PHOTO GALLERY: Queer on a Friday Night

Mei / 21 / Student / Baltimore, MD

“Friday nights are spent at my part-time job, working at a small, family-owned Taiwanese cafe. I rode the light rail home to an apartment that would be empty for an entire week, thanks to spring break (which is just how I like it). The rest of the night was lost to a four hour drawing frenzy, only after which I realized I had accidentally left a pot of water boiling on the stove the entire time.”

Megan and Laneia / Trader Joe’s Professional; Autostraddle’s Executive Editor / Target and Nordstrom Rack in Chandler, AZ

“Here we are running errands, sending pictures to each other of the things we’re most excited about. We didn’t end up buying either things — that dress was too long and we already have a water filter. After this we went to In-n-Out!”

Emily / 24 / Retired / Yurt

“Spent this Friday night at a Queer Body Love retreat with some rad and beautiful humans. Cried, talked about our feelings, held each other tenderly, was fed cake by naked queer women in a hot tub in the forest. Collectively made magic.”

Rose / 20 / Student / Security Glasgow

I had the most amazing night at Queeriosity, a first year fundraiser at Glasgow School of Art. Spent most of the night in the womb room, incredible yolic pink space with glitter and pink cushions everywhere. I love Glasgay.

Hayley and Sarah / 22 / “Figuring it out”; Tech Educator / Providence, RI

My girlfriend Sarah took this pic of me glamorously cooking pasta for us in my boxer shorts. #kitchentop

Amy / 38 / Trauma Surgeon / Chicago, IL

Hanging out in the call room waiting on the next trauma to roll in. This is how I typically spend my weekends, patiently waiting for tragedy to strike. My motto and defense of enjoying trauma: accidents are going to happen, it might as well come to me so I can take care of them!

Laura M / 30 / Engineer and Staff Writer at Autostraddle / Cambridge, MA

I’m crushing everyone as The Lost Vikings, my new favorite character(s) in Heroes of the Storm.

Sophia / 26 / Graduate student / Princeton, New York

These pictures are from two Fridays in the past month: one from the first Friday night I spent in my new place after moving (delighted with the built-in bed bookshelves, where I decided to shelve poetry), and another in New York. The first night I spent reading; the second I spent talking on the phone to my childhood friend, wandering, and seeing an off-off-Broadway show in which a grad school classmate was acting. Incidentally, said classmate was the first woman on whom I realized I had a crush – unreciprocated, of course.

Stephanie (right) / 23 / Grad student, Brunch host / Babes of Carytown, Richmond, VA

On the last Friday in March, one of my best friends Miña and I attended a dance party fundraiser for abortion access that was held at Babes (a 32 year old lesbian bar)! The organization, Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project (RRFP), which raises money to fund abortions in the Richmond community, does a lot of exciting fundraisers and is absolutely crucial in today’s political climate.

Megan / 23 / Costume Designer / Basement of an NYC Theatre

Here I am in basement, sewing away and making stage magic happen. I freelance for all things costumes and sometimes my only company is that lil mug of tea while I hear  our tech rehearsals happening above me. I think I had been at that same makeshift sewing table for about 10 hours by the time this photo was taken but hey I love what I do so I’m still smiling about it!

Emma / 27 / PhD Candidate in Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience / Boro Bistro in London

I was in London for a family emergency but I had time to meet up with a friend I’ve known since we were 11, and we talked about my stress and worries that’ve been really bad recently. She was lovely. I have lived in lots of far-apart places and I’m a person with a small number of very close friends, so it’s hard sometimes to maintain those relationships but this meet-up was really restorative and healing for me. The café décor was also laughably weird which lightened the mood. (That is indeed a hand coming out of the air vent.)

Danika and Cass / 28, 27 / Scientist; Personal trainer / Chicago, IL

We spent our Friday night U-Hauling in matching snapbacks! …And explaining “U-Hauling” to our straight friends.

Vanessa / 28 / Writer, Nanny and Future full-time hiker / Portland, OR

As luck would have it, I happened to hold an Autostraddle meet-up on this particular Friday night! So that’s what’s happening here! A real live Auto meet-up! The sun was shining, which never happens in Portland, and it felt like spring was really here (it is, it is!), and we all hung out at the Florida Room eating greasy food and working on art projects and arguing over the taste of celery and if it’s appropriate to put ketchup on a tuna melt (celery tastes DISGUSTING and ABSOLUTELY NOT, for the record) and then by 8pm we were all heading home which is exactly when I like my Friday evening plans to wind down, to be honest. In short this was magical — I look forward to hosting more Portland Autostraddle meet-ups on Friday nights.

If you’re sending in late submissions this weekend, email [email protected], subj QUEER FRIDAY, with your high-res shot, name, age, occupation, and the location of your night, and include a blurb about what you’re doing.

