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

i had fun last weekend though. people danced, at a club, to house music. there was even a black person there.

about the same, tbf.

Oh, I meant to mention to Eric and T, I took my first climbing lesson! It was incredible! And really challenging. I hadn't done a lick of weight or resistance exercise since I moved in July, and no running for over a month, so it wiped me the fuck out. I've been back at the gym, and I can't wait to have a little more endurance in my forearms next time.

It felt weird and unnatural the first time I let go of the wall at about 20 feet up. My brain deadlocked with itself trying to force me to let go or hang on. My forearms broke the impasse.

bravo, elmo <3

I lifted my (old tube) TV tonight.

Very friendly Eagle crowd in Portland. Saw a nice gal-on-guy flogging there.

I saw that you'd started from a FB post, J3ss3. I thought I'd liked it, but I dunno with the new FB layout. Things slip by me so easily.

I love watching newbie climbers get past that first "let go" moment. I also like watching them totally worn out from the first few climbs. I forget what it felt like to feel like total jelly and not to even be able to land on my feet. I sometimes miss that feeling.

Eric, the Gotham nominations are out, so, detrius.

Thought NRQ would do the honors this year.

Plus, what fresh hell is it that NYFCC moved their year-enders by three weeks?

2 weeks, I think. Very prez-race circuslike.

Has nrqy mayne even posted lately?

Not sure, I haven't trolled many of the movie threads in the last few months.

After I became OK with letting go, I tried the auto-belay and it got freaky all over again.

I was reeling with giddiness when I posted about it on FB, but it really is something to literally let go and trust someone to keep you from plummeting.

I wasn't thinking when I chose the location with the outdoor wall for lessons going from mid-October through November. They'll probably postpone Sunday's lesson since this weekend's going to be a continuation of yesterday's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald conditions :-/ Hopefully we can switch locations if Indian summer doesn't come back.

I want to go out for a drink b/c I'm wide awake and stir crazy, but it's 12:21 on a Friday night, so it's going to be not-low-key everywhere within a reasonable distance of my home. Even the little lesbos bar will be fully right now. Hmmrmrrm.

There have been so many fucking idiot bros screaming down on the street tonight. There are always a few revelers, but tonight they're being idiots. Three drunk dummies are hollering at cars and mooning cabs....

Some friends who drove here from NY bought me a paper grocery bag full of fireworks in Indiana, which I have had for months. I'm always so tempted to throw firecrackers out the window at jerks. They would never be able to tell where they came from, but I can't further disturb the peace that way.

Anyway, I guess I'm off to the lolManhandler. Ta.

i have been sitting around with my cat and boyfriend. we watched an episode of 90210, then threw on some sex and the city. 5th season. we also made brownie sundays and took a nap.

That was lots of fun. That bar is a rare holdover from he late-70s/early-80s Chicago gay scene, and as such it's sleazy, but friendly also and quiet in some senses. I'm pretty sure it's the only bar left in Chicago that plays porn in the main room. Its "back room" is a courtyard w/ a tin roof. One of the old-timers told me that they added the roof in the 90s when straight DeP@u1 students started moving into adjacent buildings and complained of the plein air debauchery.

oh, I been dere

sounds good

it's saturday and i'm at work

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y153/struggin/photo-1.jpg

^view out the window

damn

life is fucking rad, y'all.

tabes, were u around that shit at Occupy Oakland?

also jesse, i think an indoor wall is most certainly necessary for chicago. christ, it's necessary for here.

i bouldered today. it's getting to the point where i'm giving people beta and it's working. didn't have the best day myself— got thrown off of this v6 way too many times— but a good round of core exercises and 45-minute sauna session later and i feel fantastic.

*the shit*? which shit. i've been around for a lot of stuff, missed it today because i was helping my friend move things and/or having sex.

I read about some nasty police aggression that happened on Thursday or Friday

Went to the gay cowboy bar on their one disco night. Got a number.

Ugh. I need a sex life I'm going insane.

xp did you get a hand-drawn portrait of Grace Jones as well?

I can't believe I missed the discush on ageism. I have quite a bit to say about that topic

I am wearing my best cardigan right now.

That is all.

pic?

Age is such a weird thing in that people get freaked out about it so easily, and I'm hesitant to discuss it (re: fucking older guys) with a lot of people because of how freaked out they get. I've thought about it quite a bit and I'm convinced it comes down to the way people use age as a means of sorting people into some hierarchical structure whose upper/lower tiers are "off limits" to them in terms of closeness, friendship, intimacy, etc., and it's something that they cling to very dearly and get very nervous about when it's permeated. I mean, I just find it really easy to talk to/relate to guys of all ages and have a great deal of friends who are around or over 40 who I'd consider my peers; obviously there's that inevitable gap of life experience and, often times, wisdom, but I've never thought that it was some sort of thing that had to actually separate people. So, as a result, I often times approach/talk to/build friendships with older guys like they're people my own age.

