-havers and looking at the no-sex-havers and saying "guys getting some dick on the daily is really only marginally improving my terrible year"

Lol

I don't know if romance is a life enhancer or not but I know it has sought me ought lately. Keep trying to let it down easy.

what

How are you Jed?

How’s everybody holding up?

i'm getting a little toasty wfh. tell me about the romance that has sought you out surm.

I'm trying to imagine myself hooking up thru OKCupid with a Cool Dude and living together for the next several months.

lol

Ooooooooh. Lol. I’m totally into that fantasy. I am in a similar fantasy with the romance that found me in Virginia. A good friend of one of my oldest friends, and the feeling like, he was meant to be there when I was there because I needed his energy. We all got drunk on the phone last night, I got major butterflies and probably sounded like a total ass. I want to see him again soon but I don’t want to act a fool. 😮✨🦋🧜‍♀️💕🧤🍀☃️❄️☂️🍕🎧🧩✈️

Also I get my passport soon and I want to plan a trip to Aruba. All by my fucking self. Thoughts?

The idea of travelling is so distant for me right now

My parents want me to go out west for Christmas (i.e. drive out) and I'm... pretty sure I'll just be roasting a chicken for a couple friends again this year

The idea of being on a plane right now is positively terrifying.

We hardly let people we know into our house.

My husband and I are now just starting to talk about maybe taking a plane to California in March or April. Even that seems too soon.

i flew home and back recently... honestly i found it fine. i would recommend an airline like delta that doesn't sell middle seats and booking a seat in the back of the plane. also getting tested before you leave and a few days after you land. states like new york that aggressively track travelers coming in from certain states haven't (to my knowledge) traced outbreaks back to flying, tho it's still reliant on self-reporting of symptoms, tests, self-quarantining etc. if you/ppl close to you aren't at increased risk and mentally the idea of flying feels doable, i think you can feel ok about it.

Hi LGBTQIAs. Pour one out for Bill tonight.

❤️ I will poor one out
You hanging in Kev?

Hi surm! Yes, I am. Not much sleep, stomach aches, tears, etc. But lots of joy today even if some of it is bittersweet. How are you, boo?

I hear you. I hope you will try to take good care of yourself this winter and surround yourself with friends.
You know what, I’m a little lost these days but i also love my new bedding so can’t complain. it is nice to c you ::)

Also geez now you guys got me scared about flying, I didn’t think I was being so cavalier! Gonna go with Jordan’s words of wisdom

I have traveled a few times during COVID: A plane to Boston in April, a plane back home in July, and then Amtrak to Boston and back a few weekends ago. Between data on air ventilation in plane and train cabins (the air is fully exchanged every 2-5 minutes w fresh outside air) plus the relative scarcity of outbreaks traced back to air/train travel, I felt cautiously OK with it, though it's not something I want to do regularly. All 4 trips were pretty undersold, you had the whole row to yourself and there weren't that many people around you, though I've heard from multiple sources that planes are getting fuller and fuller, which makes me skittish. I was going to go back up for Thanksgiving but have scrapped my plans with the current uptick in cases, and will instead be going for a few weeks over Christmas.

I mean, I should also say that I will always be slightly immunocompromised because of the cancer bout, so I am taking precautions more seriously than some others might need to.

I dunno if this belongs in a US Politics thread or elsewhere, but the past 24 hours have been really nuts. The world looks different, like, I feel as if this awful psychological malaise of the past four years has been slowly but perceptibly dissipating.

Moments enter into my head like faded memories of awful past relationships-- remember when Melania plagiarized Michelle? remember Sean Spicer?-- shit like that. I genuinely feel as if the past four years have been like some kind of psychosis-inducing nightmare.

Anyway I'm cleaning my house today, listening to Deerhunter, and putting gut strings on my violin for a change of pace

Yes, nightmare is the word. Lots of feelings for sure. Like fuck. The last for years ACTUALLY HAPPENED. it wasn’t an evil SNL skit!

(And yes tabes that makes total sense)

Yeah i went to the park yesterday and everyone who was there was looking around like “did we all just wake up from the same nightmare?”

We legit met two of our best friends at the abandoned golf course and sat in the sun for hours, lighter than any of us have felt in years. And we all identify as radical leftists and hate Biden! It really was a beautiful day for it to go down.

My favorite was the Jezebel headline

“Coherent Adult President Speaks Sensical Words to American People for the First Time in 4 Years”

to paraphrase a friend: "our long national nightmare is finally over! now, onto the next nightmare!"

