self-isolating LGBTs of SPRING 2020

I enjoy plenty of aspects of Pride, but skipping it one year wouldn’t bug me much ... if there was anything else to do for months on either side of it.

Haven't gone in decades... all that awful music.

Folsom Street East is too crowded as well

To be honest it’s not even the activities I will miss but the sense of joy and reflection in the air

always been thrilled hearing pride motorcycles/percussion/crowd noise echoing through the streets even if I was not in immediate proximity

For sure, same :(

this is pretty rare but i'm craving social activity today

like i would love to be on a beach with a bunch of handsome gay men listening to top 40 radio and being entertained by endless "witty repartee."

i think the most realistic approximation of that would be to go to the park with my boyfriend, scowl at all the straight couples with little babies and goo at the baby ducklings.

I’m going to a park in a little bit to meet up with my pal and his husband. Baking some blondies for the occasion.

Not being able to swim in a large natural or artificial body of water this summer is really going to be the pits - we’ve already had some 90+ temps in the past month

woah we just made blondies last night! are they the washington post ones? they're even better the next day ;)

yeah i'm going to be breaking the rules on the 'no swimming' thing at some point and dunking in a lake

I LOVE BLONDIES

and yes RE: temps i have to reinvest in an AC and new fans for the house ... $$$

blondies are totally coming back!

Real question: how much park cruising do you think is going on right now?

Not asking for myself, or even for a friend... I've never hooked up in a park! I've played watchdog for friends who have, though. I'm more just curious. I know a couple men who have confessed to me that they've been doing it and I'm curious if this is more common than I'd imagine.

map: OG joy of cooking recipe from the ‘60s. didn’t rise as much as i wanted, still good tho!

I live near a park that has a rep for being, or maybe once being, a big cruising spot - have not witnessed anything of the sort there either before or after march 2020

I'm relieved I at least got fucked two months ago.

we spent some time at a park today and there were at least two obvious cruisers

we spent hours outside, went to one park, then another, back to the first park, ordered thai take out. admiring trees, creeks, birds, oh and shirtless men. we sat directly next to the volleyball sandboxes and watched the show - not obvious at all lol.

i just can't imagine picking someone up in a park, it feels so 80s! but i did get a beej in a park once

"Real question: how much park cruising do you think is going on right now?"

I exercise around Buena Vista park in SF every morning at around 3-5 AM since this all started, so I won't have to deal with people on the street. The first few nights after the shut down there were a lot of gay people cruising the park. I honestly felt bad for some of the little short guys cruising the park at 3:00 AM when I went by them, I honestly expected them to have their heads bashed in. It seemed super unsafe to me. Four days after the shutdown in SF started, I have not seen anyone, but I have seen a few cars seemingly waiting for people to go into the park. Maybe earlier in the night, but it seems people are behaving.

rly can't believe ppl still do that! dang!

I meant that to be in a positive light, it was way, way, way down :), if it didn't come across that way.

i miss y'all

Hi clouds what are you doing right now?

i'm four days late but rn i'm sitting with edwin waiting for burritos and watching him play animal crossing <3

hi everybody!

hi!

#sexstarved

HI

i miss you guys too, literally "ILX" has been on my to do list for a week, no joke.
i guess my update would be that i've officially been out of romance for so long that i've resorted to erotic chat on the interwebs. oops!

hospitals suck, guys

i need movies, not tuna sandwiches and laxatives

💜 Find any good movies love?

I watched La Cérémonie again last night -- a movie for our times if any.

preoccupied with certainty of spinal surgery later this month now. asking y'all I don't end up at Full FDR!

Good luck, Morbs, you happy warrior.

blechhhh

stand up for morbs

i continue to hold that la ceremonie is a more effective film than parasite, though almost surely not as stylishly shot

OK so how is everyone doing? What a blindingly weird year.

I just spent the last hour re-reading the Queer threads from years past and it's like... so much was happening in 2018, 2019! So little seems to be happening right now.

My ex, who I adore, and who is great, got really hostile and awful to me post-breakup. I chalk it up to "he really loved me and this breakup is hard" and "he's insecure about my new fuckbuddy and the sight of me moving on with my life creatively", not mad at him, but I cut off contact with him, perhaps indefinitely. Sad we couldn't make it work! I will miss his friendship and I will miss the dog.

My current fuckbuddy, our relationship kind of took a boyfriend-by-necessity turn as a result of COVID and quarantining and it quickly became clear to us both that this was way too quick and we aren't compatible for long periods of cohabitation so we ended things for a bit and are now, like, dating again, as best as you can in these dreadful circumstances. He is so, so sweet, it's weird to be dating who is kind instead of spiky.

It's been pretty interesting to be in a position of "trying to sell a record" with COVID and all this protesting, I've kind of run out of musical steam, and I'm toying with the idea of writing a pile of new songs, but also toying with the idea of turning to writing sci-fi instead.

Hi, FGTI!