I mean, on the flip side, I've definitely interacted with older guys who also cling dearly to this hierarchical structure and as a result talk down to and even fetishize me as a "young guy", and it's really skeevy.

Also a lot of times (but not always [but a lot of times]) 40 year olds are, like, *really* good at sex.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6213/6274794847_cf5f3f8ec3.jpg

lame pic of me (what *am* I doing with my head?) but it's the best pic i have of this cardigan, which I love

it sort of looks like an old TV tuned to static, only in sweater form

I'm 40 and I like getting it on with dudes of many diff. ages

totally get that if you overplay the age divide it can be creepy

hard not to tho, esp. when some people are very into roleplay about that difference

best to treat people as individuals and just follow their lead about verbal stuff that goes there

I like and am attracted to people my own age too, and I feel like that avoids the "chickenhawk" sketchy thing

Whoa, you got some crazy moiré all up in that. Yeah, the age roleplay is something I could never get down with, and I've had a few guys that have wanted to be my "daddy" or some shit and I tried playing along once for a little bit and then was like "okay, no". I just cannot do it; it feels really icky and incestual to me. I have absolutely no desire to be viewed as younger/juvenile/baby/etc. I mean, dom/sub is totally fine, and even sir/boy I can get down with, but something about "daddy" and "son" is just eeugggh to me.

I mean I guess it's a reality that people have "types" but that doesn't mean that you treat actual people as if they were just living examples of a type- the trouble with people who are "chickenhawks" -or "daddyhunters" for that matter- is that they are looking for some living individual person to plug into a fantasy scenario that is about categories rather than individuals (in this case, age categories, but maybe not so different from people who need a bearded person or a tall person or a certain race of what have you)- so there's something kind of un-ethical and instrumentalizing about it insofar as a person is being treated as a type rather than a unique agent- but then, as somebody prone to think in terms of psychoanalysis, I also have to fess up that it is simply no surprise that those linguistically defined terms and categories really are how many people's desires are wired- and it is no surprise that lurking behind a lot of sexuality is a fetishization of power differences that are bound up with early childhood experiences- I mean, I couldn't be a Freudian and not see that these totemic parental figures are objects of desire for all of us, and Stevie I think that that's what is behind your visceral "eeugghhh" response here- the incest taboo is really powerful and it's there for a reason- but because it's powerful, people want to tap into that power in controlled bursts during sex through things like roleplay, dirty talk, etc. Your disgust is just as intense as other people's pleasure at getting into these kinds of scenes- and in both the disgust and the pleasure, the source is the same early childhood training we all have.

that is so totally otm

dr#w otm -- about power relationships and his hair.

I'm praying that this isn't the UK's Matthew Shephard moment:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-15426893

Not that on its own it's any less horrific and twisted of course.

NO STEVIE HE DIDN'T BUT WAY 2 BRAG ANYWAY

drew OTM for realz upthread.

In my experience the decision to Act My Age around younger prey depends on the guy's demeanor. In a couple of cases "role playing" is unavoidable: he sought An Older Man, so that's what I'll play. I find the practice slightly loathsome because the exchanges can't escape a certain condescension, and it's alien to my nature.

it's not alien to my nature, but I think most younger men are confused when one breaks into laughter.

(i'm trying to parse the prey doing the seeking in the first 2 sentences)

A healthy sense of irony, like a well-used semicolon, is catnip.

This weekend I had an overnight encounter with a 52 year old who after we had already spent a lot of time together revealed his age like he was dropping bit of a bomb on me.

aww. was it fun?

jess what is the name of that kitty litter thing again?

It's Smart Cat Box. http://www.smartcatbox.com. I'm getting an error message when I visit the site right now, but it was working earlier today (I was buying more seeds, I wasn't just browsing).

lol

thanks!!

I started using it the first week of August and the 4 lb. bag of litter (seeds) lasted until the second week of October. That's longer than I should have waited before changing it and the seeds were beginning to lose their waterproof quality. It's probably realistic to say that a 4 lb. bag 6 weeks.

xp- NP! Also, FYI, I have two cats, one of whom I wonder if she is* sort of diabetic or something b/c she pees so much!

Anyway, I really recommend it with no significant qualifications.

yes you know - my cat is peeing more in her older age so i'm thinking this is the way to go