I'm Only Happy When It's Gay // LGBTTQQIAAP+ // Fall 2021

hi sweetums! what's the story?

Gonna see that boy whom I hooked up with three weeks ago this weekend, I think. Otherwise I'm grading papers and at night sipping Negronis and watching Chris Marker films.

Love the beginning and end of that post.

transitioning into my 'dirty old man' phase

folks, i need a vacation. to somewhere with a recognizably human culture, ideally.

hey all! Hate my job but what else is new.

Other than that, I'm facilitating a manuscript workshop that promises to be pretty cool with a bunch of rad writers in it. Feel like I might be smoking too much weed but oh well, makes the monotony bearable in some way.

Loosely planning some trips in the spring, and a weekend in New York later this month, maybe....

I haven't done a proper workout in two years, but I've been five times in the past week, good full set each time, feeling great tyvm!

map come to Philly

I've been keeping up with an exercise regimen, but more recently, I've been seeing more "results"— I'm stronger and more sinewy that I was a few months ago. Climbing V6 in the gym, and either doing HIIT workouts or bicycling 20-mile circuits on the non-gym days. Not bad for a guy who nearly died two years ago.

I walk 5 miles a day and it's done wonders to fuck with my sense of time.

map come to Philly

― Warmed Regards, (Stevie D(eux)), Thursday, November 4, 2021 1:17 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

<3

been biking to the gym at least 2x a week, plus also started taking a daily supplement stack for immune system enhancement. mulling over seeing a trainer again and also have some dietary changes i’d like to start making (more protein, less simple sugars and seed oils). also trying to improve my relationship to screens, reducing blue light exposure when i have to use computers and staying away from my phone/computer after 9pm. gettin into doing kind things for my body after a year or so of doing not-so-kind things to it!

Oh, I also bought a standing desk when I couldn't sit for about a month (long story lol), but I now stand while WFH and let me tell you, I feel so much better about working. Back, shoulders, everything.

Donald Rumsfeld's greatest legacy.

be good to your bodies everyone, they deserve it

i'm contemplating doing...

foot exercises

oh!!! what would it serve you?
it's funny all this talk about taking care of your body, I was just thinking the same. I think it's because I looked in the mirror yesterday with overhead lighting lol. T if you wanna grab a drink lmk. btw are u ok with a cod3d version of your name around here? totally understand either way. maybe only for special occasions? 🙂

oh!!! what would it serve you?

it might help my running form.

yesterday morning i had a long in-person chat with a gay friend who i can talk about stuff with. it felt very nice.

that's so nice. had it been a while?

I've mainly been hanging out with my girlfriends lately, but yesterday, I reached out to a fellow queer about some health stuff and he's having me over for a pot roast tonight ♥️

you sure you wanna be throwing your weed into boiling water?

xp oh that's great!

it's been a while. my boyfriend is a really patient listener but sometimes you just need someone else. i remember when these threads had the title "i don't have any gay friends in town" or some such, which has always been more or less true for me, but i have one i guess! i'm going to try harder to nurture this friendship.

i love that. I remember those titles too. and there was definitely a while (like years) where I had no idea what it was like to have gay friends. luckily over the years I've been introduced to a bunch. it's really crazy how you forget the importance of seeing and being and learning from people that "look" like you for lack of a better word

lol Alfred

When we moved, 7.5 years ago, to the small market town in North Yorkshire where we now live, we had to say goodbye to our gay friendship network. For several years, we knew no other gays in town… but then I started playing disco on vinyl every Friday night in the bar up the road. That brought them out of the woodwork. Over the summer, we invited all the town gays that we now know round to our place for drinks. Most of them had never met before. And now we have some formative sense of a community. And this pleases me.

that sounds so wonderful

Wow.

It was all a bit too much for one of our number, who, several drinks in, suggested that we all get our cocks out. Talk about misreading the room. The he spent the rest of the weekend messaging around: “I’m so sorry if I offended anyone”. Ah, bless.

omg lol. at least the gay community specializes in non-judgement. good for you for instigating that, game changer.

