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

I think Portland is a pit full of Nazis, have had some okay times there but have mostly enjoyed leaving.

Portland was also the place where I tried to buy beer at a gas station using my passport and was refused because it wasn’t a drivers license. I was using the passport because my license had expired but the woman wouldn’t sell to me until I showed her my expired license. It was very strange.

that sounds like a properly American request
i really had no idea people felt this way about Portland lol
you learn something new everyday
i still indulge in a good amount of weed even though it makes me kind of paranoid
the benefits still seem to outweigh the negatives i guess??

it's pretty hilarious now that it's legal in NY, plenty of street smoking. i love it.

swen - i work as an archivist. current job has been getting on my nerves lately, thinking it may soon be time to decamp (plus i need to anyway if i’m to have any hope of getting PSLF)

i’ve only been to portland once, for a conference. at one point i went to one of the gay strip clubs (there’s two iirc?) with some other ppl from the conference lol

hey i came on this thread to bitch about my gay ass life and y'all are talking about portland, we have a thread you know, but hey, this is portland, you do what you like.

anyway this week i am pissed because my girlfriend has been crashing on my couch since april and it has been a tremendous stress on both me and her and she finally got a room in a house, and has a lease signed, and was going to move in NEXT MONDAY, except the fucking HOUSE OWNER didn't tell the OTHER ROOMMATES and they're demanding the owner not rent to my GF. legally of course there's a signed fucking contract, my GF has the right to move in, but in practical terms, you know, she doesn't want to live in a house where the other housemates don't want her there and fucking hate her being there.

the thing is, this is just a fucking STANDARD FEATURE of queer life. we're all disasters, we're all under huge allostatic load, and every trans person in particular i know, myself included, does fucked up shit like this on a regular basis. i'm sick of it. i'm fucking sick of it. i was talking to a cis queer friend about the drama in my life and asked how she was doing, because, you know, it's polite, i asked her before i trauma dumped too, again, it's good to be respectful, and she said her life was boring and all she was doing was working and GOD i would kill for some boring right now. one week. one week free of insane personal drama. that's all i ask.

and again i'm not exactly a poster child for mental health, and my gf is dealing with a lot from me. compound trauma, you know? compound trauma. i just want a chance to catch my breath and then maybe i can deal with all the shit that's been piling up, then maybe i can get through life without fits of involuntary screaming.

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re: glamping - the queer leather group i'm in is having their annual camping trip next month and i'm going to unfortunately miss it. half of the lesbians out here are hiking lesbians and i got kind of a complex about it, i got severe functional limitations and my dating pool is kinda limited as it is.

regarding salem, it's a government town. everybody works for the fucking government there. i've never been, maybe you will get "friendly, rooted and affable" from state employees, but that's not the general vibe i get from the place.

portland has changed a _lot_ over the past 30 years. i wasn't there in the '90s, i hear people talk about the Old Days pre-Portlandia a lot though. there is lots and lots of marijuana. i don't smoke myself but if you do, you know, portland is a good city for you.

i got an ex who's a reed alum. it seems like a decent school if you're into that hippie shit.

there are nazis here certainly, and most of them are cops or cops' brothers. so, you know, something to watch out for. most people are pretty strongly anti-nazi, though.

at the same time portland is institutionally pretty fucking racist. everybody knows it, knows oregon has been one of the most racist states from the beginning, but nobody does anything about it. so, you know, it's pretty standard for us to be huge hypocrites, you know, standard west coast shit.

it's weird because simultaneously it's gentrified and there's a lot more homeless people. lotta drugs out there too. crack is, inexplicably, big again this year.

in conclusion, portland is a land of contrasts.

i come at it from a punk/former hobo perspective. King Burritos are excellent, some of the beer is good, the town is a sprawl and most of the people suck

regarding salem, it's a government town. everybody works for the fucking government there. i've never been, maybe you will get "friendly, rooted and affable" from state employees, but that's not the general vibe i get from the place.

i work for the government so my options are limited. just doing a bit of wishful thinking re friendly and rooted etc but tbh it's gotta be better than salt lake fucking city. incremental improvements you know?

i'm sorry you're going through all of this right now kate and i very much wish for you a week free of personal drama tbqf.

i have a couple of friends from here (both pretty granola) who moved to Portland and have been trying for years to coax me out there for a visit, and an ex who used to always tell me i would love Portland so much, which i very much doubt because all the bands from there make me want to fucking puke. The Decemberists, the Dandy Warhols, Sleater Kinney, Modest Mouse, the Shins- you name it, i can't stand 'em. and it's put me off the place for life.

