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

word

one of my friends says the word is "achillean" btw

just makes me think of that bob dylan song lol

hungry like a man in drag

you know i want your lovin'
honey, but you're so hard

but probably most people wouldn't have that reaction

oo i like 'achillean'

i finished a song!

tell us about it!

like i think it's not that bad. i'm going back to a light rock thing, which i left like in high school but am feeling much more than poppy sounds these days. i've been listening to a LOT of grunge (it's not a grunge song lol, just saying.) that's my story! what have you been listening to t3ddy

that’s cool! i love grunge.

i have been listening to Poco, Slikback, old goa trance mixes, and a lot of Karen Dalton

spring makes my listening habits deeply weird, every year

spring is a very special season. so much opportunity, it feels like. can you tell me more about karen dalton?

i feel really bad about this kink convention i'm supposed to be going to. trying to... process some complex emotions. and what's coming up for me right now is disgust

and i mean it's not the kind of disgust people usually talk about in terms of kink. i mean no i'm fine with that. more than fine, really, a lot of this stuff is stuff that i would like to do, like, a lot

nah what disgusts me is... like, people say over and over again "kink is not abuse", and after what i've seen in the last year... a lot of the people who say that, they don't actually know what abuse looks like. _i_ don't actually know what abuse looks like. like, if i want my ass beat and somebody beats my ass, _that's_ not abuse. some people think it is, and in that sense, it's important to say that it's not. if those people are disgusted with me, that's their problem

it's the same thing with me, the disgust i feel towards the way people behave in the kink scene here is my problem

i'm experimenting with using kink as a form of self-harm. a lot of people around me use sex as a form of self-harm. i don't do that personally. pre-transition i guess sex was a form of self-harm for me. everybody told me it was supposed to feel good and it did, but it also felt _very bad_ because of the dysphoria. but i felt, like, biologically compelled to do this thing that i hated and that made me feel bad. if i didn't, i kept thinking about things that disturbed me (like, femme shit, that stuff's actually normal but i didn't feel that way at the time), and i would also get irritable and angry from the testosterone. it felt like purging. like cumming felt like vomiting out of my cock. (is there a hardcore band called "cock vomit"? i guess there is now.) i guess that's how i'd describe my experience, i mean, on some level vomiting feels good, you know? but it's not _pleasant_.

anyway when i talk about kink as a form of self-harm, i mean it in the same way that people use sex as a form of self-harm. like sex isn't _bad_, clearly, just like kink isn't _bad_. i've learned that there are all kinds of ways to do self-harm that... people get concerned about you when you do certain things, but if you don't do those things... i guess people are still concerned, but they're disempowered. self-harm is basically a hostile act, when i do it at least. i feel a lot of disgust towards other people, other people whose behavior hurts me, whose behavior serves as a really significant barrier to me getting what i want, and my response to that is fuck you, i can hurt myself way worse than you can hurt me.

i've had people talk about, like, when they have the urge to self-harm snapping their wrist with a rubber band, and like it's not a question of whether one self-harms or not, it's about _how_ one self-harms, right? wrist-cutting isn't socially acceptable; snapping my wrist with a rubber band is. if i fuck up my bobos (i'm gonna leave that typo), if i honk on my bobos with a cane, that's acceptable, right? because i can just say "i like pain".

that's the complicated thing. i _do_ like pain. and sometimes that's healthy, and sometimes that's not. and it's not easy for me to tell the difference, always.

and these motherfuckers out here saying "kink is not abuse", like it's that fucking simple.

ok there's not a band called "cock vomit", but there's an act that put out a cassette called "cock vomit", and of course it's some fucking power electronics bullshit. god, i hate power electronics. edgelordy bullshit.

swen, you would love Karen Dalton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsYHN7eCCtU

I definitely had a "power bottom" phase, lasted about a year. I don't know where it came from. I've always enjoyed bottomming but this was ridiculous. Getting fisted, getting DP'd, I was all in. I had (and still have) a ridiculous dildo collection, some real doozies. I kept my anus pliant and whistle-clean. I could take any cock, anywhere, "no loads refused", as they'd say.

