Throw on Your Best Cardigan and Celebrate Fall 2011 with the Gays of ILX

GAY HEDONISM

"would love your cock to be hanging out more often."

I wonder what accounts for how often I don't recognize names referenced in the gay threads. Today: Monae, Prefuse 73, and Liv Ullman. I'm not the most culturally aware person, but I keep up, and at my workplaces I'm usually considered the guy who is into ridiculously "obscure" or "underground" shit. But here I mark the ignorant end of the spectrum. When I IM w/ Stevie or Corey I do a lot of Googling b/c I get tired of delaying conversation while they explain who Nicki Minaj is.

I do have really notable gaps in knowledge, I guess. There was the eye-opening post where I asked if anyone had heard of this amazing "new" singer named "Eartha Kitt," b/c I had just seen her video for Where is My Man at the bar. Laurel thought I was joking, but alas, I was not....

When have I talked about Nicki Minaj!

oh man -- we're gonna have fun when I visit, guys.

Gay-related event of the day: a few male and female friends and went to a friend's (straight red-head I've posted about before) house to watch the Bears/Packers game through his new projector on to an 8' screen. After the game, he put on a Bound Gods video, which we watched for about 15 minutes over the audio of another football game. Today a bunch of heteros learned about CBT, hemostats to the chest, and other sado-masochistic delights, displayed in larger than life-size while we ate pie and drank pulque.

xp - Stevie talked about her. He gave me a little talk when I said I didn't know who she was.

I know she's annoying

T0mas is the guy who loves going to Th3 H0l3, he basement "back room" bar at a leather bar b/c of his go-to example: we were sitting at the bar talking while the guy next to us ordered a beer while getting a bj.

I feel of like I am the Little Britain character Davith who is really devoted to his identity as "the only gay in the village."

Hmmm, I may be momentarily going to this guys house for dinner and fun.

yay!

yeah, I'm excited. this guy is so cute.

Guys is there ever a time where you decline sex on the first date/meet up? Because I've said yes every single time without exception but I feel like maybe it's also good to maybe wait and build up some anticipation?

Also I feel like a lot of things are changing and I'm maybe starting on a new path re: boys

"maybe" lol

Yes, there are times when I have and would again, and there are definitely times I should have, both because it wound up making me think I liked a guy who turned out to be bad news, or because it was easier than getting to know the guy.

declining can be good -- contrary to the pressure of being a man and bringing back the goods on the reg. figuring out what's right for you is a process.

well, gays, Folsom Street Fair was probably the best time i've had in ages. went with th3o, and we hung out with some of my housemates, watched some whipping demos, and peed together on a human urinal. then we met up with th3o's primary partner and his friends, ate food, then went to the dyke/trans bar and played pool and drank beer....and it wasn't awkward at all. in fact, his primary and i get along really splendidly and we made jokes about th3o and whatnot. it was fun.

then th3o and i went to the Powerhouse, where we were in a backroom orgy with a cast of about 30 other guys for 3+ hours. today we hung out in our underwear and drank coffee and made food til 4 pm.

uh, my life fucking rules.

I should go to Folsom some year, I'm getting kinkier (again) in the right circumstances.

I just ate some bacon. I'm living large too!

Not as large as Gerard Depardieu, I hope, whose scene having a mutual stroke with another 60something man I'm trying to expunge from my mind.

"mutual stroke," heh

aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So, uh, nothing steamier than a couple kisses happened, but, uhhh, we seem to really, really like each other. I feel totally giddy right now. He cooked steak for me and we watched Black Swan, which neither of us had seen, and talked about all kinds of stuff. He wants to go to Night Slugs with me on Thursday, which is his birthday.

you threw on your best cardigan and celebrated!

nice, Rev!!

so obviously, things are going pretty well for me right now, but i have a question for all of you b/c of a conversation i had with some friends on Sunday.

i've gone on two dates with this guy. he's cute & smart and definitely finds me to be cute & smart, too. here's the issue: he asks coyly whether he can kiss me. and the last time he asked whether he could hold my hand. and it isn't because he's shy or afraid i'll reject him. i think it's b/c he's really, really bought into the undergraduate consent spiel that lots of queers get nowadays.

before i go on, don't get it twisted: consent is extremely important, and should be practiced to its most logical extremes, at all times possible..