April’s gallery theme will be announced on Wednesday, April 5 Monday, April 10!

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70 Comments

  1. “was fed cake by naked queer women in a hot tub in the forest.”

    I’m sorry what? Where do I sign up?

    • this is how i imagine everyone lives in portland. i don’t even know if this yurt is in portland, but it feels like it is, you know?

      • I’m so sick of living among the straights, please take me away to a Portland commune where this is common occurrence

    • The yurt is in the santa cruz mountains in california, though it’s an honour to be seen as portland level queer. another highlight of the weekend was having glitter sprinkled on my butt by the Glitter Goddess and watching her glitter up everyone else on their body part of choice, and then all of us lying on the ground and moving/touching ourselves sensually. Also I mean there was a lot of emotional work and we built a super powerful container of seeing one another and holding space to be our truest queerest selves. Great weekend overall, highly reccommend. https://www.elizabethjcooper.com/retreat/#retreatinvite

      • Sounds so dreamy! I looked it up and I would looove to be a part of smthng like that! Unfortunately I’m currently quite far from west coast but if I’m ever in that area or smthng similar happens closer to me, that’d be great!

      • Also didn’t mean to downplay the emotional work part, that also sounds great, it just that that last sentence had so many of my favorite words at the same time hahaha. Fed.Cake.Naked.Queer. Women. Hot tub. Forrest. Magic ahhh

      • Emily, I love you so much and our wacky fucking emotional container and the yurts and the hot tub. Also, Autostraddle, I want you to know that I am also in this photo and wore the lazy femme shirt ON PURPOSE because I love you too.

        • Dani i SEE u in that lazy femme shirt!!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️sorry i didn’t put everyones names, I got overwhelmed trying to figure out everyones age and occupation (i know your deep fears and desires but not your job titles)

  2. THIS IS SO CUTE Y’ALL ARE MAJORLY CUTE MAYBE I WILL TAKE A PHOTO TONIGHT AND SEND IT IN BELATEDLY BUT SPOILER ALERT I GOT MY HAIR CUT YESTERDAY (LIKE AN INCH) AND I HATE IT AND THINK IT IS TOO SHORT (LIKE I ALWAYS DO) SO I MAY BE KIND OF POUTY IN THE PHOTO BECAUSE UGH, LONG HAIR FEMME HAIR CUT WOES YA KNOWWWWWW?

    but for real @green this is just my fave thing on autostraddle right now, just the absolute best. i wanna stare at cute queers doing cute things JUST LIVING THEIR LIVES for forever and you are making that possible so THANK YOU <3

    • ? YES PLEASE SEND A PICTURE OF YOUR LONG LUXURIOUS HAIR -that is only 1″ shorter than it usually is- PLEASE

    • As a very long haired femme I FEEL YOU! One inch feels like you’ve chopped your hair in half or something! But I-m sure you look fabulous :)

    • As a long-and-curly haired femme, the idea of having my hair an ENTIRE INCH too short is the stuff of my nightmares,so I totally feel you.

      I bet you look supes de dupes cute though! :D

    • V MY ROOMATE HAS GORGEOUS FLOWY FAIRY LOCKS AND HE ASKED ME TO TRIM IT. I TRIMMED RIGHT WHERE I WAS TOLD TO, HE WHINED ALL OVER THE HOUSE ALL DAY! I HAVE LITERALLY WITNESSED THIS FEEL!!

  3. This is so cute and good!! You are doing a major public service with these galleries, and I hope they never ever stop.

    Also, I didn’t even think about any of the things in the intro paragraph (like, having to explain what this gallery/Autostraddle is to a group of people, etc. etc.), even though they are totally super valid. This makes me really happy, because just 5 years ago the idea of having my face and name in Autostraddle would have filled me with dread, but now in 2017 I was like, “hey guys, so we’re totally gonna take a pic for the queer on a friday night gallery, yeah? good, cool.” I didn’t even fully realize how super-gay my life had become!

  4. Oh my word that concert sounds so great Kris, and that song? That sounds super awesome and gay!

  5. Just spent 20 minutes zooming at every pictures on the wall of the image from Hungary !

    Anyway, sending this picture on the gallery is a little step on my way to a public coming out (i’m not entirely out). I did not send my face (playing the trumpet = not sexy at all), but still, someone who knows me will recognize it so I was kind of scared when I sent it but now I feel strangely proud.

    • Yo P., as another queer History student from France: you can and should be proud <3 Also, I love your bookshelf (French editions!).

    • Congrats for that little step out of the closet! I shared the Queer in the Kitchen one on my Facebook as a kind of global coming out :)

    • solidarity from another queer history/lit student in France! (also: I’m from Toulouse! yay Sud-Ouest!)
      & Beauté Fatale is an *amazing* book. still wondering why it hasn’t been translated yet into English, though.

