making our way back: reclaiming queer space in the SPRING of 2021//LGBTQIA+ Vaccine ed.

it's true, there are definitely people i don't want to come out to. i feel like if i don't have to see them again and they're obviously conservative or even predatory (like cops) then it's best to pass or leave it unspecified if possible.

i still get a little uncomfortable when we drive through small-town utah. i was pleasantly surprised when we stopped in a coffee shop in green river and the owners made a point of making us feel relaxed and welcome. (then a little less pleasantly surprised when they complained about the push to raise the minimum wage.)

my way of 'coming out' to conservative people i don't have to see again is being a grumpy bitch to them, lol

i still do the thing where if we're driving through small towns and we stop at a gas station, i keep a studied distance from my boyfriend.

so i never actually came out to my parents, in the sense of sitting them down and telling them "so, um, i'm gay." i love my parents and get along with them* but we've never really had a "sit down and have a heart-to-heart" kind of relationship. they ended up figuring it out for themselves when i brought a "friend from college" (ie my first bf) home with me for thanksgiving and my mom walked in on us cuddling. i later learned from my mom's now-ex-best friend that she spoke to her about it shortly after it happened, and i guess my mom expressed some worry, to which her friend countered "but even if he was gay, he's your son, and you still love him no matter what, right?" and she said "well, of course." my dad was more emotionally reticent and we never really explicitly talked about it but he was never anything other than welcoming and loving to my now-husband. to this day i feel i was a little bit cheated out of the experience, even if i know that i was relatively fortunate and that that process doesn't go great for a lot of gays (will always remember my college roommate's very turbulent coming out to his conservative texan parents).

before my parents found out though, i came out to my friends on livejournal when i was 17 lol

*dad's now deceased going on two years but couldn't think of a non-awkward way to refer to both my alive parent and my dead parent here

Thanks surm and everyone for the reassurance xx

Coming out for me was significant mostly in that marked the end of a long period of a sort of denial. There was a point where it became undeniable, and the reaction from friends at the time was "yeah, we've known that for years already, what took you so long?"

It's been about 6 years since I even halfheartedly looked for a date. There's no formal diagnosis, but it seems likely that I have ScPD. My insatiable need for alone time has strained relationships of all kinds. Most friends have given up calling me, at this point. I almost never wanna hang. There is still a yearning for some kind of companionship- I've developed a very animistic world view.

Good posts, boxedjoy. Ongoing navigation is OTM. I think it's okay to be bitter and angry. You're not wrong for what you feel.

Obviously have empathy for what y'all are talking about, particularly as I now have to navigate life with a sexual zone off-limits due to cancer, but while I don't mention it at first meeting or whatever, it hasn't been my experience to code-switch or that coming out is a process. Maybe I've just been lucky or maybe I just don't care, or maybe a bit of both. If someone has a problem with me being gay and married to my partner, then that's their issue.

I think the only thing that's changed for me in Philly is I don't dress like as much of a total slut, but that's also because I'm older and the east coast has very different mores about this stuff than the west, from my experience.

My coming out story involves me being shitty and my ex moving my kids halfway across the country after our divorce so I don’t really like to think about it

Although my parents are already much nicer and warmer to my new male partner than they ever were to my ex-wife so that part of things was not a problem, although I guess when your kid is about to hit 50 and has been effectively self-sufficient since graduating college, there’s not all that much you can do about how they’re going to live

xxp i kind of want to hear more about west coast vs east coast social mores tbh.

I always thought it was the other way around honestly, like I can tell you that New Yorkers on the whole are very eager to shed our winter layers, and will do so the moment the thermostat hits 72. It's like a cathartic thing, almost. Maximum skin exposure from the first nice day in April as a rule.

I haven't spent enough time on the west coast, but my sense is that in Southern California it's mostly just the tourists who dress that way in milder weather. Californians might have fewer opportunities to wear that favorite sweater or jacket.

I got ugly stares and called an ugly name when I wore my DICK BINGE shirt with cut-off sleeves on the east coast. I'd wear that shirt into shopping malls in conservative parts of California and no one would look twice. Sometimes I'd even get a compliment!

There are other personal anecdotal tales, I just find that people on the east coast are much more likely to straight up call me a faggot to my face if I dress a certain way, and I literally had that happen once, maybe twice, the entire time I lived in California.

That sucks :(
NYC isn't going to be the most representative sample of the east coast as a whole. New Yorkers are famously desensitized to pretty much whatever and anything more conventional than a bologna sandwich as hair accessory (at least 1 documented occurrence) is unlikely to turn heads.

I def experienced quite a bit of that in Long Island when I visited friends in the 90's, not that I wore anything too out there. But I later lived in a couple of pretty conservative towns in northern Nassau County (and one very small town that's really hippie) and it wasn't an issue. I don't know if times changed, or if it's the age difference.

So I know what you mean, it totally sucks, it's just been a while since I personally encountered that so maybe I've become overly optimistic about the state of things.

Actually living in these quite affluent parts of Long Island, my lifestyle and living conditions were very incongruous, more or less like a squatter. Car-free, at other times heat and plumbing-free also. I probably looked more 'different' than I realized at the time, but it was very conspicuous in other ways too, and I was constantly surprised at how tolerant the neighbors were.

To what extent I encountered resistance... It was mostly young kids who were obnoxious.

grew up just outside nyc and lived there for a time before moving to LA. pretty sure the first time anyone ever called me a faggot was when i was visiting SF for the first time.

i tend against ostentation generally but i've thought a lot about my clothes this year and how boring they all are and how i want to change that. but i also find clothes shopping fundamentally stressful - i know some people love it and are super-good at it but i have never really been one of those people. i just want some fun, stylish, durable clothes that are like...not fast fashion but not bank-breaking either.

What's convenient for you to get to in terms of stores? What general silhouette r u thinking?

It's summer y'all

texting with a beautiful boy I met at a friend's political debut

I see - and what age does boy mean nowadays?

Anyone know what this one's about?

holding poppers while posing for pictures with pop starts isn't a personality but y'all really stay in love with a mediocre white man who said racist shit in the past

— the morally corrupt juan barquin (@woahitsjuanito) July 19, 2021

from a followup tweet: this guy (no, me neither):

lol @ dumb bitch jordan firstman being a super spreader https://t.co/0htv0ZNYFS

— the morally corrupt juan barquin (@woahitsjuanito) July 19, 2021

lol that Tweet's by a friend/former student/local film writer

(no, me neither)

Truly.

Apparently it's this https://www.distractify.com/p/jordan-firstman-tweets

tbh I'm just glad I'm old now

Hello! Do we have a summer thread yet? Cuz it's summer y'all, and "my hair is comin' down" (name the movie and actress without googling and win a fun gif of what I think best represents your posting style! 🌈💰

hi surm! i have no idea but i'd appreciate a gif

New thread?

yes plz

is there a new one

haha you do it i suck at titles

Lucky for you, I got all these daddy issues: Queer Summer, 2021 (LGBTQQIAAP+++)

fill er up!