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

wyd

Popping Advil for monkeypox vax-induced chills.

:| feel better soon

i'm in a meeting

calling in sick in a few, air quality got me feeling crappy

I’m about to go into a meeting

HI

jesus fuck i've missed you all

i'll skip the update on my life and just say - love the invocation of Morbs above, and lovely to catch up on some stories.

how are the meetings? i'm on a hybrid schedule now so there are a lot of meetings with my kitchen blurred in the background happening. i look pretty cute on camera though, i think because it blurs my features slightly so i'm ok with it.

o also it's so funny to see the community finally catching up to my k + caps microdose therapies. who knows if they're working but sometimes it's nice.

I'm going to sell my Jeep (because I can't afford it) and attempt to live a year without a car (except the one my husband owns)

well that should be fine, right? what does your hubby own?

that's sad about your jeep though, i'm sorry :(

meh, I liked it a lot but it's not going to break my heart at all ... not much of a car person tbh. My husband's car is a Beemer

not a fan of cars either.

i griped to my partner about how much i hate salt lake city and utah for the millionth time last night and it sounds like Project Move Out of Utah will be moving forward at the beginning of the year, with a 1.5 year eta instead of 5 years. potential destinations include colorado and oregon.

My husband just signed a contract so we're stuck in Minny for another 3 years at least

i still don't have a driver's license. my permit's still good until late january but i haven't been behind the wheel in months and tbh i'm not really feeling up to practicing rn. i find driving kind of terrifying but i also feel a little silly that literal 17-year-olds can drive with confidence and i can't.

it's ok! if you don't absolutely have to have it, why bother? my 50 year old partner hates driving and is very nervous about it, he can do it if he has to but would much rather not. i've always been a confident driver but have become very tired of and frayed by it over the past few years. people are psycho death machines out there and i feel like it's gotten significantly worse since the pandemic. i would like to live in a city where driving would be unnecessary but feel like maybe a small-to-medium sized city is a better fit for our preferred pace and it's harder to thrive in those places without a car generally speaking, at least in the western u.s.

xp to eric h. are you happy with minneapolis?

I'm from here originally; maybe just a midlife wanderlust crisis

T and I both love driving, but I drive a majority of the time because I grew up in the area where we live so know how to get everywhere without looking at a phone.

In case anyone has free time this afternoon, I'll be reading some poems (about anal) at the end of this event, which is a conversation between the director of Visual AIDS and Ted Kerr, an artist and AIDS activist. https://brooklynrail.org/events/2022/12/08/visual-aids/

(It is happening now)

i don't think i've been to a party where i wasn't djing since maybe before the pandemic, maybe longer than that? when i quit drinking i basically quit going out because being social in a group setting was too difficult. we went to a joint birthday party last night at a house downtown owned by someone my husband dated many years ago and still has a little crush on. it was a little awkward because of that and because a lot of the people who were going to my sunday tea dance over the summer were there. with almost all of them i made some noise about wanting to get together and then just kinda ghosting and ignoring them. one guy's name i forgot and asked whereupon he scowled at me, playfully i hope. one couple we had agreed to have a play date with, we've been out to dinner with a few times, but now we're realizing we don't have any chemistry with them so i guess that's just going to be awkward now.

anyway, in spite of all that furtive anxious energy and feeling like a weird scraggly boo radley, it was pretty enjoyable. i had the handsomest fellow give me doe eyes whereupon i immediately froze like a deer in headlights and made a beeline for the porch outside. there was a drag show to watch and i had one good conversation. an old friend showed up with a new boyfriend, it was warm and then weird. we were only there for an hour. i gotta start forcing myself to do this more often or i'm not going to have any friends in my 40s.

this morning i had a really hot rendezvous with a big meaty batch of muscles from the gym. he hit me up for it, gratefully, i'm glad i was able to attract him. great energy, lots of talent in bed, husband material for a go-getter but a personality i can only take limited amounts of and i'm happy with my goofy beautiful husband who i have a deep and basic love for. feeling really happy i can have both as i start consuming only clear liquids the day before my first colonoscopy.

omg what a packed post! listen it sounds like you're properly living.

also I don't think it has to be awkward with that couple, I mean shit happens - like all the time. I've learned the hard way that you know what - you survive awkward. ya just do.