but implied consent is also an important aspect of consent. if my head is on your shoulder, and we're talking and kind of being cute, don't ask me if you can kiss me. just fucking kiss me. by asking me, you totally just made me lose any amount of boner i had for you.

anyway, my friends and i agree about this— that certain things are implied when engaging in various intimacies. but maybe it's just that we're looser and slutty? gah. what do the gays here think?

i think it's tough to give a black & white answer

he probably has a fear of rejection, yeah & if he's someone that you'd want to pursue i'd imagine that you could break down that wall pretty easily just by telling him "you don't have to ask"

it was cute when the first guy who ever kissed me said it but yeah as a twentysomething i'd find it odd

yeah, i mean it seems like he's kind of...'baby' gay or whatever, so i'm not trying to intimidate him or whatever. especially given my headlong dive into some of the more...uh...'extreme' sides of gay living. but in a way, he's scared me off by being so consent-oriented. like, if we ever rolled into bed, would he ask if he could suck my balls? i've had experiences with people like this, and it drives me absolutely insane that they're so into keeping with consent that they put out any fire that could have existed...

If "implied consent" leads to a lot of "whoa, what are you doing?!" near-miss kiss attempts a la Children's Hospital, then it's all for the better.

It's a little 'much' I would agree, but test your limits with the consentdom. (Don't cut him adrift if he asks first about sounding.)

No, really, just jam it in.

Yeah, if he's new I'd say be patient but certainly try to steer him toward being able to detect these things for himself.

Though I'm totally lolling at like "Can I put my arms around you now?" "Can I take yr shirt off?" "Can I touch yr chest?" "Am I allowed to unbutton yr pants?"

YES GRASSHOPPER YES JUST FUCKING DO IT, JESUS

Most people, I'd want them to ask. Otherwise it's just rude when I say, "No."

MASTER MAY I GIVE YOU A LI'L PECK ON THE CHEEK

I was a wreck before my first gay kiss – he had to ask me. A rat the size of a tabby scurried under the car.

like, if we ever rolled into bed, would he ask if he could suck my balls?

haha, this just makes me think of

This thread makes me think of that situation guys sometimes run into, the one where a girl is giving you head but not going down to suck on your nuts even though you'd really like her to. So you sheepishly ask, "could you suck my balls?" hoping she will, and then she does, but all you can think about is the sound of your own voice asking "could you suck my balls?".

― Bryan (Bryan), Thursday, December 2, 2004 12:05 AM Bookmark

I had an extended conversation/debate with a friend about consent. She presented the position it necessary to have not only consent, but I enthusiastic consent. I said that it can be a real buzz kill to verbally request consent. What gets lost when you're talking about this issue in the abstract is that in reality "consent" isn't going to be as dry and stilted as interrupting passionate making out to go, "Is it OK if I finger you?" and "Yes, I consent to your fingering." I think that saying "I want to _________" is ask good as an interrogatory, and not boner kryptonite.

xp - hahaha I think about that post all the time!

The emotionally damaged ex-boyfriend had a big problem with consent. I learned that it was never OK to say, "Do you want me to fuck you?" (or vice versa) or even "I want to fuck you." After a couple times when I said something like that, he chewed me out for not "being a man" and just "taking" him. I learned that with him, I had to push past his resistance and reluctance, and then he would be really into it. Basically I had to be a date rapist.

that is the one thing where i always request consent!

Yeah, really.

Holy f, my bestie works in a science lab and had to order a rat for some experiment where she will p much do nothing but shoot it up with amphetamines every once in a while. Naturally, she named him Judy Garland. I am so, so proud of this woman.

wow

I only ever ask questions that I know the answer to.

Was that Judy Garland's drug of choice?

The 50-something, musical-theatre-loving, gay, right-wing, extremely racist leather man I used to wait tables with* chewed me out and held a grudge because I didn't know who Liza Minnelli's mother was. He got really shitty with me after I started asking the other staff if they knew who her mother was, and by far, the majority of them didn't know. I posted a poll with the same topic on another forum, and and over half of respondent's did not know.

Do you homos know who Liza's mother was?

* I feel like I've talked about him a million times, but still - he was smart and actually really really funny and he worked with people of all kinds of races, but his passion was hating racial minorities.

So he was Hitler-lite in the campy macho way? nagl.

I wouldn't have known if I hadn't looked it up. On the other hand, I really have no idea who Liza Minnelli is other than the name of someone who's famous.

*sigh*

Rev, try Cabaret with the Black Swan guy