It was not really an expression of self-harm, but it was a kind of a severance package for the end of an abusive relationship. I'd been being pressured for 2.5 years into "being OK" with a boyfriend who was sexually abusive. Suddenly being out of that awful relationship made me just want to get fucked into the ground. So I got fucked into the ground. And then I started dating somebody who wasn't abusive. And my life is blissful and, comparatively, boring. (That's the problem with abusive boyfriends, they're always so... interesting.)

wish i could still get fucked but i also bounced on a lot of dick back in my day so i feel okay about it

i am also, tbh, a great top

I know there are some people who are into those... I couldn't remember what the brand is called, so I had to google "bad dildos" and sure enough it came right up. Bad Dragon.

I see a lot of trans women go through what a lot of us call our "slut era". I tried, by God. I really tried. I don't know how it is for other people, but yeah, for me, it does have a lot to do with getting out of an abusive relationship. My ex-wife emotionally and sexually abused me, and it's taken a _long_ fucking time for me to accept or come to terms with that as much as I have. When we broke up, I'd never _been_ in a relationship with someone else.

It took me a year to get with anyone else and when I did it kind of became this folie a deux thing. I guess if I really want to get into it it's this relationship that overshadows everything else. She's a great person and all but holy fuck she is _not_ a low-drama person. She spent the first few months of our relationship getting fucked by anybody she could in order to try and prove to herself she was _worth_ fucking. It doesn't seem to have worked. She resents me for not meeting her intimacy needs. I don't meet her intimacy needs because one of my boundaries is that she needs to _ask_. I refuse to mind-read, particularly not when it comes to sex, particularly given that she has a really really hard time saying "no". I'm not going to be intimate with someone who lacks the self-confidence to say "no". To me, that's not really consensual.

She keeps pressuring me to find another partner because she keeps feeling "pressured" sexually by me. We haven't been intimate in six months. We cuddle. That's it. We barely even see each other once a week. I'm beyond "desperately thirsty" and am into full-on spinster, and now I'm supposed to go to this kink convention and... it just reminds me. Reminds me of all the love I want, all the love I deserve, all the love that I have never had for more than, like, a weekend, a honeymoon. She hates herself. She hates her body. She's at a weight where she can barely get around. I'm genuinely worried that she could have a myocardial infarction any day now. I gave her $20,000 to get off my couch in the hopes that it would, I don't know. Allow her to have the stable, healthy life I felt like she deserved. It didn't. No amount of money could. The money means nothing to me. The disappointment in watching her flail over and over and over again... that does hurt. A lot.

Most of the time being with her lets me avoid thinking about how painful it is for me, not having the support and care that comes with a loving intimate relationship. She gets upset when I talk about how lonely I am, and she's not _there_ for me, hasn't been _there_ for me for more than the occasional cuddle for six months now.

Well, if not her, than who? I went to this new years' eve party with all of the people I used to know before my folie a deux relationship with my GF burned those bridges and it's not like... they're not actually doing any better than I am. I stood there, sober and lonely, while I watched a bunch of people fucked up on all kinds of drugs desperately making out with each other. They were all extremely hot and extremely miserable. It was awkward. I'm just fucking trying to not be miserable. When it comes to relationships, I don't know how to do that. I'm 48 years old and I've _never had a healthy relationship in my entire life_. I love myself. I think I'm a wonderful person who has a lot to offer in a relationship. Where do I find people who have something to offer _me_?

That breaks my heart, Kate!! I want you to have a healthy relationship!!

I am lucky, most of my exes are amazing people. Even actually the shitty awful ex, he is shitty and awful but he’s kinda amazing in other ways, I don’t ever wanna see him again but I don’t hate him in any respect.

idk i'm having kind of a shit weekend

i feel like going out with my friends would really help me get my mind off my breakup with my girlfriend, really lighten my mood

i try talking to my friends though, and they're all dealing with so many different crises

i feel like shit and if i could, you know, just hang out with some folks and have a conversation where nobody else talks about wanting to kill themselves, where people can just be encouraging and tell me "it's ok, you'll get over her, it sucks but in the long run you'll be better off for it, you're a great person and there are tons of people who like you, here c'mon let's go for a night out on the town, shake those blues away"

instead it's like "you know what would cheer you up, you should get an onlyfans"

i'm all in favor of sex work but no. no, i'm pretty sure getting an OF would not cheer me up. i'm pretty sure taking psilocybin and undergoing "ego death" would not cheer me up. people say i'm "oppositionally defiant" but i'm gonna be honest with you i've gotten a lot of really bad advice

i mean it's not always bad advice. sometimes it's clown memes.

