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

it was crazy windy earlier — kind of fun to bike in before getting an eyeful of street grit and leaves

YES THE WIND

caps unintended but necessary

I was just thinking about how it is ALWAYS windy in Chicago. It's especially windy today - even now - but the air is never still here. It feels a little weird when it stops.

that is great. i'm really not all that into still air. wind is one of my favorite things, even tho MY element is rain.

(they do go together after all)

I like rain... when I'm inside and don't have to be anywhere.

it's nice. water in general is really a good thing. in fact my first ILE thread was

What is your favorite thing to do with water?

Wow, this is a retweet from last night orig a local weatherman:

Gusts 45+ mph tonite; 60 mph ovr open lake wi 18-20 ft. offshore waves.”

Is Gordon Lightfoot still alive? We might need him.

that's hot

I'm a slave to love

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f308/sotoalf/325576_10150345428684521_720269520_7952034_1784762925_o.jpg

I'm eating a delicious cherry puff pastry from Au Bon Pain and thinking of you, Corey.

Hey gays are any of you familiar w author R1ch4rd McC4nn?

M cancelled on me for last night, but wants to hang out at some point this weekend.

I loved stealing the cherry tarts at ABP

I just finished The Women and now I'm going to hang w/ my friend Ph!11!p

i am gonna go dancing tonight although i'm not sure i have anyone to actually go with

think i may make a bevmo run first because i $$$$just got paid$$$$

bevmo

*sighs*

as in, wistfully

beb' mo

baseball tonight, then tomorrow, 4 more baseballs. I may look for Hot Mess in the interim.

*rad date thing in DC this evening with red-headed Moroccan/Italian dude w a huge interest contemporary art and a killer smile. I think we both like each other and are hanging out again, maybe?

*yesterday I talked to Andr3w fucking H0ller4n on the phone for like 15 minutes about The Saint and The Price is Right and oh my god how on earth is this real life idk

I tried on a cardigan today. It looked good, but it was shitty material that felt like sandblasting. But I found a sweet plaid shirt on clearance. Next week I will look around for cardigans that don't give road rash.

I'm thinking it might be a good idea to inform my one or two secret crushes of those crushes. They're ridiculous and annoying to me and my friends. The rejection will hit finally purge those fantasies of romances, and of course open me up to new delusions. For real though, I know they're not into me, but they don't know that I wish they were, so it's exhausting. (/therpy)

wow- a 21 min. xpost....

Andr3w fucking H0ller4n? how?

bevmo?

Bcz i met this dude via Manhunt for a strictly friendly coffee and it wound up being R1ch4rd McC4nn and apparently they're friends and so after me talking a ton abt Dancer From The Dance he basically just like called him and handed me the phone

!!!

Morbs: BevMo is a chain of beverage stores thruout Cali/where I do most of my liquor purchasing. Bought Cynar and Old Overholt on Friday.

This weekend I discovered that alcoholic Redi-Whip-type whipped cream exists. Haven't tried it, but will at some point. It's shelf stable. 30 proof.

I just saw that my boss orders from BevMo sometimes. I've never known him to go to CA, though.

That alcoholic whipped cream freaks me out

Guys, it's time for one of our periodical thinky questions: Why does sex so often lead to a discontinuation of communication? I mean looking back in life, there are tons of guys that I was attracted to and we were pals and all but we never hooked up and we are still buddies and all is well, and there are so many about whom I felt the same way, and we DID have sex, and now we just don't really talk any more. It seems to provide this sort of closure, whether you want it or not, and I just cannot figure out why. I mean, I like to think I have a very open-minded/grounded approach to sex where I can be casual or I can be intimate without getting attached and all of that shit, and I'm fine with having sex just be sex, and yet I find myself doing this same thing where I just lose the desire to maintain the same sort of dynamic we had before we fucked. I'm not talking about, like, "Oh, the sex was so awful; I can't bear to speak to this person ever again", but I just feel like subconsciously it's this end result for so many people, and once they get it they feel like their work is done, I mean not in a conscious/manipulative way but just something deeper down.