  6. Seeing my art on this page is even more exciting than seeing it in the gallery!!!
    Thanks Laneia for helping me put another check mark of making dreams come true!!!

  7. LIONZ KLUB

    Also aiofe!! Your rats! And the lighting in that photo! ? @ your whole self

    I really like it when I see Queers In The Wild who also have pets that a cat would eat

      • As a different Aoife, this cracks me up so much. I get such entertainment from befuddling the fuck out of people with Irish names. But maybe that’s just cause I rarely have to encounter it IRL (perks of being in Ireland, where Aoife’s are so common that I was once one of four in a class of only 22)

        • I have Irish spellchecker on my phone bc I spell my middle name the Irish way online to keep employers from finding me and I thought it would save me and it did not

        • I’ve also misspelled my own first name though (Michael) so like this an across the board problem

  9. OHMYGOSH I am SO EXCITED to see rural northern Wisco represented!! Hi Nico in Luck!! I wanna come check out your co-op!

  10. I always tell myself I should send a picture and then I always forget about it until I see the Gallery published!!! If I miss the late submission opportunity I have no excuse… I visited my girlfriend in Houston recently and went to the Rodeo so got excited to see someone else doing that, I also went to watch Logan (it was hard to pick between Logan and Beauty and the Beast) and had game night last friday with my coworkers. So many picture opportunities lost!!! I guess I can send one of me right now…reading Autostraddle :P

  11. Maggie in DC I think I have that same chambray shirt!!! It looks very cute on you!

    Feeling very ~seen~ in terms of how many other people were in their apartment drinking (box?) wine!

  14. What I got out of this gallery:
    1) I’m definitely not living that 20s lifestyle anymore,
    2) I’d like to leave the house occasionally,
    3) Queers can do anything.

    Such a lovely gallery! Would love to contribute in the future and have a human other than my partner in the photo with me.

  15. I don’t think I’m even capable of expressing in words how much I love this series.

  16. I adore these galleries So0o0oOOoo0o0ooO MUCH!!!!!!!!! When I realized this afternoon it’s march 31st I thought, QUEER IRL MUST BE OUT TODAY! Promptly stopped what I was doing to check and to my delight here it was. Huge smile on my face the entire time of scrolling through this, y’all are radiant and i love peeking into your lives.

  17. Dear Erin / 28 / Parent and student / Home base;

    Thank you for making me feel less alone with my constant Friday night laundering. I just want to make use of that off-peak hydro pricing in the evenings, y’know??

    Xo, Faith/27/Hamilton. :P

    All you Straddlers have such cool lives, damn it! I’m such a hermit. Thanks for letting me live vicariously through all your images! :D

    • I’m also a regular Friday night launderer, and I’m cool as fuck (one of these things is a lie). Laundry is valid as are you!

  21. I was feeling too insecure to click this gallery cos I thought everyone would be out getting drunk at a club/bar and chatting up cute women. Media version of ‘Friday night’. Tbh apart from the cute women (and it takes me a while irl to warm up to ppl) that isn’t what I want from Friday night but I feel odd about not doing as that’s basically media representation of a good Friday night.

    So glad that I can relate to the ways some of you spend your night, makes me feel less alone & odd and more like there’s more ppl who enjoy themselves the same ways I do.

    I hope all of you (inc everyone here) had great Friday nights.

  22. Finally went through all the pictures while recovering from my Friday night (which was exactly as described in y comment about all my other Fridays haha)

    So many of you having chilled Friday nights are making me consider that I should occasionally take a leaf from your books and do that, it looks cozy! :)

  23. YOU’RE ALL SO CUTE JUST THE CUTEST I HAVE CRUSHES ON EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU AND WOULD BUY YOU A MILKSHAKE IF YOU WERE INTO IT.

    Also Lauren & Faith- yes, so cool!! xoxo

  24. MEI!
    IS YOUR STOVE OKAY!? or like your house! Or are you just like, full of ambient steam and so your skin is super-hydrated?

    • the stove is ok! (besides the problems it already had before) mostly my concern was my roommate’s pot because all the water evaporated and left marks on the bottom hahahahaha…….but thankfully she doesn’t care, since she won’t need it after we graduate in a month anyway

  25. This is hands-down one of the best things on the web. Also Chandra’s posing skills are top-notch.

  26. This is probably one of my favorite things on Autostraddle, even if it made me a little sad.

  28. Super Sculptor Amy, congratulations! Your contribution made me SO happy. You’re a fucking hero – go you for the show.

  29. This continues to be my favorite thing! I would have joined in, but I knew the pic quality was gonna be soooo good, and my fri night is a selfie of me sleeping.

  30. OMG IT ME! I’m so excited to be on the Autostraddle site in such an awesome way, you guys are all wonderful beautiful people!

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