-

breakups are _normal_, it's _normal_ to be sad when i go through a breakup even if it's not really a breakup, more a recognition something that's already happened, even if it's not a bad thing

resilience is... like what i would _like_, where i would _like_ to be is to feel really sad and cry and recognize this is hard and painful without being in a position of...

i'm _supposed_ to get out and do the normal things, check my mail, pay my bills, do the laundry, go out with friends, and that's how i'll get to feeling better, that's how i'll get back to being a healthy, functioning human being

i'm terrified of going on dates. i'm terrified that i'll go out with someone and they'll fall in love with me because i'm the first person who's shown them human kindness in six months and they'll tell me all their darkest secrets, things they've never told anybody else

and they'll think that's romantic

i work really hard to try not to be like that anymore. i put so much effort into it. i like other people, it's just hard for me to _trust_ people i like.

and it's even harder to not blame myself. to not essentialize it, to not joke about "being attracted to red flags". to. like. acknowledge that i have this deep-seated _need_ to be hurt, _need_ to be abused, that those things are _normal_ to me, and to figure out some way to... get in relationships that recalibrate what "normal" means. i've worked so hard to believe that i'm a good person who's worthy of love, and one sort-of-breakup and here i am back really wanting to seek out people who will abuse me. those people are _so easy to find_. they are so _exciting_. they are so _hot_.

well. i guess i can write instead. it feels good to be able to write this and share it and not feel guilty about sharing it, not feel like i'm doing something wrong or being inappropriate by sharing it. it's nice. and i did go for a walk today, by myself, and i felt terrible, and i still feel terrible, and it helped.

god, dbt skills ftw

so glad i did a round

i like the vernaculzar these days tbh

ppl did actually wake up in a lot of waya and i'mb here for it

i would recommend the promise of civilization during these days of early to mid twenties and i yearn to hear some more.

dear swen, i have no idea what you are talking about lol

i am a gloomy gus by nature and my primary partner's sense of humor does not always do it for me. young pine, on the other hand, brings us all together in riotous laughter quite often. we have victorian lady alter-egos with falsetto voices, i am beatrice, young pine is priscilla and j is gwendolyn. we also do crazy eyed joe redneck voices and joke about fucking rotisserie chickens. j is always straining to come up with the worst puns. most everything else right now is kind of shit but laughter is a refuge. it's medicine i usually usually won't take but my fellas are kind of forcing it on me and it's really helping.

So! Two Victorian ladies walk into a gay bar and...

fuck a rotisserie chicken?

the kind of kink I can get behind and in front of

mmm chicken grease watch out for them bones though

never!

So, need a read on something: got into a little tiff with another poet/writer over some of the drama revolving around the closing of this independent literary distribution. We quashed it, but one of the reasons why I was wary of this person beforehand is because they seemed to often target queer dudes in their online haterade-spewing. Sometimes I have agreed with the haterade— there is a lot of very mediocre work that happens to be made by queer dudes out there— but sometimes I have wondered: why does this person target queer dudes and trans people from NYC so much? Nothing conclusive, so just a thing in the back of my mind.

Yesterday, he posted a “joke” that reads as very supportive of the work of Tom Clark. Background info:

In Dorn's (and his wife Jennifer Dorn's) magazine Rolling Stock, #5, there appeared, written in collaboration with Tom Clark, an item called "The 1983 AIDS AWARDS FOR POETRY--In recognition of the current EPIDEMIC OF IDIOCY on the poetry scene." The page featured a large illustration of a test-tube of reddish liquid, presumably infected blood, which was the "prize."

The recipients of this "award" were Dennis Cooper ("for writing the most AIDS-like line of the year: "Mark's anus is wrinkled, pink, and simplistically rendered, but cute"); Clayton Eshleman (for "attacking a dead--and thus harmless--poet, Elizabeth Bishop" in a review in the LA Times Book Review); Robert Creeley (for writing extravagant blurbs for books by Stephen Rodefer and Joanne Kyger); Steve Abbott ("for accusing everybody who doesn't like him or his poetry of 'rabid homophobia'"); Allen Ginsberg (for claiming he wrote some lyrics for the rock group The Clash, when supposedly he hadn't); and finally, "WRITE-IN CANDIDATE" ("Fill in the name of your favorite POETRY IDIOT here.").

