Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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I well understand why people might suspect I'm gay. I find it amusing, really, since at least to my own satisfaction, I'm as zero on the Kinsey scale as one can get. Adjusting for the kind of floating point error you wouldn't notice on a pride float.
Am I offended when people online suspect I'm gay? Not really. If I cared, I wouldn't supply the material. I'm more annoyed when people take my rather definitive declarations that I'm straight as evidence of denial. Gee, the dude who regularly writes essays about falling in and out of love with women is gay, is all I can say to them. Bisexuality is a harder to adjudicate diagnosis of exclusion, but we've moved past the ICD-10 paraphilia era.
I can only sigh in exasperation. If I regularly defend gay and bisexual subcultures against attack, it would take a particular form of intransigent self delusion to not acknowledge tendencies to join them. I don't acknowledge them because they don't exist
Honestly, there's are plenty of prosaic reasons I hang around with gay people. I started going to a gay pub entirely by accident (I have that essay about the shock of realizing it's a gay pub, I'm not very observant at times), and picked up gay friends. This well predated my brother coming out, but might have contributed to him feeling comfortable doing so. He could see I was more than comfortable treating gay people as human beings, though I can only hope that he had enough reason to trust me before that. Humans are weird like that, he could have told me a decade back and I'd have had his back, that's what brothers are for.
What else? Those environments are, as you suggested, quite novel to me. And there's always some drama going on, I pack my own popcorn. I also appreciate that they're quite understanding and accepting spaces, not that that's for my own benefit. I do not like moral busybodies, not that you can't find them there too.
More recently, I'm seeing a (straight) woman heavily enmeshed in the culture. She dragged me to a drag queen night the first date (I went willingly, I was just curious), and her best friend is a gay influencer. That kinda constrains the option space for me, you know, not that I particularly mind. If there's booze and people to tell me about their mental health issues, I'm content. You only get one of the two at work.
You're heading full throttle into a lonely existence where you wondered where the years have gone.
What do you want? If you just want a relaxing time with nonjudgmental mildly drunken coevals, fine, but long-term I have serious doubts about that as a path toward fulfilment. Humans need a bit of drama and conflict. If you want a break from women, fine, but then you're not even doing that.
There's big writing on the wall here and that you clearly do not see it amazes and saddens me, not because of you but because it says something larger about human's incapacity for self awareness.
Do you think my "jokes" about feeling like it's time for me to settle down and have a wife and kids are just jokes? They aren't.
I am acutely aware of the risks of pushing these things too far. I only need to look at that uncle of mine for a good example of the worst case scenario. By his accounting, a lothario in his 20s and 30s, then turning 50 and feeling awfully fucked and lonely (not mutually exclusive things). To his credit, he did try. He was married to a woman for a year, and she had BPD.
To my credit, while I was with my ex with BPD, I had the brains to not marry her. Despite being intensely in love with her, and seeing a future together. If she hadn't been crazy, I would have been married with kids.
In other words, if you're telling me to settle down, you're preaching to the choir. That's been the plan for several years. The hard part is finding someone who I think fits the bill. The good news is that that's going well. I'd like to be a good husband and father, and not just in possession of more than my fair share of dad jokes. If I need examples, I just have to look at my dad and my grandpa.
You might ask where the delay arises? Well, you try marrying when you're in such a transitional stage of your life, rather unmoored geographically. It's not easy. I met someone I could see myself marrying last year, and as predictably as I had feared, geography ended things.
Not too get even more Ask George here, but I think possibly the routine of hanging out in bars with homosexual men is not the ideal environment to meet women. Now it may be true that you do not wish to meet women in bars--and if this is your viewpoint, you are probably not entirely unwise. But I suspect that, with your job, social hours are limited. Why not find spaces where you are at least more likely to run into a woman free of emotional baggage? (cough, choke, wait, hang on, let me get some water...) I mean a woman who might have less emotional baggage than the types who frequent gay bars in their attempts to get the hell away from straight men.
Gay pubs are absolutely not the right venue to meet women, but I don't really go there to meet women. I go there for for the booze, and because that's where a few of my non-work friends live and try to die.
I meet women the old-fashioned way: on dating apps or at work. Well, at least one of those is lindy. I will ignore the monthly arranged marriage my dutiful elderly parents drop on my doorstep like a mouse missing a head.