But what would gay bars be like without judgment??

ok that's true 😹

mike that sounds so great :)

talking to a cutey on grindr from the uk who wants to meet up when he's here in a week - never tapped into my thing for auburn haired brits!

my bf is an auburn haired brit!

omg lol
obv
you guys sound perfectly suited

We hung out with our queer friends yesterday! One just had a hysterectomy so we brought him coffee and snacks and an edible, and we sat around and watched our dogs act like idiots while chatting like maniacs. It was great.

My partner and I went to see Eternals on Saturday and then took a stroll through Rowes Wharf just in time to see a drunk bachelorette fall into Boston Harbor trying to recreate the "I'M KING OF THE WORLD" scene from Titanic. We then helped fish her out. It was wild.

Whoa, DJP. That sounds wild!

That reminds me we have to help our friend Jim retrieve his dead father's Zippo, which is down in a ditch below a tall bridge and difficult to access. He dropped it and it fell through the bridge sidewalk, one of those very intense grated metal things.

obviously the bachelorette thing is not funny but i mean, it's also really funny.

It was all a bit too much for one of our number, who, several drinks in, suggested that we all get our cocks out. Talk about misreading the room. The he spent the rest of the weekend messaging around: “I’m so sorry if I offended anyone”. Ah, bless.

― mike t-diva, Sunday, November 7, 2021 8:40 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

my heart goes out to this man.

I mean, everyone came out the other end okay so I feel only a little guilty about how I keep cackling every time I think about it

lol that's good.

Also good on ya'll for saving some drunk white woman.

lol

I also just rewatched Titanic the other day and confirmed my suspicion that Leo is my favorite actor

T your hang sounds so nice

It was! We love these friends.

finally rescheduling my second date with Danny, costume designer. first date was him plying me with beers, which I had no problem with. he suggested drinks for round 2, I guess that's fine? I feel like in straight land round 2 is always dinner

a friend of mine (ahem) works at a government agency. he was in the office early on a monday morning, and the director of said agency, also known to come in early, came by the cubicle for a visit. the first words out of this director's mouth were "did you see adele last night? *gasp* *swanning*".

in a video meeting a few weeks ago, the director was talking about the mission of the agency, and referenced the words of a practioner from long ago, which were, i shit you not, "as (professionals), we are riding the horns of uncertainty." my friend responded, "and we ride the horns that we're dealt," and the director burst out laughing. everyone else looked uncomfortable.

the director has shown my friend photos of his grandkids, and is mormon of course. either closeted or on a down-low arrangement, right?

he is a closeted married gay guy

there are many of them

true

my friend was delighted at first that he could "tell" but now he just wants to keep his distance. he is pretty sure there are some closeted lesbians at his workplace too.

i think marcos would look hella cute in a speedo tbh as well

this guy really needed me to wear a speedo for him after we ate at the cheesecake factory

i love a specific fetish!

lol

Beefcake Factory

my bf and i have a running joke about the little factory where we ad-lib a construction foreman saying things like "ok boys, time to grease up your pistons, bend over and put your backs into it," etc.

I definitely don't fit into speedos anymore, the last pair I bought I weighed about 15 pounds less than I do now for a variety of reasons.

I should have said 'my speedos'

It's worth mentioning that I almost exclusively wear bikini briefs, tho. I hate any other type of underwear.

my kink of shame is that i bought a bunch of shorts and these weird little ball holsters from a lame gay-bro clothing company based in san diego called w00f clothing, and i still wear them to the gym. my cheeks are turning red just typing it haha.

I go home tomorrow and I'm excited to see my dude. It's been 24/7 with him for a while now bc pandemic. Physical distance has created imagined mental distance, I feel his absence.