:)))))

thanks swen! haha i was autotyping because i was hungry i think?

how i see this time of year is that we have a little over a week and a half and i get the wonderful gift of no more christmas music, but i hope you all are doing your best you as we slide into the solstice!

i meannnnnnn

my best might be a stretch but i am being creative in my spare time which was not the story for a hot minute

lmme ask u - push ups v bench press?

i love the bench press

the realest thing to do laid out on your stomach imo is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhujangasana or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhanurasana

omg i do that!!!!!!!

omg i do that!!!!!!!

whenever I'm done with my push-ups I get into that pose and it feels fucking amazing

cobra pose that is

the other one i would kill myself

whenever I'm done with my push-ups I get into that pose and it feels fucking amazing

― Swen, Saturday, December 17, 2022 7:53 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

hell yeah.

honestly no shade but i will NEVER do matching xmas sweater / pyjama selfies over the holidays. yours are all cute of course!

especially djp's, you guys are hot

I used to be so effing good at Dhanurasana pose -- I will be again soon

it's a tough one, i can get halfway there. breathing in it is a real challenge for me. these days anything that helps decompress my lower spine from sitting too much is my jam.

agreed

how do we all do with depression in here?

2022 was my most depressed year in nearly a decade-and-a-half. I've been receiving treatment for it for about that long--which itself was way later than I probably should have sought help. I've likely suffered from it all my life, but the first time I really noticed it taking control of my life was in, like, 1996-97, with notable peaks and valleys in the decades since.

There is a thread elsewhere on the board on this topic if you are looking for general questions/discussion (Depression and what it's really like) but using this space to discuss particularly queer concerns re: mental health is not a terrible idea (I think).

No real depression here; anxiety yes, but depression no. Especially when I'm not drinking

hey yeah, i like this question. long story short for me: it's gotten better over the past 5 years. i'm sensitive and prone to melancholy from the get-go but changing some external factors has helped what had turned into some depression, i guess i'd describe it as medium-grade in intensity. exercise is also helpful for me, i do a lot of it and follow it like it's a drug regimen. i still feel like i'm batshit crazy and deal with social anxiety, etc, but actual depressive episodes are fewer in frequency and don't last as long as they used to.

i'm sorry that your 2022 was like that crypto.

Thanks, map.

It has been a rough few years in general: COVID, obviously, but also the loss of three family members in as many years, others still dealing with some fairly serious illnesses, the stress of finishing up a dissertation in the midst of all of this…I’m sure it all contributes. Glad to see this year go, and hoping it represents the end of a particularly shitty era.

map making us all blush up in here

No anxiety or depression, just looking across a narrowing abyss at the half-century mark and going "Hi...?"

I wasn’t depressed but then I got an AARP mailer and then tried to travel after the shitshow snow storm

I have had my moments this year, but much of what has driven my depression and anxiety the past few years melted away to a certain extent because I just began forgiving my body again after cancer and surgery and gaining a bit more weight than I wanted. Now I’m bouldering V8, bicycling a fair amount and feel robust but also don’t beat myself up if I don’t feel great or things have been wild and I’ve been drinking a few more beers a week as a result.

I am trying to make peace with being close to 40 and not feeling like a professional in my field, but alas, I know a lot of that feeling is driven by situations beyond my control, at this juncture.

My big goal for next year is to write more prose. Sounds stupid, but up until recently, there were years when I found the process excruciating. I suddenly hit a groove again recently, so!

that's awesome. it's so hard to keep the creative juices flowing. I went through a few months this year when I wasn't working on anything, and it was pretty awful. keeping a creative routine takes a lot, but it's usually worth it. for me it's a lot about how hard I've failed in the past, and mustering up the courage to keep being an amateur. but I've come to the realization lately that there really is no other choice.

i feel you cryps. this year has felt awful. so i had the cancer, but it's also felt like a perfect storm of other things. I guess some of them have more to do with the cancer then I sometimes realize. I also had to worry about my job for a while, so all in all just a dismal year. depression has definitely flourished. I'm very ready to close the book and try to recenter. if you have any guided breath work videos to throw my way, I'll be gladly receptive!

Without fully realising the extent of it until summer 2020, I've had depression and anxiety issues since my teens, and I think some of it may have been seeded by the agony of being deeply closeted and terrified all the way through my adolescence: as I could neither be the person I was expected to be, nor the person who I actually was, I was left being nobody at all.

Going onto SSRIs in 2020 was the final piece in the jigsaw, and it's clear in retrospect that this should have happened years ago. I know they don't work for everyone, and I know that they don't do ALL the work, but they work astonishingly well for ME, and I feel nothing short of reborn.

To bring it back to a gay context: a couple of months ago, I finally felt ready to get laid. I'd had a major crisis of confidence around 2011 which also left me no longer interested in hooking up, so I'd stopped completely. Over the summer, I started getting the urge to get myself out there again, and the urge wouldn't go away, so my best going-out buddy and I booked a Saturday night's stay in Manchester, and I got the Tadalafils in. (Oh, and I bought a black leather harness. Well, why not.)

We went to a cruisy bar/club, I hooked up in the old-school analogue way, and the hotel was just around the corner. Turns out that if you've not hooked up in 11.5 years, the next time will be fucking INCREDIBLE. It feels good to be back in the saddle.

Welcome back!

Austin, I hope you know how much your posts have meant to me; you're also among the ilxors I'd love to kick it with irl. A big kiss.