I don’t follow, but I don’t know who Tom Clark is, or why he was shunned. That AIDS award is really bleak!

I have a few gay friends who go full misanthropy in their online exhibitions. I don’t love it. They’ve crossed lines far too many times. “A few gay friends” actually just one, really, the others who do this I tend to keep distance

omg lol what was i talking about above

that was def a post brought to you by the party bus

ok here i am trying to parse:

"so glad i did a round" = OF DBT THERAPY

"i like the vernacular these days /
ppl did actually wake up in a lot of ways and i'm here for it" = the kids are woke have and instituted a cultural vernacular surrounding identity, sexual expression and gender that i admire

"i would recommend the promise of civilization during these days of early to mid twenties and i yearn to hear some more." = civilization actually does have some promise in the 2000s lol

ok that's the best that i can do

Thanks!!!

how are you lovey?? what's the day today?

<3 <3 <3 :)

i'm good! breathing easy because of an unexpected tax break :). about to go for a run in the sun.

what's going on w u?

omg taxes

well i had a unexpectedly loud wknd, like met all kinds of people and stayed up til 6 making out with my friend last night i mean what am i 16

exhaustion central!

how is everyone doing? love to all yous

bumped into an estranged former bestie recently and it was devastating and challenging but i really enjoyed the part where we got to hang out for a couple of hours

it made me wanna meet new people! i even installed a couple of apps on my phone ('looking for pals not dates') and set my gender to nonbinary and 'show me everyone'... no matches came up until i switched it to male. i live in manhattan around the corner from a major university, unreal... of course i am mostly getting messages from guys who wanna hook up

but i don't think i can use these kind of apps it is just a terribly unpleasant and unhelpful way to connect with people, will probably delete before the week is out. approaching and talking to complete strangers in central park would be a million times better than this.

how can those of you who use apps for dates and such even stand it? tell me tell me

i have met one cool person and several duds through dating websites. i have never used an app, don’t plan on it tbh

I came out at the same time I discovered AOL chats in 1999. My first few hookups happened thanks to AOL.

Since then I've had several boyfriends I've met online, many of whom remain friends. Websites and apps gave me the confidence to eventually pick up dudes in bars, most recently in February.

Online vs live ain't a binary.

but i don't think i can use these kind of apps it is just a terribly unpleasant and unhelpful way to connect with people,

It really isn't. In 25 years of using them we've come back to my or his place...maybe four times? I insist on meeting at a bar or coffee shop. We usually have a puddle of interests from which we can draw conversation. If it doesn't work out one of us will call it a night; if it does, we'll make out and grope and maybe the next step but no more.

I don't know how old you are, but creating a version of yourself with which you can chat with guys is an essential part of the dating/hookup scene. Should things deepen, it's up to you whether you shelve that version.

I am with Deflatormouse, I think the apps have ruined dating and based on my own experience, they rarely deliver.

how were you hooking up in your early years? Picking up guys in person?

approaching and talking to complete strangers in central park would be a million times better than this.

yes, do it!

Since then I've had several boyfriends I've met online, many of whom remain friends

same! i've met a bunch of cool people on dating sites and very few duds, mostly ok cupid i think. that was a very different kind of environment with people crafting very thoughtful responses to the essay questions. there was a lot to sink my teeth into.

now i've installed tinder and a couple of similar apps, including one specifically aimed at meeting platonic friends. but it basically shows you tinder profiles, with everyone posting the standard issue dating app photos and revealing very little else about themselves.

it'a not an online/real life binary, no. i don't see myself picking up dudes in bars. there is too little ambiguity about what everyone is after there; i am bad at saying no.

i guess it's apparent that i want to slow things down. in fact i think that ultimately, what i want is to avoid having sex :)

but you seem to have intuited that i can't quite figure out how to create the version of myself with which i can chat. and want to bypass that part of interacting with others, i won't usually take to anyone online who doesn't cut straight to the deeper stuff. and you're right; it doesn't usually work that way.

by the way, i'm 40 and spent a year or two in my early 30's talking to strangers in new york through various outlets. it was pretty cool!

