#gym memberships are fucking expensive are we out of our minds?

[divorciada]

how do people just "dont bother" to cancel subscriptions they dont use for months? i forgot to cancel a free trial and felt it for weeks :(

[whydoyouwannaknowmyusername]

jan, 30th

i feel so shitty today lol. i'm so bad at restricting (fastinh >>>), i had whole bread and freaking cheese for breakfast, but bc of it i got no lecturing. had salad for lunch and binged on so many fucking sweets. not why i'm feeling shitty tho. i have freaking insolation and am just coming out of my period. my shoulders are all burning, it'll be at least tomorrow for me to feel hydrated again and my muscles hurt too, can barely raise my arms without burning.

i went trekking to a waterfall yesterday and, the stress of the road and emotional rollerscoaster of pms aside, it was rlly nice. my fav part was photographing my aunts and editing the pics later. i'm so proud of my pictures. but i did not want to be photographed. my body looks so weird and wobbly and enourmous on a bikini, i couldn't possibily. they are straight sized but they don't need to be skinny to be pretty, or even to be pretty at all. we took selfies, and at the time i was absolutely sure of my decision. but now i feel a bit grievous of it bc the pics i took of them turned out so marvelous they posted immediately and i so wish i had one there on the waterfall too. granted my body was bleeding a freaking endometrium so i give myself a license for being bloated and wanting to crawl under a shell. i want some aspects of idealized adulthood so much (idealized by me ofc). working an intership and paying for my own waxing as regular as needed so i'll always feel better in a bikini - that helps a lot for me, everything from the neck down begone pls. and paying for a membership at a gym or a voleyball school (though that one's truly expensive) a lot of ed tumblr is just actively hating our bods, but i just do that so frequently against my will that i need to cultivate some balance. i don't need to hate who i am to change how i am rn. for some ppl it's a boost for results but i guess i'm just a sweestpo girlie - i'm slow in that & it's a love and hate. but today for example, i wanna eat some fruits, rest up and really take care. not half-a-banana-for-the-whole-day, which is what i feel i should do. i can't stop the voices and the tormenting around food every single hour of every day in my life. i can't stop the eat-helthy!-you're-so-fucking-disgusting!-eat-to-feel-better!-are-you-dumb?!. i can't stop my triggers, i can't undo my purges and binges, i can't make my mind neutral to food and to my body and helpful to a healthy-ish weightloss. but i have these impulses to take care. true care, not stuffing my face bc i'm dumb and wired to use food as comfort. true care, like eating a lot of fruit - and the sugar in them - after a day of insolation. and i think i should listen to them every once in a while.

[venusiangguk]

BUDGETING

dont know if everyone will still want to know on budgeting lol

I don't want to sound like a bitch yk

BUT

I think the most important thing for me was learning to give yourself the freedom to enjoy things like little by little

I used to do this thing where I was uptight for a super long time and then I wpukd splurge huge amounts and for nothing.

I'm not religious either but I truly believe that setting out a little each month/week for charity is great bc it's always comes back in a form that's greater you know.

Pay rise, new job opportunities, idk good things.

Ik it sounds cringe and gross but I think it's worth it !

THE STEPS LMAO

Okay so I always but in 40%-45% like in the bag already savings I mean (this can obvs be adjusted to fit your own needs but if say keeping over 30% is key!)

And work around everything else in the steps below !!!

If I was brave enough I would send pictures of my last year budgeting plan and how I managed to save !! But I'm not 😭😭😭

the first step for me would be to list your monthly income !

Monthly is way easier to work with and easier to adjust in the long run !

Second would be list out things that have to be paid always. So fixed expenses.

I.e rent, MOT, bills, food ( for this I would highly recommend just having a monthly shopping of like say £20-25 - seems un do able but isnt !!! Frozen veggies are your best friend:)) gym membership, spotify, prime all of that.

Third which is super important for me at least would be to set out a like reward bonus for yourself.

( in cash preferably- like so once it's gone it's gone you know- like monthly rewards for yourself - sometimes you use it and sometimes you dont!! )

Fourth - ALWAYS SET AN EXTRA LIL FUND FOR THE UNEXPECTED THINGS!!! ( car crashes, dentist, medicine if your toaster breaks if your fridge breaks !! all of that lovely stuffs 😃)

So when you look at all that infront you- really just scrutinise it.

Like -

How much of that do you really need to spend?

Is there anything you can cut out on ?

This is super important at least to me bc then I see that yh shit - that is crazy I'm spending useless money )

I think that also keeping student loans separate is SUUUUPER SUUUUPER bc it just. Idk if anyone else is like this but seeing how much they expected from me to be able to learn always depressed me so I made a separate folder for that- made it pretty so it didnt look sooo bad lmao ) but I think the biggest part was getting to grips that I had all that to pay back!!!

Then like random things :

Concerts, events, holidays.

Like make sure you have them planned in advance and make separate funds for all of them.

To cater to what they need! Like for a concert- hotel and food money and merch buying and army bomb and a NEW OUTFITTTT lmao)

And yh - I think setting up a teeny amount for charity or to help ppl is always great aswell bc well idk you feel good and it does always come to find you- doesnt have to be a large amount. Maybe even a food box every month or smn cute and sweet like that !!

This is how I did it : ( kind of irrelevant and just abt silly me lmao but maybe itll help(?))

So i used to work night shifts at this horrible packing place ( it was freezing too but the pay was so good! It was £15-18 an hr ( sometimes even more )and I used to work from 11pm-4am 7 days a week like I didnt take a day off until I quit and i did it for 2 years ! That was like 50k but I had a lot of things to pay off and my parents wanted nearly all of it back off of me 😃)

This is also the NOT the job I wanted yk? Like I used to work with a bunch of stinky ass men and it sucked but I had to do it bc well my parents kicked me out bc I was non religious looool.

I was never enough and I just got kicked out yk? ( oh no not my sob story but just to put it into perspective sort of like I was fucking depressed my money was going like wildfire )

So I had to kind of take everything/every opportunity. They expected a lot back from me too in that way like alot of my learning was going to them :/)

From 5-7

I worked at a bakery ! Cooking and baking and having fun! That was the best job I had the pay wasnt all that but it was something and I needed everything I could get ! It wasnt everyday either but so and so.

I also am bilingual so that way I was able to get a job as a teacher in a daytime school teaching which I did voluntarily! For the first year !

( I had this routine for 2 years!!)

So like I was getting an okay amount from these jobs but god heavens I was spending so unnecessary.

Like a high price for a shit apartment where I would have to pay for things to get fixed to and that was really expensive.

My parents also took alot first year earnings and that's when I was like well shit I have nothing I really need to like get my shit together yk?

There was student loan (- I dont want to like envoke sympathy bc of all this I just wanna like say that my money was kind of slipping away yk I feel like I'm being annoying 😭😭😭 ) - and just a whole lot of wasting on food ( my biggest expenditure- at the time I was struggling with binge eating and bulimia so 🙃🙃 yh )

Dumb shit off amazon, and like just crap you know

Also car petrol and mot and car stuff. and bus and train fares just money can go so easily.

It was just super super tiring to have juggle all these balls at once but when I got the hang of it like doing all those steps I felt more free and more aware of myself and I was able to enjoy while still getting yk the most out of what I do.

I work as a translater/teacher now so the pay is good and like using these steps is how I got the most out of myself

Uh idk If this even makes sense anymore and I'm sorry if come off as bitch too

I don't mean to or come with a sob story

I just think its important to like realise that no matter what and who in your life demands things from you - you always have to choose to look after yourself first- how you choose too look after yourself is ultimately how you choose to look after others too ! Take good care of yourself - give yourself a clearer mind and you'll be able to see a bigger picture- outside of the one built for you !!

If your struggling with other issues - mental health too it can help bring clarity to that too ! Bc it's some sort of semblance.

Gosh I feel gross what if you have to read all of this 😭😭😭

I hope it helps you ♡♡

Budgeting is really important bc we need to buy houses!!

Need property!!!

Start our own businesses !!

Become our own bosses !

It's just super important to know your expenses you can know yourself better too !

And you can be more mature and more self aware

💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Gosh I really ate your ear off with this one

for everyone wondering about our bestie w 50k savings: this is her story !!

[buttercupsfrocks]

Hey, Tumblr, did you know that there’s an Interior Design Police as well as a Fashion Police?! Strangely neither did I until I stumbled upon a listicle entitled 75 Things No Woman Over 50 Should Own on the delusionarily titled bestlifeonline.com. There, along with the usual arbitrary selections of sartorial crimes against humanity, (tracky bottoms, skinny scarves, bolero jackets), were the following:-

Tapestries. (What, even if one designed and made them oneself, comme ça?)

Neon signs.

A piggy bank.

Novelty salt and pepper shakers, (Oops!)

A vinyl tablecloth. 

Novelty pillows. (Dang!)

A rolodex.

Indoor wicker furniture.

A lava lamp. (Who doesn’t love a lava lamp? Not this fully paid up B52s fan, I can assure you).

A dish of seashells.  (D’oh! Missed the memo again).

Framed autographs (yep, got one of those too).

Talk about random. And there’s more; much more. It appears I should have jettisoned my giant pin boards at least twenty years ago, along with my magnifying mirror, stuffed animals, coloured pens, fairy lights, frameless posters, cheap mismatched silverware, decorations based on cartoon characters, mismatched towels, striped wallpaper, tassels, and elaborate keychains. (They’d have a blue fit if they knew that one of my keychains has both a twiddly fake key and a tassel on it). In fact the entire website is little more than an endless litany of stuff you should feel ashamed about owning, wearing, and in some cases, even saying. Like I totes can’t say “totes” – me, a writer, who loves slang so much she has at least a bookshelf-and-a-half dedicated to it. I also can’t say: “OMG”,  “humblebrag”, “talk to the hand”, “fauxpology”, “sorry not sorry”, “I can’t even”, “as if”, “sus”, (a term in common UK parlance among people of all age groups for the duration of my lifetime), “ship”, (fuck you; Spuffy forever), and…wait for it…”adulting”, even though I plainly know a good deal more about doing it than the embarrassingly embarassable twelve year old ninny who probably wrote the article.