Women without emotional baggage? Where does one find one of those? They clearly aren't looking for psychiatrists.
Jokes aside, I am dating someone with just enough to fit in the carry-on allowance. And we go to places other than gay clubs. I just had a lovely day with her at Loch Lomond.
I had to look up lindy. It is a word I shall never use. I didn't know you were dating anyone other than seeing the lesbian sometimes. I hang my head in shame for not being up-to-date.
I forgive you for the unforgivable sin of not knowing the ins and outs of my dating life, particularly aspects I haven't written about before. I do appreciate the concern, I just wanted you to know that I have about the right degree of concern myself. And that instead of simply sitting there being concerned, as would be tempting to some, I'm taking action.
I still worry about you. Call it my feminine side. Jungian, naturally.
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A true extremely-online person uses the all-comments "firehose" page, so that he never misses out on consooming comments as they are posted.
I think I'd like to meet you in real life.
In-person meetups between people who are not physically attracted to each other are overrated.
My retirement party was two hours long (including 1.5 hours of time theft). This was justifiable. There were something like a dozen people present, and they spent the time eating and discussing their shared job. Even then, I didn't actually enjoy it that much.
My housewarming party with my former coworkers will be four hours long. IMO, this is on the long side, but can be considered justified because (1) the coworkers will discuss their shared job, (2) large amounts of food will be provided, (3) the drive is three or four hours each way (which also implies some staggered arrivals), and (4) substantial amounts of time will be taken up by a house-design contest in which the attendees will discuss the design process with each other. Even then, I don't really expect to enjoy it that much, other than the house-design contest and inviting people to walk with me on the "flat" roof. (I'm holding it not just to show off my cool custom house, but also to show up a coworker who said he was going to hold a housewarming party and then failed to do so.)
In contrast:
A few months ago, I half-jokingly suggested organizing a meetup of people who are interested in nonconsensual editing of print and PDF items into HTML. But a meetup centered on HTML would make far more sense to conduct online: the attendees would share their screens to show off their different approaches. And, even then, what's the point of doing all this rigmarole for an hour of ephemeral screen sharing? The people who would attend can just make individual blogposts on the topic on their personal websites.
Several years ago, I gave serious consideration to asking fellow New Jersey hater @The_Nybbler for an in-person meetup. But what would we actually discuss? Merely hating New Jersey isn't actually substantive enough for a conversation. Even if it is considered substantive enough, it can sustain maybe five minutes of conversation that would be far easier to carry out online (with links to relevant laws). And there's no point in setting up an ephemeral one-on-one conversation when it's much more useful and lasting to just upvote his comments and provide links to relevant laws whenever he expresses hate for New Jersey on this website.
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I used to do that back when I was less gainfully employed. I mean, I was still gainfully employed, I just had more free time.
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Hmm. Can people more au fait with what is current tell me if "Fag Hag" is still an acceptable term or is now a disgusting slur?
Okay, you like girls, you're straight, you're just metrosexual. All good.
I told the lady whose sleep I interrupted by typing away furiously defending my sexuality at 3 am that I was furiously defending my sexuality at 3 am.
She looked at me knowingly, and declared "SMH, you're a bit flamboyant."
I told her: "that's not the same thing as being a singing man, Kathleen" and took away the duvet. She took it back. I can never win. If I do win these things, I must go join the other men.
I have heard people use the term "fag hag" in online discourse, but I've only run into "hag" and "fag" and "packets of cigarettes" IRL. I have no idea if that's a slur, but gay people have never shied away from calling themselves things the straights can't call them without offense.
I'm not going to question your sexuality, but do you just want to brag about the sexual attention you're getting from gay men? Bait em, lead them on, and then switch to "oh I'm 100% straight btw"? It's coming across as performative like... you're seeking some sort of validation? Idk
I find it modestly amusing, until someone like @Amadan comes in and misses the running joke. It's been known to happen.
More importantly, ego boosts from male compliments can be real, but should be downscaled. To quote myself:
If I wanted to brag about women, I would brag about women. I'm too busy doing other things to them.
I didn't miss the joke, dude.
We just think it's funny that you doth protest too much.
Don't you start growing a sense of humor on me. It's upsetting and unnatural.
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