Blindingly weird. I have for months now had a low-level panic set into my neck and suprasternal notch that sometimes flares down but never goes away. Initially COVID-related, it sure didn't help being in the (initial) epicenter of a nationwide revolution. If there's one thing you need to know about Minnesotans and in particular Minneapolitans, it's that we love being thought of as exceptional, but absolutely never enjoy being the center of attention. (And then working in news, I naturally have a full second wave of COVID panic with so many of my co-workers having been out in teeming petrie dishes of humanity.)

I'm still getting married ... which, after four months of him working from home and us otherwise spending nearly our entire social life with just each other and still wanting to go through with it, must be the right decision. We did realize we can't pull of a destination wedding, however small in scope (it is just going to be us and our immediate families), because there's no point going to a destination if there's nothing open to enjoy. So we're getting married in the no-longer-burning city of Minneapolis, three months from tomorrow. We'll renew at Martha's Vineyard whenever, if ever, things return back to normal while our parents are still alive.

That's fantastic news, congratulations!

Yeah, I've been feeling like quarantining is kind of "make or break" for relationships. Some of my coupled friends are having a ball! My own apartment is spacious-for-one, cramped-for-two, so it was impossible to really get a read on our co-habitation compatibility

My fiance and I have discovered that, when the world's ending, sometimes we're OK splitting cocktails and watching lascivious Richard Dawson-era episodes of Family Feud.

That's something I didn't know I'd appreciate in a partner, but here we are.

The quarantine definitely accelerated my new relationship to the point where I’m now calling him my partner

!!!!!!! :D :D

xp Also, you're delving into partner cocktail quality time, I saw!

There should be a new word for happiness!

You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings.

Wow DJP that is so great!!!

Yeah, congrats to you!

SURVEY SAYS

Well I'm happy to hear that, Dan!

:-D

Thank you, everyone! I’m still kind of reeling with how quickly this has all gone but I’m super happy

hey congrats DJP! (also loving the cocktail recipes)

Let’s see, 2020: I got laid off from one of my jobs, but the silver lining is I was made a FT benefited employee at the one I didn’t get laid off from. Being around my husband more or less 24/7 has been nbd mostly but I am pretty thankful that we have separate spaces for working.

I am also in the worst shape physically that I’ve been in for some time and it’s honestly bumming me out. Before all this happened I was getting into a regular exercise routine and going to a boxing class that I loved 2x a week, but COVID threw all that out the window, plus my diet has mostly gone to shit too. I’m occasionally doing online workouts but it’s hard for me to feel motivated without other ppl working out nearby/an instructor guiding me. And yeah, whatever, gay man can’t go to gym and is sad about it news at 11 but it’s been kind of a drag on my overall mental health.

In the meantime I have occasional baking projects, self-guided Italian lessons, and some personal genealogical research keeping me busy on top of work. I do really, really miss non-screen-mediated sociality something fierce though. I hate not hugging my friends.

hairpulling.gif

Yeah sorry guys, calling an AFAB-transperson (who themselves has not undergone medical transitioning) "truscum" is way outside of my level of comfort and I'm gonna leave this discussion before I start using the word "fuck"

― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, July 29, 2020 11:12 AM (two hours ago)

oh hey just to circle back to this, fuck this and fuck you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fTXzdHoip8

Thread's not doing much to bolster the case for cis gay men rn tbh.

i'd like a case, a nice lager perhaps

ftr my good faith/bad faith thread was in response to this thread

did i miss something

basically the ILX version of Fox & Friends

now let's do Fox and His Friends

Kinda already did both

AFAB queerness is valid and fluidity is valid and online experiences are valid, I got screamed at because my advice centred AFAB queer people. (That centring AFAB queer inherently means excluding AMAB queers, but... if a space centres AMAB queer people by default, that's... NOT exclusionary? That's just... what, normal?)

If you make a disparity between AFAB spaces and AMAB spaces, you are literally transphobic.

less AFAB and AMAB, more AHAB (moby dick reference)

I'm on board with that.

ahoy

blow me Ishmael ;)

call it a braised cod

lol

If you make a disparity between AFAB spaces and AMAB spaces, you are literally transphobic.

― braised cod

Thanking u for circling back to this

That was a genuine thank u!!

sorry silby, I'm new here.

Never admit that, claim you’ve been posting for at least 12 years under various names

<3

Good mourning!

Could use a couple more of you over on the Janet poll thread with Brad gone.

And I remain horny.

Still fighting anxiety/panic, but at least I'm finally on a prescription.

Brad left? Oh dear.

Sending all of you lots of love.

I don't know that for sure; just seems that way since otherwise he'd be all over the Janet poll.

it's a great poll Eric

not v lgbt atm but feel duty-bound to assert in brad's absence that they are a they

thanks for being so dutiful

less AFAB and AMAB, more AHAB (moby dick reference)

― Give me a Chad Smith-type feel (map)

this, of course, stands for "assigned harpoon at birth"

(no i didn't come up with this, all of these jokes have been told and retold for years)

lol

innies over here, outies over there

I must admit it took me a while to work out who was assigned what at birth when I first saw the ACAB as an acronym. Or, rather, to work out that it wasn't related at all.

Assigned Cop At Birth fits for some people

Omg!

Y all i missed a LOT
I’m going to start a new thread if nobody else has started one

please do!

♥️