Also what Kate said about institutional racism and hypocrisy, i just can't imagine myself ever living in a city that is 70+ % white.

anyhow sorry for the rant. love to all'a yous.

for the record i didn't know most of those bands were from portland (i knew about sleater-kinney). the big band people seem to like around here is dead moon. never heard 'em personally.

Dead Moon are great

my perspective fwiw is middle-aged precariat lady with a serious case of Mad (redacted) Syndrome. idk, i guess i could always move since i had to sell my house in the divorce. everybody here is chronically traumatized and fucked up. do trans people have it better anywhere else?

like, i could just pack up and move to minnesota or some shit.

the Bay, New York, Seattle.

Portland is fine for what it is— but being in a mixed-race queer partnership when so many racist assholes abound is just not it for me. Philadelphia is a shithole in many ways but at least it’s a majority-minority city.

i think the Dandy Warhols are to Portland what the Levellers are to Brighton or something. what could be more Portlandian than this?

Taylor-Taylor informally added the second "Taylor" to his last name around 1999. On the issue of his double-barrelled surname, Taylor-Taylor has said ... "I was just tripping on the 'my parents are still married' thing. Basically, when my friend Gina Williams started dating my other friend Kevin Williams, they decided to hyphenate their names. So she started calling herself Gina Williams-Williams and then I became Courtney Taylor-Taylor".

shit table i can barely afford to live in pdx. philly's nice but i prefer passive aggression to "fuck you, buddy"; i'm definitely a west coast sort of asshole, i've found, and portland is the most affordable major city on the west coast

"can't afford to be anti-racist" is pretty fucking pathetic though

lol i’m definitely an east coast asshole, native californians are always like “chill man”

the west coast definitely mellowed me a lot tho, i was there for a decade, wouldn’t trade that time for anything

gotta be honest with you pdx isn't exactly increasing my mellow quotient these days. maybe if i listen to "sugar magnolia" again, idk.

the Bay is much more chill than PDX . i was younger and broker and lived like a king cuz i had good hookups

i’ve lived on the west coast now for longer than i lived on the east coast (as an adult) but every time i go home or visit nyc i resume my cranky northeast corridor ways again lol

happy Pride, everyone!

Hello, happy pride

happy pride!

i went to the sex party on saturday night and it was great! i actually, like, chatted with and flirted with and then, you know, had sex with two guys. i don't think i've ever done all of that sober in that kind of environment. it was fun and confidence-boosting. of course now i'm coming down with a cold lol.

I was asked at lunch today "did you do anything for Pride?" and I said "no, I rarely if ever do Pride things" and they said "whyever not?" and I said "because I dislike gay men to begin with, why would I want to be around an enormous group of them? terrifying!"

I kind of wanted to do a Pride event this year but a) nothing I considered seemed to be particularly interested in either people of color or bisexuals, and b) everything also just felt like a mass consumer nightmare that was less about celebrating the strength of non-straight people and more about how big corporations really hope non-straight people buy things from them

have a love/hate thing with them myself xp

way to sow those wild oats map ;)

did nothing special this weekend, mostly bcz i was feeling a bit sad/lonely with my husband being gone for so long (he gets back on friday). on saturday i did wander over with a (str8 female) friend to a queer party that catered mostly to baby dykes/NBs/trans girls. my friend and i felt a little bit like mom and dad chaperoning the cool kids’ house party lol.

also this thursday i am playing a 6-7 hour pride DJ set by myself(!), gonna be wild! should be fun provided the host lets me do my thing without his usual pass-agg commentary

xp Well yep, and I felt as if "gay culture, generally" = a mass consumer nightmare to begin with

Had an enjoyable weekend with being gay with my gay boyfriend and our dog watching films and eating gay food and doing gay things like "assessing the unfinished basement in our rental for sealant possibilities"

I did loads of drugs this weekend to honor Pride.