I enjoy wearing speedos! I do not enjoy being naked in public. My speedos are black and from the Speedo/CDG collaboration.

i think marcos would look hella cute in a speedo tbh as well

― Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Wednesday, March 2, 2022 3:01 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

<3 <3 <3

i dont even wanna talk about the underwear i wore for most of my twenties. like the cheapest square boxers from target lol. financial security and feeling more ***gay*** in my life now means i finally bought nicer underwear. i have these pale pink ck briefs on right now and i look good in them

My partner used to be a competitive swimmer and wears speedos, which I do not think I will ever be capabalenof doing

it took me a while to get there but whenever i was around a bunch of boys in speedos wearing a normal bathing suit i felt like a prude so i decided to switch over to the dark side... in mixed company (meaning a straight beach) i'd prob wear normal bathing suit. but as far as riis beach in new york, p town, fire island etc i like being among the horde of skimpy suits (or in p town, the horde of nudes). i believe alfred saw me wear a speedo when we were at the standard in miami beach but that's only bcuz my boyfriend's trunks got ruined so i let him wear mine thus leaving me w/ just a speedo

I lit a candle for you two at the Standard chapel.

i have a weird situation. so this guy, f, was friendly to me on ig and eventually came to a dj thing. he is close friends with my partner's work manager. he is also in an ltr. i had a friendly coffee date with f which turned into texting which got flirty, him initiating it. i asked if he was flirting, which seemed to make him anxious, but i told him it was welcome. i was communicating with my partner about it this whole time with the understanding that this sort of thing was fine (with no knowledge yet about f and his partner and where they are at), but he finally said he was uncomfortable because f is close with his manager at work. which is fine and very understandable and i'm supportive of that. so i've cooled off on texts and i'm sure f has picked up on it.

anyway, we had planned a couples dinner thing as friends. but now that feels awkward to follow up on.

i think i still want to be friends with f and i think that could still be possible but i'm unsure about where to go from here.

what do i communicate to f here? my partner doesn't want me to say to him that i stopped flirting because of the work manager, to leave him out of it. which, ok, i guess? this is strangely bewildering and i've taken a few days to try and think it over but could use some perspective.

anyway, we had planned a couples dinner thing as friends. but now that feels awkward to follow up on

to be clear, we had planned it, then they had to cancel, nothing rescheduled yet

I think maybe reschedule the couples dinner if possible and then try to thread the needle of friendly-but-not-flirty there so you're showing interest in spending time together but not interest in *wink wink, nudge nudge*?

Or, is there an avenue via DJing in which you could re-engage neutrally? I can't gauge from the story if he's a music nerd or not; if he is, maybe you can come up with some crate-digging type of question?

It's very odd trying to think of strategies to engage with someone that communicate that you are NOT flirting with them

haha right? I think my well-worn instinct is just to disengage altogether, part of me wants to try something different this time but i feel like it's going there anyway.

i think the issue with the couples dinner is that my partner feels like he's dragging his feet now but i need to check in with him about it. that's a good idea if we're both into it i think.

an activity that is low stakes and neutral is a good idea but i don't think he's really a big music guy. if something comes to mind i'll propose it though.

hi gay

stevie are you Posting Again???

lol I doubt it but I'm at least posting today

it's been a weird past several months for me but I think 2022 is being v good to me so far. my ex and I broke up last feb but have stayed close friends and prominent forces in each others lives, and then he started seeing someone in early dec which unleashed a whole slew of emotions, some anticipated and some not, and I realized that he was moving on and that I needed to move on too and that I was actually really lonely? like the whole year I had little desire to put any energy into like dating or hooking up but then it all hit at once and I was super depressed for like a month and a half, but I think it's p much gone now.

