Real love -- I'm, like, searchin' for that Queer Love -- LGBTQIA+ Love // A Thread for the Real Ones

some of the more positive(?) things elder gays have taught me have been reminders of how contingent, temporary and limiting the current norms of queer culture, discourse, terminology, and praxis actually are, and that today's ideas aren't always the best ideas - which seems obvious but can be easy to forget, especially with so many people and spaces and movements being destroyed and too often forgotten (so that every generation feels like it's starting from scratch and ends up falling for the same pitfalls that could easily have been avoided if we weren't so alienated from our own history)

(I don't want to project my own desires onto a prelapsarian radical queer past because I know it was messier and uglier than that I just wish younger people were more interested in learning from the insights and mistakes of older people in general) (I know there are structural and political and cultural and social-reproductive issues in the way of that and it's not all their fault) (whether I count as a younger person depends on who I'm talking to but I'm partly scolding myself here as well as realising I'm just another out of touch elder to the average teen)

(when I say gay I mean queer because requeering gay is a personal project of mine)

Maybe I'm just in a sad place today, thinking about my friends who've passed. Two close friends of mine, both younger than me, died last year. One of them, the last time I saw him, was March 2019. We had lunch together in Harlem. At that lunch, we were talking about the topic you're referencing, Left. I took a "young queers could learn something from elder queers" position. I felt that there were/are a lot of weird traps that the discourse was falling into. My friend disagreed. He thought that we middle-aged queers (and older) should be in a constant state of being-educated by the youth. He felt that the education should flow upwards.

gotta be a two-way street imho

Principal Skinner.gif

Death -- painful, prolonged death -- was such a touchstone of the previous generation of gay men that in my experience they've only been too willing to talk.

wonder if this generational isolation is one consequence of the way we educate kids, where there's lots of emphasis on the need for a large section of students to remain "on the same level" so that they can be taught more efficiently. and like we quarantine kids away from others who are even one year older or younger.

i think these kinds of intergenerational relationships are most common among artists, and seem to come about where there's a mutual desire to produce work and to midwife the creation of artworks, and then nurturing each other is a vital part of that.

i read into things sometimes that aren't there, because i _want_ everyone to be queer.

thank you, otm, this is 100% what i used to do also. my own 'gaydar' debunked

i got it right the first time (the "subtle ambiguity" = he had eyes for me, it wasn't actually subtle at all)
and that was my license to see what i wanted to see

i have little grays and whites in my beard and i honestly love them.

oh, def no complaints about the little white hairs

jeez wtf did i post last night?
having these moments very recently where there is zero impulse control, pretty scary 😳

i mean, recently i slept with 2 men (well, one was a boy) who i legit HAD NO RECOLLECTION OF. like i got in touch with them on the apps thinking it was the first time, they were like oh hi! remember that was fun wasn't it! i was like... they were like yeah your apartment was so nice, we had fun.

i mean. there is def some sex Alzheimer's thing going on. maybe it was a post-cancer thing and i was still reeling. but like, ok i'll watch out for that.

well thankfully they’re making so many advances today on sex Alzheimers that we may soon be rid entirely of this cruel affliction

For real though I never remember sex I’ve had anymore. Young pine is like ‘remember when he x and I y and you z’ and I decide in the moment if I can white lie or not.

I have had some successful “give me wisdom” exchanges with elder gays, but ironically the wisdom offered wasn’t what I expected:

1. People will try and destroy you constantly in your life

2. Your life will continue to get harder and worse, in scary and unexpected ways

Both the elder gays who offered me this advice (if you could call it that) are dead now, RIP I loved you guys

When I was 21-22, my best friend was a twenty-five years older lesbian lady. Her life at the time seemed impossibly well put-together— she owned a house! I remember she said, of being 46: “your friends just start dying left and right, it’s shocking”

― a hyperlink to the past (flamboyant goon tie included)

omg fgti that was pretty much exactly the advice that i needed to hear

yeah i am the older person, i do seem impossibly well put-together (tho I had to sell the house in the divorce). and i missed being part of the queer community at 20, at 30, at 40 (one of the things the transmedicalist Benjamin Scale was most adamant was that queer people COULD NOT BE TRANS). that kind of hard-earned wisdom, that kind of real talk, god i value that so much. because i'm nearly 50, because the people who could have told me that are dead now, just like your best friend is dead now.