Has anyone else had experiences with this?

Yes, mainly 10-20 years ago. I have no real understanding of it either.

i think this just happened to me

like, fun date with cool dude, capped off with great sex. haven't really spoken to him since. if we hadn't gone there, would it have been different?

Probably.

Today I was talking to the guy I stayed with in northern WA a few months ago, with whom I kept in loose touch (we've texted/had a good IM conversation maybe 5 or 6 times since) and he pretty bluntly said "We probably wouldn't be talking if we'd hooked up" and I was just like "Yeah, I know". Also I met up and hung out with this one dude from Scruff in NC and it was strictly friendly, we got pho and frozen yogurt and laughed about stupid music videos and then he dropped me off and that was that, and we've kept in touch but our conversations have gotten progressively more flirtatious and today it got pretty heavy and we basically acknowledged our desire to fuck, and he was all "Man, I knew I should have asked you to come back to my place" but I feel like if he had, things would've just been *different*

Maybe it has to do with building up anticipation? Do you spoil it by just fucking on the first date?

i have some thoughts on this

maybe this is super cynical or maybe i'm projecting but once you have sex w/ someone you cease to do all these things that we all do in order to get ourselves to have sex -- namely, work to present ourselves as interesting. once you've fucked someone you can pretty much initiate sex by going "hey, let's fuck again", and if you both want to fuck again then you'll fuck again, maybe a few more times, and from there something resembling a relationship will evolve bcuz you both like each other and like fucking, or you'll both realize that the sex is cool and the other person is pretty cool but ultimately this isn't what you want and you both move on and the communication kind of breaks off

idk i haven't had tons of sex in my life so i might be wrong

Hey it's table's b-day!

i'm inclined to agree, j0rdan

which in part explains why i generally never sweat first dates but am terrified of subsequent ones

i think it's a pretty common developmental episode to hook up with somebody and either (a) catch serious feelings for them or (b) realize they have caught serious feelings for you -- either way, one person attaches more significance to the act than the other person, and dealing with the imbalance can be incredibly awkward and sometimes painful.

without having formed the bond of a relationship, whether it's a friendship or something more explicitly romantic, i think it's really easy to just bail and not have to negotiate that imbalance.

idk, just a thought.

J0rdan otm.

I would argue that the desire for another, whether for friendship or sex, is always an exercise in erotics; if it's a friend the erotics get sublimated or whatever. We underestimate the degree to which our energy dissipates in that spurt of cum. I'm guilty as charged.

oh, "spurt of cum" is definitely going to haunt me for a while

either way, one person attaches more significance to the act than the other person, and dealing with the imbalance can be incredibly awkward and sometimes painful.

kind of long for the title of my autobiography but i'll submit it to my editor and see what he thinks

it's like a Calvino or Jeannette Winterson novel.

Why does sex so often lead to a discontinuation of communication?

totally my experience, sometimes i'm happy about it and sometimes not but it's quite frustrating generally - i assumed there was something about being lol british & emotionally repressed in my experiences but there's def also a bit of the opposite of what j0rdan says, ie by initiating contact after you've fucked, it's like you're saying it ~meant~ something to you. weirdly i think if it ever did ~mean~ something to me it'd be easier to deal with. as much as i enjoy the fact that it's ok and expected for gays to fuck on the first date without going through bullshit courtship rituals, the negative flipside is definitely how that can nip potential friendships (maybe even r*l*t**nsh*ps!!! who knows. who am i kidding lol) in the bud.

also by the time you've mulled it over and then got on with life suddenly, like, three weeks have passed and it'd be a bit weird to suddenly be all "hi!!!" again.

also are any of you in LA? i'm going to be there mon thru wed next week interviewing yelawolf

i am!

It's no easy trick to master insouciance.

it is easy to feel kind of small when the other person has, tho