I went up to visit him in early jan (which we'd planned before he met his new boo) and it was... not the worst it could have been, but not really great either. but while I was there I met up with an internet pal of several years who I chatted with semi-regularly but had never met irl, we'd always been friendly but never actually flirty, and we uhhh reaaally hit it off wink wink nudge nudge (we fucked), there was like a really exciting chemistry and we've kept in touch and chatted almost daily and I'm actually going back to boston this weekend to stay w him for a few days and see this play he's in. I don't think I have the capacity for another like committed long distance thing but I really like whatever it is we're doing and hope we can continue it in its current state (though we will invariable have to have A Talk at some point, likely this weekend, to just to make sure we are on the same page so no one gets hurt)

I've also been going out more which has been really invigorating, I wound making out w 2 diff brand-new guys at the leather bar a few weeks ago (which is unheard of for me???) and one of them seems to be becoming/has become a new fwb, which is really really nice. we traded numbers and then got drinks a few days later (which turned into a hookup > sleepover > him making me breakfast), and then I invited him over for dinner last night. in addition to being an excellent fuck he's also like really affectionate and cuddly and intimate but w/o being like, emotionally clingy, which is honestly so perfect and wonderful and I feel like I've really lucked out. it's been several years since I've had any sort of reliable fwb/fuck buddy type situation, and I've been lamenting it recently so the timing is wonderful (I think I had sex with 1 person in all of 2021). we are planning a date to a brand-new massive h mart in the burbs and I could not be more thrilled.

also I've become better friends w this long-time acquaintance over the past 6-8 months or so after we went to honcho campout together, and him + me + a friend of his have become this little posse and we have been going to raves together, which is really fun and also kind of hilarious that I am entering a "rave phase" in my mid-30s. but it's nice to have a new group of friends outside of my normal friend circle who's down to do fun stuff. I also got invited to a week-long house share on fire island w them and said yes and it is SO weird and I have already had a whole existential crisis abt it but it will be such a new experience for me and I'm really looking forward to it

also also I'm going to LA for 10 days in april where I will see donna rouge, quincie, felicity redewll, and maybe make some new friends idk??? life is being kind to me and it's given me a little boost of confidence and I am really savoring it

stevie!

i'm going to LA next week, what are gay things to do?

marcos, how you holding up?

nice to hear all that stevie and that you're thriving and trying new things and people after the split.

marcos go to "ginger rogers" area of will rogers state beach in la for some sightseeing if you wish!

the l.a. thread peeps were great with recommendations for a trip we didn't end up taking last december.

err in santa monica not la

marcos go to "ginger rogers" area of will rogers state beach in la for some sightseeing if you wish!

yes this is the kind of thing i am looking for thank you!

although i feel like i will need a speedo

we order you to file a full report

stevie if this trip is anything like your last one then I am certain you will make tons of pals!

hi marcos! if yr into the gay bar scene, akbar and the eagle are in silver lake. weho has lots of bars as well but i don’t really go to any of them (for distance reasons mostly). if you were coming in two weeks I’d say come to the gay happy hour I’m DJing in highland park. and yes to ginger rogers too for fun and sun and speedos!

marcos you should go to the Museum of Jurassic Technology

Stevie, I have a number of friends who went through a mid-30s rave period. I think I just partied so hard from 18-32 that I don't have the stamina any more-- I don't even get to midnight on New Years Eve, tbh.

Also,.hi!

Yeah, my rave period started when I was 32 and was basically over when I was 38. Happy days. Well, happy weekends at least.

One of the happier periods of my life was dropping ecstasy every Friday for five months and dancing myself crazy. I learned a great deal about myself.

guys guess who I hung out with today!!!

not me!

extremely beloved former gaylxor elmo argonaut!!! we got brunch and went shopping and talked about boys and I convinced him to buy a copy of Samuel Delany’s TIMES SQUARE RED, TIMES SQUARE BLUE

aw elmo <3

ELMO

that beebs <3

and stevie!!!! honey I love that you're going out a bunch and healing. I've been there and you're doing the right thing. I've just now weirdly gotten to a stage in my life where I realize how much I love to dance. I need to go out dancing. I've been dominating a life situation for a number of months now so I'm sober as a judge but I have a nice stash on deck.

new thread to come in a day or two, just been slammed.

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

PS I changed my username, let's not make a big deal about it I'll explain when necessary xxxoxox