Listen, it took too many years for me to learn that no one holds a stopwatch, no one sets your rhythm to a metronome, and no one shakes his head. You set your own pace. The thought that I could've said when I was 25, "Well, no, I don't wanna have sex" would've blown my mind. In ways we are better than we were.

omg amen

i still suck with boundaries tho.
i've had some beautiful relationships with people who also suck with boundaries, it's amazing what can happen in those cases. but obviously it doesn't end well.

All my relationships began as irl meetings and were borne out of friendships (and returned to friendships afterward, save one). Except my current boyfriend! We met on Grindr in the middle of the pandemic, went on several no-contact dates getting to know each other, and eventually started dating properly once our respective pods approved of the union

The date where we first held hands under the patio table was thrilling in a Victorian sort of way

I thought of Kay Ryan's "Hide and Seek":

It’s hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.

i still suck with boundaries tho.
i've had some beautiful relationships with people who also suck with boundaries, it's amazing what can happen in those cases. but obviously it doesn't end well.

― Deflatormouse

not necessarily! i mean, it's not a _good idea_ in general, but i really do feel positively about my relationship with my now-QPP. we kind of modeled healthy boundaries for each other. that experience was what eventually led me to break up with her, because we weren't in a place where we could have that kind of relationship, but it hasn't been a disaster or anything. we're closer in a lot of ways for having broken up. she came over today to take me to urgent care this morning (i fell in the shower and gave myself an accidental lip piercing). saturday, on my five-year tranniversary, we went to a craft fair - she loves craft fairs, i love being able to support people in their personal interests, particularly if they're not interests i share. then we went to see "hundreds of beavers", and we had just such a great time. if we were still together it would _not_ have gone that well. tomorrow morning she's coming over and we're going out to breakfast, and she'll probably make me another pot of cold brew. it's really sweet and healthy and wholesome. overall she's not necessarily doing super great, she's got some challenges going on in her life, but we can still have a good time together, have a relationship that isn't centered around anyone's trauma.

i tried dating apps and got nowhere with them. i'm pretty rejection-sensitive. dating apps for me feels like filling out job applications. here's 100 people and maybe something good might come out of one of them, and i'm just swiping, swiping, swiping, and i'm thinking wow, here's 99 people i'm not ever going to get with. because i have to look at each one of them individually, right? if i'm at a party and i'm not interested in someone i don't think about it, i'll naturally gravitate towards the people i _am_ interested in, but a dating app, it'll be like "how about her, are you interested in her?" and i'm supposed to make that decision based on, what, three pictures and a joke about the last book they read? ick.

as far as bars go, i don't drink and i have auditory processing disorder, which means that i have a hard time differentiating between different sounds in social settings. it's dark, i'm disoriented, and since i have a hard time with eye contact i'm not really looking at the other person anyway.

-

deflatormouse, i'm with you on avoiding sex. at the same time, it's easy for me to slow things down so much that it becomes kind of a "why bother?" situation. like, the major reason i broke up with my QPP was because we _weren't_ doing anything together, because she wasn't up for it, and even though it was nothing to do with me, it made me feel really inadequate. socially i feel like i'm doing really good. i got a good number of friends who i'm not interested in getting with at this particular time for various reasons, and that's nice. i love having friends who i can socialize with without that kind of "will-we-or-won't-we" tension.

it's also hard for me to talk about the stuff i'm actually _interested_ in, because there's so much shame, and i'm so afraid of rejection. particularly the stuff on the right side of the slash. stuff on the left side, i'm fairly confident about that, as long as i can trust the other person to respect my boundaries (because doms get to have boundaries too, doms get to say "no"), but on the right side? like, it's not the entirety of who i am, but it's important to me to _sometimes_ have interactions with other people where i'm submissive and femme, and my brain is telling that, you know, "every trans woman wants to be a submissive femme, nobody's going to want you that way". neither part of which is true - having put it down in writing it's really easy for me to recognize that.

i guess this is important because when it comes to building intimate relationships with people, there is something that i'm interested in, that can be done casually, where there's a potential to build something more out of it. it's just hard to talk about it though because there's so much baggage attached to it. it's the way i feel about rope, the baggage around that. for me it's like, you know how some people will just go out there and do nude modeling for painters? it's not a sex thing, people who do nude modeling for painters aren't doing it as some fetish. you know, to get good at something, it involves building one's skills. and that's one of the ways i'm interested in being a rope bottom, as a casual, non-sexual thing. that doesn't mean that there aren't other contexts in which rope interests me, just like someone who does nude modeling isn't only ever nude in a, like, artistic way.