and it's not suicide, it's not people not transitioning, it's just fucking _allostatic load_. it's the way it wears on you.

there's so much pressure to frame things in positive ways. "it gets better" and all that. that's what i fucking needed to hear, that my life will continue to get harder and worse. in a way i have been kind of waiting for things to get better, telling myself "it'll all blow over", while in the back of my mind asking myself "but what if it _doesn't_ get better? what if this is the best things get for me?"

i was talking with a friend, someone who transitioned before me, someone who was one of my transcestors actually. she writes stories, and that's a lot of how i think of transness - the way we tell and live our own stories. there's this idea that i have a lot of trouble with, which is the idea of "happily ever after". i don't believe in that. at the same time, she's got this view of things where transition _doesn't_ make anything better, that she has the same problems she always had and a lot more besides. and it's complicated. there's also this idea that having to be cis is the problem and transition is the solution, it's the cure. i wanted to believe that. i was a really fucked up person for a long time and then i transitioned and things were so much better, i had the Barbie Dream Transition, and it didn't fucking fix _anything_. getting my dick cut off didn't _fix_ anything which, now that I say that, is ironic given that i kind of got "fixed". it _helped_, in ways i didn't expect. i stopped having the genital dysphoria i never knew i had. what i wanted was to get this done and then maybe i'd be able to cum with someone else. there is a lot of focus on it, a lot of anxiety about it. i was certainly like "god, what if i never cum again". it makes sense. genitals are sexual organs and there's pressure to act like they're not, i mean reasons for GRS don't _have_ to be sexual, one doesn't need a _reason_ for GRS at all, but i certainly hoped it'd be easier for me to cum. my surgeon asked me that, at a followup, it's a standard question, "can u cum from sex", and i said "no, but i couldn't before". grs changed nothing about my sexual functioning except the dysphoria, the feeling of _wrongness_ that always came along with sensual pleasure, that tended to overshadow any pleasure i was feeling.

anyway it's just... so fucking liberating to hear the tradition of queer wisdom speaking. gaudeamus igitur, motherfuckers. i could be dead in so many different ways two years from now. i'm alive now. and it's not just the haters, the bigots who will try and fuck you over. that's easy. it's other queers. it's evil exes who will say stupid shit like the shit your evil ex said to you. the shit other queer people have said to me, if a transphobe said it i'd laugh in their face, but when it's another queer person, it fucking wrecks me.

-

Death -- painful, prolonged death -- was such a touchstone of the previous generation of gay men that in my experience they've only been too willing to talk.

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

i never _got_ queer transphobes (are there any left? i think of them as being kind of like the fash furries you used to see). so much of what i learned was from queer tradition was from other queer people. i grew up in the northern new jersey during the AIDS crisis. i heard a lot about ACT UP. one of the big reasons i never shut up about being trans is larry kramer. silence = death, that's what i took from the AIDS crisis. and i've had to work really hard to find a way to talk about it that isn't just doom spiraling. i do find it important to... state the facts as much as possible. to talk about the trans people i know who kill themselves. to talk about the shit that cishets just don't _know_, don't _think about_, don't _have to_ think about. seeing people around you dying all the time and _nobody talking about it_, instead talking about it like it's _your fault_ somehow, that god hates you, that you're _grooming children_, i'm not the first fucking queer person to live with that. damn near everything i've been through gay men or street queens or people who were something other than _trans_ went through it first, paved the way. i guess a lot of why i've avoided gay male community, gay male wisdom for so long is this fear i had of being seen as a gay man. and i just don't fucking care anymore. someone wants to think i'm a f-ggot? sure, ok, i'm a f-ggot. i'd say it all the time except that i know not everybody is as ok with that word as i am. it's a balance. it's knowing where and how to speak up.

oh, def no complaints about the little white hairs

― O Fundo Escuro de (Deflatormouse)

i always wanted to be _old_, i always wanted to be _distinguished_, white-haired. i bleached my hair in my 20s and it looked terrible, i was blonde back then. now my hair is naturally white (the stuff that wasn't fell out during the same work project that led me to conclude "i can't fucking do this shit _and_ pretend to be cis at the same time") and i dye it red, haha. well, maybe i'll get to be a white-haired old lady one day.