And still on the subjects of lists that give me the right royal pip, there’s thelist.com. 

“If you are familiar with Dr Martens, you are too old to wear them.” 

I’m sorry, what now?! 

“We know those Crocs and orthopaedic shoes are super comfy, but they're not doing you any favours. There's something to be said for smart, sensible footwear, but you don't have to sacrifice your style and give away your age just to save yourself a few blisters”.

Unless of course you suffer with any kind of condition that dictates you  have to wear fugly orthopaedic footwear, as numerous older people do. And blisters are the least of my problems, bub. Believe me the bunting and party hats come out when I can persuade anything approaching normal-looking footwear to accommodate my orthotics. Doc Martens are one of the precious few options available to me. I am, incidentally, feeling especially “salty” (another word my age precludes me from using), about this right now as, having discovered I can sometimes wear sandals with a moulded orthotic-like sole, these Office sandals... 

...which I genuinely love and desperately wanted to rock this summer, damn near crippled me when I tried them on. 

For all the blather about older women being able to cast off the shackles of convention and wear what we please, (or whatever the expert du jour thinks is within reason), the same unspoken assumptions that prevail in mainstream ladymedia are present in spades on these websites. Nobody reading could possibly be fat, or if they are they’re assumed to be fighting their poor beleaguered bodies unto death. The only chub ever alluded to, (albeit soto voce), is “middle aged spread”, but only the vestigial kind that can be miraculously rendered  invisible by the belting of an “unflattering” oversized garment in the middle. 

“Show off your curves by adding a cute belt to that dress or coat. It will accentuate your shape and let you still wear those comfortable items in your wardrobe without looking like you're wearing a muumuu.”

Never mind that I quite like wearing a muumuu, far from showing off my curves, belting any of my coats would make me look like the Albert Hall, which while undoubtably a Look, is not one I’m after.  

“Balance is important when it comes to crafting a stylish look. Wearing oversized clothing disrupts that delicate equilibrium and unintentionally ages you.”  

What. Ever. 

The hectoring never lets up. 

“There really is no such thing as grown up glitter when it comes to apparel, so it's best to accept that fact and avoid glittery tops, bottoms, and everything else!” 

“Dressing like the '80s or '90s can be fun for a party, but being attached to a trend from your youth can look tired and disconnected and therefore can make one age themselves.” 

“Large prints, especially on a tight clothing item like leggings, are an avoid-at-all-costs look. They are just too loud and aren't a piece that helps you look your best”

Among the ten items everyday.health.com bans me from wearing on account of my encroaching dotage are “too trendy denim”. Apparently I’m “not in my element” with it so my hard work was all for nought. Also verboten are oversized, overly decorated hobo bags, cheap unflattering underwear; (fat chance of finding cheap underwear in plus-sizes anyway though apparently I should do like the Sainted Gwyneth and wear Spanx under everything. Because she totally needs to and I so enjoy colic); and…wait for it…wait for it...  

...“loud accessories”. This includes, horror of horrors, plastic earrings, which apparently I forfeited the right to wear at 35. (Do they count vintage phenolic, bakelite, and lucite as plastic I wonder? Because if enough rich older women get dissuaded from wearing it I might actually be able to afford some instead of faking it). Instead I’m exhorted to make a... 

“Stunning Substitute: think quality and quantity. Limit yourself to one funky accessory per outfit – as long as it’s well-made. Think a leopard-print scarf, thin silver bangles or a gold clutch to dress up nice jeans and a simple top”. 

Yeah, no. And, by the way here’s a picture of Helen Mirren in quite the loudest plastic necklace I’ve ever seen which, as you can plainly see, ages her terribly. 

*snort*

Which brings me neatly to the subject of role models. Dame Helen comes up a lot. Here’s Harper’s Bazaar with some more:

“Pay close attention to the way women like Robin Wright, Julianne Moore, and Kristin Scott Thomas dress. And revel in the moment when you can justify shopping for labels like Céline, Calvin Klein, Jil Sander, and the Row — because not all sweaters are created equal. The Perfect Length (not too long, not Rihanna short), with the just-tantalizing-enough neckline, is more than worth the extra zeros”.  

Wow. So much nope to pick apart in just three sentences! 

Firstly, while I’m sure they’re all perfectly charming, I look nothing at all like any of these women, so why would I aspire to their style? Secondly, they have allllllll the extra zeros in their bank accounts while I have zero zeros. Thirdly, even if I could afford any of those labels, (a sweater from The Row costs well over a thousand quid by the way), why the love of little fluffy kittens would anyone think I want to dress like this?

I mean I know I like an oversized garment but I’m good with Monki, thanks. If that lot doesn’t say, “this was the only shit I could find to fit me”, I don’t know what does. And quite what the tiny, terminally haggard looking Olsen twins, who dreamed up the wretched label, would look like in any of this eye-bleedingly expensive folderol I shudder to think. You’d probably need to send in the fire brigade to find them in all that fabric, poor loves.

At its root shaming-as-entertainment is a tool for capitalism, both simple and complex. Feel mortified for owning something age inappropriate? Buy something new and more grown up, preferably at enormous expense. Or, if pay day’s too far off, invest in some garbage gossip rag and bitch about the state of those richer and more famous than you are. It’ll make you feel great for all of five minutes, then you can fill the emptiness that follows in its wake with some cheap fast fashion or cake. Even though cake is naughty and unclean and fast fashion is killing the environment; but hey that’s what diet books (kerching!) and gym memberships (kerching!) and ethical fashion, (with a cut-off size of 16), are for, right? 

Ironically, in yet another catalogue of grievous mistakes to make once you’re over forty, bestlifemyarse.com includes “neglecting your mental health” and “basing yourself-worth on what other people think”. But how the hell are women expected to do that under a constant barrage of opprobrium, not least since also included in the aforementioned list is “avoiding the scale”?

Tumblr, I put it to you that people are just as likely to buy stuff if they’re feeling good about themselves than if they’re feeling shite. I fucking love stuff but there has to be an alternative way to sell it that’s less damaging to our sanity and self esteem. That’s in part why fat women created their own media. But, the more it edges into the mainstream, the more it it puts the wind up advertisers and those who rely on their sponsorship. So now our message – the one about self acceptance and being able to live unrepentantly in the bodies we have – has been appropriated, de-fanged, and rebranded as “Body Positivity”, an ersatz movement intended to reassure average-sized women fretful they might be a little bit fat, with the added proviso, “as long as you’re healthy”, (i.e not fat). And while the net abounds with token examples of older lady bloggers granted the status of fashion maven, they’re all slender as reeds, and most of them are ex-models. Big fucking whoop. Meanwhile anyone of any age who is objectively fat is “promoting obesity” simply by expressing our personal style in public.

My collection of shells incidentally, includes some my mum brought me back from the Channel Islands when I was a child; a conch a friend dove for  in the Virgin Islands and presented me for my 19th birthday; several beauties that held pride of place in a late family friend’s study for decades; an abalone shell from New Zealand plucked from the beach by my Kiwi pal Di; a sand dollar from Ocean Beach in San Francisco given to me by my dear friend Jude who died of secondary breast cancer a few months before Jane did; some pebbles gathered with my friend Lesley in literal sub-zero temperatures on a completely deserted beach one not-so-flaming June up north, both of us in hysterics over the utter bleakness of it all, and a load more shells from the Pembrokeshire coast contributed by my friend Steve’s departed mum back in the 1980s. Even the bowl itself was given to me by Karen, whose parents found it in the attic of their new house and thought I might like it. It’s a veritable a lifetime in shells; a celebration of love and friendship spanning decades. In short it has meaning, which is a damned sight more than you can say for any of these wretched lists.

Rise above the buzzkill, Tumblr.

[purplesurveys]

482

How many...

How many times have you skipped class? Too many. I only started doing it in college but since then I’ve done it a lot. The class I skipped the most would probably be chemistry or psychology lmao. How many times have you kissed the last person you kissed? I’ve been with her for technically five years so that number’s going to be huge. How many years have you known your second closest friend? I’ve been familiar with her for 17 years, but I’ve been friends with her for only seven. How many alarm clocks are in the house? Technically, four. All our phones have alarms but we don’t have actual alarm clocks. How many people have you argued with? Your questions ask stuff that are very difficult to count lmao. I can be a bit of a war freak so I’m guessing the number’s also risen to be a lot.

How many times have you watched your favortie movie? Probably in the 80s-100s range. There was a time I watched Two for the Road every day for several months, and I still watch it several times a year. How many people do you live with? I live with my family. With my dad working abroad, sometimes I’ll live with four people but most times I live with three. How many pairs of boots do you own? None. It’s too hot to wear boots. How many people have told you they're in love with you? Just one. How many times have you cried over the opposite sex? Maybe twice, and not because of romantic reasons. The first was because my grandfather died; the second time was when my dad dropped the bomb on me that he wouldn’t be able to watch my high school graduation. How many people have been in your house at one time? .......Huh? How many stuffed animals are in your room? None. I was never a fan. How many cellphones have you went through? Eight. How many pets do you have? I have a dog, but I’ve had several other pets in the past.

What would you do if...

What would you do if you could never listen to music again? I think I’ll be alright for the most part since I don’t rely on music as much as others do, but I’ll definitely grow restless at some point, especially if I have to drive in silence. What would you do if your current bf/gf cheated on you? I’d imagine wanting a few days or weeks to myself to think about what was just done to me and using that time to take care of myself and see my other friends. I don’t actually know what to do following that; I just never entertain that thought so I never think of it lmao. What would you do if you could never wear jeans again? Be so fucking stoked. I hate jeans. What would you do if your dad became president? Teach him about key political and social issues...and maybe be glad that he doesn’t have to work abroad now. What would you do if you lost your most important possesion? That would be my dog. I would be broken; I’ve never lost a dog before. What would you do if your house burned down? Grab my dog, put my phone and laptop in a bag, and jump off my room’s window. What would you do if your best friend didn't want to be friends anymore? I’d be really confused and hurt. I would probably talk to Hans to get to the bottom of it. What would you do if you had to move to a different state/province? Asked to be left behind. I’m not gonna have my relationship that I’ve worked so hard on adjust to my family’s (very) delayed migration-ish plans if this happens.   What would you do if someone shaved your head? Hope I get paid for it, lmao. What would you do if Jesus came to your front door? I work with a Jesus. I’d invite him in, get him a light snack, and ask him why he visited. I don’t recognize any other Jesuses. What would you do if your house was robbed? Scream at the top of my lungs. What would you do if your sister/brother got married? Well first I’d be envious that they went first, but I’d otherwise be excited that I get to go to a party hahaha What would you do if dogs became extinct? Hate humanity forever. What would you do if the last person you kissed proposed to you? Think she’s insane, and I’ll have to turn it down. I’m sure she doesn’t want it this early too.