the group i'm interested in around here, though, the assumption is that you're doing it to learn to tie and i feel really awkward about that, just like going up to some stranger and asking if they want to tie me up. i don't feel unsafe or anything, it's just really embarrassing and awkward and i'm kinda terrified of people just saying "no", like i'm reading the social cues wrong, which i do sometimes. i went to a new year's eve party that was kinda like that this year, people are all making out with each other and i don't know what the protocol is to start making out with people, like, do they know each other? are they all in a polycule together? and these people are pretty much all, for the record, just as fucking autistic as i am, which doesn't make it any easier. an allistic person might, like, see that i'm feeling awkward and left out and help me feel more comfortable lol.

like the thing is if someone's vanilla and cishet there's this kind of assumed mutual goal and you don't have to talk about "it", you just have to let "it" happen. which i'm not a big fan of, i think that's bad overall, but jesus christ i don't want to go up to somebody and talk about my fetishes on the first date. except if i don't, well, the relationship doesn't kind of work out.

like i got into the first relationship of my life when i was 33, i was in that relationship for the next 12 years, and eventually i broke up with her because _i had not ever actually been sexually attracted to her_. which apparently is not normal for a 12-year-long relationship? i don't know. like alfred said, the thought that i could have directly said "no" never occurred to me. nor did the idea that my never having said "yes", never having expressed any desire for coitus at all, might have some implications regarding the consensuality of the sexual activity in question. that shit isn't the kind of thing i want to talk about on a first date either. i don't know how to _deal_ with that within the context of a prospective relationship.

-

anyway the good thing is that i asked this group if they could do some, like, social stuff so i could get to know them in person before asking anyone to tie me up, and they're giving it a shot. god knows if it'll help. i'm absolutely terrified. i'm going to give it a shot, at least!

we met our current third on scruff. i've met a handful of keepers through it over the years, though i'm not in touch with any of them. i only ever met guys on that app if sex was the priority tbh. i had grindr for a minute but never liked it much. i agree that apps are generally a bad way to make good connections.

it's nice to hear from everyone. deflatormouse, i wish you luck.

i hope you guys don't mind if i share a little travelogue of our weekend in southeast utah.

we spent two days in comb ridge, a monocline or tilted slab of sandstone jutting up from the earth at about 15 to 30 degrees that runs north to south for 28 miles and is 2 to 3 miles wide. narrow canyons carve through the rock every mile or so down the length of it. here's an aerial image of it: https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/145000/145913/iss060e038053_lrg.jpghttps://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/145000/145913/iss060e038053_lrg.jpg

in almost every one of the canyons, there are pictographs, petroglyphs and/or ruins, left behind by ancestral puebloans and later groups. we went into two of them, fishmouth and monarch, and hiked to the rim and saw the procession panel, one of the most breathtaking pieces of art i've ever seen. we also saw the wolfman panel, a very foreboding "who goes there" kind of collection on the rim of butler wash right where it joins the san juan river. we saw maybe 10-15 other people the whole time, a huge contrast to moab, which was completely overrun and which we passed through to get there. exploring the ruins and looking at potsherds in shady canyon alcoves and then just sitting on a rock enjoying an enveloping and friendly silence, watching leaves shake and listening to flows of wind was completely sublime. at the end of the second day we decided to try going for a swim in the san juan river. we stopped at a popular boat ramp and decided there were too many people, then i used google maps satellite view to scout out a little dirt access road a few miles upstream. we got there and saw three cars parked next to the canyon wall and an awning was propped up, taking up the entire width of a small path carved out of the very dense tamarisk leading to the river. a woman was at one of the cars. she asked us if we were from there, we said no not really, we were just hoping to go for a swim. a navajo extended family were celebrating a daughter's birthday. they offered to let us walk through their spot into the ankle-deep river, but we opted to walk further along the canyon wall and see if any other paths broke through the tamarisk. it just grew denser and denser, so we came back and they told us they were heading out anyway. so eventually we had the spot to ourselves and we all swam and played in the river naked in the golden light until the weakening sun and the breeze chilled us too much. afterward we were grateful to find good if overpriced food in a gravel courtyard restaurant in bluff. the end.