Only one of those days involved gay men, a pity. In my life at present the straights party harder than the gays.

pride always brings up these feelings for me.

so in a suburb of slc there is an aquarium. it's owned by one dude. next to it is this 16-story structure just standing there:

https://www.abc4.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/08/Plaza_day084-1.jpg?w=876&h=493&crop=1

apparently u2 used it during some world tour or other. and the owner of the aquarium bought it for millions of dollars and it's just sitting there by the freeway. it's extremely dumb and ugly imo.

so a few weeks ago i see this:

https://x96.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/X96_LLPQ-Pride10890x1080IG.jpg

and, i dunno, my feelings about it are that it's total trash. gaywashing the stupidest shit to keep it up as a roadside hee-haw attraction. it's sponsored by encircle and the lion mamas and utah pride. encircle and the lion mamas are mormon apologiests afaic. utah pride is a tax write-off for people like the lesbian board member of the huge private jail company here.

That spider shit is like out of one of those third-tier Star Wars films.

utah pride is the pride org that runs the festival and parade in slc every year. all the banks and cops are in the parade and have been for as long as i can remember. this year they really decided to lean on 'only bring in non-local talent or people with 12k+ followers on instagram" for the festival. i did not go, even though i really wanted to see crystal waters. i was exhausted tbh.

xp right? lol star wars another intellectual property that's part of mainstream gay discourse now.

I remarked earlier this month that I wish the traditional "pride rainbow" could be retired and replaced. Rainbows just are so aesthetically hideous that it's hard (for me, anyway) to have any positive association with them. Personally I think the pride flag should just be leopard print, any colour scheme. I'm not a big fan of leopard print or anything but it seems like a good alternative. Also the trans flag is gorgeous and should remain as-is

I really like the bisexual flag and it bums me out that you only ever see it in specific gift shops in Provincetown

My facebook memories for today reminded me that thirteen years ago, I wrote this:'
"RAINBOW FLAGS ARE STILL FLAGS. GET THOSE LIGHTERS STARTED."

While my stance has softened in recent years because I'm hopefully not as much of a fucking asshole as I used to be, I still basically associate the Pride flag primarily with homoconsumerism and homonationalism. Not my cuppa, to say the least.

Philly Pride luckily ain't much, tho I bartended the post-Trans March party last October and it was absolutely fucking bonkers, truly glad Philly is a decent enough city for trans pals.

Haha wow I love that

I've been wary of flags since I was kid; the last seven years have mad me murderous about them.

I didn’t even do much for Pride this year and even still I’m caught up in melancholy that it’s over for another year

i do really like pride month tbh. part of it is that june weather is fantastic.

guys i got a nasty cold after being a whore over the weekend :|

next week i am taking the 4th through the 7th off work and i'm really looking forward to it

My facebook memories for today reminded me that thirteen years ago, I wrote this:'
"RAINBOW FLAGS ARE STILL FLAGS. GET THOSE LIGHTERS STARTED."

ahh, memories...

♥️

feel better, map!

:) thank you

i remember that actually, in June 2015 everyone had that pride flag filter thingy on their facebook profile pic and it sickened me and i posted a rant about how pride flags had always made me feel that i should not expect to be welcomed or tolerated except by special invitation, that i should expect to be persecuted and that displaying it felt like a self-congratulatory gesture, hashtag #godhatesflags (ughh)

it bewildered lots of folks and upset a few, in particular younger friends. my attitude has changed only somewhat but i'm able to see the flag in some contexts as honoring the struggles of others who have faced more extreme and more violent bigotry than i have.

i deleted my fb a few months after that anyhow.

reminds me of when gay marriage was legalized in the US and it led to me and my husband (then bf) getting into a fight about queer anti-assimilation politics stuff, and also not picking up the phone when my mom called me happy about the news because i couldn’t bear to have any more conversations about it. mid-2010s was a weird time.

In my neck of the UK woods, the rainbow flag has been almost entirely replaced by the Pride Progress flag, which I like a lot more design-wise, as it conveys its message in quite a clever way, and gives new context to the continuing presence of the old rainbow. (Hmm, not a very elegant sentence, but let it stand.)

Rolling Stone ranks The 50 Most Inspirational LGBTQ Songs of All Time:

#48 Kelly Clarkson, "Stronger"
#40 Ariana Grande f/ Zedd, "Break Free"
#22 Beyoncé, "Break My Soul"
#14 Mariah Carey, "Hero"
#3 Katy Perry, "Firework"

Full list ⬇️https://t.co/3NhlIG4MX9

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) June 28, 2023

Hm, I think we can do better. 1. Huggy Bear “Pansy Twist”

Nah 1 is Yummy Fur "Plastic Cowboy"

idk i don't like lists i'll stfu now

No Carl Bean and no Sylvester is just … very Rolling Stone