Have you ever...

Have you ever broke a body part? I’ve sprained an ankle, but other than that no. Have you ever broke someone else's body part? Oh gosh that’s terrible. I don’t think so. Have you ever changed for a guy/girl? Only if I knew it was for my betterment to change. Tried to jump on a celebrity but been stopped by the security guards? Uh no, but a little close. I was exiting a mall at the same time Greyson Chance walked in, and my system just shut down and did the first thing it thought of: get my phone out and start taking photos. He was like, 2 feet away at this point so his bodyguards kinda told me to get out of the way, which I deserved. To this day I still don’t understand why I did something as stupidly fangirly as that, and I can’t even name one of his songs. Have you ever complained about the last person you spoke to? Never. Kate’s my homie. Have you ever cried on your mom's shoulder? No. We’re not close like that, and it’s more than likely that she’d just tell me to pray if I ever decide to confide in her. Have you ever dialed 911 as a prank? I haven’t. Have you ever won a talent show? No. I’ve won a quiz bee though, haha. Have you ever spilled a drink on a expensive electronic item and ruined it? No. I didn’t spill a drink, but I did let my old iPhone 5S be soaked when I was walking under the rain once without an umbrella. I just kinda thought my phone would be durable enough to resist the raindrops, but that was the start of the end for it.   Have you ever fainted when someone told you shocking news? No. I’ve only fainted from hunger + heat. Have you ever swooned over the Jonas Brothers? Yes, when I was 10. Have you ever bought a piece of makeup that cost over $100? No and I don’t think I would ever do that. Have you ever been cheated on by someone who claimed to love you? I’ve never been cheated on. Have you ever got food free because the waiter thought you were hot? No.

Do you...

Do you have someone who will always be there for you? I’d like to think so. My best friends are my ride or dies. My Daydrinkers group (that’s what we call ourselves because we used to go to this local bar in the early afternoon) are also trustworthy. Do you have a membership at a gym? Nah, I’m too lazy to go to the gym. Do you act dumb to get guys/girls to like you? No...does that still even work these days? Do you know anyone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day? No. And if I did I would stay away from them. Do you follow the rules? Most of the time. I don’t enjoy getting reprimanded :/ Do you have a friend who secretly really annoys you? No. I wouldn’t count them as a friend if they did annoy me. Do you always have Pepsi at your house? Nope. Only our parents drink softdrinks and they’re not always at home, so we seldom have soda around the house. Do you flirt with anything that moves? ??? No ??? Do you watch SpongeBob? Still do, yep. I just watched it yesterday. The comedy of the older episodes is timeless. Do you count sheep when you can't sleep? No. I tried to do that as a kid since it’s what I saw in cartoons and in a Mr. Bean episode but it never worked. Do you sweat easily? No. I sweat slower than most people. Do you like pineapple? I hate it. Do you refuse to wear something that's out of style? Typically, yes. Do you type 'u' or 'you'? Depends. I’ll type depending on who I’m talking to and my mood.

What is...

What is your best friend's name?Gabie. Or Angela. I have two best friends.What is your first girlfriend/boyfriend's name?Gabie.What is your neighbour's name?I never talk to the neighbors and have no idea who any of them are.What is your least favorite swear word?Cunt.What is the best and most romantic way to propose to someone?I don’t think there’s a singular best way to propose. That differs for everyone.What is something that always makes you laugh?FRIENDSWhat is the name of your hometown?Sampaloc, Manila.What is the most gentle way to turn someone down?I guess just be straightforward about it? I wouldn’t like to be put under mind games or mixed signals if I was the one being turned down.What is the ugliest girl name?I don’t think there’s an ugly girl name, just ones I’m not fond of. I don’t really like old-fashioned ones like Barbara, Linda, and Gertrude.What is the most boring thing to do?Waiting.What is the funnest kind of question to answer?If you’re talking about surveys, questions about my day or my experiences are always nice to answer.What is the most useless thing you know?I wouldn’t call it useless but I can recognize flags and the capital cities of a number of countries. I collected Kids’ Almanacs every year growing up and they always had a section on geography so that’s why I got to memorize those trivia.What is your favorite pair of pants?My white Mango ones, because they’re super stylish and can be casual or smart casual depending on what I pair it with.What is the best flavour of ice cream?Cookies and cream is my favorite flavor.

[wobblyfet]

The Definitive Ranking of Villainous Pokémon Teams

With USUM just coming out and Team Rainbow Rocket being a thing, I thought I’d dig up a ranking I started a while ago!

7. Team Flare

Look, those outfits are snazzy. There’s no denying that. But… who the hell are these people? What’s their goal as a team of villains?

I mean, Lysandre talks about creating a more beautiful world because he thinks humanity is dumb. The qualifiers for what a more beautiful world exactly are is never made particularly clear, just that this involves the purging of everyone not in Team Flare. He gets a bit of backstory about having a genuine savior complex turned into radical disillusionment, but it doesn’t really cover how murky his goals are here. Like, what exactly is he objecting to about the ugliness of the world? Does he want to wipe out much of the world’s ecosystem with the laser beam of doom in their headquarters or just people? How does that work? And what is Team Flare?

I’m not sure at all what the organization of the rest of this team is. The grunt dialogue suggests getting in is quite expensive, and some of them seem pretty caught up in this whole beautiful world business. There’s suggestion Flare membership is kind of an issue of status. Much of both Lysandre’s and general dialogue about it do sort of resemble the dialogue from real world radical organizations, but the problem here is that radical ideologies tend to have a deeper surface rationale than what Team Flare’s deal is. They care about class elitism while also wanting to destroy what makes the world economy, and I don’t really know why these people would be more invested in genocide than, say, aggressively running a fashion line or a country club.

The problem for me probably boils down to how little depth this team is given. The grunts are just sort of there, admins are indistinguishable, and nobody has really any characterization except Lysandre and Malva, and even that’s pretty murky. Because of that, they fall flat as antagonists.

One thing I did like about them as villains: how Lysandre uses the Holo-Caster to spread his message. Having him pop up between videochatting your friends to monologue about purity and cleansing was genuinely disquieting. In this day and age, abruptly revealing that this world’s equivalent of a smartphone is actually a vehicle for ideological evil is intimidating and relevant.

Though, I gotta say, a Pokémon game is really not the place for Holocaust puns. Boo on that.

 6. Team Aqua

These guys are the only ones to seriously rival Team Flare’s stupidity. To begin with, looking at the original games, the whole hook of “More water! Yay environments for Water Pokémon!” is really bizarre in the context of a villainous team on Hoenn. Hoenn is a goddamn island, and at that one that is already thoroughly integrated with the sea. Why there would be enough radical water lovers in this area to warrant any a whole group obsessed with expansionism is kind of beyond me.

I do like that how the remakes broadened both Aqua and Magma’s motives, but… remixed Team Aqua is still incredibly dumb. They’re a radical group in defense of wronged Pokémon, which is cool, but the answer is to destroy the world and restore it to another primordial state? What? I’m no expert in environmental science but I’m pretty sure something like that would, like, definitely wipe out most Pokémon, including the ones that live in the sea. A questionable goal for a group purportedly all about saving wronged Pokémon.

And what’s the long-term plan here for the rest of the group? Is this destruction of the world like a death pact for the members or what?

Archie is entertaining, but let’s be real, he’s also pretty lame. Going so far as to recruit a potentially suicidal eco-terrorist cult only to chicken out when a big whale starts to make it rain is kind of pathetic.

Things that win Team Aqua villain points: fleshed out and entertaining characters in Archie, Shelly, and Matt. Also, pirates are cool.

 5. Team Galactic

I feel like Team Galactic started the trend in Pokémon games of there being apocalyptic stakes with the villains. A good Pokémon villainous team doesn’t really need to be world-destroying to work well as bad guys, as I’ll elaborate on below. That said, I would still put a big gap between Galactic and the bottom two teams, and I do generally like these guys.

Cyrus wants to create a new universe without pesky things like spirit or feelings. This makes enough sense for a villainous team in the context of Sinnoh, where a person can capture deities of space and time in Pokéballs. And I also quite like how the game contextualizes Cyrus as a villain of emotional abuse in his childhood- not to say this excuses him, but it adds a nice bit of depth.

Like the last two villainous teams, I have some questions about how exactly Cyrus’s goals translate to an ideology for an entire team of mooks, or, more importantly, how such a wet blanket of a leader convinced a legion of followers to run around Sinnoh in those embarrassing spacesuits. It’s never made super clear what the rest of Team Galactic is hoping to get out of the deal, but unlike Team Flare or Team Aqua, it’s easier to headcanon a large group of people being enticed by holding positions of power in a new world where, without any spirit, people and Pokémon might easily function as slaves.

Another thing I like: Cyrus’s eventual fate in the distortion world. No redemption, no dramatic downfall scene, just him eerily ranting about his ambitions as he wanders off into the netherworld. It’s creepy and sad, and fitting ending to his saga.

Overall, I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other about Team Galactic. It’s satisfactorily developed but comparatively not as interesting as other bad guys in this franchise.

Those team spacesuits, though. There’s no explanation for that.

 4. Team Magma

Look, this team suffers from a lot of the issues that their counterparts do. Namely, the way Maxie and his team just kind of fuck off very quickly after awakening Groudon. It’s sort of ridiculous to go so far to advance your villainous team only to give up so quickly. But, other than that, Team Magma is so much better.