Biden/Harris: New Nightmare

yeah :|

so this is kind of related i guess but i just need to vent somewhere about facebook drama (i know). my boyf is long-time friends with this girl i'll call betsy. i hung out with betsy once over a weekend irl and she was very funny and nice. several months ago she posted some delicately racist thing on facebook, i got up in her comments questioning her, she took offense, i apologized for my tone, she seemed really mad that i called her out. i can't even remember the details anymore. anyway i made some dumb post today about centrist democrats ruining everything and she basically told me i was a moron for believing that politics has any effect on anything at all and that i don't know anything about how the world works. i told her in a pm that her comment hurt, that i thought we were friends but that i don't do name-calling (i know, a little rich from me), wished her the best and blocked her. my read on her is that she is a gen-x ex-mormon who has been through a lot of trauma and bullshit due to her family and abusive ex-husbands but is still fundamentally closed off to the outside world, very much sheltered, has never encountered or sought out cultural or racial diversity in her life and is still attached to a lot of reactionary beliefs. a lot of that might be inaccurate or unfair idk but i just.. can't really excuse her comments, you know? my boyfriend, who generally agrees with me about politics (we have had a lot of discussions, poor guy), considers her a "sister". they aren't constantly in each others lives or anything, but they have known each other for twenty years, and he says he loves her and he's sad that she would say that to me. i'm pretty sure i don't like betsy though - her behavior is total anathema to me. so we agreed that me blocking her was for the best and that if she chooses to keep their relationship going, i would be fine with that, that if she eventually apologizes to me, i would accept it, but that we might not all be friendsies and that vague plans we had talked about re: her staying with us were probably off the table. both he and i are absolutely fine with that and supportive of each others' choices which is great. and i'm glad i'm no longer friends with this person who is probably ten years older than me (grown-ass!) and is racist and randomly attacks a generic complain-y post i make on facebook. i love my boyfriend but there is a small part of me that's disappointed that this person he's close with .. behaves so poorly. oh well, people are complicated and i've never been in a relationship with someone who is so ok with setting boundaries when they need to be set, that is a big important part of what's making this relationship so solid rn, and this boundary seems like a relatively clear-cut one that should be easy to set and forget. anyway, just needed to get that out somewhere.

Good for you. We’re at a point where people need to learn the hard way. It sounds like you guys understand and empathize with one another, and it sounds like he doesn’t shy away from hard practical decisions, which to me is one of the sexiest things. Also you could have been way harsher so don’t lose any sleep.

I feel you on this. One of my oldest friends from college and her boyfriend have been saying some weird shit... It’s the third time she’s been describing where she lives and she’s had to call out someone’s race to do it. Once in talking about her neighbor who is loud and disrespectful she ‘s like “well, he’s Asian ...” and that was it. No idea how that’s relevant. Another time we were walking into her building and this guy asked us a question about the front door and she was all weirded out. later when she told her boyfriend about it she was like, “this Asian guy didn’t know what he was doing” .... like zzzz you’re boring me pet and you were a poly sci major at Smith so not sure what’s up. Also her bf didn’t vote bc .... the whole system is fucked anyway! Well there’s a new one you sheltered fuck! Ok yup anger issues sorry anyway yeah BUH-LOCK

Haha. Yeah, people need to either 1) not be racist or 2) not be in our lives.

That’s what I’m thinking

And really i mean people should be anti-racist because i know for me it has been and will continue to be a process

Word
PIZZA FOR BREAKFAST today y'all

I was an anti-racist before, but my partner has done a lot of training me in that regard, since he is of ambiguous ethnic appearance, and often is mistaken for ethnicities he is not. He comes from southern Italian and Chinese stock, so he has darker skin than many Chinese people...let's just say that when we lived in California, people assumed he spoke Spanish. Hell, the first time I took him home, I thought he was a weird goth cholo because of all his gnarly tattoos.

In any case, the strangest thing about our families is that his white mother and stepfather are Trump voters, and he hardly talks to them. They're awful people. His Chinese dad and indigenous Hawaiian stepmom are amazing, but they're so far away from us. So it's just my parents as nearby family, and they are lovely, but have had to be trained over the years, too, particularly my mom. Dad is a leftist at this point.

Long story short: good for you for putting boundaries on idiot racists, and good for your boyfriend for understanding.

ty

🤍 Happy Friday
Love u guys

back at you, take care of yourself this weekend. ready to be a house-bound do-nothing slug myself.

had an emotional morning after having That Dream where i yell at my parents

O no. I’ve definitely had those dreams. Weirdly I had a Very Good family moment this weekend, which is pretty rare and surprisingly uplifting