-

i'm sort of working to try and better understand and express my feelings about intimacy... it's easy to put it in terms of "people don't like me" or "people don't find me attractive", and that's provably false. one of the big pain points of being a queer woman is not wanting to _initiate_. it's not about being a "bottom" or a "sub" at all for me. i mean, women, we compliment each other all the time, in ways that cishet guys never did, and i love that so fucking much. girl, you look amazing, oh my god, you're so gorgeous, and sometimes that _can_ be backstabby and bitchy and disingenuous but usually it's _not_. what i want to hear is not just "wow you're so cute", but "wow you're so cute, wanna cuddle". no that doesn't happen, i'm a queer _elder_, i'm nearly 50 and a _role model_, and i'm hardly the only trans woman with rejection sensitive dysphoria. when i was younger, when i passed as a pretty twink with gorgeous long hair, guys would come on to me sometimes, and that's the thing, _guys_. with women, cis and trans, i've always had to ask.

(having said that i do actually _like_ guys, like a lot, if a guy came on to me in a way that wasn't creepy and i was into him i'd absolutely say "yes", or at least "so what kind of fun are we talking about here, because i might be on board depending". but i gotta be careful who i say that around, particularly since i _am_ very much the bi/pan stereotype of "i like four men and all women" haha)

what i want to hear is not just "wow you're so cute", but "wow you're so cute, wanna cuddle".

feel this

funny, i had way more girls come on to me than guys when i was young and pretty. i should have embroidered snails on my shoes

it's 57 degrees and sunny today and i feel like the snuggle dryer sheet bear about it

really!! omg that's so cute. lol i love him. you know i'm totally the opposite - we had a beautiful chilly day in NY today and i loathe the reality that it's inching towards a warmer climate this week.

for real Henkel North American Consumer Goods sure knows how to sell me toxic garbage

i feel the same, for once. instead of dreaming of summer all year i'm kinda dreading it.

like the time off and people leaving you the fuck alone is always nice lol. i just wish the heat were dryer in my part of the world.

what have you been purchasing??

oh, lol, i meant the snuggle bear makes me want to buy their awful fabric softener 🧸☣️
i like hibernating lately. i feel more pressure to seize the day when it's nice out.
got a nice little playlist with a lot of satie and relevant japanese ambient music and a huge stack of research books and a bottle of eau trois and a bed with fairy lights and a semi-permanent blanket fort in my living room, don't make me leave my apt this year

omg i've been listening to a healthy amount of japanese ambient! and yess to fairy lights and blanket forts in combatting the unrelenting rat race pressure of the sun yikes.

haha, well said
what japanese ambient?
that satoshi ashikawa record is probably my favorite- the still park pieces sound so much like falling snow that i will probably have to delete them soon, along with the obvious debussy piece :(
but also really feeling yoshio ojima/satsuki shibano, got into that via the St. Giga radio archive thing which was posted here

well i'm going to paste these in my "music recs" log (which is currently pretty empty because i got rid of it in a system revamp some time ago so this is lovely) - but my embarrassing approach lately has been to just tell Alexa to "play Japanese ambient music" haha. trying to remember how i got started on that, either i just randomly thought of it or she may have suggested it once. what's the obvious debussy piece? i always liked him.

lol
i heard this stuff on Youtube initially, it all went viral on my favorite website Youtube

The Debussy is called The Snow is Dancing

there's a comp on LITA with a bunch of these folks
https://lightintheattic.net/products/kankyo-ongaku-japanese-ambient-environmental-new-age-music-1980-1990

oh snap love that - thank you.
now let's talk about your late-night habits - is this a typical time for you to be up? it's 1am here which is pretty standard for me. i have a little ways left and i think a lot of people think i'm nuts, but i know Brad Pitt stays up super late.

i work as a doorman/security guard, formerly in a famous hotel, currently in a residential building, and currently most of my shifts are 11pm to 7am

no regular bedtime.
i sleep for 4 hours per day on the days when i work that shift
i sleep about 15 hours most saturdays

i am heading to bed shortly myself (not working).

what about you?
And how come the summer dread, Swen?
Or the Winter Love as the case may be?

amazing. love the nighttime so that sounds cool and a big thumbs up to sleeping on Saturdays. i dunno i've just always loved staying up late, gray days and winter lol. emotional safety. i'm not sure. sometimes it feels like there's some connection between daytime and my relative experience with trauma from the past that i can't put my finger on. dunno, that's probably way overthinking it! <3 hope dreams are sweet tonight.