To be fair, in the original Gen III games, their motives are pretty thin. However, for the same reasons Team Aqua doesn’t make much sense, Team Magma does. Hoenn is a tropical island in the middle of the sea that demands travelling through the sea and jungle to get anywhere. Hell, I spend enough time facing Wingulls and Tentacools on water routes and I’m ready to sign up. Or take a Team Magma pamphlet, at least.

I kid, but that’s mostly why I like Magma’s expanded motives in the remakes so much. In a world that’s obsessed with accommodating Pokémon and keeping balance with the environment, a reactionary group obsessed with human expansionism makes for realistic bad guys. And expanding land for development at the cost of the ecosystem is exactly what a group like that in Hoenn would focus on. To be clear, none of this is to say that Team Magma is condonable, or that Pokémon’s pro-environmentalist message is somehow a bad thing- it’s just that in this context, Team Magma would be one of the most plausible villainous organizations to come up.

I also quite like Team Magma’s characters. Maxie is a cool customer and exactly the type of smug asshole you’d expect to present an environmentally-unfriendly development plan at the corporate meeting, and Tabitha and Courtney are quite amusing. Updated Courtney in particular is weirdly charming, and I kind of hope we see more of her. And even though I just whined about how easily Maxie turns around and changes his mind, I don’t really think a redemptive ending for them is necessarily a bad thing. Isn’t an ending like that what most of us are trying to get from the Maxies of the real world driving our planet to ruin?

Anyways, if Magma started looking into building eco-friendly bridges across those damn water routes, I’d totally take a pamphlet. Just saying.

 3. Team Rocket/Neo Team Rocket

Team Rocket! The OG villainous team! And easily still the most iconic, over twenty years later now. They invented the Pokémon villainous team, and they surely deserve some props for that. That’s the whole reason Giovanni’s coming back as the leader of the super-villains, right? (I have some qualms about this, but more on that later)

Nostalgic factors aside, I think Team Rocket works quite well as an antagonistic force. I just praised Team Magma for being possibly the most realistic villainous team in the Pokémon world, but I really think that dubious honor should go to Rocket. These guys don’t want to end the world or build a new universe or anything like that; they see simple profit in Pokémon and are totally willing to go after that, whatever the cost. And with that, they’re able to function on a large scale and do terrible things.

Even without threatening the Pokémon world with apocalyptic aims, for my money they’re still demonstrably scarier than any other evil team in the series. Yes, Team Rocket will actually murder that Cubone’s mother, and they will mutilate those Slowpokes for profit, and they will mess up Magikarps with freaky radio wave experiments. For that reason, Rocket plots are more memorable than like anything else in the series.

And, like any evil organization worth its butter, they won’t fucking die. They’ll be reorganizing and spreading their tendrils to the underbelly of Johto and the Sevii Islands and now Alola. It’s totally plausible to me that a mafia with an eye for exploitative profit would have more lasting power than any of those other cults and become the villains of the Pokémon world.

They’re only at #3, though, and that’s because of one thing: Giovanni makes very little sense as a big bad boss.

I mean, he’s the shadowy kingpin of Kanto’s criminal underworld, and a gym leader? Isn’t a gym leader’s entire job to be a public official/stepping stone for up and coming trainers in the league? I’ve seen the meme of the one dude in Viridian City musing on the mystery of the gym leader while standing right next a sign that says “GYM LEADER: GIOVANNI”, but really, that’s actually, that’s a really strange problem for the team.

Because really, why would Giovanni think it’s a good idea to run a criminal syndicate from inside an establishment that literally asks for kids to come in and beat him, and then when it happens, be all like “Welp, that’s it for my criminal empire. Time to fuck off to the mountains.” It’s easily the most inexplicable downfall in the series.

I’m not sure why Neo Team Rocket in Johto wanted this guy back so desperately. And I know he’s leading Team Rainbow Rocket because he’s the most iconic legacy villain and all, but let’s be real, all those leaders probably could’ve picked someone more competent to be the evil superboss.

 2. Team Plasma/Neo Team Plasma

If I were in the Pokémon world and didn’t have the luxury of a video game screen’s distance, I would probably have some serious moral qualms about the whole catching, training, and battling system. I mean, like, PETA’s response to the Pokémon franchise is over the top and unintentionally funny, but the ethics of how you train Pokémon the only way the games let you is a fair thing to consider. Would the Pokémon world be better off without gyms and Pokéballs, really?

That’s the main reason I like Team Plasma. Their premise is more ideologically compelling than any of the other teams. Because, really, in the first four generations there’s a lot talked up about bonding between Pokémon and trainers and how the two built up the world through cooperation, but there’s really not much to indicate that this exchange is demonstrably preferable to Pokémon whose best interests might not, you know, involve forcible abductions and battling until passing out. Having a villainous team like Team Plasma let the franchise address this question in a thoughtful way, and I dig it.

It also let the Team Plasma grunts be some of the most gloriously awful hypocrites in the franchise. I still remember how absolutely infuriating it was to have all these twerps show up and obstruct me with Pokémon battles while getting all self-righteous about how battling this way was wrong, and how much I hated them all even though they had a valid point. I dig that too. A mix like that can be an ideal recipe for a good antagonist.

What really sells me on Team Plasma, though, is the family drama backing it all. N is great every time he shows up, with all his cryptic dialogue and struggles to do right by the creatures he loves. Pokémon never really had an anti-villain before and he was perfect for games as much about moral ambiguity and balance as Black and White were. Having someone intimately connected to Pokémon and their needs (I remember the chills I got when you first go in his room and see all the scratched-up toys) makes him ideal to communicate the message that good trainer-Pokémon relationships are a healthy reciprocal exchange where a trainer ideally pays attention to the needs of their Pokémon. It’s a nice message.

N adding moral ambiguity to the game is great, but the drop of Ghetsis as the true mastermind is a good one too. The extent of Ghetsis’s manipulation of N was damn chilling, and silly robe or not, adding the personal touch cements him as one of the most solidly awful main bad guys in the series. Child abuse is sort of a running theme in this franchise, and I oddly appreciate much of the way it’s featured- I mean, I don’t like it, but it’s a literary appreciation. In the case of Black and White, framing an ethical struggle of how to do right by your Pokémon against someone brutally exploiting that struggle for the sake of a power grab was effective.

(as an aside, I didn’t much care for the reveal that N wasn’t Ghetsis’s biological son. I feel like the game sort of treated the reveal as a “Guess what? Ghetsis wasn’t your legitimate father all along!” which isn’t great, since whether or not a child has blood relationship to their caretaker doesn’t actually have any bearing on said caretaker’s impact and moral responsibility as a guardian, and pretending otherwise reinforces a harmful message that adoptive parents aren’t somehow “real” parents. Not super important but it’s just a little thing that bothers me)

Team Plasma’s second appearance is honestly less memorable to me than the first, but I dig the whole team evolution and split between Ghetsis’s power grabby followers and N’s good-hearted followers. It gives the saga of Team Plasma a legacy development we’ve really only seen otherwise with Neo Team Rocket in Johto, albeit with a more epic bent.

The big unanswered questions- how the hell did Team Plasma end up a weird religious monarchy? (And who the hell are Anthea and Concordia?) I feel like demanding more practical details of the running of all these evil organizations than a game for children is realistically going to give us is a running theme in this ranking, but I care about these things, dammit.

 1. Team Skull/Aether Foundation

When I first made this ranking about a year ago, I gave first place to the Sun and Moon antagonists then too, but I wondered if it was recency bias speaking. But after a year of being less wrapped up in Gen VII than I was then, I can look back and say that these guys are the definitive #1 villainous Pokémon team. I make this announcement seriously and with perfect objectivity on the matter. No questioning or dissenting opinions will be tolerated in this house, silly nit.

I kid, of course. This is just an opinion-based list I wrote for my own amusement. But that said, I do think the antagonists this game gave us are easily a cut above everyone else on this list, just with what speaks to me.

Team Skull, to begin with, is everything. Everything from their designs to their dialogue to the way Alola treats them like a giant joke really feels like these guys were crafted with a lot of affection for them. They’re perfect for the Gen VII games because, like much else, it’s goofy and self-aware and just plain fun. I’ve seen footage of the grunt reacting in horror over you getting to say you don’t remember who they are several times now and it’s still hilarious.

But also like much of Gen VII in general, it swings back around with a surprising amount of depth. The more time you spend talking with grunts, you get more and more of the sense of a lost and displaced group of people turning with their comrades on a society that doesn’t have a place for them. A lot of this is framed around the failure in the Island Challenge, but really, it’s not hard to read more into all the possible reasons the Skull kids could have turned to crime than that, right? (and even if you just leave it at that, I do sort of wonder sometimes about how much value the Pokémon world puts on someone’s strength as a trainer. It seems like it might be a somewhat limiting way to run things, to say the least, but that’s a discussion for another day)

Anyways, Team Skull resonates with me for the same reasons that Magma and Rocket do- it’s a not inaccurate depiction of what kind of evil organizations would appear in a world that resembles our own. What many of the Skullsters describe reflects real life gang psychology remarkably well. The world doesn’t want you, because the normal standards (the Island Challenge) are too high, perhaps on top of not having food or money or being shut out socially for any number of bullshit reasons. But the gang has your back, and it’s gonna provide AND stand with you against the world. Hence the perpetuation of crime culture even when “better” life choices are there, and the emphasis on belonging and group loyalty. The way the story frames Team Skull along those lines gives you another totally plausible villainous group, but unlike Rocket or Magma, it does it in a way that frequently plays on your empathy.

Don’t get me wrong here, I definitely do not mean to paint Team Skull as a bunch of poor lil’ woobies who turned to crime because they had no agency to be better people. They’re still the villains here, after all. We see plenty in game of all the ways they’re earnestly terrible to Alolans, from generally being obnoxious punkasses who get in your way to vandalizing to stealing children’s pets to taking over Po Town. As funny as it is, I’m not totally sure why the denizens of Alola are as unconcerned with Team Skull as they are; taking over an entire goddamn town is nothing to sneeze at.

It’s just… surprisingly nuanced, is all. Team Skull can be a bunch of weenies, genuinely threatening, and have a kind of a tragic reality underneath it all at the same time. Walking through the barricaded ruins of Po Town, across all the belligerent patrollers or members just sitting in the rain, is eerie for more reasons than one.

Boss Guzma encapsulates all of it pretty well. He’ll gloriously ham things up every time he’s on screen, and he’ll bully anyone in his way, but the game also gives him some backstory and, eventually, room to express his standards and prove that he’s really not beyond redemption here. Because getting caught up in Lusamine’s sinister plots really always came down to wanting personal validation and what’s best for his Skull kids, more than a core desire to watch the world burn from Ultra Space. (I might just be a sucker for the Even Evil Has Standards trope, but even so)

I also love the moment where Plumeria decides to help you. It’s not a moment of redemption in the sense that she’s seen the light and decided to stop being a punk. Her MO doesn’t ever change at all; she fights you because she wants to protect her kids, and she comes to your side because she wants to protect her kids.

I love everything about Team Skull, but they’re only half the equation. Sun and Moon also gave us the Aether Foundation. Hoo boy.

Lusamine is my favorite main antagonist in the series. For my money, she’s easily the scariest. And not just because she fucking froze her favorite Pokémon in ice to admire them at her leisure forever. I mean holy fuck what was that and was anyone expecting a scene that horrifying in a game like this. But anyways… (shudders)

Lusamine is intimidating first because of the way she wraps herself in a veneer of civility and benevolence. I mean, it’s true that she gives off creepy vibes from the introduction, just like Lysandre, but the difference lies in just how much the Aether Foundation embodies the qualities of Pokémon Good Guys we know so well at this point. They want to protect the ecosystem and, for Lusamine, it comes from a place of love. But it takes a while to figure out just how messed up that understanding of love is.

Lusamine’s love bubble is about what she can control, and when what she loves deviates from her expectations, she reacts with physical and emotional violence. Because underneath it all, she’s an astonishingly selfish person who puts her loved ones in danger by association. She treats her love for vulnerable parties as a tactic to mold them into whatever she wants, even to horrifying ends (permafreezing Pokémon who probably loved and trusted their trainer), and treats love as a commodity that can be withheld as a punishment and an excuse for doing whatever she wants in retribution. She can take advantage of Team Skull, and more horrifically, Nebby and her children, and eventually end up at critical self-indulgence in Ultra Space because all the world has failed to meet her impossible standards for love and therefore deserves to be razed by her deadly interdimensional pet jellyfish.

I mentioned in the last entry how child abuse is something of a running theme in the Pokémon franchise, and Lusamine brings the most intimate and thoughtful depiction of it yet. It winds up with Gladion lost and caught up with criminals he doesn’t even like associating with and turns cold. Lillie ends up working very hard, by way of new positive social bonds, to overcome the complexes association with her mother forced into her. In the end, both get to symbolically save themselves and stand up to Lusamine’s abuse. It touched me in a place I would have never expected a series like Pokémon to reach.

Lusamine is the fucking worst, but… I appreciated how the games even gave her backstory and space for empathy, too. The lady had a hard deal herself, and after losing your partner that way, it’s understandable that someone would end up obsessed with control and selective about love. She’s still terrible, mind you, but it’s worth seeing where something like that is coming from. And also, I really appreciated that even when her kids are breaking free and standing up, how they still sort of love each other. I loved Lillie’s monologue on Exeggutor Island about how her mother wasn’t all bad all the time, and they have good memories. It’s a realistic outcome for abuse victims to think that way, really. Lusamine’s concept of love is horrifying and unconstructive, and the fact Lillie loves her isn’t going to stop her from resisting her mother’s mind games, and the mere existence of familial love between them isn’t going to come close to fixing just how much in the wrong Lusamine is, but it’s there. It’s more unexpected thoughtfulness it would have been easy not to include, and I’m very glad it’s there.

I also love how Lusamine, like N, addresses in a meta sense some of the moral quandaries the format of Pokémon lends itself to. Because yeah, realistically, the average player is going to be kind of similar to Lusamine- we see Pokémon as ideally under our control and as decorative collectibles to be frozen in the game file indefinitely when we don’t need them anymore. And just like Lusamine, our reaction to seeing a brand new interdimensional jellyfish of doom (or the like) is going to be “I’ve got to get that.” The value of an antagonist like Lusamine is to show how this way of playing Pokémon absolutely cannot be extended to your living, real life relationships.

If I have one criticism of the Skull/Aether coalition as bad guys, it’s probably that the rest of the Aether Foundation is rather opaque. One minute they’ll be serving the wholesome environmentalist mission, and the next they’ll be attacking you with evil grins under Lusamine’s orders. Exactly how much the members knew about and were chill with Lusamine’s secret agendas or how this was dealt with after her downfall was never something that was really addressed.

(Also, screw Wicke. That woman was clearly aware of both how Lusamine was abusing her kids and the shady things the foundation was up to, and why it was wrong, but she still supported it all by working as an Aether executive. I would have hoped you’d get to kick her oily butt like you do with Faba to teach her a lesson about passive complacency in evil activities, or at least see her get a verbal slap on the wrist, but apparently not)

Overall, though, I have a hard time nitpicking when the good parts are so thoughtful and meaningful to me. It’s with this that I’m proud to declare these the top baddies! Woo!

Anyways, that’s it for the definitive ranking! I had fun with this. Will Rainbow Rocket be more or less the sum of its parts? I can’t wait to find out!

[nikki-writes-stuff]

This Weekend

Jack sat at the hotel bar Friday evening, playing out the upcoming days in his mind while he considered the variety on display before him. He just arrived at the Holtsville Residence Inn by Marriott not even half an hour ago, after having left his office at Ranger Capital, LLC in Queens when the sun was still up. Lane closures due to motor vehicle collisions and the legend-inspiring Rush Hour traffic on the I-495 expressway had slowed his already-arduous commute to a crawl; he barely even unpacked his bags before casting off his tie over the nearest chair and heading to the bar to try and relax. His mirrored aviator sunglasses still sat in his sport jacket’s front pocket.

He would have to sneak in whatever relaxation he could get over the weekend before he returned to his luxury rental in Commack sixteen miles west, which he could just barely afford after bills, groceries, and his gym memberships were paid for. He once considered downsizing to a studio, but enjoyed the bragging rights he as a young professional was granted by living where he did. It came with the lifestyle, he told his peers. As division supervisor for a high-profile firm like Ranger, he had the makings of the dream setup—the mid-size sedan and cozy living space with enough leftover income to go out every so often, or really splurge and buy himself a very nice suit once a month. He of course omitted the long hours, uninteresting work, and weekend conferences with the heads of the parent company—Nassau Holdings—like the one tomorrow that he just checked in for today.

And of course there was the fact that he was still, painfully, single. Through it all, Jack couldn’t help but dwell on how much this weekend was going to suck.

Her voice pulled him away from his thoughts. “Hey there, traveler,” she said to him. “Can I buy you one?”

He instantly recognized her voice. Anne, his immediate superior only a few years his senior, took a seat next to him. She was much more relaxed than he was, and dressed in something that was much less than appropriate for the workplace. “Sure,” he said. “As long as Chuck is paying.”

At this they shared a chuckle. “Please,” she said, “you think he’d be that charitable? We were lucky the rooms didn’t come out of our checks.”

“At least the bar is well-appointed…” He got the bartender’s attention. “Maker’s Mark, please. Neat.”

Anne nodded. “That sounds great, I’ll have one too.”

That hadn’t surprised him. In the eight months he’d worked directly under her, he’d learned she could drink any of his friends under the table.

Of course, opportunities to socialize outside of the office were rare, and usually came in the form of Happy Hour gatherings at the watering hole nearest to the office to commemorate someone’s retirement. They could never really let loose together in front of their colleagues for fear of being judged—or worse, separated—by Chuck. But they’d found their fun in other ways.

Familiarity and commiseration paved the road for openness to bloom between them. Jack once boldly said if they were ever sent to a regional conference together they could save a few bucks by sharing a room. At the time Anne replied, much to his surprise, that the room service they ordered together would end up being more expensive. They flirted playfully like this for months, but he always let her lead it. He would allow her to set the tone and make sure he wasn’t overstepping his boundaries.

“Shame about that room service, huh?” Anne said raising her glass and grinning.

“Damn shame.” Jack brought his glass to hers and they shared their first drink.

Three rounds and ninety minutes later their conversation toured through topics from their previous jobs to the universe and their place in it, but inevitably returned to the two of them as it always seemed to.

“So, you got anything planned after this?” Anne asked. “Surely you’ve got more going on in your life than work.”

“I’m afraid not,” Jack said. “The pay isn’t enough to allow for much of that, and this month’s get-out-and-have-fun budget got blown last week… I’d have thanked Chuck for that in person if he’d come out here tonight like we did.”

“Oh, fuck you, Jack,” she said in jest, hitting his arm playfully as she did. “You’re no fun..!”

He resisted the urge to respond to her fuck-you remark with where and when. “Now, I never said that– just that loose funds are tight right now, and that the job ruined another perfectly good weekend.” 

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow you to let work ruin this weekend—I’m taking you out somewhere. You live nearby, right? What’s there to do around here?”

“Well,” Jack confessed, “the night life out here is pretty dismal. I imagine this is as good as it gets around these parts.” He gestured the two of them and their now-empty glasses.

“Huh,” Anne added, running her finger along the rim of her glass. “Shame… How ever will we kill time during this terrible work-related getaway?”

Jack could swear he heard her suggest that they make good on the share-a-room offer he made all those months ago. “Well, we’ve got rooms here, right?” he said, only half-serious.

“Yes, we do… So,” she said, slipping a few $20 bills under her glass for the bartender as she stood up. “Mine or yours?”

Anne took his hands in hers as she led him through the doorway and toward his bed. He let his sport jacket roll off his shoulders—no sooner had it hit the floor than he pulled her in for a sensuous kiss. He was perfectly content to savor this slice of perfection, letting his hands run on their own up her sides and back while her arms found themselves wrapped around the base of his neck, resting atop his shoulders as she caressed the back of his head. Their lips held their embrace for several-second intervals, briefly breaking contact between kisses to let a giggle free, or allow their tongues to get familiar with each other.