i love gray days, too. you think it's a north shore thing (i had extended fam there growing up, still do)? it's really beautiful on gray winter days. so now on gray days in the city that's what i think of.

wish you sweet dreams too <3

oh, blackout curtains. i couldn't survive without blackout curtains

i have them literally always closed in my bedroom lol. i grew up on the north shore!! :D you're prolly right about that!

i know you did, why i said that. same, mine are permanently closed.

oh boy, i suspected by the way you said that you prob already knew but you know, new display names and such, i barely know what's what!! we will need to dig deeper soon haha.

we don't go way back or anything but it's come up :)

okkkkkk glad you're not a family member i'm forgetting :D :D

hoping the sun today finds you all well. is anyone else a morning person / sun worshipper? i empathize with night people, like i think there's a lot of pressure to join the sun race and if you're simply a night person you must feel alienated and kinda sore about it. my first ltr was a night person. if 0 is 100% daytime all the time and 10 is 100% nighttime all the time, he was like an 8? i am essentially a 0 unless forced otherwise. that ended up being way harder than i thought it would be. my current ltr is like a 3, much more doable.

i have this feeling that where i live is in a weird interzone as the climate changes. we're definitely getting warmer, but also a little wetter (though the wetness does less because it isn't snow). having acknowledged that we're all fucked, where i'm at could be better, could be much worse. an instinct to go north and try to live closer to the land, which started off as a fanciful idea and something i was interested in watching other people do, has only grown stronger in me over the past few years.

an aspiration towards grounded-ness, i love it!

i empathize with night people, like i think there's a lot of pressure to join the sun race and if you're simply a night person you must feel alienated and kinda sore about it.

It’s true, I appreciate your empathy

3 sounds perfect, I agree. Think my ideal sleep schedule would be like 12:30-8:30

The warming trend is pretty scary, New York used to be unbearable, bitter cold in the winter, now > 45 is normal, we used to get blizzards with 3-4 feet of snow in one shot, now if it snows 2 inches this is touted as a once in a lifetime event, like a solar eclipse. Def wanna live closer to the land myself, and I don’t know if that’s the right instinct actually, to isolate myself more

I think about what I want vs. What i should want, and like someplace warm where i can go to the beach every day would be the healthier choice for sure

i'm just still kind of confused about what people do on the beach. like do you nap? i guess people read?

I swim, then lie in the shade for about 20 minutes before retreating to the indoors

The sun is my enemy and wants to kill me and may do just that one day

Good afternoon!

oh hellso!

xp that sounds about right. i do enjoy like walking near the water.

I was a night person until I started working early mornings, which quickly turned me to a morning person, and now I am probably about a 0. I can count on one had the number of times I've stayed up past midnight in the past twelve months.

1230 to 830 is actually my typical sleep schedule, apart from Friday DJ nights when it’s 0300 to 0900 and a second sleep in the afternoon. My peak time has always been 4pm to 8pm.

I just don’t get beaches. They were fun when I was a child and playing with sand, but since then: eww no, the mess, the discomfort, the boredom!

i like swimming in the ocean or a lake or a river. i can make a day out of it if i have some shade, food and protection from bugs (more of an issue at lakes). generally prefer exploring a rocky coastline with tidepools and such over miles of sand, and anything crowded is a no-go for me. the last time i had a great day on a beach was at a sandbar next to a relatively calm stretch of the colorado, massive red rock cliffs above us, a boat floating by every once in a while, alternating between cold water and hot sun, etc.

I'm an absolute morning guy. Up at 5:20 a.m. even if I'm partying.

that's radical Alfred .... like what do you do at that hour
i mean what time do you go to bed

omg i used to have to be at work at that hour. it was absolute hell.

it was a menial job at a market research company. i'd just plow through the work and spent the rest of my life in a catatonic stupor. i mean way more than i do now. i never slept, ever, during the week.

i spent several nonconsecutive hours a day tossing and turning in bed, none of them asleep

I just pulled an all-nighter to write a paper!

i get up before 5 am most weekdays. gym time before work. i'm usually in bed by 8-8:30 pm. once i'm back at my thursday night dj gig that will all probably slip an hour or so later.