Gently, he tugged on the zipper running up the back of her dress and slowly lowered it all the way to the bottom, down the small of Anne’s back to just above her rear as he kissed her still. In response, she moved to undo his shirt one button at a time, un-tucking it from his slacks and taking time to appreciate his musculature as her fingertips ghosted up his stomach and chest, finding their way around to his back. He reached up to her shoulder straps, slipping them over her shoulders and taking the time to let his hands explore her feminine curves as he helped gravity do what it did best.

Anne broke away from him, flashing him a coquettish grin as she backed away closer to the bed and snaked out of her dress entirely. Jack took in the sight—her divine figure clad in a matching set of dark lace lingerie—and wondered to himself how the hell he got so lucky. She shot him another sensual smirk as she turned slowly and allowed her hips to sway, knowing full well he’d be admiring the way her derrière moved as she did. Anne took a seat at the bed’s far end and kicked off her stilettos. She seemed to glide backward toward the headboard as she crossed her legs and beckoned Jack libidinously.

Anne bit her lip as she watched Jack roll out of his shirt and reach down to undo his belt, flinging them to opposite ends of the room as his slacks fell to the floor. An Adonis in his own right, Jack smirked as he watched Anne’s eyes move up and down all six feet of him, pausing at the growing bulge in his boxer-briefs. He strode up to join her in bed, fitting perfectly between her legs as she uncrossed them for him. They took a moment to feel each other’s warmth through the thin layers of fabric separating them. Jack’s eyes met Anne’s, holding the gaze for a solid three seconds before she reached up to pull him in for more hungry kisses.

Jack was not in any hurry, like most men his age were. He wanted to take his time and make sure Anne was enjoying this just as much as he was, if not more. He moved his kisses from her lips to her jaw, and down to the side of her neck. She let him know she liked what he was doing—she tilted her head back a little to expose more of herself to him and pull him closer to her, encouraging him to indulge in her as her breathing slowly, but noticeably fluttered and accelerated.

His hand moved slowly up along the inside of Anne’s thigh, stopping where he knew she was most sensitive and teasing her through the fabric. It didn’t take long for her to move the fabric aside and coax him further. He took her invitation, sliding his fingers into her wetness and curling them upward into a hook. At this Anne’s chest and shoulders heaved, her eyes shut tight and mouth hung agape. Jack curled and straightened his wrist in a slow, rhythmic pattern, moving Anne’s body almost all on its own. “Yes..!” she breathed into him.

He steadily moved his hand quicker, and listened as Anne’s breathing accelerated further to match the pace of his movements. A quiet moan escaping every few breaths let him know he was hitting all the right notes perfectly. And if he needed further confirmation…

Jack froze as he felt her fingers move up around his waistband and begin to pull down on his shorts. Anne explained, as she caught her breath, “You know I’ve never been selfish.” She continued to work on his waistband while he reached over to the bedside dresser with his free hand. Jack rifled through the top drawer feeling around for the condom box stored there.

Anne placed her hand on his wrist. She leaned up and gently bit his earlobe. “No need for those, handsome,” she purred, the warmth of her breath tickling his ear. She shepherded his hand back to her and reclaimed his lips with hers, moving aside the fabric that once separated them and guiding Jack into her.

Their foreheads met as their hips rolled in concert together, their breathing intensifying as the temperature rose. Jack’s hands, now free, found their way to Anne’s and their fingers interlaced. This was something they both wanted but neither had the courage to make anything happen before now. And not that they were living it, it was better than anything Jack could have imagined.

Anne lifted her hips off the bed and rolled Jack onto his back, quickly claiming her spot on top as she straddled him and tossed her bra aside. Immediately they got back into their rhythm, hips moving in unison and eliciting more than a few quiet moans from both of them.

“I’m close,” she whispered between gasps. “I’m really close.”

“Anne…!”

“I want it Jack..!”

“Anne, I’m—!”

“I want it all..!”

“Anne—!”

The rush. Time stood still during their ultimate moment together. She tightened around him and arched her back as he released into her in a shared cloud of passion and emotion that could be recorded in history as absolutely unforgettable. When the seconds began to pass again, Anne collapsed into bed beside Jack, looking lovingly into his eyes before burying her face into the side of his neck. Glowing as she seemed to, she was never more beautiful to Jack than she was in that moment. He briefly considered the possibility that it was her who bedded him, not the other way around as he previously thought. His grin widened as he realized he actually preferred to think of it that way.

They repeated their actions once more before drifting off to sleep that night.

Anne opened her eyes the Saturday morning to a sweating glass of cold water resting atop the night table on her side of the bed. She smirked to herself as she rolled over and sat up, finding Jack straightening his tie in the mirror.

“Didn’t take you for the love ‘em and leave ‘em type,” she said in jest.

Jack grinned as he turned around to acknowledge her. “Yeah,” he said carrying the joke. “I had hoped to be gone before you woke up.”

“Fuck you, Jack,” she laughed.

Now he was free to respond however he liked. “Maybe after the conference.” He strode up beside the bed and leaned over her. “I don’t want to be late for the pitch this morning.”

She grabbed hold of his tie and pulled him in for a deep kiss. “Make me proud out there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jack left to meet out-of-state investors for breakfast and pitch Ranger’s business model to them. He made it back to the Residence Inn right in time for the regional conference that afternoon, taking a seat between Chuck and Anne. When the time came for his input, he was thrilled to report to the Nassau representatives that his pitch went beautifully, and that they would have all the funding and more needed for the year’s expansion.

He and Anne checked out shortly after the conference was over. They returned to Jack’s apartment where they spent the rest of the day ordering takeout and watching old movies. Anne spent the night with him again.

A cozy breakfast in Huntington village is where they spent their Sunday morning, and they shared their afternoon on Fire Island before having to part ways that evening.

And when Monday morning finally came along, Jack decided the weekend couldn’t have gone better.

~written by Brendan M. Lubin, 2017

___________

Fucking... Brendan, how dare you destroy me like this? Thank you SO much for submitting this beautifully written smut! I wanna be Anne when I grow up, I swear to God. Guys, if you loved this piece (and I know y’all did) then check out @the-original-b; his poems are absolutely amazing!!! 

[jutsgforit]

The Not So Absolute Types of Gay Guy in Ibu Kota

Pernah suatu ketika ketemu dengan orang yang terlalu nyentrik. And I was like, “Can I go home now? I do need to feed my pet.” Pernah suatu hari kenalan sama orang yang ganteng banget that you can’t find a dark spot on their face, it’s just flawless. Tapi, ketika dia ngomong, you start to freaked out - because you know why. Dan pernah akhirnya ketemu dengan orang yang cakep luar dalam, lahir dan batin that you feel soo intimidated. But, it was a good day and everything went exactly your way. You guys had 3 rounds straight. Trus lo baper dan dia enggak. And then you keep meeting some more new faces. Ada beberapa yang jadi temen, ada yang cuma singgah aja, until you meet the right one.

Kemudian tanpa lo sadari, you have met countless gay guys in Ibu Kota already. Beberapa punya persamaan dan lo mulai mengelompokkan mereka, just for fun. That’s exactly what I’m doing here, sesuai judul tulisan. Tidak bermaksud mengeneralisasi atau mendiskreditkan sekelompok orang tertentu. Beberapa orang mungkin bisa mengidentifikasi dirinya masuk ke beberapa kelompok dan beberapa yang lain tidak bisa sama sekali. Atau mungkin ini jadinya kayak tahapan gitu, there is no way you can categorize gay people into several groups as we are all unique.

Atau... karena kita semuanya sama. We are just the kids that could never fit in during schools and sought refuge in the music department, or in campus organization, or in debate club. And now, here we are, in the busiest and most populous city in the entire country, looking for self-worth and validation from our surroundings. Tentunya dengan caranya masing-masing. Apa dan bagaimana itu, no hard feelings. :p

 P.S: Pengelempokkan dilakukan berdasarkan pengalaman pribadi penulis and of course, there is no science on it. Again, just for fun!

    1.   The Social Media Darlings

 They live the pleasant life, moving around from one interesting, Instagrammable place to another. Hanging out with friends, from one group to another. Kalau mereka mau kenal seseorang, harus ngecek Instagram-nya dulu. Do they take good pictures? How many followers do they have? They believe it will tell them a lot. They make a good amount of money, tapi semuanya masih terasa pas-pasan. Hidup itu bekerja di Senin-Jumat dan hunting foto-foto bagus di Sabtu-Minggu. You will find them at a newly-open cute coffee shop, making a pose dengan segala perlengkapannya; the outfit, the camera, some accessoris here and there, semuanya untuk menghasilkan foto-foto berestetika dengan tone warna sempurna worth thousand likes di media sosial. Tapi, mereka.. with all the beautiful images and the updates, and the stories we see from their social media, apakah seindah di kehidupan aslinya?

 Personality traits: Photogenic, detail-oriented, soo digitalized

Typical appearance: Stylish, somewhat they look classy and minimalist, have a bleached teeth

Profession: Mostly they’re photographer, social media manager, online marketing professional, graphic designer, buzzer, blogger

Preoccupations: Fashion, traveling, music, movies

Open or discreet: Openly discreet

Jakarta hang out: All the cute cafes all over Jakarta, every Instgrammable spot in the city that you can barely imagine

Relatable quote: Your are your image building

Followers on Instagram: 28.4K

   2.   The Alpha Gay Male a.k.a The Gaylisters

Tipe gay yang paling eksklusif di antara komunitas gay. They live the good life every gay guy in Jakarta could ask for, and they’re usually too good for you. They’re somehow really proud and snarky that they only like to talk to each other. Most of them are handsome and very dandy looking. Mereka memiliki pandangan tertentu akan hidup. They know exactly their shit and are very ambitious. Sangat stylish dalam berpakaian but they don’t do it to impress, they do it for themselves. They somehow enjoy being a spotilight and they like to think that the world revolves around them. Mapan, they have decent job. Sering bolak-balik liburan, and they don’t hang out at cheap coffee shop or common eatery at the malls. They like to do a restaurant hopping at the most expensive hotels. Berusaha banget untuk hidup sehat, and yes, their body toned by a personal trainer at the premium gym in town. Ketika berada di kerumunan mereka terlihat standout dan dominan, and I hate to admit that they’re effortlessly charming.

 Personality traits: Ambitious, liberal, selfish, individualist, classy, snobby, smart, witty, sometimes sarcastic

Typical appearance: Toned or muscular, rapi dan bersih, sometimes with facial hair, rambut klimis ber-pomade

Profession: PR, marketing, news anchor, doctor, entrepreneur, manager or director in any kind of working field

Preoccuptions: Politics, house music, fashion, traveling, branded stuff

Open or discreet: Discreetly open

Jakarta hang out: Satoo - Shangri-La, Table8 - Hotel Mulia, Seasonal Tastes – The Westin Jakarta, Cinnamon – Mandarin Oriental, L’Avenue - The Hermitage.  

Relatable quote: Cogito ergo sum

Followers on Instagram: 8.632

   3.   The Gym Bunnies a.k.a The Butter Face

They spend entirely too much time at the gym. Generally they don’t have pretty face so that’s why mereka sangat terobsesi dengan tubuh berotot and they do whatever it takes to have one. They consume all the fitness supplements from whey protein, creatine, amino acids, etc, you name it. Beberapa di antara mereka melakukan perawatan wajah yang cukup intensif. Punya membership gym di mana-mana, or they stick to one after rooting around. Sangat knowledgeable untuk urusan fitness, nutrisi makanan dan body building. And because they’re gay, they’re fond of mix and match the gym outfit. Kalau baju gym-nya lagi item, semuanya item juga; sepatu, short, tempat minum, tas gym, gloves. And because they’re gay too, they befriend with mirrors in every corner of the city. They like to flex a bit and check on their muscles. But, one thing, they still don’t really like to check on the upper side.

 Personality traits: Sporty, friendly, easy going

Typical appearance: Muscular atau sangat muscular tipikal binaragawan, maskulin, rambut cepak atau botak

Profession: Personal trainer, PNS, karyawan BUMN, bankir  

Preoccupations: Pecs, fitness, health, sports

Open or discreet: Discreet

Jakarta hang out: Gym, gym, gym, and gym

Relatable quote: No pain, no gain. Shut up the fuck up and train!

Follower on Instagram: 1.012

   4.   The Loud and Proud Social Workers

 Tipe yang paling inklusif. They don’t take things for granted. They believe they were born for a mission. They’re very open and bold. They’re somehow the protectors of our community. Sangat kritis sampai ada beberapa di antara mereka yang memilih untuk menjadi ateis atau agnostik. One of them once told me, the sok discreet me; kalau orang-orang kayak lo yang straight-acting dan well-educated se-discreet ini, you don’t make our community’s fight to fit in the society any easier. Persepsi orang tentang gay will always be rooting around, sorry; ngondek, kemayu, ganggu, etc, etc. Because people don’t see you as gay, you’re guys being invinsible. And, well, it hit me. Hard, I must say. Tipe yang ini can be very dramatic sometimes, but, hell, they’re really smart.

 Personality traits: Liberal, open-minded, collectivist, vokal, intelligent, humorous

Typical appearance: They come in all shapes and sizes, beberapa sangat kemayu but they’re really proud

Profession: Pekerja sosial di INGO/NGO atau any kind of organisasi sosial

Preoccupations: Social issues, gender equality, human rights, children, politics

Open or discreet: Proudly open

Jakarta hang out: Every good coffee shop in town

Relatable quote: You don’t need to be gay to be a supporter. You just need to be human.

Follower on Instagram: 432

   5.    The Social Climbers a.k.a The Brainless Beauty

They can’t stand being missed out of things that are happening. They sound so pretentious sometimes. Nothing special actually, everything is so physical. Sorry to say, but their only talent is taking a lot of selfies. They put details when it comes to how to dress as they don’t do it for themselves, but they do it to impress. Mereka menggunakan media sosial untuk membuktikan eksistensi and most importantly to become popular. But, I can tell, isinya full-face selfie dan OOTD semua. They usually work in agency or entertainment industry and make enough cash to have a nice apartment in Gading or Kalibata area, fantastic wardrobes, beauty treatments, iPhone 7+ and to afford a quarterly leisure in Bali or Bangkok. They were born really pretty, but unfortunately it didn’t come a long with an intelligent brain (Tuhan Maha Adil!). They’re not qualified enough to have a powerful and eye-opening before-sleep conversation with (if that’s what you’re looking for). Beberapa di antara mereka orang daerah yang menemukan kebebasan baru di Jakarta. It’s Ibu Kota, bitches! Time to shine!

 Personality traits: Hedonist, superficial, drama queen

Typical appearance: Trendy, they don’t mind to wear something very noticeable for the sake of fashion, some of them have flawless face

Profession: Model, aktor FTV, bintang iklan, singer, freelancer  

Preoccupations: fashion, modeling, entertainment, cheesy lines

Open or discreet: Open

Jakarta hang out: Skye, Cloud Lounge, Social House, Basque de Tapaz, Dragonfly, and all the other bars and clubs at SCBD

Relatable quote: Work less, party harder!

Follower on Instagram: 86.4K

   6.   The Artsy-Fartsy Fags

Seni buat orang-orang seperti kita pada umumnya menjadi sebuah cara untuk menikmati hidup, bahkan passion. It’s somehow the only thing that we know we’re good at. Tipe ini, they put art before other things in their lives beyond belief. What they do? They join a choir in their campus, they sing at a wedding, they do gallery hopping twice a month, they join a dance club, they give review to every good book they read, and every good movie they watch. You're more likely to find them at a gallery opening atau pemutaran film festival oleh berbagai Institut Budaya Kedutaan Asing di Jakarta, atau di acara semacam Jakarta Fashion Week atau Nylon Face Off.  Tidak jarang, banyak dari mereka punya pengetahuan yang luas, tidak hanya soal dunia seni dan hiburan, tapi juga sejarah, budaya, bahkan politik. Some of them do those stuff for a living. Some of them do it to find a self-worth. Some are just cooler than you. Some also might be cooler than all your friends, and they’re not afraid to show it. Tipe ini, indeed, will make you feel intimidated with their tastes and everything they know. Akan ada banyak bahasan dan cerita soal hal-hal yang tidak pernah lo dengar sebelumnya. It will leave you speechless and there is nothing you can do but nodding your head. And then it hits you that no one will ever know if this type of gay guy is being honest with themselves or just being artsy-fartsy.

 Personality traits: Hipster, artsy, some of them are geeky, bookworm

Typical appearance: Twinks, some of them are tattooed, usually with slightly long hair or bangs

Profession: Musician, writer, illustrator, event organizer, freelancer

Preoccupations: Art, cultures, history, something like 9gag, any kind of festival

Open or discreet: Open

Jakarta hang out: Dialogue Kemang, Galeri Indonesia Kaya – Grand Indonesia, @America - Pacific Place, Goethe-Institut, Reading Room, Galeri Nasional, museums and other art gallery all over Jakarta

Relatable quote: There is art in Jak(art)a and every p(art) of our body.

Follower on Instagram: 2.345

   7.    The Nobodies

They are just some gay guys in town. You happen to meet them at the malls, on the street, on public transportation. They’re everywhere. They’re very noticeable, either with their skinny tops or they way they make a group in public, chattering and talking to each other about what happened in the past few days, or simply the way they look at you. Dan mereka kayak punya dunianya sendiri. Honestly, I don’t know where they come from. I guess, no body knows. No body wants to know.

 Personalilty traits: Mediocre, usually unmanly, annoying (yet, most of them don’t know it)

Typical appearance: They come in all shapes and sizes; ada yang sangat skinny, sampai yang sangat buff.

Profession: Officer at some store/supermarket, customer service

Preoccupations: Men and hot gossips

Open or discreet: Open

Jakarta hang out: Every boring place in Jakarta  

Relatable quote: I might be no body, but hell yeah, I’m everything to someone.

Follower on Instagram: 143

   8.   Our Dear Slutty Friend 

We always have that one friend yang tiba-tiba ngilang, taunya lagi ketemuan sama orang dari dating app. Iya kan? LOL. Punya kehidupannya sendiri. Somehow mereka emang tidak bersahabat dengan namanya komitmen. Most of the time juga mereka kurang reliable. But this kind of person, I can tell, akan selalu jadi orang yang kita cari ketika kita butuh informasi soal siapa pun yang baru kita gebet. Saking seringnya mereka meet up sama orang baru. Most of them emang good looking sih, and very confident, funny and charming. Most of them juga sangat knowledgeable di bidang tertentu. Taste mereka juga cukup versatile. Pokoknya overall sangat appealing. And they seemingly have the natural instinct to catch a prey. Bahkan ada yang menipu dengan terlihat begitu harmless. 

Kalo lagi ngumpul, banyak banget bahan cerita, especially about men and their touch and go life. Setiap pertemuan, cowok yang dibahas selalu berbeda-beda sesuai dengan urutan tanggal ketemunya. Kalau ada kesempatan, satu-satu bakal dikenalin. Yeah, they’re such a slut. Tapi, banyak di antara mereka yang menyangkal. The justification is they do it while they’re single, and once they’re commited to someone, they will of course leave that kind of life. But, dear, our slutty friend, it’s now 2017... when will you be committed to one?

 Personality traits: Bitchy, slutty, funny, confident, cerdas, fleksibel

Typical appearance: They just look good

Profession: Psikolog, HR staff, marketing, salesman, those who work for creative industry

Preoccupations: Filosofi, psikologi, politik, sejarah

Open or discreet: Open

Jakarta hang out: All the happening places all over Jakarta, bars, cafes, and clubs in Sudirman-Kuningan area

Relatable quote: How can you be so smart and hot looking at the same time?

Follower on Instagram: 976 (and keep raising)

   9.   Mr. Denial

Mereka yang for all you care, adalah straight, tiba-tiba ketahuan main Grindr, Tinder atau aplikasi sejenis. Atau mereka yang somehow bisa lo sense “punya bakat” menjadi seorang gay, dan suatu saat kebukti, entah karena dia ternyata pernah ketemuan sama temen gay lo, atau dia mantannya temen baru lo or else. Track record mereka emang selalu pacarannya sama cewek. Bahkan beberapa punya pacar cewek but do the game behind them. Atau bahkan beberapa di antara mereka udah nikah dan punya anak. Kalau diajak ketemu sama orang, maunya di tempat yang sesepi itu atau maunya langsung ketemu di kosan/rumah/kontrakan aja. They want everything to be straightforward, fast, no drama. This type, mereka punya pull factors tersendiri. Bikin penasaran gimana gitu. I guess, nothing beats the excitement when Mr. Denial get caught? Or we both envy and pity them for being denial for the rest of their lives?

 Personality traits: Straightforward, misterius (ini sih karena kitanya aja yang ngerasa, mereka sebenarnya just an ordinary guy who happens to be in our circle)

Typical appearance: Average looking, some with a very cute smile

Profession: Karyawan BUMN, those who work for big company, entrepreneur

Preoccupations: Current issues, things that are very practical and technical

Open or discreet: Super discreet

Jakarta hang out: Beer Garden, Melly’s, Camden, Murphy’s, LeÓn, and other decent places in Senopati or Dharmawangsa area

Relatable quote: Surprise, surprise!

Follower on Instagram: 351

[aliceviceroy]

When Queerness Is Cultural Capital, Lesbians Go Broke. June 27, 2017 There’s a video going around social media this Pride month: the ABCs of the LGBTQA. It says “those six letters will never be enough…” while smoke in every color of the rainbow swirls around a multicultural dance troupe. The video, produced by an expensive gym franchise, is further proof that Pride has been fully co-opted by identity capitalism. A is for ally, aka a straight person who identifies as woke. E is for exhibitionist. H is for heteroflexible. K is for kink. What I learned from this abecedarian of narcissism is that LGBT didn’t include enough people, so we added literally everyone else. We are witnessing an interesting cultural trend of inclusion so radical that it demands a catchall (I know I don’t have time to list out those 26-to-infinity letters): queer. What this viral Pride season commercial illustrates is that queer identity is about more than who you love or fuck. There’s no requirement to be homosexual, just to be open-minded. This whole thing is less about “labels” and more about the lifestyle attached to sticking a “Love is love” sign in your front yard. How did we get here? How did queer go from a slur, to a political slogan, to an identity, to this purposefully impossible to define denotation of the in-crowd? This marketing campaign? And where do lesbians fit? Do we get to sit at the cool kids table? Or should we return to our camper vans where we won’t inconvenience anybody with our folk music and our boring monosexuality? Cara, the former etymologist at Autostraddle, writes that queer comes to us from Old Scots, and its first recorded use was in an insult competition. Before 1508, its Old High German antecedents referred to strangeness or eccentricity. She writes, “According to the OED, “queer” first showed up on paper in 1508, in a transcription of “The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie.” Flyting, very popular in early 16th-century Scotland, was a public entertainment in which bards “would engage in verbal contests of provocative, often sexual and scatological but highly poetic abuse.” Whether as an insult or a synonym for not-normal, queer was only ever used to cast out those people deemed freaks, to bully anyone gender non-conforming, to rally the mob for a game of smear the queer. When the queer reclamation project began in the bullhorns and on the picket signs of gay liberationists, the purpose was to strike back against heteronormativity. “We’re here, we’re not like you, and we don’t want to be.” Or how about, “We’re here, we are what we are, and you don’t get to define normal anymore.” Judging by the mainstreaming of the term, queer is hardly considered derogatory to many in the LGBT family. Reclamation projects are not always so swiftly accepted. Women who’ve tried to reclaim “slut” (eg Slut Walk, slutshaming) have not successfully ended rape culture or the virgin/whore dichotomy. The difference between unsuccessful reclamation projects like “slut,” and wildly popular projects like “queer” is the degree to which not only the word can be normalized, but also the people who it is used to describe. It reminds me of that Weezer song, “everyone’s a little queer…” See “queer” as a term has become an umbrella that accommodates not only the type of sex you have and with whom, but also how you identify the sex you have, how you identify your personality, your aura, the ineffable je ne sais queer that may or may not be related in any way to your sexuality, or even the way you present yourself to the world, but simply some deeply held, internal feeling. You don’t actually need to share a common oppression or a common romantic or sexual behavior. You don’t need to share the common experience of gay bashing, having your Christian parents disown you, or any kind of homophobia. You also don’t need to share the experience of getting sweaty palms and weak knees when Rachel Maddow is on TV, or when K. Stew shows up in your Instagram feed. You don’t need to weep all through Carol because it’s the first time anyone made a mainstream movie about lesbians where nobody died in the end. That’s cool; I mean there is no homogenous experience of being gay, and not every lesbian shares with me those experiences I just described, so why should I mind that I have literally nothing in common with the genderfluid individual marching next to me at Dyke March, other than we both have short hair and only wear eyeliner when the mood strikes? The reason I mind is because queer, in functioning as a catchall, serves to obscure what it is about my life, my community, my partners, that I needed to learn to be proud of in the first place. Because for me and all the other lesbians I know, figuring out your sexuality is hard enough, but the real work is in accepting yourself, demanding acceptance from others, being willing to walk away when that acceptance is denied. Lesbians are women, and women are taught that we’re supposed to be sexually available objects of public consumption. So we spend a lot of time saying “No.” No, we won’t fuck or partner with men; no, we won’t change our minds about this; no, this body is a no-man’s land. Lesbian, straight or bi, women are punished whenever we try to assert a boundary. Queer as a catchall term makes it really hard for lesbians to assert and maintain this boundary, because it makes it impossible to name this boundary. The inherent boundary-less nature of queer as its meaning has morphed from an insult to an identity has not necessarily made more spaces for gay and lesbian people so much as moved the furniture around. I’ll give you an example. I recently moved to a new city and was hoping to start a group house to save on rent. I joined a Facebook group called Queer Housing. I made an ad looking for queer roommates, and what I got was a whole lot of messages like “I’m a cis guy and my nonbinary femme girlfriend and I are looking for a house where we can enjoy watching Ru Paul’s Drag Race with other queers.” OK. I was kind of hoping for a house that looks more like the group house in Dykes to Watch Out For than the episodes of the Real World where the token bisexual makes out with a heteroflexible girl while the guys egg them on. One where we have a common culture, common interests, and common cause politically. Meanwhile, lesbians (people who are, legal or not, discriminated against in housing, suffer with fewer job prospects and tend to make less money than straight men, will have one less cheap housing option because the str8s are in here taking up space. Oh but A is for Ally in Queer Land, right?). Yet again, space created by and for people marginalized by their sexuality is colonized by people who enjoy all of the benefits of heterosexual privilege. It’s really hard to talk about privilege — who has it and who doesn’t — in the paradigm of queer theory, because one’s self-perception is the basis of one’s standpoint, rather than one’s membership in a broader social class like man, woman, gay or straight. I witnessed a woman in a heated Facebook argument weaponizing her queer identity as the standpoint for why her word on queerness and queer rights should be the last. A gay man asked “does your queer identity include sleeping with someone of the same sex?” She responded angrily that her queerness was spiritual and deeply personal, and that she didn’t need to share the many ways in which she was queer. That’s fine, although no one asked you for a play by play of how you reach orgasm. While my lesbianism is also deeply personal and spiritual, it’s impossible for me to hide behind “well I don’t need to tell you in what ways I’m a lesbian.” I can’t walk down the street without some man telling me that I look unfuckable. I can’t hold my sweetie’s hand in public without some man yelling “Why don’t you let a real man try? I could fuck you straight, girl.” It was a choice to come out, but I come out again every day. I could pass for straight if I would let my hair grow a little longer and stop wearing such practical shoes, but as soon as people see the way I interact with the women in my life, they know. I don’t want to indulge in “binary thinking,” in setting up a dichotomy between homos and heteros. Of course I know for some people, sexuality is fluid, and for others, it is very fixed throughout their lives. Many straight people have confusing crushes or days of experimentation, just like gay people do. Lots of people find themselves all sorts of places on the Kinsey scale. Goddess knows I was all over the place before pitching my tent in Dykesville. Yet, queer is not exact enough for me. Maybe there have been parts of me that dabbled in polyamory and BDSM, but those parts are subcategories of my specifically lesbian experience. So who cares if every letter of the alphabet is celebrated during Pride? What do I lose when lesbian is lumped in with queer? Well, for starters, political cogency. Last I checked it wasn’t the kink bars or the swingers parties that the cops raided in the 1950s, it was the gay bars, and anyone caught there could be roughed up, thrown in jail, raped or molested by cops and guards with total impunity. When Mike Pence advocated for conversion therapy as a Congressman, he wasn’t targeting those people who like to be ball-gagged or beaten during sex. He and his cronies are coming for those of us who want to live that gay lifestyle (with and without ball gags). Theresa Butz didn’t get to explain the infinitesimal nuance of her identity to the man who raped and murdered her for having the audacity to live with her girlfriend. The violence that lesbians experience is specific to being lesbian, and the culture that lesbians enjoy is specific to being lesbian. Both ends of this, the good and the bad, are the stuff a movement is based on. Queer identity and queer culture both stop short of speaking to this lesbian experience. These days when I hear someone call themselves queer, I just assume that their sexuality is too complicated to understand without a liberal arts degree. Honestly, I don’t care. I only need to know what labels you use if we’ve both swiped right, or when I’m sending out the invites to the potluck where we plot the overthrow of the heteropatriarchy. It does annoy me though, that everyone who has ever watched “lesbian” porn, or had an asymmetrical haircut, or read The Ethical Slut is demanding a rainbow participation badge. It means the market for selling not-normal, edgy, cool-ness is bigger and more profitable to lifestyle brands. It means anyone who is not-normal, edgy or cool has something to sell. It’s actually OK to let your freak flag fly without calling yourself queer or joining our parade. You can be proud of the fact that you’re not the kind of person who would slur a homo in public, the kind of person who wouldn’t bat an eyelash when you see Abby Wambach kiss her girlfriend in the stands. Ally, exhibitionist, heteroflexible, kinkster, and so on, your pride is not the same as my pride. It’s OK that I’m different from you. It’s OK that you have more in common with straight people than with LGBT people. Then again, I probably just don’t understand the personal and spiritual aura of queerness you carry deep down."